Note: This method uses Local Group Policy Editor which is not available in Home versions of Windows 7. User Installed Gadgets A user installed gadget would be one they install from another location on their own. For example, here we take a look at a user account who has two gadgets included in Windows 7 installed. And also two they installed themselves from the Microsoft site. In this example we look at disabling gadgets the user installed, but keep the default gadgets that came with Windows 7....

In today’s article we’ll cover the basics of using pptPlex, how to use it to organize our slides, and we’ve even put together a small PowerPoint presentation that we created to help get you started making your slides more interesting. Note: Microsoft Office Labs has ended their conceptual test of Pptplex and won’t be developing new versions, however you can still download and use Pptplex in Office 2007 and 2010....

When working with MSSQL databases, you may find that you need to export databases over a network share directly from the SQL Server Management Studio (SMSS) interface. While SMSS doesn’t contain this function natively, we are going to show you a work around! First, Let’s Cover Exporting and Importing MSSQL Databases As a basic necessity to utilize this guide, we want to make sure you know how to export and import your databases as ....

You can wipe Windows and start fresh or even buy new hardware, but before you go to extremes, sit down and audit your startup programs to speed up your Windows PC. Why Audit Your Startup Programs? The longer you’ve had your current installation of Windows up and running, the more likely it is that your PC launches a veritable armada of apps every time you restart the machine. If it’s been years since you’ve reinstalled Windows or upgraded your machine, there’s a good chance your startup list is pretty long....

Note: We used Windows 7 for this tutorial. Your experience on a Mac or Ubuntu Linux build may vary slightly. Hardware Requirements x86 (Intel/AMD processor) based system running at 1.0GHz or greater 512MB system memory (RAM) or more Video card capable of OpenGL 1.4, Direct X 9.0 Software Requirements Mac OS X 10.4+ (Intel based processor) Ubuntu Linux 9.04+ Windows XP / Vista / 7 (64 bit in Vista or 7)...

Algorithm Free Long-time social media users may remember when algorithms didn’t dominate the landscape. Every timeline and feed was in a simple chronological order. When one of your friends posted something, you saw it. Food tasted better, the air smelled sweeter—okay, I’m getting carried away. That’s not how social networks operate anymore, not by a long shot. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are dominated by algorithms with one purpose—keeping you on the website/app....

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, approximately half of severe car crashes occur in rural areas and about half also involve a single vehicle. So having something in your pocket or on your wrist that can get help for you is clearly more than a bit useful than asking Lassie to do it. How Crash Detection Works Both the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Series 8 feature a microphone that detects impact noise, an accelerometer that senses rapid deceleration, and a barometer that can mark a shift in pressure consistent with an airbag....

With Microsoft Excel’s NETWORKDAYS function, you can count the number of workdays that fall between two specified dates. This function excludes Saturdays, Sundays, and optionally the specified holidays. We’ll show you how to use it. This function can account for holidays in its calculation, but you must specify those holidays in a column, so be ready with a list of your holiday dates. Also, it’s important you keep in mind that this function counts both the starting date and the ending date in the calculation....

The Process Depends on Your Dock The Apple Watch Dock is what appears when you tap the Side button once. It’s a list of apps that, depending on your settings, will either show the last watch apps you’ve used or a list of favorite apps that you would like to access quickly. The default behavior is just to show a list of recently-used apps. When doing this, swiping left on an app will reveal a red “X,” which you can tap to close the app....

Redux simplifies state management in complex applications. As the Redux store contains your app’s entire state, persisting it lets you save and restore the user’s session. Creating Your Store We’ll assume you’re familiar with Redux fundamentals. For this tutorial, we’ll use a barebones store with a naive reducer. This trivial example sets the stage for a Redux store that can track whether we’re logged in. Most users will expect to remain signed in when they return to your app....

MySQL stores meta information about databases and tables in the information_schema database, and information specifically about tables is stored in the TABLES table. So all we have to do is run a query to look it up. Hmm. Maybe we’ll need to run a better query. So the data_length column gives us how much data is actually in the tables, so maybe if we just include that and sort, we’ll get something better… hmm… now this is in bytes....

The new Windows Terminal app is awesome—one of the coolest features you can set up is custom SSH profiles that are available as a dropdown menu. This allows you to access your servers quickly without typing in the hostname every time! Prerequisites This feature is usually meant for separate profiles or instances, like Ubuntu WSL vs. Powershell vs. CMD. However, you have the ability to launch a profile and run a command, and that command can be ssh....

Why Use a PSU Tester? PSU testers are so cheap and so easy to use that we really can’t recommend them enough. If you have a multimeter, you’re comfortable using it, and you don’t mind testing a bunch of pins and taking notes, you can certainly test your PSU the old-fashioned way. But, besides the simple plug-and-play ease of using a PSU tester, it has one significant benefit over doing the test manually....

Running Disk2VHD Disk2vhd allows you to create a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) of a physical machine even while the machine is up and running using volume snapshot technology. This small utility doesn’t require installation and you can run it from a flash drive if you want. Just open up the Disk2vhd folder and run the executable. Agree to the EULA… Now select the physical drive you want to turn into a VHD, give it a name and location to create and store it....

With a few clicks, you can create and maintain you own environment variables which are both global on the system and survive reboots. Creating a Custom System Environment Variable Creating a new global system variable is quite simple and is one of those features hiding in plain sight. Please note the screenshots are for Windows Server 2008, however the process for most versions of Windows is almost identical with only a few of the screens different....

Open-Source Intelligence Despite the name open-source intelligence (OSINT) is not related to open-source software—although there are many open-source software tools that can help you in gathering open-source intelligence. OSINT is intelligence gathered from publicly available sources. There’s no cybercrime required to obtain this information, it is readily available if you know where to look and how to search. OSINT can be gathered from sources such as the internet, mass media, social media, research journals, and state or national government search tools such as California’s Secretary of State Business Search and the United Kingdom’s Companies House Company Search....

Kodu is a visual programming language suitable to teach kids the basic of programming and to train their creativity. In today’s lesson, we will build a simple game that we can use as an introduction to Kodu. The Building Blocks of Kodu The world of Kodu consist of programmable objects where we can attach a behavioral script into each object that we place on the Kodu landscape. Kodu’s programming language is a simple icon based programming user interface where the language are broken down into pages and rules....

The free version of Spotify streams tracks at 96kbps on the mobile apps and 160kbps on your computer. That’s a small, but noticeable drop in quality compared to a CD. With Spotify Premium, you have the option to listen to tracks at up to 320kbps, which is essentially the same as CD quality audio. If you’re worried about burning through data at that higher level, you can choose different streaming qualities for Wi-Fi and cellular....

Taskbar Meters These handy monitors show up in your Taskbar and show the amount of resources being used. There are three meters for CPU utilization, Memory usage, and Disk IO. You can configure the Update frequency and percentage of Red and Yellow states for each monitor. The CPU Meter shows the amount of processing power your computing tasks are taking up. Memory Meter shows the amount of memory that is being used by the apps you’re running....

Word 2010 In Word 2010 open your document and click the View tab on the Ribbon, then check the Navigation Pane. The Navigation Pane will open on the left side of the document. Now click on Browse the pages in your documents icon. Now you can easily navigate to specific pages of the document using the thumbnails in the Navigation Pane. Office 2007 To browse a long document using thumbnails in Word 2007 click the View tab on the Ribbon and in the Show/Hide section check Thumbnails....