For many gamers, their gaming PC is perhaps one of their most prized possessions. They spend an enormous amount of time in the pre-build phase, lovingly build their PC themselves, and freak out at the slightest frame drop or temperature increase. Another thing that PC gamers daydream about is upgrading their rigs to the latest and greatest hardware on the market.

Back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Microsoft Office was the king of the business world. It crushed competitors like WordPerfect Office and Lotus SmartSuite, with no real challengers in sight. Then Google showed up with Google Docs and Spreadsheets — a pair of online tools for word processing and spreadsheets that let people work together in real time. Over time, these became part of Google Apps, later G Suite, and now Google Workspace, grabbing a sizeable chunk of the market.

Gaming laptops can be expensive, especially if you're looking to get some of the best hardware that's available right now. Naturally, we don't want you paying top dollar for something like this, so we've found this great deal on this MSI laptop that's going to save you a ton of cash.

Running a small business is like juggling a bunch of different tasks and creative projects. You’ll need to design cool stuff and plan consistent marketing campaigns. But don’t worry; there are tools that can help you streamline your operations, make sure everyone’s on the same page, and give each new idea the attention it needs. The goal is to make it easy to go from idea to execution so your brand’s message and visual identity shine.

For mobile gaming, a gaming laptop or a top-notch tablet can be worth consideration, but in 2024, mobile gaming is squarely in the domain of gaming handhelds. But should you pick up a new handheld like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ or stick with a reliable pick like the Steam Deck?

Smartphones are a big part of our lives today, and the best smartphones serve as more than just phones. They hold memories like photos and videos, and also protect other important things such as passwords and confidential apps. Many of us have banking apps or investing apps on our phones, and allowing the wrong person access to those apps could be detrimental to our online security portfolio. Luckily, there are steps you can take to secure applications on the best Android phones, including locking applications individually.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Bluesky now has a specific tab for mentions in your notifications as part of the app’s just-released 1.96 update. With the mentions tab, it’s much easier to see your replies or conversations you’ve been tagged in on the platform.Speaking of replies, update 1.96 lets you easily access settings that let you control how replies on posts appear to you. Replies can be linear, meaning they show up one post after another, or threaded, which means they will appear in indented threads (kind of like how they appear on Reddit). You can also sort replies by newest, oldest, most-liked, “hot,” and “random” (which Bluesky also calls “Poster’s Roulette”). App Version 1.96 is rolling out now (1/6)In this release: a notifications Mentions tab, reserving your default username when you verify your account with a domain, and other improvements!— Bluesky (@bsky.app) 2024-12-19T21:54:27.472ZIf you choose to set a custom domain as your username, with 1.96, Bluesky will also reserve your old .bsky.social name so that it can’t be picked up by someone else. I wish this feature had been available when I set my custom domain — when I did that, I made an alt account that’s parked on my old .bsky.social name so that it doesn’t get taken.Bluesky saw a surge of new users in November, and although growth has slowed as of late, the platform surpassed 25 million total users last week. The company plans to launch a subscription service early next year and, at some point, its own payment platform.And the platform has some big competition from Meta’s Threads, which seems to be doing everything it can to remind people that it can ship lots of features and that it’s much larger than Bluesky.

The Verge A Google Street View image played in role in solving a missing person investigation in Spain, according to reports from the BBC and The New York Times. The image, which can still be seen on Street View, shows what appears to be a person loading a large object into the trunk of a car, as Gizmodo points out. Another image showed someone “transporting a large white bundle in a wheelbarrow,” the BBC reports. Spanish National Police:Part of the human remains of the missing person have been found buried in a cemetery in a town in the province of Soria and advanced technical means had to be used to locate them.One of the clues that investigators had to solve the crime, although it was not decisive, was some images that they detected during the investigations in a location search application. Screenshot: Google This is the Google Street View image allegedly linked to the crime. Though the press release doesn’t explicitly name the location application it used, a spokesperson for the Spanish National Police confirmed to The New York Times that it was Google Maps while also saying, “The image was not the key to solving the case.”Authorities were investigating the case of a 33-year-old man who disappeared last year while visiting a partner in Tajueco, Soria, according to the Spanish outlet El País. Police arrested a woman and her ex-partner in connection with the crime in November.Google Maps has been credited with helping investigators in the past, with Italian authorities using Street View to trace the location of a mafia fugitive in 2022.

If you have networking equipment that can support them, setting up virtual local area networks (VLANs) makes sense from a security and management perspective. Your devices will still think they're on a physical LAN and will be able to talk to each other, but the different VLANs will only be able to talk to each other if you allow it.That's perfect for keeping insecure IoT devices away from your data, your data away from your guests, and your guests away from the contents of your computer. Unless you decide you want them to talk to each other, of course. It essentially gives you multiple networks from one set of equipment, and makes your life much easier as a budding homelabber or network admin.

So, it's no secret that we love the Windows Phone here at XDA. Whenever we see someone get Windows running on their phone, or change their device to look like a Windows Phone, we love it. So, when I reported that someone turned their Android phone into a pseudo-Windows Phone using an app, I knew I had to give it a try. So, here's how things went after I turned my Android device into a pseudo-Windows Phone.

Sometimes gaming on a touchscreen or using a keyboard and mouse just isn't enough. For some games, you just need or want to play with a controller. It's a simple piece of hardware that can really enhance the gaming experience. Of course, you'll want to make sure you choose the right one, and for that, we recommend the 8Bitdo Ultimate 2C wired controller.

Microsoft Word remains one of the most popular tools for writing all kinds of documents. Whether it's a letter, a report, or a book, you can use Word pretty much anything, and its robust set of tools allows you to do all kinds of things. It's one of the most well-known tools in Microsoft Office, and for good reason.