How to root your Android phone or tablet

Android Root Unloack


Is the allure of being a superuser tempting you? Android rooting opens up a world of possibility, but it can also void your warranty, or even leave you with a bricked device. The important thing is to be careful. Read up about what you are going to do before you begin. Make sure that you backup your data. Follow the instructions to the letter. Manufacturers and carriers have a vested interest in dissuading you from rooting. If you’re careful, the risk is minimal, and the potential benefits are impressive. Let’s take a closer look.

What is rooting?

If you’re an Administrator on a Windows machine, you have access to the entire operating system and you can do whatever you like. That’s essentially what happens if you root your Android device. With root access, you can get around any restrictions that your manufacturer or carrier may have applied. You can run more apps; you can customize your device to a greater degree; and you can potentially speed it up in a variety of ways.
The process involves backing up your current software and then flashing (installing) a new custom ROM (modified version of Android).

Why would you root?

One of the most obvious incentives to root your Android device is to rid yourself of the bloatware that’s impossible to uninstall. You’ll be able to set up wireless tethering, even if it has been disabled by default. You can also access your entire file system, install special apps that require a root, and flash custom ROMs, which can add extra features and streamline your phone or tablet’s performance. A lot of people are tempted by the ability to completely customize the look of their phones. You can also manually accept or deny app permissions.
You won’t find a lot of amazing must-have apps when you root, but there are enough to make it worthwhile. For example, some apps allow you to automatically backup all of your apps and all of their data, completely block advertisements, create secure tunnels to the Internet, overclock your processor, or make your device a wireless hotspot.

Why wouldn’t you root?

There are essentially three potential cons to rooting your Android.
  • Voiding your warranty: Some manufacturers or carriers will use rooting as an excuse to void your warranty. It’s worth keeping in mind that you can always unroot. If you need to send the device back for repair, simply flash the original backup ROM you made and no one will ever know that it was rooted.
  • Bricking your phone: Whenever you tamper too much, you run at least a small risk of bricking your device. This is the big fear everyone has. The obvious way to avoid it happening is to follow instructions carefully. Make sure that the guide you are following works for your device and that any custom ROM you flash is designed specifically for it. If you do your research and pay attention to feedback from others, bricking should never occur.
  • Security risks: Rooting may introduce some security risks. Depending on what services or apps you use on your device, rooting could create a security vulnerability. For example, Google refuses to support the Google Wallet service for rooted devices.

How to root your Android

Before you actually try to root your device, make sure that you do some reading. The best place to find discussions about rooting, guides, and custom ROMs is definitely the XDA Developers Forum. Look for a thread on your specific device and you’re sure to find a method that has worked for other people. It’s worth spending some time researching the right method for your device.

Preparation for root

You’ll want to ensure that your device is fully charged before you begin. You’ll also need to turn USB debugging on. On the Galaxy S3 you’ll find it in Menu > Settings > Developer options and then check the box next to USB debugging. You will likely be plugging your device into your computer in order to root it.
Most Android rooting methods require you to install some software on your computer. It’s likely you’ll need to install the Android SDK. You may find other software is required. Make sure you follow the instructions and install all of it before proceeding.

One-click rooting

One of the easiest methods of rooting, which also supports a long list of devices, is SuperOneClick. You’ll find clear instructions, including a video, on how to use it at this XDA Developers SuperOneClick thread.
You will need to install some software to prepare, but the actual rooting process is one click. It will only take a few minutes to complete and then you’ll need to restart your Android device.
There is software out there that claims to provide one click rooting with no extra installs, but you should not have to pay to root your device and it’s very important to be wary about the method you choose. If in doubt, do more research. The XDA Developers forum is the most trustworthy source for rooting guides.

