Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

SOLVED: Google+ stopped uploading photos with instant upload

steve — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:16:42 +0000

I love Google’s “Instant Upload,” but suddenly it stopped working last month

After poking around the web, I found a suggestion that you login to Picasa and then it will work. Yeah, right — how can that fix it?

I don’t know, but it did.

I fixed Google+ Instant Upload simply by logging into Picasa on my desktop.

SOLVED: Apps on Android Keep Re-updating Over and Over

steve — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:49:02 +0000

Recently, I noted that some apps on my Android were requiring updates a lot. At first I thought, “Wow — these developers are busy. But then I noted that the size of the update was the same each time. Exactly the same.

So I poked around and did some experimenting and found the solution.

Let the download complete.
From the Home Screen, select Menu / Settings / Applications/ Manage Applications /All
Select the “Download Manager”
Select “Clear data”

This solved my problem of some applications needing to update every day or every restart.

SOLVED: Dropbox gets stuck downloading “n” files…

steve — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:13:13 +0000

I love dropbox and have referred it to many people and businesses.

If you’d like a referral, let me know. By your asking and my referring, we both get bonus free space!

Recently, on one of my computers, Dropbox had been stuck “Downloading 7 files…”

This problem persisted for several days.

At first, I tried uninstalling dropbox and deleting the C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox folder and even deleting all the hidden dropbox files (.dropbox files) in my dropbox folders. But upon re-installation of dropbox, the problem persists.

In the end, I ran chkdsk /F /R.

Upon reboot, chkdsk found many errors and fixed them.

The dropbox problem went away.

How to assign a “ringtone” as a gmail alert on an android

steve — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:48:53 +0000

SOLVED!

If you want to set up an audio alert to notify you of new email on your gmail app, open the gmail app and do the following:

menu
more
settings
“your account name”
labels to notify
inbox
select a ringtone

I don’t know why they buried this feature so deeply.

Disabling the Sleep Button on an HP Keyboard

steve — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:39:53 +0000

For reasons only their engineers know HP designed a keyboard with a sleep button only millimeters away from the escape key.

Often the reason I am hitting the escape key is because I just hit the wrong key an instant before. HP’s brilliance in putting their propriety sleep key right beside the escape key increases the frustration, making me wait for the PC to re-awaken if I accidentally hit the sleep key.

All the suggestions I found online failed to disable this function of this keyboard, but finally — SOLVED!

Here’s my fix. Click the image to see a larger rendering.

It only took about a minute. Oh — and it took two screwdrivers.