Latest Articles
Play & Manage Your Music Collection With Rhythmbox [Linux]
Music is a way of life for a lot of people, and their music collections often reflect that to a massive degree. We all enjoy our music, and should be able to keep tabs with what music we have. This requires a good program that can easily organize our music so that perfect song is only a short distance away. Whatever your needs may be, it'd be ideal to take care of it all using just one program.
Access Facebook From The Linux Command Line
Virtually everyone, especially in first world countries, is on Facebook. Friends, events, pictures, and plenty more are all commonly found on Facebook unlike any other location. However, an ultimate geek may not want to use Facebook like everyone else -- namely via their website. Instead, the most geeky way to access the social network is to use the command line.
Have Fun Taking Photos With Cheese Photo Booth [Linux]
Taking pictures is always a great way to keep memories, wherever you are. They're also a fantastic way to spend some time and bond with friends and family. However, taking ordinary pictures with a camera or webcam can get pretty boring after a while. Mac OS X's photo booth program can get pretty interesting with all of the possible effects that you can select, but what about Linux? Thankfully there's a fairly popular application which gets the job done.
Which Is More Secure, A Password Or a Pattern Lock?
Our smartphones carry a lot of personal information. All of your text messages, emails, notes, apps, app data, music, pictures, and so much more are all on there. While it's a very great convenience to have all of these on your phone, it's also a major security risk if all of this data is easily accessible. The best way to prevent simple unauthorized access is by setting some sort of lock on your phone. Two popular choices, especially on Android phones, are passwords and pattern locks. However, which one is the most secure to use? In order to answer that, we'll have to use our brains and some math.
Top Reasons Your New Game Won’t Run On Your PC
Even as a casual computer user, it's absolute devastation if a piece of software you bought doesn't work on your system. While programs which help you get work done will most likely work as they have relatively few requirements, the same cannot be said for games. Yes, games aren't nearly as important as software you may need for work, but you'll still feel the same frustration.
How To Change Your DNS Servers & Improve Internet Security
Imagine this - you wake up one beautiful morning, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and then sit down at your computer to get started with your work for the day. Before you actually get stuff done, you go over to your favorite browser and type in http://www.makeuseof.com. Within seconds, you're looking at our website and all of our latest posts. But hold on, how the heck did your computer even know where to find MakeUseOf?
Automatically Switch Between Sound and Power Profiles With Smart Settings [Android 2.1+]
In a perfect world, our smartphones would know exactly when they should be silent, when they need to remind us of things, and when they should conserve battery. By default, however, our phones don't do this, and there haven't been any apps which can change the phone's settings for us. At least, that's been the case until now. "Smart Settings" is an app for Android which focuses on changing your phone's behaviors at certain moments.
Using Linux? Here Are Your Options For File Compression
Under Windows, you can compress your data with the file system itself (which can be recognized by the blue file name), but under Linux, ext4 - the default file system for almost all distributions - is not capable of file compression. Don't worry though, there's plenty of other ways you can compress your files under Linux - quickly and easily.
Avoid Linux HDD Faults & Errors With These Tools
From personal experience, whenever I have a problem with any component in my computer, it's more often the hard drive than anything else. My CPU has never failed me, nor my RAM, and my motherboard only once - partially. However, if I still had all the hard drives which have caused me some sort of grief or failed completely, it would sum up to a good-sized pile. However, you can prolong the life of your hard drives through careful monitoring and maintenance.
What Is Overclocking, And How It Can Help Your PC, Tablet, & Phone [MakeUseOf Explains]
Provided that you have hardware from a manufacturer who understands those principles, you can do plenty to juice up your system, whether it be a computer, tablet, or smartphone. One of the best things you can do -- with appropriate hardware, firmware, and/or software -- is to speed up your system by overclocking it.
4 Drop-Dead Gorgeous GNOME Themes
As an avid Linux user I know quite well how customizable my desktop really is. Whether it comes to the desktop shell, or the window borders, or the menu colors, or even the icon theme, all of it can usually be changed pretty easily. I've also gone over plenty of Gnome Shell themes, such as Faience or Alternative. But when it comes to overall themes, usually known as Gnome or GTK themes, there aren't nearly as many that are covered. So, we're about to fix that.
3 Best Sites To Look For Simple Desktop Wallpapers
When it comes to the look and feel of your desktop, the wallpaper plays a big part. You'll probably be staring at your wallpaper whenever you're not surfing around in your browser, and since your desktop is basically your computer's symbolic home, you should make it feel like a home. So where can you get them? Here's my top three places I visit whenever I'm in the need for a new wallpaper.
Where Math Meets Beauty: Generate Stunning Fractals With These Free Tools
If you've ever seen fractals and their near-infinite zoom capabilities, you might as well stare at them all day long because of how interesting they can be. It'd be great to have some fractal viewers in hand so that you can explore their unique worlds whenever you wish. Even better, there are some very good tools out there which are also free, so why waste the opportunity?
Which Android Smartphone Is The Easiest To Hack And Modify?
Android phones are very tweakable and customizable, even in their stock form without any "hacks". But for some of us, we don't care if they're customizable right when we get them, but instead we want to unlock their complete power to do everything we want them to.
IPv6 vs. IPv4 : Should You Care (Or Do Anything) As A User? [MakeUseOf Explains]
More recently, there's been a lot of talk about switching to IPv6 and how it will bring a lot of benefits to the Internet. But, this "news" keeps repeating itself, as there's always an occasional post which tries to push the Internet to the IPv6 protocol. Why is this theme recurring, you ask? Primarily because the transition to the new protocol is very slow. However, does it really matter to you whether the transition is going slowly or not? Should you even care?