Online Tech Tips

What Is HTTPS and Why You Should Care

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 10:00:23 GMT

Up until around 2017, a large majority of websites on the internet used strictly hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for the transmission of a website’s data to a visitor’s web browser.

Until then, most browsers were fully capable of receiving secure HTTP content, but few site owners bothered to set up their websites using HTTPS.

What is HTTPS? It stands for hypertext transfer protocol secure. And today, this secure version of HTTP is how the majority of websites on the internet transmit their content to browsers.

What Is HTTPS?

When a website uses HTTPS, it means that all of the data being transmitted between that website and your browser is encrypted.

Before HTTPS, a hacker could easily intercept the transmission between the web host and the user’s browser, and read the content being transmitted. This is because the content was transmitted in HTML or plain text. In many cases even IDs and passwords were easy to extract from these transmissions.

What makes HTTPS different? HTTPS uses what’s called Transport Layer Security (TLS), formerly known as Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

TLS uses two security “keys” to fully encrypt the data going between the web host and your browser.

Private key: This is a key stored on the originating web server. It isn’t accessible to the public, so only this private key stored on the real web server can decrypt transmissions.
Public key: The public key is used by any browser that wants to communicate with the web server that holds the website.

How HTTPS Communication Works

The communication process works as follows.

A user opens a browser and connects to a web page.
The website sends the user’s browser an SSL certificate that contains the public key. The browser needs this public key in order to open the initial connection with the site.
This initiates what’s called a “TLS handshake” where the client (browser) and the server (website) “agree” on the cipher to use, verify the site’s SSL digital signature, and generate new session keys for the current session.

Once this “session” is established, no one between the browser and the web server will be able to easily identify the information or data being transferred.

This is because everything, even the HTML transmitted to the browser, gets encrypted (essentially scrambled into nonsense text and symbols). Only the browser that established the initial connection with the website can decipher the information, and vice versa. Only the website can receive things like IDs and passwords and decipher them for use.

So, whenever you see that a site is secure, you can rest assured that the communications between your browser and the remote site are private and safe from prying eyes.

How to Know if a Site Uses HTTPS

Starting in 2017, Google put the pressure on website owners to incorporate SSL certificates into their websites. They did this by integrating a new feature into the latest version of Chrome that displayed a “Not Secure” warning to users whenever they visited a site that didn’t use HTTPS.

If you’re running the latest version of the Chrome browser and you visit a secure site that uses HTTPS, you’ll see a small lock icon to the left of the URL.

Not long after, other browsers started following suit, including Firefox, Safari, and more. They will all display a lock icon like Chrome does.

If you visit a website and the site isn’t using HTTPS to communicate, then you’ll see a Not secure error to the left of the URL.

As though this isn’t off-putting enough to keep visitors away from a website, Google also instituted a policy where use of SSL certificates would help websites rank higher in search results.

These two reasons are why most website owners finally started transitioning their sites to use SSL certificates and communicate with visitors’ browsers via HTTPS.

Why Should You Care About HTTPS?

As a user of the internet, you should care a great deal about whether or not a site uses HTTPS. You may not think anyone cares about what websites you visit or what you’re doing on the internet, but there are very large communities of hackers out there who are very interested.

By intercepting your browser communications with websites, hackers are constantly on the lookout for any of the following information:

Your email address, so they can sell it to email spammers.
Your phone number and physical address so they can sell it to marketers.
ID and passwords you use to log into your bank accounts so they can access your funds.
Any embarrassing sites you visit so they can send you emails threatening to share that activity with friends and family if you don’t pay up.
Your computer’s direct IP address so they can try to hack your system.

In fact, making sure you only visit sites that use HTTPS is a powerful way to protect your privacy and security online, for many reasons.

If you own a website, there are even more reasons you should care about installing SSL certificates and enabling HTTPS.

You’ll get more Google search traffic.
Visitors will feel safe to visit your website more frequently.
Customers will feel more secure buying products from you.
Hackers will be less likely to obtain IDs or passwords that make it easier for them to hack your website.

There are no longer any good reasons for anyone using the internet these days not to be using only HTTPS for all web transactions.

How to Use HTTPS on Your Site

If you own a website and you’re interested in getting rid of that scary “Not Secure” message when people visit your site, it’s not difficult to install SSL certificates for your website.

In fact, we’ve published a full guide on how to get your own SSL certificate for your website, and how to install it.

The simple steps are as follows:

Determine the dedicated IP address your web host has provided to your website.
Install the SSL certificate either provided by your website, or one you’ve purchased from an SSL certificate service.
Force all browsers to use SSL when visiting your site by editing the .htaccess file with a “rewrite” command that changes all connections to use HTTPS.
Make sure to provide your private SSL certificate to any CDN services you’ve installed on your site.

This process is getting even simpler lately, since many web hosting services are providing website owners with one-click solutions to install SSL certificates for their website.

How To Connect a PS4 Controller To a PC

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:00:32 GMT

PC gaming has many strengths, one of which is that you can pretty much use any peripherals you like with a computer. However, when it comes to gamepads, it seems that the Xbox controller has taken over as the de-facto standard.

Games have supported Xbox controllers natively for years and in most cases it’s simply a matter of plugging and playing. Does that mean there’s no way to connect and use a PS4 controller to a PC? Not at all! There are ways to make this work and in some cases it’s even the preferred controller. Let’s look at what’s involved.

PS4 Remote Play and PS Now

One of the main reasons a PC gamer might want to connect a PS4 controller to a PC is to play PS4 games on that computer. This can of course refer to emulating old PlayStation games for the PS1, PS2 and PS3. All the major emulators for those systems will work just fine with an unmodified PS4 controller connected to a PC.

If you want to use the Remote Play application on your PC, which lets you stream games from your own PS4, then you can also use your PS4 controller directly. You can use either a wireless Bluetooth connection or just plug the controller directly into your computer using a micro USB cable.

PS Now is Sony’s cloud game streaming service and unsurprisingly also supports the PS4 controller connected to a PC. It supports the PS4 controller via Bluetooth or direct USB connection.

Since Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox are direct competitors, you might expect that Microsoft (or Sony for that matter) have not gone out of their way to integrate DS4 support in Windows. This does actually turn out to be the case, mainly because the PS4 controller doesn’t support something known as “Xinput”.

The Problem of Xinput

While Windows 10 supports the PS4 controller as a standard Bluetooth device, there’s more to getting games to work with it than simply connecting it. The problem boils down to Xinput and Dinput.

Xinput is the controller standard used by all Xbox controllers. Any game that supports Xinput will work with any official Xbox controller and third-party controllers that support Xinput.

Other controllers have to rely on Dinput, which is the generic input standard used in DirectX. Dinput is deprecated, but still works just fine. The problem is that most games released since Microsoft integrated Xbox controller support into Windows only support Xinput. Alternatively, they may support Dinput, but have done so as an afterthought.

Any gamer who has tried to play Windows games using a Dinput controller will attest to the endless frustration this causes. As you’ve probably guessed, the PS4 controller does not support Xinput, so even after connecting it to a PC, it’s still difficult to use. However, there’s a workaround in the form of DS4Windows.

Using DS4Windows To Emulate Xinput

DS4Windows is a third-party utility that fools Windows into thinking a real Xinput controller has been connected to the machine. It then takes all your PS4 controller inputs and translates them to the Xinput standard. This is by far the best solution for using PS4 controllers with modern games.

There’s more to DS4Windows than getting access to games that only support Xinput controllers. The software also gives you much more control over the DS4 and it also allows you to use the controller to its full potential.

For example, the touchpad can be used to control your mouse pointer, which is useful in games that may not have full controller support or have some in-game actions that are easier to do with a mouse pointer.

DS4Windows also lets you use the SixAxis motion sensors in the DS4 controller, letting you map it to game controls.

You also get control over the light bar, letting you set the color or turn it off completely. It even has a feature where light bar color can reflect battery level. You can create multiple configuration profiles and have them trigger when specific games are running.

The list of features goes on, and anyone considering using their DS4 with Windows 10 should absolutely use this free utility. While you can use DS4Windows via Bluetooth, the best solution is using a wired connection. Bluetooth support can be pretty flakey with the software and certain brands of Bluetooth controller just won’t work right.

It’s worth testing out if you absolutely must have wireless support, but let’s look at how to connect a PS4 controller using a cable first.

