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How do I uninstall U3 from my flash drive?

Jan 9, 2010 Information 1 Comment

I am sure that many of you have gotten some USB Flash drives for Christmas or maybe just picked one up recently for file storage and you realized that it was hard to add files to it.
I know myself that I recently got one and it had the U3 mess installed on it which made it hard to know exactly where to put the files. It also acted like a cd rom at times. It was really annoying me.
I just wanted a simple USB drive to add files to easily.

So, the question arises. How do I uninstall U3 from my flash drive?

Most U3 smart drives come with an uninstall utility that converts the U3 smart drive into a regular USB flash drive.
This utility can be accessed from the U3 Launchpad.
Open the U3 Launchpad and click on Settings, then select U3 Launchpad Settings and click on the Uninstall tab.
Some devices have a link to the Uninstall utility under Help and Support.

If you can not find the uninstall utility on your U3 smart drive you can download it from the following locations:
Remove U3
U3 removal tool for MAC

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dec 24, 2009 Information Leave a comment

I would like to take this time to thanks all my UserBytes readers for visiting our site this year.

We want to wish you all a very Safe and Happy Holiday Season.

Remember… if you DRINK ALCOHOL this holiday season, DO NOT drive. Tennessee Highway Patrol Col. Mike Walker issued this warning: “If we catch you, we will arrest you. No exceptions. No excuses.”

Violators often face jail time, the loss of their driver’s license, higher insurance rates and dozens of other unanticipated expenses. These include attorney fees, other fines and court costs, towing and repairs, plus lost time at work.

This goes for all states not just Tennessee!!!

So please if you drink, find yourself a designated driver.

Please have yourself a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year

Iphone Car Dash Mount

Dec 17, 2009 Gadgets, Hacks, iphone 1 Comment

Ok I think through all my trials and searching I have finally found a really good windshield or dashmount for the iPhone.

I was shopping in Target this week and noticed that they had one that looked very interesting. It was from a new brand I have never heard of called Speck.

I had been seeing a lot of Speck cases and what not for the iPhone all the day long as I shopped today. This however looked like something I had been searching for, for quite some time.

This kit provides you with a base that can be mounted on the dash or suctioned to the windshield, a belt clip, a snap on case for the iPhone, ipod touch, or ipod nano, audio aux cable, and also an additional swivel attachment so that you can get every possible angle you need out of this thing.

As soon as I got to the car I took it out of the package and pretend to mount it on the dash to see how well this was going to workout. I could see right away that I didn’t want to give up my Incipio Case for the one they provide. The one that they provide is almost perfect for this. See on the pack of it there is a square piece of plastic and it happens to fit in the other square on the mount.

This was not a deal breaker for me. I like to modify things, and I had been looking way to long for a decent mount.

All I had to do was take the piece that came with the kit for the ipod nano, widdle it down a bit with a grinder, super glue it to my Incipio Case and I was done.

I tried to find a good link to provide you with so you get pick up one for yourself but I had no luck. I guess the easiest thing to do is visit Target and see if they have one there.

Here is the exact same thing but its by a different company.

http://www.iq-ss.com/index.aspx?menuid=12&type=introduct&lanmuid=66&language=en

I included some photos from my setup.

The iPhone Is Amazing

Dec 17, 2009 Information, iphone 1 Comment

I know I have said this time and time again but it really is and it can only get better and better.

Yesterday I went out of town to go shopping before all the last minute hustlers and bustlers ruled the road as well as the mall. I cant stand to be in the mall or on the roads with too many people that are aimless. I mean I see them walking in the malls like zombies with no clue as what they are doing there other than to be in my way. Same goes for the roads. I saw several drivers that failed to yield or even stop at stop signs. It was a mess.

This is how it is year after year. I started Christmas shopping early several years ago to avoid this mess but this year I have slacked a little. Luckily before the week of Christmas I am done.

Anyways back to why the iPhone is amazing, I was traveling yesterday and I had this song rattling in my head for several days now. I had this song in my collection at home once but I have somehow lost it. The day before this trip I looked hard for it as I was preparing my iPhone and my USB Flash DriveUSB Flash Drive full of music to listen to while traveling.

My car stereo is amazing too. It can receive music from my iPhone over bluetooth as well as play music back from a USB flash drive.

So I had just about shuffled through all of my music and I was still thinking about that song that I didn’t have that I really wanted to hear.

