How to completely disable Web Search in Windows 10

Microsoft has integrated web search from Windows 8.1, in addition to the native search available in previous Windowseditions. Thus when you search for anything on your Windows computer, if you’re connected to web, web search results are displayed automatically. This is also continued with Windows 10, and here Cortana – the voice assistant leads the flag.

Now, some users may be okay with fact that web results are displaying additionally even when they don’t looked forward for them. However, some other community of users may not be convinced with this fact. The reason behind this could be unnecessary data consumption by your system in order to fetch web search results. Thus, if you also belongs to latter community of users, you may want to disable web search results completely from being displayed in Windows 10.

Here is what you need to do:

Disable Web Search in Windows 10

1. In Windows 8.1 or later; Pro & Enterprise Editions, press Windows Key + R combination, type put gpedit.msc in Rundialog box and hit Enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.

2. In the left pane of Local Group Policy Editor window, navigate here:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Search

3. Moving on, in the right of above shown window and scroll down to look for Settings named Do not allow web searchand Don’t search the web or display web results in Search. Both of these are Not Configured by default. Double click on any one of them:

4. Finally in the above shown window, select Enabled and click Apply followed by OK. Enable the other Setting in similar way. Close Local Group Policy Editor now. Reboot the machine to make changes effective. After restarting the machine, you’ll find that web search results are no longer displayed. In case, if you later want to get web search results, simply restore both policies to Not Configured status.

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Glary Disk Cleaner: Free disk cleaning tool for Windows

There are already so many free junk file cleaners available for Windows – the most popular of them being CCleaner. So why then are we again covering another one? Because life is all about having options, and Windows ecosystem offers so many freeware options that one has to check them out and see what suits you the best.

Glary Disk Cleaner comes to from the well-known Glarysoft house. It offers a handy way to clean up your hard disk. It can scan your PC thoroughly and locate the temporary, unused and unwanted files cluttered on your hard disk and delete them in no time. Although Windows has its built-in disk cleanup utility, but sometimes you may feel the need to use a third party app.

Glary Disk Cleaner

Glary Disk Cleaner is a simple tool which takes no time to download and install 0n your PC. The program has a very user-friendly interface and even a novice computer user can use it without any hurdles. You can choose to run the program right after its quick installation. It simply scans the hard disk of your computer, locates the temporary files and removes them.

Glary Disk Cleaner starts scanning your PC immediately after you launch the program and gives you a quick list of files stored on your PC. You can either select the files and remove them manually or choose to delete them all in one go.

The Disk Cleaner checks the Windows, your web browsers as well as the applications installed on your PC and locates all the temporary and unused files including temporary files, cache, system log files, error report files, invalid and broken shortcuts, browsers cache and much more.

The list of files also display the path, size and format of files located giving you and option to check the file before you delete it. You can view the file in its folder, check its Properties and exclude from the removal list if required.

I don’t know if it was the size of my hard drive or the lesser number of temporary files stored on my PC, but the program actually took just a few seconds to scan my PC. Usually when a PC is under scanning, the CPU usage increases which tends to slow down the PC for the time being. But there is nothing to worry about when using this freeware.

The program is very simple and effective and I didn’t find any noteworthy issue in the program. It scanned the PC quickly and also deleted the files in no time. In short, it did is job! It is a pretty decent piece of software from the makers of  Glary Utilities and can help you keep your system clean.

You can download it here.

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Sputnik: Best free desktop RSS Feed Reader for Windows

Nowadays, many people prefer to read their daily news on tablets and computers via different RSS feed readers, as they can consolidate all the news in one place. You can certainly start using Feedly, Flipboard, etc. those work great as a feed reader. However, if your days start with a Windows PC and ends with the same, here is a free desktop RSS Reader, that assists users to read their most favorite blogs right from the desktop. Sputnik is probably the finest desktop client to read RSS feed. It is free and portable!

