Save Earth, Optimize PC power settings..

Manually activating power management in Windows 7

Click on Start, then on the right hand side of the menu select ‘Control Panel’. Control Panel has two views. If you are in Themed View double click on ‘Hardware and Sound’ and…

…And then select ‘Power Options‘.

If using a standard view, select ‘Power Options‘.

Once you are in Power Options you can customize one of the pre-configured plans by selecting the ‘change plan settings‘ options…

…and setting the amount of time before ‘turn off display‘ and ‘put the computer to sleep‘ actions are initiated. These can be set for when the computer is plugged in and when it is on battery (if you have a laptop).

To change more settings click on “Change advanced power settings”. Here you will be able to enable or set values for a variety of Power Management options.

Addendum:

EPA recommends setting computers to enter sleep after 15 to 60 minutes of inactivity. To save even more, set monitors to enter sleep mode after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity. The lower the setting, the more energy you save.
Situations that may cause Windows 7 to not sleep
PCs may not enter sleep mode when they have a file open over the network. Graphics-intensive screen savers can prevent PCs from entering sleep mode as well, and should be disabled.
Otherwise Vista should not allow software applications to stop it from going to sleep. However, it is possible for a network administrator to change this default, allowing applications to “veto” sleep when they are busy. The default can be changed using Group Policy, but cannot be set through the Power Options applet in the Control Panel.

PCs may not enter sleep mode when they have a file open over the network. Graphics-intensive screen savers can prevent PCs from entering sleep mode as well, and should be disabled.
Otherwise Vista should not allow software applications to stop it from going to sleep. However, it is possible for a network administrator to change this default, allowing applications to “veto” sleep when they are busy. The default can be changed using Group Policy, but cannot be set through the Power Options applet in the Control Panel.

List Category Wise Content Using WP Featured Content Slider

How to Display Category wise content with WP-featured-content-slider?

Well, WP-featured-content-slider is a good way to show small introduction along side a photo with sliding effect but some times we need to list only specific categories content on some specific page so, what to do then?

Its just easy 2 step customization in plugin files, see below.

Step 1:
Open "featured-content-slider.php" file of the plugin and do following customization in function called

c_slider_insert($content = null)

add an argument "$atts" into the function if not exists. So it will looks like

function c_slider_insert($atts, $content = null) 

Now add the following code in the function at starting.

extract( shortcode_atts( array(

 'cat' => ''

 ), $atts) );

Step 2: 
Open file "content-slider.php" and then find for following code and change it
from

$args = array( 'meta_key' => 'feat_slider', 'meta_value'=> '1', 'suppress_filters' => 0, 'post_type' => array('post', 'page'), 'orderby' => $c_slider_sort, 'order' => $c_slider_order, 'numberposts'=> $c_slider_post_limit);

to

$args = array( 'meta_key' => 'feat_slider', 'meta_value'=> '1', 'suppress_filters' => 0, 'post_type' => array('post', 'page'), 'category' => $cat, 'orderby' => $c_slider_sort, 'order' => $c_slider_order, 'numberposts'=> $c_slider_post_limit);

That's it one all done. now all you need to do is specify your category while writing short code like

[featslider cat=CATEGORY_SLUG]

All done! Enjoy coding...

Google Open Source Blog: A new kind of summer job: open source coding with ...

It's only Spring Break for most college students, but summer vacation will be here before you know it. Instead of getting stuck babysitting your little sister or mowing your neighbor's lawn, apply forGoogle Summer of Code and spend the summer of 2012 earning money writing code for open source projects.

Google Summer of Code is a global program that gives university students a stipend to write code for open source projects over a three month period. Accepted students are paired with a mentor from the participating projects, gaining exposure to real-world software development and the opportunity for future employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

For the past ten days, interested students have had the opportunity to review the ideas pages for this year’s 180 accepted projects and research which projects they would like to contribute to this year. We hope all interested students will apply! Submit your proposal to the mentoring organizations via the Google Summer of Code program website from today through Friday, April 6 at 19:00 UTC.

Google Summer Of Code 2012

( By Carol Smith, Open Source Team From the Official Google Blog)

Official Google Blog: Google+ Hangouts: going beyond the status update

All too often, physical distance and frantic schedules get in the way of spending time together, especially during the holidays. But you know what? They don't have to.

With Google+ Hangouts, you can go beyond “status updates,” and connect with the people you care about using multi-person video. For free. And today we're rolling out a number of improvements that make it even easier to say hello to your loved ones, face-to-face-to-face.

Upgrade any conversation from long-form to live
Certain posts act as kindling for face-to-face interaction. Suppose your sister gets engaged, or your roommate lands a job, or your favorite singer shares their concert schedule. You can obviously write comments back and forth, but it's moments like these when you really want to connect in person. That's why we're making it easy to start a hangout from any post on Google+.

Just click "Hangout" underneath a post that you’re passionate about, and we’ll add your invitation to the comments. If others are hanging out already, you'll see their invitation in the comments as well.

