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Showing posts with label new. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Innovative Uses for Your Smartphone Camera


Did you know that your smartphone camera is so much more than a gadget for taking selfies? From filing insurance claims to helping you choose your next beer, your phone’s camera is a versatile device.
If like me you are guilty of never putting down your phone, at least make sure you are maximizing your built-in camera capabilities!


Also Read: Smartphones will soon be able to share power by touching other devices

1. Use it as a mirror

While it doesn’t seem overly innovative, using that front-facing camera as a mirror is one of my favorite uses. So simple and yet so practical. You won’t always have friends around to tell you when you have spinach in your teeth so thank goodness you have your phone to check your pearly whites after dinner!

2. Use it as a pair of glasses

It wouldn’t be very practical to use this life hack for an extended period of time but if you are stuck without your glasses, or even just looking for your glasses, it can be very helpful. Hold the smartphone camera up to your face and it will magnify everything for you!

3. Use it to file insurance claims

Filing an insurance claim can be a painful experience that involves far more paperwork and waiting than feels necessary. That’s why companies are taking advantage of smartphones to streamline the process.
Esurance, for example, has rolled out real-time video appraisals. Sign in to the app to video chat with an appraiser using the camera on your phone. Allstate on the other hand uses a QuickFoto Claim Guide as part of their app to speed up the claims process.

4. Use it as an extension of your eyes

Your smartphone camera can quite literally be an extra set of eyes for those tough to reach spots you want to see. This can be especially true if you have an extension like a selfie stick to help you reach around corners or above big pieces of furniture. Can’t remember what’s hiding above your tallest cabinet? No worries! Hold your arm up, snap a pic and voila, mystery solved.

5. Use it to scan documents

Don’t have a scanner at home? Now you do. Camscanner is a smartphone app that uses the phone’s camera to digitize paper documents with cutting-edge image processing technology.

6. Use it to remember your license plate

Snap a picture of your license plate so that you never have to run back out to the car to check when someone asks you. Let’s be real, after spending hours at the DMV you don’t want to be that person that holds up the line because you have to go outside to double check your license plate.

7. Use it to order prescriptions

Walgreens and CVS’s apps now allow you to scan your medicine bottle’s barcode with your phone’s camera and pick up the refill within an hour. Gone are the days of walking down to the pharmacy, physically dropping your prescription and killing thirty minutes wandering the aisles while they prepare it.

8. Use it to deposit a check

When is the last time you walked to a bank to deposit a check? In the digital ages, many of us bank with companies that don’t have brick and mortar locations anywhere near us, so getting to a bank to do anything can be incredibly disruptive. The solution? All major bank apps now allow you to take a picture of your check and deposit it directly through the app.

9. Use it to pinpoint nearby locations

Yelp is one of the many companies taking advantage of the augmented reality movement with its Monocle app feature. Point your smartphone camera down a commercial street and Yelp will point out nearly businesses.

10. Use it to remember your coat check

Next time you coat check your jacket, take a picture of the ticket. It is so easy to lose it and if the venue is of a certain size you might be waiting for hours while they try to find your coat. It won’t happen every time but the one time that it does you will be relieved you planned ahead.

11. Use it to turn your recipe into a grocery list

Apps like BigOven’s Recipe Scan let users scan photos of recipes with their smartphones and transform them into a typed up version. This automation comes at a small fee but it is safe to say that the days of manually copying out recipes and shopping lists from cookbooks are on their way out.

12. Use it to journal your food

Whether you are trying to lose weight, stay healthy or just want to remember what you ate, there is a food journaling app for you. If you enjoy photographing your food, you might consider the Eatery, a community-based app in which users upload pictures of their food and the community comments, likes and rates the food from fat to fit. Smartphone cameras can also double as barcode readers for a number of apps like Lose it! or Weight Watchers that track the nutritional value of your meals.

13. Use it to log expenses

Tracking expenses on the go is easy when you have your phone with you. Most major credit cards companies now have apps that let you snap pictures of the receipts to track them as you go. This can be especially helpful if you have work expenses you will need to file at a later date. Want to log them now? Services like Expensify have an app that allows you to photograph receipts and file expense reports on the go.

