New Video: Installing Linux Mint 15

In our latest video we step through how to install Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' on a clean hard drive.  In our example, I am using a new VirtualBox machine and Linux Mint 15 'MATE' edition with No Codecs.  If you have ever installed Ubuntu, then you will have no problem stepping through the installation wizard and successfully installing Mint on a system. However, if you have not installed Ubuntu, and Mint is your first experience with Linux.  Do not fear.  As the wizard is rather...

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Remove Ubuntu from a Dual Boot Computer

In our most recent video, we are going to learn how to remove Ubuntu from a Windows 7/Ubuntu dual boot setup.  You may be asking yourself: "Wait a minute, Techie always does his best to promote Linux in general.  Why is he telling people how to remove it?".  And if that is your question, I'd say it is a very valid question. But simply put, there are a plethora of reasons why someone would want to remove Linux from a dual-boot machine.  See below for a short list of just a few...

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New Videos Coming Soon!

We've been working very hard to bring some new videos to our YouTube Channel!  The first couple of videos are almost out of production and should be hitting our channel within in the next days.  We will initially be covering Linux Mint (from installation to optimization post-install).  And will bloom out into other topics as they occur, or as watchers request more info on other topics. As always, I want to know what you would like to see covered in future videos.  Feel free...

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Players Will Be Required to Pay for Xbox One Features

Xbox One console Was there ever any doubt that Microsoft would go this route?  Not in my mind.  Why?  Simple, because they already do this.  A story reported on today from BBC News mentions that the Xbox One will require the user/player to subscribe to a Live Gold account in order to utilize some functions of the new Xbox One.  Is this really that much of a change?  Nope. Long story short, here is the deal.  In order to use the following functions, players...

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Chromium Browser Issue under Ubuntu

Chromium Web Browser This evening while I was web surfing, I decided to make a couple of changes to my Ubuntu desktop and thought I'd simply sign out and back in to see if the changes would stay upon a reboot/log off.  My changes worked fine.  However, I didn't exit the Chromium Web Browser properly when logging off.  In short, I logged off while I had the browser minimized to the Unity dock.  I honestly didn't think anything else about it. Upon signing back in, and launching...

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The 12th Doctor Revealed!

For Whovians worldwide, today was a HUGE day for all of us.  It was announced just a few months ago that Matt Smith would not be reprising his role of the legendary Time Lord: The Doctor.  This created a sort of outrage from the fans of Doctor Who worldwide.  As Matt has garnered the adoration of Doctor Who fans new and old.  Matt Smith portrayed the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, following David Tennant's infamous role of the 10th Doctor.  I had just started watching...

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App of the Week: RipTide GP2 for Android

It's been a while, but in attempt to get the ball rolling again; we are back with a new 'App of the Week' and this week that app is 'RipTide GP2' for Android mobile devices.  First off, let me say that this game is simply amazing.  It is more of the same but with new tracks, a much larger career mode, upgradable 'Hydro Jets'; if you played it's predecessor you will have a general idea about what the sequel will have in store for you.  However, this time around VectorUnit has given...

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Busy, Busy, Busy Times

Just checking in to let everyone know I am still alive and kicking.  It's been a while, and life has been busy.  On a personal note, I have managed to force Ubuntu 13.04 as a dual-boot beside on Windows 8 (with Windows 8 kicking and screaming the whole way).  But the end result, I have to answer a couple extra boot menu's but it works.  And works pretty well too. In the recent news, we have the release of 'Chromecast', so hopefully more info on that project coming up.  And...

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Gaurdians of The Galaxy Casting News

Following on the tail of Marvel's 'The Avengers' is a movie whose source content is not nearly as well known as 'The Avengers' amongst the general public.  However, for those of us who follow comic books, it seem pretty exciting.  The movie titled 'Guardians of The Galaxy' has all the potential to be a huge film.  And as cautious as I am to say I am excited about this movie, I can't deny the fact that I really want to see Rocket Raccoon on the big screen.  (Just hope it's done...

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More Techie's Tool Box Videos Coming Up!

I have been getting numerous requests via our Facebook page asking when more "Techie's Toolbox" videos were going to drop on the YouTube Channel again...   My response is officially, 'Coming Soon!  Very Soon!'.  A little background on the 'Tool Box' videos: I started posting a couple videos highlighting tools and free/cheap software that can be a valuable asset to those in the IT field.  It doesn't matter if you are only repairing friend's or family computers in your spare...

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Copy: Free Cloud Storage for a Limited Time

Checkout Copy... And do it now.  Copy is awesome.  Sure, it isn't a new concept.  Sites like Dropbox have been around for a while.  But if you want 5GB of free storage, why not take it right?   They have a working client for Android, iOS, and PC (Linux, Mac, & Windows).  And seeing as how I use Android, Linux, and Windows this is a very tempting offer. But for a limited time, 5GB isn't the only free storage you can get from Copy.  If you sign up for copy...

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Big Happenings in Techie's World!

Sorry for the lack of posts everyone!  (Although it feels I write this a lot here).  Things have been a bit wild and crazy in my world for the last while.  Staying busy and enjoying life has been a primary goal.  Unfortunately, I haven't been around Linux much as of late.  But I have managed to: -Become madly addicted to "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" -Get my Wife madly addicted to "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" -Work a lot -And another HUGE announcement that hopefully should...

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National Day of Unplugging

Did you hear?  That this evening from sunset until tomorrow (March 2nd), a nonprofit group named "Reboot" has suggested we have a "National Day of Unplugging".  The goal is to encourage people put disconnect for technology for the close to a 24 hour period.  In attempt to battle "burnout" and stress that comes from being wired into technology all the time (like most of us are). I see a couple things about the "National Day of Unplugging".  First: is it kind of funny that a...

