Want to do a quick currency conversion? You can use Google for that. Simply type in the amount in the original currency, then the currency you want to convert it to.

For example, type in: "100 dollars in yen" or "100 dollars in Mexican Pesos" and check out the results. If you have a mobile data plan on your mobile phone with a browser, you can use this tip for quick currency conversions on the go.

The Mac introduced the concept of using multiple "Desktops" (previously called "Spaces") using Lion's Mission Control application. Using Mission Control, you can specify which desktop applications will automatically open in which desktops by default.

To set your preferences, select and right-click (or ctrl+click or two-finger click) on an application in the Dock, then select the "Options" menu in the resulting pop-over. Inside that menu, links appear that allow you to remove the app from the Dock, open it at Login, or to have it Show in the Finder app. If you have multiple desktops active, an additional set of options will appear at the bottom. Here you can "assign" the app to "This Desktop" or the current active desktop, or to open in "All Desktops" or "None." Make your selection and your app will now open in the specific Desktop or Desktops you specify on launch.

Tablet Mania Will Accelerate

The iPad’s raging success in 2010 spurred the launch of notable, competitive tablets from Samsung (the Galaxy Tab), Dell (Streak, Inspiron Duo) and others. As sure as the Pope wears red loafers, there will be more tablets in 2011.

Research firm, eMarketer, estimates the iPad will account for 80 percent of the 24 million tablets purchased in the U.S. in 2011. What’s more, Forrester Research predicts U.S. tablet sales will surpass netbook and desktop sales by 2015.

The iPad and other tablets are still largely viewed as “lean back” devices for entertainment and Web browsing. But as they become more sophisticated, tablets will be used for “lean forward” activities, such as videoconferencing, writing, and creating presentations. Cisco’s Cius tablet, for instance, features a 720p high-def front-facing camera specifically for high-resolution videoconferencing.

Laptops Will Look More Like Netbooks

And netbooks will continue to become nearly as powerful as laptops. We’re likely to see more sophisticated netbooks that resemble laptops and laptops that are kissing cousins to netbooks. Apple, always the trendsetter, scored a hit with its 11-inch MacBook Air, so you can bet there will be more laptops in this price/form factor in 2012.

Smartphones Will Get Smarter

Android, Apple’s iOS, Windows Phone 7, and other smartphones will continue to become more advanced. Example: The new Google Nexus S is one of the first smartphones to support Near-Field Communication (NFC), which lets the phone communicate wirelessly with other NFC objects within 4 inches. Though barely in use today, NFC will enable smartphone users to easily make payments in stores or receive information about a local business via an NFC window sticker.

Smartphones Will Be Just About Everywhere

Seems like every five minutes, another must-have Android smartphone debuts. That’s unlikely to change in 2011. In fact, eMarketer believes U.S. smartphone users will grow in ranks to 73.3 million by year-end 2011 — up from 60.2 million at the end of 2010. In addition, eMarketer predicts smartphone owners will be 31 percent of the mobile population next year and 43 percent by 2015.

4G Network Availability Will Continue to Grow

Though still nascent, 4G cellular network access will become more widely available in 2011 and 2012. You’ll need a new phone to take advantage of it.

Over the past 20 years users have been forced to deal with a constantly evolving set of paradigms regarding password creation. Most of these paradigms are simple variations on a theme; begin with a word or phrase that holds personal significance, replace at least one of its letters with similar-looking non-alphabetic symbols (such as numbers or punctuation), make at least one letter uppercase, and for the coup-de-grace add an arbitrary character or two at the end.

Passwords created this way are unwieldy, difficult to type, and difficult to remember. Unfortunately they’re not very difficult for a computer to guess. A better solution for creating passwords that are easy to remember and secure is to combine a set of four entirely random words as a base, and then make necessary changes or additions based upon password policies in place.

For example (or perhaps, “four” example?), if we combine several random words to form our password, it becomes far more memorable and considerably more difficult for either another person or computer to guess: “Cardboardbatterydeskstapler?”. As a password it stands at 35 characters long, which is nothing to sneeze at, but is much easier to remember than something like, “C4rdb0ard!&4”, which you most likely will have forgotten in the next fifteen minutes. The former? You probably already have it memorized.

If you use an iPad, there is a switch conveniently located at the right side of the device which you can set to either lock the orientation of the screen or to mute the audio when you slide the switch—depending on your preference.

