How-To Geek

When you buy a subscription to Office 365, you get client applications to download and run on your computer, along with various web applications that run in your browser. So, which applications do you get as standard, and how do you access them?

When you subscribe to Office 365, you can download the desktop versions of all the regular Office apps you know and (maybe) love—Word, Excel, and so on. You also get access to the online versions of those apps and, as long as you’re storing your documents in OneDrive, you can move pretty seamlessly between the desktop and online versions. In addition to all that, you get access to several online-only apps. It’s less confusing than it sounds, though, so let’s break it down.

Note: The apps described here are provided with Office 365 (also known as O365) at the time of writing. Microsoft might—and almost certainly will—change this over time, so check before you subscribe.

Traditional Desktop Client Apps You Can Download

Office 365 gives you access to the same desktop apps with which you’re familiar. In fact, with an Office 365 subscription (unlike with the standalone perpetual license), you’re allowed to install those desktop apps on multiple computers, even on both Windows and macOS.

With your Office 365 subscription, you get the following desktop apps when you download the standard office suite:

• Outlook: Microsoft’s venerable email client
• Word: Powerful word processing
• Excel: For spreadsheets and data analysis
• PowerPoint: For slide show presentations
• OneDrive: While OneDrive itself is free, an Office 365 subscription includes an additional one TB of cloud storage
• OneNote: A note-taking app of which we’re quite fond, which also comes for free with Windows 10
• Skype: For VOIP and video calling
• Publisher: A simple desktop publishing app
• Access: For simple database creation and management

If you’ve used Office before you’ll be familiar with most of these applications, even if you haven’t used some of them.

New Web Applications You Can Access

For anyone new to Office 365, you might be unfamiliar with the web applications that come with your subscription. Some of them are available for free use even without an Office 365 subscription, but some of them do require a subscription. We’ll note which are which in the list below.

However, just because there are free versions doesn’t mean they work in the same way as when you use them as part of an Office 365 subscription. While the functionality is usually the same, the O365 apps are more tightly bound together, giving you some better inter-app options and synchronization.

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Websites track you online to show you targeted advertisements, and Firefox 65 is just the latest browser to help you opt out. You can now block tracking content online without the need for a third-party add-on.

What is Content Blocking in Firefox?

“Content blocking” is a collection of privacy settings designed to block trackers and cookies that affect your privacy and browsing performance online. This feature first appeared in Firefox 63 as “tracking protection,” but it’s been redesigned and is now named “content blocking.”

By teaming up with Disconnect, a company striving to give people the freedom to move about the internet without having to worry whether their information is being collected and sold, Firefox can block a list of known trackers when browsing the internet. You can find a full list of trackers Disconnect does and doesn’t block—along with explanations—on its website.

Firefox lets you choose between three options to protect your privacy better online:

• Standard: This is the default setting and only blocks known trackers in Private windows, allowing for a balance between protection and performance. Third-party tracking cookies are not blocked using this mode.
• Strict: Blocks all known trackers and third-party tracking cookies in any windows, including regular sessions, that Firefox detects.
• Custom: A mix between the standard and strict modes which allows you to gain complete control over trackers and cookies and lets you choose what you want to block.

Warning: When you block all cookies, some websites that rely on them may not function as intended. This can result in pages or parts of pages from loading or breaking altogether.

How to Enable Content Blocking

To find these settings, click Menu > Content Blocking in Firefox. If you don’t see this option, you haven’t upgraded to Firefox 65 yet.

On the Firefox preferences privacy page, choose the option that’s best suited for you.

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Nest

Pretty much all video doorbells will record video when they detect motion and/or when the doorbell button is pressed, but if you want 24/7 continuous recording capabilities, there’s really only one option to choose from.

Nest Hello ($229) Nest

The only video doorbell on the market that can do 24/7 recording is the Nest Hello, which is, coincidentally, one of the best video doorbells on the market anyway.

It can do 1080p video, which looks really good, and the HDR capabilities bring out really clear image quality at every angle. It also does two-way talk and night vision. Plus, if you have a Google Home Hub, it will automatically show the video feed whenever the doorbell button is pressed, which is a really nice feature to have. Even if you have a regular Google Home, you can have it announce that someone is at the door.

