Configure Alexa’s Flash Briefing One of the more touted features of the first generation echo was Alexa’s Flash Briefing. At the time, it featured the latest news headlines from NPR as well as your local weather forecast. Over the past two years, it has gained a ton of new sources for all sorts of topics. For more on getting your news fix read our article on how to setup and customize Alexa Flash Briefings....

The new Star Wars: The Force Awakens will open on December 18th this year, just in time for the holiday season chaos. There’s really nothing more to say, other than enjoy! If you haven’t seen the first trailer for the new Star Wars, you can see it in the video below. Are you excited to see the new version? I find this part of the trailer to be quite intriguing....

ipoint.exe is a process that installs with Microsoft IntelliPoint. ipoint.exe provides additional features for Microsoft IntelliPoint devices that are not available via plug and play. If you don’t use this process, you can usually uninstall the Microsoft IntelliPoint software to remove it. You can also manually remove the process by deleting in from: %programfiles%Microsoft IntelliPointipoint.exe Overall ipoint.exe is not an important part of Windows, but it isn’t a dangerous part either....

So what is the music really? It turns out that the music you hear playing is actually the music to the introduction video to Priority Inbox. On some browsers, the video auto-plays without showing up and this caused a lot of confusion among Gmailers. Fixes Perhaps the best fix would be to enable the Priority Inbox and open/close your browser. Music will pretty much be gone. Done and Done. Now, there is also another nuclear bomb approach you could take which would be silly and kind of stupid but… it’s a great excuse to show you a fun trick so let’s take a look....

What causes a HDD to die? There are three major causes of hard disk drive failure. The most common culprit of this is known as a head crash. Under normal operating circumstances, there’s a small arm with an optical head on it that sits just nanometers above the surface of the actual hard disk platter. A head crash is the result of the small optical head rubbing against the disk itself....

Windows 10 Tech Preview Update KB3050653 If you’re running the latest Windows 10 build, the update is available via Windows Update. Gabe Aul sent out the tweet this after noon which you can see below. — Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) March 26, 2015 Although I haven’t seen this problem with any of my Windows 10 test installs apparently it is a problem for enough users out there that Microsoft released this patch today....

Another great thing, when you create reminders on your PC, as long as you are signed into your Microsoft Account on your Windows Phone, you can also have them triggered there, too. Cortana is able to do this by collecting information like your location, history, contacts, voice input, Bing queries, calendar data, communication history from messages, apps, and other information on your computer. Create Time or Location Reminders in Cortana Things you should know and do before creating the reminder:...

A new feature in Windows 8 is logging on with your Windows Live ID then Create a PIN. This gives Windows 8 tablet users a quick login option. If you have a PC or laptop, you can use this feature too. Create a Windows 8 Logon PIN On a tablet, swipe from the right edge of the screen to the left to bring up the Charms Bar and select Settings....

In the technology world, things are constantly changing fast. And, in a move that’s sure to irritate some Windows Live Mail 2012 users, Microsoft has decided it’s pulling support for Outlook.com. Microsoft is (slowly) rolling out a new Outlook.com infrastructure built on top of a foundation based on Office 365. Windows Live Mail doesn’t support the protocols for this new foundation, so you’ll no longer be able to send or receive Outlook....

How to Use Tablet Mode Features in Windows 10 You can enable Tablet mode by swiping in from the right; this will present the Action Center, tap Tablet mode tab at the bottom. Once enabled, you will notice the Taskbar behaves differently. Instead of shortcuts to running applications, there are only a few available commands: Start, Back, Cortana, and Tasks View. The Back button works similarly to the back button on your smartphone....

Log in to your Outlook.com account, click Settings (gear icon) and go to More Mail Settings. Under Writing Email click on Attachments. Here you’ll have three options. To always upload files on SkyDrive, attach files as attachments or let Outlook.com choose. The most preferable option is the third one as outlook can automatically upload large files on SkyDrive and attach small files as attachments. You can also have Outlook.com remind you about forgotten attachments before sending the message....

Manage User Profiles in Microsoft Edge Once you have added a user profile(s), there is some management you can do. To get started, click the profile icon in the upper right corner of the screen and select Manage profile settings from the menu. Then click the Options button (three dots) next to the Sign in button and choose Edit. There you can change the name of the profile as well as choose a new avatar....

Add a Contact to the Safe Senders List in Outlook To get started, launch Outlook and from the ribbon, click on the More commands button (three dots) at the upper-right corner of the toolbar. Then go to Junk > Junk E-mail Options from the menu that pops up. Next, the Junk Email Options dialog will open. Click on the “Safe Senders” tab and click the Add button on the right....

Step 1 Navigate to the website that you’d like to pin as an app. For this example, I’m going to use Google Docs. (Because let’s face it–as great an effort as LibreOffice is, Docs is simply less quirky.) Step 2 Click on the Wrench icon in the top-right and choose Tools > Create Application Shortcuts… Step 3 In the Create Application Shortcuts dialog, Check Desktop and Click Create. Step 4 Go to your desktop and Launch your new Google Docs application shortcut by Double-clicking it....

You don’t typically need to refresh data in a pivot table in Google Sheets, as pivot tables typically refresh themselves when the source data is changed. That isn’t always the case, however. Google Sheets might fail to update if you’re working in a large spreadsheet with a lot of data. If this happens to you, here’s what you’ll need to do to refresh pivot tables in Google Sheets. How to Refresh Pivot Tables in Google Sheets One of the easiest ways to refresh a pivot table in Google Sheets is by refreshing the browser you’re using....

Update: It looks like this trick will work for a few days, sometimes less — depending on your computing environment. For example, in my home office it came back after three days. It looks like it ends up pulling the ad from a different server. After the ad came back, I flushed my DNS — details below on how to do it — and the ad is gone again. Remove Skype Banner Ads To remove them you’ll need to add an entry to your HOSTS file....

Note: This article has been updated to include instructions on removing the checkboxes in Windows 10, which you can find below. Remove Check Boxes from Folders and Files on Windows 7 When the Folder Options window opens, choose the View tab, scroll down and uncheck “Use check boxes to select items,” and click OK. That’s it—no more boxes. Now you can use Ctrl or Shift and click or hit Ctrl + A to select all items....

Instead, you might prefer a shorter name that identifies its location. Or, if you have multiple printers, you might want something that helps identify it more effortlessly. Additionally, you might have only one printer but want a more straightforward name. Whatever the reason, here’s how to rename a printer on Windows 11. Rename a Printer on Windows 11 When you rename a printer, it helps identify it and its location if necessary....

For example, here I associated PDF files to open with Aldiko reader. I would rather it opens with a different program, and need to get rid of that association. To do it, go to the Settings menu of your Nexus 7 – it’s in the main Apps menu. You’ll find a list of installed apps. Select the one you want to clear file associations for. In my example, it’s Aldiko....

Can My Chromebook Run Android Apps? Most modern Chromebooks (2017 or newer) will run Android apps from the Play Store out of the box. And Google has a running list of models that do support Android apps. However, that list can be cumbersome to search through. So, if you’re running an older Chromebook or just want an easy way to make sure it will run Android apps there’s a simple way to find out....