The problem happens on Chromebooks with 4 GB of RAM as well, but much less often. Still, even on the Chromebook Pixel, I experience it from time to time. The good news is that regardless of your Chromebook model, one quick command line with a restart can definitely help. The solution uses zRam or compressed swap space and you can use it on a Chromebook because it’s part of Linux, which is the underlying core of a Chrome OS device.

Essentially, zRam creates a swap disk to virtually increase the amount of memory your system can use. This is a description from the zRAM / compressed cache project site:

“This project creates RAM based block device (named zram) which acts as swap disk. Pages swapped to this disk are compressed and stored in memory itself. Compressing pages and keeping them in RAM virtually increases its capacity. This allows more applications to fit in given amount of memory.”

Here are the simple steps I found in the Chromebook Central Google Group to enable it:

1. Open up a terminal tab with the CTRL + ALT + T keys.
2. Type “swap enable” (without the quotes).
3. Restart your Chromebook.

That’s it! The change is persistent, meaning the swap file will stay active after each restart. If you want to disable it, just follow the same instructions but type “disable” instead of “enable.” And if you want to manage the actual size of the swap file, you can do that too: When enabling it, follow the command with a number representing the size of the swap file in megabytes.

I’ve used this function on several Chromebook models and have noticed that blank tabs are mostly a thing of the past, even after opening and closing dozens of tabs during a typical day.

The nice thing is that you have nothing to lose by enabling the swap function since it can easily be disabled. Even better: As of last month, Google is experimenting to see if enabling swap by default is a viable option.

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However, after two weeks with my new iPad, I’m suddenly taking advantage of these gesture functions like never before. In fact, I can think of only three instances that I even need to hit the home button anymore: Waking the device, grabbing a screen shot and getting out of the mode that lets you delete or move apps around.

Gone is the hardware button double-tap to switch back and forth between apps. No more pressing the button to return to the home screen either. After rediscovering these gestures and then making them part of my navigation workflow, I’m getting around the iOS environment far faster on my iPad. Here’s a summary of the multi-finger gestures currently available for iPad navigation; aside from the standard two-finger pinching and double-tap to zoom functions.

Five-finger pinch: Here you just “grab” the screen at any point to get back to the Home screen. It’s quick, fast and simple.

Four-finger swipe up: Want to see the multitasking bar, showing you the most recently used apps? This gesture replaces the double-tap of the Home button. You can pick a different app here or simply swipe four fingers back down to hide the multitasking bar.

Four-finger swipe left / right: Thanks to this gesture, I actually don’t use the multitasking bar much, if at all, anymore. By swiping four fingers left or right, the iPad quickly moves you through your running and most recently used apps. I strategically open my most used apps one after another, so I can quickly swipe between Mail, Safari, and the Kindle app for example.

A few extra hints and helpers

First, you have to make sure that gestures are turned on for your iPad. Look in Settings, General, Multitasking Gestures to set the slider to On if needed.

Second, you can actually remove an app from your multitasking bar with gestures, although you can’t remove an app from the Home screens without the Home button. To do this, use the four-finger swipe up to show the currently running and recently used apps.

Then tap and hold on any of these apps to get into editing mode. Tap the upper left badge — the red minus sign — on any app or apps you want to remove. When done, simply do a four-finger swipe down to hide the multitasking bar and the selected apps are gone!

Again, these gestures first appeared over a year ago and you could have enabled them by a little bit of tweaking effort and a $5 download. But they’re the real deal now and after embracing them these past two weeks, I find the iPad much simpler, intuitive and quicker to use all around.

Maybe I’m just slow to the multi-finger gesture game though. Let me know if you’re using them in this simple little poll as I’m wondering if these gestures are a type of hidden function that some iPad owners don’t know about.

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Although there is a web version of the service, Snapguide is clearly designed to take advantage of mobile devices like the iPhone, which for many have taken the place of the manual or cookbook they look to for help with a project. The guides that users create — which can contain a combination of audio, photos and video — are formatted so they are easy to see on a small screen, and the app also makes it easy for users to browse through existing guides and to “like” or comment on them. And since the iPhone has a camera that also does video, creating a new guide is almost as easy as viewing one (the company says it is working on Android and other versions of the app).