The 24/7 video recording is only available with a Nest Aware subscription, which will cost $5 per month. That may seem a bit steep, especially after you spend $230 on the doorbell itself, but the subscription also gets you facial recognition, as well as video cloud storage for up to 30 days.

The Nest Hello cannot run on battery power like the Ring Doorbell, so it will need to hook up to your existing doorbell wiring. Luckily, the Hello is very compact and will likely fit where your existing doorbell was.

Lastly, one thing to be aware of with the 24/7 recording on the Nest Hello is that you can’t turn it off if you no longer want to use that feature. The best alternative is to set a schedule to have the camera automatically turn on and off at specific times.

Buy Now What’s the Next Best Option?

If you’re not a fan of the Nest Hello, but still want 24/7 recording, you’re kind of out of luck. The next best option is to simply deal with only having video recordings of motion detected and whenever the doorbell is pressed. From there, you have more options, but the Ring Video Doorbell 2 is probably the best in this scenario.

Ring

It can either run off the battery or be wired up to your existing doorbell wiring, so it’s definitely versatile in that respect. It can also do 1080p video, two-way talk, and night vision.

It is significantly bigger than the Nest Hello, so you might have trouble installing it where your original doorbell was, but usually it’s not too difficult of a job to install it in a slightly different location, especially if you’re okay with running it off the battery.

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The Skype app included with Windows 10 now has a notification area icon. That’s great, but you can’t just right-click the Skype tray icon and close it like a traditional desktop app. Skype doesn’t give you a “Quit” option.

Microsoft’s modern Skype app doesn’t even appear in your list of startup programs, so you can’t disable it by managing your startup programs from the Settings app or Task Manager.

However, you can hide the icon from Skype’s settings window. Right-click the Skype icon in your notification area and click “Settings” or open the Skype window, click the “…” menu button, and click “Settings.”

Click the “General” category and disable the “Show Skype in the Windows notification area (system tray)” option. Skype’s notification area icon will vanish.

Note that people can still send you Skype messages if you’re signed in, even if Skype doesn’t appear in the notification area. To stop that, sign out of Skype. Click the “…” menu in the Skype window and click “Sign Out” to do so.

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Amazon

Voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri have come a long way in the last few years. But, for all their improvements, one thing holds them back: They don’t understand you. They rely too much on specific voice commands.

Speech Recognition is Just a Magic Trick Amazon

Voice assistants don’t understand you. Not really, anyway. When you speak to a Google Home or Amazon Echo, it essentially converts your words to a text string and then compares that to expected commands. If it finds an exact match, then it follows a set of instructions. If it doesn’t, it looks for an alternative of what to do based on what information it does have, and if that doesn’t work you get a failure message such as “I’m sorry, but I don’t know that.” It’s little more than sleight of hand magic to trick you into thinking it understands.

It can’t use contextual clues to make the best guess, or even use an understanding of similar topics to inform its decisions. It isn’t hard to trip up voice assistants either. While you can ask Alexa “Do you work for the NSA?” and get an answer, if you ask “Are you secretly part of the NSA?” you get an “I don’t know that one” response (at least at the time of this writing).

Humans, who genuinely understand speech, don’t work like this. Suppose you ask a human, “What is that klarvain in the sky? The one that is arched, and full of striped colors like red, orange, yellow and, blue.” Despite klarvain being a made-up word, the person you asked could likely figure out from the context that you’re describing a rainbow.

While you could argue that a human is converting speech to ideas, a human can then apply knowledge and understanding to conclude an answer. If you ask a human if they secretly work for the NSA, they’ll give you a yes or no answer, even if that answer is a lie. A human wouldn’t say “I don’t know that one” to a question like that. That humans can lie is something that comes with real understanding.

