But you know what makes it really hard? Personalized Ads. You know how you might spend your entire lunch break idly reading reviews for a photography backdrop or a pedal that makes your guitar sound like an animated Japanese pop star? And then out of sheer will-power, you tell yourself, “No!” and close the browser, thus winning the battle against unnecessary expenditures on random gear. All is well. Until there you are, browsing a completely unrelated website and in the corner, you see an ad for that precise thing you had just talked yourself out of buying....

The devices don’t record or transmit any data until the digital assistant is activated by the wake word first – in theory anyway. However, convenience and ease of use will trump security and privacy. After all, the selling point is the how simple it is to get things done — hands-free. However, you might want to have more control and kill the active listening on these devices when not in use....

When you use PayPal to send payments or shop online, you’re not confined to one linked bank account or card. Adding multiple credit and debit cards, plus your bank, to your PayPal account is optional, but it does give you the freedom to choose your payment method come checkout time. So how can you manage which payments come out of which account? And how do you switch your payment method when it comes to subscriptions or other recurring payments?...

Editor’s note: In October 2016, Windows announced the Windows 10 Creators Update slated for public released in March/April 2017. We’ve been testing out the new features that are now available for Windows Insiders. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you can get a sneak preview of all the upcoming features in the Creators Update. How to Make a Wired Network a Metered Connection As we’ve covered earlier, there are ways to tame Windows 10’s heavy data usage....

Interpreter Mode This Google Assistant mode is something our grandparents’ generations would have only seen in science-fiction movies. However, a real-time translation tool (based on reliable Google Translate) is now as real as can be. All you have to do (after you fire it up) is select languages and speak in your language. Interpreter Mode will translate what you said into your counterpart’s language. Then, it will listen to them speaking and translate it back to you....

Google Meet Video Conferencing Google Meet was initially only part of G Suite, about which you can find out more here. Meet is a simple and effective video conferencing tool and it’s both a web-based service and an app. Google has decided to make Google Meet available to everyone, on the simple condition that they have a Google Account. The only caveat is that private users have their conferences restricted to 60 minutes....

One of those with tvOS 13 is a new Control Center – similar to what your iPhone or iPad has now. The tvOS version includes abilities like viewing your currently playing tunes or videos. It’s also where you can switch users, change audio output, search for content. You can also see the time and date at a glance and is where you’ll put the device to sleep. Using Apple TV Control Center on tvOS 13 To open Control Center, hold down the TV button on your Siri Remote....

Note: This article was written years ago using an older version of Android. Your modern version of Android will work much differently. You can now simply use Google Assistant to call people by their contact name. 1 – Open Voice Dialer In your App Drawer (application list) by default, you should find the Voice Dialer included with nearly all Android versions. Tap Voice Dialer to open it. Note you can always add this “app” to your home screen for easy and quick access....

The term performance monitor (also commonly known as “perfmon”) sounds like an advanced IT tool, but it’s very accessible even for a regular computer user. In this article, you’ll learn more about the “performance counters” that give you insights into every aspect of your computer. You’ll also learn how to graph the relevant counters so you can identify where any problems might be. What’s a Performance Counter? You can think of a performance counter like a sensor inside your computer that constantly measures the health of different systems and processes....

At the beginning of the month we took a look at adding more websites to the New Tab page in Internet Explorer 9. To follow up with how useful the New Tab page is, why not make it the default home page? Here is how! Step 1 In Internet Explorer 9, Click the gear (settings) button and Select Internet options. Step 2 The options window should appear. In the General tab under in the Home Page box Type in about:Tabs....

Backup and Reset Your Apple Watch Before getting started, you might want to back up the data and settings on your Apple Watch. The good thing here is your watch is automatically backed up regularly during an iPhone backup session. This happens each time your iPhone is connected to iTunes or if you have automatic iCloud backup turned on. But if that isn’t good enough for you, you can force a watch backup....

What Is It? The concept in this game is pretty simple – fly through obstacles and avoid hitting them. As you get to higher levels, you get faster ships that can be harder to control. The only control you have here is the dragging of your finger, so it’s easy on even a small screen. The art needs an iPad to fully effect the stunning visuals. Who Is It Good For?...

What Is It? It’s a cross between your standard pinball simulator and a drawing program. Instead of getting points, your goal here is to hit bumpers and walls loaded with ink. The ball trails the color of the ink you last hit. You move onto the next level when you’ve released all the ink and made a masterpiece of the game field. As the game progress, you get more opportunities to paint....

The 10 Best iOS Accessibility Features To Make Your Phone More Useful There are so many accessibility features that it is impossible to cover them all. So I have chosen what I think are the ten best ones. This doesn’t include one of the best ones ever – Facetime. Using Facetime, deaf people can have conversations with others using sign language. I’ve seen friends do this often, and it always blows my mind....

One of the handiest features of the Photos app (which replaced iPhoto in 2015) is its ability to automatically sync with your Photo Stream. As long as you have Photo Stream sharing enabled on your iPhone, you never have to plug in your phone to your computer in order to import your pictures to Photos. I just bought my wife a new/old Macbook Air last Christmas. And in spite of enabling My Photo Stream in Photos > Preferences > iCloud, her Photo Stream pictures just weren’t showing up in Photos....

Underlined Keyboard Shortcuts on Windows 10 Make Windows 10 Highlight Menu Shortcuts Open Settings and select Ease of Access from the main menu. Select Keyboard in the left panel and scroll down in the right pane and turn on Enable shortcut underline under the Other Settings section. After it’s turned on, you will see the shortcut keys are underlined in native utility and program menus throughout Windows 10. Note that other menu items in the modern UI in the Windows 10 menu system are highlighted when this setting is enabled....

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Price Drop While there’s no price drop for the new Surface Pro 3 (unfortunately) you can save some money if you want to get the Surface Pro 2. You can save between one to two hundred bucks. Here’s a look at the prices between each model’s storage capacity. Remember that these prices are for the device and do not include a Type Keyboard cover. But since your saving a couple hundred, that will cover the price of the keyboard which is priced at $129....

If you work in an office doing menial number crunching on huge amounts of data, the biggest secret to success is becoming adept at Excel and not telling anyone. It’s what I do. Someone comes to my desk and says: “Hey, sorry to do this to you, but could you go through 2,000 rows of poorly formatted data and tell me which ones have been requisitioned but not shipped? I know it’s short notice, but could you have it done by Friday?...

Windows 10 Preview Build 19536 This next version is in the active development branch called RS_PreRelease. Which means its features could show up in the next 20H2 update. Or, they could be in the following one. Today’s announcement notes that “features in the active development branch may be slated for a future Windows 10 release, they are no longer matched to a specific Windows 10 release” Basically, the company is getting rid of the “Skip Ahead” ring and unifying everything as the “Fast” ring....

Windows 10 20H1 Preview Build 18999 Microsoft is unveiling a new feature to the Your Phone app named “Calls.” It’s an early preview and allows you to answer phone calls on your PC. It also allows the following: Answer incoming phone calls on your PC.Initiate phone calls from your PC using in-app dialer or contact list.Decline incoming phone calls on your PC with custom text or send directly to your phone’s voicemail....