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Some financial experts say that Bitcoin will be the future's currency. I agree because it is what money is not. So what exactly is bitcoin? Bitcoin is technically described as the first decentralized digital currency, also known as crypto-currency. It was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The keyword here is digital and that is what differentiates it from the physical money that we are familiar with. There lots of other digital currencies but bitcoin accounts for the largest share for these type of transactions. Each bitcoin identified by the currency symbol BTC, can be divided up to 8 decimals. The smallest unit being 0.00000001 bitcoin is called a satoshi in honor of the inventor. In between a bitcoin and a satoshi there are two other smaller units. The millibitcoin which is equivalent to 0.001 bitcoin and the microbitcoin which is equal to 0.000001 bitcoin, also called a bit. Bitcoin transcends sovereign boundaries and it is available to anyone who wants to use it, anywhere i

I love open source software. Most types of these software are free, like Linux operating system. There are lots of Linux flavors around but I highly recommend Ubuntu . Compared to others, it is easy to install and the user interface is user friendly. Unlike in its early days, many of the popular Windows software have been successfully ported to Linux, so you'll more likely to "fell at home" if you decide to switch. You can use Rufus to create a USB bootable Linux installer. If you're not a fan, LifeWire has listed the top Linux distros of all time, so you can choose the one's you prefer. LifeHacker compiled essential Linux apps, but if you want to more head on to TechSupportAlert .

There are a bunch of desktop video converters out there but I'm sure few could match what Adapter can offer. It is not an ordinary video converter. You don't just convert from one video format to another but from video to audio and even image file types. Yes, you read that right, you can extract songs and images with it. Adapter is 100% freeware, it has no ads and doesn't add watermarks. You can use it with no limits or restrictions whatsoever. Any Video Converter Free has batch processing and can directly extract and convert audio from any given video. The program can even download and convert YouTube and Google videos. Free HD Video Converter Factory can also download videos but it is faster than all the others. Plus, it allows you to cut, crop, and add impressive special effects. HandBrake has one of the most expansive software packages for ripping and converting video files. It is also multi-platform with Windows, Mac, and Linux versions. Videezy offers free stock

Despite the frailties and vulnerabilities of Windows, it still dominates the PC(Personal Computer) market. Windows 7 alone accounts close to 49% of the desktop operating system(OS) worldwide as of August 2017. In fact, I still use Windows 7 and have no plans of upgrading. Below are some useful Windows tools I personally use. UltraDefrag is a free defragmentation tool. Two things I like about it is, it is very fast and you can continue using your PC while it runs in the background. It works efficiently and computer speed dramatically improves. Sometimes there's just a situation where we have to run Windows 7/8 on a USB, luckily there's WinToUSB program. It allows you to install and run Windows operating system on a USB hard drive or flash drive, using an ISO image or CD/DVD drive as the source of installation. To do so you'll need the Windows image file. The free version is good enough for basic personal needs. Need more privacy? If yes, then go deep down up to the OS leve

As a Web Developer, I was assigned a task of integrating ads from various ad platforms in one of the websites I'm managing. Some of these ads have geographic restrictions, for example, these ads will show up only if the website visitor is from the US. Since I'm from the Philippines, I can't check if the ads were properly added or not. This is one of the many situations where VPN comes in handy. It stands for Virtual Private Network and it is a method of securing both private and public networks like the Internet. Once used only by corporations, personal VPN is now offered by a lot of providers. One important feature of VPN is the ability to hide a user IP and location. Together with encryption, these allow you to avoid censorship and surveillance. In super hero lingo, VPN gives you the power to teleport and pass through walls, haha. VPN Gate is an academic experiment project by the University of Tsukuba in Japan. The project's site has a list of public VPN relay server

Portable Document Format or popularly called PDF is a file format used to present and exchange documents reliably over different devices and software. Created by Adobe, it is designed to be versatile and can contain links and buttons, form fields, audio, video, and even business logic. It can be electronically signed and the contents are viewable using a free PDF reader. This might be a surprise for most, but FireFox , Chrome and Opera browsers have built-in PDF readers integrated. No wonder you can open PDF links or files,  haha . If you prefer desktop app, there's Sumatra PDF . Want to create PDFs? Edit forms? Or need a viewer? No sweat, LibreOffice  lets you to do all that. Oh yes, LibreOffice is free. Have a small PDF problem? Don't worry, I'm sure PDF2Go has your back. The site offers conversion, compression, resizing, editing, sorting, deleting, splitting, merging, rotating, and protecting PDF files, for free. Of similar mold are Sejda , SmallPDF , and PDFCandy . O

