Table of contents for Volume 1 2017 in Maximum PC Specials

SO HERE SHE IS, our upgraded gaming machine. From the get go, she came packed with a quad-core processor, 8GB of DDR3, a slightly ageing OCZ 256GB SSD, a 1TB hard drive, and the powerhouse that was the GTX 670. Boy, those were the days, huh? Not too old, we know. This machine was pieced together back in 2013, making it, relatively speaking, still fairly new. And it shows—the motherboard at the rig’s heart is still sound. There’s an M.2 slot offering up to 10Gb/s transfers, plenty of PCIe slots for additional cards, support for up to 64GB of DDR3, and even onboard power buttons. Aim of the Upgrade So, the story behind this system was fairly simple: We assumed that the gamer in question was on a tight budget,…

AMD BUILD WE’RE SET NEW CHALLENGES, of all kinds, all the time. Whether it’s via our executive editor, our editor-in-chief, or the management bods who want those big headlines on the newsstand, we’re thrown into the belly of the beast with a new conundrum to tackle. Every time they come, those challenges get more extreme. This time, we were sat down and told: “$300— that’s your budget. We want a 250GB SSD, and 8GB of memory. Do it!” And so here we are. Maximum performance at the absolute minimum budget. A base system that can operate efficiently and quickly, yet is fully capable of being upgraded to compete with some of the most prestigious mid-range gaming or office PCs out there. But who are we if not suckers for punishment?…

Lazesoft Recovery Suite offers a number of handy tools for fixing problems with Windows, plus it can help you recover data, too. Once created, reboot your PC from the Lazesoft rescue media. You’ll eventually find yourself at the main Lazesoft Recovery Suite, with four recovery-based options: “Windows Recovery,” “Data Recovery,” “Disk Image & Clone,” and “Password Recovery.” All four options are largely self-explanatory. Before running any recovery tools, we recommend taking a drive image of your current setup, which ensures you can always roll things back should the cure prove worse than the malady. Select “Disk Image & Clone,” and choose “Drive to Image” to back up to a suitable external drive. Second, “Data Recovery” contains the full range of data recovery options, including simply pulling off regular files, as…

Applications—programs you run on your PC—are a constant. They’re always there. We all use them, and our machines would be dusty husks without them. But they do have a tendency to get a bit out of control, particularly if a system has existed for a long time. An application almost always consists of a bunch of files; the more apps and games you have installed, the more files exist on your hard drive. This isn’t, in itself, a problem, until your drive is filled with ten thousand chunks of goodness-knows-what, and a single search operation takes half an hour because Windows has decided it must meticulously inspect every single thing. And here’s a quiz for you: What was the last program you installed, and where is it on your hard…

The Windows Store is clever. It shuts its apps away in their own little capsules, protecting your computer from rogues, and from the influence of anything untoward that may be swimming around your OS. Most standard Windows apps, though, don’t have this facility. Unless, that is, you add it yourself. Sandboxie (www.sandboxie.com) does exactly this. If you’ve grabbed something a bit sketchy and need to test it out without risk, you can install it within a sandbox to ensure it doesn’t get its tentacles in. Running a web browser on a family PC? Run it via Sandboxie to prevent your kids from downloading awful PC gremlins, or to stop your mom from inadvertently “upgrading” something she shouldn’t. Nefarious threats such as CryptoLocker are completely negated by running a sandboxed browser,…

Ever wondered what goes on under the hood of Windows? If your PC is running smoothly, doing its job, then probably not. It’s when things start to go wrong—your PC slows to a crawl, or non-responsive application errors keep popping up—that you suddenly take keen interest. There are plenty of tools out there that promise to speed up your computer, fix errors, and make things as good as new again (whatever that means), but there’s always an element of risk involved in trusting your PC to a program that doesn’t really explain what it’s doing, failing to point out that cleaning out the Registry doesn’t—on its own, at any rate —speed things up, and, more often than not, introduces problems you later can’t unpick to resolve without a refresh or,…

YOU’LL NEED THIS A TWITCH ACCOUNT Register at www.twitch.tv. XSPLIT GAMECASTER Download from www.xsplit.com. HEADSET, WEBCAM, PC, AND ONLINE CONNECTION This takes a lot of CPU power. GAME STREAMING IS A SERIOUS BUSINESS. For some people, it’s actually possible (though improbable) to make a living sitting in front of your PC, thanks to the generosity of viewers, and Twitch’s numerous partnership schemes. We’re not here today to teach you those particular secrets, though. We’re working on the most important step: getting yourself out there in a presentable, watchable manner. It’s worth mentioning here that this tutorial doesn’t only work for Twitch, though that’s the service most people use—you can also use XSplit Gamecaster to send your various embarrassing misplays and goofups to Hitbox, YouTube Live, and a number of other…

