Author: Summer Powell

We are definitely seeing the future develop right in front of us. Google’s self-driving cars, Microsoft’s revolutionary instant voice translation software, and NASA’s Voyager spacecraft exploring interstellar space all showcase the incredible progress we have achieved. These advancements were once only ideas in science fiction just twenty years ago. And now you can even search the web without ever touching your keyboard. OK, maybe that’s not quite as unbelievable as cars that drive themselves and the other stuff I just mentioned, but it’s still pretty cool and would have been hard to believe 15 years ago. To search the web…

According to YouTube, more than 100 hours of video content are uploaded to the platform every minute, with users watching over 6 billion hours of video each month. That’s more than 680,000 YEARS of video watched every single month on YouTube. While I’m sure most of those views are from people who only watch a video once, I’m also pretty confident many of those views are from people watching the same video more than once, maybe many times. If there’s a video you’d like to save for offline viewing, so you’re not having to visit YouTube every time you want to…

For years, Microsoft Office has been the go-to for Office Suite programs. It has been hailed as the top choice for an extended period. Nearly all businesses and government agencies rely on some iteration of it, making it the go-to option for exchanging documents. If Microsoft Office was free, maybe that wouldn’t be such a big deal. But it’s not free. Far from it, Microsoft Office is now several hundred dollars per year even for home users. That seems a little ridiculous to me. So today I’m going to show you how to get a free, full featured Office suite…

The easiest way to hack a computer is by tricking the user into running the malicious programs themselves. But who would run a malicious program on purpose? Quite a few people, unfortunately. The most common tactic malicious software makers use to trick users is to label their programs as something “free”. People love free stuff so this works. One of the most common searches that malicious fraud programs take advantage of is “free wallpapers”. I personally wouldn’t have guessed that, but there you have it. Here’s a way to get dozens of HD quality wallpapers for free without having to…

Thanks to a recent ruling by the European Commission on the “right to be forgotten”, Google has implemented a new feature that allows individuals to request the removal of pages containing their personal information from search results. Google has committed to following the decision and deleting requested search results that are considered “inadequate, irrelevant or outdated, or excessive for the purposes they were originally processed for.” Best of all, while this is an EU ruling, nowhere that I can see is Google limiting search engine result removal to EU citizens. On the request form, Google does ask for a form…

I love the internet wholeheartedly. It’s evident to anyone who knows me well. I spend my entire work day and a good chunk of my free time utilizing, exploring, and experimenting with internet technologies. Internet ads, on the other hand, I don’t like nearly as much. So many websites these days load up their pages with big, obnoxious, annoying ads that they’re almost not worth reading. Even worse, these ads waste bandwidth that could be used for downloading other things and make it possible for advertisers to track what you’re doing online. Why would I want to make it easy…

In 2012, Facebook was collecting over 500 terabytes of data about its users daily. That number has likely doubled or even tripled by now. It’s also become apparent that advertisers and government agencies alike are using social media websites like Facebook to “data mine” users, building profiles for predicting anything from who is most likely to buy the latest energy drink craze to which individuals may need the “no fly list” treatment. It’s easy to see why people might want to opt out of this kind of data collection. Some countries, specifically in the EU, have attempted to legislate privacy…

If you think that once you’ve deleted a file it’s gone forever, I’ve got news for you. Even after you’ve deleted a file and emptied the windows Recycle Bin, most times that file can still be recovered! Even after you’ve formatted your hard drive it’s still sometimes possible to recover data from it. This has led to a number of incidents where discarded computers and other devices that were thought safe the throw away have been found to contain sensitive and sometimes even classified information. It’s even rumored (with some evidence) that some criminal organizations have taken to buying used…

Some individuals may have various motivations for encrypting the emails that they send. Maybe they don’t trust their internet service provider or email host with their private data. Maybe they want to be more sure their messages won’t fall into the wrong hands while being sent over the net. Or maybe they just don’t want to make it easy for certain 3 letter government agencies to process, analyze, inspect, evaluate, scrutinize or otherwise read their private personal communications. Whatever the reason, it’s easier than ever now to securely encrypt your email thanks to a free and open source browser extension…

Windows offers some default methods for capturing screenshots, but in all honesty, they can be a bit of a hassle for such a simple task. Today, I will show you how to easily take a perfectly sized screenshot using the free program Greenshot. Greenshot is very easy to install, just run the installer program, follow the on screen instructions and you’re done. Greenshot doesn’t come with any spyware, adware, or unwanted programs which is really a nice change of pace compared to most of the other “free” software on the internet. Once Greenshot is installed and running is sits in…