14. Use it to remember your passport number

Do you know your passport number off the top of your head? How long would it take you to find it? Save a picture of it to your phone and be ready for the next time you might want to be spontaneous and book an international flight.

15. Use it to translate foreign text

Now that you’ve booked your spontaneous trip abroad and are exploring new countries, you might want help deciphering all of those road signs you can’t read. Google Translate’s phone app has an image feature that will translate the text in an image you snap with the in-app camera.

16. Use it to track your favorite wines

When you try a new wine while out to dinner you can now log it into your phone using apps like Vivino that have a label recognition system. Simply scan a photo of the front of the bottle and log notes and ratings for later. If like me you know enough about wine to recognize what you like and don’t like, but not enough to be able to describe your tastes to a sommelier, this is the perfect way to up your wine game!

17. Use it to find beer suggestions

Overwhelmed by the beer menu? SipSnapp has you covered. Use your phone camera to take a picture of the beer menu and the app will spit out a series of ratings, reviews and recommendations written by fellow beer drinkers.

18. Use it to import business cards

Business cards are a cumbersome but critical part of networking. Apps like ABBYY Business Card Reader are making your life easier by storing all of your business cards in your phone. Scan the card using the in-app camera and it will import all of the data. Bonus? You can hook it up to your Salesforce account making it that much easier to follow up post-conference.

19. Use it to connect with friends and family around the world

With apps like Skype and FaceTime, your phone can become a portal to another location and talking face-to-face with people on the other side of the world is a reality. My immediate family lives in three countries on two different continents so it’s nice to be able to pretend like we are sharing a meal even though we are thousands of miles apart.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Nvidia’s $2 Billion Computer Chip May Make AI Much More Powerful


At their annual GPU Technology Conference this week, Nvidia unveiled a powerful and expensive new computer chip, which CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says can perform deep learning neural network tasks 12 times faster than their previous best product. To power this speed, the Tesla P100 is packed with fifteen billion transistors – about three times more than their previous top-end chip. All this progress came at a cost of $2 billion in research and development.
Nvidia is a powerhouse in artificial intelligence hardware.

The Santa Clara-based company’s high-powered graphics processing units (GPUs) have helped drive the technology over the past few years, leading some analysts to ask, “Where are all the chip firms not named Nvidia?” With it’s proven success, deep learning – the branch of machine learning that enables systems to identify complex patterns in massive amounts of data by passing information through additional layers of simulated neurons – is where the company has concentrated their efforts.

Chips serve as the physical “brain” for AI software, which tends to be limited by hardware’s computing power. The more complex a system task, the more robust its hardware must be. P100 may offer software companies unprecedented progress thanks to a significant boost in available power. Researchers at Facebook, Microsoft, and Baidu – whom Nvidia has granted early access to P100 technology – can expect to see the capabilities of their AI systems accelerate as tappable computing power multiplies.
Along with their new chip, Nvidia showcased what Huang called “one beast of a machine” – the DGX-1, a supercomputer equipped with eight P100 chips, preinstalled with deep-learning software. 

The company calls the device “the world’s first deep learning supercomputer…engineered top to bottom deep learning…” Though the supercomputer comes with a $129,000 price tag, Nvidia hopes to promote their product to research-based organizations and institutions by giving them to teams at University of California, Berkley, Stanford, New York University, and MIT for trial runs.

Why is Nvidia so focused on deep-learning hardware?
Over the past five years, neural network deep learning has proven to be one of the most successful machine learning methods. AlphaGo defeated world class Go players using deep learning algorithms. Powered by tremendous neural networks, Microsoft’s computer vision software has competed with – and sometime even exceeded – humans’ innate ability to recognize objects. Meanwhile, a deep-learning system developed by Baidu was as good as humans at recognizing both English and Mandarin speech, though natural language processing is one of the next great frontiers.
But deep learning demands power. 
As a leader in GPU manufacturing, Nvidia has a head start on other manufacturers. It also has the capital needed to devote to the development of hardware as robust as the P100. As companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Baidu continue to take deep learning even deeper, Nvidia aims to position itself as the go-to provider of the powerful hardware to help drive the next innovations.

credit: Nvidia
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Sunday, July 17, 2016

How to Test Website Speed

Here we will learn about different tools to test your website speed. First we have to know why should we be concerned about website speed and how does it effect on your online business.

