Dummies.com: Consumer Electronics

Smart Playlists

iTunes comes with a few smart playlists. Under Party Shuffle (near the top of the Playlists section of the Source pane), you can find these smart playlists, which are indicated by a gear icon. iTunes comes [more…]

Mac Copy Utilities

You can use third-party utilities to copy information to and from your Mac to and from your iPod. When using Mac copy utilities, remember that copying copyrighted material without permission is illegal [more…]

How to Take Digital Photos with a BlackBerry

Your BlackBerry has a built-in digital camera. This video shows how to set image quality for your digital pictures and use zoom and flash options. Cell phone photography awaits! [more…]

A Battle in the Home Theater: High Definition DVD Formats

In February 2008, Blu-ray emerged as the winner in the high-definition DVD format war, when rival Toshiba gave up on its HD DVD format. This article offers previous coverage on the beginnings of the format [more…]

Adding Album Cover Art or Images in iTunes

Scan or download album cover artwork from CDs that you rip into iTunes in a graphics format that iTunes understands and link those graphics to the songs and albums you play on iTunes. [more…]

Adding Appointments to the Palm Calendar

You can keep track of a surprising amount of detailed information in the Date Book. Thousands of appointments fit comfortably into the Date Book, along with reminders, notes, and other details. You don't [more…]

Adding Categories to a To-Do List on Your Palm

People who use Palm devices are often busy people with scads of things to do. If you're usually juggling too many tasks to fit on one little screen, you'll find assigning categories to your tasks useful [more…]

Adding Contacts Manually on Your Pocket PC

Of all of the methods of adding people to your Pocket PC address book, you'll probably spend the most time adding records manually, which isn't the easiest way to add records, nor is it the quickest. But [more…]

Adding DVR Functionality to Your Mac mini

The basic function of DVRs is to record TV digitally on your Mac mini and to schedule taping for later viewing without commercials and without the hassles of tapes. You can also burn video to DVDs for [more…]

Adding Fiber Optic Lights to Your HDTV Experience

You don't have to be deep in the heart of Texas to see stars on your HDTV room's ceiling. In fact, you can buy neat fiber optic kits to add all sorts of effects to your HDTV theater. Companies such as [more…]

Adding New To-Dos on Your Palm Device

Adding items to the To Do List is as easy as you want to make it. If you want to keep track of short lists of simple projects, you can go a long way with the tools that come with a Palm device. If your [more…]

Adding Subwoofers in the Mix

Most subwoofers have floor-based enclosures with active speaker systems (that is, with built-in amplifiers) for driving the low bass frequency ranges. Your biggest decision when choosing subwoofers for [more…]

Adding a New Entry in Your Palm Address Book

Many people have relied on a Little Black Book since even before Casanova. The paper kind served well until the computer came along and enabled you to find one name from a list of thousands faster than [more…]

Adding an Appointment on Your Pocket PC

To add a new appointment, open your calendar and then tap New on the menu bar. You can also tap-and-hold on a specific date and time for the appointment, and select New Appointment from the pop-up menu [more…]

Adjusting the Security on Your iPAQ

One of the great things about an iPAQ is that it's small enough to fit into a pocket. Unfortunately, this also makes an iPAQ an attractive target for thieves or even people who simply can't resist playing [more…]

Advanced Car Audio Sound Quality Concepts

Although the four basic sound quality concepts (clarity, dynamic range, frequency response, and tonal balance) are the most fundamental to understand before purchasing a new car audio system, there are [more…]

Analog to Digital: Exploring External Video Converters

You have a computer with a FireWire port, and you want to capture some analog video. What are you going to do? You have many solutions, of course. You can install a video-capture card, but a good one costs [more…]

Archiving Your Palm Data

Your Palm device can hold only a fraction of the information your desktop computer can. To save space on the Palm device, clearing things out regularly is a good idea. The Palm device has a Purge function [more…]

Avoiding Electric Shocks

Your body is a delicate machine. Electric shocks, depending on certain conditions, can be fatal, even at relatively low voltages. What comes out of your wall outlet is deadly if you play around with it [more…]

Avoiding Timecode Breaks in Your Digital Video

Each frame of video is identified using a number called a timecode. When you edit video on your computer, the timecode identifies the exact places where you make edits. On your camcorder, a timecode indicator [more…]