1. SET UP CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY DIRECTORY First, you need to copy the easy-rsa template directory to your home directory, so your custom certificates aren’t overwritten when the package is updated. So, open the Terminal and type the following: 2. EDIT VARS FILE Scroll down to the group of lines beginning “export KEY_ COUNTRY,” and fill them in with your own personal information— see the screenshot for an example. Note “KEY_PROVINCE” should be filled with the state, such as “Mississippi” or “California.” Put your name or organization in “KEY_ORG,” and fill “KEY_OU” and “KEY_NAME” with whatever you like, such as “MyVPN.” Save the file (Ctrl-O) and exit. 3. BUILD CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY At the Terminal, verify you’re still in the openvpn-ca directory, then type: “source vars” and hit Enter. You should see…

YOU’LL NEED THIS USB STICK We recommend using a USB stick about 1GB in size. VIRUSES, MALWARE, ACCIDENTAL DELETION, or corrupted data can all put your valuable files at risk. The best insurance is to make regular backups, but what if you run into trouble in between backups, or you let your routine slide, or a friend has a crisis with their PC? That’s where an emergency USB toolkit of portable apps comes in, giving you everything you need to fix the damage, and save the day. When you install a program, not only are the files it needs to run saved on your hard drive, but it also makes its own changes to the rest of your system, such as adding entries to the Registry. Portable apps don’t do…

How do you know whether or not you have a strong password? There’s a number of websites that check password strength, and even give an indication of how long they would take to crack, such as https://howsecureismypassword. net. You don’t want to give your real passwords to such sites, but you can use them to check the style of password you are using. Another option is to use a downloadable tool, such as Hash Suite (hashsuite.openwall.net,) to try to work out your passwords. This is a Windows utility developed by one of the contributors to the respected John the Ripper tool, which is only available for Linux and Mac OSes (www.openwall.com/john). These tools are primarily designed for system admins, but are also useful for anyone who is concerned about the…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CHROMIUM OS From http://arnoldthebat.co.uk LAPTOP Any spare laptop should do. THE FIRST QUESTION in your head is probably, “Why would I want to install Chrome OS, even on my old laptop, when there are perfectly adequate full-fat Linux distros to choose from?” Good question, and the answer is that not everyone wants a full-fat distro, nor can everyone use a full-fat distro. Part of the success of Chromebooks—and they are successful, with Chromebooks outselling Apple Macs in the United States in the first quarter of 2016—is their cut-down, lightweight Gentoo-based operating system. If you want to give someone easy, no-fuss access to Google services, it should be a tempting choice. 1 CHROMIUM VS. CHROME The good news is it’s easy to install Chromium OS [Image A], the…

YOU’LL NEED THIS A CASE AND FANS All respectable cases have support for fan mounts internally INTERNAL AIRFLOW; let’s cut the crap—it’s one of the biggest dividers of opinion there is, second only to cake or pie. So, why is it so complex? What’s a positive or negative pressure system? Static pressure? CFM? What’s that? Well, that’s what we’re here to answer. Whether your woes lie with choosing which fans to use to cool your mighty AIO, or with the age-old argument between static pressure and high airflow fans, don’t you worry—we’ve got your back! Is internal airflow really that important? In a lot of ways, it’s more vital than people realize; the more air you circulate, the better temperatures you’ll have internally, and the more comfortable your overclocks will…

By default, your chat server will run on your home network only. If you want to communicate with people within your own home or workplace, there’s no need to open your Pi to the world. If you think it would be useful to be able to access the chat server from outside your home or office, first set a static IP address for your Pi, if you haven’t already, by following the guide at http://bit.ly/2cCHl8F. Next, you need to obtain a fixed IP address for your router. Your ISP may be able to do this for you for a fee. Alternatively, you can create a hostname that points to your home router through a service such as www.noip.com free of charge. The next step is to open ports 5222 and…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY PI See www.raspberrypi.org. MICROPHONE A USB model or a webcam with built-in mic. IN STAR TREK IV: The Voyage Home, Scotty and Dr McCoy are offered the opportunity to use a computer, and are somewhat bemused when it fails to respond to voice commands. The film was made 30 years ago, and voice recognition has taken huge leaps forward since then. The Raspberry Pi has not been left out, and with the help of an inexpensive USB microphone [Image A] and some suitable software, you too can have your Pi search YouTube, open web pages, launch applications, and even respond to questions, simply by speaking. The Pi has no built-in soundcard or audio jack, so you need a USB microphone or a webcam with built-in mic…