How To Connect a PS4 Controller To a PC Using A Wired Connection

This is quite possibly one of the simplest sets of instructions ever. To use a PS4 controller via USB on a Windows 10 computer, take a micro USB cable, plug the large plug into the computer’s USB port and plug the small plug into the PS4 controller. Congratulations, you’re done with this part of the guide.

Next, we’ll look at the Bluetooth method, but be warned that your mileage may vary. Especially if you plan to use DS4Windows this way.

How To Connect a PS4 Controller To a PC Using Bluetooth

Connecting your PS4 controller using Bluetooth is a little trickier.

The first thing you need to do is put your PS4 controller into pairing mode. With the controller off, press and hold the round PlayStation button and the Share button together until the light starts to flash bright white.

Now, open the Start Menu and search for Bluetooth, then click on Bluetooth and Other Device Settings.

Now click the big plus icon next to Add Bluetooth or other device.

Next choose Bluetooth

You’ll now see a list of available devices. The PS4 controller should show up as Wireless Controller.

Click on it to complete the pairing. The controller should now work with your PC.

A Second-class Citizen?

Let’s face it, unless you want to play games that were specifically designed for the DS4 on Windows 10 or have native support for it, it’s hard to recommend using one. Xinput controllers on a modern Windows system simply work. There’s nothing to set up or fiddle with. You also don’t need to spend money on an expensive first-party controller from Microsoft, since there are both wired and wireless Xinput controllers from other manufacturers.

With utilities like DS4Windows it’s possible to get most things working, but if at all possible, consider buying an Xbox controller instead. You’ll spend much less time fiddling with settings and more time actually playing your games.

If, on the other hand, you have specific applications that still fully support Dinput or you don’t mind not having PS4 prompts and a few extra layers of configuration to wade through, you can use your existing PS4 controller on your computer and still have a good time. The beauty of it all is that the choice is yours!

How to Endorse Someone on LinkedIn (and Get Endorsed)

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 22:00:31 GMT

When creating a resume on LinkedIn, people often dismiss the Skills & Endorsements section as irrelevant. In this section, there’s no restriction to what skills you can add, and pretty much anyone can endorse you no matter the expertise.

However, every section that you have on your LinkedIn profile can be used to showcase your professional knowledge and experience. The Skills & Endorsements section is no different. LinkedIn recently rolled out an algorithm that added structure to the endorsement process, making now the best time to learn how to endorse someone on LinkedIn and how to get endorsed yourself.

Why Endorsements on LinkedIn Matter

Endorsements is a LinkedIn feature that gives you an opportunity to share your knowledge and opinion about someone else’s skills with other users on LinkedIn. You can go on someone’s LinkedIn page, find a skill that you think they’ve mastered, and endorse them for it.

To start with, endorsements validate you as a specialist in your field. It’s a way for the people that work or used to work with you to verify the information you share about yourself on your LinkedIn resume.

This feature also allows you to stay in touch with your connections without actively interacting with them. When you endorse someone on LinkedIn, at the very least you remind them about yourself. In most cases, people tend to return the favor and endorse you back.

How the New and Updated Skills & Endorsements Work

Linkedin has recently added an algorithm to make the Skills & Endorsements section more efficient.

You can still choose any type of skill you want, from WordPress to Online Dating, and add up to 50 of those skills to your profile. However, the way people endorse you for your skills has changed.

When someone visits your profile, LinkedIn will analyze your profile and offer to the other user to endorse you for a skill that’s also applicable to them. That means that you won’t just get endorsements from your friends and colleagues, but also from people who are knowledgeable about those skills.

How to Endorse Someone on LinkedIn

Thanks to the new algorithm that LinkedIn is using for user endorsements, you don’t even have to look around someone’s profile to find the skills that you can endorse them for. When you open a user’s page, LinkedIn will prompt you to endorse them for a skill that you have in common. Then you can either Skip or Endorse them.

Alternatively, follow the steps below to endorse someone on LinkedIn.

Open LinkedIn and sign into your account.

Select My Network from the LinkedIn menu on top of the screen.

Select Connections from the Manage my network menu on the left.
In your connections, find the person you want to endorse and go to their profile. You can also search for that person using LinkedIn’s Search bar.

Scroll down until you see the Skills & Endorsements section.

Select the skill that you’d like to endorse the user for.

Additionally, you can answer the questions in the pop-up menu about how skilled the user is (Good, Very good, or Highly skilled), and how you know about their expertise.
Select Submit to add the endorsement to the user’s profile.

How to Get Endorsed on LinkedIn

Before you can get endorsed on LinkedIn, check if you have the Skills section added to your profile.

To add this section to your LinkedIn page, follow the steps below.

Go to your LinkedIn profile page.

On top of the page, select Add profile section.

From the down-arrow menu, select Skills.

Pick some of the Suggested skills based off your profile, or add your own skills using the search bar. It’s recommended to add at least 5 skills to your profile.

Now you can get endorsements from your connections and other users on LinkedIn. There’s no one strategy on how to get someone to endorse you. Normally, when you endorse someone they tend to endorse you back. Meaning that if you want to see more activity on your own Skills & Endorsements section, you should start by endorsing people for their skills yourself.

When someone endorses you, LinkedIn won’t automatically add the endorsement to your profile. Instead, you will receive a notification either on your LinkedIn account or via email. The endorsement will only be added to your profile after you view the notification and accept it.

Are All Endorsements Good?

One more feature that LinkedIn added to the section is an ability to remove unwanted skills and hide the people that endorsed you for them.

This might seem unnecessary, but having a bunch of skills that aren’t relevant to your field of work or your resume in general isn’t the best LinkedIn strategy. Your Skills & Endorsements section should back up the professional experience that you list on your profile. So it’s best to avoid getting endorsed by random strangers for something they know nothing about.

How to Turn Off Endorsements

If you feel like you’ve been getting too many endorsements from people that you don’t want to have recommendations from, you can turn off endorsements on LinkedIn.

Go to your LinkedIn profile page.

Scroll down until you see the Skills & Endorsements section.
Select the pencil icon to edit the section.

In the pop up window, select Adjust endorsement settings.

Toggle off I want to be endorsed to turn off endorsements on your page.

Use Endorsements to Stand Out on LinkedIn

Upgrading the Skills & Endorsements section of your profile is a great way to get more out of LinkedIn without paying for the Premium subscription. Getting endorsed by your connections and other experts in your field will validate your professional experience and make you stand out among other specialists.

Do you endorse people on LinkedIn? What’s your strategy for getting them to endorse you back? Share your best LinkedIn practices with us in the comments section below.

What Is the Google App & How to Use It

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 10:00:09 GMT

The Google App can be confusing. You see it on your phone screen with just a big G that suggests “Google”. You may not even end up using it as you already use Chrome for all your web searches and site visits. You may be using Google Maps to go from one place to the next. And then there are other apps that help you with other tasks.

So, it’s natural to ask…

What Is the Google App?

The Google app is the Google Search app.

But it also does a bit more than the standard Google Search Bar on your browser to help you discover the world around you. Think of it as a single window into the outside world. You can then customize it to discover information around your special interests and stay informed with personalized updates.

You can get the same results with any Google Search, but the Google app just makes it easier to stay in control of the glut out there.

The Google Search app can make your searches faster. So, let’s jump into the app and see what it can do.

Note: The Google Search app is slightly different in Android and iOS. For instance, the Android app displays all news items on Discover while iOS calls it Home. The screenshots included below are from iOS 13.

What Does the Google App Do?

Start with a bit of fun. Tap the Google logo on the home page. If there’s no special Google Doodle, the colorful dots do a short jig on the screen. Tap it again to check out all its dance moves.

Tap the weather icon (that displays today’s temperature) to see a forecast on the Google Search results page. The details pale in comparison to that of a weather app, but it’s sufficient to take in with a glance.

The default home screen gives you news stories, sports scores, and anything else that’s happening around the world right now. Sign into the app with your Google account to customize the information you want to see.

The main part of the app is Google Search. Tap on it to start your search or select a search from the What’s Trending list below it.

The Google App home screen displays a feed of articles which it thinks you’ll be interested in. This data comes from your search history, location, and other data that Google has about you. You can turn off web and app activity monitoring or delete it from the app itself by visiting the Activity Controls page.

What Is Collections on the Google App?

Collections is a group of articles you can collate from your search results. It’s a bookmarking feature and uses the same icon next to the URL on the app. You can add anything from the search page to a collection like images, trips, and itineraries.

Add multiple collections and access them from the Collections screen. Edit or delete them anytime. You can also share your collections with others via the app.

