Tips, guides, and reviews about software, web apps, technology, mobile phones, and computers.

  • Happy Thanksgiving from Techerator!

    To those of you reading Techerator from the United States: Happy Thanksgiving!  We decided to take a break from the tech today and instead tell you what our plans are for the holiday weekend.  Feel free to tell us your plans in the comments at the bottom of this post! Above all, we’re thankful for…

  • How to Bypass the “Welcome to” Android Phone Activation Screen

    When you turn on an Android phone for the first time (or after resetting your device), you’ll be greeted with a “Welcome to <Your Phone Model>” screen which shows you how to activate your new phone.  If you’re checking out a phone in a store (or just don’t want to activate your device yet), this…

  • A Personal Appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales to Read This Blog Post

    If you’ve checked out Wikipedia lately, you’ll notice that there’s a large, dramatic picture of a man named Jimmy Wales at the top of each page.  This guy is the founder of Wikipedia, and he wants you to give the Wikimedia Foundation some money to keep the lights on at Wikipedia. So why does this…

  • Evolve Your Living Room with a DLNA HDTV and Windows Media Player

    It’s a fact: Gone are the days that homes are built with computer rooms and family/living rooms in their floor plans.  The future of sit-down family entertainment is here, and dear lord its about time.  This month, my family decided to purchase a nice, new Samsung Series 6 6300 LED TV and a brand new…

  • SharePoint Solution Deployment Horror

    A couple of weeks ago, I had the worst professional SharePoint moment of my life, thanks to SharePoint 2007, Visual Studio 2008, and WSPBuilder. Deploying custom solutions to SharePoint is something I have done many times, but I’ve learned to expect nothing but the worst, especially when the task at hand seems like it should…

  • Facebook Unveils New Messaging Service That Will Revolutionize Communication

    Is Facebook trying to conquer the world?  It seems so. On Monday, Facebook held a conference in California where a new messaging service powered by the uber-giant, social-networking site was unveiled. There has been a lot of speculation and buzz the past few weeks and months about Facebook’s version of email.  While it’s being officially…

  • Holidays 2.0: How the Internet Changed (and saved) Christmas

    The internet is without a doubt one of the greatest and furthest reaching inventions in the history of mankind. It allows for near instantaneous communication with people on the other side of the planet (and even in outer space). Internet connectivity has become so ingrained into our everyday lives that it’s often hard to imagine…

  • The Ultimate .vimrc Configuration File for the Vim Text Editor

    Vim is a versatile and powerful text editor for command-line environments in Linux/UNIX systems.  Vim is free, open source, and is available on many different platforms, but it does have some quirks out of the box.  If you’re comfortable working in a regular text editor you might find yourself lost, but in this guide I’ll…

  • Ask Techerator: How can I search by only File Name in Windows 7?

    Techerator team: I’ve just switched from Windows XP/Office 2003 to Windows 7/Office 2010.  Before, I could easily find files in Word & Excel by simply typing a word that I knew was in the filename…. Now with Windows7/Office 2010, by searching in the upper right corner search box, the directory instead lists all the files…

  • Google Adds Instant Previews to Your Search Results

    Hey Googlers, if Instant Search wasn’t enough for you, Google has been rolling out a new feature called Instant Previews.  Instant Previews show you a visual preview of your search results, and let you quickly locate the information you wanted. Instant Previews isn’t turned on by default yet, but you can try it for yourself…