As I was traveling down Interstate 240 and cars were zooming all around like it was the Autobahn or Indy 500 I did a semi dangerous thing and decided to use my iPhone while driving, and launch the iTunes app within it (which I never use) and see if I could find that song and say what the hell and purchase it if I found it. Can I do this while driving down the road? You bet your jiggawatts you can and with ease too! Just a few clicks and 4 minutes is all it took.

amerie

Here is the song. Its Amerie 1 Thing. Very catchy tune.

I think later of course used my TomTom app on the phone to navigate to another store. Listing to music while navigating, and I get a phone call in the middle of it all and the music fades, I answer the call over the stereo that is also kick butt, and after the call, the TomTom app goes right back the where it was, and the music resumes.

tomtomapp

This phone is just amazing!!!

Shutdown or Reboot Shortcut in Windows XP

Dec 16, 2009 Hacks, Information Leave a comment

Well now that you know how to launch several programs with one click, how about I show you how to shut your computer down superfast?

This file you are about to create should be used at your own risk. I just have to say that for legal mumbo jumbo, but hey trust me it will work.

This file will kill all currently running apps on a system that you have started with the exception of a few locked Windows processes and some antivirus products making for a fast shutdown or reboot.

Here is the recipe for what I call a “just do it!” script. What its doing is basically killing off all apps that are started in your username and at the end its rebooting the computer.

@echo off
title Kill all running apps
cd c:windowsSystem32
for /f “skip=3 tokens=1″ %%i in (‘TASKLIST /FI “USERNAME eq %userdomain%%username%” /FI “STATUS eq running”‘) do (
if not “%%i”==”svchost.exe” (
if not “%%i”==”explorer.exe” (
if not “%%i”==”cmd.exe” (
if not “%%i”==”tasklist.exe” (
echo.
taskkill /f /im “%%i”
echo.
)
)
)
)
)
shutdown -r -f -t 00

Remember to copy and paste this into notepad and save it as a bat file like we showed you in the earlier post

If you don’t want the computer to reboot and you simply want it to shutdown, and I mean shutdown fast, then just remove the -r like this shutdown -f -t 00

Start All Your Programs With One Click

Dec 16, 2009 Hacks, Information 2 Comments

Today I am going to show you an easy way to launch all your favorite programs with the click of one icon.

Normally I leave my computers running 24/7. I know that’s not very green of me but that’s what I do. On the occasional reboot I have several of the same apps that I constantly use and I hate to click each one and wait for it to load so I created a batch file that will launch the ones I use the most with one single click.

Here is how its done.

Lets say you want to launch Firefox, Microsoft Outlook, Opera, and Pidgin. These will need to be installed on your computer of course.

First open notepad and copy and paste the following into it and save it as something like “startall.bat”

@echo off
cd
c:
start /d “C:Program FilesPidgin” pidgin.exe
echo Launched Pidgin!
start /d “C:Program FilesMozilla Firefox” firefox.exe
echo Launched Firefox!
start /d “C:Program FilesOpera” opera.exe
echo Launched Opera!
start /d “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12″ outlook.exe
echo Launched Outlook!
exit

Remember that when in notepad go to File then Save As and notice the Save As Type in the dialogue box? Change that to All Files or it will default to a standard text document and this will not work.

That’s it! Save your batch file to your desktop labeled to something like I said earlier like StartAll.bat and there you go, double click it and all your apps that you coded into the file will launch.

Let me teach you how to find your own apps to add to this code above.

Through lots of trial and error I finally figured out the magic behind all this and its simply start /d and you have to have the correct quotations in place.

On your computer double click My Computer or click Start and click on My Computer and then Click your C drive and navigate to Program Files. Here lets look for programs that we want to launch when we want to.

For fun I have navigated to C:Program FilesInternet Explorer and within that directory I see iexplore.exe which is indeed the Internet Explorer Application.

Now if I want to add that to my StartAll.bat file I would simply need to modify the code a bit to look like this:

start /d “C:Program FilesInternet Explorer“ iexplore.exe

Just to be clear on the syntax for this I am going to retype this below and for spaces I will use [spacebar]

start[spacebar]/d[spacebar]“C:Program[spacebar]FilesInternet[spacebar]Explorer”[spacebar]iexplorer.exe

I hope this makes sense and helps you out.

