HP CEO Meg Whitman recently told investors that the company will be shipping Windows 8 products by the end of the year, and now CNET is reporting some possible details about its tablet plans. According to the site, HP is working on at least three different Windows 8 tablets, powered by chips from Intel and Qualcomm. The two Intel models are said to utilize the chipmaker's 32nm Atom Clover Trail platform, and will come in two distinct form factors. The first is reportedly a laptop / tablet hybrid — a device type that some of HP's competitors believe in — while the second is a more traditional tablet aimed at business customers. The third product is said to be powered by a Qualcomm processor, though no additional details are given. CNET reports that some of the three models are already being readied for commercial production, which lines up with Whitman's statements last year that the company would ship Windows 8 tablets by the end of 2012.

Whitman previously outlined the dual-pronged strategy in an interview with CRN earlier this month, noting that the company would move forward with x86 tablets first, because "we don't know when the delivery is for the software on an ARM chip." Tablets certainly haven't been the friendliest game for HP, with the company's Slate 500 and Slate 2 failing to impress, to say nothing of the fire-sale special HP TouchPad. Still, it's clear Whitman feels HP must be competitive in the tablet market, and is counting on Windows 8 to help it get there

We all know the pain of a laggy touchscreen experience, and Nvidia is working on a solution with its DirectTouch architecture that uses a Tegra 3 chip to process touch input. The technology was originally announced at CES this year, but now it looks like we're closer to seeing DirectTouch make its way into a future tablet or smartphone, as touch controller companies Synaptics, Cypress, Atmel, N-Trig, Raydium, and Focaltech have jumped on board to build controllers that support the technology.

DirectTouch offloads some touch processing onto a low-power fifth core on the Tegra 3 chip, unlike current touchscreens which have a discrete module that accomplishes the task. Nvidia's solution hands off the touch processing duties to the primary cores of the Tegra 3 when CPU-intensive programs are being used on the device. According to Nvidia, the technology will result in improved touch performance — especially with multiple finger inputs — because the Tegra 3 is far more powerful than traditional touch controllers. It's also supposed to simplify the internal design and increase the battery life of devices that use the technology, since there's no discrete touch module taking up space and constantly consuming energy. We haven't yet played with a DirectTouch-enabled device — we hope to see one at MWC this week — but if the video below is any indication, the improvements look promising.

Engineer and game creator Steve Kordek — who almost single-handedly invented what we think of as the modern pinball game — passed away Sunday at the age of 100 at his home in Park Ridge, Illinois. Pinball gaming was an evolution of what was 70 years ago called a "pin game": a user would release a ball, and then try to navigate it through a forest of pins to reach the goal at the end. Several other manufacturers tried to modify the games with an array of mechanical flippers, but it was Kordek who created a version with two flippers placed at the end of the tilted playing field in 1948. Kordek's version quickly took off, and the pinball game was born. Kordek also took the step of powering his flippers with DC current, providing them greater power and bounce, rather than the AC current used by other models.

Though he was employed by gaming company Genco at the time of his dual-flipper invention, Kordek later moved on to work for Bally Manufacturing and Williams Manufacturing, where he created games like Space Mission and Grand Prix. With the clink and clang of pinball ingrained in our collective cultural awareness as deeply as any other form of entertainment, it's safe to say Kordek has left a lasting impression. We've included some videos of Steve Kordek-designed pinball games below.

Image Credit: Marcin Wichary (Flickr)

Every Linux user will tell you the same thing: know your computer. Mine always works not because there are no bugs, but because I know enough to identify their sources every time and correct them. And one of the best ways to monitor your system is through the command line. There are some great GUI for this, but the command line has the advantage of working on every computer, and it can easily be put into a script.

I propose to you five great commands for:

1. Knowing your kernel
2. Finding hidden processes
3. Listing running modules
4. Checking disk usage
5. Locating binaries and configuration files

1. Knowing your kernel

The kernel is the core of your Linux system. It is frequently updated, and knowing its version may be important for compatibility reasons. Certain programs may require a certain version in order to work properly. It may also be important for some peripherals and modules. As an example, my Ubuntu is based on the official kernel 3.0.0. So far, the latest version is 3.2.5.