Sputnik – Free Desktop RSS Feed Reader

Sputnik comes with nearly all the popular features of a typical RSS reader like Feedly. It is even possible to import feeds to this client in a click. To begin using this software, you will need either the website address or its Feed URL or exported feed file, which you can get from any third party RSS reader.

If you have this URL or file, you are ready to start using it. After opening Sputnik, unzip it and double-click on the file to open up. Right after opening it, you will see the following screen:

You can add your favorite sites manually or you can import feeds from any exported file. To add a site, click on Add feedbutton and enter your site URL or feed URL. If you want to import feed from file, just click on the Import feed from file.

If you add site, it will be added immediately. However, if you import file, it will take a couple of seconds to be added. After being added, your reader will look like this:

In the left hand side, you will get all the added sites and in the right hand side, you will get the latest articles. You can maximize your window and start reading. The next article will be placed at the end of one article. You can also click on any particular site to read particular news only. If you want to read the same news in your browser, click on the article title.

To add more sites, just click on Add feed button.

After that, write down the desired site URL or RSS feed URL. You can also select a category to categorize your sites.

Finally, hit the Done button. Your site will be added instantly.

Sputnik settings and keyboard shortcuts

You can change the number of articles that you would like to display on a single page. You can also delete articles which are older than particular time.

This desktop client also has some useful keyboard shortcuts, which can help you navigate through numerous sites:

• Right Click: Mark current article as read and jump to next article.
• Space bar: Same as right click.
• Up/Down Arrow: Scroll up and down
• Left/Right Arrow: Next and previous article
• Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow: Jump to next or previous page
• Enter: Mark a category as read.

Sputnik can help you to get rid of a cluttered RSS feed reader. You can easily read various websites right from desktop. You can download it from here. The development of this freeware has however been discontinued now.

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Easy Context Menu freeware lets you add Program or Icon to Right Click Menu

The Right-Click Context Menu in Windows, offers useful options. Although, Windows does not let you add or remove anything from context menu via any UI, you can use a third-party software like Easy Context Menu to customize it. We already have freeware like the Right Click Extender or Context Menu Editor, that let you add or remove context menu items. Today let us have a look at this free tool.

Easy Context Menu for Windows

Easy Context Menu (Earlier Bluelife Context Menu) is a context menu editor that helps users to add any installed application to the context menu or any image or icon to the context menu item.

The download package consists of 2 files. If you are using 32-bit Windows, click on EcMenu.exe and if you have 64-bit Windows, click on EcMenu_x64.exe. You don’t have to install it since this is a portable software.

All the preset items that you can add, are categorized in various sections such as Tools, System Tools, Turn Off Options etc. A very useful feature of this tool is that you can add different items to the context menu for different locations. For instance, you can add a set of tools to the desktop context menu and a different set of apps to the This PC context menu. Similarly, you can also add or remove options from the Folder Context Menu, File Context Menu, EXE File Context Menu and so on.

Add preset program, tool and option to Context Menu

To add any preset app, tool or power option to the Context Menu, just make a tick in corresponding box and apply your changes. The very first button with the mouse icon refers to Apply Changes.

Context Menu Cleaner

The fourth button with mouse icon refers to Context Menu Cleaner.

Context Menu Cleaner will let you remove any added program from the right-click menu.

To remove an item, just remove the tick-mark from the corresponding box.

Easy Context Menu List Editor

By default, Easy Context Menu will allow you to add only those programs, tools and options, what are already included in the list. However, you can also add your own favorite program to the context menu, by using the List Editor. You can add image, audio or any other item to the context menu.

To do so, click on List Editor button, which is the third button from the left. Next, click on Add New and selectApplication Files(*.*) from the drop-down menu. Next select the desired program file. It is also possible to rename the file, change its location in context menu, let Windows open the file with administrator privilege and more. One all is done, click on Save Changes. Your item will be added to the context menu.

Delete all programs from Context Menu

Suppose, you do not want to use the selected options in the context menu and wish to delete whatever you have added. At such times, just click on Uninstall All – the second button with the mouse icon.

