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Showing posts from March, 2019

What’s the Best Way to Back Up My Computer?

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Everyone loses data at some point in their lives. Your computer’s  hard drive could fail  tomorrow,  ransomware  could hold your files hostage, or a software bug could delete your important files. If you’re not regularly backing up your computer, you could lose those files forever. Backups don’t have to be hard or confusing, though. You’ve probably heard about countless different backup methods, but which one is right for you? And what files do you  really  need to back up? It’s All About Your Personal Data Let’s start with the obvious:  what  do you need back up? Well, first and foremost, you need to back up your personal files. You can always  reinstall your operating system  and redownload your programs if your hard drive fails, but your own personal data is irreplaceable. Any personal documents, photos, home videos, and any other data on your computer should be backed up regularly. Those can never be replaced. If you’ve spent hours painstakingly ripping audio CDs or video DVDs

Geek Trivia: Which Planet Has Only Orbited The Sun Once Since It Was Discovered?

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Which Planet Has Only Orbited The Sun Once Since It Was Discovered? Neptune Uranus Mars Jupiter Think you know the answer?

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Geek Trivia: What Subtle Message Does Mars Rover Curiosity’s Wheels Leave Behind?

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What Subtle Message Does Mars Rover Curiosity’s Wheels Leave Behind? (JPL) Jet Propulsion Lab (RDB) Ray Douglas Bradbury (NASA) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (CES) Carl Edward Sagan Think you know the answer?

Unravel Charger Review: AirPower Is Dead, So Buy This Charging Mat Instead

Welp, Apple Just Canceled AirPower

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Apple first announced AirPower in 2017 with a projected release in 2018. But that time came and went with nary a word from Apple. Now, despite several reports and rumors to the contrary, the project has been canceled. In a statement to TechCrunch , Apple Senior VP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio cited the inability to meet Apple’s strict standards the reason for the cancelation. After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward. The timing on this is pretty wild because just two weeks ago speculation was running wild about  when —not  if —Apple would finally announce its release. Some sites even went as far as to speculate that it would be released on March 21st or 22nd, at the end of a long week of Apple announcements. It’s clear th

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How to Resize PowerPoint Templates

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By default, PowerPoint slides use a widescreen format in a 16:9 ratio. If you’d like to change it to the standard format (4:3 ratio), or even create a custom size, PowerPoint provides a quick and painless way to make this happen. Resizing PowerPoint Templates Resizing the slides in PowerPoint will affect the way they appear during the actual presentation and how they appear on the handouts. Go ahead and open up the presentation that we will be resizing and select the “Design” tab. Next, click the “Slide Size” button. A menu will appear, allowing you to choose between the “Standard” format (4:3) or the “Widescreen” format (16:9). If you’re switching over to the standard format without any other changes, you can select it from the menu, and the changes will take effect. If you want to do a little custom tweaking to tailor the size to your specific needs, then select “Custom Slide Size.” In the Slide Size window that appears, clicking the box under “Slides sized for” (1) will ope

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Daily News Roundup: Office Depot Faked Malware Scans, Prime Members Get Free Switch Online, and More

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Happy Friday, guys and gals! While Apple and Microsoft have been quiet for the last day, there’s a little bit to talk about in Google-land. But the biggest news? Office Depot has been duping users. And it makes me sad. Google News: Gmail on iOS Finally Gets Gestures Google has a new game, Gmail on iOS gets gesture-ized, and Photos is getting some document storing chops. All this and more! YouTube TV is available in every US TV market now. Despite getting off to a rocky start , this is now a fantastic streaming TV solution that’s insanely simple. [ Engadget ] Google has a new offline Easter Egg game. It’s like Flappy Bird, but also not. Spoiler: There’s a cloud involved. [ Android Police ] If you’ve ever used Gmail on Android, you know it has some incredibly useful swipe gestures. Until now, those have been missing on iOS. [ The Verge ] Photos is getting document cropping, which should make it easier to store receipts and other important things without a bunch of clutter around

