Technology Updates | Articles about science and technology

Best Free Backup Solution for Office 365

2022-04-12T00:52:00.004+05:00

When it comes to backing up your data, you have a few different options available to you, depending on what type of data you want to protect. One common option for backing up data is to use a cloud-based backup service, such as Office 365.

Using a cloud-based backup service means that all of your data is automatically stored in the cloud, which makes it easy to access and share. You can also schedule regular backups to ensure that your data is always safe and backed up.

If you don't want to use a cloud-based backup service, you can also use an external hard drive to backup your data. This option is good if you want to back up your data on a regular basis, but it can be more difficult to access your data if you need to.

Texas Truck Accident Lawyer

2022-04-12T00:50:00.004+05:00

If you have been involved in a truck accident in Texas, you may be wondering what to do. You may be concerned about your legal rights and what steps you need to take to protect yourself. In this blog section, we will discuss some of the most important things to know if you have been involved in a truck accident in Texas.

First and foremost, if you are injured in a truck accident in Texas, you should seek immediate medical attention. If you are not injured, but the truck that you were driving was, you may be able to file a claim against the truck driver. If you are injured, or the other driver was at fault, you may want to speak to an attorney.

If you are injured in a truck accident, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. This compensation may include medical expenses,

Play Tencent PUBG on PC and Laptop

2019-06-01T15:19:00.001+05:00

Tencent Gaming Buddy (also called TencentGameAssistant) is an Android emulator developed by Tencent to help you comfortably play the international PUBG version for Android, as well as PUBG: Army Attack and PUBG: Exhilarating Battlefield, the two versions for smartphone of the incredible Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.

The emulator is available in Chinese and English, although the menu system is intuitive enough so that anyone can install the game and execute it without having to know the language. In fact, once it’s installed, the emulator will install the game automatically.

Once PUBG Mobile is installed, you just have to click on it to witness the magic of the Tencent Gaming Buddy. PUBG will start and you can check how all the controls are perfectly configured as if this was a PC game so you can save yourself the trouble of having to map them. The mouse helps you aim, the space bar lets you jump, the 'F' key lets you open doors, etc. Everything is already configured and ready so you can just play.

Tencent Gaming Buddy is an excellent Android emulator specially created by Tencent for their games so the compatibility and performance are incredible. However, in order to avoid unbalances, for PUBG you’ll be playing with servers where the rest of the players also use a PC.

Download Link

Install PUBG on PC and Laptop

Supreme Court orders arrest of Pakistan PM Raja Pervez Ashraf & KSE index plunges

2013-01-15T14:52:00.000+05:00

In a major turn of event, the Pakistan Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the authorities to arrest Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in the rental power case.

This has been reported by various sections of the Pakistan media.

Meanwhile, there is turmoil in Pakistan is already witnessing anti-government movement lead by Maulana Tahirul Qadri, an Islamic Scholar, who has given an ultimatum to PPP government to quit power and dissolve national and state assemblies.

KSE 100 index plunges by 450 points after SC orders arrest of PM Ashraf.

AFGHANISTAN In Pictures

2012-12-14T10:41:00.002+05:00

How to Fix USB Device Not Recognized in Windows

2012-12-13T19:18:00.001+05:00

Are you getting a “USB device not recognized” error whenever you plug in a USB mouse, keyboard, or other USB device? I love USB and have 5 ports on my computer so that I can connect my mouse, keyboard, camera, phone, and printer to it all at once!

However, last weekend, my computer stopped recognizing my USB devices! The strange thing about it was that the USB ports were not bad because all of my devices were still getting power to them. I could still charge my cell phone without a problem!

So I started with the normal fixing methods, including uninstalling the drivers for my devices and reinstalling them. That didn’t work! Next I tried System Restore thinking that maybe I had installed something and it caused a conflict with the USB system drivers. That didn’t work!

I read online that in order to fix this problem I should go to Device Manager and uninstall all of the devices under USB Controllers. Restarted the computer, reinstalled the USB drivers, but the problem STILL did not go away!

You may also see in Device Manager that the device shows up as an “Unknown Device”.