Your specific device

The reason rooting isn’t more straightforward is that all Android devices are not created equal. There are significant differences between Android smartphones, between manufacturers, and even between carrier specific versions of the same phone model. Make sure that any rooting guide or custom ROM you intend to use does support your specific device or you are asking for trouble.
Once you have found the right guide for your phone or tablet, it’s simply a case of working through the listed steps methodically. It can be a complicated procedure and it can take a while. Here’s an example guide for rooting the Samsung Galaxy S3. It can appear intimidating at first glance, but provided you follow it step-by-step, it should be a pain-free process. You can post questions in the XDA Developers forum if you run into trouble.

To root or not to root

Gaining full root access to your Android device can be thrilling, especially if you want to tinker with settings and customize your device. How much it changes your experience depends largely on the device you have. If you have a shuttered device, like a Kindle Fire tablet, then it’s a great way to get the full Android experience.
The potential benefits for all Android users include improved battery life, root-only apps, custom ROMs, overclocking, an end to bloatware, improved performance, and the ability to upgrade your phone when you want. If you aren’t excited at the prospect of any of these things, rooting probably isn’t for you.
Have you tried rooting your Android? Did you have a positive experience? Would you recommend rooting to others, or do you think it’s pointless? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

How to Remove the Background from a Picture


how to remove background from image



Looking to cut out the background from an image, but aren’t quite sure how to do it? Well, no matter if you have Photoshop or not, you’ve come to the right place. In this article we’ll cover two different methods that will get the job done: one that uses Photoshop, and one that relies on a browser-based Web app.
We’ll start with the simplest option – the Web app. Even if you’re partial to full-featured programs like Photoshop or GIMP, we highly recommend checking out Clipping Magic. We like it because the learning curve is insanely low, it doesn’t require any downloads or installs because it runs in your browser, and it doesn’t cost a single cent. The program is currently in alpha, but it still works like a charm. Here’s a quick rundown of how to use it: 
If you’re fortunate enough to have a copy of Photoshop and prefer to use that,  we’ve also included a quick tutorial for that on page two. 

1. How to remove backgrounds with Clipping Magic

So let’s say you want to Photoshop a mustache onto your boss’s face, but you don’t have Photoshop and all of the gloriously curly mustaches you find have annoying white backgrounds on them. In order to strip out the background and get a PNG image of the mustache by itself, follow these steps:
1. Download/save the image to your computer.
2. Head over to ClippingMagic.com.
3. Click the big blue Choose File button or just drag and drop your image into the dotted box.
4. Draw a green line on the parts of the image you want to keep.
5. Draw a red line on the parts of the image you want to remove, i.e., the background. Zoom in as needed for more precision.
Mustache background removal
6. If the image preview on the right looks correct, go ahead and click save. 

Removing complex backgrounds

Looking to remove the background from an actual photograph, not just some clip art with a white background? Don’t worry – Clipping Magic can handle this too, but it’ll take a little extra work. To get the job done, just follow the same steps as above, but get a little bit more precise with the red and green markings. For example, this picture of my coworker Brandon Widder is pretty good, but the background just doesn’t do him justice. I want to replace it with something a bit more badass.
Brandon with background
When I first dropped the image into Clipping Magic, the software’s edge-finding algorithm did a decent job of finding Brandon, but needed a little extra help catching his majestic, flowing locks.
Brandon background removal
So, to make it more accurate, I needed to zoom in and get more precise with my green markings. You can change the size of your brush in the top menu, but I’ve found that’s it’s much easier to just zoom in really far. Once you’re close enough to see where the algorithm missed the edges, drop a few green marks to help it straighten out. 
Brandon hair background
Once you’re done with that, just zoom back out too see if the finished product looks all right. Mine’s not perfect, but it’ll do.
Brandon no background

Now I can add a newer, more appropriate background…
Brandon with T-Rex background
Perfect!
If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below and we’ll see if we can help!

2. How to remove a background with Photoshop


Photoshop is a pretty amazing program, and with such a massive selection of tools, the program offers a number of different ways to strip backgrounds from images. We’ll start with the easiest method. If you’re dealing with a background that’s a solid color, you can strip it away with these simple steps:
1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Select the Magic Wand tool.
photoshop interface magic wand tool
3. Click on the background and hit Delete. It’ll magically disappear.
4. Save your image, and make sure it’s in PNG format.