Users have many options when browsing content on internet. If a website takes long to load its content then user will leave the site and move to other websites. And coming to e-commerce trends, Amazon sold average of 426 items per second in 2014.If anytime amazon experiences 1 sec delay in loading website it would have lost lot of money.Cloud service provider akamai reported that 75% of online shoppers who experience a slow site will not purchase from that site.

So what is causing delay on your website? It is mostly because of images. Images occupy more space than the remaining. And there are other modules which impact on website speed. So here are some techniques to test your website speed and know what causing your webpages load slow.

developers.google.com :With this tool you can analyse your website by entering your website url, then you will get page speed score for mobile and desktop. And it will identify the modules which delayed page load. And it will guide you how to fix these issues.

test your website speed

Pingdom : It will show how much time every element or page takes to load in your website, here we can know exactly what element or page causing delay.It will also give how much faster than other tested websites in percentile.It is also available as pro version where it will test and verify your websites availability every minute automatically and you can analyze performance data to see how fast your website loads for users from a specific country, browser, or device.

Screenshot from 2016-01-08 11-30-07-compressed


GTmetrix : It is similar to pingdom but also provides page load time history for a particular website and it provides score and explanations for each recommendation, and gives you actionable advice. The recommendations are ordered in terms of which have the most impact on your site. Fixing items at the top of your list can have a bigger impact on your overall score.
There are also other websites available to test your website speed 



When your website is slow or down for a while it means decrease in visitors or users and even lower search engine rankings. Google has announced they are using page speed in their ranking algorithm.
Is your website is down?
You have a website which has limited bandwidth, if suddenly your website users increased then your bandwidth usage will also be increased. If bandwidth usage exceeds the allowed bandwidth usage for website then your website will not work. Or there may be other reasons that your website go down are server maintenance, coding errors, DNS changes or internet connectivity issues etc..

Here are some of the services that you can check any website down for everyone or just you.






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Friday, July 15, 2016

Smartphones will soon be able to share power by touching other devices


Technology exists that allows phones and other mobile devices that are touching or nearly touching to share files. Now that concept could rise to a whole new level, allowing nearby devices to also share power, reports TechXplore.

The new technology, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol in the U.K., will work via an app called PowerShake, and it will function using many of the same principles at play with wireless power transmission. Basically, coils inside each device will allow for the sending and receiving of energy through a generated, localized electromagnetic field.
Currently, the biggest drawback to the technology is power transfer between devices has proven to be fairly inefficient; around half of the power gets lost in transmission.

The prototype transfers about a minute's worth of operating power in just 12 seconds, or if both users concur, one device can give another enough power to run for four minutes with a two-minute charge. It's not ideal but it's also promising, for a prototype.
Obviously, simply plugging in your smartphone or tablet will remain the best and most efficient way to power a device, but in a pinch, the technology could be a lifesaver.

For instance, it could be useful when traveling outdoors or backpacking, or perhaps even when there's an emergency and the power goes out.
The next step for researchers is to conduct real-world tests so efficiency might be increased in future models. Marketing groups will need to be assembled to test how often the technology might be used by actual consumers. It's all just one step closer to a fully immersed wireless world.

SOURCE :http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/gadgets-electronics/stories/smartphones-will-soon-be-able-share-power-touching-other-devices 
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Thursday, July 14, 2016

SEO Content Writing Tips

Search engine optimization is a skill used by many people to advertise a certain brand, business, product or website. The primary purpose of search engine optimization is to help your website to be displayed on the first page of the search engine result page. Content writing is also used for SEO because a search engine weighs the credibility of a website on many scales and content is one of them. 
The content should be appealing and cleat, it should describe the services or products clearly so that it is easier for the search engine to pinpoint your website. You need to know some SEO content writing tips to accomplish this task because SEO content is not just a regular article instead is a mixture of various skills.
The Length Of SEO Content