Voice Assistants Can’t Go Beyond Their Programming

Voice assistants are ultimately limited to programmed expected parameters, and wandering outside of them will break the process. That fact shows when third-party devices come in to play. Usually, the command to interact with those is very unwieldy, amounting to “tell device manufacturer to command optional argument.” An exact example would be: “Tell Whirlpool to pause the dryer.” For an even harder to remember example, the Geneva Alexa skill controls some GE ovens. A user of the skill needs to remember to “tell Geneva” not “tell GE” then the rest of the command. And while you can ask it to preheat the oven to 350 degrees, you can’t follow up with a request to increase the temperature by another 50 degrees. A human could follow these requests though.

Amazon and Google have worked very hard to overcome these obstacles, and it shows. Where once you had to follow the above sequence to control a smart lock, now you can say “lock the front door” instead. Alexa used to be confused by “tell me a dog joke,” but ask for one today, and it will work. They’ve added variations to the commands you use, but ultimately you still have to know the right command to say. You need to use the correct syntax, in the correct order.

And if you think that sounds a lot like a command line, you’re not wrong.

Voice Assistants are a Fancy Command Line

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If You’re The Victim Of A Smurf Attack, You’re The Victim Of What?

1. Theft of Virtual Goods
2. Phishing Tactics
3. A Denial-of-Service Attack
4. Credit Card Fraud

Think you know the answer?

During a presentation, a mix of media always performs best. Using images, graphs, charts, and videos not only makes your presentation more informative but also more engaging for the audience. If you have a YouTube video you’d like to use during your presentation, it’s as simple as embedding it in a slide. Here’s how.

Finding a YouTube Video’s Embed Code

Rather than linking to a YouTube video in your presentation, embedding it in the slide is usually the better option. It gives your presentation a more professional look because you won’t be leaving your slide to pop open the YouTube website. Keep in mind, though, that even with the video embedded in your presentation, you’ll still need to be connected to the internet to play the video.

First, head over to YouTube and find the video you want to embed. Once you’re there, select the “Share” option, which you’ll find in the video description.

A window will appear, giving you a few different vehicles for sharing the video. Go ahead and click the “Embed” option in the “Share a link” section.

Another window will appear, providing the embed code along with a few other options.  If you wanting to start the video at a particular time, select the “Start at” box and enter the time when you’d like the video to start. Additionally, you can select whether you’d like to player controls to appear and if you want to enable privacy-enhanced mode.

Note: Privacy-enhanced mode keeps YouTube from storing information about visitors that visit your website that the video is embedded on unless they play the video. Since we will be using the embed code in a PowerPoint presentation, this option is not necessary.

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Vinyl Me Please

Digging through crates is fun and all, but it can be difficult to find a good, playable record for a reasonable price. Thankfully, there are subscription boxes that make record collecting more affordable and easy.

Even with the rise in popularity of vinyl over the last decade it still may come as a surprise that there are a ton of vinyl subscription boxes on the market right now. They all have their own perks (exclusive records, old records, indie records, etc), but the general idea stays the same across all sites—build your record collection without wasting any time or money.

Many of these subscription websites allow you to choose a preferred genre or even specific records that you’d like each month, so you won’t end up with anything lame. And some of these subscriptions offer exclusive records, art, and inserts that could increase in value as time goes on.

Of course, depending on your budget or your listening preferences, one subscription box may appeal to you more than another. Subscribing to more than one of these would be… expensive. That’s why we’ve taken the time to find the best vinyl record subscription boxes for everybody’s needs.

Vinyl Me, Please ($25)

Vinyl Me, Please is one of the most popular record subscription services on the internet, and for good reason. Each month, Vinyl Me sends you an exclusive record, usually with a colored disc, a lyrics insert, or special artwork. And these aren’t some lame-brain records you’ve never heard of, they’re classics (and new hits) from all genres, including hip-hop and funk.

You get to decide which genre you want each month. But if you don’t like what Vinyl Me is offering, you can opt for a different record, or one that had been sent out a previous month. Some of Vinyl Me’s exclusive records have become popular collector’s items, so you may as well hop on the bandwagon now if you’ve got the dough.

