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Showing posts from April, 2019

Geek Trivia: What Is The Most Expensive Piece of Sci-Fi Memorabilia Sold At Auction?

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What Is The Most Expensive Piece of Sci-Fi Memorabilia Sold At Auction? A Star Wars T.I.E Fighter Model A Full Size Terminator Model The Robby the Robot Suit Dr. Who's Tardis Think you know the answer?

How to Create a Simple Invoice Using Excel

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Whether you’re a freelancer doing work for multiple companies, or a business that plans on extending a credit line to its customers, you’re going to need an invoice. Creating a custom invoice in Excel isn’t difficult. You’ll be ready to submit your invoice and receive payments in no time. Using an Invoice Template Creating a simple invoice in Excel is relatively straightforward. Create a few tables, set a few rules, add a bit of information, and you’re good to go. Alternatively, there are many websites out there that provide free invoice templates created by actual accountants. You can use these instead, or even download one to use as inspiration for when you’re making your own. Excel also provides its own library of invoice templates you can use. To access these templates, open Excel and click the “File” tab. Here, select “New” and type “Invoice” into the search bar. Press Enter and a collection of invoice templates will appear. Read the remaining 57 paragraphs

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How to Share a Static Snapshot of your Google Calendar

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We’ve previously covered how to show your live Google Calendar in Outlook , but what if you just want to share a static snapshot of your calendar with someone? There’s a way to do that too. Sharing a static snapshot can be useful if you want to share your Google Calendar with a colleague—or with your own work calendar so you can see it—but your company policies don’t allow you to synchronize with a live, non-corporate calendar. It’s also useful if you’re going to be somewhere with intermittent Wi-Fi for a while and you want to see your calendar even when you’re offline. To share a static snapshot, you need to export your calendar and import it into another calendar program. How to Export a Google Calendar Exporting a Google Calendar is pretty simple, so start by logging into to your Google account and heading to Calendar. Once you’re there, find the calendar you want to share and hover over it to show the three dots. Click the three dots and on the menu that appears, click “Sett...

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Daily News Roundup: Virtual Desktops on Chrome OS are Coming Along Nicely

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Virtual Desktops are coming to Chrome OS . The first glimpse of how this is going to work showed up in February , and now there’s a new video of how the feature is progressing . And it looks amazing. As Chromebooks have grown in both feature and popularity, this is a feature that  many  users have asked for—myself included. Having the option to switch between multiple screen layouts for various tasks seamlessly would dramatically improve workflow on Chrome OS, and the implementation shown in the video looks great. All that said, this is still a very early—and notably unfinished—look at how “virtual desks,” as they’re being called, will work. First off, we know that the number of desks will be limited to four. That’s understandable, especially given the lightweight hardware found in most Chromebooks. Comments on the video also note that desk switch animations or mini view haven’t been implemented yet. Again, understandable since this is still very much in development. Whi...

How to Turn Hardware Acceleration On and Off in Chrome

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Google Chrome comes equipped with hardware acceleration, a feature which takes advantage of your computer’s GPU to speed up processes and free vital CPU time. However, sometimes driver incompatibilities can cause this feature to misbehave and disabling it could save you a few headaches. What is Hardware Acceleration? Hardware acceleration refers to when a program uses a computer’s hardware in support to perform some functions more efficiently than capable in the software. The hardware was designed to perform some functions faster than software running on the CPU alone. In Chrome, hardware acceleration utilizes your computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) to tackle graphics-intensive tasks, like playing videos, games, or anything that requires faster mathematical calculations. Passing off specific tasks gives your CPU a chance to work tirelessly on everything else, while the GPU handles processes that it was designed to run. While this does sound great in most cases, sometimes ha...

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How to Use the FTP Command on Linux

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The File Transfer Protocol is older than most of our readers, but it’s still going strong. FTP doesn’t have the security of a modern protocol, but you may need to use it anyway. Here’s how to do it. Warning: Don’t Use FTP Over the Internet Let’s make this clear right from the outset: The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) dates back to the early 1970s and was written without any regard to security. It does not use encryption for anything. Login credentials like your username and password, as well as the data you download or upload, are transferred in clear text. Anyone along the way can view your secrets. However, FTP still has its uses. If you’re transferring files within your network, you should be safe–as long as no one on the network is packet-sniffing and eavesdropping on any sensitive documents as you transfer them. If your files aren’t confidential or sensitive in any way, moving them around your internal network with FTP should be fine. Linux has the standard ftp command line pr...

