Most of us have had to call contacts who have extensions in their numbers. They're annoying to enter and the process can take up time. Fortunately, if you have an Android smartphone, then you have a way of entering

extension information in your contact

's details and having your Android

automate the dialing process

for you.

While browsing the Internet on a smartphone might not necessarily be the most comfortable way to surf the web, there are some things that you can do to make it easier on yourself. In this tutorial, we're going to show you our

top five power user tips

for

using the Android browser

, including changing your home page, sharing links and more.

If you have a number of contacts on your

Android phone

who you frequently call or text, then you should know that there is a way to add shortcuts to one of your home screens to save you time.

Adding a direct dial shortcut

lets you call a contact quickly and creating a direct message shortcut will save you time when you're texting.

Once you've accumulated a large number of applications on your Android phone, you might want a faster way to access them. Fortunately, there are a few ways that you can create app shortcuts on your home screen. We'll show you two ways to add shortcuts to your home screen and show you how to remove shortcuts once you're done with them.

Your

Android smartphone widgets

can quickly give you information at a glance about anything from the weather to Facebook updates, so they can be pretty handy. Depending on the widget, you can

customize what information is displayed

so that it suits your preference. We'll show you

how to add and manage your widgets

in this tutorial.

In past tutorials, we've shown you a few Android shortcuts. In this tutorial, we're going to show you some more

advanced Android shortcuts

that you can use to access your

Task Manager

, see a list of most

recently used apps

,

create folder shortcuts

and more.

In this tutorial, we'll show you two ways that you can

save time on your Android smartphone

by using a few simple shortcuts. One of these lets you quickly

check notifications

and

toggle certain phone settings

, while the other lets you set your

Android's speed dial

.

In this tutorial, we show you

how to organize your shortcuts

on your

Android smartphone

. We'll show you

how to remove shortcuts

from the home screen, how to organize them into pagesl, and how to add new shortcuts for apps that you frequently use.

In this episode, we show you how to

browse the Internet

using the Samsung Galaxy Tab

. The Tab's browser let you use

tabbed browsing

and search pages for selected text, a rare feature in a tablet. We'll also show you how to

add widgets and shortcuts

to your home screen, as well as how to

change the wallpaper

.

If you

enable Quick Links in Gmail

, you'll be able to

add a quick link

to

frequently viewed emails

. By clicking Add a Quick Link while viewing any email, you will

add a shortcut

or quick link to the email. We'll walk you through Quick Links in this episode.

For those of you who don't know

what a shortcut is

in

computer terms

, it's quite similar to what you might think. That is to say, it's a quick way of getting somewhere. In computers, you can

quickly access files and folders

by

creating shortcuts

. We'll show you what that means in this tutorial.

If you right-click on an item in

Windows Explorer

, you'll notice a menu pop up. This menu is known as the

context menu

and offers an option called Send to where you have several options of how you can

send files to contacts

or

move files on your computer

. We'll show you how to add more options to the

Send to menu

in this episode.

You probably have gigs and gigs of music sitting in iTunes, ready to play at a whim. However, anyone stopping by your desk at work can immediately see that you're listening to your music instead of focusing on the task at hand. Fear thee not. Lucas offers up details on CoverSutra, an unobtrusive iTunes pimp that'll optimize your iTunes experience.

If you're using Windows, you create "shortcuts" to represent files or folders. On a

Mac, you can create an "alias"

that works the same way. This lets you put links to programs you use in the dock on the desktop or organized into folders without having to physically move the application on your hard drive. Michael "Doctor File Finder" Callahan explains.

We continue our

Nexus One hands on

by taking a look at the "Google Phone" homescreens, choosing new widgets, selecting a wallpaper that's more to our liking. We also take a look at the primary and secondary functions of the capacitive buttons that appear along the bottom of the phone's screen. We set a new lock pattern to secure the device and take a look at the phone's menu systems in this part of our

Nexus One video tutorial series

. We'll also take a look at the

camera and video functions of the Nexus One

.

Your keyboard probably has a Windows logo key sitting in the bottom row on either side of the spacebar. But what the heck do these keys actually do? Turns out, quite a lot! Learning a few quick Windows key shortcuts, you'll be a power-user in no time.

When I switched from a PC to a Mac one thing I had trouble with was keyboard shortcuts. Every program has them, but on the Mac you have to access them from the menu which is at the top of the screen. So, I was constantly moving back and forth. Then I found KeyCue and it made everything easier in every program.

When you install most software programs they will either ask you if you want a shortcut on the desktop or they'll just put one there. You can do the same thing and put shortcuts to folders or files for quick access from your desktop.

That are lots of ways to start a program. You can find it in it's folder and click on the executable file. That's no fun especially when it's a program you use often. You could put program shortcuts all over your desktop, but that gets messy. So, for the programs you run most you can create a Quick Launch item that will appear in the Quick Launch bar that runs across the bottom of your Windows desktp... and here's how!

Whether you want to change the way shortcut icons appear on your desktop or you want to change the appearance of a particular folder on your PC, changing the icon associated with that file or folder is a great way to customize your PC.

The context menu, AKA the right-click menu, offers some commonly used shortcuts in Firefox like bookmarking and saving pages, sending links to friends and some power-user features. The context menu options change based on where you right-click, hence the name.

Changing the icons of the folders and shortcuts you use often is an easy way to customize, personalize and update the look of your desktop.

It's easy to create a shortcut on your desktop that points to a folder on your computer. You may have a Downloads folder buried away on your PC; creating a desktop shortcut means you'll always have quick and easy access to said folder.

The Context Menu or right-click menu is a great way to complete some advanced tasks Windows or to access common shortcuts. You can rename files, change the sort or view mode of icons in Windows and much more. It's called the Context Menu because it changes depending on context: The menu will contain different entries depending on whether you click on an icon, the desktop, in a folder etc. Click your right mouse button and see what shows up!