The length of the SEO content should not be too much because no one’s got the time to read 5 to 10 pages of content. Lengthy content can be very devastating for a website because no one can read a lot while sitting in front of a screen. According to research it takes a person only 8 seconds to decide whether the website is good or bad and if the user cannot find something interesting in the first hundred words then the user will simply move on. Make sure that the content is not more than 400 to 1000 words.
Use Proper Keywords During SEO Content Writing
Always use proper keywords while doing SEO content writing, keyword spamming makes the content look unprofessional because if the keywords are not properly used, then the user will not be able to find the things which he would hope for. If keywords vary then the reader will have an easier time reading and will enjoy it.
Try To Stay On The Topic
Readers always like to read content where the writer does not deviate from the topic and stay on topic and on track. If the content writer moves away from the main topic every now and then while writing the content, then the reader also loses concentration and ultimately leave the particular page or website.
Uses As Mant Interesting Headlines As Possible
Try to use titles and headlines, this adds a little beauty to the text and helps your content pop out from all the others. It is also a better idea to place keywords or key phrases in the title which helps people finding articles and SEO content. SEO content writing tips are very necessary for content writing because without it no one can succeed in SEO.
Use Appropriate Tags
Search engine optimization is a very difficult task and requires special skills and is a set of many different techniques. Tags are one of the techniques but the person doing SEO must know hot to use them. H1 and H2 tags are the most used and create a remarkable impression in the readers.
These were some of the best SEO content writing tips and if a person utilizes all of these tips during content writing there is a big chance that there will be a lot of internet traffic on that particular website. every website needs search engine optimization and content writing takes a big part in search engine optimization for every website.
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OK, Google: valuable voice commands for Android


Before you start talking, a note: For a fully hands-free experience, you'll need to set up always-listening voice control, which will allow your phone to wake up and start listening anytime you say "OK, Google." To do that, open the Google app on your device, tap the menu icon in the upper-left corner and tap Settings. Next, tap Voice and then "OK Google" Detection. Follow the steps there to enable the system and train it to recognize your voice.

If you have an older device that doesn't support that option, you can still use the commands listed below; you'll just have to tap the microphone icon on your home screen first to start the listening process.

Device control and tools

  • Turn Wi-Fi on/off
  • Turn Bluetooth on/off
  • Turn my flashlight on/off
  • Turn airplane mode on/off
  • Turn up/down the volume
  • Dim/brighten the screen
  • Enable/disable [battery saver mode] (and other system features, such as mute)
  • Take a photo/selfie
  • Record a video
  • Set a timer for [10 minutes]
  • Open [Yelp] (or any app)
  • Open [computerworld.com] (or any website)
  • Metronome
  • Bubble level
  • Flip a coin
  • Roll a die
  • Start a run (requires a fitness app like Strava, Runkeeper, Runtastic or Endomondo)

Time, weather and current information

  • What time is it in [Paris]?
  • What time zone is [Phoenix] in?
  • When is the sunset tonight?
  • When's the sunrise in [London]?
  • Do I need an umbrella today?
  • Is it going to rain this weekend?
  • When is it going to rain next?
  • What's the weather in [Kalamazoo]?
  • Will I need a jacket tomorrow?
  • How hot is it gonna be on [Saturday]?
  • When's the next [Cubs] game?
  • What was the score of the [Cardinals] game last night?
  • Did the [Marlins] win their last game?
  • What's [Google] stock trading at today? (or just spell out a stock ticker symbol -- e.g., "G-O-O-G")

Location and navigation

  • How's the traffic to work?
  • Is [Steak 'n Shake] open right now?
  • How late is [Office Depot] open?
  • What time does [Target] open tomorrow?
  • What's a good [Mexican] place near me?
  • What's the best [sushi] nearby?
  • What restaurants are near me?
  • Where is the nearest [Burger King]?
  • Where's a [museum] around here?
  • Where's the closest [bowling alley]?
  • What movies are playing nearby?
  • Navigate to [123 South Main Street]
  • Go to [California Pizza Kitchen] with public transportation
  • Take me to [Bank of America] by foot
  • Take me home

