MakeUseOf

Justin Pot

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About Justin Pot

Justin Pot is a technology journalist based in Portland, Oregon. He loves technology, people and nature – and tries to enjoy all three whenever possible. You can chat with Justin on Twitter, right now.

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How To Turn Off Google's Personal Search Results

Has your entire life become a frustrating chore since last week, when Google added "Personal Search"? Have you been taking your rage out on innocent squirrels and kittens, most of whom had nothing to do with Google's decision to integrate a social network most people aren't using with the search engine everyone is? Stop kicking cuddly creatures. There's a simple way to stem the tide of nonsense.

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5 Amazing Add-Ons for the XBMC Media Center

Make XBMC even better by adding these amazing add-ons. Whether you're into TV, sports or gaming, these plugins will help you get the most out of your television. Last time, I lamented the end of Boxee on the desktop, but I got over it quickly when I started using XBMC. It's the software Boxee is based on, and it's fun to use.

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How To Get Free Games For Your Wii Or Nintendo 3DS (Not A Scam!)

Get free games for your Wii or Nintendo 3DS, for real. It's not a scam: all you need to do is register games you've already purchased and cash in the resulting points. Nintendo announced it planned to give away two different games to Club Nintendo members every month. The first two games, Super Mario Kart (SNES) and Fluidity, suggest Nintendo is planning on giving away some pretty nice titles.

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The End of Boxee on the Desktop & What to Use Instead

Boxee fans - it's over. There may be more fun to have with the Boxee Box, but Boxee on the desktop isn't coming back. It's time to find something else if you have a computer hooked up to your television. We should have seen it coming. There was an entire year between updates for desktop users, during which things continued to break.

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Browse Ubuntu's Software Offerings Online On Any Computer [Linux]

Explore the thousands of programs available by default in Ubuntu, online, regardless of what operating system you're using at the moment. Whether you're a would-be Ubuntu user curious about the software options or a current Ubuntu user occasionally stranded in Windows-land, Ubuntu's clean and simple online catalogue is a great place to explore.

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Al Jazeera's Chrome App Lets You Read English News Articles Watch A Live Stream [Chrome]

Visually browse the latest news from Al Jazeera using Chrome. Explore the latest news by region, watch recent episodes of Al Jazeera's news programs or watch a live stream from the English version of the Qatar-based network. It's a growing trend - news organizations providing Chrome "apps", built on HTML5. Is this app worth checking out?

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Customize Your Radio News Listening Experience With NPR's Pandora-Like Infinite Player

Make listening to NPR online more like listening to the radio. Open one website then start listening to public radio news stories. Skip stories you don't like or give them a thumbs up or down rating. Over time, the stories you hear better match your interests. Basically, NPR's new Infinite Player is Pandora for news.

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5 Podcasts You Should Seriously Check Out Right Away

Do you listen to podcasts? You should. Not only are they a great way to keep up with the news, they can also be incredibly entertaining and enlightening. Even better, it's the ultimate multitasking medium. I no longer mind cleaning around the house, for example, because it gives me time to listen to amazing things.

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Use Chrome OS On Unsupported Computers With Chromium OS Lime

Like this idea of Chrome OS, but don't want to fork out money for a ChromeBook? Good news! Chromium Lime brings the Chrome OS experience to a huge number of laptops and netbooks, thanks to a wide variety of drivers added by developer Hexxeh.

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Ubuntu Restricted Extras: The First Thing You Should Install On Ubuntu [Linux]

Install Java, Flash, every codec you'll ever need and much more, all at once. It's heavily proprietary, but Ubuntu Restricted Extras is probably the first package you should install in Ubuntu. Are you a new Ubuntu user? You might soon notice that a lot of things don't work out of the box. You cannot listen to MP3 files or watch most movies; even DVDs.

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Progress Quest Points Out What's Wrong With Bad Games

Step back. Think about what you're doing. Then do something better. That's the basic idea of Progress Quest, a satirical role-playing game that lambasts the worst aspects of gaming. I love video games. They are active where other mediums are passive, requiring me to participate in order to proceed. Just sitting there and watching isn't an option.

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Listen To Your Music In Spotify For Free Without Wine [Linux]

Do you love Spotify's free version, but tired of needing Wine just to listen to the music? Good news - Spotify now offers a free version specifically for Linux users. Or at least, users of Debian, Ubuntu and their variants. Sorry Fedora fans. Spotify gives you access to millions of songs, for free. Unlike Pandora or Last FM though, you can listen to entire albums on demand.

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3 Dead-Wrong, Yet Common Complaints About Unity & Ubuntu

Do you hate Ubuntu's new interface, Unity? Do you think Ubuntu is making a huge mistake by changing things, and will inevitably crash and burn because of this? There are good reasons to dislike Unity and the new Ubuntu. It's not yet ideal on multiple monitor setups, and some inevitable bugs came up. There are some wrong complaints out there, though. Here are three.

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Make Your Dumb Phone Smart With ifttt

With If This Then That (ifttt) and SMS I can teach my dumb phone all kinds of smart tricks, from updating social networks to adding events to my calendar. What makes ifttt so good at educating your dumb phone is SMS messaging. Here are a few ways you can use it to your advantage from your dumb phone.

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Back Up Your Entire Hard Drive With Redo Backup & Recovery

Easily make a copy of your entire hard drive . Don't just back up your data: back up all of your software, your settings and everything else by cloning your entire hard drive. Redo Backup makes cloning your system easy, but also gives you access to file recovery and a variety of other tools. You can even browse the web while everything's happening.

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Manage Your Podcasts Easier With The gPodder App

Looking for the best way to manage and sync your favorite podcasts on Linux? Stop looking. With a simple user interface, built-in syncing to iPod, MTP and file-system based devices, and an online service for managing your collection away from your computer, gPodder isn't just the best podcast client for Linux: it's among the best podcast clients out there full stop.

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Live USB Install Puts Linux On Your Thumb Drive With Ease

Boot one of over a hundred Linux distros from a USB disk. With Live USB, software you can run on both Windows and Linux computers, it only takes a couple of clicks to make your USB disk a bootable Linux disk. The live CD just might be the most useful tool in any geek's arsenal - we've pointed out 50 uses for live CDs in the past and plan on showing you many more.

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Y PPA Manage: A GUI For Managing Ubuntu PPAs [Linux]

Do you want to avoid using the command line when installing bleeding edge software? Then manage your Ubuntu PPAs from a simple GUI with Y PPA Manager. Ubuntu users get their software from the Ubuntu Software Center, or the command-line based "apt-get". These programs, in turn, get software from online repositories.

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Replace The Terrible Windows 7 Games With The Classic XP Ones

Ditch the shiny and slow. Get old-fashioned but familiar Windows XP games working on your Windows 7 computer. They're ugly, but they work the way you're wired. Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts and Spider Solitaire remain a favorite of many office workers. As a quick Google search reveals though, many of these people aren't happy with the Windows Vista/7 versions of Solitaire and other classics.

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5 Creative Uses For A Virtual Box That You Probably Never Considered

Try out Android, Windows 8, any live CD and more, on your computer without messing up your bootloader (or worse.) With VirtualBox it's easy, if you think creatively. VirtualBox gives you an easy way to create "virtual boxes", a sort of computer inside your computer you can use to try out new operating systems and learn more about how computers work.

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