One of the obvious categories for such easy-to-consume mobile guides is recipes and cooking, and Snapguide offers a number of those already, including some created by an award-winning chef. Cooking also played a key role in the formation of the company: the idea for Snapguide came together after chief technology officer Steve Krulewitz — a former engineer on Google Chrome — gave co-founder and CEO Daniel Raffel (a former chef and also former product lead for Yahoo Pipes) a book on bread-making. At that point, Raffel says he realized there was no easy way to create or share step-by-step instructions with photos and video for relatively simple tasks.

Although Raffel has created a number of guides himself that involve cooking — including “How to make a marinara and margherita pizza” and “How to barbecue teriyaki tofu” — he also a wide range of other fairly eclectic how-tos, including one on how to fly a dual-line kite and another on how to replace the battery in the key fob for a Prius. The service has been seeded with guides created by a number of other users as well, including Bouchon’s Chef de Cuisine Rory Herrmann, gardener and nursery owner Flora Grubb, and a beekeeper who has created a guide on how to clean and render beeswax.

Like most people, I hardly ever turn to how-to guides unless I am completely stuck — and then I usually just Google the term I am looking for (faucet dripping, etc.) and then click through whatever looks good and try to memorize the key steps. The nice thing about Snapguide isn’t just that the guides have photos and videos included, so that you can see exactly how to do something (the guide on catching Dungeness crabs is quite good) but it is really well designed for the phone and tablet. I could see myself holding the app on my iPhone or iPad — or having someone else hold it — while I try to execute whatever maneuver I am working on, or prepare a recipe for something complicated.

Snapguide, which is based in San Francisco, closed a $2-million round of funding last year from a group of venture funds, including Index Ventures and SV Angel, as well as individual investors such as former Facebook staffer Dave Morin and former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington.

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Since Apple introduced the new device a week and a half ago, we’ve been trying to answer your questions about which device to buy, whether you should upgrade and, once you have it in your hands, what to do from there. Which apps should you get? Which ones will look the best? Which data plan should you pick? Here’s what you need to know.

Details, details

Here’s a scientific explanation of what makes the new so-called Retina display so very bright and unpixelated.

Sure, you might feel silly taking video with an iPad. But Kevin Tofel thinks you might feel differently now that the new iPad has better cameras and useful photo-editing software. Here’s his analysis of the new cameras.

Making decisions

One-stop shop for the most insightful reviews of the new iPad: here’s Om’s meta review of the reviews.

iPad versus iPad: Now that Apple is bringing 4G to the iPad, which carrier should you go with? Kevin Fitchard compares the services and options from both AT&T and Verizon.

Now that you have your iPad

What if you already have a 3G wireless contract? We walk you through the steps to upgrading your 3G data plan to a 4G data plan.

With that 2048 × 1536 display resolution and 264 pixels per inch, the iPad’s most noticeable new feature is the Retina display. Here’s a roundup of the apps available in the iTunes App Store now that have been optimized for the new high-resolution display.

iPhoto, Apple’s photo-editing software for the Mac, is for the first time on the iPad. It’s been reworked for touch-based editing photos and creating Photo Journals pictures, maps, weather and calendar widgets — here are the details.

As our own iPads get delivered, we’ll have more coverage over the weekend and into next week, so stay tuned.

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The biggest obstacle for Windows 8 on a netbook isn’t the processor or memory requirements, as one might expect. Instead, it’s the display resolution, as many older netbooks came with a 1024 x 600 resolution screens. But as demonstrated on this video demo, Brad Linder from the Liliputing blog shows how to adjust the screen so that a netbook works with Windows 8, the Windows Store and applications specific to the Metro user interface:

Although it’s not optimal, and it takes a little tweaking to get Windows 8 working on a netbook, I’m planning to follow Linder’s lead and dust off an old netbook. Why risk a computer needed for daily activities or futz with a dual-boot situation when a low-cost laptop will give a taste of Windows 8?

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What You Need to Get Started

To start, you will also need an HDTV with an Apple TV attached, an iPhone 4S and a free Skype account. Why Skype and not FaceTime?  Well there are many more Skype users than FaceTime users. And quite frankly, it is much easier to get all members of the family up and running with a free Skype account than to initialize everyone’s iOS and Mac devices with FaceTime.