Messaging and communication

  • Text [Grover] that [I'm running late]
  • Send text to [Ernie], mobile -- [I enjoy cheese]
  • Send email to [Gordon] -- [I'll call you in 20 minutes]
  • Send email to [Guy Smiley]. Subject: [Pickles.] Body: [Dill is always the way to go]
  • Send [Hangout] message to [Bert] -- [wanna grab lunch?] (also works with WhatsApp and other third-party messaging clients)
  • Start a video call with [Maria]
  • Post to Twitter -- [What a gorgeous day!] (requires Twitter app to be installed)
  • Post to Google+ -- [Hello, all of you stunning people] (requires Google+ app to be installed)
  • Check my voicemail
  • Read my messages
  • Call [Mom], mobile/home/work
  • Call [my brother] on speakerphone
  • Call [McDonald's on Third Street]
  • Call the [Hilton in Downtown Chicago]
  • What is [Zoe's] number?
  • What's the phone number for [Applebee's]?
  • What is area code [323]?

Organization and personal info

  • Add to my [grocery] list (or any list name you want -- your phone will prompt you to speak the item or items you want to add; when finished, say either "finished" or "that's it")
  • Add [Purchase beef] to my [to-do] list (or any list name you want; with this command as well as the previous command and the next two commands, you'll be able to choose to have the info saved into Google Keep or any other compatible note-taking app)
  • Note to self: [The Beef Purchasers would be a good name for a band]
  • Write this down for me: [There are different ways you can make a note to yourself by speaking]
  • Remind me to [take out the trash] in [two hours]
  • Remind me to [put out dog food] when [I get home]
  • Remind me to call [the boss] when [I'm at the airport]
  • Remind me to [eat at Canter's] next time [I'm in L.A.]
  • Wake me up at [7 a.m.] [tomorrow]
  • Set an appointment for a [haircut] [tomorrow at noon]
  • When is my next meeting/appointment?
  • What's my schedule for [July 17th]?
  • What does my day look like on [the 3rd]?
  • When is [Father's Day]?
  • When will my package arrive? (requires shipping confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Show me my bills (requires bills to be present in Gmail)
  • Show me my bills due this week/next week/[in July] (requires bills to be present in Gmail)
  • Show me my photos from [France] (requires photos to be present in Google Photos)

Music and video

  • Listen to [The Beatles]
  • Listen to ["No Rain"]
  • Listen to [party music]
  • Play music for [working out]
  • Listen to [Pearl Jam] on [Spotify]
  • Next song
  • Pause the music
  • Play me [Soundgarden] videos on YouTube
  • Show me the trailer for ["Ice Age 5"]
  • What's this song? (identifies music playing out loud in the room)

Travel

  • When does [United flight 1807] arrive?
  • Is [Southwest 2093] on time?
  • Is my flight on time? (requires confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Find me a nonstop flight from [L.A. to Chicago]
  • Show me my trip in [October] (requires confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Show me my trip to [Chicago] (requires confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Show me my hotel reservations (requires confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Where's my hotel? (requires confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Show me restaurants near my hotel (requires confirmation to be present in Gmail)
  • Search for hotels in [Boston]
  • Book me a table at [Plum Tree Inn] (requires OpenTable app to be installed)
  • Translate ["sausage"] to [German]
  • What's [French] for ["cheese"]?

Conversions and calculations

  • What's [75] times [812]?
  • What's [16.2] percent of [94.7]?
  • What's [28 inches] in [millimeters]?
  • What's [12] in [hexadecimal]?
  • What's [25 U.S. dollars in [Euros]?
  • What's the tip for [15 dollars]?

Food, drink and nutrition info

  • Show me [salmon] recipes
  • Show me things I can make with [chicken]
  • How do I make a [Manhattan]?
  • What's in a [margarita]?
  • How many calories are in [popcorn]?
  • How much fat is in [cheddar cheese]?
  • What's the healthiest kind of [cheese]?

