If you, for example, install multiple media player applications on your Android device, you’ll find that Android will give you the choice of which application to launch by default when you open a media file or document. However, you may later want to change this default setting.

To do so, go to Settings > Applications > Manage applications and then press the "All" tab. Choose the application that you previously selected as default, and scroll to the section "Launch by default" and press the "Clear defaults" button. Next time you open that particular type of file in the future, Android will prompt you again to choose a new default app.

Ever surfed for the number of a pizza place on your iPhone and just wanted to dial the phone number straight from the webpage? If you are using the default browser on your iPhone, which is Safari, that's no problem at all.

Safari automatically converts numbers that look like phone numbers into links. If you press those links, a popup window will appear giving you the option to call the number from there or cancel. No need to write down or even copy and paste the numbers.

If you are using Internet Explorer and Windows 7, you may have noticed that when you mouse over an IE browser window, a preview of the open tabs in the browser is shown. While this is useful to give you an idea of the sites you have open, it can get annoying if you have multiple tabs open at the same time. If you would prefer to disable this feature, you can.

Just go to Tools > Internet Options (in the upper right-hand corner of the browser) and then click on the "Settings" button in the window that pops up. In the list of Tabbed Browsing Settings, uncheck "Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar." Click on OK and you should be good to go.

A very useful feature in Microsoft Office is called "AutoRecover", which automatically saves your document at specified time intervals so that in case of an application or system crash, Office can recover its latest version.

By default this is set to 10 minutes, but you can change this easily by clicking on the Office button within the application, and then clicking on the "Word Options" or "Excel Options" (or other application) button in the lower right hand side of the window. Go to the "Save" section and look for "Save AutoRecover information every…" and change the settings there. Be sure to click "OK" to save your preference. A word of caution: setting the interval at very short timespans such as every 1 minute can slow down your computer with frequent writes to the hard disk. Try a number between 5 minutes to 10 minutes first.

Mac OS X has always had a solid text to speech feature built right in.  When you’ve been reading a while and your eyes are getting tired, it’s a great tool to use.  I’ve also found it extremely useful in previewing any text during the editing process.  No matter if you are simply composing an email and want it read back to you to see how it sounds, editing a long report, or putting together a letter, using the text to speech feature is fun and easy to use.  

Usage Scenarios

• Reading emails aloud
• Reading web site articles
• Proofreading email and word processing documents
• Proofreading text for web content

How to Ask Your Mac to Read Aloud

1. Click and drag your mouse over any text content in virtually any application
2. Right click the highlighted selected text
3. On the pop up menu choose ‘Speech” > “Start Reading”

The selected text will begin being read aloud to you by your system.  It will stop reading when it reaches the end of your selected area.  Unfortunately, you can only stop the reading if needed.  There is no pause feature yet.

If you need to stop your Mac from reading aloud, there are a couple of ways to do it:

1. Right click the highlighted text being read back to you
2. Choose “Speech” > “Stop Reading”

Or

1. From the application menu bar across the top of your Mac, choose “Edit” > “Speech” > “Stop Reading”

Adjusting How Your Mac Reads Aloud

You can adjust the text to speech settings in the System Preferences app.  You can change the type of voice you hear by selecting different male or female voices.  You can choose the speed at which text is read back to you.  You can also set other spoken features, such as when alerts pop up on screen, they can be read aloud to you if you like.  You can even have your computer speak the date and time at set intervals.

To Adjust Text to Speech Options:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Locate the “Speech” icon under the System group (fourth row down, fifth icon from the left) and click to open.
3. Once in the speech settings area, at the top click on the “Text-to-Speech” section.
4. Review and adjust your text-to-speech settings to fit your needs.

Yes, there are many very cool features built right into your Mac that you may not know about yet.  I hope you find this tip useful.  I know I use the text-to-speech feature on a daily basis.  If you would like to learn more about what your Mac system can do in a business or work environment, please do not hesitate to contact us today!

Leaving your computer for a short time but don't want anyone peeking at your desktop or files? Simply lock it. When you lock your desktop, anyone who wants to use it will have to log in using their username and password.

One way to do this is to press Ctrl+Alt+Del and then click on "Lock Computer." A quicker way is to press the Windows logo key and the L key.

In Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, you can set an animation to trigger when you click on an object. This is a simple way to add and control interactivity to your presentation. To add an animation trigger, select an object that already has animation applied to it.

On the “Animations” tab, in the “Advanced Animations” group, click “Animation Pane” and then select the animation that you want to trigger. Back in the Advanced Animation group, click and hold on “Trigger” and select “On Click of” and select the object for which you wish to trigger the animation when clicked.

With Windows 7, there are easier and faster ways to rename multiple files in one sweep. The first way is to click on a file's name and rename it as usual, then press the "Tab" key to access the next file in the list.

Another way is to select multiple files (press the Ctrl key or Shift key and select the desired files), then right click on the first file and choose "Rename" to give it a new name. The rest of the files will be renamed with the same name. For example, if you name the first file "image", it will become "image (1)" followed by "image (2)" and so on.

Google Chrome allows you the option to search within a specific site. First type the web address of the site you want to search in the address bar, and then press the "Tab" key.

If Google Chrome has a record of the site's search engine, you’ll be offered the option to search within that site only. Try it with sites such as LinkedIn, Bing, and Yahoo.

In Windows, there are various options for configuring the speed, look, and behavior of your mouse pointer to exactly the way you want it.

To do so, click the Start button, and then click Control Panel. Click Hardware and Sound, and then under Devices and Printers, click Mouse. In the Mouse Properties box, click on the Pointers and Pointer Options tab, and adjust the options to change the shape and size of your cursor by changing the "scheme". In the "Pointer Options" tab, you can change the speed, visibility, and other characteristics of your pointer. You can add pointer trails, automatically snap the pointer to buttons and dialog boxes, and so on. These settings are especially handy when using small screens such as on laptops or netbooks.