How to Create a Flow From Scratch

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Microsoft Flow is a trigger-based system for creating automated workflows. There are lots of templates available, but if they don’t fit the bill for you then here’s how to create a brand new Flow from scratch. You’ll need a free or paid-for plan to use Flow, so go ahead and sign up for one if you haven’t already. Head to the Office 365 app launcher (the nine dots in the top left corner) and click Flow to launch it. Step One: Create a New Flow The front page throws you straight into the templates, but we’re going to create a Flow from scratch, so click “My Flows” in the menu on the left-hand side. If you’ve never created a Flow before then this page will be blank; otherwise, it’ll contain any flows you’ve previously created. Click New > Create from blank to start a new Flow from scratch. You’ll be given the option to start from a popular trigger, but we’re going to start from nothing, so click the “Create from blank” button. Read the remaining 37 paragraphs

What’s the Difference Between My Photo Stream and iCloud Photos?

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Keeping your family photos safe from device failure is the primary reason backups exist. iCloud claims to back up all your photos “in the cloud,” but the way it works varies depending on what settings you have enabled. My Photo Stream vs. iCloud Photos “iCloud Photos” does what you’d expect—it stores all your photos in iCloud. Whenever you take a picture on your iPhone, it immediately uploads to iCloud where it’s backed up even if you break your phone. iCloud Photos will also send all the photos you’ve taken to your Mac, and any other device you have connected to iCloud so that everything is synced up. This is assuming everything is connected to the internet, and you haven’t turned off iCloud Photo Library using cellular data . iCloud Photos is great but has a major issue: storage space. The free iCloud data plan only gives you 5 GB of storage, which is extremely small, even compared to other free storage plans from services like Google Drive. You can fit about 1600 pictures in 5

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Android Weekly: Galaxy Fold Details, a 4000 mAh Battery Charged in 17 Minutes, and More

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This week saw a lot of Samsung news (as usual), with more details about the Galaxy Fold starting to trickle out. Xiaomi also showed off its 100w charger that can juice a 4,000 mAh battery in just 17 minutes. And more! Samsung News: Watching the Fold Fold Let’s start with the Samsung stuff this week, shall we? Samsung showed off how it tested the Galaxy Fold’s seam durability. It can fold 200,000 times. [ Android Police ] All versions of the Fold will reportedly ship with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. Not surprising. [ Android Police ] The Fold will be released in 15 countries in Europe starting at €2,000. That’s so many €. [ Android Police ] The Galaxy A90 was teased, with Samsung saying it will have a “Notchless Infinity Screen.” Curious! We’ll find out more on April 10th. [ The Verge ] If you can’t wait for the A90, however, the A70 was released this week. [ Samsung ] NBC used a Galaxy S10+ to shoot an entire episode of The Tonight Show. I wonder how much Samsung had to pay

Update WinRAR Now to Protect Your PC From Attacks

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Do you have WinRAR installed on your Windows PC? Then you’re probably vulnerable to attack. RARLab patched a dangerous security bug at the end of February 2019, but WinRAR doesn’t automatically update itself. Most WinRAR installations are still vulnerable. What’s the Danger? WinRAR contains a flaw that would let a .RAR file you download automatically extract an .exe file to your Startup folder . That .exe file would automatically be started the next time you sign into your PC, and it could infect your PC with malware. Specifically, this flaw is a result of WinRAR’s ACE file support. An attacker simply needs to create a specially crafted ACE archive and give it the .RAR file extension. When you extract the file with a vulnerable version of WinRAR, it can automatically place malware in your Startup folder without any additional user action. This serious flaw was found by researchers at Check Point Software Technologies . WinRAR contained an ancient DLL from 2006 to enable support fo

Geek Trivia: Which Punctuation Mark Didn’t Have A Dedicated Key Until The 1970s?

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Which Punctuation Mark Didn’t Have A Dedicated Key Until The 1970s? The Question Mark The Exclamation Point The Apostrophe The Comma Think you know the answer?

