This feature has been available in Office 2007 from the beginning but we never covered it yet, and it was something I overlooked. After playing around with it for a while however, I found that it is a good way to manage the multitude of emails I get everyday. Here we will go through colorizing contacts who are sending messages so they’re easier to spot. Also categorizing the subject matter into different color groups seems to help in keeping thing straight....

AutoGK is a free application that runs on Windows. It supports Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Transport Streams, Vobs, and virtually any codec used for an .AVI file. AutoGK will accept as input the following file types: MPG, MPEG, VOB, VRO, M2V, DAT, IFO, TS, TP, TRP, M2T, and AVI. Files are output as .AVI files and are converted using the DivX or XviD codecs. Installing and Using AutoGK Download and install AutoGK (link below) Open the AutoGK....

The first thing we need to check is whether or not a profile already exists. We can do this by opening a PowerShell window and typing: Since our query returned “False” we are going to have to create a new profile. We’ll type the following in our PowerShell prompt: You should get the following pop-up, and just click yes to proceed. The profile script will now be created. It will be in the location following the “Directory:” output....

Turn Off Suggested Sites Suggested Sites is a feature in Internet Explorer 8 (included in Windows 7 by default) and enables you to find sites similar to the one you’re visiting. When Suggested Sites is turned on, your browsing history is sent to Microsoft where they compare it to a list of updated sites that are related. To turn off the feature click on Tools \ Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab then scroll down to Enable Suggested Sites and uncheck the box to turn it off then click Ok....

Note: Jarte comes in “Exe and Portable” versions. Installation & Startup One of the nice features present during the installation is the ability to choose which dictionaries that you would like to have added. Notice that even if you installed all of the dictionaries that less than 10 MB of disk space would be required. Once the installation has finished and Jarte starts for the first time you will be presented with the EULA....

The Nest Audio is Google’s top-tier smart speaker, with the ability to pair two to create a stereo setup. Now you can get one (or two, or three) of them for $49.99, a discount of $50 from the usual price. Starting with the basics, the Nest Audio is a smart speaker with Google Assistant. It can play music from popular streaming services (like Spotify and YouTube Music), answer questions, set reminders and alarms, play podcasts, control smart home devices, and much more — all with simple voice commands....

SkyDrive Explorer After installing SkyDrive Explorer…go into My Computer and you’ll see the drive listed. To access the drive you’ll need to sign into your Windows Live account. Now you should see all of the folders and files you have created and stored in your SkyDrive. You aren’t able to open files directly from SkyDrive Explorer, but you can copy, delete, and rename them. Before deleting an item, you’ll get a confirmation dialog box making sure you want to permanently delete it from the SkyDrive....

PowerShell is used by many server administrators. Naturally, one of the most used tasks is the ability to build scripts and functions to inventory your servers and understand what your environment has. Though there are many ways to accomplish this, with varying levels of complexity, we are going to build a fairly simple but effect Windows Server Inventory Report within this article. Prerequisites This article will be hands-on. If you intend to follow along, please be sure you have the following prerequisites in place first:...

If you use Excel to create a checklist, you may want to count the number of checked or unchecked boxes. With a simple formula, you can tally them in a cell that adjusts as more boxes are marked or unmarked. Designate Cells for the Checkbox Controls When you check a box in Excel, the result of the check is True. For unchecked boxes, the result is False. So, before you create the formula to count your checkboxes, you’ll need to designate cells to hold the True or False result....

Instead of having a bunch of separate drives to deal with, why not put them together into one big drive? You can use software RAID to accomplish this, and here’s how to do it. RELATED: How to Use Windows 10’s Storage Spaces to Mirror and Combine Drives Windows 8 or 10? Use the new Storage Spaces feature instead. Windows has built in functionality to set up a software RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) without any additional tools....

Auto Playlists In Library view, click on Create playlist dropdown arrow and select Create auto playlist. On the New Auto Playlist window type in a name for the playlist in the text box. Now we need to choose our criteria by which to filter your playlist. Select Click here to add criteria. For our example, we will create a playlist of songs that were added to the library in the last week from the Alternative genre....

Image Resizer Powertoy Clone This is a clone of the popular Image Resizer Powertoy developed for Windows XP. To use it, right-click on a photo and select Resize Pictures from the Context Menu. In Basic Mode you can select between 4 different sizes…Small (854×480), Medium (1366×768), Large (1920×1080), or Mobile Device (320×480). Click on the Advanced button to get more options and resize a picture to your own custom size....

Visual Studio has a handy feature for running commands before or after builds. This can be used to automate some of your development process, such as pulling in dependencies during the prebuild phase, or sending build artifacts to development environments. Setting Up Prebuild and Post-build Commands From Visual Studio, right click on the project, and click “Properties.” Then, under “Build Events,” you’ll find the controls for setting the commands that run before and after the build....

PHP in the repositories comes with tons of modules that aren’t needed, and we’ve always custom-compiled our own version with only the things that we need. But when you’re switching from one server to another, or you want to compile it again and you forgot to save the options, there’s luckily a few easy ways to see the configure options. It’s also really helpful for setting up a local development environment that matches production....

Google Cloud Platform is a competitor to AWS that makes running virtualized servers easy and cheap. Unfortunately for beginners, they have a novel approach to setting up SSH that requires some explanation and setup. Quick SSH Access: Use the Console If you need quick access, the simplest method is to click “SSH” from the GCP Compute Engine console. This will bring up a new Chrome window that will transfer keys and connect you to the instance....

Since you shouldn’t have to open up the computer just to figure out what you have installed, here’s how to detect the type of memory your Linux PC has installed without having to open up the case. Note: be sure to read our article on how to tell what type of memory your Windows PC has installed. How to Show the Installed Memory Open up a terminal window and type in the following command:...

By decoding the emotional mess behind a rant, you can find out what changes need to be made in your life to save yourself heartache and time. But you have to brew in the icky feelings first before you can understand what caused them — and then do something productive about it. The rewards of a heartfelt rant don’t come easy. You have to put in the work, sweat, and maybe tears and refine your art of rant....

The point of limiting bandwidth is to make sure your backup scripts don’t clog up the network connection between your web server and database server. Naturally, limiting the amount of bandwidth your backups are using is going to make them happen more slowly, but if you can deal with that, this is the way to do it. Normally your rsync command will look something like this: What you’ll want to do is use the –bwlimit parameter with a KB/second value, like this:...

Microsoft Desktop Player You can run the player from the website (shown here) or download the application for use on your local machine (link below). It allows you to easily access MS training and information in a central interface. To get the Desktop version, download the .msi file from the site… And run through the installer… When you first start out, enter in if you’re an IT Pro, Developer and your role....

Move the Taskbar Right-click an empty area on the Taskbar and uncheck Lock the taskbar. Now that it’s unlocked, hold down the left mouse button and drag it to any of the four sides of your desktop. Here we take a look at it on the right side in Windows 7. Here is a look at what it looks like at the top of the Desktop. Wherever you reposition it, you’ll probably want to move some of your Desktop icons around accordingly....