5 PowerPoint Templates for Efficient Meetings

Statistics indicate people spend up to 35-50 percent of their work time in meetings. It’s no wonder many individuals grumble at the mere idea of meeting with colleagues during the workday. Fortunately, tools like PowerPoint make meetings less miserable. They can serve as aids and keep the pace of meetings flowing. Even better, PowerPoint templates can shorten the time you have to spend putting your slides together. Below, you can explore five PowerPoint options and learn how you can customize them to suit the unique needs of your next presentation. 1. General Meeting Template A company meeting is an excellent...

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Are These 10 Lightroom Mistakes Ruining Your Photos?

How are your Lightroom skills? Do you make your photos shine, or do you spoil them with your heavy-handed technique? Could you even tell the difference? Browse through Flickr, or any other online photo sharing site, and you’ll see the same mistakes made again and again: poor exposure, too much saturation, dodgy HDR, and more. They’re all easy to avoid, but only if you can recognize them in the first place. Let’s take a look at 10 of the worst Lightroom mistakes you need to avoid. 1. Not Straightening the Horizon There’s no more obvious sign of a snapshot than...

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Here Are 20 Hidden Amazon Features You Shouldn’t Ignore

Amazon is packed with cool features that can make your life easier. You’ve got your core set of Prime benefits, plus several newer Prime features that trickled in over the years. There’s a lot to love about Prime. But what if you don’t have Prime? No problem! Amazon still has dozens of other useful perks that you can take advantage of right now without paying an extra cent. You probably know about a few of these already, but I guarantee there are a handful you’ve never even heard of before. Orders and Shipments 1. Shipment Updates via Text Amazon offers...

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Which VPNs Still Work With Netflix?

In January 2016, Netflix announced a crackdown on VPNs, or virtual private networks. This meant that using a VPN to access the Netflix catalog offered in a different country was suddenly against the company’s terms of service. And while many thought that the crackdown on VPNs would ultimately fail, it hasn’t so far. As of now, if you try to access Netflix through a VPN, it will immediately thwart you from doing so. You’ll see this error message: Why Netflix Is Wrong In Blanket-Banning VPNs The core logic of the ban makes sense. Movie and TV show producers sell rights...

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7 Free Microsoft Paint Alternatives

Microsoft officially deprecated Paint in July 2017. Of course, the app hasn’t been updated since Windows 7 anyway, so it’s hardly news. While it will remain available through the Windows Store, this really spells the end for MS Paint. Microsoft is now squarely focused on the new Paint 3D; there’s only so much time the old version of Paint can remain available until it becomes a liability. Perhaps it’s time to start looking for free alternatives? Here are seven of the best for you to check out. 1. Paint.NET Paint.NET started life as a student project back in 2004, but...

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Mozilla Needs You to Test New Firefox Features

Mozilla has launched a trio of experimental Firefox features, and it needs you to test them out. The new features are all at an early stage of development, and available in the Test Pilot program. And your feedback could help determine whether they make it into a future version of Firefox. Firefox was once the major alternative to Internet Explorer, but then Chrome arrived to spoil Mozilla’s party. Firefox is still popular, but it’s no longer the force it once was. Now, Mozilla is putting a lot of work into Firefox in the hopes of competing with Chrome once again....

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Should You Use AMD or NVIDIA GPUs on Linux?

When it comes to choosing a fast graphics card, there are two main options: AMD and Nvidia. There are a number of factors that set them apart, and this is doubly so on Linux. On Windows, speed is the only thing that matters — Nvidia GPUs (graphical processing unit) tend to be faster than AMD. But on Linux, there are other things to keep in mind. GPU Drivers: Proprietary vs. Open Source There are two types of drivers you can install to get your graphics cards working, namely proprietary drivers or open source. While there are good and bad aspects to...

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Partition Tables and the Dangers of Editing Them

If you’re a computer tinkerer (since you’re here, there’s a pretty good chance you are), you’re probably familiar with the following dreaded sight: You’ve finished one of your projects, and have just rebooted. You’re greeted with a pitch black screen with the words in tiny white letters, “Invalid partition table!” It’s dreaded because that’s as far as your machine will get while booting. Let’s take a look at exactly what a partition table is and why it’s important to take care when reconfiguring your computer’s drives. All About Hard Disk Drives To help understand partitions, it is useful to understand the media:...

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12 Free Windows Store Platform Games to Jump For

The platforming genre holds some of the most esteemed games of all time. But even if you aren’t playing a masterpiece, they’re still a ton of fun to play. When you need a break from your day and want to run and jump as a silly character and avoid danger while collecting objects, these free Windows Store games have you covered. Plus, you can even take them offline if you like. Control a Kooky Character Like platformers that feature a wild protagonist? These games are for you. 1. Dave in Danger Based on the original Dangerous Dave game from 1988, Dave...