Tap the Collection you want to share. Configure the share settings. As you can see in the screenshot below, you have two options.

Share it with a view-only link.
Share it with a Contributor link so others can add to the collection.

You can use Collections for research and then use the Contributor link to seek the help from others, all from your phone. It can work like a pinboard for gathering more information before a trip or for daily stuff like recipe collections.

When you want to view your collections in a browser, sign into that Google account and type: https://www.google.com/collections.

7 Google App Tips You Should Know About

1. Use The Dark Mode: The Google App theme will match the phone’s default setting. You can toggle the Dark Mode from the app’s Settings.

Select More > Settings > General > Theme.

2. Hide Stories With a Tap: Don’t want to follow a certain news item on the Home screen? Select the three-dots on the bottom of the card and tap Hide this story. This is one way to improve the topics you want to follow here.

3. Use 3D Touch For Quick Searches: Keep your finger on the Google icon for just a bit longer and the Quick Search menu opens. The 3D Touch feature is a wonderful way to see what’s trending and use the different search modes Google has.

4. Read Aloud To Multitask: Tap the Read Aloud button on top to have a male or female voice narrate the article to you while you do something else. You can even add multiple articles to the queue.

5. Add Siri Shortcuts to Google: You can make both Siri and Google Search play along by going to the Settings and configuring a few favorite shortcuts. Siri Shortcuts must first be configured with the Shortcuts app before the key phrases trigger the desired actions.

6. Turn On Incognito Search: Incognito search doesn’t save your search history. You can do a quick incognito search from the 3D Touch menu or turn it on permanently by selecting the three-dotted More > Turn on Incognito. After any search, you can tap the incognito icon on top of the search page to turn it off.

7. Search With Google Lens: You don’t need separate OCR tools as Google Lens is the visual search engine for your phone. Translate text, scan stuff you want to buy online, explore landmarks, identify plants and animals, add events to your calendar from a poster, and more.

You can even do a reverse Google Image Search with any image in your iPhone’s Photos. Tap on the tiny image icon on the top right and select an image from your iPhone’s gallery.

Do I Need the Google App?

If you are a heavy user of Google Search then the app gives you a fluent way to not only do web searches, but also to organize specific searches in Collections. You get Google Lens, Voice Search, and the usual Google Web Search with all its advanced operators within a tap or two.

Most of all, you can stay on top of topics that interest you. In the end, you just might like playing with the Google Doodle or using 3D Touch on Google Widget as a shortcut to your searches on the iPhone. Tell us about it. Do you use it as much as you should?

Is It Worth Paying More For Nintendo Switch Vs Switch Lite?

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 22:00:28 GMT

If you haven’t yet bought Nintendo’s newest console, the Switch, you might be unaware that Nintendo also released another version of it called the Switch Lite.

Nintendo created this version in order to be an affordable option for those who want to play all the great games the Switch has, but not spend hundreds on a new console. The Switch Lite cuts many of the features of the original Switch, but still has all the necessary components to enjoy your Switch games.

With the Switch Lite being around $200, and the original Switch about $400, it’s definitely worth looking closely at the Nintendo Switch vs the Switch Lite to see if you’d rather save the money and use the Lite instead.

Why The Lite Is So Much Cheaper

With the huge price difference between the two platforms, you might wonder what the difference is. In fact, there are some pretty big differences between the two consoles.

The Nintendo Switch Lite is technically just a handheld device, while the original Switch is an entire console you can hook up to your TV. This is possible because, besides the handheld device, the Switch has a dock you can set it into so that the game can be displayed on a television. The Lite lacks this ability, but makes up for it by being a powerful handheld device you can use anywhere.

The original Switch also has detachable Joy Con controllers on the sides. With the Switch Lite, the sides of the handheld are not detachable. It also has a full directional pad on the left-hand side. Otherwise, they have the same button layout and feel as the Switch Joy Cons. You also still have the ability to use Pro Controllers with the Lite, as you can connect them through Bluetooth.

Also, because the Switch console automatically charges the handheld and Joy Cons when connected to the dock, you will have to use an AC adapter to charge the Lite. This is included with the handheld. If you decide to buy Joy Cons separately, though, you’ll need to buy the charging stand for these, since they’ll have nothing to connect to in order to charge.

The Switch Lite, as you might imagine, is much smaller in size than the original Switch. While the original is 4 inches tall and 9.4 inches long, the Switch Lite measures at 3.6 inches tall and 8.2 inches long. The screen is also smaller, being 5.5 inches wide, compared to the 6.2 inch screen of the Switch.

As far as overall features go, the original Switch outweighs the Lite. However, if you enjoy having an extremely portable and high quality handheld system, the Lite should definitely be your go-to.

Features Of The Switch Lite

This new iteration of the Switch may certainly be a better option if you want a budget version that allows you to play the console’s games. There also is one feature of the Lite that actually outdoes the Switch.

This is the Switch Lite’s processing chip, which uses a custom Tegra X1+. This is a slightly upgraded version of what was used in the original Switch, and works more efficiently. This gives the Lite a much longer battery life. Eventually Nintendo did rerelease the Switch in 2019 with this processor to help it run faster and lengthen battery life.

The Lite also has the same display specs as the Switch’s handheld. They both have an LCD screen with a resolution of 720p. Of course, the Switch console can have an output of 1080p when docked to a TV, but as far as the handheld display goes, they are the same.

Also as with the Switch console, the Lite allows you to save game progress on the cloud with Nintendo’s online service. This means that if you eventually decide to upgrade to the full Switch console, you could potentially have access to your game saves.

But what games, exactly, are you able to play? The games supported for the Switch Lite are virtually the same as the Switch, besides ones that don’t support handheld mode. However, if you have a separate controller or Joy Cons, you can play tabletop mode games as well.

That being said, as the Switch is about twice the amount of the Lite, you should think about what features are important to you. Since the processing power of the Lite is the same as new Switch consoles or even better than the old ones, you won’t be losing anything either way. The decision mainly lies on how you want to play your games, and if you want a real console experience.

Is The Switch Lite Worth Buying Over The Switch?

These two platforms are definitely much different from each other, and if you’re looking for a fully-featured home console, the Lite will probably not be for you. Without the ability to hook up to a TV, the Lite is just a handheld that allows you to play Switch games.

That being said, if you really want a way to play these games while staying on a budget, the Switch Lite is more than enough of a way to do this. Even with its smaller screen size, the display quality, color and brightness is the same as the original Switch. This smaller and sleeker design also makes it much easier to use while you’re out in public.

If you prefer the handheld experience, and the ability to use the Switch on the go, the Switch Lite is perfect for you. And, as far as handheld systems go, the Lite is one of the best from Nintendo and on the market overall.

How To Edit GoPro Videos

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 10:00:56 GMT

GoPro makes arguably the best action cameras on the market, which isn’t surprising given that they invented the product category. However, no matter how good the camera is, you still need to edit that footage into a slick product that will delight your audience.

So if you’re wondering how to edit GoPro videos, here are some of the best apps and resources you can use to make amazing footage.

Edit GoPro Videos Directly in the App

OK, so you’ve recorded your GoPro footage and now you’re ready to edit it. You don’t have to go very far to do it! The GoPro App (Android & iOS) for smartphones has a very basic, yet fast and powerful video editor built into it.

It will walk you through every step of a standard edit. If you don’t know much about video editing, or don’t care, this is the best option for you.

Use an Advanced Mobile Editor

The GoPro editor is great if you don’t have the time or skills to do a proper edit. It lets you quickly share your adventures to your followers on social media, while adding some attitude and flavor with automated music and cuts.

This is cool, but pretty limited. The good news is that you can get advanced video editors for mobile devices that give you more complete control. For example, LumaFusion for iOS offers almost as much editing power as desktop video editors. On Android, apps like Adobe Premiere Rush give you far more options than GoPro’s app does with a very intuitive touch-based interface.

These two apps are just our own top choices on each respective mobile platform, but these days you really are spoilt for choice.

iMovie has a mobile version on iOS which pretty much has all the bells and whistles of the macOS edition. In fact, you can start your project on your iPhone or iPad and then seamlessly move it over to the macOS version. Best of all? iMovie is completely free!
PowerDirector is a free Android video editor that’s highly-rated by users. However, many of the best features are locked behind a premium subscription model.
FilmoraGo is a fantastic choice for users who don’t have much video editing experience. It has both Android and iOS versions. What’s great about this app is that it’s hyper-streamlined and provides you with everything from music to special effects in one package.

