How to Decorate Your PC for the Holidays

Make your Computer Look Festive for the Holiday Season

Install Holiday Themes to Decorate Your PC

Happy December to all!  We are in the middle of the Holiday Season, and people are decorating houses, cars, and yards to make them look more festive.  Why should your PC be left out?  Today, we are going to look at a few ways you can decorate your computer for the Winter Holidays.  Specifically, we are going to look at using Themes to change the appearance of your computer screen.

Convert a PDF or Scanned File into Editable Text, Using Google Drive

Apply OCR to Previously Saved or Scanned Documents;
Easily Convert PDF Files into Editable Formats

 

The articles in this blog are inspired by real life issues.  This weekend, I received a call from a less-skilled user. All of his electronic files had "disappeared" from his PC, and he was busy trying to recreate them from hard copies. He had already scanned a bunch before he discovered the scanned files were not editable.  Rather, he had a bunch of files that had basically been scanned into giant graphics. Was there anything he could do?

We discussed that, in the future, he needed to look for a "Scan to OCR" option in his scanning software. Most scanners include a Scan to OCR plug-in. (We also had a long conversation about disappearing files, and what that might mean, as well as setting up cloud backup through Backblaze to prevent these issues in the future.) But believe it or not, all was NOT lost. It is NOT too late to convert those scans. There is an easy way to apply OCR to saved files, using Google Drive and Google Docs.

What is OCR

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. OCR takes electronic information stored in an image format, (like GIF, JPG, PDF, or PNG,) and converts it into characters your programs can understand.  When you copy or scan something, basically a device is taking a picture of whatever you lay on its bed. Electronically, it saves a series of dots, rather than a series of letters and numbers. If you wish to edit a scanned document, first you MUST convert it back from a bunch of dots to characters software can recognize and understand. This process is called OCR, or Optical Character Recognition.

Most popular scanners come with OCR software.  If you are scanning a document, and you will want to edit it later, you should look for the “scan to OCR” option in your scanning software.  (It may also be called "Scan to Doc.")

If you have a document that has already been scanned to an image-based format, you will need to convert it using OCR BEFORE you can edit it.. This is also true for files you have stored on drives and other media.

OCR Using Google Docs

Google Drive contains a free and easy way to convert image-based files to editable text.  This is especially handy for PDF files, as well as files received as e-mail attachments. Google Docs has hidden OCR capabilities. You can open a file stored in Google Drive with Google Docs, and run it through an OCR plug-in while you're doing so. The steps are outlined below.

Reader View in Firefox

Reader View: A Firefox Feature for a Cleaner Web Page

Reader View Strips Out Everything But the Content
It Also Can Read the Content Aloud to You

In the early days of the World Wide Web, browsers did not support a lot of fancy stuff.  Animated GIFs and Blinking Text were about the most sophisticated design elements available. But as the web matured and browser technology advanced, the average web browser was able to support a whole slew of features. Not only did we start seeing multi-columned web pages, we started seeing pop-ups, ads, and a lot of clutter.  This is fine on a lot of web sites, but sometimes we just want to read the main content, without a lot of distracting elements.  Sometimes, we yearn for the early days of the web, when information was presented cleanly, and in a decent sized font.  Reader view is here to help a user achieve that look.

What is Reader View?

Reader view, also referred to as Reader Mode, is a feature that strips away all extraneous content, leaving you with just the "guts" of the page.  It strips away things like menus, buttons, ads and background images, leaving you with just the main content. It also changes the page's text size, contrast and layout for better readability.

To demonstrate, I zoomed our last post to 50% in both "regular" and "reader" modes. Then I took screenshots.

Here it is in "regular" mode:

Tip: Convert That Old Computer to a Safer Internet Machine

Pre Windows 7 Machines are NOT SAFE for Surfing the Internet

Neverware's Cloud Ready is a Safer Alternative

If there's anything the recent ransomware attacks proved, older computers are just NOT the best choice for surfing the Internet.  Both Microsoft and Apple pushed users to upgrade their Operating Systems, due to security vulnerabilities that were currently being exploited.  Folks running Windows 10, and those who keep their Windows 7 systems updated had no worries.  The ransomware could NOT attack their systems.  However those running Windows XP and/or Vista were extremely vulnerable.  In fact, most viruses are designed to attack older operating systems and those that are not kept patched.

However, most older systems are unable to handle Windows 10.  Many users are stuck with 7, XP, or even (shudder) Vista, as their budgets do not allow for new machines.  Many people have older systems lying around they'd like to re-purpose for children or as spares.  Do you have to abandon all hopes of surfing safely with an older machine?  Heck no!  Neverware is here with a solution. It can convert that old computer into a much safer, Internet Machine.  Neverware will help you convert that dangerous old laptop into a Chromebook.

BEST Source for Free, Open-Source Software (FOSS)

Get Free Alternatives to Expensive, Commercial Software

I am a great proponent of Free Open-Source Software (FOSS).  These days, a home user should be able to completely equip his/her home PC without shelling out a lot of money for software.  There are free equivalents to almost EVERY popular program, including MS Word and MS Office.  If you follow this blog, I'll be reviewing the various alternatives in upcoming articles, including what I use on my own PC.  But first, I want to introduce you to the site I use to download most of my own software: Ninite.com.

Customize Your Android Phone

Google Introduces a Free Tool to Help You Make a Cool Home Screen

Make your Smartphone Look Prettier

Tired of the same old boring phone appearance?  Haven't gotten around to customizing your phone's look, or just not sure where to start?  Google has launched a new, browser based tool to help you change up your Android's look.