TWT Newsletter NG – Issue 49 – Super Summer Fun!

Welcome to the June 2017 TWT Newsletter

Time for another TWT newsletter! As we reach the half way point of the year, the weather remains as typically unpredictable as ever here in the UK, with the outlook as turbulent as our politics!

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In this months issue:-

What’s new at Top-Windows-Tutorials.com?
It’s summertime again! Make the most of it with your Windows PC
Tip of the Month – Send cash safely via PayPal
Free Utility of the Month – dgVoodoo2
Windows Store App of the Month – Zen: Colouring book for adults

What’s new at Top-Windows-Tutorials.com?

In May we continued checking and updating our pages regarding Windows updates. We added a new tutorial for a useful app called Flexera/Secuina Personal Software Inspector. This program will check the apps installed on your PC and advise you if an updated version is available. Since outdated apps can be vulnerable to attack from hackers (especially apps with online features) it makes sense to update them whenever possible.

Flexera Software Personal Software Inspector (also called Secuina Personal Software Inspector) is a simple security app you can run on any Windows PC. Its purpose is to check the software you have installed on your PC and help you update any apps that have updated versions available. The program is easy to install and use, check out our tutorials for this handy tool here.

It’s summertime again! Make the most of it with your Windows PC

As I write this article, there’s a gale blowing outside and it doesn’t feel much like summer, but for most of us in a northern hemisphere of the world, it’s time to enjoy longer days and more sunshine (or at least, hope for some sunshine). Back when I was a youngster, my mum would often tell me to leave the computer and go play outside, but these days most PCs aren’t restricted to a desk and can come and help make your summer more fun! Here are a few ways that you can brighten up your summer with your PC.

Music music music! – If you are a long-time subscriber to our newsletter, you probably know that we’ve run articles like this before and we often point out how your PC makes a great media player. Of course that’s still true. You can make playlists in Windows Media Player or Groove Music on Windows 10. Queue up some tunes suitable for your summer events, then hook your PC to a portable stereo or speakers and enjoy some great tunes at the family cook out or on that camping trip (just don’t play your tunes too loud and annoy the neighbours/fellow campers!). You can also use apps like iTunes to make playlists for your phone. Use the bigger screen and keyboard/mouse to queue up your tunes, it’s a lot less fiddly than doing it on your phone.

If you’re bored of your existing music collection, have you tried the various streaming music services that are now available? The ever popular Spotify service provides ad-supported streaming and is a fantastic way to check out new and popular music for free. If you love what’s on offer, you can upgrade to the ad-free experience by paying a small monthly fee. Visit the Spotify homepage to learn more. There’s also Deezer, a similar service which has gained in popularity in recent years.

Be a picture sharing pro – Summer is all about making memories and we all love to snap some pictures while we’re enjoying the season. Once you have taken your pictures you will want to share at least some of them with your friends and family. You could upload them to Facebook or Twitter, but what if your Aunt Sarah doesn’t have a Facebook account? The best solution is to use a service like Flickr. Flickr is a free photo hosting service. When you upload a photo to Flickr, you can then send anyone anywhere a simple web link so they can view the photo. If you like to share on Facebook or Twitter, you can configure your Flickr account to automatically share your uploads there too, while your friends who don’t do the whole ‘social network thing’ can still see your photos via e-mail or messenger.

If you have an Android or iPhone device you can also use the official Flickr app to send any photos you take instantly to your Flickr account. While there isn’t an official Flickr app for Windows devices just yet, you can still use third party programs such as Perfect Flicker.

Make the outdoors more fun – If you have children or teenagers who are reluctant to leave their gadgets behind and go out and make the most of the summer months, why not use your PC to make outside more exciting? Kids love to play treasure hunt, so why not use your PC to help turn your back garden into a treasure island? You can use the free word processor LibreOffice.org Writer and a suitably piratical looking font to type out clues, or use this handy treasure map maker to design a cool looking map. Once your young pirates find the treasure, let them have a go at making clues or a map themselves.

For older kids or teenagers, how about a treasure hunt of a different kind? Turn a regular old walk in the countryside into an exciting treasure hunt with Geocaching. This is a fun outdoor activity where participants use GPS enabled devices, such as mobile phones or a tablet to locate geocaches, hidden containers located all around the world. All kinds of software for Geocachers is available on Windows and mobile devices. To find out more or to find if there are caches located near you, visit Geocaching.com.

So as you can see, there are lots of ways your Windows PC can help you get the most out of your summer. If you have your own ideas or stories of how your PC helped you enjoy the summer more, do let us know. You can contact us here!

Tip of the Month – Send cash safely via PayPal

Lots of us like to shop online and because of this, lots of us have PayPal accounts too. While you’re probably used to using your PayPal account with eBay and other online retailers, did you know you can use it to quickly send money to friends and family too? Better still, this service is entirely free. As long as you both have a PayPal account, you’re good to go.

To send money to friends and family, log onto your PayPal account then click on “Money” at the top, and then on “Send or Request Money”. You should then see the option “Send money to friends and family”. Click on this, then simply enter the e-mail address of the person you are sending to and the amount you want to send. The money will then be sent from either your PayPal account (if it has sufficient funds) or your bank account to your friend free of charge.

Remember, when sending money like this you forefit the usual buyer protection that PayPal offers. Be wary of anyone who asks you to pay for goods and services using this method.

Free Utility of the Month – dgVoodoo2

dgVoodoo2 is a tool we talk about often over on our sister site, Play-Old-PC-Games.com. As you may or may not be aware, games in Windows usually use a technology called DirectX. DirectX lets a game communicate with the graphics chips in your PC and draw 2D or 3D worlds. DirectX has had many revisions, the latest being version 12, which comes with Windows 10.

New computers and graphics chips do support older versions of DirectX, but often their support isn’t as good as it could be. dgVoodoo2 is special software that translates games using older version of DirectX to use DirectX 11 instead, vastly improving compatibility on newer machines.

If you have an old game that doesn’t seem to want to run properly, perhaps the graphics are corrupt or there are weird error messages when you start it, dgVoodoo2 could help. Check out our tutorial over on Play-Old-PC-Games.com for more information.

Windows Store App of the Month – Zen: Colouring book for adults

A nicely presented colouring book is one way that you can get most children to stay quiet for a few seconds. As many adults are now discovering, the relaxing practise of colouring in pretty pictures can work on frayed adult minds too. Zen: Colouring book for adults takes this new craze and brings it to Windows machines.

Colour pictures with brushes, pencils or just click the area you want to paint and watch it fill. Use your mouse or a finger or stylus on a touch screen. You can even turn on relaxing music to help you chill out. Even better, you can’t accidentally colour over the lines!

Grab your own little bit of zen by visiting the Windows store here.

That concludes our newsletter for June. On behalf of the team here at TWT, I’d like to say thank you to all our readers, new and old for your continued support. The TWT Newsletter will return on the 10th July 2017 for more tips, tricks and techniques to help you get the best out of your PC, be it Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10. We hope that you found this newsletter informative and useful. If you did not then please let us know why, you can contact us by visiting this page. If you have enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to pass it on to all your friends and family, or better still encourage them to sign up for their own copy. Until next month, keep checking Top-Windows-Tutorials.com and enjoy happy, safe and stress-free computing!