To know exactly what kernel you are using, its version, and your computer architecture, use the command:

uname -mrs

With this example, we can clearly see that I am using the official kernel, version 3.0.0. The i686stands for my computer architecture. Here it means that I am using a 32-bit computer. On the other hand, x86_64 would have indicated a 64-bit architecture.

2. Finding hidden processes

To know what processes are currently running on your machine, most people would recommend the command “top“. Joshua wrote a very good article about it last year at Linux Running Too Slow? Here’s How to Find the Cause. Personally, I find this command very useful, and as Joshua explains, it can even be used to monitor the RAM usage.

However, I am sometimes too lazy to search in the list provided by “top“, and if I already know the name of the program running, I recommend the combination:

ps aux | grep [name of the program]

This will have the effect of listing all the current processes, even the smallest ones that will not be picked up immediately by “top“, and then filtering them according to your keywords.

This method will instantly give you the name of the user responsible for this process, the PID number, the CPU usage percentage, the memory usage, the name of the process, etc.

As a side note, if you don’t know how to kill a running process:

kill [PID number]

OR

killall [name of the process]

3. Listing running modules

Modules appeared in version 2.0 of the Linux kernel. They are very useful, and you can consider them as drivers that you can load and remove from the memory. As an example, if you are using a laptop, you probably have a WiFi card. The corresponding modules for that card are probably loaded automatically at start up. If you want to save some battery, you may want to stop the card when you are not using the Internet. Removing the corresponding driver from the memory will then give you a little bit more memory (and you will also be sure that your card is disabled).

But first you need to know which modules are currently running. The command for that is

lsmod

This command is simply the combination of “ls” for listing files in a directory and “mod ” for module (I know, what a surprise).

As a complement to your knowledge, you can add modules with the command

modprobe [name of the module]

and remove them via

rmmod [name of the module]

These two commands have to be launched by a super-user.

4. Checking disk usage

Keeping an eye on your system’s volumes can save you a lot of trouble. You may want to be sure that there is always enough room in /root, and remember to periodically clean your /tmp. For that purpose, there are two great commands:

lsblk

and

df -h

lsblk displays a tree representation of the partitions of your computer. It also gives you some useful information about the size of these partitions, their type, and their mountpoint.

However, even if lsblk is more visual, I still prefer to use df -h. The latter gives you more information about the remaining space, the size of the partitions, and the percentage of memory in use.

You may have noticed that the command df alone will give you the size in bytes, which might be very hard to interpret. The option -h stands for human readable and gives you the amount of data in gigabytes, megabytes, or whatever is the easiest for a human to understand.

5. Locating binaries and configuration files

One of the first things that confused me when I left Windows a few years ago was that the file system was completely different on Linux. There is no such thing as Program Files, or a single directory for all the configuration files. But it may be very useful to know where these binaries are. For that purpose, the command:

whereis

is among the best. Similarly to

whoami

which gives you the name of the current user, or

whatis

which explains a command quickly, whereis can locate binaries, manual entries, and various configuration files. Its syntax is also very simple:

whereis [name]

In the example above, I asked where Firefox was, and the command returned the location for its binary and various directories, as well as the manual page.

But one of the greatest strengths of whereis is its ability to locate standalone configuration files. Here is another example, where I was searching for rc configuration files:

Such options can become very useful, especially if you are not using Ubuntu but another distribution like Archlinux which requires a serious amount of time to edit these files.

Conclusion

With these commands in your pocket, you will be able to see a little more of what is going on in your system. If you still prefer to have a GUI for that, I would still recommend things like Baobab for the files and Gnome System Monitor in general.

Are you using other commands? Other GUIs? Let us know in the comments.

