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Showing posts from May 27, 2014

How to Speed Up a Sluggish Android Smartphone

If getting rid of superfluous apps on your smartphone doesn't solve the problem, reinstalling factory stock software likely will. Like rehab -- or the drunk tank -- for our lethargic, wrong-side-of-the-tracks smartphone inhabitant, this operation may sound like a big deal and a lot of work, and unfortunately it is, because you have to reconfigure your apps. One of the disadvantages of retaining a phone after the expiration of a two-year contract -- as many of us do -- is that those older phones have accumulated a few years' worth of digital gunk. They're clogged up like an aging sewer on the wrong side of town. Just like on a PC, bits of app and OS code become discombobulated -- orphaned from the parent program. Onboard digital debris becomes disoriented like a drunk stumbling out of a favored hole-in-the-wall; jumbled lethargy sets in, and the device can take forever to start or become sticky in operation. Well, just like a PC -- or a run-down apartmen...

How to Slim Down a Bloated Android Device

Determine where best to free up space. Take a look at the Pictures and Videos space used in particular. Look for the numerical value next to the descriptive label. Video and images, unlike music, often don't need to be stored on the device and can be moved. HD video is a major memory hog. Photographs and music are other forms of media that take up a lot of space. It's a good idea to prune an Android device periodically, for a few reasons. A mishmash of apps, some aging, have all kinds of on-device routines running that can negatively affect performance. Worse, some are continually accessing the Internet and eating into your data cap -- unlimited wireless Internet on mobile devices is practically nonexistent these days. Plus, the accumulation of apps and their associated data hogs now limited storage memory. It's common to see no expandable storage options on may current phones. I've written about ways to speed up a slowing phone before. In "Ho...

China Calls for Increased Testing of IT Products

Today in international tech news: Adding yet another chapter to the U.S.-China cyberstandoff, China calls for increased vetting of major IT products and services. Also: Cabbies vandalize -- and engage in fisticuffs at -- the London office of a taxi app; a German court tries to legislate against revenge porn; and Twitter heeds Pakistani block requests. The ever-testy cyberstandoff between the U.S. and China got a new twist when Beijing announced that it would start "cybersecurity vetting of major IT products and services" used for national security and public interests, according to the Xinhua news agency. The vetting is designed to prevent suppliers from using their products to control, disrupt or shut down clients' systems, or from using the systems to scoop up information. Companies that don't pass muster will be barred from supplying products and services in China. The Xinhua article references both a) Congress' 2012 declaration that...

Microsoft Opens .Net, Hops on Devops Bandwagon

The most obvious reasoning for Microsoft's establishment of a .Net foundation and further opening up the technology is the continued presence and prominence of open source software -- and openness in general -- in key, fast-moving enterprise IT trends including cloud computing, Big Data and devops. Today, Microsoft continues to reshape its approach to open source. Microsoft recently established a .Net foundation and open sourced substantial parts of the popular programming language, continuing to spread its newfound love for open source software. However, it's another movement -- devops -- that may be more of a driving factor in Microsoft's .Net move. In establishing the independent .Net Foundation and making more key pieces of .Net open source, Microsoft was promoting collaboration and community, it said. Many open source technologies exist for .Net, including the recently released .Net compiler platform codenamed "Roslyn." Microsoft also high...

Is Liberalism Immoral?

T he best advocates are often converts. So it is with Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks has an important forthcoming book, The Road to Freedom, which I’ll discuss in a minute, but it’s worth pausing over the unusual career of Brooks himself, because it says much about happiness, free enterprise, and the unique American spirit that Brooks has spent the last decade attempting to save. The son of two liberal college professors, Brooks writes that when he was growing up in Seattle, “No one in my world voted for Ronald Reagan. I had no friends or family who worked in business. I believed what most everybody in my world assumed to be true: that capitalism was a bit of a sham to benefit rich people, and the best way to get a better, fairer country was to raise taxes, increase government services, and redistribute more income.” Brooks became a professional musician, playing the French horn with the Annapolis Brass Quintet and with the Bar...