Subscribe to Vinyl Me, Please Cratejoy Vinyl Record Club ($20)

If you’re a fan of subscription boxes, then you’ve probably heard of Cratejoy. The website’s full of unique subscription boxes, from cat boxes to makeup boxes, and it turns out that the Cratejoy Vinyl Record Club subscription is pretty good too.

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TP-Link’s HS100 smart plugs got a well-deserved shoutout in our roundup of best smart plugs and for good reason—thanks to this sale you can grab them for only $14 each.

RELATED: The Best Smart Plugs

The plugs, part of TP-Link’s “Kasa” line of smart home products are a really great value at their regular $20 price point, but at $14 they’re a steal. You get smarthome integration through both the Kasa app and Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, and IFTTT recipes. The native app has built-in scheduling and easy remote control.

Best of all, if you’re looking to avoid adding another hub to your home you can skip that step—these plugs are Wi-Fi based, you just add them to your home network one at a time in whatever quantity you need. No hub required.

Buy on Amazon

 

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If someone you know is a frequent air traveler, their needs are very particular, favoring light weight, low volume, and anything that can reduce the pressure cooker stress of a modern airliner interior. Here are a few choice picks.

RELATED: Best Travel Pillows for On-The-Road Comfort

Most of the needs of the frequent flier are obvious, but if you’re not one yourself, there are eccentricities that can be hard to predict. Noise-cancelling headphones, for example, aren’t just to decrease the sound of the incessant toddler in the next row: they double as handy earmuffs for colder destinations. The following selections range in prices and application, but you should be able to find something useful for anyone who needs to trek to an airport more than once a month.

To Keep Their Gadgets Going: Heloideo Charger ($39) Eric Ravenscraft

Long distances away from power outlets might drain even the most capacious of phones, so a rechargeable battery is an excellent travel companion. You can check out all our recommendations here, but my personal favorite remains the 10,000mAh Heloideo charger—I haven’t taken a trip without it in over a year. It features plenty of juice for two or three complete phone recharges, an integrated wall charger, and tuck-away cables for Apple Lightning, MicroUSB, and USB-C, so all the connections it needs are right there in the same package. No matter what someone’s gadget is, this battery has it covered for power.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Their Stuff Safe: TSA-Approved Luggage Locks ($12) Lewis N Clark

Sure, frequent travelers probably already have their own locks. But like nail clippers or pens, they have a frustrating tendency to disappear (all too often while the TSA is giving a bag one of its oh-so-careful inspections). Grab a few for your friend, and sooner or later they will be happy you did. This Lewis N Clark model can lock to zippers and luggage handles at the same time, or clip things like a smaller bag or water bottle to rolling luggage for easier carry. Speaking of which…

Buy on Amazon To Keep Them Hydrated In Flight: Collapsible Water Bottles ($25) Nomader

Staying hydrated during flight is a necessity, and even the most attentive flight attendant might not be able to get a passenger adequate water. This water bottle can fold flat and roll up to fit easily in a bag and get through security, then unfold for a full 22oz when your recipient gets to a water fountain. Unlike some similar designs, it stays stiff even when near empty thanks to a sliding lip, and a screw-top cap makes for easy refilling.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Flight Essentials At Hand: A Backseat Bag ($68) Genius Pack

Your gift recipient probably already has a travel bag, but if they happen to be someone who prefers to check baggage and keep it light on the flight, check out this design from Genius Pack. It includes straps on the back that hang off of the in-flight meal tray, allowing the user to zip it open and get instant access to frequently-used items like a passport, phone and charger, or tablet (with its own dedicated pocket). When they arrive, the bag will clip onto rolling luggage with ease.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Them Occupied: Kindle Paperwhite 2018 ($100) Amazon

Amazon’s e-readers have always been popular travel items, but last year’s upgrade to the workhorse Paperwhite model is of particular note. In addition to a new flush touch screen (don’t worry, it’s still matte anti-glare) and waterproofing for tub or beach readers, it includes Bluetooth, allowing users to load up and listen to Audible audiobooks. As a secondary device, it’s a great way to save battery life on a phone if one needs it for constant work or navigating.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Them Sane: Noise-Cancelling Headphones ($100-350) Sony

You knew we were going to mention this, right? Noise-cancelling headphones are pricey, but they’re also a godsend in the unpredictable social interior of an airplane. At the moment Sony makes some of the best on the market, with the Bluetooth-equipped WH-1000XM3 being a good middle ground. They’re compatible with high-resolution, high-bitrate audio, feature fantastically understated styling, and use USB-C charging (still a rarity). If $350 for a set of headphones is outside your budget, Anker makes a very serviceable set for $100 in its Soundcore sub-brand.

