What Is a VPN Tunnel? The short answer is that a VPN tunnel is an encrypted connection between you and your VPN. It makes it so neither your ISP nor the sites you visit can see what you’re doing unless they crack the encryption—which in practical terms is impossible. Tunnels add a great deal of security to your internet connection and many VPN services advertise them as the alpha and omega of online safety....

Make it Easier to Use With One Hand Google has put out some pretty big Pixel phones. The Pixel 6 Pro, for example, has a massive 6.7-inch display. To make it easier to reach things with one hand, Google has included a handy gesture. The “One-Handed Mode” settings allow you to swipe down on the bottom edge of the screen to do one of two things. You can choose to move the entire screen contents closer to the bottom of the screen or show the notifications....

Navigating a large spreadsheet can become increasingly difficult as you add more data. What if you want to quickly go to a particular cell or range in Google Sheets? Here, we’ll show you a few ways to do this. You might have a specific cell that you update regularly with new data. Or maybe you have a cell range that you constantly review. With the “Go To” feature, links to frequently visited cells, and keyboard shortcuts, you can get where you need to go in your sheet easily....

Some of the new features, like the Downloads directory, are only accessible through your Home directory, which is why it makes sense to put an icon for it right on the desktop. To do this, click the Start button, and then right click on your User name. Choose the Show on Desktop option: Now your home directory icon should show up on your desktop: Alternate Method You can also right-click on the desktop, choose Personalize from the menu, and then Desktop Icons on the left-hand pane....

Google has been testing the next release of Android for most of this year, known as Android 13. Now the final beta version has arrived, taking us one step closer to the completed update. Android 13 Beta 4 is now available for download on select Google Pixel devices, which Google says is the last testing update before Android 13 is officially completed. The final stable update is “just a few weeks away,” and just like the other betas, the new Beta 4 update is mostly intended for developers who need to test apps and games on Android 13....

While visually unassuming, the PW515 is a swiss army knife of a webcam. It packs a middle-of-the-road microphone and stellar 4K Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor into a sleek grey and black exterior. If your office setup is lacking a webcam, this is a great place to start. Out Of the Box The PW515 comes in a small cardboard box about as tall and wide as the webcam. Included inside, you’ll also find a 2m (6....

Here’s the dialog that you are probably used to seeing: And here’s the commands that correspond to the different buttons. The most important one from a cleanup perspective is the first, which will delete just the temporary internet files that are cluttering up your computer. To use these commands, just run them from the command line, the start menu search box in vista, or a batch file. Temporary Internet Files...

Note that this tip should work in all versions of Windows. Note that you could also use this in reverse… if your system tray is disabled and you don’t know why, you should check this registry key. You can even remove the clock if you’d like, by right-clicking on the taskbar and choosing Properties. It’s on the Notification Area tab. Manual Registry Hack Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key (Create if it doesn’t exist):...

Most of us like me love to keep the icons and some files in the desktop for quick access but ironically I love a clean desktop too. But there is a simple tweak without any additional tool to get the best of both worlds, you can hide the desktop icons & files and create a custom keyboard shortcut to access those icons and files. Step 1: Hide the desktop icons and files....

Thanks to our great forum member ScottW for coming up with this idea. He’s always an excellent source of geeky wisdom! Using the powercfg Command Windows 7 and Vista come with the powercfg command that you can use from the command prompt, and we’ll have to use this tool to figure out the GUID—the internal ID that Windows uses—for the plan itself. To find the power scheme GUID, simply open up a command prompt and type in the following:...

[Update] A number of readers have pointed out that in Vista you can just right-click the recent items and choose “Clear Recent Items List”. XP is the only one with a bunch of menus to go through. Either way this should work the same across both versions. You can either manually open the shell folder and clear out the items, or you can use the script I’ve provided which will actually give you a shortcut that deletes the recent items with nothing more than a double-click....

Note: Keep in mind Windows 7 is just being released and there could be bugs, crashes, etc…and you won’t be able to restore your system if disaster strikes! Disable System Restore Now with all that being said…Open Control Panel, switch to all items view and click on System. In the next window click on the System Protection link. The System Properties dialog box opens where you will want to select your system disc and click the Configure button....

Speaking of donations … if you really like an open source or freeware application, donate a few bucks to the author of the project it’s just a cool thing to do. Now for ISO Recorder V2. Installation is very slick. The download is less than half a megabyte and the install is 2 clicks. The author of this application, Alex Feinman , considers this a Windows Powertoy which I definitely agree....

LED Backlighting in LCD TVs LCD TVs can be grouped into three categories based on the type of LED backlighting system: Direct-lit, edge-lit, and full-array. As the name suggests, direct-lit TVs feature a panel of LEDs placed directly behind the display stack. Full-array TVs have a similar LED placement, but the number of LEDs is significantly more, and these LEDs are divided into different zones. But unlike both direct-lit and full-array TVs, edge-lit TVs have LEDs on the perimeter, and depending on the TV, these LEDs may or may not be grouped into multiple zones....

I had asked my friend Caveman a while back if it was possible to select text in any application and do a Google search via a hotkey. He came back 30 minutes later with a solution, which I’m posting for you here. First, make sure you have the xsel package installed by running the following command: Now we’ll create a shell script named gsrch.sh and put it in your home folder....

The basic way this works is that at the end of the 30 days, you’ll need to run a small command and reboot your computer, at which point you’ll have 30 more days, up to a maximum of 120 days. This trick should work regardless of where you got your copy of Windows 7 from. Note: make sure to check out our screenshot walkthrough of the Windows 7 Beta if you haven’t already, because Microsoft is giving away beta keys that don’t expire until August 1st....

Cost Generally, gaming mice are going to be more expensive than regular mice–sometimes far more expensive. You can find decent gaming mice starting at $40 with higher-end options around the $150-200 price range. Gaming mice provide more functionality than regular mice, which we’ll discuss throughout this post. Overall, you’ll find more value in gaming mice as they come with software you can use to adjust and customize their features. This includes the macro keys, RGB lighting, sensitivity, and polling rate....

Evernote is free to download and gives you a free 40MB space to synchronize and store notes. First create a new notebook and choose the appropriate settings. You can even store it as public and a URL will be created to share with friends and colleagues. Evernote has a very familiar explorer type user interface. After creating a new notebook the title shows on the left side menu. Saving text and pictures from the Internet is only a matter of highlighting what you want and sending the selection to Evernote....

Note: This software will take an incredibly long time to calculate the entire total, because del.icio.us requires a delay of a couple of seconds between requests. I set the delay to 10 seconds between requests, so if you have 1000 pages in your site it’s going to take you nearly 3 hours. If you don’t use that delay, you’ll end up being blocked by del.icio.us. Best to let it run overnight....

A Look at FotoSketcher Installation is simple and you can have FotoSketcher up and running very quickly. When you open FotoSketcher each time, you will see the following pair of pictures displayed as examples. Getting started is as simple as clicking on the Folder Icon or using the File Menu. Note: There is also a portable version of this software available! Here is a look at the menu setup for FotoSketcher....