8 Clever Uses for Your Smartphone’s Camera (Aside From Taking Pictures)

Sure, your smartphone’s camera can be used for photos and video chats, but it can do much more than that. Your phone’s camera is a powerful tool you can use for everything from finding better prices to navigation and translation.
Your smartphone’s camera is a full-fledged input device that makes all sorts of creative apps possible. The apps mentioned below are just examples — there are a variety of different apps that do all of these things.

How Can I Find Out Where an Email Really Came From?

Just because an email shows up in your inbox labeled Bill.Smally@somehost.com, doesn’t mean that Smally actually had anything to do with it. Read on as we explore how to dig in and see where a suspicious email actually came from.

Someone once said, "I wants to know how to figure out where emails actually originate from:."

How Attackers Actually “Hack Accounts” Online and How to Protect Yourself

People talk about their online accounts being “hacked,” but how exactly does this hacking happen? The reality is that accounts are hacked in fairly simple ways — attackers don’t use black magic.

Knowledge is power. Understanding how accounts are actually compromised can help you secure your accounts and prevent your passwords from being “hacked” in the first place.

How to Find the Version Number for Your Device Drivers in Windows

We have advised you not mess with your drivers if they are not broken in the past, but from time to time issues arise and later versions of a driver may fix an issue that you are experiencing. Here is how to see which version any driver is at, on any recent version of Windows.

How to Prevent People From Viewing Your Browser’s Saved Passwords

Have you ever saved a password in your browser — Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or another one? Then your passwords are likely viewable by anyone with access to your computer while you’re logged in.

Chrome and Firefox’s developers think this is fine, as you should be preventing people from accessing your computer in the first place, but this will likely come as a surprise to many people.

How Can I Stop Apps from Running at Boot on Android OS?

Is it necessary to keep your list of startup and running apps lean and mean on Android OS, and if so,  how can you put the brakes on an application heavy startup?

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of Android Enthusiasts—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

How to Easily Reset a Computer Back to a Clean State Each Time It Boots

 

When you’re managing a public computer, you need a special kind of tool. You need a way to reset that computer back to a clean state every time it boots so no one can make any harmful changes.

Commercial solutions like Deep Freeze offer this feature, and Microsoft once offered it via its Windows Steady State tool for Windows XP and Vista. However, Windows Steady State has been discontinued and doesn’t work with Windows 7.

We’ll be using Reboot Restore Rx for this, as it supports both Windows 7 and Windows 8. Steadier State is another solid option, but it only works in Windows 7, and even then only with Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate.

How To Add Files To VLC on your iPhone Without iTunes

VLC for iPhone has been released back onto the App store and has some nice new features, one of which is a small webserver you can use to send files directly to your iPhone through a web browser.

Note: The computer and iPhone must be connected to the same network in order for this to work.

How to view Youtube Videos on your BlackBerry

Have you ever wondered how to view YouTube® videos on your BlackBerry® smartphone while you are on the go? Let’s take a look at how you would go about viewing a YouTube video on your device and the requirements that are necessary in order for you to view these videos using the Mobile Network.

1. The first step is making sure you have an active data plan on your BlackBerry smartphone and that the signal in the top right corner of your device shows as any of the following: 3G, GPRS, EDGE, or 1XEV.

'Apple can read your iMessages' claims security firm

Apple's iMessage system could be decrypted by employees on government orders, according to claims from security researchers.

 

How to Turn Your Windows 8 Laptop into a Wireless Access Point

A lot of companies are starting to sell portable 3G routers that you can take with you when you go out, but what happens when you forget, luckily How-To Geek is here to save the day with this neat command line trick.

How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows

Windows won’t allow you to modify files that open programs have locked. if you try to delete a file and see a message that it’s open in a program, you’ll have to unlock the file (or close the program).

In some cases, it may not be clear which program has locked a file – or a background process may have locked a file and not terminated correctly. You must unlock the stubborn file or folder to modify it.

Note: Unlocking certain files and deleting them may cause problems with open programs. Don’t unlock and delete files that should remain locked, including Windows system files.

How to Locate Your Lost or Stolen Android Phone (and Wipe if Necessary)

Thanks to a new native Android tool, you can now easily locate your phone and (in a worst case scenario) perform a remote data wipe. Read on as we show you how to activate the feature on your phone.