Buy on Amazon To Pack Way More Stuff: Compression Travel Bags ($18) RoomierLife

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Maybe you’ve heard of Google’s “Advanced Protection” program. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, we’re going to talk about what it is, who should use it, and how to enable it. Let’s go.

What is Google Advanced Protection?

Google Advanced Protection (GAP) is basically two-factor authentication (2FA) on steroids. It uses 2FA as part of the process, but it requires two security keys instead of just one—something like Google’s Titan Key bundle is perfect because one wireless key and one USB-only key is recommended for GAP.

The second key is more of a failsafe so your account is still protected should something happen to the first one. This is something that anyone can add to their Google account—you don’t need GAP to use two security keys. Again, the Titan Bundle is a perfect example of how this works in practice.

Beyond that, GAP also limits third-party access to your Google account. While you can use your Google account to sign into some sites, this type of access is limited to “Google apps and select third-party apps,” which helps protect your data from potentially fraudulent activity. It can also make things a hassle if you use your Google account to log in to a lot of third-party services. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.

Lastly, GAP enables extra security measures to safeguard your account from potential hijackers. While unlikely, the most determined of account thieves can attempt to steal your account by simply pretending to be you. With GAP enabled on your account, extra steps are put in place to help prevent this—even if you lose both of your security keys. This means Google will require additional information from you to gain access to your account, which “will take a few days for Google to verify it’s you.” So…try not to lose your keys.

Who is Advanced Protection For?

Now there’s the big question. With all these extra layers of security and, let’s be honest here, major inconveniences, it’s clear that GAP isn’t for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not even for you.

Google’s intent with Advanced Protection is to safeguard “the personal Google Accounts of anyone at risk of targeted attacks—like journalists, activists, business leaders, and political campaign teams.” In other words, people who are more likely to be targeted and have something to lose when attacked. Or people who attackers have something to gain by, um, attacking.

If you’re not one of those people, the odds are you don’t need to enable GAP. It’s just overkill for most users—for most people, just using 2FA is enough. And like I said earlier, you don’t have to use GAP to add security keys to your Google account, so that’s a good idea too.

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Are you having trouble with your Wi-Fi connection? Try using 2.4 GHz instead of 5 GHz. Sure, 5 GHz Wi-Fi is newer, faster, and less congested—but it has a weakness. 2.4 GHz is better at covering large areas and penetrating through solid objects.

5 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz: What’s the Difference?

Wi-Fi can run on two different “bands” of radio frequency: 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz. 5 GHz Wi-Fi went mainstream with 802.11n—now known as Wi-Fi 4—which was introduced back in 2009. Before that, Wi-Fi was largely 2.4 GHz.

This was a big upgrade! 5 GHz uses shorter radio waves, and that provides faster speeds. WiGig takes this further and operates on the 60 GHz band. That means even shorter radio waves, resulting in even faster speeds over a much smaller distance.

There’s also much less congestion with 5 GHz. That means a more solid, reliable wireless connection, especially in dense areas with a lot of networks and devices. Traditional cordless telephones and wireless baby monitors also operate on 2.4 GHz. That means they only interfere with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi—not 5 GHz Wi-Fi.

In summary, 5 GHz is faster and provides a more reliable connection. It’s the newer technology, and it’s tempting to use 5 GHz all the time and write off 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. But 5 GHz Wi-Fi’s shorter radio waves mean it can cover less distance and isn’t at good as penetrating through solid objects as 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi is. In other words, 2.4 GHz can cover a larger area and is better at getting through walls.