There’s a ton of talk out there about changing your logon screen manually, but many people – particularly those who are more tech-illiterate – would like a program that can magically do this with the click of a mouse. If you’re one of the latter group of people, someone from Finland appears to have been listening to your grievances. Now, you can use Kirjaudu (which means “logon” in Finnish) and click a large button on the application to change that old, boring logon screen into a beautiful background. There’s no crazy installation process, no adware obligations, and no insanely long processes involved in simply making the switch.

The Problem Most People Face When Modifying Windows

The majority of computer users would like to turn their Windows installations into something more personalized, much like how you can do it with certain Linux distributions. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t really want people messing around with their graphic interface, and why code it into Windows when there are many third-party applications (some even free for download) that can do these things? We’re not exactly sure why Windows doesn’t let you do things like changing the Start button or logon screen on your computer.

Third-party applications simply suck, for lack of a better word, since most of them require you to pay and have very limited functionality in their trial versions. Some of them can even end up breaking your computer in ways you never thought possible. The free versions don’t quite cut it either, and sometimes you want to do something simple without installing an entire suite for it. The problem isn’t easy to address, and the alternative isn’t any better: You would have to change your logon screen manually.

So… Kirjuadu Comes to The Rescue

Nobody likes to mess with the Windows registry. It’s just one huge hodgepodge of disasters waiting to happen, especially if you have no clue what you’re doing. A clever Finnish developer made an application that does it all for you, and you barely have to do any work to make it happen. Kirjuadu is available for download here. Not only is the application malware-free, but it’s also open source for those techies that want to make the world a better place. Once you download it, simply open the EXE. You should see a window like this:

That has to be the most oversimplified interface in the world. Yet, you can’t argue with the fact that almost anyone can use it. Once you push the button, it will take you to a browsing window, where you can select the file that you’d like to change your logon screen to.

Once done, you’ll see the interface show the picture you selected on the right-hand side. Click “Start” and the application will change the logon screen for you. Restart your computer to see results.

Please note: The developer of this application is not associated in any way to Make Tech Easier, and any bugs should be reported on the developer’s project page here.

Let us know what you feel about this program in the comments section!

When you have an Android phone, you use it for many reasons. A lot of times, your Android phone is used for both work and personal.

When you are using your phone for business, you are not going to want certain ringtones or backgrounds to be on your phone no matter how funny you think they are. When you are at home, you may not need the same settings as you would if you were working. In steps Profile Scheduler.

Android Profile Scheduler basics

There are a lot of things you can control using Profile Scheduler. You can set up a bunch of different profiles for different occasions. Each of the profiles can have very different settings. The default profiles are:

• Normal
• Meeting
• Silent
• Night
• Outdoor

You can use each of these default profiles as a starting point to create what you need. Some of the settings you can make adjustments to:

• Ringtone sound and volume
• Message Notification sound and volume
• Audible touch tones on or off
• Wi-Fi on or off
• Bluetooth on or off
• Screen brightness and timeout
• An application to automatically launch

Scheduling profile changes

There is an option to schedule changes automatically. What happens here is, you need to set a time range and choose the days of the week you’d like to have the profile change. Once you select the profile you’d like to be activated, you are all set.

The scheduling feature can be turned on and off manually if your schedule changes or even overridden by selecting a different profile if you have an impromptu meeting for example.

Using Rules

Rules can come in handy for automatically changing your Android phone profile to something more appropriate for the situation. In the Rules tab, you can create a circumstance to have Profile Scheduler make a change to your profile.

The way it works is you select a profile you’d like to change to. Then you choose the criteria. Is it in a desk dock or is the battery level low or you are in a certain location. Then you may need to add some specifics like where your location needs to be (e.g. the office or at home) on the map or how low your battery needs to be.

Once you have set all of these criteria, you are all set to go. When the situation is met, Profile Scheduler will switch up your profile accordingly. I have one set for when I arrive at work my profile changes to my Work profile automatically.

Possible Profiles

Driving

A driving profile could consist of turning your Bluetooth on and activating Vlingo for using voice commands to make calls while driving.

In the office

You can have the Wi-Fi turn on and change your notifications and ringtones to something a bit more business-like.