Starting a hangout on a post (left); Joining a hangout already in progress (right)

The desire to “go live” isn’t limited to your desktop computer, of course, so we’re also bringing hangouts to Google+ Messenger on mobile devices. Simply tap the new hangout icon when the time is right, and you'll flip from text and photos to smiles and laughter.   Read on Google's official blog

Your iPhone Is Tracking Your Every Move

Your iPhone Is Tracking Your Every Move
Researchers have discovered that the iPhone is keeping track of where you go and storing that information in a file that is stored - unencrypted and unprotected - onto any machine with which you synchronize your phone. It is not clear why Apple is collecting this data.


The discovery of a file called 'consolidated.db' was made by data scientists Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, who were initially looking at mobile data and thinking about ways to visualize it. They'll present their findings today at the Where 2.0 conference.


While it is not unusual for cellphones to track users' location, that information is typically kept behind a firewall and it requires a court order for others to be able to access it. This isn't the case with this particular file, raising serious questions about privacy and security.


Tracking Your Coordinates Since iOS4

The file contains longitude and latitude data, recording the phone's coordinates, along with a timestamp. This recording process seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update, which means that there could be almost a year's worth of location data stored - literally hundreds of thousands of data points. While the coordinates aren't always exactly correct, they are incredibly detailed. It appears that the location is determined via cell-tower triangulation, but the timing of these recordings varies.


It isn't clear why Apple is tracking this data, although the possibilities for location-based features are endless - location-based advertising, geofencing apps, and so on. Although the iPhone data is stored on back-up files when the phone is synced to another computer, it doesn't appear that the data is transmitted to Apple. Nevertheless, Apple appears to be unique in this type of tracking, and according to Warden, other phones do not record user's location in the same way; the two researchers have not been able to find comparable tracking systems on Android phones.


Although Google's Latitude, for example, can track your location and lets you give that information to your contacts, it is something you need to opt in to. With the iPhone, you have no such option. There is no way to delete the file, as it will simply be restored, but you can encrypt your iPhone back-ups to make the information somewhat less accessible.

Your Location Data - Unencrypted, Visualized

And that is another crucial part of this problem: in addition to the existence of the tracking mechanism, the information is incredibly accessible. To demonstrate this, Warden and Allan have created a simple downloadable app that will let Apple users check to see what location information has been stored. The app is fascinating, but also pretty frightening as it demonstrates that anyone with access to your phone or to your back-up files will be able to see where you have been since you installed iOS 4 on your phone.





The Guardian cites Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos as saying, 'if the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't store the location. And it doesn't need to keep an archive on your machine of where you've been.' But rather than ascribing it to any sort of malicious intent he said it's likely a 'cockup rather than a conspiracy.'


Conspiracy or not, it still doesn't reflect well on Apple's concern over its users' privacy. We have reached out to Apple for comment on this file but we have not heard back at the time of publishing.

Google Docs Finally Gets a Native App for Android

Google Docs Finally Gets a Native App for Android

After relegating users to in-browser editing since Android first came on the scene, Google Docs has finally made its way to mobile handsets in the form of a native app. The application itself will allow you to search through your documents and upload new files, though editing is still relegated to the mobile browser. This isn’t so bad, as Google has done a lot of work getting their online productivity suite up to speed on smartphones. The application excels in the extended features it offers.

For starters, you can now easily share files from Google Docs with the contacts in your smartphone. It’s as easy as clicking the dropdown button next to any item and selecting share. You can also star documents easily, which comes in handy when used in conjunction with the accompanying Android widget. That widget lets you go directly to starred documents or create a new document, but perhaps its best shortcut is one that allows you to upload an image to Docs. Why would we be uploading an image? Because Google Docs features the ability to turn an image containing text into an editable file. Pretty darn nifty.
The app is available for phones running Android 2.1 and higher and can be found in the Android Market now.
Android Market Link: Google Docs

Microsoft has received five times more income from Android than from Windows Phone

Microsoft has received five times more income from Android than from Windows Phone: "

Microsoft gets $5 for every HTC phone running Android, according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, who released a big report on Microsoft this morning.

Microsoft is getting that money thanks to a patent settlement with HTC over intellectual property infringement.

Microsoft is suing other Android phone makers, and it’s looking for $7.50 to $12.50 per device, says Pritchard.

HTC Pays Microsoft $5 Per Android Phone, Says Citi.

A rough estimate of the number of HTC Android devices shipped is 30 million. If HTC paid $5 per unit to Microsoft, that adds up to $150 million Android revenues for Microsoft.

Microsoft has admitted selling 2 million Windows Phone licenses (though not devices.) Estimating that the license fee is $15/WP phone, that makes Windows Phone revenues to date $30 million.

So Microsoft has received five times more income from Android than from Windows Phone.

Looking forward and assuming that Microsoft can receive this type of settlement from about half of the Android license takers, then the prospects of a windfall from Android dwarf the expected income from Windows Phone.

Google’s Android seems the best thing that could have happened to Microsoft’s mobile efforts, ever.

I could also calculate how the Android license income could be further funneled to Nokia (via their current agreement with Microsoft) for promotion of its phones. Thus, an Android licensee could reduce his margins in order to promote a competitor’s products.