RELATED: What’s the Difference Between 2.4 and 5-Ghz Wi-Fi (and Which Should I Use)?

You Can Use Both With One Router

Modern routers are generally “dual-band” routers and can simultaneously operate separate Wi-Fi networks on the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies. Some are “tri-band routers” that can provide a 2.4 GHz signal along with two separate 5 GHz signals for less congestion among Wi-Fi devices operating on 5 GHz.

This isn’t just a compatibility feature for old devices that only support 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. There are times you’ll want 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi even with a modern device that supports 5 GHz.

Routers can be configured in one of two ways: They can hide the difference between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks or expose it. It all depends on how you name the two separate Wi-Fi networks.

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Swingline Introduced a New Product As The Result Of What Movie?

1. Office Space
2. The Matrix
3. Fight Club
4. The Company Men

Think you know the answer?

Papa Annur/Shutterstock

Clean wheels are a key part of ensuring your car or truck looks as good as it did the day you first drove it off the forecourt. You need the right tools and cleaners to get that desired effect though. Here’s a look at the best cleaning products out there for removing brake dust, oil, and general road dirt.

All these cleaners have the potential to eliminate all dust and dirt from your wheels and tires, providing you use them correctly. You need to own the right cleaning tools for achieving that result. Ideally, you want a brush, microfiber cloth, or sponge to get things looking just so. You also need a high-quality pressure washer to wash off residue and any easy to eliminate dust marks. We’ve already checked out general cleaning implements, but we’ve picked out some key favorites for this task too.

Read on to find out more about making your wheels and tires super clean and shiny.

Wheel Brush: TAKAVU Wheel Brush ($16)

The TAKAVU Wheel Brush is ideal for getting to those hard to reach nooks and crannies within the wheel spokes of your alloys. Using your fingers with a rag is not only ineffective but a route to sore hands, so this brush is a great and effective way of circumventing that. It’s 9.5″ long so there’s plenty of room here to get into the tricky parts of your wheels. Whether you’re just trying to agitate some dirt away, or quickly polish something, this brush will help you out a ton.

Buy on Amazon Detailing Brush: Mothers Detail Brush ($4)

It’s not that hard to get the dirt and debris off your wheels but it’s trickier to get them super shiny and as good as new. That’s where the Mothers Detail Brush comes into play. It offers extra soft bristles on a long brush that’s easy to grip onto. Simply use it to eke out the last few marks on your alloys so you get every last hint of dirt. It’ll take a little elbow grease but if you want a sparkling clean car, you want to do it well, right? These brushes will make that possible, and at a low price too.

Buy on Amazon Adam’s Deep Wheel Cleaner ($17)

The sweet spot for a good wheel cleaner is to use one that cleans effectively, but doesn’t take much effort from you. Adam’s Deep Wheel Cleaner is that cleaning solution. Simply spray it on, wait for it to change color, then wash it off. It is genuinely as simple as that.

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Epic’s launcher only lets you move Fortnite by uninstalling and redownloading it. Here’s how to move Fortnite to another folder or copy it to another PC—without the 32 GB download.

Back Up Your Fortnite Folder

First, you’ll need to create a backup copy of your Fortnite folder. Fornite installs to C:\Program Files\Epic Games\Fortnite by default, so you’ll probably find it there. Navigate to that folder in an Explorer window.

Right-click the “Fortnite” folder and select “Copy” to copy it to your clipboard.

Paste a copy of the Fortnite folder into another location. For example, if you plan on moving Fortnite from your C: drive to your D: drive, you might want to paste it to your D: drive. If you plan on moving Fortnite from one PC to another, paste the Fortnite folder onto an external USB drive.

Do not immediately copy the Fortnite folder to your desired location. For example, if you want to install Fortnite to D:\Epic Games\Fortnite, don’t immediately copy the folder there. Instead, consider copying it to D:\Temporary\Fortnite for now.

Wait for the file-copying process to complete before continuing.