General knowledge and searches

  • Who founded [Snapchat]?
  • Who directed the first ["Harry Potter"]?
  • Who's in the cast of ["Scrubs"]?
  • Where did [Zach Braff] go to college?
  • Where was [Jimmy Kimmel] born?
  • How much is [Mark Zuckerberg] worth?
  • When did [Johnny Carson] die?
  • How did [Johnny Carson] die?
  • What's [Natalie Portman's] real name?
  • What movies has [Natalie Portman] been in?
  • How tall is [Jennifer Lawrence]?
  • How old is [Larry Page]?
  • What's the definition of ["phobia"]?
  • What are some synonyms for ["beautiful"]?
  • Who's the CEO of [Google]?
  • Who is [Marissa Mayer] married to?
  • Who wrote ["In The Plex"]?
  • What are the dimensions of ["Starry Night"]?
  • When was the first episode of ["Seinfeld"]?
  • What's the theme song to ["Friends"]?
  • How long is ["The Angry Birds Movie"]?
  • How long is the [Golden Gate Bridge]?
  • How far away is the [moon]?
  • What's the temperature of the [sun]?
  • How tall is the [Statue of Liberty]?
  • Show me photos of the [New York skyline]
  • Search Twitter for [Olympics] (requires Twitter app to be installed)
  • Search for [flowers] on Tumblr (requires Tumblr app to be installed)

Silly stuff

  • Play Pac-Man
  • Go go gadget [Netflix] (or any other app name)
  • Make me a sandwich
  • Who's on first?
  • Who are you?
  • When am I?
  • Beam me up, Scotty
  • What is Matt Damon's Bacon number?
  • What does the fox say?
  • Do a barrel roll
  • Askew
  • How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
  • What's the loneliest number?
  • What's the answer to life, the universe and everything?

And finally...

  • Hello


This story, "OK, Google: 160 valuable voice commands for Android" was originally published by Computerworld.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Alternatives For Windows 10 Users


You will be no longer to get Windows 10 for free after this month, according to Microsoft. Users have to pay to either get a copy of Windows 10 or to upgrade from an older version. This isn't a good news for anyone who hasn't yet upgraded their PC or planning to build a system of their own in near future. 

Here are 4 alternatives to Windows that you should consider in case you missed out on the free upgrade window or if you are bothered by the privacy issues concerned with the operating system and looking for a change.


1. Ubuntu
Ubuntu is world's most popular free Operating System. It is Linux based and used very widely across the globe. Noticeably, many important government agencies across Europe and Asia use Ubuntu in their offices.

The fact that Ubuntu gets a free upgrade every year and it comes with familiar apps like Firefox and Thunderbird along with free MS Office alternative called Libre Office makes it a very valuable alternative.

Additionally, Ubuntu requires very fewer system resources enabling it to run quite well on older systems and are mostly free of viruses and malware.

2. Chrome OS
Chrome OS, the web-based Operating System developed by Google, has been gaining popularity across North America in recent years. Its rising popularity is so evident that in many online stores such Amazon the best selling computers are Chromebooks pushing Windows PCs to second place.

Although, it may seem that you must need a Chromebook to run the Chrome OS, a little workaround developed by New York based start- up Neverware makes it easy to install it on any computer.

It is light on resources and is automatically updated regularly. You can find our guide on how to turn your computer to a Chromebook here.

3. Hackintosh
If you don't want Windows on your system, then why not install MacOS on it? No, it certainly isn't a joke. Making Hackintosh computers, or computers build with MacOS is a very popular choice among many PC building enthusiasts.

Running a MacOS on anything other than a MacBook can be considered illegal, but so far there hasn't been any legal problem with regard to individuals making Hackintosh PCs. However, the main problem is that not all hardware work with the Hackintosh, and finding drivers for the hardware component can be a nightmare.

If you are willing to sacrifice a lot of time and energy in building a PC then it can be an option and you can find many guides explaining how to do it on the internet.

4. Linux Mint
Linux Mint is almost same as Ubuntu internally as they both are Linux based operating systems and apps and software for both are always the same.

However, where Linux Mint, despite being a lesser-known Operating System than Ubuntu, gained its popularity is through easy to use user interfaces called Cinnamon and Mate.

They look very similar to Windows in many ways, unlike Ubuntu's Unity which bears more resemblance to the MacOS. The familiar visual elements such as taskbar and Start Menu like application launcher found in Linux Mint eliminate the learning curve of moving to a new Operating System.