Prepare the Car Mount

Most iPhone docks are designed for someone sitting at a desk. What is needed is a better mount that can allow the iPhone to be better positioned for larger settings.  Take any decent smartphone car mount with a suction cup, like this one from Arkon for $15 on Amazon. The suction cup needs a smooth surface to attach to, so try mounting it to any household hand mirror. This set up gives extra stability to the video and the added ability to pass the camera in the mount around easily. The great thing about the car mount from Arkon is that it is just about infinitely adjustable, so no matter how or where you need to place the hand mirror you can angle the iPhone the way you want. And if you happen not to have anywhere to place the hand mirror, just tack up a nail and hang the hand mirror upside down on the wall.  Just don’t lock in the iPhone 4S before you make the video call. (The mount’s quick release allows one to attach and detach the iPhone quickly and easily.) Wait until after the call has been established before you put the iPhone into the car mount attached to the hand mirror.

Initiate the Video Call

Placing a video call on Skype with an iPhone is just as easy as chatting or placing a voice call.  To increase the quality of the video once the call is established, be sure to use the back camera of the iPhone. Then double click the phone’s Home button and swipe left twice to reveal the volume and Airplay buttons. To display the call on the big screen, just click on the Apple TV you want to use and turn on Mirroring. Once you’ve done that, mount the iPhone in the car mount and experience video calls on the big screen. As a side note, I have found that when placing Mac-to-iPhone Skype video calls, it is easier to establish a video connection when the call originates from the Mac.

If this solution works great for you, you can always shop around for a more attractive mounting solution.  You could even invest in a mountable surface that permanently affixes itself to the wall just above your HDTV. For instance, the top shelf of my main entertainment system is made of glass, so I don’t really need a mirror in that room of the house.  There are just as many car mounts on the market as there are solutions on how to mount them on or near an HDTV.

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The new iTunes Match page not only includes a couple of paragraphs describing the service, as did the brief blurb on the iCloud page that used to cover the topic; it also includes a simple four-step procedure for getting started matching your library and a 10-question FAQ featuring most of the things I’ve been asked by confused family and friends about the service. This includes whether or not iTunes Match streams or downloads a track (it can do either on a computer running iTunes; it does both simultaneously on an iOS device; it only streams on Apple TV) and what happens if you don’t renew your subscription. (Downloaded songs on any devices remain yours, cloud access is gone.)

Also included is an iTunes Match walkthrough video, which provides exact instructions for how to find and subscribe to iTunes Match on your Mac, as well as how to turn it on your iOS 5 device and Apple TV. It’s about as straightforward as a screencast gets, and the whole thing is just over a minute long. If relatives are calling about getting iTunes Match set up on their new iPad, this is definitely the direction to point them in.

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Welcome to another installment of Tips and Tricks, the series that aims to teach you something new about your Apple stuff. This time, we’ll be taking a look at Siri on the iPhone 4S and how changing one or two words in your query can produce completely different results.

Dateless reminders

Sometimes, you might want to use iOS 5′s new Reminders app as more of a checklist, rather than being reminded at a certain time for each item. Using the normal Siri query, Remind me to…, you’ll be asked to give a time or place to be reminded. In order to add a ‘dateless’ reminder, you can say one of two things. Either use Add … to my … list, which will add the item to the named list, if you have one set up, or you can use Remember to… to add the reminder to your default list without giving it a date.

Stop Siri tripping over words like Christmas

When setting up reminders, Siri can get a bit confused if your reminder contains words such as ‘Christmas’ or ‘Easter’. Instead of setting the reminder up for the date you say, it’ll ignore that date and set it up for 9 AM on the day you mentioned. However, after a bit of playing around with word order, it turns out that this only happens if you mention the holiday day before the date on which you want to be reminded.

Say Remind me to buy Christmas presents on December fifth, and Siri will create a reminder for Christmas day at 9 AM. However, say Remind me on December fifth to buy Christmas presents, and your reminder will be created exactly as intended. As long as you tell Siri the date for the reminder first, you should have no problems.

