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[Windows 8] Learn about your neighborhood by reading Wikipedia on Explora
What are some cool or interesting places to visit in your area? If you’re new to the area, you probably don’t know–but with Explora, you can find out. Explora lets you view Wikipedia articles on local businesses, neighborhoods, and more, while in the process, you learn about your world.[...]
What
Read More »[Windows] Keep track of files and add the date to the end of filenames with Append Date
Many computer users deal extensively with files every day. However, they often loose track of which exact version of a file something is, or when it was created. With Append Date, that’s not an issue: this little program lets you append the date to any filename with the click of [...]
We have another Windows 8 hater — the developer of Minecraft
Valve hates Windows 8, Blizzard Entertainment isn’t very enthusiastic about Windows 8, and a user interface expert feels Windows 8 is a “cognitive burden” on people. Who else is a Windows 8 naysayer? How about the developer of Minecraft.
Minecraft is a popular game for PCs. Markus “Notch” Persson, the [...]
Read More »[Windows] Attachments too big? Split them with Split Byte
Email, for some bizarre reason, still has an upload limit of around 25-50MB. It’s slowly getting better, but you still can’t send very large attachments to certain people. If you need to email something to someone, try splitting the file with Split Byte.[...]
What is it and what does it
Read More »[Windows 8] Pop the bubbles or die trying in Bubble Star
Bubble Star is a free game on the Windows Store that offers 100 levels and ”hours of fun”–and it’s not just talk. It’s for real. Bubble Star, which is essentially Frozen Bubble with powerups, is a great game to play for a few minutes at a time, eventually working your [...]
[Windows] Monitor CPU usage, memory usage, and computer temperature from your system tray with Perfgraph
Keeping tabs on your CPU and memory usage is a must for anyone who likes to keep their system in tip-top shape. If you’re one of those people, try Perfgraph. It’s a free program that adds a surprisingly minimal chart to your taskbar that can show CPU, memory, network ping [...]
[Windows] Test USB drives for actual storage capacity with H2testw, because knockoff USB drives lie
“$12 for a 64GB flash drive?! Send me 20!”
Cheap thumb drives and hard drives off of Ebay and from street vendors can often be of dubious quantity and quality, even if they claim to work when you plug them into your computer. H2testw is a program that one ups [...]
Read More »[Windows 8] Watch and listen to YouTube videos with Youtube Player
The internet is all about sharing photos, videos, music, and much much more. A large part of this is entirely YouTube, the online video sharing site that has become a home for high quality (and low quality) videos produced by everyone and their dog. Youtube Player brings that great content [...]
EU is getting ready to sue Microsoft which could result in a fine as high as $7.4 billion
Remember that browser choice screen Microsoft promised to include in all EU-destined Windows PCs from 2009 onwards? That same browser choice screen Microsoft “accidentally” forgot to include in Windows 8 but has now promised to add it? Yeah, well, despite Microsoft’s assurance, EU regulators have finalized their probe into Microsoft [...]
Read More »Good lord, we have another one: Adobe is starting rapid release cycle for Flash
Trying to mimic Chrome, last year Mozilla introduced a rapid release cycle for Firefox — Mozilla decided they would release a new major version of Firefox every six weeks or so. This resulted in Firefox, which used to see roughly one major release every year, going from Firefox 4 to [...]
Read More »[Windows] Open Firefox and Firefox Portable at the same time with TwinFox
One of the coolest things about Firefox is that it’s available in both installable and entirely thumbdrive-based portable editions. If you’re a user of the portable version, however, you might find it annoying that you can’t run the installed version at the same time as the version located on your [...]
[Windows] Open frequently used applications and files quickly with the free dock Winstep Nexus
Handy as Windows 7′s taskbar may be for launching all of your favorite apps and programs, it’s still not perfect. There’s still no official way, after three years, to dock specific files on your taskbar–only programs, and within their jumplists, files. Winstep Nexus is a beautiful dock that, along with [...]
[Windows 8] MetroPuzzle is a simple, fun puzzler that makes you think
So few games released today are slow, relaxing puzzlers. That’s what makes MetroPuzzle stand out: rather than being all about rushing as fast as you can, it makes you stop and think. It’s all about the relationships between the blocks themselves, and trying to remove the central white shape by [...]
Be careful what you rent — rent-to-own computers from seven companies spied on users, stealing passwords and photographing… sex
You know those scary stories you hear about how a hacker took control of someone’s webcam and videotaped or photographed them without their knowledge? Yeah, well, it turns out hackers aren’t the only ones doing such things — companies that rent out computers do such things, too.
The Federal Trade [...]
Read More »[Windows] Help your concentration and sleep better with White Noise Sleep System
Extraneous noise can be very distracting–it’s our brains trying to pick patterns out of the background. White noise can help. Random frequencies that combined create the sound from an old CRT TV on the wrong channel, white noise contains no patterns, and thus is impossible for our brains to use. [...]
[Windows] Back up, transfer, and restore your Gmail inbox and archive with GMVault
A lot of people use Gmail to manage their day-to-day lives. But what happens if Gmail were to suddenly get wiped off the face of the earth, or if Google were to close down your account? It’s important to keep backups of your emails for the sake of your data’s [...]
[Windows 8] Watch full-screen TED talks with TEDTalks HD
Ever seen a TED video? If not, then you don’t know what you are missing. TED – which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design – is a nonprofit organization that organizes TED conferences and talks where people give speeches on ideas or inventions they have. They’re amazing to listen to, and [...]
New Java vulnerability in Java 5/6/7 bypasses Java security sandbox, affects 1 billion users worldwide
Is it open season on Java? Or has the season for Java never ended? Who knows. I do know, however, that yet another vulnerability has been discovered in Java. This time the vulnerability affects Java 5, Java 6, and Java 7, meaning roughly one billion users around the world are [...]