Move Your Footage to a Computer

While mobile video editors have come a long way, there’s still no substitute for proper desktop video editing packages. This means you’ll have to get your footage onto that computer if you want to work with it there.

With GoPro cameras, you have two main ways of doing this. The first is to remove the SD card from your camera and put it into a computer SD card reader. Many laptops already have these built in, but on most desktop computers you’ll have to use a USB card reader. If you’ve moved your footage onto your smartphone you can upload it to the cloud and then download it to your computer.

Some newer GoPro cameras can also upload footage directly to GoPro cloud storage. If you’ve chosen to pay for it, that is.

The Best Computer Video Editors for GoPro Footage

Now that you’ve got your GoPro footage on your computer, you need to get a good video editor to process it. On desktop operating systems there are a wealth of options, but we do have some suggestions as to which are the best for both beginners and those looking for more powerful packages.

On Windows, Linux, and Mac you’d do well to give the OpenShot free and open-source video editor a try. It’s fairly friendly to beginners, costs nothing and works across multiple operating systems.

If you’re willing to spend a little money on a subscription, then Adobe Premiere Pro is an excellent choice to edit GoPro videos. It’s an industry-standard package, has plenty of support material built into it and can do just about anything you’d want from an editing perspective.

Adobe also offers Premiere Elements, which you can buy for a one-off price. It’s much more limited, but it’s designed to let total beginners create something that rivals professional output. Just with less creative freedom. Premiere Elements 2020 does however include action-camera specific features, such as color correction, lens distortion removal and help trimming your clips for optimal action.

On macOS, you can simply start off with the free included iMovie application. We’ve got a great guide for you, so if you have a Mac, check out What Is iMovie? A Guide On Getting Started. Apple’s own Final Cut Pro is the ultimate macOS-specific video editor you can buy, but of course it’s pretty expensive.

If you don’t want to spend any money and you want a professional-grade editor, then your best option is DaVinci Resolve. Its free version has most of what you’ll ever need and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Plenty of video editors are jumping ship from Premiere to Resolve. Its Pro version has a similar price to Final Cut Pro and it’s a one-off purchase.

Resources for Stock Video and Audio

Your GoPro footage is awesome! However, a complete project may need more than just the stuff you shot. Which is why any GoPro video editor should be aware of extra resources. Maybe you want some sweet music or a cool stock video clip to tie scenes together or build an intro.

The good news is that the internet is chock-full of great resources you can use in your project. Some won’t cost you any money, some will be free. All of them come with specific licenses that dictate what you’re allowed to use them for, regardless of price.

Since there are so many, we’ve taken the liberty of putting together dedicated articles listing great sites for media creators.

If you’re looking for video clips, head over to The 10 Best Online Sources For Royalty-Free Videos which lists resources for both hobbyists and professionals.

Sound effects are often overlooked, but putting the right foley in your project can have a big impact. If you need some “pow” and “zing” in your video, check out the 10 Best Websites to Find Royalty-Free Sound Effects.

No GoPro video is complete without a good soundtrack to set the mood, but the songs included with the stock app are limited and overused. If you need fresh new beats, head over to The 7 Best Places To Find Free Ambient Music.

The Basic Process of Editing a GoPro Video

OK, so now we’ve gone over all the things you need to edit a GoPro video, but the last piece of the puzzle is your workflow. That’s the sequence of events from where you plan your shoot to where you have the final video. There is no such thing as a universal workflow for a video edit, but to give you a rough guide as to how you could go about it, we’ve created some useful guides that can help.

Follow these 6 Video Editing Tips for Beginners to make sure you get the best quality video every time.
This Adobe Premiere tutorial for beginners includes video editing tips for Adobe Premiere, but are also standard guidelines you should follow regardless of the software you use.

If you follow these basic guides, you should have a pretty decent GoPro video at the end. The rest all depends on your personal creativity and, of course, the quality of the footage you made. If the stars align, your GoPro video could be the next viral sensation!

How Does Noise Cancellation Work?

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 22:00:02 GMT

Noise. It’s all around us. Whether it’s a crying baby, the hum of an air conditioner or the animated babble of your office co-workers. A quiet place to work or enjoy some relaxation is becoming a truly premium commodity. Noise cancellation technology can help bring the zen back into your life.

The question is, how does noise cancellation work? Let’s go over the principles of the technology, so you can make an informed choice when buying your own noise-cancelling equipment.

A (Very) Basic Overview of Sound

Sound is energy travelling as a wave through some form of matter. We generally hear sound transmitted through the air.

For example, a guitar string vibrates in air, knocking air molecules about. Those molecules knock into their neighbors, and so on. When the wave moving through the air hits your ear drums, it moves them at the same frequency as the guitar string.

Your brain converts that movement into electrical signals that you then perceive as sound. That’s a very simplistic explanation of what sound is, but it’s the least you need to know to understand noise cancellation.

A (Very) Basic Overview of Anti-sound

A wave has different properties. It has a frequency, which is how often the wave goes through a full cycle.

Using our guitar string as an example again. The frequency is how quickly the string moves through one full vibration. We perceive higher frequency sound as high-pitched. Lower frequency sound is more bassy. Apart from frequency, waves also have amplitude. That’s the height of the wave’s peak. Next, the wave also has a phase. This is the position of the peaks and troughs of the wave.

If you generate a sound wave that has the same amplitude, but the opposite phase (the peaks are where the troughs of the other wave are), it causes destructive interference. The two waves essentially cancel each other out. This can be done at large scale, where you need to have just as much energy in your anti-noise generator as the original sound itself. However, if you only want to cancel noise for one person, you don’t need much power at all, which is where noise cancelling headphones come in.

Noise Cancelling Headphones

Noise cancelling headphones are technological marvels. On the outside of the headphones, there are microphones that sample the ambient noise outside the headphones. This sound is analyzed by onboard electronics, using a mathematical algorithm. Each headphone maker has its own secret-sauce algorithm, which all work to differing levels of effectiveness.

Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones WH1000XM3

The algorithm is used to calculate the anti-noise wave needed to destructively interfere with the ambient noise where you are. Then a device known as a transducer, which is essentially a type of speaker, generates the anti-noise wave.

The end effect is that when you switch on the noise cancellation function, you’re suddenly enveloped in (near) silence. Which allows you to enjoy your audio at much better fidelity or just enjoy some peace and quiet.

Active and Passive Noise Cancellation

The process we just described is usually referred to on product specification sheets as “active noise cancellation” or something similar. Confusingly, some headphones claim to have something called “passive” noise cancellation.

It’s very important not to confuse these two features. There really isn’t such a thing as passive noise cancellation. What this term actually means is that a given pair of headphones were designed to block out sound using plain old soundproofing.

This means that the materials and design of the headphones isolate you from outside noise to some extent. From that point of view, sticking your fingers in your ears is also “passive noise cancellation”.

There’s much to be said for a pair of headphones that offer great sound isolation, but linking that to noise cancellation is a bit of marketing sleight of hand.

The Limitations of Active Noise Cancellation

Current active noise cancellation technology can’t block out noise perfectly. They work incredibly well when it comes to constant, predictable sources of noise. Think of a jet engine, the hum of an air conditioner or your fridge compressor. Modern active noise cancellation is incredibly good at erasing that type of sound completely.

Conversely, sudden unpredictable sounds pose much more of a challenge. This usually includes loud human conversations, someone breaking a glass cup or any other noise that the algorithm doesn’t have time to analyze. That being said, new cutting edge systems with faster processors and more sophisticated algorithms are beginning to deal with these types of noise as well.

Awesafe Electronic Shooting Earmuffs

One interesting example of such specialized active noise cancellation technology comes in the form of electronic earmuffs used when firing rifles, pistols and other firearms.

These earmuffs use passive sound isolation to block out all sound, just as regular shooting earmuffs do. However, they have external microphones that pass through sound around you, to maintain situational awareness. So you can have a conversation with another person with ease. However, the maximum volume of all sound around you is kept under a comfortable maximum.

These systems can often provide directional sound and amplify quiet sounds as well, while cancelling out gunshots. It’s not exactly the same technology as mainstream noise cancellation headphones, but it’s closely related.

AI-Powered Noise Removal

A fairly new development is the application of artificial intelligence technology to remove unwanted noise from an audio signal. Unfortunately this can’t quite happen in real time just yet, so it isn’t effective at noise cancellation. What it is very good at is removing noise from a microphone signal.

For example, if you’re trying to Skype someone or make a voice recording in a noisy environment, it can be hard for the person on the other end to understand what you’re saying. Using artificial intelligence, that audio stream can be analyzed and everything but your own voice can be removed.

