Saying Goodbye: 5 Alternatives To The Optical Disc
With computers growing smaller and lifestyles going mobile, less devices offer sufficient space for internal optical drives. Presently, the market is kept afloat by Blu-ray consumer home video sales, but in terms of data storage, optical discs are slowly becoming obsolete. Moreover, while most movie buyers still prefer to own a physical copy of their purchase, this market, much like the music market, will soon be taken over by streaming services.
3 Simple Steps To Fixing Your Computer Issues
Every day dozens of tech questions cross the desktops of editors and contributors on MakeUseOf Answers. Many of them are easy to answer and have actually been asked and solved previously. Looking at other Q&A forums, the same scenario unfolds. It seems that many people don't understand how to use the Internet. Or maybe they are overwhelmed by the amount of information presented.
Why You Should Never Ask Friends or Family to Fix Your Computer [Opinion]
There seems to be this huge misunderstanding that anyone who knows something about computers is a geek and can fix them, regardless of what is broken. In reality, when it comes to complex issues, most geeks simply know how to use Google and aren't afraid to try and follow instructions they found online. The thing is, this is an amateurish approach, which is fine when playing with your own computer. It becomes a problem with other peoples computers.
Add Anything to Your Amazon Wish List With This Chrome Browser Addon
Occasions to give and receive gifts happen throughout the year. Likewise, you have the whole year to craft your own wish list and collect gift ideas for friends and family. But do you have a good place to manage your gift list? If you regularly shop at Amazon, you probably have at least one wish list with them. Amazon wish lists are actually very cool because you can add comments to each item, set a priority, and keep several public and private lists.
Rid Your PC Of Outdated Bookmarks, Duplicate Files, Broken Shortcuts & Empty Folders [Windows]
Collecting is part of human nature. Over the course of a life, we collect a lot of things. For a few decades, this has been including digital data. With every backup you make, you are not only duplicating files and folders, but you are also manifesting small errors - empty folders, duplicate files, outdated bookmarks, and broken shortcuts that don't lead anywhere anymore. Whenever you restore your data from a backup or copy them to a new computer, you carry over those imperfections.
Manage & Collaborate On Email Intense Projects Inside Gmail With Streak [Chrome]
Streak is a powerful Gmail project management add-on for Chrome. It comes with templates for many different types of projects, for example customer support or event planning. In Streak, projects are called pipelines. You can add boxes to your pipelines, fill the boxes with information, e.g. incoming and outgoing email, comments, people responsible etc., and track the progress of each box.
Zen for Writers: Finding a Calm, Peaceful State For Your PC That Would Inspire Productivity
Writing is one of the toughest jobs in the world. It's lonely and you have to focus and think at the same time. Our brain, however, is constantly looking for new stimuli. It loves nothing more than entertaining random thoughts and shifting attention to attractive signals. That's how you get distracted and side-tracked and this is what makes writing so hard. Most professional writers have a routine and a matching workspace to get into the flow of writing.
Yay, Free Stuff: How to Get a Freebie Every Day for a Week
The internet is loaded with free stuff, from trial software to sites that offer free samples and coupons. Unfortunately, the good stuff is drowned in a sea of scams and dubious survey sites. And even if you do find free offers from trustworthy sources, you have to ask yourself, why are they giving away a perfectly fine product for free? Is this a genuine offer or do they want to collect your personal information, get you to buy more later, or in one way or the other make you advertise their brand?
Use Custom Styles For Any Website With Stylish [Chrome]
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Web designers and developers have to live with this curse every day. And when you happen to work for a major website like Facebook, even the slightest change has the potential to cause an outcry among users. In web design, like everywhere else, it's impossible to appeal to everyone. But what if you are one of those annoyed users? Is there anything you can do?
Split Your Tabs With The Tab Scissors Addon [Chrome]
Browser tabs are a blessing and a curse. They are easily opened, rarely closed fast, and tough to keep organized. You quickly end up with dozens of tabs in a single window and then what? You need to switch back and forth, you struggle to navigate between tabs, your computer slows down, and usually you don't even need half the tabs. And if you do try to keep your tabs organized, you may often find yourself manually pulling out sets of tabs into a new window. What a hassle!
How To Hide Your Personal Information On Facebook
In the age of the Internet, privacy is a luxury and you have to constantly be on your heels to maintain it. Facebook makes it particularly hard for users to guard their personal data. Despite many changes, Facebook privacy settings remain complicated. Moreover, past updates have unexpectedly made previously private information available to the public. Well, no stranger needs to know your email address, phone number, or see your family pictures.
3 Excellent Defrag Utilities & Why You Still Need to Defragment In 2012
Accessing files from the hard drive is a speed limiting step in operating a computer. Hard drives used to be a major bottle neck and fragmentation of data slowed them down even further. With the New Technology File System (NTFS), terabyte sized hard drives, and solid state drives setting new standards, fragmentation has become a non-issue and defrag utilities are almost obsolete. Almost!
Schedule & Post Updates For Twitter, Facebook, & LinkedIn With BufferApp [Chrome]
Buffer is a web service for scheduling tweets, LinkedIn profile and group posts, as well as Facebook updates for both profiles and pages. Buffer is great if you want to plan ahead and schedule your updates in advance. Another feature that makes it so convenient is that you can update multiple profiles simultaneously. What would make Buffer even more awesome is if you could add updates directly from a page you want to share.
Did You Know You Can Bookmark Specific Gmail Messages? Here Is How & Why
Many cases have been made for why Gmail is an ingenious webmail client. Now even though it is almost trivial to find emails in Gmail, knowing that you can find them doesn't mean you will remember to search and read them once they have been filed or archived. So what else can you do to not forget about important information?
5 Advanced Gmail Search Operators You Should Know
Gmail is an ingenious webmail client with many awesome features. Being a Google service, one of its strengths obviously is Search. And this is exactly how Google revolutionized email. In Gmail you don't really have to worry about filing or sorting emails because you an always find them in a matter of seconds using the Search. While you will easily get to most emails with a plain keyword search, it does help to know some advanced search operators.