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How to Schedule An Email in Outlook

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There are many reasons you might want your email to arrive at a particular time, like wanting your mail at the top of someone’s inbox when they start work. You can do this in Outlook by scheduling your messages. Before we go any further, we need to add a couple of caveats. First, sending an email at a particular time does not guarantee that it will arrive in your recipient’s inbox at that time. There are many steps between you sending an email and the email appearing in someone’s inbox . While you can generally assume that a message sent at 8:30 am will be in someone else’s inbox within a minute or two, don’t rely on it for critical delivery. The second caveat is that this only works for the desktop Outlook client, not the Outlook web app. How to Schedule a Message in Outlook With that out of the way, let’s schedule a message in Outlook. The good news is that you don’t need a 3rd party add-in to do this; it’s baked right into the Outlook client. Create your new mail as normal, then

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How to Turn Translation On or Off in Chrome

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Google Chrome lets you automatically translate a webpage that not written in your browser’s default language. Like most online translation software, though, it can be a little unreliable. If you don’t need it—or if you use a different translation service—here’s how to turn Chrome’s off. How to Turn Translation On or Off The first thing you want to do is fire up Chrome, click the menu icon, and then click on “Settings.” Alternatively, you can type  chrome://settings/  into your address bar to go directly there. Once in the Settings menu, scroll down to the bottom and click on “Advanced.” Scroll down a little bit more until you see the Languages heading, then click on “Language.” By default, Chrome has translation enabled. If you want to disable this feature, click the toggle button into the off position. If you’re going to continue to use the translate feature, do nothing. Read the remaining 9 paragraphs

Daily News Roundup: Shoddy MacBook Keyboards, FTC Cracks Down On Robocalls, and More

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Apple finally acknowledged that there are issues with the MacBook keyboard, Samsung showed off how it tested the Galaxy Fold for durability, and the FTC is cracking down on robocalls. And so much more! Apple News: Sorry ‘Bout that Keyboard! The third-generation MacBook keyboards have been getting heavily criticized for a while now, and Apple finally said something about it. In a comment to The Wall Street Journal, an Apple spokesperson said they’re aware that a “small number of users” are having issues with the keyboard. They went on to say they were “sorry.” [ Engadget ] WatchOS 5.2 is out, bringing ECG functionality to Europe and Hong Kong. [ MacWorld ] As Engadget points out in the linked piece, companies that focus on breakdowns and repairs (like iFixit) have found the system in the new MacBook keyboard to be fragile and a design flaw. That makes it’s something that affects  all users (or probably will eventually)—not just a “small number of users.” Still, the fact that it

How to Import Photos From a Camera or Phone Using Photos on Mac

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With iCloud Photos, photos from all your Apple devices will be visible in your Mac’s Photos app . But, if you have an Android phone, digital camera, or have simply  run out of space in iCloud , you must import them manually. The process is pretty simple for any device you have. First, plug the device in and open the Photos app. You’ll find it on your Mac’s dock, or you can press Command+Space to open Spotlight and search for “Photos.” Look for your device in the sidebar to the left, under “Devices.” If your device doesn’t show up, you might need to make sure the device is in the correct mode for importing photos. Some cameras have an import mode you might need to enable, and most phones (Android and iPhone included) will probably need to be unlocked before showing up here. The method may vary by manufacturer, so you’ll have to check your camera’s user manual if it isn’t working. Once it’s connected, click on the device name to bring up the import page. This will show a list of eve

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How to Update Your AirPods’ Firmware

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Apple’s AirPods are one of the company’s most popular accessories, and they’re pretty great. Like all modern wireless headphones, they have firmware that sometimes needs to be updated for optimal performance. Here’s how to update the firmware on your AirPods. With no screen to speak of it can be easy to forget that wireless headphones often need firmware updates to make sure that hey work as well as they possibly can. Sometimes the updates even fix bugs that have been reported. If your AirPods are misbehaving, it’s always a good idea to check whether there are software updates available. When AirPods Automatically Update Thankfully, AirPods will normally update their firmware—a type of software that runs on the AirPods themselves—on their own. So long as a few prerequisites are met, you should never need to force your AirPods to update manually. Those prerequisites are: Your AirPods are in their Charging Case. The Charging Case is plugged in or placed on a Qi charger if using a