How to Protect Your PC’s Hardware From Static Electricity When Working On It

Whether you’re building your own computer, installing new RAM, or upgrading your PC’s components, you’ll be opening it up and touching sensitive electronics components. While doing this, you should be careful of static electricity, which can harm your computer.
You don’t have to be completely paranoid about static electricity, and there’s no need to go overboard and buy an antistatic mat. A few basic precautions are all you need.

Wirelessly Transfer Files on Android Devices With Dropbox

As great as smart phones have become when it comes to handling our digital lives, there are still a few tiresome concessions we make for their use. One is having to plug our device into our computer in order to transfer files. Some manufacturers such as Apple have launched new services to alleviate that using cloud computing. Here is one way you can send files to your Android based phone completely free without the help of a USB cable.

Transferring files wirelessly on Android using Dropbox is easy

7 Wi-Fi Tweaks to Increase Your Speed

Chances are if you have a wireless internet connection at your home, you have had some trouble with the speed of the connection at least once before. That being said, a slow wireless connection can be frustrating to deal with. You are probably paying good money to your internet service provider, so slow speed is something you should not have to deal with, right? Well, the truth is wireless speed can be affected by a number of things. Luckily there are some Wi-Fi tweaks you can try that should help boost your speed and get you rolling in no time.

5 Essential free Software for Windows PC

Imagine, you have a new high end PC with Windows installed. You switch on the PC in excitement only to ask yourself the question, what should I do now? Even the most high end hardware is useless without the right software. This article deals with such five essential software for your PC that do not put any dent on your pocket. For convenience purposes, each software is provided according to the category of its usage. So lets begin.

All the freeware mentioned support all versions of Windows including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Create a Shortcut to lock your Computer

Have you ever left your PC in a hurry? Have you ever felt that it is a pain to lock your system in the simple way of doing CTRL+ALT+DEL? I would imagine that you have and then, this trick is for you. This trick enables you to create a shortcut to lock your computer instead of doing the regular CTRL+ALT+DEL, thus providing you a way to quickly and easily get away from your PC whenever you are in a hurry.

Install, Boot Windows from USB Pen, Thumb or Flash Drive

Normally, Windows is installed using optical media like DVDs and CDs but there are times when it is not possible to boot into the windows setup using disks probably because your DVD drive is not working or, if you are using one of those ultra-portable laptops, it is not there at all.

To overcome this problem, one can either use an external DVD drive and install Windows normally or create a bootable pen drive to install Windows whenever needed. In this tutorial, we will discuss about the latter and learn how can we create a bootable USB drive for installing Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. As installing Windows from a flash drive is much faster than from a CD/ DVD, such an installation will also save time.

Recover Windows Password With Free Password Recovery Tools

There are times when you forget your Windows password or someone changes it without your knowledge. In such situations, you will be locked out of Windows. To regain access, you can use some password recovery software to recover your Windows password. This article contains a list of some such password recovery software.

Note:  Most of these software are available as Live CD's. (For non technical readers, a Live CD is a compact disk that contains a bootable operating system that you can use from the CD itself, without having the need to install it.)

How to Fix a Slow Windows 7 Computer

Most people love using Windows 7. That’s because it’s by far one of the nicest and the most productive Microsoft operating system. But there can still be glitches, errors, and lags. The good thing about Windows 7 is that it has lots of tools to troubleshoot and repair a slow computer. Here is a guide to where to find them and how to use them.

1. Problem Steps Recorder

Problem Steps Recorder is a great solution to get a detailed description of the problem, so that you can either review the report yourself or send it to a tech support guy. Basically, this tool records everything happening on the computer that needs troubleshooting. It records all mouse clicks and everything that is pressed on the keyboard, takes screenshots, and then saves the report as a zipped MHTML file. This file can be easily emailed and analyzed. To enable Problem Steps Recorder, click on Start, type PSR and hit Enter. Then click on Start Record. To save a report, just stop recording your computer activity.

Windows 8 Tips: Tweak and Customise

1. Set Start screen background

If you'd like to change your lock, user tile or start screen images then press win + I, click 'Change PC settings' and choose the Personalize option. Browse the various tabs and you'll be able to choose alternative images or backgrounds in a click or two.
And in theory you'll also be able to define apps that will display their status on the lock screen, although the app must specifically support this before it'll be accessible from your Personalize settings.

2. Schedule maintenance

Windows 8 can run common maintenance tasks - software updates, security scanning, system diagnostics and more at a scheduled convenient time, which is good.
Unfortunately it doesn't actually ask you what time is convenient, instead just setting it to 3am and allowing the system to wake your computer (if hardware and circumstances permit) to do its work. Which isn't so good.