The Tech Loft

For first time user’s of XBMC, this article is for you! But those who have not yet added the Fusion repo to their File Manager, please read as well. Up until a short while ago, when you first install XBMC you had to manually install video add-ons one by one. Then, along came the Fusion Repository, and all you favorite Add-ons were now in one location without having to upload them one by one to your XMBC device. The good people at XBMCHUB have now released a fantastic configuration tool that now uploads and installs the most popular video add-ons for XBMC in one single shot. The whole process is very simple and outlined in the video I have uploaded to YouTube. Forgive me for the poor audio quality…it’s been a while since I’ve uploaded a video and failed to do some tests before actually recording and uploading the video. XBMC: Install FUSION REPO & XBMCHUB Configuration Wizard

Hi folks, today’s article is for iPhone owners who have updated to iOS 7. I bet many of you have noticed since upgrading to iOS 7, the battery usage on their phones has gone through the roof! I’m sure there are several new features that are gobbling up the juice from the battery so I instantly conducted a search on finding ways to find reduce battery usage and look for the features that are hogging my iPhone’s battery power. 1. Spotlight iOS 7’s search function called Spotlight continuously indexs new data. You can select what data you want indexed or completely turn all options OFF. Check out Settings > General > Spotlight Search and disable what you don’t need, such as events, podcasts and events. 2. Turn Down the Brightness One of the most popular tips in reducing battery usage has been to turn down your screen’s brightness. Use the Control Center or visit Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness and disable Auto-Brightness and decrease the ...

I’m happy to announce that VideoLAN has released VLC for OUYA Android gaming console! Downloading and installing VLC is simple, just SEARCH ‘VLC’ in the Discover section of your OUYA menu, select and ‘Download Now’. Watch the video below for the easy install!

Whether you’re Windows or Mac owner we ALL want our computers to run in fast and timely manner. Sometimes it seems that in a Windows world, there are more optimization tips you can run than on a Mac. For example, for those who are still using platter hard drives, Windows has disk defragmentation. But of course, this option is not found in Macs because (from what I’ve heard) OS X stores documents in a manner that does not need fragmentation. So let’s go over a few easy tips that will help you keep you Mac running speedily along. And don’t worry, these easy tips that will not suggest you swap out your drive for a solid state unit. Hopefully you’ll enjoy my list of curated tips on speeding up a mac! 1. Clean Your Hard Disk Drive If you have old photos, movies or music that you don’t access anymore, I would suggest moving them to another storage device. Having your hard drive full will increase access times so it’s best to keep it lean. To view what...

One of the cool things about owning an OUYA Android gaming console, is that you can side load apps AND the fact that the creators of OUYA encourage hacking the box. I think that’s one of the reasons I decided to support and donate to the OUYA Kickstarter a year ago. Well, a year has pasted and I received my OUYA console near the end of May. So what we’ll do now is install XBMC on OUYA. XBMC will not be found on OUYA’s game ‘store’, it’ll have to installed by downloading it from a website first. I have run through the download and install instructions on my video below, which can be found on my YouTube Channel along with over 200 other videos I have created and posted. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj81EIjSgWQ DIRECTIONS TO INSTALL XBMC ON OUYA Navigate to MAKE –> SOFTWARE –> BROWSER Navigate to the website ‘ http://goo.gl/gkdvk ‘. Downloading will begin automatically. The file is about 50Mb. Once downloading has complet...

WHEN 27″ ISN’T ENOUGH Lately, my YouTube video ‘Connect your pc to a HDTV’ has been getting a lot of attention. Over that past several months, it’s been one of my most viewed videos. So I decided to post an article on the subject of how to connect your pc to a hdtv. I guess 27″ computer monitors aren’t big enough for some folks, LOL! Hopefully you find my post to connect a pc to a HDTV helpful! MY PC AND TELEVISION GEAR This article is being written base in my experience with my own computer and hdtv. My computer has a custom rig, nothing special. At the time I recorded the video, I had an Asus EN8400GS SILENT/DI/512MD2(LP) nVidia 8400GS Chipset 512MB video card which supports DVI and HDMI out running on Windows 7. My television was (which I still currently own) a Samsung 42″ Plasma 430 Series (2010). CABLE CONNECTING When I connected my video card to the HDMI connector on my hdtv, the cable I used was a DVI to HDMI cable. On the back of m...

THE SHUFFLE ISSUE IN IPODS So I really don’t think I’m the only one experiencing the ‘shuffle’ issue. When listening to a playlist from my iPhone (or any iOS device), shuffle songs from a playlist play back in the same order. To a point where you can predict the next track on a 80 song playlist. You playlist is no longer a shuffled playlist but just a playlist. I have seen this issue reoccur on my iPod Video 5G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4s and iPhone 5. Yeah, I’ve gone through quite a few iOS devices. RESHUFFLE YOUR IPOD PLAYLIST From what I have found out, when you select to shuffle a playlist, the actual shuffling of songs is calculated ONCE and from every replay of the playlist, the songs will play in the sequenced order over and over. In order to reshuffle your songs, you’d have to UNSHUFFLE and then select to SHUFFLE your songs. This action apparently recreates the random traversal path through your playlist (or entire library). It re-seeds the random ...