Read More »[Windows] Help scientists unravel the mysteries of protein folding with Folding@home
Did you know that, around the world, there are numerous projects to use home computers as distributed supercomputers? There are, and Folding@home is one of the most famous ones. Created by scientists at Stanford University, it lets your computer join a vast network that allows them to study the science [...]
[Windows] Download and upload to remote fileservers (FTP, SCP, SFTP) with WinSCP
There are tons of people who use FTP clients every day. Graphic designers use them to upload completed designs. Web programmers use them to upload finished scripts and programs. Whatever you use them for, try WinSCP. It’s a free and popular client that does not only FTP, but SFTP [...]
[Windows 8] Read the latest issue of Popular Science with the free PopSci app
Popular Science is a cool magazine, and has made a great switch over into web magazine form. It has an official Android app, an iOS app, and now, a Windows 8 app. It rolls all of the latest stories and headlines into one big, beautiful app that lets you read [...]
Fake “Microsoft Windows Update” e-mail will steal your Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo, or AOL passwords — be careful
E-mail threats are a non-stop nuisance. After the recent “Important Changes to Microsoft Services Agreement” malicious e-mail, we have another swipe at Windows users. This time the e-mail comes in the form of a phishing attack.
An e-mail from “privacy@microsoft.com” with the subject of “Microsoft Windows Update” is hitting inboxes [...]
Read More »[Windows] View detailed information about the elements of the periodic table with pElement
There is tons of information known about each and every element known to mankind, but accessing it is another story. Most of it is scattered by the winds throughout the internet, some appearing on Wikipedia’s info boxes but most hidden throughout the mountains of text one might expect to find [...]
[Windows 8] Get a beautifully-animated, wonderfully-futuristic disk scanner with Disk Falcon
The future is of technology awesome, according to movies such as The Minority Report and Avatar. (The future itself, not so much.) But those futuristic computer interfaces are actually somewhat possible today–through the use of animated computer graphics and some clever design, the team of developers at Sad Cat Software [...]
[Windows] Edit your Windows Vista or 7 bootloader with Visual BCD Editor
Is your computer prompting you to choose between Windows 7 and some version of Windows you got rid of many years ago? That’s actually an issue with your bootloader, but luckily, with Visual BCD Editor that’s easy to fix. Visual BCD Editor is a free program that lets you edit [...]
[Windows] Disable USB reading or USB writing with one click with Phrozen Safe USB
USB drives are great–a great way to transfer viruses and sensitive files from one computer to another, that is. If you’d prefer to keep other people’s data off of your computer and your data on it, you can easily disable thumbdrives with Phrozen Safe USB with just a single click.[...]
[Windows] Lower your computer’s volume automatically with Volume Concierge
Are you an evening computer user? Many people are, but at the same time, many people choose to sleep or otherwise rest during the same time. If someone in your household or workplace doesn’t want your volume up high at certain times of day, set your computer to automatically lower [...]
[Windows 8] View and learn about the 118 elements with the Periodic Table
Chemistry students everywhere are always in search of a better periodic table–one that shows them everything they need to know without overcrowding the already small squares. Due to their linkable, expandable nature, computers are a natural candidate in the competition, and with Periodic Table, you can quickly get all of [...]
Microsoft releases new update to plug Internet Explorer exploit — get this now even if you got the earlier one (both 32-bit and 64-bit are supported)
Earlier this week dotTech brought you news about a vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer. Microsoft realized the significance of the vulnerability and quickly issued a hack-and-slash Fix it utility to patch the vulnerability. Aside from the fact that the earlier Fix it apparently didn’t support 64-bit machines, it also wasn’t a [...]
Read More »[Windows] Pick a video, song, or file at random with Pick Me
Are you trying to pick just one movie or video to watch tonight? Best of luck! If you were perhaps using a random number generator like Pick Me, however, you could eliminate the overwhelming number of choices and just sit back and relax. It’s incredibly easy to use, and is [...]
[Windows] Collect all of your Windows utilities in one place with Puran Ultilities
Every Windows computer ever, no matter how meticulously kept up, has some amount of useless or junk data on it. Be it in a temp file somewhere, or even a failing hard drive, Puran Utilities lets you seek out disk problems with Disk Check. But Puran Utilities is more than [...]
[Windows 8] Play checkers with your computer in Modern Checkers
Are you a fan of checkers? If you are, you’ll probably be disappointed to hear that there is not going to be an official Microsoft release of checkers for Windows 8. However, that doesn’t mean that other developers can’t come in and create their own versions of the game–and that’s [...]
[Windows 8] Bring Windows Gadgets back to Windows 8 with 8GadgetPack
Microsoft changed thousands of things between Windows 7 and Windows 8. Not the least of the differences is the omission of Gadgets. Originally introduced in Windows Vista as the Sidebar, they were eventually reduced down to just individual gadgets in Windows 7, and taken out entirely in Windows 8. However, [...]
[Windows] Clean up and tweak your dirty context menu with Right Click Enhancer
Every time you right click on a file or folder, it brings up the context menu. In there, age-old programs that you thought you took off of your hard drive 10 years ago lurk around, waiting for you to accidentally unzip your files with the wrong program. Only a few [...]
[Windows 8] Bring scientific calculator functions to your computer with Calculator²
Many people use scientific calculators only once or twice a month. This means that the rest of the time, they’re sitting, occupying space, for vast amounts of time. Ditch the physical device and start using your extremely powerful computer as a calculating machine with Calculator² for Windows 8.
One of [...]
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