Windows Task Manager: The Complete Guide

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The Windows Task Manager is a powerful tool packed with useful information, from your system’s overall resource usage to detailed statistics about each process. This guide explains every feature and technical term in the Task Manager. This article focuses on Windows 10’s Task Manager, although much of this also applies to Windows 7. Microsoft has dramatically improved the Task Manager since the release of Windows 7. How to Launch the Task Manager Windows offers many ways to launch the Task Manager . Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task Manager with a keyboard shortcut or right-click the Windows taskbar and select “Task Manager.” You can also press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and then click “Task Manager” on the screen that appears or find the Task Manager shortcut in your Start menu. The Simple View The first time you launch the Task Manager, you’ll see a small, simple window. This window lists the visible applications running on your desktop, excluding background applications. You can s

Geek Trivia: Vintage Marbles Glow Brilliantly Under Blacklight Thanks To What?

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Vintage Marbles Glow Brilliantly Under Blacklight Thanks To What? Phosphorene Lead Uranium Milk Glass Think you know the answer?

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How to Create and Print an Envelope in Word

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If you want to create a customized envelope, whether for personal or professional use, but don’t want to invest the money having it done professionally, Microsoft Word has you covered. Creating a customized envelope in Word is simple thanks to a feature designed for the task. Creating and Printing Envelopes in Word Go ahead and open up Word and select the “Mailings” tab. Next, click the “Envelopes” button. The Envelopes and Labels window will appear. This is where we’ll enter all of our information. In the “Delivery Address” box (1), enter the recipient’s address. The “Return Address” box (2) is where you’ll put your name and address. You can leave this out by ticking the  “Omit” checkbox if you prefer. Once you’ve entered all of the information, click “Options” (3). In the Envelope Options window that opens, you need to tell Word how you’ll be feeding the envelope into the printer. Read the remaining 19 paragraphs

Daily News Roundup: Apple News+ Insecurity, Verizon’s Misleading 5G Commercials, and More

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Things have been pretty quiet in terms of “big” stories over the last 24 hours, but there are still some interesting points to take a closer look at. Apple’s half-baked News+ service is a good one, as is Google’s feature gap on ChromeOS. Apple News: Turns Out News+ Isn’t Very Secure Apple launched News+ just two days ago, but it’s already been “hacked” to show that you can look at magazines without paying for a subscription. Oof. Known iPhone hackers Steve Troughton-Smith was able to pull magazines from cache. Without paying for a subscription. Not cool. [ Twitter ] The Verge’s Dieter Bohn took the 2019 iPad Air for a spin, calling it a “very happy medium”…I think that means he liked it? [ The Verge ] Yesterday, Apple announced it would be closing down two Texas stores. Today, a report was released stating that it plans on opening a new pair in Singapore. [ MacRumors ] As half-baked as News+ is out of the gate, this honestly isn’t surprising. The entire experience is not very

How to Improve the Sound Quality of Your Voice Memos on iPhone and iPad

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Your iPhone’s Voice Memos app records audio in a compressed format by default, saving storage space on your iPhone but reducing the recording quality. You can switch to a lossless mode for maximum fidelity. Your iPhone, by default, records voice memos in a compressed format. However, if that doesn’t cut the mustard for you, there is an option to switch over to a lossless recording instead. It’s not clear what file format your iPhone uses here, but suffice it to say it’s going to take up more space than a compressed AAC file. Bear that in mind, but considering most voice memos are probably pretty short, we don’t think it’ll be of huge impact. How to Choose Lossless Recordings As always with iOS, the setting that we are looking for is in the Settings app. Open it and tap “Voice Memos” to get started. Next, tap “Audio Quality” towards the bottom of the screen. The next screen offers two options. Tap “Lossless” for the best sound quality from your recordings. If space is your main