For example, Nvidia’s RTX Voice application uses the special deep learning hardware in their RTX graphics cards to process microphone audio. So whether someone is typing on a keyboard, vacuuming the floor, or doing construction work, none of that will be audible to your audience. You can see a demonstration of this incredible technology here.

Since there’s enough time between where you speak into the microphone and the other person hears the audio for the AI to do it’s work, there’s no issue in terms of real time limitations. Perhaps with technological advancement these super-effective AI noise removal methods will work as a form of headphone noise cancellation as well.

Noise Cancelling Microphones

Moving on from headphones, another place where a similar technology can be very useful for most people, especially now that so many of us rely on remote work, are noise-cancelling microphones.

Once again, even though the marketing language uses the term “noise-cancelling”, these microphones don’t generate anti-noise to interfere with the source of the noise. Instead, they take the sound as a whole and then apply the same sort of noise-identifying algorithm to it. Removing it from the input audio stream before passing it on.

You even get in-line AI-powered microphone noise removal solutions, such as this ASUS adapter. Plug it into a USB port, connect your headset to it and the little electronic brain inside will remove unwanted noises, leaving only your crystal clear voice behind.

The Sound of Silence

You don’t really notice how much the constant noise of modern life grinds you down until you manage to block it out. Slipping on a pair of good noise-cancelling headphones can feel like a refreshing wind blowing away your low-level anxiety.

Now that you know how noise cancellation works, you can make more informed decisions about your anti-noise kit of choice. If you buy the right stuff, you’ll find that the sound of silence really is the best music you can get.

6 eBay Buyer and Seller Scams to Spot and Avoid

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 10:00:51 GMT

eBay is the flea market of the web. It’s an amazing site full of potential treasure, whether you’re searching for a hard-to-find video game or Justin Timberlake’s half-eaten French toast.

Unfortunately, it is also full of scammers looking to make a quick buck. Though eBay has strong buyer protections in place, you need to be wary as you navigate this online bazaar.

Being forewarned is forearmed. Know which eBay scams to look out for and you can better protect yourself against malicious elements that want to make a living off your dime.

eBay Seller Scams to Avoid

Stay alert for any of the following seller scams on eBay.

Incorrect Name on Shipping Label

Most people throw away any mail they received that is not addressed to them. Most people won’t open it, especially if it is a package. Instead, they mark it as wrongly delivered. Scammers take advantage of this and send a package with the correct address, but the wrong name on the label. Because most people return the package, the scammer can resell it.

If an eBay package is returned or refused, the seller is able to keep the money and the product–only to turn around and sell it again to someone else. Once a transaction is finalized like this, the buyer can’t dispute it, and therefore has no recourse to get their money back.

Watch Out for Empty Boxes

It seems that every year, there’s a particular item that’s in high-demand. Years ago, it was the Furby. A few Christmases back, it was the Pie Face Board Game. The “empty box” scam is when a seller places an item for sale that’s in high demand. Since so many people want it, most will buy it right away without reading the description.

The item will be listed at or above market value, only for the buyer to find out the box is simply that: an empty box. Unfortunately, if the description clearly stated the product was nothing more than a box, there is nothing the buyer can do. Make sure to thoroughly read the description before you buy, no matter how much you may want something.

Beware of “Untested” Items

It’s a common scam that sellers will post a valuable item for sale at retail price, but list it as “untested.” In most circumstances, it’s simple enough to test a product before you sell it. An item listed as “untested” means the seller is, at the very least, too lazy to put in the effort.

On the other hand, there are legitimate instances where an untested product may be a quality find. The problem is that it’s hard to tell for sure. When you encounter this, look at the seller’s profile. If they have a low feedback score, steer clear. You should also look at their sales history.

Many scammers buy and sell products to themselves through secondary accounts to keep their feedback percentages high enough to trick buyers into thinking they’re legitimate. In cases like this, there will likely be a high number of small purchases and sales.

eBay Buyer Scams to Avoid

Be aware of any of the following buyer scams on eBay.

Buyer Claims You Only Sent an Empty Box

Unlike the seller scam that involves empty boxes, this one you can fight back against. Make sure to take photographic evidence (with metadata enabled on your camera) to document the entire packing and shipping process, each and every time.

The way this scam works is that the buyer will accuse you of fraud and claim you only sent an empty box. You can contact eBay and appeal the dispute, but if you do not have absolutely every step of the process documented, eBay will rule in the buyer’s favor. eBay is a pro-buyer company, and this scam takes advantage of that fact.

Buyer Claims They Never Received the Item

Due to eBay’s purchase protection policies, it’s incredibly easy for someone to claim they never received the package and force you to issue a refund. However, you can request a signature upon delivery. This is actually required for any purchase over $750, but many sellers are not aware of this fact.

Make sure to track every shipment all the way up to delivery and keep documentation showing when it arrives. If you’re shipping something worth more than $750 like a computer or gaming console, make sure to require a signature upon delivery. If the person signs for the package, then they can’t claim it wasn’t delivered.

Buyer Refunds Package with a Broken Item

This scam is all too common. Someone will purchase an item like an iPhone and then claim it was broken upon delivery. They’ll ship it back with a broken iPhone inside, but it won’t be the one you sent–it will be a phone they had lying around for this exact purpose. They keep the phone and get their money back.

The best way to avoid this scam is to document everything you can about the item you’re selling. Look for specific serial numbers, IME numbers, and even markings on the item itself or the box. Take pictures. Have all of this information ready in case you need to dispute a refund with eBay. While it isn’t a guarantee, it gives you a better chance to fight the scammer.

8 Best FPS Browser Games You Can Play Online Now

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 22:00:06 GMT

FPS games are some of the most widely-played games in the world. With FPS titles known to virtually everyone, like Call of Duty or Overwatch, you might notice a bit of a price tag, not only for buying the game itself but sometimes also for microtransactions.

However, if you still want to get in on all the action an FPS game provides without spending a penny, there are FPS browser based games that can be just as fun to play. Though they may not have the same level of graphics quality or speed, you’ll find yourself getting the same edge-of-your-seat thrill as more popular games out there.

Thankfully, all you need to play these games is a computer and a good internet connection. For a good majority of these games, your computer doesn’t even have to be that powerful. So as long as you have these basic necessities, you’re ready to play.

Krunker

If you want the fun of an FPS game without the toll they can take on your computer, Krunker is the FPS browser game for you. The graphics are stylized yet simple so that the game looks good without giving your PC too much work to do.

This game is also multiplayer, so you and others online can explore multiple original maps. You can also choose from many different classes, each with their respective weapons and playstyles.

Over time, you can level up your classes to gain access to better weapons. With all the fast-paced action this game has already, this just helps with keeping you invested in the game.

Superhot

This is a unique game among other browser FPS games. Superhot is a full game you can download for PC, but the makers of the game also created a demo version that is browser-based.

The game has a sci-fi feel and includes an intriguing storyline where you control time with your movements. The graphics are very original but should also be easy on your computer. And, if you decide you really enjoy playing this game’s demo, you can find it on Steam for your PC or as a VR game.

Wolfenstein 3D

One of the games that started it all was Wolfenstein 3D. If you’re looking for a more retro gameplay experience, this one is exactly what you need. Hailed as the grandfather of modern-day FPS, it sets you up with all the essentials of the genre.

You play as prisoner in a world where WWII Nazi Germany has taken over, and you must escape a Nazi hideout. The graphics are just as they were when the game first released, technically a 2D game but made to look 3D through visual illusions and clever programming.

If you want to relive the past of FPS gaming, this is the best one available to play online right now.

Mini Royale 2

You might have noticed all the hype surrounding battle-royale style games. If you want to get in on this craze, Mini Royale 2 is a great FPS browser game to try out. You play on a small scale of 10 other players, and your objective is to be the last one standing.

The graphics are very distinct and colorful, almost looking like legos. This game also has some great fast-paced gameplay, while still running well on any computer. Despite the small user base, you should still find this game keeps your interest for as long as you play it.

Global Strike

If you’re looking for a game like Counter-Strike, you’ve found it. Global Strike is nearly the exact same as the older version of Counter-Strike, yet allows you to play the game in a browser. The graphics are pretty outdated, but there’s a strong player base and it’s still just as enjoyable.

There are multiple modes you can play in such as capture the flag, team deathmatch, and even a zombie mode. This keeps the game interesting with every new round. However, there are some difficulties with lag in this game. But if you really want to play a game similar to Counter-Strike in your browser, this is the closest you’ll find.