You can read more about Easy Context Menu and download it from its home page.

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FireFTP: Free FTP / SFTP Client for Firefox browser

FireFTP is a popular, free, secure, cross-platform FTP/SFTP addon available for Mozilla Firefox browser, which provides an easy and intuitive way to access FTP or SFTP servers. It is one of the top extensions available for Mozilla Firefox with over 616,601 users downloading it. Today we are reviewing FireFTP version 2.0.23 and will show you how to use FireFTP in Firefox.

FireFTP for Firefox

You can manually surf the available add-ons available in the firefox browser and install them or visit this link using your Firefox browser and then click on “Add to Firefox” to add it.

Clicking on the “Add to Firefox” button will open up a prompt, where it asks if you want toe install the addon. Click on “Install“.

When you are done, it prompts you to restart the browser. Restart the browser and you are now ready to use it.

Features of FireFTP

• FireFTP is absolutely free with cross-platform support. Works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• It is Secure as it has support for SSL/TLS/SFTP providing encryption to combat fraud.
• Synchronization support is great as it keeps directories in sync while navigating.
• Directory Comparison feature compares directory content including sub-directories.
• It is Available in more than 20 languages and supports UTF8 character encoding.
• It automatically reconnects and resumes file transfers in the case of network interruption.
• Supports Search/Filtering,Export/Import accounts,Remote Editing,File Hashing: Generate hashes of files (MD5, various SHA’s),Drag & Drop.
• It has built-in integrity checks of transfers (XMD5, XSHA1)
• File Compression using Mode Z,timestamp Synchronization, Proxy and FXP support,Advanced properties like CHMOD, recursive CHMOD, thumbnails etc, IPv6 support are the other important features.

How to use FireFTP in Firefox

Launching FireFTP is easy, as it is integrated directly into the browser. Head over to browser menu and find the Developeroption. Expand the Developer option to find the option as shown below in the picture.

Click on the FireFTP option to launch the window in the browser. You can also launch it by navigating to this link using address bar: chrome://fireftp/content/fireftp.xul

That should open up the FireFTP interface with local file explorer. You may click on the images to see the larger versions.

In order to login to your server using FireFTP, Click on the “Create account” option which opens up a new dialogue asking for the credentials for your server. Fill in the required details like Hostname, port number, username, password etc and proceed. You can also save the details with a desired profile name for future use.

On successful login you should be able to view your server files in the right hand side of the FireFTP window.

It is so simple! If you are looking for a light-weight free FTP client, you can start using FireFTP. We hope this tutorial helped you in getting started with this FTP client.

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5 Powerful and Most Useful Excel Features you need to know

Microsoft Excel is the most useful and easy tool for business analysts. It has large number of useful formulas, features and bundles of interactive charts. But, most of us are not known of all of them and there are some more features which are powerful and easy to use to make our work simpler. You might not have noticed some of the useful Excel 2013 features like Sparklines, Slicers, Conditional Formatting and other formulas which add value to your work. In this article, I will take you through them and will give you an idea on what are those and how to use them.

Most Useful Excel Features

Among many Excel features, there are some hidden features which are easy to use and you many not know all of them. Without any further delay, we will look at 5 such Excel features.

Sparklines

Sparklines were first introduced in Excel 2010 and are used to represent visualizations for the trend across the data in a row. It fits in a single Excel cell and saves the space on the worksheet. This is a cool feature and is very easy to use. Calculating the trend for row data and placing the visualization in the single excel is really a great feature to use.

In order to create your own Sparklines, select the range of data. Click insert on the ribbon and select the type ofSparklines (Line, Column or Win/Loss). Next, enter the range of the target where you want to show the Sparklines. For more information on how to create Sparklines, visit Office Blogs.

Conditional Formatting

Conditional Formatting is a well known feature of Excel. It is used to visually present the data based on the conditions met. It is also useful to create heat maps. This would be helpful to find the interesting patterns by exploring the data effectively.