How to Customize the Taskbar in Windows 10

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The Windows 10 taskbar works much like previous Windows versions, offering shortcuts and icons for every running app. Windows 10 offers all kinds of ways to customize the taskbar to your liking, and we’re here to guide you through what you can do. We’ve taken a look at customizing the Start menu and the Action Center in Windows 10. Now, it’s time to tackle the taskbar. With just a little bit of work, you can tweak the taskbar to get it running just how you like it. Pin Apps to the Taskbar The simplest way to customize your taskbar is by pinning various apps and shortcuts to it so that you can access them more quickly in the future. There are two ways to do this. The first is to open the program, either from the Start menu or an existing shortcut. When the app’s icon appears on the taskbar to indicate it’s running, right-click the icon and select the “Pin to taskbar” option from the context menu. The second way to pin an app to the taskbar does not require the app to be runn...

Geek Trivia: Who Appeared On The Largest Denomination Of U.S. Currency?

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Who Appeared On The Largest Denomination Of U.S. Currency? Herbert Hoover William Howard Taft John F. Kennedy Woodrow Wilson Think you know the answer?

How to Make Tri-Folds in PowerPoint

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While Microsoft PowerPoint is almost exclusively used for presentation purposes, it’s also a great application for creating interesting and visually appealing brochures. Here’s how to create (and print out) a tri-fold using PowerPoint. Making Tri-Folds in PowerPoint Good news—there are templates! This is the quickest and easiest way to accomplish your goal, as there are several different tri-fold templates available for download online . Browse through the template library, select the one you like, and download it. Once you’ve downloaded it, go ahead and open it up and you’ll be greeted by two slides. These slides contain boilerplate text and images, but the layout is exactly what you need for a tri-fold brochure. All you need to do is replace the content with your own. Let’s use the first column of slide two as an example. As you can see, we have three parts here—the header (1), some descriptive bullet points (2), and an image (3). Replacing the header and bullet point content ...

Chrome for Android Has Dark Mode–Here’s How to Turn it On

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The Chrome desktop browser recently got dark mode on both Mac and Windows, but it’s also available on Android. It’s not quite as straightforward as other platforms, however, as it’s currently tucked behind a flag. Here’s how to enable it. First things first: you’ll need to make sure Chrome is updated in the Play Store . The version should be at least 74, which you can check in Settings > About Chrome. If you don’t have 74 yet, this won’t work. It’s rolling out in stages through the Play Store, but you can also sideload the APK if you’re not into playing the waiting game. RELATED: How to Sideload Apps on Android Once everything is updated, fire up Chrome and type the following in the Omnibox: chrome://flags/#enable-android-night-mode Tap the dropdown, and set it to “Enabled.” Hit the button at the bottom to restart your browser. Once Chrome re-opens, tap the menu button and jump back into Settings. There  should be a new option called “Dark Mode” in the root menu. ...

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How to Disable Outlook Add-ins For Troubleshooting

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If the Outlook client starts behaving oddly, one of the first things to do is see whether add-ins are causing the problem. Here’s how to disable them so you can tell if they’re the issue. What are Add-Ins? Add-ins are extra bits of functionality that software providers create to hook their application into Outlook. You can install add-ins yourself by opening Outlook and clicking Home > Get Add-ins, which will show you some of the add-ins available to you. However, most add-ins are installed automatically when you install a piece of software on your computer. You may never use the add-ins, or even be aware that they’re there, but they aren’t (usually) malware or anything nasty. They’re intended to make it easier for you to use a product. For example, when you install Adobe’s Acrobat PDF reader, it installs an Outlook add-in that lets you make PDFs out of emails. There’s usually no need to remove add-ins, but if Outlook starts behaving oddly—especially if it freezes, crashes, or...

