Dropbox is more than simply a convenient way to share, store, and sync files. Thanks to some clever individuals in the development community, you can do much more with Dropbox. One of the more interesting and useful third-party applications for Dropbox is DropPages. It turns Dropbox into a simple web server, letting you publish static […]
There comes a time when you need to convert one or more files to another format. Say, for example, you have a bunch of .rtf files that you want to turn into OpenDocument files. Chances are you don’t need to do that too often, but when the time comes, opening each file in a word […]
QR Codes. They look like barcodes that have gotten wet and smudged. You’ve probably seen them. In fact, they’re everywhere: on the web, in print ads, on business cards, and even on the sides of buildings. All you need to do is scan a QR code with your smartphone and you’re either taken to a […]
Whether you’re a professional web developer or someone who maintains their own website(s), chances are you do most of your work on a desktop or laptop. Which makes sense, seeing as how there are any number of great web development tools for various operating systems. But what happens if you need to make some changes […]
One of the applications that’s missing from the Linux desktop is a good WYSIWYG HTML editor. There have been a few, like NVU and KompoZer, but they haven’t been actively developed for a while. Enter BlueGriffon. Built on top of Gecko (the rendering engine used by Firefox), BlueGriffon enables you to create web pages using […]
Sometimes, you run into a problem that you just can’t work through with mental brute force alone. Brainstorming with others works, but that’s not always an option. One popular and effective way of beating a problem or releasing your creativity is mindmapping. While you can go old school and use pen and paper, there is […]
At some point, you’re probably going to do some work on the web — whether you plan to or not. That work could be writing a blog post or article, adding a page to a web site, or regularly writing for a site like Make Tech Easier. No matter what you do, knowing some HTML […]
No matter where you turn, people seem to be talking about the cloud. And while cloud computing does have its attractions and advantages, there are still a few concerns about it. Like what? Well, your data is in someone else’s hands. And what happens if a service you’re using closes up shop, denies you access […]
If you’re like most people, then you probably have more than a couple of passwords. A lot more. Passwords for email services, entertainment sites, web services, and things like that. The problem with passwords is that they can be hard to remember. Or, at least, it’s hard to keep track of which password you use […]
What’s one of the most frustrating things about using any online service? Getting your data out of a service. With some, that can be fairly easy. With many others, it can be difficult, if not impossible. But you should be able to get your information – no matter what the information is – out of […]
Search engines come. Search engines go. Remember Cuil? And when was the last time you used Lycos? While Google, Bing, and Yahoo! are arguably the leaders in search, there are literally dozens of search engines out there. Many of those engines track your search history and, based on that history, put you in what’s been […]
Money. It’s something that most of us don’t have enough of. And what we have, we want to hold on to and keep track of. For many people, an old fashioned spreadsheet is perfect for their needs. The rest of us need a little something more. Not with the features, of say, ,KyMyMoney or GNUCash […]
In mid-June 2011, something interesting happened. The number of blogs hosted by a scrappy upstart blogging platform called Tumblr surpassed those of the venerable (and immensely popular) WordPress.com. That was an impressive feat, considering Tumblr was launched over four years after WordPress.com. The content on Tumblr consists of tumblelogs, which are somewhere between full-blown blogs […]
Using a USB cable to move files between your Android device and your computer is … well, it’s so early 2000s, isn’t it? With wifi, if not ubiquitous, then widespread, there’s no reason why you should need to plug your device into your computer to do anything. As long as you have some wifi available […]
With the growing popularity of ebook readers like the Kindle and iPad, more and more people are reading on a screen rather than from printed books. And more and more authors are getting into the act. Why not you? Maybe you’re a budding author who wants to self publish. Or maybe you’re a software developer […]
Do you have DVDs that you want to back up or take portable? Of course you do. Well, ripping those DVDs doesn’t have to be a major chore. In fact, ripping DVDs can be quite easy. If you’re a Linux user, you have a number of excellent options. And you can turn to the command […]
No matter who you are – software developer, technical writer, blogger, or just someone wanting to show off their cool desktop — you need to take the occasional screen capture. There are a large number of commercial, free, and Open Source screen capture tools out there. They range from bare bones apps to ones that […]
If you use Ubuntu, or one of the many Linux distributions derived from Ubuntu, you’re probably familiar with at least a couple of ways to install software. You might use apt-get from the command line. Or, you might use Synaptic Package Manager. Another entry in the installer sweepstakes is Eve Installer. Unlike other installers for […]
If you want to keep your task list portable and future proof, no software does that better than todo.txt. It’s a command line script that saves your tasks to a simple text file — one that you can move between different computers and operating systems with ease. Todo.txt has been covered on Make Tech Easier […]
I use Twitter quite a lot. For the longest time, I used Web-based Twitter clients, clients for my smartphone, or browser extensions to interact with my Twitter account. Why? The desktop clients for Linux left me feeling cold. They either did too much or too little, and just weren’t satisfying overall. One client that does […]
Converting videos on the Linux desktop isn’t exactly difficult, but it can be tricky. There aren’t all that many conversion tools out there, and some of them aren’t all that easy to use. Take, for example, ffmpeg. It’s pretty much the top of the heap when it comes to video and audio conversion. But it’s […]
I like a good GUI as much as the next person, but some things beg for a little more simplicity. One of those things is a to do list. Which is why I turn to the command line and a text file for mine. Of the several command line to do applications out there in […]
If you’re like most people, you probably have more than a couple of audio files on your computer. And they’re probably in a few different formats. Like what? Like MP3, MP4, WAV, FLAC, or even Ogg. And maybe you want to covert to those files to another format – say MP3 to Ogg. There’s no […]
If you’re new to Linux and free/Open Source software, or even if you’re a more seasoned user, then you’re often looking for more information. Not just documentation, but also useful tips and tricks. The team here at Make Tech Easier works hard to provide as much quality information as we can. But we can’t write […]
Are you looking for a fast, efficient, and easy way to rip music from your CDs in Linux? Then look no further than the command line. Yes, you read that correctly. The command line. For a variety of reasons, the Linux command line has a reputation for being difficult and unwieldy. In some cases, that’s […]
There comes a time when every serious Linux user needs to do something more than read a PDF file. That something could be combining several PDFs into one file, splitting a file into individual pages, or pulling an attachment out of a PDF. Windows users have it easy. If they’re willing to part with a […]
Even though we’re supposed to be in the digital age, it’s amazing how much paper and printed matter we still have to deal with. Contracts, receipts, photos, forms. It’s hard to count how many trees have been sacrificed to print those kinds of things. If you want to try to go paperless, one way to […]
