August 8, 2013

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites



When it comes to decorating your desktop with new wallpaper, you probably have some favorite sources already, and we hopefully our Wallpaper Wednesday series is one of them. Even so, there's always room for more great photos and images to download and use to personalize your workstation. Here are a few great wallpaper repositories you may never have heard of that are worth exploring.

The Desktop Wallpaper Project

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites
The Desktop Wallpaper Project is actually much like our own Wallpaper Wednesdays, and appears every Wednesday over at art and design blog, The Fox Is Black. Every week the team behind the site highlight the work of a designer or artist who's made a beautiful, original image available to the public to download and use on their desktop computer, mobile phone, wherever they choose. In almost every case, the work is available in multiple resolutions, from the netbook-friendly 1280×800 all the way up to 2560×1440. They also include specific downloads for the iPhone, iPhone 5, and iPad, but they're all easily tweaked to fit Android and other mobile devices as well. If you're tired of landscape photographs and swirling colors and would like some original art, check them out.

Dual Monitor Backgrounds

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites
If you're like me, you can't imagine working without at least two displays. If you do have multiple monitors, you may be settling for one image on one screen and nothing on the other, or two completely different desktops on both. Thanks to Dual Monitor Backgrounds (DMB), you don't have to. DMB hosts thousands of free desktops in resolutions designed specifically for dual screens of all sizes. Sometimes it's two objects on either display, juxtaposed to create a mirror or versus effect, other times is a single sweeping image that combines both of your monitors into a single view. The site is updated every day, and you can browse by popular, recently uploaded, or by category. If you create an account, you can save your preferred resolutions, rate and comment on wallpapers, and save your favorites.

Social Wallpapering

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites


Social Wallpapering is actually pretty big, but I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who aren't familiar with it. The site thrives on its community of users, who up and down-vote wallpapers they love or dislike in order to keep the front page fresh, interesting, and the site as a whole only populated with much-loved, high-quality wallpapers. At the same time, because of that, good wallpapers can go unnoticed because someone just hates a specific category, for example. Of course, you can always fight fire with fire, sign up for a free account, and up-vote the wallpapers you love. You can also save them to your account so you can get back to them later, heart them so everyone knows you love them, and, of course, download them to your computer so you can add them to your rotation. Social Wallpapering is more of a "you get what you get" kind of site, so don't expect tons of screen resolutions and options. You do, however, get a collection of wallpapers you may not find anywhere else.

Desktop Nexus

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites


Desktop Nexus has well over a million wallpapers to its credit, over 700,000 members, and yet it's still one of those wallpaper sites that you don't hear about too frequently. Maybe it's because it has that kind of "ad-ridden wallpaper site" look to it, but looks can be deceiving, and especially are in this case. Desktop Nexus has a massive community of users, moderators, and artists, all sharing their own wallpapers and wallpapers they find elsewhere around the web. You get the typical categories, like "nature" and "video games," but the site's groups and sub-groups are as niche as "wallpapers of waterfalls" and "HDR wallpapers." If there's something specific that you find inspiring or want on your desktop, you can probably find a member group dedicated to it. Accounts are free (as are the wallpapers), and once you're a member you can upload your own favorites, join those groups, rate wallpapers you find, save your favorites, and customize your experience. As with most sites like this, once you're signed up, you also see fewer ads than passers-by.

GoodFon

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites


GoodFon is a bit smaller than many of the other sites here, but it still has a modest collection of wallpapers in a variety of categories, so it's not difficult to find something you'd like (and might not find elsewhere). The site has the usual categories, like "people" and "sports," but check out their "macro" and "painting" categories for images you may not be expecting, and to find something really unique. One of GoodFon's claims to fame is that all of its wallpapers are available in various screen resolutions and checked by site administrators to make sure they're high-quality and fit the category they're listed in. If you sign up for an account, you can rate wallpapers, save them to your account, search by color, and more. Also, don't be put off by the russian characters on some of the pages—the site's community is very global.

PixelGirl Presents

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites


PixelGirl Presents has been around for a good long while (it was founded in 2000 by one person), and its collection has only grown and matured over the years. While there are plenty of desktop wallpapers to browse, you can also find tons of smartphone wallpapers and icon sets to personalize your desktop. Wallpapers and images are listed with their artist alongside so you can see more by the same person, and there are quick filter buttons at the top of each page to sort by screen resolution or category. Unlike sites that aim to have massive, sprawling desktop collections, PixelGirl Presents is pretty well curated. Whether her style is the same as your style is a matter of debate, but you'll definitely find a nice variety of images that you probably won't find elsewhere.

