Today it is time for the first "best of the web" episode of 2012. We have an interesting mix of news, guides and how to articles you should consider reading. Therefore, don’t hesitate to check it out.
The Best Tech Related News
As usual, we start the roundup with the most interesting news we learned about this month:
Google Changes Its Privacy Policy – What Does This Mean For Users? - You might have heard that Google changed its privacy policy, so that there is one document for all its services. If you want to know more about what it means for you, check out this article.
Windows 8 demoed with new Gaze eye-tracking tool - This is a very interesting concept video about using Windows 8 with your eyes as the controller, not a mouse and keyboard. Pretty impressive!
Symantec: Anonymous stole source code, users should disable pcAnywhere - Ars Technica shared this important announcement from Symantec. Ed Bott takes the discussion further and argues that Major Symantec breach highlights risks of running old software. Interesting discussion to follow.
Movement in space -The Daily talks about Microsoft’s latest home for Kinect technology: portable computers. Imagine the Kinect technology embedded in your laptop or desktop monitor? Awesome!!!
Ford and Microsoft SYNC – How the Two Giants Are Changing the Car Infotainment Scenario - This article speaks about an interesting collaboration between Ford and Microsoft and what they could enable from a technological perspective, for the future of driving.
The Best Tech Tips & Guides
Let’s check some of the most interesting guides and tutorials published by other websites we compete with, in a friendly manner:
3 Useful Tools to See Who is Using Your Home Wi-Fi - Our friends from Guiding Tech have published an interesting article about identifying other computers using your network. It’s a good complement to the built-in Windows Network Map we covered a while back.
Why is dial up so slow? - This is a very good technical discussion about the specifics of dial-up connections and why they are not capable of faster data transfers.
How to Optimize Google Chrome for Maximum Privacy - 30% of our readers use Google Chrome to view our website. We’re sure they will all enjoy this guide on tweaking it to achieve maximum privacy while browsing.
3 Neat Ways to Scroll Smoothly on Windows - Do you want to improve the precision and smoothness of scrolling on your Windows computer? Check this guide for some good tips.
5 Tools to Manage Android Phone from Windows - NirmalTV has published a roundup with useful tools you can use to manage your Android phone. Personally, I can’t wait to try some of them.
The Best of 7 Tutorials
Before we close this episode, we would like to share this month’s most popular articles on 7 Tutorials:
The Best Tools to Check for Software Updates - Wow! We published this analysis less than a week ago and it generated a ridiculous amount of interest and comments. We are very flattered and hope you will join the discussion on the topic, place your comments and give us a +1. We need them to make 7 Tutorials more and more popular! :)
How To Use the System Configuration Tool & All its Awesomeness! - I loved writing this tutorial about the System Configuration utility and it seems our readers loved it too. If you haven’t yet read it, don’t hesitate to do so now. You will learning something useful.
What’s the Best Startup Manager for Windows? - In case your are looking for alternatives to the System Configuration utility, you should read this roundup. It shares some great programs for you to use.
We would like to share also some of our top articles from 2 years and 1 year ago. Our site has become old enough for us to be able to do this:
The Beginner's Guide to the Notepad - Last year in January, we published a tutorial (that’s right, a tutorial) about Notepad! Who thought people will actually read it and appreciate it? It turns out people enjoyed it quite a bit. Since then, the article generated a reasonable number of pageviews and inbound links.
How to Set Up an Ad Hoc Wireless Computer-to-Computer Network - Two years ago we published quite a few technical articles. The most popular was this guide about setting an ad-hoc wireless network between to laptops. It can come in handy when you need to do some quick file sharing with your friends and co-workers.
How to Work with the Action Center - This tutorial is less technical but very useful. If you want to customize how and why Windows alerts you, this article is a must read.
Related articles:
Best of the Web for Windows Users - February 2012
the Best of the Web for Windows 7 Users - December 2011