Removing complex backgrounds

To strip away a more complex background in Photoshop, you’ll need to dig a bit deeper into your toolbox. Photoshop is an incredibly full-featured program, and as such, it supplies you with a myriad different ways to remove backgrounds. Some of these methods carry far steeper learning curves than others, so for this tutorial we’ll go over a method that’s fairly straightforward. Here’s how it’s done:
1. Open your photo in Photoshop.
2. Select the Background Eraser tool.
photoshop screenshot
3. Adjust the brush size to your liking.
4. Set the Sampling to Continuous.
5. Set the Limits to Find Edges.
6. Adjust the Tolerance. Lower is generally better since a high setting will remove more colors. It’s generally a safe bet to opt for a setting in the 20-30 range.
7. Hover your brush over an area of the background that’s near your object. Click and it will magically be removed.
photoshop screenshot 2
8. Continue this process until you’ve created a background-free border around your entire object. Feel free to adjust the tolerance as needed where your image gets lighter/darker around the edges.
photoshop screenshot 3
9. Once you’ve got a solid border around your object, you can switch over to the regular Eraser tool to remove the rest and put on the finishing touches before you save
That’s it! if you have got any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below and we’ll see if we can help!

20 Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free

It seems like these days you can learn just about anything online for free, but of course some of that information is better than others. The good news is there are plenty of reputable places to educate yourself online for free, and here’s a TechProceed.com's compiled list of 20 of them to get you started.

1. Coursera

The coolest thing about Internet learning is that you can take college courses which in the past were only available to people who forked over immense sums of money to attend elite colleges. Coursera brings a bunch of those classes together into one site, offering nearly 400 courses ranging from Introduction to Guitar from Berklee College of Music to Constitutional Law from Yale.
Courses typically include videos and certain coursework (such as online quizzes) that must be completed in a certain amount of time, as these courses are monitored by a professor. Stop by regularly to see what’s new, or search for topics that interest you can put them on a watch list so you’ll be notified when a new class begins.

2. Khan Academy

Home to more than 3,000 videos on subjects ranging from SAT prep to cosmology, art history to calculus, Khan Academy is a great place to learn. Detailed courses are broken into smaller sections of text or videos for ease of learning that fits into your schedule, and all are self-paced so you can spend as much or as little time with the subject as you like.
You can also leave comments or ask questions if you want more information or if something isn’t clear in the lessons.

3. OpenCourseWare

The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a worldwide effort to make college and university level course materials accessible for free on the Internet. Search for a specific topic that interests you, or search by language (20 are available) or the source of the coursework.
There are more than 5,000 classes in English alone, covering everything from statistical thermodynamics (Middle East Technical University) to Epidemics in South African History (University of Cape Town) and Creole Language and Culture (University of Notre Dame).

4. ALISON

A global-learning resource with courses in English, French and German, ALISONcovers everything from SAT prep to health and safety courses required in Ireland. There are lessons on everything from study skills to American copyright law, currency exchange to nonprofit fundraising, and general accounting to negotiating when buying a house.
Completion of a course grants you “certification,” which is a British designation, but it’s still kind of fun.

5. MIT Open Courseware

If you always wanted to attend a big-name school like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now you can do the next best thing by taking many of its courses for free from your home on your own time. The MIT Open Courseware site posts course materials from a wide variety of classes you can search by department.
Choosing a course will show you when it was originally taught and by whom, and will give you access to the syllabus, course calendar, readings, assignments and study materials. You can download the course materials and work through the course at your own pace.

6. Academic Earth

If you’d like a broader collection of courses than MIT provides, Academic Earthis a great place to look. This free course aggregator has a stunning collection of courses from around 50 universities across the globe. You can search by source or general subject.
Don’t miss the curated playlists on topics such as natural laws, the nature of evil and the economic crisis. The video electives—with subjects like how to take a punch and why World War II made us fat—are lots of fun, too.