To create the heat map, select the data and head over to the ribbon. Under Home, click Conditional Formatting and then click Color Scales. Now, pick the color scale. You can even set the color scale by editing the formatting rule. For more information on Conditional Formatting, visit Office Support.

SMALL and LARGE Functions

We all know about MAX and MIN functions. They give you the maximum and minimum values of the selected data respectively. But, in order to find the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or nth largest or smallest value of the selected range if data, we can make use of LARGE and SMALL functions respectively.

In this example, in order to find the top two products for each month, we made use of MATCH and INDEX functions along with LARGE and SMALL functions. For more information, visit SMALL and LARGE functions.

Remove Duplicates

Do not blame me for mentioning this feature in this list. It is very important to get rid of redundant data from the available huge amount of data. It is one of the best ways for cleaning and organizing the data and so thought of having it in this list of powerful Excel features. Removing Duplicates feature was introduced from Excel 2007 and is helpful to remove duplicates which is the most important problem which we face.

To remove duplicates, select the data and head over to the ribbon. Under Data, click the Remove Duplicates button and what you see the data without duplicates. For more information on how to Find and Remove Duplicates, visit Office.com.

Slicers

Slicers act as visual filters. It helps you to visualize the subset of data as a connected chart or as a raw data. For example, if you want to show the trend of sales of various products, then you can create the interactive sales trend chart using Slicers. Based on the product you select, respective chart is shown. Slicers were first introduced in Excel 2010 and enhanced a lot in Excel 2013.

In Excel 2013, if you want to add Slicer to your charts, select the data range and click on insert > Slicer. Now, select the part of the data you want to use as a filter. In the image above, Product column is used as a filter. How here for more information on how to use Slicers.

For more details on these features and to download the example workbook, visit Office Blogs

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Screen To GIF: Free software to create animated GIF Image within seconds

GIF image is highly sought file format amongst tech bloggers, who often write on how-to guides, as well as meme makers. Hence today we will look at a free yet extremely helpful software named Screen To GIF that helps you produce high-quality animated GIF image within a few moments.

Create GIF image using Screen To GIF

ScreenToGIF is probably the simplest way to record your screen and turn them into a GIF image or motioned image. This particular tool includes a number of handy features and tools, that will assist you in editing the GIF image before finishing.

To start with, download portable ScreenToGIF on your Windows PC. This is a portable software as well. After downloading this portable GIF image creator software, just unzip the file and double-click on it to open. You will see a window as follows:

The very first thing that must be set is to change the aspect ratio or the window size depending on your requirement. The default size of  484×209 is comparatively small for most.

Once you have et the default image size, you can start recording your screen by clicking on the Record button. To stop the recording, simply click on Stop button. Right after recording the screen, you will get a window that looks something like the subsequent picture:

Now, you have a whole bunch of options to edit the image before finalizing. You can add the following to your image, after recording:

• Add text
• Add quick caption
• Add image frame or title frame
• Edit frames
• Change animation speed
• Crop image
• Use transitions
• Add border around image
• Export specific image frame (More information are written below)
• Delete selected image frame (More information are written below)
• Use filter: Blur, Sepia, Gray Style

Get a still image from GIF image

Apart from creating the GIF image, you can also export a still image from the recording. ScreenToGIF helps users to change the frame number that will be captured in each second. If you have set a huge number, you will get more frames or images. This is what “Export specific image frame” means.

ScreenToGIF Settings

Screen To GIF doesn’t come with a huge number of settings. Instead, it has fewer but very useful features.

• Use custom GIF encoding or paint.NET encoding
• Change loop – use custom loop
• Show or hide mouse cursor
• Show or hide mouse clicks
• Use hotkeys to start and stop recording (F7 – Record/Pause & F8 – Stop)
• Change aspect ratio
• Change number of frames to be captured in a single second

Download Screen To GIF from here and start creating quality GIF images on your Windows PC.

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