How To Make a Youtube Video Into an Animated GIF..???

You’ve likely seen webpages and picdumps everywhere, with goofy, ridiculous, and funny animated GIFs. Here’s how you can have some fun by making your own in a matter of minutes, using your favorite Youtube videos and Photoshop.
While animated GIFs may be pretty useless, they can be funny and fun to make. See what you can do with your favorite Youtube videos and Photoshop, and a surprisingly little time.

How to Create Progress Bars in Excel With Conditional Formatting

Progress bars are pretty much ubiquitous these days; we’ve even seen them on some water coolers. A progress bar provides instant feedback on a given process, so why not bring some of that graphical pizzazz into your spreadsheet, using Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature?

Progress Bars in Excel 2010

“Bar-type” conditional formatting has been around since Excel 2007. But Excel 2007 would only make bars with a gradient – the bar would get paler and paler towards the end, so even at 100% it wouldn’t really look like 100%. Excel 2010 addresses this by adding Solid Fill bars that maintain one color all throughout. These are ideal for creating progress bars.

So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? Macs Don’t Make You Creative!

Chances are you have at least one “creative” friend who’s a Mac advocate. Ever wondered how Apple got a reputation as the “creative company,” or why artists are so drawn to them? Surely, computers can’t make you creative, can they?
Maybe you’re an avid Mac Hater, or maybe you’re an Apple advocate—chances are you’ve heard of this myth and wonder why people all seem to think this way. Take a look through the history of Apple, and see why Macintosh has become so synonymous with desktop publishing, photography, creativity, and design industries.

What You Said: Malware Fighting Tips and Tricks

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite malware fighting tricks. Now we’re back to highlight some of the tips and tricks you shared.
Our Ask the Readers series gives our awesome and technologically literate readers a chance to show off their know-how. Today we’re rounding up some of the tips and tricks from Wednesday’s Ask the Reader post What Are Your Best Malware Fighting Tricks and highlighting them here.

Sandbox Your Browsing and File Sharing Activity

Multiple readers used software sandboxing as a tool for isolating harmful malware. Most used free Windows application Sandboxie and some used virtual machine applications like VMware and VirtualBox. Sandboxing your internet connected applications, especially web browsers and file sharing applications, create an extra layer between your operating system and malicious code.

Avoid Browsing as a Root User

While this tip applies across operating systems it’s most critical for Windows users. Most people (if not 99% of them) use Windows every day as an Administrator/root user. If malware finds its way onto the machine it’s simple for it to take over since the account it’s active on has full access to the machine. Second only to sandboxing your applications in popularity was restricting the user account and browsing only on limited access accounts instead of as an administrator.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It?

Microsoft has just released the final version of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7, but should you drop everything and go through the process of installing it? Where can you get it? We’ve got the answers for you.
If you’ve never installed a service pack before, it’s just a big collection of fixes and changes for your operating system, bundled into a big fat download to make it more convenient if you reinstall—if you’ve kept Windows updated, it should have most of the fixes already installed through Windows Update.

How Do Noise Reducing Headphones Work?

Passive noise reduction, active noise cancellation, sound isolation… The world of headphones has become quite advanced in giving you your own private sound bubble. Here’s how these different technologies work.

What Are Computer Algorithms and How Do They Work?

Unless you’re into math or programming, the word “algorithm” might be Greek to you, but it’s one of the building blocks of everything you’re using to read this article. Here’s a quick explanation of what they are, and how they work.
Disclaimer: I’m not a math or computer science teacher, so not all of the terms I use are technical. That’s because I’m trying to explain everything in plain English for people aren’t quite comfortable with math. That being said, there is some math involved, and that’s unavoidable. Math geeks, feel free to correct or better explain in the comments, but please, keep it simple for the mathematically disinclined among us.
Image by Ian Ruotsala