Warmerise: Red vs Blue

If sci-fi shooters are more your speed, Warmerise is the best sci-fi FPS game you can find to play on a browser. There are some great weapons at your disposal to play with, as you go head-to-head with other players from either the Red or Blue faction.

You choose which faction you want to join before you play, and fight among others in order to get higher in rank. The graphics, as in most of these browser games, aren’t anything special, but the unique concept and gameplay makes up for it.

Open Arena

Another classic FPS game is the Quake franchise. Quake III Arena is a retro game that helped the FPS genre gain so much of its popularity. And now, you can easily play it in your browser. Open Arena is a clone of the Quake III Arena game which allows you to start a server and play with others.

If retro gaming is your thing, you will definitely love this game. However, as it is an old game, the graphics are outdated and the controls might feel clunky. But it’s great to play if you’re looking for some FPS nostalgia.

Rush Team

This is a team-based FPS game taking place entirely in a browser. You play with your team throughout maps in different objective-based tasks like capture the flag, search and destroy, deathmatch, and more.

However, the graphics in this game are less than stellar, and it might be hard to find other players to create a team with. But if you want to play a game similar to that of Call of Duty or Counter-Strike, this would be the best one for you.

How to Post an Article on Linkedin (And Best Times to Post)

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 10:00:20 GMT

Whether you’re a new LinkedIn member, or an experienced user with a LinkedIn resume, you’re probably looking for new ways to upgrade your profile. One way to do it is by posting articles on LinkedIn.

Publishing your own content on LinkedIn can help you make better use of the platform in more than one way. Plus, you don’t need to pay for LinkedIn Premium to take advantage of this feature.

Learn why you should start posting articles on LInkedIn, what type of content to publish, and the best times to post.

Why Post an Article on LinkedIn

Simply registering your profile on LinkedIn is not enough for effective networking and job hunting on the site. LinkedIn is all about networking, collaboration, and growing the number of your connections. Posting unique articles on LinkedIn can help you advance on the platform.

Here’s how publishing your own articles can help you become a Pro LinkedIn user.

Spruce Up Your Resume

Your most recent written posts appear as a part of the Activity section of your LinkedIn profile under Articles. If you don’t post anything, you’re missing out on the opportunity to attract your audience’s attention.

Remind Your Connections About Yourself

When you publish an article on LinkedIn, your connections will get a notification about it and you’ll appear in their feed. It’s a good opportunity to remind your audience about yourself in a non-intrusive way.

Grow Your Network Through Shared Posts

If you manage to craft an interesting article with unique content, there’s a good chance someone from your connections will want to share it on their LinkedIn feed. That could help you grow your network and open you up to new professional opportunities.

Get Featured By LinkedIn

LinkedIn sends Daily and Weekly digest emails to all their users. If you manage to create engaging and compelling content, there’s a possibility of being featured in that LinkedIn’s newsletter that your connections will receive. That way you don’t just get more exposure but also more trust from your audience that you’re an expert on your topic.

What Should You Post on LinkedIn?

One of the most obvious article topics for LinkedIn is sharing your professional expertise. After all, your LinkedIn page is all about showcasing your skills and experience. By way of sharing your professional knowledge in a form of LinkedIn articles, you’re giving your audience insight into just how much experience you have on the topic. That in turn will help you build your reputation as an expert.

However, that’s not all you can post on LinkedIn. In fact, you shouldn’t focus on just the content related to your professional field if you want to attract different types of people. It’s likely that most of your connections share the same hobbies and interests with you. Posting about things that you enjoy is bound to attract their attention.

Some other topics that make for a good LinkedIn publishing material are trends, tips & tricks type of articles, and interesting lifehacks. Articles like that tend to perform well and have a high engagement rate on social media.

How to Post an Article on LinkedIn

When you gather some ideas for a new post to share with your network, follow the steps below to publish an article on LinkedIn.

Open LinkedIn and sign into your account.

In your LinkedIn feed, find the Start a post box and select Write article. This will take you to the LinkedIn publishing tool.

Write or paste your article into the window, come up with a catchy headline, and add a featured image.

The LinkedIn publishing tool allows you to change the text format, add numbered and bullet lists, as well as insert hyperlinks into your article.

You can use Publishing menu to save your articles as drafts to edit later, and share your drafts with other users.

When you’re happy with your article, select Publish in the upper-right corner of the screen.

In the Share box, you can edit who can see your future post, choose whether to allow comments on your post, and add hashtags to help people find your article.

Once you confirm publishing your article, it’ll be added to the Activity section of your profile. You can always go back to your article if you want to edit or delete it, as well as share it to other social media channels after it’s published on LinkedIn.

The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

Of course, you can post on LinkedIn whenever you want. However, if you’re aiming for a higher engagement rate, you should carefully time your posts to increase the chances of catching your audience’s attention.

While there’s a general opinion on the best time to post on LinkedIn, you should think about your audience first. Taking into account the nature of the platform, most LinkedIn users are working professionals who, depending on their work field, will either use LinkedIn during their working hours, or at lunch time.

Keeping that in mind, imagine an average member of your audience on LinkedIn. Think about when they’re most likely to check their feed, and figure out your ideal time slot for posting based on that.

If you’re still in doubt, use the common LinkedIn posting strategy. It’s recommended to publish your content on LinkedIn between 8am and 2pm on Tuesday through Thursday.

The Worst Time to Post on LinkedIn

When it comes to the worst time to post articles on LinkedIn, the same strategy applies. Think about your audience and imagine when they’re most out of reach and don’t use their phones or computers.

Try to avoid posting on weekends or outside typical business hours – 9am to 5pm.

Time to Upgrade Your LinkedIn Resume

Publishing content on LinkedIn is a great way to impress both your existing and future professional contacts and earn their trust online. Start posting your articles on LinkedIn and use them to create a smarter resume that could land you a job in the future.

Have you ever posted an article on LinkedIn? What was it about? Share your LinkedIn knowledge with us in the comments below.

How to Install Fonts on Windows 10

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 22:00:52 GMT

If you want to create a new document with stand-out text, you might want to think about installing a new font. These can be found online for free, as part of a font set, or for purchase. If you want others to see these fonts, you’ll need to use them in static files, such as PDFs or images. Otherwise, you’ll need to supply the font itself.

You can install fonts on Windows 10 in several ways. You can download and install fonts manually from online sources, you can install fonts directly using the Microsoft Store, or you can use third-party font managers to install fonts for you. If you want to know how to install fonts on Windows 10, here’s what you’ll need to do.

Where To Find New Windows 10 Fonts

There are several online sources available for free font downloads. You could, for instance, download free fonts from the Google Fonts collection, where over a thousand fonts are available.

Other online sources for free fonts include Font Squirrel and Urban Fonts, but this is a far from exhaustive list. You could even design your own font using the free FontStruct service. Whether you’re downloading an existing font or creating your own, the font file itself will usually be in the TTF or OTF file formats.

If you’re a Photoshop user, you could make use of your Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and download fonts through that service. You can also install fonts on Windows 10 directly using the Microsoft Store.

Install Fonts in Windows 10 Using Windows Font Viewer

If you’ve downloaded a suitable TTF or OTF font file from an online source, you can install it in several ways. The first method is by viewing the font file itself. Window will allow you to preview a font and install it using the Windows Font Viewer.

This shows the font being used with the sentence, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, which contains every letter of the alphabet. The numbers 0-9 and some punctuation (such as semicolons) are also shown, allowing you to view the font design in full.

The Windows Font Viewer opens both TTF and OTF font files. To install using this method, click the Install button in the top-left corner of the Windows Font Viewer window.

After a few moments, your new font will be available to use in other software on your PC.

Install Fonts in Windows 10 Using the System Font Folder

If you’re installing several fonts at once, however, then installing fonts using Windows Font Viewer would be a slow, time-consuming process. Instead, you can install the fonts manually by copying them into the Windows system folder for fonts (C:\Windows\Fonts) directly.

To do this, open Windows File Explorer and head to the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. In another Explorer window, drag the files to the Fonts folder. Alternatively, copy the files, then right-click > Paste in the Fonts folder itself.

Once the files are copied or moved into place, the fonts will be available in your other apps and installed Windows software. You may need to restart any open apps to be able to view the fonts, however.

Install Fonts in Windows 10 Using Windows Settings

If you’re struggling to install fonts on Windows 10 that you’ve downloaded online using the method above, you can drag-and-drop them in the Fonts menu in Windows Settings instead.

