A half-wave FM antenna can provide clear radio reception from local and distant stations. In comparison to a factory antenna that may come with your FM stereo receiver, a half-wave antenna’s resonant properties improve reception of incoming radio signals. Build yourself a T-shaped half-wave FM antenna to pick up those distant stations and learn a basic dipole antenna design. Tips Writer Bio

First things first. I will briefly describe everything you will need to put this system together. Believe me, it is MUCH cheaper than buying the systems going right now that simply email you still pictures. First, you will need an IP-based web camera. You can find many different types of these by just searching Google for “IP WEBCAM.” Radio Shack also carries a few good choices. There are a few weatherproof ones on the market but it is not necessary because you can always put a cover on it....

There are lots of places online where you can build inventions. An invention is something that you design, which serves a purpose. Famous inventions, like the telephone and the computer, have changed the way that the world works. Whether your invention is something small or something large, you can play around with your ideas at several sites online to figure out how to make them better, or even to complete a design idea you can shop around to stores that might want to purchase it....

The Apple iMac comes with a DVD drive capable of both playing and burning, or recording, DVDs. You can use DVDs to store files, such as music or documents, or you can create your own custom DVD movies complete with personalized menus. The iMac lets you burn DVDs both through the Finder and through iDVD, which is Apple’s application for creating DVDs. Use the Finder to burn data DVDs for backing up or storing files; use iDVD to create a personalized DVD that will play on DVD players....

Microsoft Excel can keep track of and calculate your sales commissions. You can also set up a number of different scenarios with different commission rates to calculate your earnings depending on the selected markup. Calculating your commissions in Excel can help you determine the markup that will maximize your earnings without pricing your product or service too high. You can save, modify and print your Excel spreadsheets. Reports and graphs can also help you to visualize your earnings and potential earnings based on different commission rates....

Free cash flow (FCF) is a measure of the cash available to make interest payments to potential creditors and equity investors, and is used in valuating a company before making investment or lending decisions. Knowing how to calculate free cash flow valuation with Excel can give investors and lenders a competitive edge when making decisions. Much of the information required for a free cash flow valuation can be found on a company’s income statement and statement of cash flows....

Microsoft Word 2010 allows users to customize the capitalization of one or more selected words. This means that you can quickly change an entire document to all uppercase or lowercase letters in as little as a few seconds, a feature that may come in handy when making last minute design changes to a Word document. Tips Writer Bio

Creating a “clone” of a hard drive is creating a full backup of all the files and folders contained on the drive. This will afford you the equivalent of a “do-over” in the event of system failure, allowing you to quickly bring your system back online. You can easily create a clone of your drive onto an external hard drive utilizing your laptop in conjunction with a docking station. Writer Bio

While high-definition televisions slowly are becoming the norm, most content still is delivered over coaxial cable, which in turn is connected to the source of the TV signal, whether that’s cable, satellite or antenna. HDTVs are capable of connecting to coaxial cables to get this content. Warnings Writer Bio

Dial-up Internet service uses regular telephone lines to access the Internet. Because of this, you can use any old telephone jack in your home to connect your computer to the Internet at any time, so long as you’re using dial-up and have a dial-up Internet service provider. You do this by connecting your computer to the jack with a phone cable, and then creating a new dial-up connection in Windows....

Because of the distances between car audio components, it might sometimes be necessary to make your own, custom-length RCA cables. One of the best ways to do this is to connect RCA jacks to speaker wire. This is a pretty straightforward job that requires only a little bit of work and some simple tools.

If you are on the same local network as a remote printer with networking capabilities, you can connect to the printer and send documents to it without a cable connection. Both PC and Mac systems can connect to remote network printers, as long as you know the host name of IP address of the device you are trying to print to. Once you have established the initial connection with the remote printer, you can begin sending files to it....

Different electronic devices are built to run at different voltages and types of current. In the United States, the the voltage of typical wall outlets is 120 volts, also called mains voltage, and it provides an alternating current, which means that the flow of electricity regularly switches direction. Some power sources, however, most notably car batteries, run on a 12-volt direct current. There are times when you may want to run a device built for a mains voltage from a 12-volt power source or the other way around....

The Apple iPod hard disk is formatted differently by iTunes depending on the operating system of the computer connected to the device. Thus, an iPod formatted on a Mac is only compatible with Mac computers and an iPod formatted on Windows is only compatible with Windows computers. You can convert the iPod format if you need to switch from Mac to Windows, but this process will erase all files on the iPod, thus losing all your music....

Acoustica’s Mixcraft application includes audio record and edit features for virtual audio tracks. Mixcraft also lets you generate multiple audio tracks that you can edit and enhance with built-in tools and native or external plugins. After finishing the project, mix down the audio down to a single MP3 file that you can play on your computer, smartphone, tablet or MP3 player. Writer Bio

Since Adobe’s PDF format became an international standard in 2003, the ability to convert to and from the format has become significantly easier. A common task for computer users is to be able to convert a PDF format to various versions of MS Word in order to use the information for follow-on work. Google Docs is a freely available application that can import PDF files and permits you to save them in various formats, including MS Word....

WMA files are the standard files used by Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. They are just like a standard .MP3 audio file, except they are used primarily in conjunction with Windows Media Player. Instead of ripping a CD to the .MP3 file format, you can easily rip it to the .WMA file format to take advantage of Windows Media Player. Writer Bio

DVC Pro video tapes are professional grade video recording tapes used in high-end video cameras. The capture quality is far superior to miniDV, miniDVDs and hard drives found on most user-based video cameras. However, not many devices play DVC Pro tapes, so if you are looking to display your work for someone you may need to convert the DVC content to a VHS tape or DVD.

All Windows-based computers have a free built-in audio recorder. This application allows you to record content ranging from a computer microphone to a connected audio device. Because of this, it is possible to hook up an LP record player to the computer and record the content as an MP3 track. Once saved as an MP3, the audio file is ready for use with any MP3 music player.

Updated February 10, 2017 Insert a blank CD-R into your computer’s burn drive. Open the Windows Media Program under “All Programs” in Windows “Start” menu. Click the “Burn” tab in the program. Select “Music CD” under the drop-down menu there. Click on the MP3 file in the folder where it’s saved on your computer, and drag it over to the “Burn List” in Windows Media Player. Click the “Start burn” button and your MP3 will be burned into a CD using the CDA format....