Aero Shake—a fun little feature that lets you grab a window by the title bar and shake it to minimize all other open windows—can sometimes get in the way. If you don’t like it, you can turn it off with a quick Registry or Group Policy edit. Disable Aero Shake by Editing the Registry Manually To disable Aero Shake on any PC running Windows 7, 8, or 10, you just need to make an adjustment to one setting in the Windows Registry....
By default, Kodi does not store artwork and other metadata with your actual media, but doing so is highly beneficial. With a quick settings change, you can park your videos and their associated metadata in the same place. Why Store Data Locally? Kodi usually downloads and stores metadata with the Kodi installation itself—so thus if you have it installed on a media center PC in your living room, that is where the metadata is also located....
There’s nothing like a loud bang and a bright flash of light to really make an occasion feel special. New Year’s Eve, Halloween, and of course, the Fourth of July are all celebrated with fireworks. They’re a pretty tricky subject to photograph, though, so let’s break down what you need to know. What Makes a Good Firework Photo? For all the flash and bang in real life, fireworks on their own are a pretty boring photo subject....
The Nest can turn itself off while you’re at work, so it only heats or cools your house when you’re at home. If it doesn’t guess when you get home correctly, though, you could be waiting hours in an uncomfortable house. If you have an Automatic Pro, your car can tell Nest to start warming up as soon as you leave work. RELATED: How to Make Your Car Smarter with an OBD-II Adapter...
Adobe’s Flash plug-in has a big target painted on it. A recent leak shows there’s another Flash Player 0-day that allows attackers to compromise your computer, and that it’s been for sale for the last four years. Flash is going away, and everyone should uninstall it at some point in the future. Here’s how to get rid of Flash, whether you’re using a browser’s built-in plug-in or a system-wide plug-in on Windows, Mac OS X, Chrome OS, or Linux....
How to Add a Song to Your Apple Music Library The Alarm app on your iPhone lets you change the alarm tone to any song that you’ve downloaded or synced to your iPhone (using iTunes or the iTunes Store). If you have an Apple Music subscription, you can choose any song from the company catalog (of more than 60 million songs) as an alarm tone. RELATED: How to Change the Alarm Sound on Your iPhone...
Online services are becoming increasingly concerned with security, with two-factor authentication now being the flavor of the day. Extra security at login is great, but what if you forget your password? Facebook’s Trusted Contacts can help out here. Phone a Friend You may feel that you would never forget your Facebook password — you probably enter it at least once a day — but what happens if you take a Facebook sabbatical, or your account is hacked and your password is changed?...
Say Hello to Intel ARC If you haven’t been keeping tabs on GPU news, you may be surprised to hear that Intel is joining NVIDIA and AMD as a graphics card vendor with Intel ARC. Intel has been working on improving its integrated GPU technology for years and almost brought a radical GPU product with the code name “Larrabee ” to market years ago. But, in general, the company isn’t synonymous with GPU technology—unless you count integrated, or “onboard,” graphics....
When it comes to smart thermostats, there’s a handful to choose from, but the big three that stand out are the Nest, Ecobee4, and Honeywell Lyric Round. We’ve tried out all three to see which one has the upper edge, and where their features differ. RELATED: Can a Smart Thermostat Actually Save You Money? Each of these three smart thermostats is unique in its own way, so before we dive in and discuss the similarities and differences between them, here’s a brief overview of the Nest, Ecobee4, and the Lyric Round....
Deciding whether you need a hub is just one of the many choices that you have to make when building your smart home. It’s arguably one of the bigger choices that you’ll have to make, though, as it has a big effect on the devices that you can add to your home. We’ll explain what a smart home hub is so that you can decide whether you should go down that path....
Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a security technique used in operating systems, first implemented in 2001. The current versions of all major operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux) feature ASLR protection. But in the past week, a new method of bypassing ASLR has been found. So, should you be worried? To those without a low-level programming background, ASLR can be confusing. To understand it, you must first understand virtual memory....
After multiple delays, Fedora 37 was officially released on November 15, 2022. Here’s a preview of what to expect from the latest release of this uber-stable Linux distribution. If You Want to Get Ahead, Get a Hat I’ve always been a fan of Red Hat Linux. I remember buying a set of disks for version 5.2 in a branch of a famous British high-street stationers in 1998, because it was easier and faster than trying to download it at the time....
FPS isn’t just for bragging rights. If it’s too low, your gameplay suffers. If it’s consistently high, you might be able to bump up your settings for a more visually pleasing experience. Here are several ways you can check your PC game’s FPS. It’s easier than ever to display a PC game’s FPS. Steam now offers a built-in FPS display, as does NVIDIA via its GeForce Experience software. The game video recorder FRAPS is also still around to help you display FPS in games if you’re not using Steam or NVIDIA....
If you’ve tried to install Google Chrome in Ubuntu Linux, you may have noticed that it’s not available in the Ubuntu Software Center. However, it’s easy to download a package file for Google Chrome and install it on your system, and we’ll show you how. NOTE: When we say to type something in this article and there are quotes around the text, DO NOT type the quotes, unless we specify otherwise....
The Ai41s are an update of Fluance’s previous Ai40 speakers, but they aren’t just a minor update. In addition to increasing the wattage from 70 to 90 watts, they’ve been completely redesigned as a ported speaker, rather than the sealed design of the previous model. A digital audio input joins Bluetooth and analog audio connectivity, making the Ai41s a perfect option for playing any kind of music in small to medium-sized rooms....
You can use the blind carbon copy (BCC) field to send a copy of an email to others without showing their email addresses to the primary recipients. Here’s how to add a BCC in Outlook on Windows, the web, Mac, Android, iPhone, and iPad. What Is Blind Carbon Copy (BCC)? Blind carbon copy (BCC) allows you to send a copy of an email to the recipient(s) you enter in the BCC field....
If you’re a fan of movie trailers, pre-rolls, and the build up of anticipation leading up to the cinematic experience, then we’ve got a treat for you: Plex Media Server makes it dead simple to recreate that theater magic right at home with both trailers from your own movie collection as well as those of upcoming releases. You may already be aware that Plex supports trailers, but not many people know that you can leverage trailers into something much cooler than something you manually load up now and then....
If you like playing games, it’s always cool to let people watch you play online. I still don’t understand why that is, but people love watching other people play stuff. Here’s how to stream your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 4 Pro gameplay over YouTube, Twitch, or even Dailymotion. First things first: you need to be playing a game. So fire something up and let’s do this thing. I’ll be testing on a PlayStation 4 with The Last of Us Remastered, because it’s the best game of all time....
People love customization, and if there’s one thing Android is really good at, that’s it. And Google’s Messenger is no exception. Every conversation has a specific color, but you can change the color of any conversation through its menu. RELATED: How to Back Up Your Text Messages to Your Gmail Account The first thing you need to do is jump into the conversation that you want to change the color of....
The combination of a smartphone or tablet and a search engine makes it easy to find just about anything at a moment’s notice. If you have an Android device, you may think that search engine has to be Google, but it doesn’t. Here’s how to change the default search engine on Android. Google services are integrated very deeply into Android devices, but that doesn’t mean that you have to use them....