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How to Permanently Delete an Ebook From Your Kindle Account

Decluttering, whether physical or digital, is good for the soul. But for most of us, there are areas we overlook when cleaning — like our Kindle libraries. While it’s easy to delete ebooks from a Kindle device or Kindle mobile app, removing books from your Kindle cloud account isn’t as straightforward. In this post, we’ll go over how to do both. Deleting Ebooks From Your Kindle Device You can delete ebooks from your device or app right within said device or app. Navigate to the list of titles downloaded to your device, find the title you want to remove, tap and hold the title,...

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How to Enable Echo Notifications for Amazon Packages

Amazon’s Echo can do so much through its library of skills that it’s easy to forget that it has lots of neat functionality built right in. If you order a lot from Amazon, it’s handy to know when a package you’ve ordered is coming your way, right? By flipping a quick setting, you can have Alexa tell you when a package was marked for delivery. No matter which Echo you have, open the Alexa app on your phone and slide out the left menu. Select Settings and then tap the Notifications entry. At this time, there’s only one selection in...

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Want to Design a Book Cover? Watch This Free 33-Episode Photoshop Course

The best way to learn Photoshop is to take on an actual project. Tasty Tuts is a great place to learn Photoshop, and their YouTube channel is a must-stop on your learning journey. It has fresh new content for you every month, which is great for someone trying to catch up with the digital arts. Their latest free offering is a 33-episode course that will teach you how to design a book cover for a children’s book from scratch. Though it’s meant to be a beginner’s guide, it can also be a refresher course for anyone who wants to sharpen their skills. The...

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How to Back Up Your Hard Drive to Google Drive

Data backup is one of the most important aspects of modern computing. How would you feel if you lost a lifetime of photos, all your treasured videos, every important document you own, and your entire media collection just because your hard drive died? Of course, you might get lucky and be able to salvage some content, but it’s a risk not worth taking. You need to make regular backups. There are lots of high-quality backup tools on the market, but as of last month, there’s another free option for you to consider: Google Drive. Using Google Drive for Data Backups...

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You Can Now Control Your Fire TV With Your Voice

If you own an Amazon Fire TV or Fire TV Stick you can now control it with just your voice. How? By making use of Alexa, of course. There are some caveats though… You have to live in the U.S., also own an Echo device, and be willing to issue commands to an artificial intelligence. Not content with simply selling us stuff we don’t need Amazon is slowly but surely taking over our living rooms as well. The Amazon ecosystem now incorporates multiple devices, and they’re gradually learning to communicate with each other. The latest pairing is your Echo and...

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6 Ways You Can Use Microsoft Office Without Paying For It

Microsoft Office remains the gold standard of office applications. Don’t get me wrong: There are several good Microsoft Office alternatives available, but nothing comes close to the real-deal. That said, if you want Microsoft Office, you’ll be reaching deep into your pockets. Its continued popularity hasn’t seen Microsoft take a soft stance, and reduce the price. Microsoft Office 2016 Home & Business currently retails for $229 for a single PC license. If that makes your wallet weep, check out these methods to use Office for free. [AMAZON id=B0153V61XU] 1. Use Office Online Microsoft itself offers a substantial collection of free...

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These Laptop Computer Temperature Monitor Apps Could Save Your Hard Drive

Heat wreaks havoc on computers, especially laptops. Tight cases and dust buildup can lead to poor air circulation, and without circulation, the heat generated inside has nowhere to go. Indeed, ignoring heat problems is the surest way to destroy a laptop. You thought it slowed down because it’s old and contains outdated hardware? That’s partly true, but not the whole story. Heat can severely impair the performance of computer components, with hard drives being the most susceptible. If your hard drive seems like it’s dying, first check the internal temperature. Fortunately, checking temperatures is as easy as using one of...

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You Can Now Make Microsoft Word Read Documents Aloud

Microsoft Word has a new trick up its sleeve, and it should help anyone who struggles with the written word. The new feature is called Read Aloud, and it’s a significant improvement on the previous text-to-speech offerings in Word. Let’s hope this helps eradicate typos once and for all. Most of us can look at a word and immediately tell whether it’s spelt wrong. Or look at a sentence and tell whether it’s structured correctly. However, some people struggle with these things. Which is the main reason why Microsoft has upped its text-to-speech game with Read Aloud. Microsoft Word Can...

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Learn to Use Mac Automator With 6 Handy Example Workflows

Apple’s Automator for Mac is where many get their first taste of programming. Before Workflow, before IFTTT, there was Automator for Mac. A little bit of patience and creativity are all you need to start automating your Mac — you don’t need to know a single line of code. These are some example actions you can build that should get you familiar with the various types of things you can build using Automator. With these blueprints, you should be able to get started building your own. Getting Started With Automator When you open a new document in Automator, it presents you a...

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