It’s a Reference to an Astoundingly Huge Number The Google name originated in 1997 when two Stanford University Ph.D. students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created web search engine technology called PageRank that analyzed the number of links pointing to sites (often called “backlinks”) to determine page ranking results. Originally, the pair called the technology “Backrub,” as a playful pun on their analysis of backlinks. While looking for a better name with officemate Sean Anderson, someone suggested “googolplex,” and Anderson mistakenly typed in “google....

Due Diligence Required To be clear: we’re not saying you should never buy any of these items online, just that there is an elevated level of risk involved in making some of these purchases. Many of these risks can be mitigated with care and attention, or simply abstaining from the purchase and spending your money elsewhere. The most important thing to remember when buying anything online is that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is....

If you’re a first-time MacBook owner or are considering buying one, you probably have a lot of questions about the notebooks and ecosystem. We’ve answered some of the most common queries newbies might have to help get you up to speed. Can I Keep It Plugged in All of the Time? Like any other laptop, you can keep your MacBook hooked up to power all of the time if you want....

Part of the reason why Roku has been so successful is how easy it is to use Roku devices. The interface is simple, and it really hasn’t changed much at all since it was first released. We think a few extra features would go a long way in making Roku even better. RELATED: 7 Roku Features You Should Be Using Content Recommendations Content recommendations on TV platforms are a divisive topic....

Saving time, performing tasks easily, working efficiently, and maximizing output are all parts of productivity. With these several Google Sheets features, you can boost your productivity and work more effectively on your spreadsheets. 1. Calculations Without Formulas Like viewing calculations in Microsoft Excel’s status bar, you can quickly see the sum, average, minimum, or maximum of a group of cells in Google Sheets. This gives you an easy way to see calculations without adding formulas that you may not need in your sheet....

The first thing you will need to do is download and install Google Desktop. You may think of this as a free product offered from Google that will index email, files, and web history on your computer for faster searching and access. While it does offer faster searching for computer items, when you install Google Desktop you’re not required to include the enhanced search features. We will cover the indexing and other enhanced features of Google Desktop in future posts....

Now that the Android 13 developer preview is out, the folks at 9To5Google have managed to dig into the operating system to learn some of its secrets. One such secret can be found in the settings menu, and it’s that delicious Tiramisu codename. In Android 12, Google hid the codename a little better, simply listing the Android version as “S” in the settings. For Android 13, it appears the company didn’t want to make people dig as much since it put the dessert codename right under the Android version section of the About phone part of the settings area....

If you’d like to backup your entire profile including passwords, cookies, bookmarks, etc, you can use this method. Open up the Add-ons screen and find Password Exporter in the list, where you can click the Options button to bring up the Import/Export Passwords dialog. You can either import or export your passwords using this dialog, and you can choose to encrypt them if you want. You can export in either XML or CSV format....

Scott Lovegrove has solved this problem for everybody by creating the Windows Live Writer Backup Utility, which can even be run with command line arguments for automating backups. The interface of the application is simple enough, all you really need to do is click the world’s biggest Backup button and specify the location to save the file. You can also start it from the command line with any one of the command line arguments....

Here’s your default inbox view, notice that the subject line is underneath and is in a lighter gray color that’s more difficult to read at a glance. To change this setting, go to your View menu, then Current View, and then Customize Current View (note that you could create a new view for this setting if you wanted) Now click on the “Fields…” button to open up the Show Fields dialog....

Changing this setting without a GUI will require some text editing, but that’s classic linux, right? Let’s open up the /etc/network/interfaces file. I’m going to use vi, but you can choose a different editor For the primary interface, which is usually eth0, you will see these lines: As you can see, it’s using DHCP right now. We are going to change dhcp to static, and then there are a number of options that should be added below it....

There are two solutions that I’ve found to make Firefox expand this dialog by default, one is an extension and the other is a Stylish script, so we’ll go over both solutions. Using the OpenBook Extension Download and install the OpenBook extension from Mozilla Add-ons, and after rebooting Firefox you’ll see that the bookmark dialog is now open by default: There are also a bunch more useful options available in the ridiculously tall Options window:...

Most popular video call services allow you to blur the background of your video feed, including Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and others. The feature is a great way to hide personal information (e.g. photos of family members on a wall) and distractions, but right now, each web app has to implement its own background blur technology. That usually involves cloud-based software or artificial intelligence libraries like Google’s Tensorflow, sometimes with mixed results....

The Release Channels are separated into three categories for Windows. Stable (what everyone has when they first install Google Chrome) Beta (stable and complete features that are promoted from the Dev Channel approximately once per month) Developer Preview (has the newest features and ideas being tested, can be very unstable at times) At the moment, the Release Channels for Linux (32 & 64 bit) and Mac are Developer Preview only....

I do not have the specific technical energy consumption facts but generally a LCD’s use 20-50 Watts of power. On the other hand a CRT monitor can use as much as 150 Watts! The amount of power needed between the two is dramatic. I usually advise you looking at half the power consumption with an LCD monitor. With Energy Star Rated you’re looking at even less. For myself the quality of LCD’s seems better as well....

What VPNs Will Protect You From Before we get to that, though, it’s probably best to go over what virtual private networks are and what they’re good for. When you access the internet, you do so by connecting first to a server run by your internet service provider, which then connects to the website you’d like to visit, in this case, How-To Geek. A VPN reroutes your connection: From your ISP’s server, your connection goes to one operated by the VPN provider, and then to the site you’d like to visit....

Google Sheets like Microsoft Excel offers many functions for calculations and tasks. While you can use symbols to perform mathematical comparisons, it may be beneficial to use the functions we’ll discuss instead. Why Use Google Sheets’ Operator Functions Comparison operation functions include things like greater than, less than, equal to, and the like. And if you use formulas in Google Sheets already, then you know you can use symbols for these operations....

OpenPGP and GNU Privacy Guard One of the advantages of electronic files over paper hard copies is you can encrypt electronic files so that they are only accessible by authorized people. If they fall into the wrong hands, it doesn’t matter. Only you and the intended recipient can access the contents of the files. The OpenPGP standard describes a system of encryption called public-key encryption. The GNU Privacy Guard implementation of that standard resulted in gpg, a command-line tool for encrypting and decrypting in accordance with the standard....

Enabling the Accessibility Features There are two different features you’ll need to enable to control your Mac with both facial expressions and head gestures. Both of these features will need access to your camera to work. To get there, click the Apple icon in the desktop’s menu bar and then select “System Preferences” from the drop-down menu. In System Preferences, click the “Accessibility” option. In the left-hand pane of the next screen, scroll down to the Motor group and click “Pointer Control....

Importing Gmail Contacts Exporting your Gmail contact information is basically handled the same for you to use the file to import into any email application. Just log into your account, select Contacts and then individual or All contact then Export to a location on your hard drive. Next choose Outlook’s CSV format to allow the file to easily transfer into the application. The next thing we need to do is import that contacts file into Outlook 2007....