Showing all posts tagged "Tech"
2017-07 Anything You Can Do About CIA Surveillance, Or Is It Game Over?
First, it was wiretaps and men in black sedans. Assassinations, "democratic" coups. Then came television and radio, and manipulating the press via cleverly inserted news items. It was all tinfoil hat stuff at first, but disclosures and declassifications have proved that the old conspiracy "theories" were anything but (and it seems tinfoil is actually useful). And now we have Vault 7 (a vast collection of data being released by WikiLeaks), which demonstrates the immense reach of the surveillance state acr...
Posted on July 25th, 2017
2017-07 Unlock the FM Radio Hidden on Your Smartphone
There’s a little-known feature most smartphones have hidden inside. It’s a common technology — you might use it in your car or at home — but most people don’t know they also have it on their phone. In case you haven’t guessed already your smartphone probably has an FM radio receiver built right into it. You just need to activate it, and we’re here to help you do just that. The FM Tuner Locked in Your Phone It might seem strange that smartphone manufacturers would include an FM receiver and not tell their...
Posted on July 21st, 2017
2017-07 Use This “Make a Copy” Trick When Sharing Google Drive Documents
The utility of this neat Google Drive hack isn’t quite clear from the title, but give this tip a chance. Try it out once and you will see the immediate benefit when collaborating with others on Google Drive. It’s easy to make a copy of any document within your own Google Drive account. But what if you want your collaborators to automatically create copies when they receive share links? This small tip can come in handy when you want to preserve the original document or template while giving others the fle...
Posted on July 21st, 2017
2017-07 Let Your Photos Shine With a Custom Background: Here’s How Using GIMP
It’s easy to change the background of a photo in Photoshop, but you don’t have to pay for expensive software if you don’t want to. GIMP is the best free image editing software around, and it’s almost as powerful as its commercial counterpart. Changing the background in GIMP is simple, and there are several different ways to do it. In this guide we’ll take a look at two of the best solutions — one very quick the other more precise (and powerful). Before You Begin If you’re new to GIMP you might be confuse...
Posted on July 14th, 2017
2017-07 4 Keys Missing From Your Keyboard and How to Add Them
Are there keys on your keyboard that you haven’t pressed for weeks? Even with the most common keyboard shortcuts, you might never have reason to hit keys like Scroll Lock, some of the F1-F12 keys, or Pause. What you’d appreciate more are keys that let you access certain functions that you actually use immediately. Even better, you can add many of these to your existing keyboard. That’s what we’re going to accomplish today. Here’s how to stop wasting keyboard space with functions you don’t use and add som...
Posted on July 14th, 2017
2017-07 A Digital Inheritance Vault Can Protect Your Online Data
It is easy to hoard digital accounts. I’m sure most people cannot remember every account they’ve ever created. The internet is a vast place. Services come and go. Sometimes creating an account is the only way to get access to a specific file or publication. Add in your enormous digital footprint — photos, music, videos, and so on — and keeping track of what is important becomes difficult. The succession of your digital world is becoming equal to your physical life. We make a will declaring how we can our...
Posted on July 13th, 2017
2017-07 Handy Flowchart Templates for Microsoft Office
Creating a flowchart might be a very easy task for some. And if you follow our article, you can make a gorgeous one in Microsoft Word. But what if you do not want to start from scratch? These templates for Microsoft Office let you create a flowchart quickly in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Whether for a business purpose or a personal one, you will be off to a great start with these handy and easily editable options. Why Use a Flowchart? If you need to document or explain a process or procedure, there is no...
Posted on July 12th, 2017
2017-07 File Formats 101: Open vs. Closed, Text vs. Binary
The file is one of the fundamental parts of the computing experience. But what is a "file" anyway? It’s an icon on your desktop, an entry in a list that opens your budget as a spreadsheet, and a name you can give to your latest selfie. At the end of the day, a "file" is a collection of bits (zeroes and ones) arranged in a pattern that some application understands. Developers may keep these patterns secret, which may make users keep a particular program despite alternatives. Other developers may actually ...
Posted on July 12th, 2017