So how did I finally fix the problem? Well, apparently it’s a super simple solution! No need to edit the registry, uninstall drivers, or anything of that sort.

Simply UNPLUG YOUR COMPUTER FROM THE POWER SUPPLY. Yes that’s it! Note that this does not mean just turning off your computer because modern computers don’t really turn off when you press the power button as the motherboard still gets power.

First to explain, the motherboard is where all of hardware of the computer is connected to, including the USB ports. Sometimes the motherboard needs to be “rebooted” also because something can go wrong, i.e. all your USB ports suddenly stop working. The small microprocessor on the motherboard will reload the drivers and your USB ports should be back to recognizing all devices!

So first turn off your computer using Shut Down or pressing the power button and then UNPLUG it from the wall outlet. Let it sit for about a minute and then plug it back in.

Hope this helps someone fix that pesky “USB device not recognized” Windows error!

7 Ways to Child Proof a Computer

2012-12-12T18:25:00.002+05:00

I have a 2 year old daughter and I have realized the importance of child-proofing my computer! The second I turn around, she runs to my desk, jumps on the chair and starts banging away at the keys. If the computer is already on, she has figured out how to move the mouse and click on anything she can. It’s great fun for her, but a major headache for me.

I didn’t really think she could do anything, but apparently randomly pressing a bunch of keys on the keyboard can accomplish a lot more than you think! My daughter sent emails, deleted folders, opened programs, and even moved files with her keyboard slamming. In this article, I’ll talk about a few ways you can child-proof your computer and hopefully save yourself some grief. If your kids are older, I’ll also give you some tips for them too!

Method 1 – Lock Your Computer

This simple option solved most of my problems with my daughter. If the computer was off and she slammed the keys, it would turn on, but remain on the locked screen. Thankfully, she’s too small to enter a password just yet!

Before my computer goes to sleep, the screen saver usually comes on. I also enabled the password on the screen saver in case she gets to it before the computer sleeps. I have my computer sleep after about an hour, so there are a lot of times when the screen saver is on.

Method 2 – Use a Limited Account or UAC

The first method only works for really young toddlers, not with kids that are older than 3. By that age, they will probably scream and yell until you let them on the computer. At this point, you need to give them access to the computer so they can play games or do whatever, but also make sure they can’t do anything else.

One way to do this is to use a locked down user account. You can use the Guest account in Windows, which has limited user rights across the system. The Standard user account still has a lot of permissions and can do quite a bit. The guest account is disabled by default, but you can enable it and it prevents the user from installing software, changing settings, etc.

Another feature in Windows is UAC (User Account Control). You can set this to the highest setting and any standard user account will have to enter a password in order to complete the task. UAC pops up quite a bit if you have it set to the highest setting, so those users will not be able to change most of the settings on the computer.

Method 3 – Parental Controls

Windows 7 and Windows 8 have built-in parental controls that let you restrict the programs that can be run on the computer, the time the computer can be used and even filter web sites the user can visit.

You can Google on how to enable Parental Controls and this may suit your needs. It’s not total protection, but it can help you control what can be done on the computer. If you are worried about data being deleted or getting a virus, this method won’t work very well.

There is also a feature in Windows 7 (not the Home version) called AppLocker that prevents programs from being run. You can basically choose which programs you want to allow to be run and the user will only be able to open those programs. You can learn about AppLocker here.

Method 4 – Group Policy

Parental Controls is nice, but if you want access to a ton more rules and restrictions, you’ll have to familiarize yourself with group policy. You can restrict access to drives, restrict access to the Control Panel, remove tabs from IE options dialog, restrict access to the registry, command prompt or task manager, prevent users from deleting browsing history, and all kinds of other stuff. Group policy can control every aspect of Windows, so you can really lock down a computer hardcore by using it. To get to the local group policy for a PC, just type gpedit.msc when you click on the Start button.

If you are running Windows 7 Home or Starter, you won’t be able to use local group policy settings. Unfortunately, it only works on Windows 7 Pro, Ultimate and Enterprise. If you have any of these versions, it’s super useful for locking down a PC. There are a ton of articles online that explain how to use local group policy, so have fun!

