How To

Windows 8 can sync your settings and personal preferences over multiple PCs, as long as you log in with your Microsoft account. It's a convenient feature if you frequently switch between computers, like a laptop and a desktop. If you don't want to sync your settings, you can disable it by going to PC Settings on your Windows 8 PC. However, your sync settings will remain on Microsoft's servers. Here's how to delete your Windows 8 personal settings from the cloud:

Step 1: Disable syncing on every Windows 8 PC or RT device. Display the Charms … Read more

Rich text formatting, be gone!

Two questions: Do you use a Mac? Do you find yourself copying and pasting text throughout the workday? If you answered "yes" to both questions, I would recommend spending $2.99 in the Mac App Store on Get Plain Text.

Once installed and running, Get Plain Text places an icon in your Mac's menu bar. Click on it and from the drop-down menu, choose "Automatically clear formatting." Now when you copy and paste text, you'll grab only the text and none of its formatting. You can easily turn this … Read more

You may have noticed in Apple's recent iTunes update that they played a little game of "hide the app update button." Well, not to spoil the surprise, but we uncovered it.

Instead of its usual location across the bottom of the App pane in iTunes, you now have to select the new Updates tab located above the pane. Once selected, an Update All Apps button will appear in the previous location on the bottom.

Apple also decided to festoon any app in need of an update with a red Update ribbon. Logically, you might think that you … Read more

A picture being worth a thousand words makes screenshots often the most convenient method for conveying instructions to people. While Apple has a number of screenshot options built into OS X, these often result in intermediary files that can clutter up your computer if you frequently use them.

For example, if you press the classic Shift-Command-3 shortcut to take a screenshot, the image file will be saved to your desktop, where you can open it, crop, and otherwise edit it before sending it to your recipient. With this method, though, you are left with the file on your desktop that … Read more

If you're new to Windows 8, there's finally a user guide available from Microsoft to help you learn the basics. The PDF document is named the Windows 8 End User Training Brochure. The 36-page user guide goes over basic Windows 8 topics like the Start Screen, touch-screen gestures, and navigating apps. It also touches on more advanced topics as well, like BitLocker, File History, and Windows To Go. Perhaps the most useful sections of the document, however, are the touch, mouse, and keyboard shortcut lists.

The document is short enough that you could print it for quick reference. … Read more

Remember when Google demoed the Racer game at Google I/O a few weeks back? Well, apparently Racer was just the beginning of showing interactive games using nothing more than Chrome.

As you can see from this Google+ post, Google has released yet another Chrome game. This time it comes in the form of the arcade classic of Skee-Ball, with the game being called Roll It.

Instead of relying on only mobile devices as the Racer game did, Roll It requires you to have a computer and mobile device, both with Chrome installed.

The mobile device, be it an Android … Read more

If you use Evernote to organize your life, then your life just got more organized. Evernote updated its iOS, Mac, and Web apps to include reminders, which is "one of the most requested features of all time," said Andrew Sinkov, Evernote's VP of marketing.

I updated Evernote on my Mac and iPhone to try out reminders. On the Mac app, you'll see a small alarm clock icon in the upper-right corner when viewing your notes. Click on it to set a reminder. You can then add a date for the reminder. Evernote provides a button for … Read more

Digital photography is a blessing and a curse. OK, it's more of a blessing than curse. Freed from the cost of purchasing and developing film, digital photographers can take multiple shots of the same scene in an attempt to capture the perfect shot. Unless you dutifully manage your photo library and cull the extra shots from each photo shoot, your library quickly becomes difficult to navigate and your hard drive cluttered. PhotoSweeper for Mac identifies duplicate and similar photos and lets you dump the ones you don't need in the trash. The app costs $9.99 in the … Read more

Computer malware authors exploit weaknesses in software. Developers combat computer crooks by patching their programs to block malware attacks. That's why we're encouraged to keep our software up-to-date. Every now and then, a software update fails, leaving our systems a little less secure.

I got a first-hand look at the problem the other day when the Apple Software Update program balked at installing iTunes version 11.0.3 on my Windows 7 PC. The installer reported "insufficient privileges" and suggested I log on as an administrator or contact my system administrator. Of course, I was logged … Read more