Windows 7 and Windows 8 include a great little application you can use to record sounds - Sound Recorder. All you need is a sound card and a microphone plugged in, or a webcam with a microphone built in. Your recordings are saved as Windows Media Audio files and can be played by any media player. To learn how to use this program, don’t hesitate to read this tutorial.

Windows Photo Gallery has many great features. One of our favorites is face recognition, which allows you to identify and tag people in your photos. The more people you tag, the easier it is for Windows Photo Gallery to suggest tags and correctly identify people. Another great thing is that, if you publish your photos on Facebook, your tags will be published on Facebook as well. Tags can also be used as search criteria, so that you can easily find the photos the interest you. In this guide, I will show how tagging and face recognition work in Windows Photo Gallery 2012.

By default, Internet Explorer 10 and 9 use Bing as their default search engine. I like Bing and l am using it a lot more often than I used to, because their algorithms have improved over time. However, some people just want to use Google and are not interested in using Bing. For them, I have created this quick tutorial, showing how to add Google as the default search provider in Internet Explorer. This guide also works for the modern version of Internet Explorer 10, included with Windows 8 or Windows RT.

Windows Essentials is a suite of free programs that has evolved a lot over the years. At first, it was named Windows Live Essentials. Now it has been rebranded to a shorter, simpler name. To make things even more confusing, the number of programs included in this suite has evolved a lot over time. That’s why, in this article, I will explain what Windows Essentials are and how to download and install the programs included in this suite.

Very few people are aware that for each file stored on your computer there is a set of metadata associated with it, that gives information about its source, author and other important details, depending on its type. In this article I am going to discuss about metadata, what it is and the uses of it. Then, I will cover how to add, remove and maintain metadata for your files. The procedures apply to any version of Windows.

Bernhard Geier's photos, most of them taken in his native region of Salzburg, Austria, showcase nature at its most mysterious, hidden between banks of mist, clouds and snow, forever out of reach and unknowable. The 36-year old Austrian believes he was blessed to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world and he is constantly inspired by what he sees around him. He works in the printing plant of a local newspaper in the pre-press sector, where he also has the chance to use his favorite photo editing program - Adobe Photoshop. While photography is his main passion, Bernhard also enjoys reading and gardening and is a fan of most music genres. To see the amazing photos Bernhard has chosen to share with us and find out more about him, we recommend reading his interview below.

There are a number of indirect ways that you can trick Windows 7 and Windows 8 into printing from a shared printer attached to a Mac, but the best way to do it is through Bonjour. That’s because with every version change - either between Windows or OS X - the process gets muddled and a new solution has to be devised. But Bonjour has been fairly reliable even as both operating systems have evolved. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to set up OS X so that its shared printers are available to Windows computers and devices.

Would you like to know how many open ports are found on each computer or device that is part of your network? Do you want to evaluate how good their firewall protection is and how vulnerable they are? Then, you should try Nmap - an open source tool for security auditing. We use it in our reviews for security solutions and we think it is awesome. You should also try it out.

Do you want to change your Windows screensaver? Or do you want to disable the screensaver completely? Or do you want to change the way it works? This tutorial shares all the steps you need to go through. The procedures are the same, both in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

If you collaborate with people all over the world, it is very useful to add more clocks to Windows 7 and Windows 8, so that you can quickly view the time in other parts of the world. Luckily, Windows makes it easy to add additional clocks to the notification area of the taskbar, on the Desktop. Here's how it works:

If you have a network where multiple devices and operating systems are used, you might not be able to use the Homegroup for easy network sharing. In such scenarios, you need to share your folders and devices using different procedures. For example, sharing a printer with the network involves a different and lengthier set of steps. Here's how it works, both in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Bucharest-born Oana Roxana aka Yuuza, already has a loyal following on deviantART. Her illustrations combine an Asian inspired drawing style with themes taken from Romanian stories and legends. They show a talent for decorative art and a great attention to detail. Her drawings don't just focus on the figures and characters, but all that surrounds and represents them from clothes patterns to backgrounds and stylized scenery. Her work brings a fresh and modern perspective to Romanian folklore. When she's not working on her original illustrations, Oana amuses herself by making flash animations and drawing fan art. To see Oana's beautiful work and find out more about her, we recommend reading her interview below.