Method 5 – Encryption

If you’re looking for a way to keep your data safe, you may want to look into creating a secure encrypted container on your system. You can do this using a program called TrueCrypt. It’s a free program that has been around for a long time and does an amazing job.

If you have important files you don’t want anyone to access or accidentally delete, you can create a encrypted container that you can mount to the system only when you need to use it. Otherwise, it doesn’t even show up on the system. The HowToGeek has a great guide on getting started with TrueCrypt that explains how to do this.

Method 6 – Deep Freeze It

There is this amazing program for IT people called Deep Freeze, which is about $35, but is something that a lot of parents would love. Maybe you don’t care about setting up parental controls or learning group policy or encrypting your hard drives, etc, etc. What if you could let your kids do anything to the computer: delete files, change settings, install crapware, download viruses, etc and then magically get everything the way it was with a restart?

Deep Freeze does exactly that. It’s absolutely awesome. A lot of companies and schools use this software because you can setup your system the way you want, let users wreak havoc, and then simply restart the computer to get it back to the original state. They can literally delete system files and it won’t matter. If you want need something like that, then buy this software. I’ve used it myself and it works amazing well. Read more about it on their site.

Method 7 – Install Another OS

One method I use to make sure guests coming over to my house don’t access my personal files or mess up my system is to install another copy of Windows on the same PC. You probably have some old computer running XP or something, so just install a dual boot system with your main OS and a secondary OS that you can boot up to for other users.

I have a Windows 7 machine that also has Windows XP installed along with Deep Freeze. Firstly, there are no perosnal files or programs on XP other than the basic stuff. Even if someone does something or installs a program, etc, I just restart it and I’m back to my clean install of Windows XP. Of course, you need to get another copy of Windows, but if you don’t have a copy, then just use Linux!

I also have Ubuntu installed and that’s totally free. You can even download a specific flavor of Ubuntu that matches the style of Windows, so users won’t be disoriented if they have never seen Linux before.

Those are seven quick tips that I’ve used in the past to secure my computers from children, nosy people and everyone else. How do you child-proof your computer? Let us know in the comments.

Prevent Google Chrome from Opening PDF Files in the Browser

2012-12-12T18:23:00.001+05:00

I’ve been working on a project lately where I have to download a lot of PDFs from a website and then go through them and highlight text, add comments, etc. In Google Chrome, whenever I click on a link to a PDF file, it just opens the file inside the browser window.

This is pretty convenient for most people and it was fine for me until I started this project. Other than viewing the PDF file, you really can’t do anything else with the file if it’s opened in Chrome. So basically, I was clicking on the save button, saving it to the hard drive and then opening it from there. After a while, this started to become a little annoying and time consuming.

I was using Adobe Acrobat on my Mac to make the edits to the PDF files, so I wanted to use that instead of Chrome. Finally, after playing around with stuff for a while, I managed to figure out a good solution. In order to prevent Chrome from opening the PDF files, I had to disable the Chrome PDF Viewer. Here’s how you can do it. Open Chrome and paste the following into the address bar:

chrome://plugins/

Now find Chrome PDF Viewer and click on the Disable link.

Once you disable Chrome PDF Viewer, when you click on a link for a PDF file, it will now just download it like a normal file as shown below:

Now when you click on the file, it will automatically open in the default application set for opening PDF files on your machine. Note that in addition to disabling Chrome PDF Viewer, you might also have to disable Adobe PDF Viewer in the Chrome plug-ins section. When you install Adobe Acrobat, it also installs a PDF viewer in Chrome too, so if you want to open the PDF files in the desktop Adobe program, you’ll need to disable all PDF viewers that are Chrome plug-ins.

In addition, you may have to change the default program for opening PDF files on your computer. For example, on my Mac, the PDF files were opening in Preview rather than Adobe Acrobat. To change the PDF viewer on a Mac, you have to right-click on a PDF file and choose Get Info.

Then you have to expand the Open with section and change the program to the desired PDF viewer of your choice. Then click the Change All button, which will ensure all PDF files open using that program.