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Sunday, June 19, 2016

Secure Your Accounts Against Cybercrime

The Internet enables us to do things we'd never have even dreamt about even a decade ago. We can buy and sell, learn and teach, meet new people and share experiences without ever leaving te comfort of our homes. But every coin, however, has a flipside, and new dangers stalk us while we're peacefully buying, selling, meeting and sharing.
You've seen the headlines - data breaches at LinkedIn, celebrity Twitter accounts hacked. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not immune to such attacks.
Thankfully, there are some simple precautionary measures you can take to help minimize the risks. Here are some tips.

1. Awareness

Knowledge is the best way to protect your digital identity. By knowing the dangers of the cyber world, you'll also get a better understanding of how to avoid them. Always find a couple of minutes a day read up on the latest security concerns and remain aware of potentially dangerous situations and vulnerabilities.

2. Anti-virus/spy software

These have long become a must-have for each and every web surfer. Viruses have evolved from simply damaging systems, erasing data and similar outward mischiefs. They can now be used as intricate tools for spying and retrieving your security data and gathering information, such as logins, passwords, keys, phone numbers, e-mails etc., etc.
Install anti-virus software, USB protection and adware blockers so that your device won't betray your interests. And at the same time, don't let such measures lull you into a false sense of security: run regular checks, and don't trust suspicious sites, even if your antivirus doesn't alert you. Scam masterminds are always working to stay a step ahead of the wardens.

3. VPN-services

If you use public Wi-Fi hotspots on a regular basis, a VPN becomes absolutely indispensable.
A VPN is the least protection measure you should use in order to secure your social network and e-mail accounts. It creates a secure encrypted connection between your device and VPN's server.
A VPN, however, is not a silver bullet.
While a VPN does make it harder for hackers and other cybercriminals to spy on you, it’s always better safe than sorry, and you should always avoid sharing potentially sensitive information while using public hotspots.

4. Password generators

Are you proud of your long and sophisticated password that, for years, has been reliable and safe for your multiple online accounts? Don't get too complacent.
In order to stay secure you should change your passwords regularly – and you should avoid using the same one across multiple accounts.
The older your password is, the weaker it becomes each day. If you've run out of ideas or you simply can't memorize new security keys, use a password generator.
These online services will take care of inventing and keeping safe a number of difficult to crack passwords for you.
If you still prefer to come up with your new paswords yourself, make sure they includes both capital and lower-case letters, and numbers also.

5. 2-step authentication

This is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to protect your accounts from being hacked. 
Double-secured accounts are entered through both password and a verification code, normally sent directly to a user’s phone. For some services (for example, online banking and payment systems) such measures are mandatory, but for most social media platforms they're optional. However, it's strongly recommended that you utilize such features for better security.

6. Restriction and blocking apps

This may come as a surprise, but most information breaches occur because a third party, entrusted with the information, leaks it unwittingly. “Third party” meaning your family, friends or even employees.
To be on the safe side you should use the advanced control settings on your devices and limit the sharing of such info to the fewest amount of people possible.

7. Privacy settings

Don't neglect the privacy settings on your social media accounts, applications and other resources which you share information through.
Sometimes the default settings are as far from private as can be and require immediate tweaking to ensure your security isn't compromised.
Make sure you share only what you mean to share, and only with whom you intend to share it with.
You may also want to avoid oversharing in order to maintain a level of anonymity online. Think twice before sharing another picture or clicking “Like” – cyber criminals pick up any shred of information they can get to learn about your tastes and preferences: this makes it easier for them to guess your passwords, secret code words and other information that is supposed to be private.

8. A touch of paranoia

Be suspicious - apply critical thinking and don't trust easily.
You may be sociable, amicable and open-hearted, yet experts advise to add contacts to your friend list only if you know them personally.
Being suspicious will help you avoid the bait set by phishing e-mails and sites and take pause before clicking on links that prompt you to  “Check THIS out!” from your trusted accounts. Double check - make sure the messages really are from one of your connections, not a foe in disguise, who has breached their account.
Also, think twice before sharing sensitive data through unsecured connections – you never know who else might be watching.
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