To access this menu, right-click the Windows Start menu and press the Settings option.

In Windows Settings, press Personalization > Fonts. At the top of the menu is an option to drag-and-drop font files. If you’ve downloaded OTF or TTF font files, you can find and select these in a separate Windows File Explorer window, then drag-and-drop them onto your open Windows Settings window.

Once dropped into place, the fonts will be ready to use immediately.

Finding and Installing Fonts from the Microsoft Store

If you’re struggling to find new fonts you like, you may be able to find them in the Microsoft Store, Windows 10’s built-in app store. Rather than searching for these manually, you can access the list of available fonts for download directly from your Windows Settings menu.

You can open Windows Settings by right-clicking the Start menu and clicking Settings.

In Windows Settings, select Personalization > Fonts. In the Fonts menu, press the Get more fonts in Microsoft Store option.

This will launch the Microsoft Store in a new window. A list of free and paid-for fonts will be available to view. Click one of the available fonts in the Fonts list here to preview it.

In the preview section for a font in the Microsoft Store, press the Get button. This will download and install the font on your PC. You’ll need to authorize the purchase if you’re purchasing a paid-for font at the next stage.

After the font has been installed, you’ll be able to use it in your other software immediately.

Using Third-Party Font Managers

If you’re struggling to install new fonts in Windows 10, you may prefer to use a third-party font management tool. These tools are an all-in-one solution for fonts, letting you download, manage, and update new fonts directly.

One font manager you can use is FontBase, a cross-platform font management tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux. FontBase is free to use, and it allows you to quickly install fonts from the Google Fonts collection without downloading and installing them manually.

Download and install FontBase to begin. Once it’s installed, you can view your currently installed fonts in the main FontBase window. If you want to install a new font from the Google Fonts collection, press the Google option under the Providers category.

FontBase uses an activation system to switch fonts on and off. When the app is open, the fonts you’ve activated become available to use in other software. When it’s closed, the fonts are disabled and become unavailable. This is designed to limit your system resource usage. To activate a font, select the checkbox next to a font in the Google list. When the checkbox is green, the font is active.

If you prefer, you can take a font from FontBase and install it manually so it remains available at all times. To do this, right-click a font you’ve activated, then press the Go to font option. This will open the location of the font in Windows File Explorer.

Double-click the font file to open it in Windows Font Viewer. Once it opens, press the Install button.

If you decide to install a FontBase font permanently, it’ll be available to use immediately, regardless of whether FontBase is open or not.

Creating New Designs with New Fonts on Windows 10

Once you know how to install fonts on Windows 10, you can let your creative side go wild. New documents, images, professional infographics and more can all benefit from a new font or two, especially if you’re bored of seeing the same old Times New Roman or Arial font in size 12 appear in your documents.

Once your fonts are installed, the next steps are yours. You could design and create a multi-page PDF in Photoshop, letting you integrate your new font style into a static document. You can even add fonts in Photoshop directly, with even more fonts available to install and use as part of your Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

Best Free PS4 Games To Play Right Now

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 10:00:07 GMT

Sometimes you might feel that itch to start playing a brand new game, yet maybe you don’t want to spend the money on one. Thankfully, free-to-play games are bigger than ever, and there are lots of options out there to download. Many of them can even rival the games you have to pay for.

When it comes to free PS4 games, though, what you get can sometimes be a mixed bag. It’s hard to know if what you’re downloading is going to be a quality game, or something you can tell little effort was put into.

So you don’t have to spend your time doing trial and error just to find a game to play, here is a list of the best free PS4 games you can download right now.

Apex Legends

If you’re in the mood to see what the hype for battle-royale games is all about, Apex Legends is a great place to get that fix. And, moreover, it’s entirely free to start playing. This game became popular as an alternative to Fortnite, and it sets itself apart from this and other battle royale games with its truly fast-paced action and tight controls.

Apex Legends is played as a first-person shooting game, where you play in a three-person squad among 20 other teams. Another innovative feature of this game is a ping communication system, which allows you to talk to your teammates even if you don’t have a microphone to use.

Smite

If you’re a fan of MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games like League of Legends or Dota 2, this one will be right up your alley. It works extremely similarly to these games, where you play in a team of five other players against an opposing team.

This game revolves around using several different gods or goddesses from different religious pantheons, such as Greek or Egyptian. The game uses figures from mythology as playable characters, and you have special attacks and powers to use as each.

Smite is one of the most played MOBA games out there, so it’s definitely worth a try if you like strategic, team-based PS4 games.

Warframe

Looking for a game to play similar to Destiny? Or maybe you just like sci-fi shooting games? Warframe is a third-person perspective game which involves exploring an open world as an alien race called Tenno. These beings use robot-armor, called Warframes, which provide abilities and weapons.

You can play through missions solo, or you can team up with up to four other people to complete them. You also gain experience from missions which help you to upgrade your Warframe.

This free-to-play PS4 game is also nice in that it really tries to avoid giving those who pay for features in the game too much of an advantage. You can get every item or upgrades completely in-game if you play enough.

Neverwinter

This game is based on the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms city of the same name. For fans of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, Neverwinter is an amazing option for hours of gameplay.

Neverwinter is very heavily story-based, and provides simple gameplay for an intriguing yet casual experience. You can choose from eight different classes from Dungeons & Dragons to play as and explore Neverwinter, with different powers and abilities for each.

Brawlhalla

Fighting and platform games come together in this colorful 2D world, similar in gameplay to Super Smash Bros. It’s also just as easy to pick up, with simple yet satisfying controls.

Your goal is to knock your opponent off the stage by damaging their character. You have multiple lives that get depleted each time you’re knocked off, and whoever runs out first loses. You can choose from 50 characters to play, and there are also different skins available that allow you to play as characters from multiple other franchises, such as WWE, Tomb Raider, Adventure Time, and Steven Universe.

DC Universe Online

DC Universe lets you create your own superhero (or villain), and play in the world of DC comics. You can interact with well-known heroes and villains and explore the famous areas of the DC universe.

This game is an action-based MMO game, combining compelling DC universe-based plots with familiar MMO style gameplay. Best of all, it’s completely free to play. Even though the game has been around for awhile, it’s still getting regular updates and has an active user base.

You’ll be able to spend tons of time in this free PS4 game, and if you’re a superhero fan, this is for sure worth looking into. It’s an extremely unique game that stays interesting no matter how long you play.

Fallout Shelter

The Fallout franchise is undoubtedly one of the biggest and most popular out there. Fallout Shelter was created as a small spinoff game that plays as a simulation where you manage (you guessed it) a fallout shelter.

It’s a great free PS4 game if you like simulators, or need a break from playing the rest of the Fallout franchise. The game does include some in-game microtransactions to reduce the time spent waiting for things to happen, but if you have some time on your hands and can be patient, you can play the game 100% free.

How To Induce Lucid Dreaming Using Mobile Apps

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 10:00:41 GMT

Today you have many devices designed to reduce digital eye strain caused by staring at screens all day and to improve the quality of your sleep. Yet do you ever feel like you’re wasting time while sleeping?

If you get around 8 hours of sleep daily, does that mean you spend a third of your life doing completely nothing?

All that time doesn’t have to go to waste thanks to lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams are all about being aware that you’re dreaming and in a sense being awake while sleeping. If you learn to induce lucid dreaming, you can take control of your dreams and even learn new skills while your body’s getting rest.

Here’s everything you need to know about lucid dreaming and how to induce lucid dreaming using mobile apps.

What Is Lucid Dreaming?

Do you ever wish you could turn your dreams into fun adventures and choose where and when those adventures take place? Apparently, this is possible with lucid dreaming. You can fly, go to space, become a record-breaking athlete, and talk to your dog – all while you’re sleeping. It’s like virtual reality, except there’s no limitation to where your mind can fly.

A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you’re dreaming. It’s not an usual state for the human mind. That’s why people tend to wake up from lucid dreams. Although at its core, the practice of lucid dreaming is about staying in this self-aware dreamstate and exploring it further.

What Are the Benefits of Lucid Dreaming?

Inducing the state of lucid dreaming can take a lot of time and patience, especially if you’ve never experienced anything like it before. However, it’s worth it for the potential benefits that lucid dreaming can bring.

Aside from having fun while you’re sleeping, you can use lucid dreaming to overcome past trauma or a phobia and forget about having nightmares. If you’re inclined to depression, lucid dreams can help you deal with it through improving your self-awareness.