7. Open Learning Institute

The Open Learning Institute from Carnegie Mellon University allows access to a handful of course materials so you can learn at your own pace from the same kind of materials and self-guided assessments that would be used in a classroom. Their offerings are limited, but there’s a lot of detail in the coursework. Instructor-led courses are also sometimes available.

8. Open Culture

This site isn’t very pretty, but Open Culture does boast a collection of more than 700 downloadable courses, including college-level, certificate-bearing classes, language lessons, educational materials for K-12 and more.
There are also just some interesting links that aren’t to courses but you’ll still learn something from, such as this post on a reading list suggested by Ernest Hemingway.

9. Open Education Database

The well-designed Open Education Database claims more than 10,000 courses from universities from around the world. Search by topic and you’ll see the number of full courses, as well as which courses have audio lessons, video lessons or mixed media, so you can learn in whatever way you like.
You can also use this site to learn about online and offline schools, should you choose to continue your education in a more formal way.

10. iTunes U

Many of these same online courses can be accessed away from your computer with the help of iTunes U, a free app that can be downloaded to you iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. It says that it includes 500,000 different courses, with material ranging from elementary school to college-level.
There’s also educational material here from respected institutions like the New York Public Library and MoMA. You can also add notes to the videos, share with friends and keep your course materials in iBooks so you have everything you need to learn wherever you are.

11. TED

The TED talks are a legendary source of information on all sorts of topics, and any discussion of how to educate yourself for free online needs to include them. There are now thousands of videos on all sorts of topics available on the site.
If you’re a fan of whimsy you can also get the site to suggest a fascinating, beautiful or informative video for you, among other tags. This may not be formal education but it certainly can be life-changing.

12. 99U

Love videos by experts on all sorts of topics? After you visit TED, check out99U, which is another great source of educational videos on all sorts of topics. It has a strong focus on the subject of creativity, business development and innovation, so it’s sure to be of interest if you’re an entrepreneur or in a creative line of work.

13. Ignite

If you want to learn something new and you’re really pressed for time, check out Ignite videos. The purpose of this series of speaking events is to have each person share something innovative or inspiring in just five minutes. Sounds silly, but you can get a big dose of greatness in a short amount of time.

14. Wikiversity

If you prefer your learning to be text-based, check out Wikiversity. As you might imagine, this site is part of the Wikimedia Foundation and includes detailed pages on a variety of subjects. It includes information of value to learners from preschool to college and beyond, and like other wiki projects is open-source and collaborative.
This is a good site or browsing, and the “random” button is a lot of fun

How to Find Out Which Windows Process is Using a File

Ever try to delete, move, or rename a file only to get a Windows system warning with something like one of these messages?
  • "Cannot delete file: Access is denied"
  • "There has been a sharing violation"
  • "The source or destination file may be in use"
  • "The file is in use by another program or user".
  • "Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use"

One of the best ways to handle locked files or folders is to use the free Microsoft program Process Explorer. Here is how to use it to find out what program, DLL, or handle is using a file or folder. You will need to run as administrator.



How to find out what program is using a file


In Windows 7 or 8, the system message may tell you what program is using the file. If it doesn’t or if you are using Windows XP, there is a simple way to find the program:
  1. Open Process Explorer, running as administrator.
  2. On the toolbar, find the gunsight icon on the right (shown highlighted in the figure shown below).
  3. Drag the icon and drop it on the open file or folder that is locked.
  4. The executable that is using the file will be highlighted in the Process Explorer main display list.



How to find out which handle or DLL is using a file

  1. Open Process Explorer, running as administrator.
  2. Enter the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F. Altenatively, click the “Find” menu and select “Find a Handle or DLL”.
  3. A search dialog box will open.
  4. Type in the name of the locked file or other file of interest. Partial names are usually sufficient.
  5. Click the button “Search”,
  6. A list will be generated. There may be a number of entries.
  7. An individual handle in the list can be killed by selecting it and pressing the delete key. However, care is necessary when deleting handles, as instabilities may occur. Often, just rebooting will free a locked file.