To become a Gmail power user, you’ll need to master Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts allow you to speed through your mail faster than you can click. Gmail even lets you create custom keyboard shortcuts. Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts aren’t enabled by default and don’t appear when you hover over interface elements, so you won’t find them yourself unless you explore Gmail’s settings. This guide will get you up and running quick....

Graphics programs aren’t simply for just editing your photos—they can have whatever fun application you can think of. For a fun, geeky project, here’s a simple papercraft toy you can make with a printer and simple household tools. Download the HTG Custom Papercraft Templates The template is a simple, tiny download containing one PNG file and one Photoshop file. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can still do this project, you’ll just be painting or drawing your printed papercraft toy by hand....

Meta announced today that starting in August 2022, you’ll be able to create a ‘Meta account,’ which can then be used to set up and use a Quest VR headset. The company said in a blog post, “Your Meta account is not a social media profile; it lets you log into your VR devices and view and manage your purchased apps in one place. In the future, we’ll extend Meta account functionality so you can use it to log into other Meta devices....

Score some great games, DRM-free and cross-platform, at a pay-what-you-want price by grabbing a copy of The Humble Indie Bundle #2. Last year marked the start of the Humble Indie Bundle where independent developers got together and offered their games in a bundle at a pay-what-you-want price. The games came DRM-free, cross-platform, and you could specify how much of your contribution would go to the developers or to charities like Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation....

Is your desk and computer covered with sticky notes? Do you have miscellaneous pieces of paper with bits of information buried in drawers, your laptop case, backpack, purse, etc.? Get rid of all the chaos and get organized with note-taking software and services. We’ve collected a list of the best desktop applications and cloud-based services for taking, storing, and sharing information. Applications The following programs are desktop applications you can run directly on your computer, some of which are portable, allowing you to take your notes with you....

Now that Windows 8 Enterprise is available to the public as a 90-day evaluation and Windows 8 Pro is available for Microsoft TechNet subscribers, we decided to collect links to the Windows 8 articles we’ve published since the release of the Developer Preview. Windows 8 UI Screen (formerly the Metro Start Screen) and Desktop The Windows 8 UI, formerly called the Metro Start Screen, is Microsoft’s replacement for the Start menu....

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary.” It’s a document specification that allows you to easily collect and organize web-based news and information from websites. RSS reader applications allow you to follow your favorite websites without having to visit each one separately. For more information about RSS, see our article defining RSS and describing how you can benefit from using it. We’ve collected some links to good desktop and web-based, free RSS applications....

August has been a busy month here at HTG where we covered topics such as setting up a posthumous password contingency plan, when you should properly eject a thumb drive, got a first look at the UI for Windows 8, and more. Join us as we look back at the most popular articles from this past month. Note: Articles are listed as #10 through #1. Set Up a Posthumous Password Contingency Plan...

Every week we bring you interesting facts from the history of Geekdom. This week in Geek History witnessed the first successful demonstration of the electric telegraph, the safe landing of the Spirit rover on the surface of Mars, and the birth of famed fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. First Successful Demonstration of the Electric Telegraph In 1838, Samuel Morse gave the first successful demonstration of the electric telegraph. Although the original telegraph and the Morse Code tapped out upon it was extremely primitive by today’s communication standards it laid the backbone for modern communication....

Enums, or enumerated types, are a list of constant values with developer-friendly names. They’re used in programming to commonly used to establish a set of predefined values that a variable can take. Defining a List of Values Enums are a list of values, each of which is always unique. You can’t have two values in the enum with the same name. This makes them quite useful for defining all possible value states a function can handle....

What Are Reverse Proxies? A regular proxy, called a Forward Proxy, is a server through which a user’s connection is routed through. In many ways, it’s like a simple VPN, which sits in front of your internet connection. VPNs are a common example of these, but they also include things like school firewalls, which may block access to certain content. A reverse proxy works a little differently. It’s a backend tool used by system administrators....

So far this approach sounds similar to Infrastructure as Code (IaC). GitOps is more than mere IaC though: a successful implementation will incorporate an automated mechanism to apply your config files to live infrastructure components. Merging changes should cause your infrastructure’s state to transition towards that described by the revised repository content. This requires a bridge between your source control platform and your infrastructure provider, allowing the current state to be communicated between the two....

Apple’s HomeKit smarthome platform is all over the news lately, but many people are unclear on the specifics like how to use it, what you can use with it, and so on. Read on as we dig into HomeKit to clear up some of the mystery surrounding it. What Is HomeKit? In June of 2014 at their World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) Apple announced iOS 8 and highlighted some of the upcoming features....

MFA Can Involve 2FA Two-factor authentication is a subset of multi-factor authentication. So the core definition of both is essentially the same. MFA simply means that a resource (such as your computer or online account) is secured by more than one type of credential. The reasoning behind MFA is that there’s an exponential reduction in the odds of someone compromising all of the authentication factors you need, especially if they’re very different in nature....

SQLite is a relational database that’s compatible with SQL. Unlike other SQL-based systems such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, SQLite doesn’t use a client-server architecture. The whole program is contained in a C library, which gets embedded into applications. The database becomes an integral part of the program, eliminating resource-intensive standalone processes. SQLite stores its data in a single cross-platform file. As there’s no dedicated server or specialized filesystem, “deploying” SQLite is as simple as linking its library and creating a new regular file....

Static vs. Dynamic Content “Static content” applies to files that don’t change. They’re stored as files on disk and served directly to the users of your website. For example, CSS stylesheets are static content; they can be hosted as a file download, and they’re the same for each user. This doesn’t mean static content can’t offer interactive websites. JavaScript files are static content, and they don’t execute any code until they reach a user’s browser....

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 Tom loves the clean organization portable apps provide and wants to know why everything isn’t portable: We’re certainly fans of portable apps and would also like to get to the bottom of things. I put them all in a ‘Programs’ dir on a drive separate from my Windows partition, so whenever I reinstall, I have all my applications available with minimal effort and on the plus side, I get a nice clean setup....

Smart Plugs Are Perfect For Simple Automation We like smart plugs because they’re easy to set up and make for great automation. Just plug it into an electrical outlet and then plug something into it. You now have a smart outlet—use an app for the rest. No need to get out any tools, or play with electrical wiring. You might think that smart plugs would be a great way to save energy too....

Netflix is currently pushing a bunch of mobile games to its platform, so if you were expecting to play console games or anything of that sort, you’re going to be disappointed. Still, the company has a pretty solid set of games ready for day one, including a couple of Stranger Things games that should make fans of the show happy. In total, there are five games available from four different developers....

Cortana is one of Windows 10’s most visible new features. Microsoft’s virtual assistant makes the leap from Windows Phone to the desktop, and there’s a lot you can do with it. It isn’t just a voice assistant either — you can also type commands and questions Open Cortana to see information it thinks you might care about. Cortana provides a lot of passive information, too, even notifying you when you need to leave to make an appointment on time....