Distinguish between a text and an email

When using the syntax Send a message to…, Siri will send either an iMessage or an SMS (depending on whether the recipient has iMessage or not). However, if you start the sentence with Write a message instead of Send a message, then your message will be sent as an email instead.

Change spelling or find alternative interpretations

Perhaps when using Siri or when using the dictation feature, you may have noticed blue dotted lines under select words in the text. This means that either alternative spellings are available, or Siri thinks it’s possible you said something slightly different. Tap the underlined word, and a menu similar to the copy/paste menu will appear, allowing you to select the suggested alternatives.

Do you have any tips of your own for using Siri more effectively? Share them below in the comments.

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It’s actually not too difficult of a workaround to get multiple Gmail calendars on a Windows Phone device, and the solution is nearly identical to the one I found when the first Apple iPad was launched. Back then, I had to do a similar little trick. Normally, you can configure Google Sync, a service that sends mail, calendar and contact information to non-Google devices, right on your handset. In the case of a Microsoft Windows Phone device, that standard method doesn’t work. Here’s the step-by-step process to get multiple Gmail calendars on a Windows Phone by using Safari on the desktop.

1. Open Safari, then view its Preferences pane. In Preferences, go to the Advanced tab and check “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” If you already have this checked, you can skip this step. Close the Preferences.

2. In the Safari menu bar, you should now see a Develop menu option. Select it, choose the User Agent option and pick “Mobile Safari 4.3.3 — iPhone”. This tells web sites that you’re using the iPhone’s browser. You need to do this to open up the mobile site for the Google Sync service.

In Safari, browse to http://m.google.com/sync, and sign in if needed.

3. Now go to the Develop menu in Safari and choose to Disable JavaScript as shown by the check mark below.

4. Still in Safari, choose to manage your Windows Phone.

5. In the next window, you’ll see that Google says you can sync up to one calendar to your device. Ignore that message because the workaround allows multiple calendar selections. For instance, I chose the calendars for my wife and children.

6. Once you’ve made your selections, click the Save button. That should do it, so don’t forget to undo the User Agent change and re-enable JavaScript in Safari. On the Windows Phone handse,t you may not see results immediately. To speed up the process and see the new calendars, just go into Settings, Email + Accounts, and tap/hold on your GMail account. Choose the Sync option.

Here’s a before and after look on my own phone: All the shared Gmail calendars I need are on my Windows Phone.

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To add a new word to the dictionary, tap Settings, then navigate to General > Keyboard. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a Shortcuts heading. Don’t be put off by the name; this is the place to teach iOS new words, but it’s called shortcuts because it’s primarily used to create typing shortcuts, similar to TextExpander.

Next, tap the Add New Shortcut… button. You’ll be taken to a new screen with two text fields, labelled Phrase and Shortcut. The important one is Phrase, at the top. This is where you need to type the word you want to add to your dictionary. The Shortcut field, as it says, is optional. That’s where you’d add a shortcut that expands into the phrase you added (more on that in a minute).

After typing in a word or phrase in the first field, tap Save at the top of the screen and your word will be added to the auto-correct dictionary. Now, when you type that word anywhere on your device, auto-correct should leave it alone, and if you spell it slightly wrong, it should suggest that word, too.

My username for almost everything is jobbogamer, so I added it to my dictionary.

If you’d like to enable TextExpander-like functionality, you can fill in the Shortcut field. For example, you could type “eml” as the shortcut, and set the phrase to your email address. After tapping save, whenever you type “eml”, auto-correct will suggest your email address. It’s very useful for words and phrases you type a lot, and since the feature is baked into iOS, it works in every app, not just those with support for TextExpander Touch, which was the way to get this functionality before iOS 5.

Some useful words to add to the dictionary

I’ve found it incredibly useful to add some words to my iPhone’s and my iPad’s dictionaries. For instance, I’ve added all my email addresses (I have quite a few!) with different shortcuts; my main email address is “eml”, my iCloud email address is “ieml”, and my Gmail address is “geml”.

Other helpful words to add are words you’ve made up yourself – I have a few of those, too – and nicknames for people. That way, you won’t have to battle auto-correct to type words that don’t really exist.

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