At the gym or running outside

You could have the media volume turned up and the ringer volume lower. You are less likely to answer a call while you have your phone strapped to your arm while working out. You could also have the screen brightness turned down and even shut off the mobile data if you are listening to music on the SD card or internal phone storage.

Conclusion

There are a lot of possible uses for a having multiple profiles set up and easily changeable with a few clicks. It takes a few minutes to initially set up the profiles and perhaps a bit of tweaking them now and again, but you will come to realize the little time spent can really save you a lot of trouble and bring you a lot of conveniences.

How do you change your phone setting quickly?

For those of you who use Facebook, I am sure there are one or two of you who have an Android phone. If you fall into this category, there is an application that lets you make new cover photos from pictures you take from your phone. You can add Facebook Cover Art to the list of Android apps on your device.

The short explanation of the Facebook Cover Art is this: when you are out someplace and you take a really great picture, you can create a new Cover picture and upload it right to your Facebook Timeline. Below is the specifics of how it works.

Using Facebook Cover Art for Android

When you open the application, you will be prompted to grant access to your Facebook account. This is important to do because if you don’t grant access, you can’t upload the new Cover art.

Once you have granted access, you are ready to get to making your first Cover picture. To start, you will want to find a picture you have taken. There are a few places you can look for a picture. You can choose from images on your phone, in your Facebook news feed or pictures you have already uploaded in your Facebook albums. These choices are listed across the top of the application’s main screen.

When you have found a picture on your phone that you want to use, press Use Photo in the bottom right of that screen. You will be asked to choose what you want to do with the picture: use it as a profile picture, as cover art or seamless mode.

Using pinch to zoom, you will need to resize and move the picture so it fills the area and looks the way you’d like it to.

When you have the picture the way you want it to be, you will have a preview of how it should look. If all is well, then click on Upload and Share. You should see a popup telling you to head over to m.Facebook.com and select the new picture as your new Cover art.

Other options for Cover art

There is a bunch of pre-made Cover art packaged into Facebook Cover Art for Android. If you don’t have any interesting pictures to use, try one of these.

What works well and what didn’t

The process was pretty easy to figure out and complete but there were a couple things I couldn’t get to work. These issues may have been related to my device specifically so do not let these hinder you from trying out Facebook Cover Art for Android.

When choosing pictures from my device, there were a few pictures that didn’t want to work. I believe they were pictures from a home screen wallpaper application I previously used. The other problem I had was, the end result of the Cover I created was not 100% the same as the end result. It took a little playing around to get the picture in the preview (before uploading) to be centered and look the same as the end result on Facebook.

Conclusion

I really like this application. It makes using your pictures for a Cover really easy. For people who are on the go more than at a computer, this is a great way to change up your profile on the fly.

Share your tips for using Facebook while mobile in the comments below.

If you have an old family photo in black and white, you'll love this tutorial. I will walk you through how to convert a black and white photo into color. First, let's take a look at both the initial photo and the finished product:




Step 1: Actually, the original photo was a little darker so I had to modify the level parameters. Go to ‘Image > Adjustments > Level’. A histogram menu will open. There are three parameters under the graph. To adjust the light level, I have increased the left value and slightly decreased the right value. The middle value remained unchanged. You can choose your values by adjusting the slider until you are satisfied. Lightening your image may make it a little easier to work with. Also, ensure your file is in CMYK mode.




Step 2: Next choose the selection tool. I like using the polygon lasso but you can use the normal lasso tool if you'd like. First, I'll concentrate on the skin. Select all of the skin including the face, hand, neck and shoulder. This will require patience, attention and perhaps a few attempts!




Step 3: Look at the photo carefully... I have selected her face but excluded her eyes, eyebrows and lips as those colors are different. To exclude any area of the selected face simply hold down the ‘Option’ key while using the Lasso tool. To add other areas like the hands and shoulders hold down the ‘Shift’ key. After all of the skin has been selected, press 'q' on your keyboard. This will unleash the quick masking option which will turn all other areas pink. Touch up areas of the skin that are pink using the eraser. To smoothen the mask add a little gaussian blur effect and then hit ‘q’ again.