While you’re dreaming, there’s no limitation to your imagination, which in turn will increase your creativity and original thinking in real life. It can also have beneficial effects on your physical skills – you can try new things while lucid dreaming without any risks, which will remove or at least reduce the fear of trying it in real life.

How To Induce Lucid Dreaming

The idea of taking full control of your dreams couldn’t be more appealing. Imagine using all of that extra time that you spend sleeping to improve your real life skills and talents. There are many different techniques that you can use to induce lucid dreaming. And of course since it’s the 21st century, there’s an app for that.

Lucid Dreamer – For Performing Reality Checks

Reality checking is one of the most important aspects of lucid dreaming. Every now and then, you need to ask yourself whether you’re awake or dreaming, even during the day. Then you should perform a reality check. If you fail the reality check, you’ll realize you’re dreaming and can try to take over that state.

Lucid Dreamer is a free app that has a built-in Reality Checker. It will give you certain tasks like looking at yourself in the mirror, reading a book, or moving objects. You’ll get notifications to perform the task during the day to do it regularly. Once you build the habit out of it, when you’re alerted by the specific sound or vibration from the app you will perform the reality check in your dream and trigger the lucid dreaming state.

Download: for iOS, Android.

Dream Journal Ultimate – For Keeping Your Dream Journal

One thing you’ll need to learn to do if you want to become lucid is to remember your dreams. Dream journaling can help you there.

Dream Journal Ultimate is a free app that can help you track and analyze your dreams. You can keep your entries private or share them with the community. The app allows you to add tags and view dreams that are similar to yours. It can help you identify patterns and perform better reality checks the next time you’re dreaming.

You can also use Dream Journal Ultimate to interact with other users and exchange your lucid dreaming experiences with them.

Download: for iOS, Android.

Binaural Beats Therapy – For Exercising WILD Technique

One popular lucid dreaming technique is called WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming) and it implies initiating a lucid dream as soon as you go to bed. Listening to binaural sounds or white noise right before you go to sleep can help you with that. It helps you fall asleep faster while keeping your mind conscious at the same time.

Binaural Beats Therapy is a free app that has different sections with binaural sounds specifically meant to induce lucid dreaming, to help you relax during air travel, or to inspire creativity.

For better results, try listening to different sounds for a few nights and choose the one that feels most comfortable to you.

Download: for Android.

Simple Habit – For Guided Meditation

While meditation isn’t directly related to lucid dreaming, since you need to stay conscious to become lucid, it can still help you in the beginning. Practicing meditation can make you more self-aware and help you not freak out and immediately wake up when you realize you’re dreaming.

Simple Habit is a free app for guided meditation. It offers audio recordings of meditation sessions of various lengths organized by themes and different goals. You can use the app to set the reminders to meditate daily or use its On The Go mode to hop on a quick session whenever you have a free minute.

Download: for iOS, Android.

Take Up Video Gaming For Better Lucid Dreaming

Playing video games to induce lucid dreaming probably isn’t the advice you expected to hear. Yet it’s one of the best ones. When you’re playing a game, you submerge into a virtual reality where you learn to control your movements and decision to progress in the plot. Lucid dreaming happens to require the same skillset. Pick your favorite games and start practicing.

Are you interested in lucid dreaming? Have you tried taking control of your dreams before? Share your lucid dreaming experiences with us in the comments below.

Is A Gaming PC Really More Expensive Than A Console?

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 10:00:01 GMT

If you want to play video games in this day and age there have never been more options. You can grab a smartphone or hop on a game streaming service and be playing in no time. However, for most people who play video games as a primary form of entertainment, there are two choices: PC vs console.

Consoles are purpose-built gaming machines that offer plug-and-play gaming with no need to mess about with game settings. They are also pretty affordable, or at least their initial price tag is.

PCs, on the other hand, offer complete hardware flexibility and, if you spend enough, the sort of gaming horsepower that no console can match. Except perhaps right as a new generation of consoles launches.

While the PC platform is, in general the home of premium video game performance, gamers often baulk at the perceived price of being a PC gamer. The question is whether that perception is accurate. The answer, as we’ll see, depends on how you look at things.

The Hardware Costs

There’s no two ways about it. The amount of money you have to hand over to take a console home is less than you’d pay for an equivalent or better gaming PC. As a console’s lifespan rolls along, that fact changes. Since the console hardware doesn’t change, new PC hardware becomes more powerful at a lower price. So eventually a similar asking price for the console will net you a PC with better specifications.

Why are consoles so much cheaper? There are a few reasons for this. Console makers get preferential hardware prices because they build millions and millions of consoles. Console makers also don’t need to make a profit on their consoles. Often they either break even or take a loss on each unit.

This is acceptable because of something known as the “attach rate”. In the case of a console, this refers to the games, services and accessories users must buy to get any real use out of their machine. So even if the console hardware itself doesn’t make any money, there’s instant profit from the sale of the first game, accessory or subscription.

With PCs, every component has a profit margin. The individual manufacturers need to make a return on the hardware or there’d be no point. The end result of this is that, from a performance-per-dollar point of view, PCs are more expensive than consoles. However that’s not the whole story. It would be more accurate to say that PCs cost more upfront. But if we look at the cost over the lifespan of a typical console, that picture changes.

The Software Costs

Because consoles are a closed platform, game developers need to pay for the privilege of releasing games on that system. This comes in the form of a fee attached to every copy sold. Rather than take a hit to their own profits, that cost is passed on to the console gamer. So you’ll find that, at launch, console games cost more than the same title on PC.

That’s not all! Since several different distributors compete for PC game sales, you’ll hardly ever pay retail price for a PC game. Whether it’s a pre-order discount or price cuts mere months or even weeks after launch, there are always amazing deals to be had on PC games. Console games, in contrast, tend to hold their full price for much longer. They also don’t enjoy price cuts nearly as deep as those on PC when they do go on sale.

This is where the main equalizer in the price of gaming on PC vs console comes into play. However, this clearly depends heavily on how many games you buy.

For argument’s sake, let’s say that a console game costs $10 more than the PC version on average. If you buy one game a month for five years, that would be $10 x 12 months x 5 years. Equalling $600.

If you had added that $600 to your initial console purchase and bought a $1000 PC instead, your total expenditure would have been the same. These days, a $1000 can buy a pretty decent gaming laptop or desktop. However that’s just one area of hidden cost that console gamers have to contend with.

Online Services Costs

Since the PC offers an open platform, players don’t have to pay for functions such as multiplayer to a third party. On consoles, online multiplayer is usually reserved for a subscription service, which is in addition to any actual game subscriptions you might have to pay.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all sweetened the deal by adding discounts and “free” digital games into the mix. So whether that’s worth the cost will be up to individuals. However, the bottom line is that if you want to play online at all the fee isn’t optional.

So the value added aspects don’t carry that much weight. If you add the difference in monthly online multiplayer subscriptions to the average difference in game prices, it further equalizes the price difference between PC and console hardware over the console life cycle.

Upgrade Costs

Next, we need to factor in the cost of upgrading a PC. First of all, upgrades to PC over the course of it’s console equivalent generation is optional. At least when it comes to cross-platform games.

A rather recent development with consoles is the mid-generation upgrade. Which gave us the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. Neither of these were essential upgrades, but they did offer a fairly affordable bump to graphical power.

The CPUs for these mid-generation machines were virtually unchanged. So if you did the same thing to your PC mid-generation and only upgrade the GPU, then you’d spend about as much (or less) as you would on a new, updated console. From that point of view upgrading has a negligible effect when comparing PC vs console.

Do You Need A PC For Other Things?

The next important consideration when calculating comparative cost is whether you need a computer for anything besides gaming. If you do need a computer for more than gaming, then the console’s cost is in addition to that of a non-gaming PC.

In that case, you might as well add the costs together and get the gaming PC. If you don’t need a PC at all, then we can leave it out of the cost comparison.

A Different Perspective On Costs

As we’ve seen, if you look at the total cost of ownership over the lifespan of the typical console, the cost differences of PC vs console aren’t nearly as dramatic as they’ve been made out to be. Of course, PCs can be incredibly expensive at the high end, but this is not a comparison of extremes.

Then again, we shouldn’t forget that consoles have unique advantages as well. For example, they are designed to be shared household machines rather than being personal. Also, they don’t require as much technical knowledge to operate or buy. However, from a pure cost perspective, if you can afford a higher upfront price, there’s a strong argument to be made on the PC side of the equation.