Daily News Roundup: New Chrome for Android Attack Spoofs the Omnibox

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There’s a new Chrome attack on the horizon, and man, it’s a doozy. Dubbed the “Inception Bar” by the finder , it replicates Chrome’s Omnibox, essentially giving attackers the potential to take control of Chrome completely. Found by developer James Fisher, the Inception Bar is an incredibly clever phishing attack that leverages the fact that Chrome for Android hides the Omnibox—that’s what the address bar on Chrome is called—as you scroll. Once you scroll down the page a bit, the Omnibox is hidden, and it’s automatically replaced with the spoofed bar. And it looks  incredibly convincing —it can even lock the real Omnibox in an overflow container, preventing it from re-appearing once the Inception Bar is in place. While it doesn’t look like this attack has been found present on the web (yet), Fisher built a working proof of concept on his site , which you can check out at the link. Once you visit the site, scroll down the page a bit, and right after the Omnibox disappears, yo...

How to Delete Synced Information in Chrome

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When you sign in to Chrome using your Google Account, a whole bunch of your personal information gets saved and synced across all your devices, but what if you want to delete everything stored in the cloud? Here’s how to remove your synced information. RELATED: How to Turn Syncing On or Off in Chrome How to Delete Synced Information If you’re already signed in to Chrome and Syncing is turned on, fire up Chrome, click on your profile picture, and then, click “Syncing to.” You can also type chrome://settings/people into the Omnibox and hit Enter. Under the People heading, click on “Sync and Google services.” Next, click on “Data from Chrome sync” and a new tab will open. Read the remaining 21 paragraphs

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Geek Trivia: Which 1980s Film Was Criticized As Being A Feature Length Commercial?

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Which 1980s Film Was Criticized As Being A Feature Length Commercial? The Great Muppet Caper The Wizard The Brave Little Toaster The Goonies Think you know the answer?

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Geek Trivia: If Alexander Graham Bell Had His Way, We’d Start Telephone Conversations With What?

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If Alexander Graham Bell Had His Way, We’d Start Telephone Conversations With What? Ahoy-Hoy Hey Hey Salutations Greetings Think you know the answer?

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Geek Trivia: What Was The Deadliest Airship Disaster Of All Time?

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What Was The Deadliest Airship Disaster Of All Time? The Roma The Erbslöh The USS Akron The Hindenburg Think you know the answer?

Windows 10’s Your Phone App Gets Android Notification Mirroring

How to Generate Random Text in Word

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Sometimes, you might need some boilerplate or filler text in a Word document. One solution is to head over to a lorem ipsum or dummy text generator to create that text. Alternatively, you can create the text yourself directly in Word. Generate Random Text with the Rand Formula If you want to use random (yet coherent) text as filler content in your Word document, you can use the random content generation formula provided by Word. There are, however, a few notes to make when using this function, depending on how much text you need. The first method is to simply type in the following formula: =Rand() This will automatically generate five paragraphs, each containing three sentences. You can change how much random text Word generates by filling in what’s between the parentheses. To do that, you’ll use =Rand(x,y), where x is the number of paragraphs and y is the number of sentences in each paragraph. For example, if you want seven paragraphs that each contain four sentences, you’d u...

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How to Add or Remove Your Phone Number in Messages or FaceTime

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If you have an iPhone and a Mac or iPad, you can link your phone number to your iCloud account to send and receive calls and messages from the same number on both devices. Add a New or Existing Number on iOS You’ll need to make sure your devices are signed in to the same iCloud account for everything to sync correctly. The process is the same for all iOS devices, but you’ll need to enable your existing number on your iPhone first. On your phone, open the Settings app. Tap on the category marked “Messages.” Make sure you’re signed in and have iMessage turned on. Scroll down and tap “Send & Receive.” Read the remaining 21 paragraphs

Daily News Roundup: Free One-Day Shipping from Amazon

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One of the most significant benefits of Amazon Prime has long been the free two-day shipping on almost everything. But that time may be coming to an end—Amazon is talking about transitioning to free one-day shipping. Oh yeah. In a call to investors yesterday, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company is working on setting the Prime shipping default to one-day. He said that they have been “working on evolving the Prime shipping program” with one-day shipping, going on to say that they’ll “be building most of this capacity through the year in 2019.” The word on the street is that Amazon will spend upwards of $800 million for the required infrastructure changes to make the change happen. They’ll also be expanding partnerships with USPS, UPS, and FedEx—alongside its own delivery service, of course—to make the one-day dream a reality. While it’s probably unlikely we’ll see one-day shipping hit all items before the end of 2019, Amazon is already making moves to get this shindig started ...