Tried to install an MT4 Expert Advisor(EA) but you can't find it in the Navigator ? That's most probably because it didn't install properly. MetaQuote's latest build of MetaTrader has a completely revamped directory structure and EAs, indicators, scripts, and libraries are now located in new directories. The old EA's were not updated to install in these locations. To fix this problem you need to manually place the EA files in their respective folders. But how to extract them from the installer? Not a problem at all. You can use Universal Extractor or UniExtract for short. It is a program specifically designed to decompress and extract files from any type of archive or installer. To use it, browse for the target installer then click “OK” button and it will start extracting the contents. EA files usually consist of the EA itself which have an extension of .ex4 and the library file(.dll). After extraction, go to your MT4 and on the menu, select “File”, then “Open Data

Wouldn't it be nice if you can install all your favorite desktop software in one go? When my hard drive gave up on me once, I haven't really thought about it. But the second time it happened, I searched for a multiple software installer, haha And I came across Ninite , and they happen to offer just what I'm looking for. The software is a real time-saver as you don't have to install and set-up each program, it takes care of the installation for you. It supports most of the popular programs for basic computing needs. It downloads the latest versions from official sites, so it is safe to use. Just select the programs and it will package everything into one giant installer. The good thing is, once it is packaged, you can re-use it again if ever the need arises. RuckZuck Tools is of a similar mold, but offers a lot more packages and constantly adding new ones. Other alternatives are WindowsRemix and Chocolatey . For the technology savvy, Npackd maybe a good fit. It is not

Office applications are always a big help, may it be in writing a document or preparing a presentation. But let's admit it, this software is expensive and if there's a free but good quality offering, I would choose the free one every time, haha. I've scoured the web looking for exactly that and I didn't come up empty-handed. Check out my list of free office productivity suites. LibreOffice is composed of several apps that enables you to do pretty much anything. It has Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for presentations, Draw for diagrams and vector graphics, Math for mathematical formulae, Base for databases and Charts. LibreOffice is actually a fork of the OpenOffice.Org project however, it is frequently updated. It has installers for Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms and has good compatibility with Microsoft(MS) Office. If not for LibreOffice's frequent updates, it would look like Apache's OpenOffice , haha. In fact, they have almost

Using an RSS feed reader is one of the easiest way to get the latest website updates. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary but is also known as Really Simple Syndication. It is a standard format for publishing web content that is frequently updated, like blogs and news sites. An RSS document is a feed. It is either a full or summarized text with metadata, such as author's name and date of publication. Most websites offer RSS to anyone interested via a special URL for free. A feed reader or a ggregator is a software that checks for updates and presents it to the user. It has several advantages. One, people don't have to visit each website from time to time. Second, there's no need to subscribe to every site's newsletter. InoReader offers unlimited subscriptions for free. The service has a useful rule feature, which allows automatic tagging of articles. It is multi-platform with apps for iO S, Android and Windows phones. FeedReader Online  and FlowReader  are other services

Working long hours in front of the laptop have a lot of side effects. But most concerning is eye strain. Computer screens are bright and staring at them without blinking results to dryness and redness of the eyes, blurred vision, and migraines. Desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone screens emit blue light, which disrupts sleeping patterns. According to a study, eye strain affects some 90% of people who spend at least 3 hours a day in front of the computer. One way to ease eye strain is to follow is the 20-20 rule. This means that every 20 minutes, look at an object around 20 feet away, and stare at it for 20 seconds. This way you're giving your eyes a break. But this is difficult to apply in real life. Like me for example, when I'm focused on work I tend to forget a lot of things. There was even a time I wasn't aware my neighbor's house next door was on fire,  haha . To remedy this, use software and web apps.  F.lux is desktop software that adjusts the color of the

BitTorrents aka “torrents” work by downloading small bits of files from many web sources at the same time. Since it is easy and free to use, it became the most popular form of peer to peer(P2P) file sharing. To start downloading software, music, movies, and digital books all you need is a torrent file and the client software. A torrent file is a computer file with .torrent extension. It does not contain the actual content to be distributed, but rather a metadata holding various information, such as files and folders to be distributed, and also a list of the network locations of trackers, which are computers that help participants in the system find each other and form efficient distribution groups called swarms. These files are downloaded from torrent sites. There are a lot of excellent sources such as KickAssTorrents (KAT), 337x and  YTS with fewer ads and easy to navigate design. TorLock  boast of verified torrents only. The .torrent information will then be used by a BitTorrent cl