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Smarthomes still aren’t very smart, and voice assistants don’t truly understand you. Beyond using groups, you should name your devices carefully to avoid overlap, hard to remember names, and confusion—both for you and your voice assistant.

Similar Device Names Introduces Command Confusion

Have you ever asked Alexa or Google to turn off the living room light, only to get asked repeatedly which living room device you want off? You can try to enunciate better or be more specific, just to be left frustrated because Google and Alexa don’t understand what you want.

Usually, the problem is you. If you named a smart outlet “study,” a smart light bulb “study,” and a smart switch “study,” your voice assistant won’t understand which device it should turn off. You can solve some of this by setting up groups. But it also helps if you follow some basic rules when naming your smart devices.

Plus, naming your smart devices well from the beginning helps you avoid having to relearn those names when you’re forced to change things down the line.

Name Groups After Rooms or Purposes

The most important names for your smarthome are the names of your groups. If you aren’t grouping the devices in your house, you should be. You’ll accomplish more with fewer words, and you’ll have less to remember. Both Google and Amazon have made it easy to create groups, and the sooner you do this, the better off you will be.

One good strategy is to name your groups after the room in which they’re located. A group for devices in your living room should be named Living Room, a group for your study should be called Study, and so on. The exception is for groups of things not tied to a specific room. In that case, you should use their purpose for the name.

For example, if all your Christmas lights are on smart outdoor outlets, then put them in a group named Christmas. You’ll tell your voice assistant “turn off Christmas” when you want to control the group.

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Which Major Video Game Company Also Owned A Major League Baseball Team?

1. Sega
2. Nintendo
3. Microsoft
4. Sony

Think you know the answer?

When heading to your new dorm room, buying a vacuum cleaner specifically for it might not seem like the most exciting of purchases to make. It’s a necessary thing to buy though, so we’ve looked at the best vacuum cleaners for your dorm, so you don’t have to put too much thought into your purchase.

We’ve focused on bagless vacuum cleaners because they’re far easier to maintain than vacuum cleaners that need new bags at regular points. We’ve also only looked at relatively inexpensive options because who wants to spend hundreds of dollars on keeping their dorm room clean? Exactly. On top of that, you won’t find any full-size upright vacuums here. With the average dorm room barely over a hundred square feet and typically without an actual closet, there’s not a lot of

Whatever your requirements, here’s the best vacuum cleaner for your dorm room.

Best For Unidentifiable Stains: BLACK+DECKER HNV215BW52 Compact Cordless Lithium Wet/Dry Hand Vacuum ($40) Black + Decker

We’re not going to ask questions about what happened but sometimes you’ve got an unidentifiable stain on your dorm floor or furniture and you know it’s a bit wet, a bit dry, or a lot of both. That’s where you need a vacuum cleaner like the BLACK+DECKER HNV215BW52 Compact Cordless Lithium Wet/Dry Hand Vacuum. It’s a small handheld vacuum cleaner that’s designed for quick cleanups and spills.

It deals with anything you throw its way without too much fuss. A washable bowl and filter mean you can clean up any stinks thoroughly, and it’s always easy to see what the dirt level is like as you go along. Its 12AW suction power isn’t strong enough to do the whole room, but if you just need to clean up some bits and pieces, it’s ideal. The charger is wall mountable too if you happen to have a room where it’s ok to mount stuff.

Buy on Amazon Best Budget Option: Eureka Blaze 3-in-1 Swivel Lightweight Stick Vacuum Black ($30) Eureka

A good stick vacuum cleaner doesn’t have to cost a fortune, as the Eureka Blaze 3-in-1 Swivel Lightweight Stick Vacuum demonstrates. It utilizes a swivel steering action so you can easily move around your dorm room without missing any crevices or awkward corners. That’s made even better by its designated crevice tool.

You can easily transform it to a hand vacuum, stair vacuum or stick vacuum through a few tweaks to the cleaner’s build, with the Eureka Blaze keen to pick up large or small particles just as easily.

The stick only weighs 4lbs so it’s super easy to maneuver, whether you’re using it on hard floors or low pile carpets. Its 18-foot power cord means it covers a wide area in no time too.

