Requirements Windows XP / Vista / 7 or Intel based Mac w/ OS X 10.5 or later. 1 GB RAM or more Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or higher / AMD Athlon 3200+ Broadband connections TV Tuner for streaming and recording live TV (optional) Note: Slower internet connections may result in stuttering during playback. Installation and Setup Download and install Orb on your home computer. (Download link below) You’ll want to take the defaults for the initial portion of the install....

Every geek wants to pretend that they are a dangerous hacker with the ability to take down any PC, and after you read this article, you can do show off your skills with nothing more than Notepad. Of course, we’re not making an actual virus—it’s a fake virus. In fact, it’s a test virus. But it’s still fun, and today’s article is sponsored by reader Erik, who wrote in and told us about it....

Last week we showed you how to try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC and get started developing for the upcoming new devices. We noticed, however, that the emulator only contains Internet Explorer Mobile and some settings. This is still interesting to play around with, but it wasn’t the full Windows Phone 7 experience. Some enterprising tweakers discovered that more applications were actually included in the emulator, but were simply hidden from users....

Windows users in European countries should start seeing the so called “Browser Ballot Screen” after installing the Windows Update KB976002 (link below). The browser ballot offers a dozen different browsers, including some you’ve likely never heard of. They each have some unique features, and are all free, and here we take a quick look at each of them. Internet Explorer 8 Internet Explorer is the world’s most used web browser, as it’s bundled with Windows....

Google revealed in a blog post today that it will update several of its iPhone apps “in the coming weeks” with widgets made for the iOS 16 lock screen. Google Search will have quick shortcuts for starting a text, voice or camera search. Chrome will offer similar search shortcuts, as well as buttons for opening a new Incognito Mode tab and the Dino game. Google Drive will have a widget for suggested files, such as documents recently shared with you, as well as a shortcut for starred files and folders....

Add Videos to Start Menu (Windows 7) There are links to several things on the Start Menu by default, but the Videos folder is not one of them. To add it right-click on the Start button and select Properties, and under the Start Menu tab click on Customize. Now scroll down to Videos and select Display as a link and click Ok. Videos now appears on your Start Menu....

cron is an automation tool, so anything that you run on a regular basis can likely be switched over to a cron job. If you wanted to make regular daily backups, or restart a service once a week, cron can do that. How Does Cron Work? Cron jobs are defined in a file called the crontab. This file is unique to each user, and while they’re usually located under /var/spool/cron/crontabs, they’re not intended to be edited directly....

When it comes to browser names, sometimes a browser gets a straightforward name that implies exactly what it does—like Internet Explorer. But Chrome? Why name a browser after shiny metal? The Name Is Design Reference The name “Chrome” was assigned as a codename to Google’s browser project early on in the development cycle back in the late 2000s. It’s both a reference to the actual chrome found on iconic and fast mid-century muscle cars—Chrome was designed to be a faster and more streamlined replacement to the browsers of the day—and a reference to the design of browsers themselves....

When Mousepads Were Needed The public debut of the mousepad occurred in 1968 during what has become known as “The Mother of All Demos.” It was used by Douglas Engelbart as he showed off some revolutionary computer hardware and software. Of course, mousepads were created in response to computer mice. The first mouse used two wheels to track movement, but they quickly evolved to use trackballs instead. Mousepads were created to increase the friction of the ball in the mouse....

Despite powering over 90% of cloud workloads today, Unix (and Linux with it) had humble beginnings. Jim Hall discusses how Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s became the backbone of many modern operating systems. The Origins of Unix In the early days of computing, users interacted with the computer through a variety of byzantine means. The original ENIAC didn’t even feature a “programming interface” like we think of such things today; instead, programmers connected separate “functional units” together using plugs and wires....

Accessing Your Yahoo! Account If you are not already signed into Yahoo! in your browser then you will need to login when accessing the drop-down window. As soon as you are signed in the first thing that you will see will be your “Inbox”. Note: The only problem we noticed during our tests was the slowness of the “Toolbar Button” to display the “Unread E-mails Count”. Before going further one of the nice things about the extension is the ability to have the drop-down window pop out into a new but small separate window (use the “link” in the upper left corner)....

Using Zoho Notebook Helper Using the extension is easy and straightforward. Highlight the text, images, and links that you want to save, right click and select Add to Zoho Notebook. Note: It is recommended that you leave your status bar visible while using the extension. You can choose to add the selection to a new or pre-existing notebook or page. We created a new page for our example. Once your selection has been added to your account, you can see how nicely the formatting is retained....

The standard model comes with 2GB of RAM, which isn’t a lot, but the Fire HD 8 Plus bumps that up to 3GB of RAM. They also come with up to 64GB of storage, expandable up to 1TB using a microSD card.

Adding External Drive for WHS Folder Backup After plugging in the external drive open Windows Home Server Console and you’ll see the drive listed and that it’s not added yet. Right-click and select Add from the menu. The Add a Hard Drive Wizard kicks off… In the next screen it’s important to select the radio button next to Use this hard drive to back up files that are stored on your home server....

Note: XBMC has been replaced by Kodi. We have an updated guide to using movie sets in Kodi. Despite if you think the second two Matrix movies should be included in the trilogy or not, combining movie collections and being able to reorder the movies in the order they were released is a much needed feature in any movie library. In XBMC there are a couple of ways to set up this feature, and if you prefer using a text editor check out the link below....

Creating New Keyboard Shortcuts Go to the start menu shortcut for the program, right-click on it, and select properties. When the properties window opens click in the shortcut key text area. All that you need to do is choose an appropriate letter for the program (i.e. O for Opera, E for Editra, etc.) and type it in the blank. You will not need to type any other keys or combination in…the “Ctrl + Alt +” will be automatically entered for you as soon as you type the letter in....

Just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send Facebook packing, though. There’s more than one good reason to kick Facebook to the curb. One possible reason is due to the amount of information the social media giant keeps on you. While you can see what data they keep and opt out of them storing this data, some folks find it uncomfortable and just want to get off the platform all together....

Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago. The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7. But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC....

Windows 7 introduced the new Sensors and Location platform that would let Windows automatically respond to environmental changes sensed by light, orientation sensors, or GPS chips. This makes your computer more aware of its surroundings and change itself accordingly. The location platform is especially interesting, as it brings the potential of automatic location based search and maps to your PC. Unfortunately, most laptops today are not equipped with GPS chips....

The Problem You swap out a sound card, make adjustments to it, or are upgrading to another version of Foobar2000. When you open it up to listen to your favorite tunes, you see the following playback error message. The Fix Open the player and to to File \ Preferences. Then expand Playback and highlight Output, and make sure the correct soundcard is selected for your Output Device. That’s it! Now you should be back in business listening to your music on one of the coolest music players out there....