Step 4: Next, go to ‘Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curve’ or click on the half black circle icon beneath the layer panel and select 'Curve'. This will create a new layer. In the dialog box, name the adjustment layer as 'Skin' and check the box to use the previous layer as the clipping mask. When you hit ‘OK’ a new graph box will appear. Click the drop down menu beside the text ‘CMYK’ and select every color one by one. Change the shape of the curve so that the graph will look like this:




When you click ‘OK’ you will see the magic! His/her face has changed into color! Of course, you will need to adjust the curves in the previous step according to the skin color you are trying to achieve.




Step 5: Now that we've covered the basic, you can follow the same method to colorize the hair, lips and clothes. For every each set of uniquely-colored items, create a new adjustment layer and modify the color curves accordingly. For her hair and lips, I have used these two settings:




Step 6: Because I want her hair to have have blue hair and brown lipstick, I've raised the blue curve for the hair layer and raised the red curve for the lips with a mix of black. My final photo looks like this:




That concludes this tutorial. Best of luck bringing your black and white photos to life with color!

Did you know that you could add a torn up effect on a photo with Photoshop? In this tutorial I will show you how to do this!

Step 1:

I picked up the photo of Lee Major to tear up. Duplicate the layer and select the blending method as ‘Screen’. The image should look brighter.




Step 2:

Double click on the duplicated layer to open the ‘Layer Style’ window and click on ‘Drop shadow’. Choose the blending mode ‘Multiply’ and lower down the opacity. Now add ‘Inner Shadow’ and ‘Inner Glow’ effects; use multiply blending mode, low opacity and black color. Now click on ‘Bevel and Emboss’ tab and set the depth to 13% and the shadow mode to ‘Lighten’. Follow these screen shots for guidance:













Step 3:

Now find some images of torn paper and cardboard from Google images and place them in your Photoshop document. I have used three images and placed them like so:




Step 4:

The way we lay out the torn paper outlines how the photo will be torn. Click on ‘Layer 2’ in the layer panel while holding down the ‘Control’ key and the shape of the torn paper will be selected. Now click on ‘Layer 1’ or whatever layer contains the photo. The selection is now covering the area of the photo; press ‘Control + X’ on your keyboard to cut the area and paste it on top of all layers.




Step 5:

Follow the same method for the other torn papers and cut the photo according to the shapes.

Step 6:

Now select the layer on top and double click it to open the ‘Layer Style’ window. Add a drop shadow effect and repeat the same effect for other layers that contain parts of the photo. You can also add some Gaussian blur effect to the torn papers in order to lighten the background. The photo seems a little too bright so I also placed a new level adjustment layer on top and darkened the photo. My final image looks like this:




Tear away!

Many times while using color codes in your website, may be for a paragraph background or a font color you might have had a certain color in mind after seeing that in an image on your PC or some image on a website, you might have not been able to get the exact same color that you need or you would settle for some color that almost matches the color that you had in mind.

This tutorial guides you through a step by step procedure to get HTML color codes from an image on your PC or the image you see on a website, so that you can use that exact color code for your work.We will work on two examples here, one is the image on your PC and the other is the image on a website.

Example 1 : Using an Image on your desktop

Step 1: Choose an image on your desktop, I have choosen the twitter logo as many people usually ask for that shade of blue

Step 2: You can use Adobe Photoshop to get the HTML color codes, but that option will not go well with most of us, so I have chosen an alternative. Create an account in a free image hosting website such as Photobucket or Imageshack and upoad the image. I have uploaded my image onto a photobucket account.

Step 3: After you have uploaded the image, click on the direct link as shown in the image below.

Step 4: Now go the website Degraeve Color Palette. Paste the copied URL where the arrow is pointing and click on the color-palette-ify! button and see the color codes of all the colors used in your image.

Example 2: Use an Image on a website

Step 1: Here I am going to use the logo of the website BigRock as my image. Visit Bigrock and right click on the logo and click on copy image URL option

Step 2: Repeat step 4 of exmaple and see the results.