Insteon is one of the most popular–and arguably most powerful–lines of smarthome products out there. If you’re just getting started with Insteon, here’s how to set up your hub and your first device. What Is Insteon? RELATED: What Are “ZigBee” and “Z-Wave” Smarthome Products? Insteon, at its simplest, is a line of smarthome products. Insteon makes smart outlets, smart light bulbs and switches, a smart thermostat, motion sensors, security cameras, and other products designed to be a sort of “one stop shop” for all your smarthome needs....

If you’ve ever wanted to listen to podcasts on your Sonos speakers, then there are actually several ways to stream them, be it from the Internet, your computer, or from a mobile device such as a phone or tablet. The Sonos system has a lot of versatility and functionality. Setting it up is a virtual cinch and from there, you can do a number of cool things with including adding streaming music services and using it as a sleep timer or alarm....

Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment has customizable keyboard shortcuts and animations, but its options are all hidden. We’ll show you how to get started with the CompizConfig Settings Manager and point out some of Unity’s more interesting configuration options. The CompizConfig Settings Manager, available in Ubuntu’s software repositories, is like the About:Config page in Firefox. It contains a lot of options that can cause problems with Unity if used incorrectly. If you encounter a problem, you can reset Unity to its default state with a single command....

Whether you choose to save addresses, payment methods, or both, you can speed up form entry using your web browser’s autofill settings. Here’s how to set up and use autofill in Mozilla Firefox. Enable Autofill in Firefox To use the autofill feature in Firefox, you must first enable it. And luckily, you can enable it for addresses and credit cards separately. This is convenient if you prefer not to use it for one or the other....

When you’ve got a PC completely infected with viruses, sometimes it’s best to reboot into a rescue disc and run a full virus scan from there. Here’s how to use the Avira Rescue System to clean an infected PC. Download the Image and Make a Bootable USB Drive Download the Avira Rescue System ISO. Download and install Rufus, or use the portable version. Insert the USB drive into the computer....

The Navigation Pane in Word 2010 allows you to jump around your document in several ways. You can use it to find text, Word objects, such as tables and graphics, and to jump to specific headings and pages. We have previously shown you how to jump around your Word document using bookmarks. This article shows you how to use the Navigation Pane to move around your document in multiple ways....

Lenovo has announced three new monitors under its “ThinkVision VoIP” banner: the T27hv-30, T24mv-30, and T24v-30. They’re all 16:9 desktop monitors, with minimal bezels around the screen and integrated speakers. Each monitor also has a wide array of ports, including HDMI, DisplayPort, USB Type-A, and USB Type-C. They’re not built for graphic design work — they cover 99% of the sRGB color gamut, but nothing else — but they do have a refresh rate of up to 75 Hz....

Much of the work around porting desktop Linux to Apple Silicon (M1 & M2) Mac computers has been under the Asahi Linux project, which already offers a desktop distribution that can boot natively on many models. Even though Linux has supported ARM chips for years, largely due to Google’s use of Linux for the Android kernel and devices like the Raspberry Pi, making everything work on Apple Silicon has been a challenge....

With the new Homegroup feature in Windows 7, it makes sharing data between computers a lot easier. But you might need to map a network drive so you can go directly into a folder to access its contents. Mapping a network drive may sound like “IT talk”, but the process is fairly easy. Map Network Drive in Windows 7 Note: All of the computers used in this article are part of the same workgroup on a home network....

The default view in Outlook 2010 can be overwhelming if you receive a lot of mail. One option which most modern mail clients have adopted, is conversation view, where we group all mail that is related so it reads like a conversation. Switching To Conversation View Fire up Outlook and head over to the View tab. Here you will quickly come to see the Show as Conversations check box....

Last month we covered topics such as how to make Google Chrome fast again, build a $35 media center with Raspbmc and Raspberry Pi, why using your monitor’s native resolution is important, and more. Join us as we look back at the best articles for July. The Best Articles of July Note: Articles are listed as #10 through #1. VPN vs. SSH Tunnel: Which Is More Secure? VPNs and SSH tunnels can both securely “tunnel” network traffic over an encrypted connection....

This week in Geek History saw the beginning of the Cthulhu horror mythos, the Columbia space shuttle disaster, and the birth of Facebook. Also, check out our new addition “Other Notable Moments” at the end for more facts and trivia from this week in Geek History. Cthulhu First Appears in Print In 1926 Weird Tales published a tale of terror titled “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft. Although Lovecraft had published works prior to “The Call of Cthulhu” that revolved around what would later be called the Cthulhu Mythos, the publication of “The Call of Cthulhu” placed both Cthulhu and Lovecraft soundly in the pantheon of horror characters and writers, respectively....

Tabbed browsing is a fairly new concept. Not that long ago, if you wanted to view a website, but didn’t want to leave the website you were currently viewing, you had to open a new window. Firefox was the first to make tabbed browsing popular. Now, all browsers use tabs to displays multiple websites at once. Tabbed browsing in Opera is a little more advanced than in Firefox and other browsers....

P2E Games Play For Keeps Play-to-earn games, also called P2E games or even just crypto games, are games that have cryptocurrency and NFTs as an integral part of the gameplay. Often, instead of buying the game, you buy stuff within it, like characters or weapons or, well, just about anything. This isn’t entirely unique, plenty of games use a similar model, especially so-called free-to-play (F2P) games. These games let you play for free and even let you earn items through gameplay, but the good stuff is usually locked away behind a paywall—or perhaps a very time-consuming grind....

Multi-tenancy is most frequently seen in the context of cloud SaaS services. Organizations that sign-up to a service become “tenants.” The tenant encapsulates organization-level configuration and usually supports multiple end-user accounts. When a user logs in, they see their organization’s tailored view of the service. Why Use Multi-Tenancy? The primary alternative to multi-tenancy is single-tenancy. In this model, each tenant receives their own standalone installation of the system. In practice, this means dedicated server infrastructure needs to be configured for each tenant....

For the hack you’ll need a candle, a stand of some sort (they use a chemist’s ring stand), a foil tin, some water and glycerin from your local drugstore, and a pop bottle. Watch the video above to see the surprisingly simple build and the cool fog-like effect you get out of it. 5 Dollar Fog Machine [via Boing Boing]

Every now and then, you’ll encounter a website that forces you to register to view it. Rather than give the website your real email address – often an invitation to spam – you can use one of these tricks instead. These tricks won’t help you access websites with paid registration. They’re for websites that want you to register for a free account so they can email you and collect data on what you read....

If you’re a PC gamer, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Valve’s Steam and use it regularly. Steam includes a variety of cool features that you might not notice if you’re just using it to install and launch games. These tips will help you take advantage of an SSD for faster game loading times, browse the web from within a game, download games remotely, create backup copies of your games, and use strong security features....

Windows 8 apps – originally known as Metro-style apps and now known as Windows 8 style, Modern UI style, or Windows Store style apps, depending on which Microsoft employee you ask — are very different from traditional desktop apps. The Modern interface isn’t just a fresh coat of paint. The new Windows Runtime, or WinRT, application architecture (not to be confused with Windows RT) is very different from the Windows desktop we’re used to....

Using AbiWord During installation make sure to associate it with doc and RTF files if you want to be able to open up Word documents from others. From here you can also scroll down in the components window and select from several language dictionaries. The layout is similar to other word processing apps and is easy to use. You can set up extra toolbars for easier editing and document creation....