Bonus: Flickr and 500px Groups

Seven Great, Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites


While we love finding sites that are dedicated to wallpapers and that offer them in dozens of sizes, if you prefer to avoid flashy graphics and screenshots from video games, check out Flickr and 500px. Neither site is exactly "under the radar," but both have great user groups and user-generated collections of photography and art that make great desktop wallpapers, and almost all of them have RSS feeds that you can plug in to your favorite desktop switching application (more on that a little later). Most people think of Flickr and 500px as places to upload their own photos and to connect with people they know, but you can find a wealth of great wallpaper, much of it free to download directly from the photographer, as well.

The Usual Suspects



If you're just getting into the whole wallpaper thing, check out our guide to keeping your desktop fresh with new wallpapers. We show you some great apps and tools to automatically download and rotate your desktop wallpaper from a number of sources—or your own personal collection.
Of course, we would be remiss to let this post go without mentioning some of our own favorite wallpaper sites, like Desktoppr, which syncs with Dropbox for easy downloading and desktop switching, and Wallbase, which scrapes a number of sites on the internet for a constant stream of new, high-quality wallpapers that you can search by keyword, color, resolution, and even by uploading your own image (which is great if you have a low-resolution desktop and want to find a higher-res version!)
We should also mention the obvious names, like InterfaceLift, Wallpapers Wide, DeviantArt, Vlad Studio, Digital Blasphemy, NASA's Image Gallery, and some of the more popular wallpaper sites that made our top five in our last Hive Five for wallpaper sites, and the Hive before that. If you're looking for even more sources, check those out, you won't be disappointed (and you may already have them bookmarked).


August 7, 2013

How to Use Microsoft Word 2013′s Built-in Screenshot Tool



We recently showed you that you could use Microsoft Word as a blog post editor and the feature was really well received. We back with this byte size tip to show you how you can quickly add screenshots to your posts.

Use Microsoft Word To Take Screenshots

Taking a screenshot in Word is really a painless experience, simple switch over to the Insert tab and click on the Screenshot button. You will be greeted with a thumbnail image of every Window you have open at the moment, you can simply click on one of the thumbnails and it will be inserted into the current document.





Taking a decent screenshot of a particular Window has never been easier.





If you want to capture a specific area on the screen you can opt to go for the more precise, Screen Clipping option instead of clicking on a thumbnail.





Once you have selected the area on the screen you want to screenshot, it will be added to your document automatically.





That’s all there is to it. Word keeps looking better and better as far as a blog post editor goes. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/169468/how-to-use-microsoft-words-built-in-screenshot-tool/

August 4, 2013

Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7 [Updates]




 


Microsoft is finally rolling out Internet Explorer 10 to users with Windows 7 installed on their machines. This is a huge user base, as Microsoft claims there are over 700 million customers still using Windows 7 as their operating system of choice. How many of those are still using Internet Explorer as their browser? According to StatCounter, just under 30% of Internet users are using IE.


Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer gives a real-world speed increase of 20% over IE9, which is certainly no small difference. Microsoft also cites studies that show that Internet Explorer 10 is the fastest browser available on Windows. Even with the speed increase, Microsoft also shows evidence that IE9 is the second fastest browser, edging out Firefox version 15.

Just like the Windows 8 version of IE10, the Windows 7 browser has a major focus on HTML 5. This seems like a smart move, as it’s clear that HTML 5 is taking over the web, and Microsoft has tools in place to help web developers make the most of it.

IE10 on Windows 7 also comes with the Do Not Track (DNT) feature for users concerned with privacy. By default it is on, but users can go to options and turn the DNT signal off if they prefer.





If you are making the switch to Internet Explorer 10, make sure you check out our Internet Explorer 10 tips and tricks article, as it will help you get started with the latest version of Microsoft’s browser.
Internet Explorer 10 is available for download now directly from Microsoft. With the improvements to speed and security, are you willing to give Internet Explorer another go on your Windows 7 machine? Are you going to stick with your current browser? Hit the comments section below and let us know.


Source: Microsoft

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/microsoft-releases-internet-explorer-10-for-windows-7-updates/