How to use Flickr for iOS' new live and custom filters

The updated Flickr iPhone app has a whole new look. Find out how to access and use its new features, including filters you can apply before you snap a shot and customize afterward.

Yahoo updated its Flickr app for the iPhone yesterday, and the new app boasts an entirely new layout, thanks in large part, Yahoo says, to its acquisition of GhostBird Software (maker ofKitCam) in June. The app features a new collection of filters, which you can now apply before you snap a shot. And after you have taken a picture, you can customize the look of your chosen filter in addition to tweaking its appearance with a number of editing tools.

Let's walk through the new filters, which you can now access in camera mode as you are lining up your shot. If you don't like the result, don't worry: you can switch to another photo after snapping the shot or go no filter. In camera mode, tap the filter button in the lower-right corner to bring up the filter options, which are fairly sizable thumbnails as far as filter thumbnails go. Once you have perused the options -- there are 14 filters in all -- you can tap the filter button again to hide the filter thumbnails to finish lining up your shot.

Camera mode also gives you the ability to zoom, lock focus and exposure points, and use grid lines to compose your shot. Swipe sideways to swipe through the collection of grid patterns. Pinch to call up the slider to use to set your zoom level. Lastly, tap with two fingers to call up focus and exposure points, which you can then drag to move.

After you have snapped a shot or selected a photo from your iPhone, you can access the customization options for all of the filters. Well, all but ColorVibe, whose look I could not find a way to tweak. For most filters, you can pinch to adjust the intensity of the effect. Two filters -- Throwback and Lomo -- require you to twist with two fingers instead of pinching to customize their look. Also, you can tap the pencil icon on the filter you are previewing to access additional effects: vignette, tilt-shift, burst, and worn. The burst tool is akin to light leaks, and the worn tool adds texture. With each added effect, you can pinch or twist to alter its look.

In addition to the live and customizable filters, there a number of editing tools at your disposal. In edit mode, there are two buttons next to the filter button at the bottom of the screen. One is a one-touch enhance button, while the other lets you crop, straighten, rotate, and flip your photo. Tap the triple-dot button on the right to access four more edit buttons to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, white balance, color balance, color levels, and sharpness

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Return to YouTube's old way of buffering full videos

You may have noticed that when you are playing a YouTube video, it buffers only so much ahead of your current position. And should you pause the video, buffering stops altogether. The reason behind this lackluster form of buffering? YouTube's embrace of Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (Dash), which breaks a video into segments, buffering each segment as you make your way through the video. In theory, Dash allows YouTube to adapt to changing network conditions without stalling out at times.

In the real world, Dash means you can't pause a video and come back to it later with it fully buffered, which allows you to skip around the video without waiting for it to rebuffer each time you jump to a new spot.

YouTube doesn't let you disable Dash playback, but browser extension YouTube Center does. It's available for Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari. It has not been approved in the Chrome Web Store, so you'll need to download it to your PC and drag the file into Chrome's extension page. Also, Chrome users will need to check the box on the extension page to enable Developer mode.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)

YouTube Center installs a small settings button in the upper-right corner of YouTube. Click on the gear icon to open the settings panel, which conveniently opens over your current YouTube page. It lets you tweak oodles of settings, but for the purposes of this post, you'll need to click on the Player tab at the top and then uncheck the box for Dash Playback. No need to save; just click the X in the upper-right corner to close the settings window and return to your YouTubing ways.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)

Windows users, take note: my fellow How To blogger Nicole Cozma tested YouTube Center with both Chrome and Firefox on a Windows machine and the extension did not work. To conclude, your mileage may vary.Now, you'll notice that once you begin a video, YouTube will buffer the entire thing, even if you leave it paused and head to another tab. I tried YouTube Center on a Mac with both Chrome and Firefox, and the extension worked seamlessly. I also found it made my default playback window larger, which I didn't always enjoy, since it made browsing related videos while half-watching the current video a more difficult task. Thankfully, on the Resize tab in the settings window, there are many options from which to choose.

How to remove old Android devices from the Play store

Similar to how it keeps track of your downloaded and purchased applications, Google also keeps track of your Android devices. Each smartphone or tablet you register to your Google account is automatically synced with the Play store, giving you the ability to install new apps from your Web browser.

There doesn't appear to be a limit to the number of devices Google stores, which means things can start to get a little crowded as you begin to upgrade to the latest and greatest gadgets. There is no need to fret, though; a simple solution makes it easy to organize or even remove oldAndroid devices you no longer use from the Play store.

Here's how to do it:

Removing old devices
Go to the Google Play store from your computer's Web browser, click on the gear icon at the top-right-hand corner of the screen, and select the Settings option. You will be brought to a page titled "My Devices," which lists all the smartphones and tablets you have registered to your Google account.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dan Graziano/CNET)

Next, deselect the devices you wish to remove from your account under the Visibility option. This will hide select devices from appearing in the Play store when you are attempting to download a new app.

Renaming your devices

Alternatively, you can also rename devices for better organization. This can be done in the Google Play settings on the My Devices page. Click on the "Edit" option at the right-hand side of the screen, enter a new name, for example "Dan's Nexus 7," and click the "Update" button.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dan Graziano/CNET)

This will make it easier to download apps on shared accounts or to organize multiple devices. When attempting to download a new app you will be presented with three options: the app is compatible with all of your devices, some of your devices, or none of your devices. Clicking one of these three options will display a drop-down menu with your newly organized device list.