Buy on Amazon Best 2 in 1 Option: Bissell Adapt Ion Pet 2 in 1 Cordless Stick Vacuum ($100) Bissell

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When you’re shopping on Amazon, you might have seen the words “Fulfilled by Amazon” next to some of the things you buy. You hopefully won’t notice anything different about the purchase experience, but you could run into problems.

Amazon the Marketplace

Amazon isn’t just an online store—and it hasn’t been for some time. It’s a marketplace, like eBay or Alibaba; it just hides that fact better.

Over 80% of the products sold through Amazon are bought not from Amazon but from an Amazon Marketplace seller who is paying Amazon to list their product. The numbers are even crazier when you look at the products listed on Amazon, not just sold: of the 350 million-plus products available, Amazon only sell 12 million of them directly—not including books, media, and wine—the rest are sold by Marketplace sellers.

Even if you’ve never noticed you were buying from a Marketplace seller before, the odds are you have.

Fulfilled by Amazon

The reason most people don’t realize that Amazon is a marketplace like eBay is it generally smooths over all the roughs and bumps. Sellers have two options:

• They can list their products on Amazon and, when an order comes through, pack and ship it themselves.
• They can list their products on Amazon and bulk ship any number of items to an Amazon warehouse. When an order comes through, Amazon workers pack and ship it like it’s an Amazon product. This is Fulfilled by Amazon.

For sellers, the big advantage of Fulfilled by Amazon is Amazon handles everything. They don’t need to run their own store, handle payment processing, deal with a shipper, pack things up, or customer care—for a small fee, Amazon does it. Sellers sometimes refer to Fulfillment by Amazon as “FBA.”

For customers, the advantage is that they get the same, regular Amazon experience, including stuff like Prime, free shipping, and the like, for an extra 338 million products that Amazon doesn’t sell directly. Most people—including me—don’t even notice when they’re not buying directly from Amazon. The packages arrive at your door just the same.

How to Spot an Amazon Marketplace Seller

While Amazon doesn’t trumpet it from the rooftops when you buy from a Marketplace seller, they don’t hide the information either. Here’s an official Amazon listing.

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We’ve been streaming content from the internet for a long time, and it’s gotten to the point that the internet is synonymous with services like Netflix and Youtube. But what exactly is streaming, and how does it work?

Streaming Happens Bit by Bit

When you want to watch a video or play a song on your computer, you need to download it first. There’s no way around that. Knowing this, you may look at Netflix or Spotify and ask “how did we figure out how to make videos and music download instantaneously?” Well, that’s just the thing. When you stream media, it isn’t downloading to your computer instantaneously; it’s downloading piece by piece in real-time.

The word “streaming” is self-descriptive. Information arrives at your computer in a continuous, steady stream of information. If downloading movies is akin to buying bottled water, streaming movies is like using a faucet to fill an empty bottle.

You could compare streaming a movie to watching a VHS tape. When you play a VHS tape, every second of video and audio is scanned piece by piece. This happens as you’re watching in real-time, which means that any interruptions will suddenly pause or end your movie watching experience.

When you stream a movie or a song, your computer downloads and decodes itty-bitty pieces of a media file in real-time. If you have an unusually fast internet connection, then the file may be fully downloaded before you’re finished watching or listening to it, which is why a stream will sometimes go on for a while even if the internet cuts out. That being said, anything that you stream doesn’t go into your computer’s permanent storage (although some services, like Spotify, will put some small cache files on your device to make future playbacks faster).

Businesses Work Hard to Make Streaming Fast

Streaming video and audio from the internet isn’t new; it just feels new because it’s finally convenient. Watching a video or playing a song from a website happened bit by bit used to be an annoying and time-consuming affair. The stream would constantly stop and start, and you could spend minutes just waiting for media to buffer (and sometimes, it wouldn’t buffer at all).

But the way that streaming works has mostly stayed the same. Files download bit by bit as you’re watching or listening to them. It’s the infrastructure that’s changed, and businesses like Youtube and Netflix have worked hard (and spent a lot of money) building that infrastructure.

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