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App of The Week: Shadowgun Deadzone

Our App of the Week for the week of March 1nd, 2013 is: Shadowgun: Deadzone.  As always, we always try to highlight apps that are cheap and/or free in most cases.  There are exceptions where an app is just so awesome, that paying more than $4 or $5 dollars shouldn't be a problem.  But keeping true to our idea that most of us are on a budget (and or just cheapskates like me), ShadowGun: Deadzone is a FREE app.  And unlike our usual App of Week pick, this game is cross platform...

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Falcon Pro is Still Kicking

As reported in a post yesterday, one of the best Twitter clients on the Google Play Store was having some issues with Twitter's Access Token limits.  For the time being, things seem to have been worked out.  No Twitter didn't recant on their stand of not increasing Falcon Pro's token limitations. Instead, looks like the tokens were reset.  Thus freeing up used tokens.  The only catch is that if you are still a user of the app, when you download the latest update, you will...

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Should Pre-College Students Be Offered Programming Courses?

There is a video circulating the social media networks that was created by Code.org.  If you aren't familiar with this nonprofit, here is a brief explanation.  Their goal is to promote computer programming to the point in which schools across the United States would start offering computer programming courses to their students.  Currently, most schools do not presently offer their students the opportunity to take programming classes until they attend college.  Where...

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Ubuntu 12.10 Laptop Issues

Over the past several days I have been attempting to get Ubuntu running the way I want it to on my laptop.  This has been easier said then done.  I have a Pavilion g7 laptop running Windows 8 out of the box.  Windows 8 isn't my choice of OS, but one I can live with for things like playing certain games, and producing our YouTube videos.  However, for everything else, I'd really prefer using Linux. After disabling Secure Boot in my laptop's BIOS and imstalling Ubuntu 12.10,...

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Twitter's Token Limits vs Falcon Pro

I was considering featuring the Falcon Pro Twitter app for Android devices as one of our weekly app picks.  However, I am kind of glad that I didn't.  But not for the reason you may first think of. The app is an outstanding Twitter client for Android devices.  It is very fluid and offers a smooth user experience when using Twitter.  In my opinion, it is just much sleeker and useful than most other Twitter clients I have used (including the official Twitter client for Android). So...

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Mortal Kombat Legacy 2

I just saw this today, even though it has been out for better than a week or so.  Over at Machinima's YouTube Channel, there is the preview trailer for the upcoming sequel to the Mortal Kombat reboot/web series "Mortal Kombat: Legacy" and it is aptly titled "Mortal Kombat: Legacy II".  As of yet there is no release date for when the episode's will start filtering onto the Machinima channel, but hopefully it will be soon.  As it looks pretty awesome! Looks like this time around...

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App of The Week: Temple Run 2 for Android

As the title mentions, our App of The Week for the Week of February 23rd, 2013 is Temple Run 2.  Let's be honest, if you have a Android or an iPhone, then you have probably at least heard of or even seen the original Temple Run.  The original Temple Run became somewhat of a staple of mobile gaming.  Along with the likes of Angry Birds, Jetpack Joyride, and numerous others.  Either way, the original was an awesome game (albeit, rather frustrating at times; but still awesome). If...

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Steam is now a Native Linux application

That's right, you read that right. Valve has released it Steam client as a native Linux application. I have installed it on my Ubuntu 12.10 box and can confirm that it does indeed work. And is pretty much just as easy to install as it is on any Windows machine. If you are using Ubuntu then be sure to check the Software Center that is built into Ubuntu to download and install it.  I have yet to try a game as I am currently in the process of downloading Counter Strike: Source for testing. To...

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Rooted Nexus 7 Updated to Android 4.2.2

As mentioned in my earlier post (Nexus 7 Rooted via the Nexus 7 Toolkit) I have rooted my Nexus 7 tablet using Mskip's Nexus 7 Toolkit from the XDA Developer forums.  It was an extremely easy (and quick) process.  Mskip did away the daunting and somewhat confusing aspect of rooting the Nexus 7 and he did an outstanding job.  But as my luck would have it, just a couple weeks after finally rooting my device, Google releases an OTA update to bring the device to Android 4.2.2. What...

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Retro Game Curator on YouTube is Now Live!

Well, you can tell we got snow here in my area today.  Why?  Because I was finally able to get some time to sit down and do some recording!  As mentioned in a previous post, we have a welcome addition to the TechieSmarts network of websites/YouTube Channels!  It goes by the name of: Retro Game Curator. There is also an associated blog as well.  Check out: http://retrogamecurator.blogspot.com where we have a growing selection of posts covering topics concerning old school...

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New Video on Our YouTube Channel!

After a long hiatus, I'm back!  Just uploaded a brand new video to our YouTube Channel, so feel free to swing by and check it out (or watch it below).  Regardless of how you watch it, be sure to swing by our channel and subscribe so you stay up to date as we add new videos! Ubuntu 12.10: Install Cinnamon Desktop ...

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OTG Cable for Nexus 7 Makes Moving Files Easy

As mentioned in a previous post, there is a USB cable you can purchase for your Nexus 7 that will allow you to read from USB Flash Drives (and write to them if you are rooted), use game controllers, etc.  But keep in mind that this cable is not a standard USB cable.  It is called an "On-The-Go Cable" or "OTG Cable" for short.  They are fairly cheap to buy, and in my opinion are well worth the investment for any Nexus 7 owner.  Does it work?  Do you have to be rooted to...

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