Wirelessly migrate data between Samsung Galaxy devices

Transferring contacts and personal data from your old phone to a new one used to be a cumbersome ordeal. These days, it's a much simpler process and in some cases, you don't even need cables or wires to copy your data.

On Android phones, just having a Google account takes care of your contacts, bookmarks, apps, and more. However, it won't help you copy old SMS/MMS messages, pictures, music, and other files. For Samsung Galaxy users, there's an easy way to get those files over to your new Galaxy device. Samsung's Smart Switch Mobile app lets you wirelessly transfer data from your old Galaxy device to your new Galaxy device. Here's how:

Step 1: Install the Samsung Smart Switch Mobile app on both of your Galaxy devices.

Step 2: Position the two Galaxy devices within 50 cm of each other, then launch the app on both devices. Tap on the Connect button from one of them to initiate the connection.

Step 3: Once the devices are connected, you'll see a list of data types that you can choose to transfer. Select the data you want to copy over, then tap the Transfer button.

Step 4: On your target device, you'll be prompted to accept the transfer. Tap OK to continue.

How to Install Microsoft Office on Linux machines

How to Install Microsoft Office on Linux

Linux users can use LibreOffice, Google Docs, and even Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, but some people still need — or just want — the desktop version of Microsoft Office. Luckily, there are ways to run Microsoft Office on Linux.

This is particularly useful if you’re still on the soon-to-be-unsupported Windows XP and don’t want to pay an upgrade fee to upgrade your computer to Windows 7 or 8. This obviously isn’t supported by Microsoft, but it still works fairly well.

Ways to Install Microsoft Office

There are several different ways to install Microsoft Office on Linux:

• Wine: Wine is a Windows compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows programs on Linux. It’s not perfect, but it’s optimized enough to run popular programs like Microsoft Office well. Wine will work better with older versions of Office, so the older your version of Office, the more likely it is to work without any trouble. Wine is completely free, although you may have to do some tweaking yourself.
• CrossOver: CrossOver is a paid product that uses code from the free version of Wine. While it costs money, CrossOver does more of the work for you. They test their code to ensure that popular programs like Microsoft Office run well and ensure upgrades won’t break them. CrossOver also provides support — so if Office doesn’t run well, you have someone to contact who will help you.
• Virtual Machine: You could also install Microsoft Windows in a virtual machine using a program like VirtualBox or VMware and install Microsoft Office inside it. With Seamless Mode or Unity Mode, you could even have the Office windows appear on your Linux desktop. This method provides the best compatibility, but it’s also the heaviest — you have to run a full version of Windows in the background. You’ll need a copy of Windows, such as an old Windows XP disc you have lying around, to install in the virtual machine.

We’ll be focusing on using Wine or Crossover to install Office directly on Linux. If you want to use a virtual machine, all you have to do is install VirtualBox or VMware Player and create a new virtual machine. The program will walk you through installing Windows and you can install Office inside your virtualized Windows as you normally would.

Installing Microsoft Office With Wine

We tested Office 2007 with this process, as Office 2013 is known not to work properly and Office 2010 doesn’t appear as well supported. If you want to use an older version of Office, like Office 2003, you’ll likely find that it works even better. If you want to install Office 2010, you may need to perform some more tweaks — check the Wine AppDB page for the version of Office you want to install for more information.

First, install the Wine package from your Linux distribution’s software package repository. On Ubuntu, open the Ubuntu Software Center, search for Wine, and install the Wine package.

Next, insert the Microsoft Office disc into your computer. Open it in your file manager, right-click the setup.exe file, and open the .exe file with Wine.

The installer will appear and, if everything goes well, you should be able to go through the installation process on Linux as you normally would on Windows.

We didn’t run into any problems while installing Office 2007, but this will vary depending on your version of Wine, Linux distribution, and especially the release of Microsoft Office you’re trying to use. For more tips, read the Wine AppDB and search for the version of Microsoft Office you’re trying to install. You’ll find more in-depth installation instructions there, filled with tips and hacks other people have used.

You could also try using a third-party tool like PlayOnLinux, which will help you install Microsoft Office and other popular Windows programs. Such an application may speed things up and make the process easier on you. PlayOnLinux is also available for free in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Why You Might Want to Use CrossOver

If the Wine method doesn’t work or you encounter problems, you may want to try usingCrossOver instead. CrossOver offers a free two-week trial, but the full version will cost you $60 if you want to keep using it.

After downloading and installing CrossOver, you’ll be able to open the CrossOver application and use it to install Office. You can do everything you can do with CrossOver with the standard version of Wine, but CrossOver may require less hacking around to get things working. Whether this is worth the cost is up to you.

Using Microsoft Office on Linux

After it’s installed, you’ll find the Microsoft Office applications in your desktop’s launcher. On Ubuntu, we had to log out and log back in before the shortcuts would appear in the Unity desktop’s launcher.

Office works pretty well on Linux. Wine presents your home folder to Word as your My Documents folder, so it’s easy to save files and load them from your standard Linux file system.

The Office interface obviously doesn’t look as at home on Linux as it does on Windows, but it performs fairly well. Each Office program should should work normally, although it’s possible that some features — particularly little-used ones that haven’t been tested very much — may not work properly in Wine.

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Of course, Wine isn’t perfect and you may run into some issues while using Office in Wine or CrossOver. If you really want to use Office on a Linux desktop without compatibility issues, you may want to create a Windows virtual machine and run a virtualized copy of Office. This ensures you won’t have compatibility issues, as Office will be running on a (virtualized) Windows system.