New Technology : What Do You Do When Facebook Is Down? [MakeUseOf Poll]

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Facebook rarely goes down, and when it does it tends to do so for minutes rather than hours. However, with many more than 1 billion users, Facebook is one of the cornerstones of the Internet, and those five minutes of downtime can cause mayhem. And panic. And mass hysteria. With that in mind, we want to know how you cope when Facebook goes down. Or whether you feel that “cope” is far too strong a word for this mild inconvenience. Welcome to this week’s MakeUseOf Poll. iPad Pro, Apple Con To answer this week’s question please scroll down the page...

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New Technology : 5 Safe and Clean Places to Download Free Apps

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Finding free software shouldn’t be hard, and it shouldn’t come with risk. Linux users are lucky: they have access to package managers full of clean software. Android and Windows users, not so much: there’s always a chance that any “free” app will be riddled with ads, or come with malware. Which is why open source software is nice: it’s developed by a community, not a company. But finding clean downloads of open source software, and other free software can be tricky. Today Cool Websites and Apps shows you five places to get clean software installers and updates for a wide...

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New Technology : A Look Back at History’s Biggest Risk Takers

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There is a great deal of value in taking risks. Sure, it’s safer and easier to sit back and take the safe route, but if everyone did that, we’d miss out on so many of history’s greatest accomplishments. This can be a valuable less to all of us, as taking more risks (at least calculated ones) could help us move ahead and accomplish even greater things! It’s with that in mind that we look at some of the greatest risk takers throughout history. These individuals were willing to put fear aside and take big steps, just like we all are...

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New Technology : How to Give an Online Presentation from Anywhere

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Giving an online presentation can be a tricky endeavor if you don’t have the right tools. Thankfully, there are lots of online tools available to help. Whether you work with a global team or you’re just working from home, the ability to present material “in person” using the magic of the Internet can make the difference between a powerful presentation, or a boring one. The tools presented in this article all allow you to not only share your presentation via the Internet with others, but they all offer built-in tools that let you present in real-time, while others on your...

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New Technology : What Are Bad Sectors And How Can You Fix Them? [Part 1]

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Imagine this: You suffered a power loss in your area while your computer was on. After the power is restored, you boot your computer only to find that Windows automatically ran autochk on your hard drive and it says you have bad sectors on the disk. What are these bad sectors? Is this a sign your drive is going to bite the dust? Can these sectors be repaired? We have the answers to these questions and more in this two part article. This first part will deal with the hardware aspects of the problem while the second will cover the...

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New Technology : How I Finally Learned a Different Language. And You Can Too.

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In early 2014 I took a course that guaranteed I’d be conversational in a new language (Spanish) in just 30 days. Not fluent, mind you, but able to hold short conversations with native speakers. Great. I’m moving to Mexico in May, so I can get ahead of the language learning process, I thought. The claim wasn’t false. I was indeed conversational in Spanish after just 30 days. Well, as long as you consider asking for a beer, where the bathroom is, or telling someone that your dog enjoys eating rice and beans, conversational. In fact, if part of Spanish fluency was mastering...

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New Technology : 10 Default Microsoft Word Settings You Can Optimize

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Optimize (verb) — One of the surest signs of prowess over any software. When Microsoft Word is the billion strong global tribe of productivity workers, any sign of mastery could turn you into royalty. Even for the usurped, the seconds of time saved while working with the word processor will definitely make you the king or queen of your little office corner. Or a time saving Word Ninja, as my friend Ryan called it. If Microsoft Word’s hidden features can make our lives easier, optimizing them for our everyday tasks should make it even more so. One of our readers...

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New Technology : 6 Automated Pet Products to Make Being a Pet Owner Easy

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Being a pet owner can be hard work. Making sure that your furry friend is fed, watered, exercised, and up-to-date with its vaccinations can be both time consuming and expensive. Most owners (myself included) would retort that the love and compassion that their pet provides more than makes up for any downsides. Nonetheless, secretly I think we’d all admit that a little helping hand every now-and-again would be very much appreciated. Thankfully, technology now has the ability to step up and help you out. Here we take a look at six automated pet products that’ll make your life that much...

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New Technology : Upgrade to Office 2016 for Free Today with Your Office 365 Subscription

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Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows has landed and it brings many smart new features, including co-authoring with real-time collaboration, simplified sharing, a great feature search engine called Tell Me, and much more. The Mac version of Office 2016 has actually been around for a few months already. If you have an Office 365 subscription, you can get it now for free and we show you how below. Alternatively, you can buy it at the Microsoft store (different packages available and Microsoft has a guide for installing it) or your local retailer and if you’re unsure, we have a guide for...

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New Technology : Remember Quicksilver, The Free Open Source Mac Launcher?

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You’ve probably forgotten entirely about Quicksilver, and that’s too bad. The now-free Mac launcher is much more capable than Apple’s Spotlight – and in many ways better even than Alfred, the launcher that dominates the third-party-app-launcher scene these days. Software that’s easy to use out-of-the-box is wonderful, but so is software that rewards you for digging. Quicksilver is the best kind of rewarding software. The more you dig into this seemingly simple app the more you realize it can do – and the more you want to learn more about how to use it. Quicksilver, first released in 2003, was long considered the...

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