To set your preference, go to Settings > General, and under the "Use Side Switch" section, choose either "Lock Rotation" or "Mute."

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.

Extreme weather can be hard on sophisticated electronics devices, like your smartphone. So with winter approaching, here are a few tips to keep your mobile phone fully functional when it’s cold outside.

For starters, keep your phone fully charged. Cold temperatures can run the phone’s battery down more quickly. Make sure you have a car charger to keep your phone charged if you get stranded or stuck in traffic on icy or snowy roads. You might also want to think about an extra battery as backup.

Make sure to handle your phone with extra care as the temperature falls. The display screen can become brittle when exposed to cold temperatures for long periods of time, and could be more susceptible to cracking. When you are outside for extended periods, keep your phone in a warm place like an inside jacket pocket, keeping it close to your body for warmth. Avoid leaving it in an outside pocket or backpack or in the car overnight.

Finally, remember that you can’t dial or access the keyboard on a touch screen with traditional gloves. If you need access to your phone while outside in the cold, you might consider purchasing a new type of gloves that have an electrically conductive overlay in the fingertips, which allow you to use your phone while still wearing the gloves and keeping your hands warm. Local Boulder company, Agloves, produces and sells these touchscreen gloves. Check them out at http://www.agloves.com/.

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.

There are certainly a few similarities between your Android powered phone and your computer, one of the biggest being maintenance. Over time you will find that your Android phone will slow down and become less responsive while performing small tasks like switching between applications or opening an email. A great way to remedy the issue and improve performance is to perform some manual cleanup steps using the native phone settings and a few helpful applications.

1. One of the most helpful apps that I have found over the past year and a half of owning an Android phone is “DiskUsage”. This application can take a little bit to get used to but it can be used to clear unneeded data from most of your Android apps. This app can be downloaded for free from the Android Market and when opened will ask if you would like to view data within App Storage, or the Storage Card. When cleaning to improve performance, you will want to concentrate on the App Storage. It will then scan all of the directories on your phone and provide a visual layout of the used space. This interface can be somewhat cumbersome and expands as you scroll, though it does display all of the installed apps and disk usage on the phone itself. Try to locate larger applications and touch the box that the application text appears in to highlight it. Then press the menu button, followed by the “Show” button. You will then be able to clear the temporary data from the application. It is important to note that this will remove some customized options within some apps that you choose to clear data from.
2. Another helpful app that can be used is a Task Killing app. There are several free versions of these in the Android Market and can be used to stop unneeded applications from running in the background.
3. Delete old text messages.
4. Set your email settings to synchronize only the needed time period of email. For instance, set your email settings to sync the past two weeks instead of 1 month.
5. Power cycle your phone at least once a week.
6. Remove/Uninstall unneeded applications by accessing your Settings menu, Applications, and then Manage Applications.
7. Using the same Manage Applications menu, move any applicable applications to the SD card instead of keeping them on the phone or App Storage. Please note that some applications cannot be moved to the SD card.

 
Should you use a 64-bit version of Windows? More and more frequently, users are installing the 64-bit version of their operating system of choice over the less capable 32-bit version. But most people don’t really have a full understanding of what the difference really is.

The primary difference is in available RAM. 32-bit operating systems have a memory ceiling at 4 GB of RAM simply because the size of a 32-bit value will not allow any more. Not only does 32-bit have a hard limit for the amount of memory it can address, there’s also another problem: your devices, like your video card and motherboard BIOS take up room in that same 4 GB space, which means the underlying operating system gets access to even less of your RAM. If you are running a high-end video card in a 32-GB machine nearly half of your RAM could be taken by the card.

A 64-bit machine on the other hand can access 17.2 BILLION gigabytes of system memory, banishing any limits far into the future. This also means that your video cards and other devices will not be stealing usable memory space from the operating system. The per-process limit is also greatly increased on 64-bit Windows, instead of a 2 GB limit, each application has access to 8 TB of virtual memory without any special API, a huge factor when you consider applications like video editing or virtual machines that may need to use enormous amounts of RAM. On Windows, the 64-bit versions also come with a technology to prevent hijacking the kernel, support for hardware-enabled data execution protection, and mandatory digitally signed 64-bit device drivers. All of which provide more stability and fewer crashes.

It used to be said that if you didn’t need more than 4 GB of RAM then a 32-bit operating system would suffice. But as the applications that your business relies on become more and more resource intensive, 64-bit operating systems are becoming more necessary and less of an option.