All good things come from Sweden.

Don’t believe me? Think about it: Abba. Ikea. Dynamite. GPS. Green-living communities. Lord of the Rings-inspired metal music. Statuesque blond ski instructors.

And Spotify.

Way back in 2008, a software development company in Sweden kicked back and thought about how great it would be to offer DRM-free, streaming music to the masses. Granted, lots of people have had this thought. I’m sure you’ve all spent some time on websites like Pandora, last.fm, and maybe even Grooveshark. But you probably don’t have an iTunes-like desktop client that will do what those sites will do. That’s what Spotify is all about.

Spotify lets you pick and choose what music you want to hear from their seemingly bottomless catalog, track by track, album by album, or artist by artist. It will also automatically import any existing audio files on your computer into its directory, so can play those songs along with stuff from Spotify. You can drag things directly into your play queue or create custom playlists. The stuff you make is saved to your account, so you can access the same playlists and history from any computer. You can also link your Spotify account to your Facebook, so you can share playlists with your friends and subscribe to their playlists in turn. Lists are also provided from time to time by the Spotify staff, and other commercial interests like Rolling Stone magazine and various record labels.

continue

We here at NYC Tech Guys have discovered that folks have a lot of complaints when it comes to their computers. From speed issues to viruses run amok, there are myriad frustrations that can complicate the user experience.  But even more amazing, lots of people don’t realize that there are some excellent software solutions out there that can ameliorate or even totally rectify some of the most troublesome issues that plague your computer.  To that end, we present “our picks,” a basic ranking of our preferred options for the most popular types of software to help you find the right programs to make your life easier.  This week, we’re talking about some great utilities for Mac users.

Macs are well-known for their user-friendliness and relatively low-maintenance operating systems, and it’s true: as long as you’re conscientious about keeping your software up-to-date and don’t drop it off a cliff, you’ll likely never have a problem with your trusty Mac.  But that said, there are some things that remain veiled behind the curtain of mystery—like keyboard shortcuts. Or Flash. So it is in the spirit of discovery that we present this list of apps that can make your iLife (HA! See what we did there?) that much easier.

continue

We here at NYC Tech Guys have discovered that folks have a lot of complaints when it comes to their computers. From speed issues to viruses run amok, there are myriad frustrations that can complicate the user experience.  But even more amazing, lots of people don’t realize that there are some excellent software solutions out there that can ameliorate or even totally rectify some of the most troublesome issues that plague your computer.  To that end, we present “our picks,” a basic ranking of our preferred options for the most popular types of software to help you find the right programs to make your life easier.  This week, we’re talking about some great utilities for Windows users.

continue

In spite of all the wonderful things computers have added to modern life, they’ve given us some pretty rotten things too: sentient AI along the lines of HAL and SkyNet, diminished capacity for social interaction, FarmVille. But of all these modern inconveniences, repetitive strain injuries have to be the most prevalent, persistent, and downright annoying. From headaches to hand cramps, there are myriad ailments you can blame on your PC.

Including sleeping poorly.

Ever since computers stopped using interfaces made up of neon green fixed-width type on an empty black screen, the light emitted by your PC’s display was meant to mimic daylight. Specifically, the color temperature of most displays is set to around 6000K by default.  And if you leave your display’s brightness setting at the higher end of its range, it means your eyes are getting bombarded with an awful lot of photons.  Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to stare into the sun?

And burning holes into your retinas aside, staring long and hard at your computer screen after dark can actually affect your circadian rhythms—the biological clockwork that tells you when it’s time to eat, time to wake up, and time to sleep.  Since your body interprets the cooler temperature light coming from your display as sunlight, it thinks computer time equals party time, even if it’s actually nighttime and you want to retire shortly after that last round of Spider Solitaire.

continue

So last week we served up some sites and programs you could use to watch television programming on your computer or mobile device.  While some people have certainly embraced the glory of streaming internet television, some people still prefer getting their fix from the 60″ flatscreen holding court in their living room. But what if you could get all that lovely internet TV on your actual TV?  Without the pesky bother of paying for cable?  Well, look no farther.  Here are a handful of options you can use to accomplish just that feat.

continue

Anyone who works or has worked in an office environment has come up against this problem at some point or another.  You create a document in a feverish frenzy, send it to the printer with a flourish, and go stand by the industrial monolith to await the hard copy of your genius.

And wait.

There’s no telling how many times you’ll try to reprint before you finally realize that you neglected to change back to your “usual” printer after some other anomalous print job.  And while the worst case scenario is having to rescue a hapless coworker from the pile of copies you sent to the “wrong” printer next to his desk, it’s still a time-consuming and frustrating error.  As such, I’m sure you’ll be thrilled to hear there’s a free program that will render this irritating gaffe obsolete.

Enter Automatic Printer Switcher from Computed Synergy! This program runs in the background of Windows to redirect print jobs according to your every whim.  You simply download and run the program, open the other programs whose print jobs you wish to control, and use the handy interface to pair program with printer.  With a few clicks of a mouse, Word documents will print in your office, Excel spreadsheets will become PDFs, and that funny email forward from Aunt Mabel or your plane tickets to Maui will emerge from that printer in the corner that your boss can’t see.

continue

I love having multiple monitors. It makes working in multiple application so much easier. Most of the time I’ll have several browser windows, email, a couple servers, some windows explorer windows and other various things open and dual monitors makes switching between the programs much more fluid. What do you do if you don’t have the room (or budget) for a second monitor? Adding virtual desktops gives you almost the same functionality, for free!

What is the benefit of multiple virtual desktops?  For me, when I’m working on several projects at once virtual desktops allow me to segment the windows into groups and makes it so that I only see the windows that I don’t get lost in the shuffle of open apps.

I’m a big fan of a program called Dexpot.  It’s compatible with all modern verisons of Windows (XP, Vista, and 7) and allows you to have up to 20 virtual monitors (the default is 4) with alpha transparency, fast screen switching options and the ability to move windows back and forth between different virtual desktops.

continue

Spyware, malware, adware…whatever you call it, it’s time to get rid of it. Is your system running slowly, are you getting pop-up windows?  Is there software that “looks” like an antivirus program asking you to pay, warning that you are infected but won’t do anything until you cough up the dough and you don’t remember even installing it?  You might have spyware on your computer.

Loosely defined, spyware is any software on your computer that is monitoring you (internet usage, web habits, or even possibly stealing passwords), adware is any software that tries to display ads on your computer either when you’re browsing websites that don’t have pop-ups windows or sometimes when you’re not even on the internet.  Malware is both spyware and adware, plus any number of programs that pretend to be antivirus, antispyware or other types of utilities but actually don’t do anything except ask you for money.

There are some really great free tools out there to remove spyware.  If these don’t get rid of your infection we’d recommend either calling a professional or just backing up your data and reinstalling your entire operating system and all programs.

continue