Christmas and holiday parties mean getting lots of family and friends together. And getting the family together usually means lots and lots of pictures! Here are some of our favorite tips for taking better photos this holiday. You might use a tiny digital camera, your smartphone, or a DSLR. It doesn’t matter, because the principals of photography are pretty similar regardless of the equipment you’re using. With these few tips, you can improve your family photos, and have the perfect Christmas pics for which your whole family begs for a copy....

Do you use the command line in Windows to get things done? If you are more comfortable typing commands to accomplish tasks than using the mouse, we have compiled 20 of the best Windows command line tips and tricks to help you become a command line guru. Copy to the Clipboard from the Windows Command Prompt There may be times you need to copy text from the Windows command prompt and email it to someone for help with a problem or save it to a file for later reference....

Change How Lock Screen Notifications Appear Apple changed the default location of notifications in the iOS 16 update. Notifications now appear in a stack at the bottom of the screen, requiring an upward swipe to display them. This lets you see more of your wallpaper and any widgets you have added to your lock screen. You can change this behavior under Settings > Notifications using the “Display As” controls. “Stack” is the new default behavior, while “List” is how notifications used to be displayed in iOS 15 and earlier....

Shutting down and restarting your computer should both be easy tasks, right? Well, in Windows 8, these tasks are not straightforward. However, there are easier ways of shutting down and restarting your Windows 8 computer. We’ve showed you before how to shut down or restart your Windows 8 computer and how to add shut down, restart, and sleep shortcuts to the Windows 8 Metro Start screen. Recently, we wrote about the new Win+X menu in Windows 8 and showed you how to add items to it manually and using a free tool....

Android 13 has been in development for the past year as the next major upgrade for the best Android phones. Now the update is finally starting to roll out to select phones. What’s New in Android 13? Android 13 isn’t another design overhaul, like Android 12 was — instead, Google focused on smaller usability improvements and security upgrades. There are a few design changes, like an updated media player in the quick settings panel, and support for themed icons that match the wallpaper color....

When you visit a website you actually share information with more websites than the one you see in the address bar. Read on to find out how to stop websites from tracking your browsing habits using Internet Explorer 9. An Introduction To How You Are Being Tracked Most websites use adverts as a form of income, and there is nothing wrong with this. The problem comes when the adverts on someone’s websites start tracking our browsing habits....

You’ve got WEP encryption enabled, your network’s SSID is hidden, and you’ve enabled MAC address filtering so no one else can connect. Your Wi-Fi network is secure, right? Not really. Good Wi-Fi security is simple: Enable WPA (ideally WPA2) and set a strong password. Other common tricks for increasing a Wi-Fi network’s security can easily be bypassed. They may deter more casual users, but a strong WPA2 password will deter everyone....

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-drive grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Seth Carnegie wonders about computer power management: How indeed? What combination of software/hardware magic makes it happen? The Answer SuperUser contributor Jcrawfordor offers both a condensed and detailed response to the question that more than adequately addresses the question: The too long;didn’t read it answer: Power states in your computer are controlled by an implementation of ACPI (advanced configuration and power interface)....

Why Consider the Number of HDMI Ports? When it comes to shopping for a new TV there are a lot flashier things than what kind of ports are on the back. Things like debating if it’s worth shelling out for a beautiful OLED panel over a standard LCD panel, for instance, or if it’s time to finally swap your aging 1080p set for a pixel-packed 4K model are likely factoring in a bit heavier than what kind of ports the TV has....

When you install an add-on in Firefox, a confirmation dialog box displays with a countdown on the Install button. Many people find this annoying and would like to disable the countdown. However, it is there for good security reasons. IMPORTANT: The Install button delay countdown is a security precaution to make sure you only install add-ons you trust and to reduce the chance that a malicious website can trick you into installing an add-on without your consent....

When you travel internationally, your iPhone can connect to any of the local carriers. Your own home carrier will probably have a preferred one that might not have the fastest or best service; here’s how to force it to use something different. Why You Might Want to Force Your iPhone to Use a Particular Carrier I’ll use myself as an example here. My home carrier in Ireland is Vodafone. When I’m in France, my iPhone tries to use SFR, which is fine… most of the time....

We all know about QR codes. Some black and white boxes, containing encoded data. Boring, isn’t it? Let’s decorate and make your QR code more stylish and customized! No, QR codes aren’t dead; it’s just the fact that people have failed to properly utilize them. Today, we will tell you how to make attractive QR codes. Let’s have a look at a QR code in a bit more detail. The arrangement of the small black boxes in a QR code determines the information it contains....

Is your favorite text editor lacking a few features? Maybe you want to easily get a word count or change the case of selected text. There is an easy way to enhance your editor with these and additional features. Dolphin Text Editor Menu is a free program that adds features to any program in which you can type sentences or paragraphs, such as Notepad, Word, OpenOffice, Wordpad, and even programming environments like Visual Studio....

If you’re running out of free space on your Google account, you can easily find and delete the largest documents in your Google Drive, Gmail, or Photos accounts. Here’s how. First, visit Google’s storage manager website on your Windows 10, Mac, or Linux desktop browser and log in with your Google account. Scroll down until you reach the “Large items” section. Here, you’ll find separate boxes showing the largest documents across your Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos accounts....

The Nintendo Switch comes with a meager 32GB of storage. You can expand your storage with an SD card, but that’s still a pretty small amount of space on your console. Here are several ways you can clear up internal storage space, or at least offload some of that data to an SD card. By default, if you have an SD card installed in your Switch, the console will automatically store downloaded games and screenshots to it until it’s full....

Google added the ability to get location alerts for iPhone and Android in August 2022. Previously, the only way to see if someone had left or arrived was to manually check. Alerts make this much easier, especially for recurring situations. RELATED: How to Find Your Family and Friends Using Google Maps First, open the Google Maps app on your iPhone or Android device and tap the profile icon in the search bar....

There are tons of great games available on the Android platform, but playing them with an onscreen interface isn’t much fun. Ditch the fake buttons and start enjoying your games with a comfortable gaming controller. Why Do I Want to Do This? Modern Android phones are powerful little devices that can play a wide array of new Android-specific games as well as a huge number of emulators which in turn open the door to playing thousands of awesome vintage games....

If you need to remove an image’s background on your Mac—so that the background is transparent—you could use something like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. The problem is, Photoshop isn’t cheap, and both applications come with a sizable learning curve. Luckily, you can remove image backgrounds with Preview for free. Option One: Use Instant Alpha If your image has a simple background, the easiest way to remove it is the Instant Alpha tool....

Ubuntu One, Ubuntu’s built-in cloud file storage service, allows you to make files publically available online or share them privately with others. You can share files over the Internet right from Ubuntu’s file browser. Ubuntu One has two file-sharing methods: Publish, which makes a file publically available on the web to anyone who knows its address, and Share, which shares a folder with other Ubuntu One users. Getting Started You’ll need to enable Ubuntu One to share files, if you haven’t already....

We have already shown you how you can disable the Windows Store in Windows 8, but what if you have already installed some Metro applications or intend on doing so, but don’t want them to be uninstalled? Read on to find out how you can do this. Removing Uninstall From the Start Screen Press the Windows + R key combination to bring up a run box, type gpedit.msc and hit enter....