If you have any tips or improvements to this please list them in the comments section below.

Operation Chokehold

Dec 16, 2009 Information, iphone 3 Comments

attfail Operation Chokehold: Hey its worth a shot right?

I’ll tell you something — I’m really sick of the sorry ATT network as of late. It is extremely pathetic. I hear the engineers are friggin livid. And, because they’re engineers, and they can, they’ve come up with a plan to teach AT&T a lesson. They’re calling it Operation Chokehold. Last night I got this email that they’ve been sending around inside Apple, encouraging people to join the crusade:

Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. THe idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!

If anyone has ideas, use the comment strings. Tell your friends. Get people involved. We have a few days to create a movement and plan a major assault.

Remember to turn OFF your Wi-Fi during that hour. There would be NO point if a bunch of people are browsing YouTube in their office or home and they are using their daily Wi-Fi without knowing. This would not affect ATT in the least bit.

Turn off your Wi-Fi, if you have no better choice, just browse through the YouTube app

Remeber folks this is to be done at NOON pacific time, that’s 1 p.m. Mountain time, 2 p.m. Central time and 3 p.m. Eastern time.

I myself plan on watching some YouTube videos or listening to Slacker radio for an hour.

Gmail Folders and Filters

Dec 11, 2009 Information 1 Comment

gmail-logo2 Recently in a previous article, I discussed a really cool free tool used for video surveillance called VitaminD

The tool is AWESOME!

The only problem I have is that sometimes my inbox is overloaded with small still captures notifying me of what is going on. At first I thought is there a way to limit the number of emails that VitaminD sends? Then I thought, no that would defeat the purpose. I need these emails. I just need to manage them a certain way.

I basically knew what I had to do. I needed to create a folder in my email and create a “rule” for incoming mail that would send the mail from VitaminD into the correct folder. This is easily done in Outlook using the create rule wizard, but I don’t use Outlook. I use Gmail.

Gmail takes a different approach to this. Instead of Folders, Gmail uses Labels. Using labels and filters, you can have Gmail sort your incoming mail by sender, subject or other criteria to your custom folders(labels) — out of the Inbox.

Let me show you how.

To make Gmail route certain mail to particular “folders”, bypassing your Inbox:

Open Gmail and go to your Settings in the top uppper right.
Click on the Filters
Click Create a filter.
Enter the desired criteria.
To filter all mail from somebody, type their email address in the From: field, for example.
Click Next Step.
Make sure Skip the Inbox is checked.
Also check Apply the label:.
Select an existing label (folder) from the Choose label… menu or: Select New label….
Type the desired name for the label (folder).
Click OK.
Optionally, check Also apply filter to conversations below to move existing messages matching your criteria to the folder.
Click Create Filter.

Thats it!

Now new messages matching your rules will arrive in their labels (i.e. folders) only. This is very easy to manage isnt it?

Mozy Backups

Dec 10, 2009 Information 2 Comments

Ok I am pretty sure all of my readers out there are backing up their data using some form of media like backup tapes or maybe even CD’s and DVD’s and storing them offsite like in a bank safety deposit box or in your office at work or something right? …..right?

Please tell me you are… If its one thing everyone should know about computing its BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!!!
Backup your important data. Your pictures, your financial data, your music that you paid for online. It makes no sense not to have digital copies of this elsewhere.

Wait ….what….? You dont back up!?!

Oh No! What are you going to do with all those precious photos you have of your newborn baby girl, or those pics of fluffy your little Yorkie, or your Grandmothers 80th birthday? Oh you planned on backing them up to DVD but just never got around to it huh?

Let me try and paint you a mental picture and give you something to thing about. Its a stormy night, lightning abound striking hard to the ground with such loud crackling booms that you feel its right outside the window. The power surges on and off repeatedly within seconds. You didn’t think to turn off the computer, but that’s ok, the storm caused a power outage in the neighborhood and now you don’t have to worry about that. The next day you decide to power it on and check your Facebook and Twitter pages along with email, but wait…. whats that clicking sound? The power light is on but I hear this odd clicking coming from inside the case. Whats this on the screen? NTLDR is missing? What the hell is that? Then you think oh no…my computer must have gotten zapped in the storm. My power-point presentation that I had been working on for 3 weeks was on there. Then panic sets in and you think of all the other things you have now lost and you have an empty feeling inside. Read More..