For Windows users, you can check out my previous posts on changing the default program to open a filewith and setting default programs in Windows 7. Hopefully, if you are one of those folks who doesn’t need the default PDF viewer in Chrome, you can use the technique above to solve the problem.

Is It Better to Log Into Websites using Facebook, Google or Twitter Accounts?

2012-12-12T18:22:00.000+05:00

Over the years, you may have noticed that a lot of websites let you use your Facebook, Google or Twitter account to log into their websites. You don’t have to create a new username or password and a lot of the sites will automatically share your activity on Facebook if you give authorization.

This makes logging into those websites very convenient because you don’t have to create another set of usernames and passwords that you have to remember. For example, you can log into sites like rottentomatoes.com, sears.com, citysearch.com, stackoverflow.com, friendfeed.com, getsatisfaction.com and a million other sites using Facebook, Google or Twitter.

By far, the most popular option is Facebook. Facebook released a set of APIs in 2008 called Facebook Connect that changed how people log into third-party websites. Just about every major sites now lets you use Facebook Connect to log into their websites.

The idea has exploded in popularity and you might be logging into a lot of websites using Facebook without even thinking about it. However, like with everything in the world, there are advantages and disadvantages to this type of login.

Advantages

The advantages of logging into multiple websites using the same credentials are fairly clear. Here’s what I find to be most useful:

1. No need to remember multiple sets of usernames and passwords for each site.

2. Credentials are less likely to be hacked since they are securely stored with Facebook, Google, or Twitter.

3. Sites are customized to use the Facebook API and therefore make it super easy to share your activity on those sites with your friends and family.

These are the three main advantages to using your current Facebook, Google or Twitter account to log into a third-party website. One of the main benefits I see is the fact that your credentials are more secure with the likes of Google and Facebook. There are a lot of websites that have great services, but don’t follow strict security procedures and can lose your information to hackers. I’ve gotten many emails over the years from companies that had their databases hacked and therefore my account was compromised.

Disadvantages

You probably have heard the phrase “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket” and you’ve probably read online at least once not to use the same password for every website you log into. There are reasons why you hear these statements over and over again.

The disadvantages to using Facebook Connect to login to every website you visit or comment on also are pretty clear:

1. Facebook, Google, Twitter become a single point of failure. If you lose access to any of those accounts, you lose access to all of the sites that rely on that account.

2. Similarly, if your account is hacked, the hacker could potentially see what apps you use on Facebook, etc and then log into those websites as you.

That’s basically the only disadvantage, but it’s a really big one. The fact that you are entrusting that much information to one particular site or service could cause privacy issues later on. Does Facebook, Google and Twitter get to keep all of that information about your activity forever? What happens if they sell it to someone else later on? It’s definitely risky if you don’t like one company to have access to so much information about you.

Conclusion

In the end, you want to diversify. I personally have some websites where I login using Facebook Connect, others using Twitter, others via Google and the rest using the regular website login. This way you’re not relying on one service or company for logging into a bunch of different sites.

Also, note that using Facebook to log into other sites will reduce your privacy because of how data can be posted back and forth between the site and Facebook. If you log into a website using Google or Twitter, there is less chance of that activity being posted to your Twitter feed or on Google+. For whatever reason, Facebook apps that you authorize tend to collect a lot more information and also post that info to your Facebook account.

Even though you probably haven’t heard of many horror stories yet, there are bound to be cases of hacking, theft, outages, lost access, etc as this type of login option becomes more popular. As with everything, try to stay diversified and you’ll be safer on the Internet. Do you use Facebook, Twitter or Google to log into websites? Let us know in the comments. Enjoy!

How to Enable GodMode in Windows 8

2012-10-30T17:24:00.001+05:00

How to Enable GodMode in Windows 8

Posted: 30 Oct 2012 04:23 AM PDT

Windows 7 users were delighted when they found out about a secret feature called GodMode. It basically lets you create a folder with a special name that somehow then gives you access to just about all of the controls, options and settings for the OS. Luckily, you can enable GodMode in Windows 8 too! To [...]

Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

2012-09-03T17:08:00.001+05:00