1. DOWNLOAD INSTALLATION FILES Open Terminal on your Raspberry Pi or connect via SSH and download the installation files by running the command git clone git: //github.com/StevenHickson/PiAUISuite.git . When the download is complete run cd PiAUISuite/Install to open the installation directory. 2. RUN THE INSTALLER Use the command sudo ./InstallAUISuite.sh to run the text installer. Choose y to install any dependencies, and then work your way through the installation wizard. See the main article for more details about how to do this. 3. INSTALL BOOST C++ LIBRARY If you encounter an error when trying to set up the Voicecommand program, run sudo apt-get install libboost-regex1.49.0 to install the necessary software. Next, run sudo ./InstallAUISuite.sh to run the installer again. 4. COPY CONFIGURATION FILES Because you’re going to be running the…

THE CONCEPT OF THE UPGRADE PATH is at the very core of the hardware enthusiast's philosophy. The notion that you can take a five-year-old system, throw out a few parts, install a few new ones, and have a rig up and running—which almost competes with a brand new build —in less time than it takes for Obama to drop the mic is certainly appealing. But how far does it go in practice? What makes the biggest difference? And what should you upgrade first? So here, we decided to find out. We took two case studies, two rigs gathering dust in the corners of our office: one a gaming system, the other a workstation. And then we chose two very different upgrade paths for them both, just to see what makes…

THIS IS BY FAR the more interesting build. In fact, its ancient and decaying spec sheet was still far more intriguing than the updates that followed. With one of the world’s first six-core consumer processors, 6GB of DDR3, and a prestigious Intel motherboard (yep, it still made them), this system managed to crank out some serious numbers even today, six years on. The hard drive situation was far less desirable— with two SATA II HDDs, it was mostly used a web server, before finally being retired two years ago. Last week, it was a shelving unit. So, what did we manage to salvage? Aim of the Upgrade This was the biggy. We knew we wanted to upgrade to a more modern chipset. But a more modern chipset requires a brand…

Operating system not found One of the most stomachchurning moments in any PC user’s life is when you switch on your computer to do some work or let off some steam, only to find Windows won’t boot. You may get lucky—Windows 10 is smarter than previous versions, and can resolve certain issues on its own, but in many cases, you’re left an endless reboot loop. Assuming Windows even gets that far. g er an wn, in ng If Windows can’t fix itself, what next? Do you have a recent backup of your data? What about Windows itself? Of course, it’s perfectly possible to reinstall Windows from scratch, but that’s the best part a day lost to restoring your PC. And did we mention your data? hat up ws tly om…

Why plug in another USB drive, or download tools from the net, when you can embed any portable tool directly into your recovery drive? Once embedded, the tools can be directly accessed through Win10PESE’s Start menu, or via an icon in the Taskbar Notification area. To add apps to your drive, first expand the “Apps > Portable” section in Win10PESE’s left-hand pane, then check “PStart and Papps.” Next, click the “Open Source Folder” button to open the folder where your portable apps need to be collected, each one inside its own folder. Once you’ve copied them into here, return to Win10PESE, and carefully enter the folder name of each app under “Directory of Apps,” plus the name of the program’s executable file under “Name of exe.” To add a shortcut…

Installing isn’t the be all and end all of software. Check out portableapps.com—you’ll find a vast range of apps that run comfortably from a USB stick without marking your precious PC even slightly. But what if your favorite app doesn’t offer a portable version? Most programs can be made portable using Cameyo (www.cameyo.com), a system that uses the concept of a virtual machine to package up all the components of an application into a single executable file, either on your desktop or, excellently, online. We’re not done with installers entirely, however; in order to create a Cameyo package, you need to fire it up, run the installer, and tell it when the installation has finished. It detects the changes made to the filesystem, and swallows them into its own virtual…

Although we’ve mainly had our eyes set firmly on your hard drive in this feature, your applications don’t just take up space there. Certain programs can have a disastrous negative effect on the overall running of your system, and might even be running on your system without your knowledge. Task Manager can do a pretty good job of showing you what’s going on; hit Ctrl- Shift-Esc to open it, then “More Details” to see a categorized list. Right-click the column headers, select “Type,” then click it to sort the apps in the list, and have a look through to see what’s running. Keep an eye out for things that hog your CPU, memory, and disk access, and look at the “Performance” tab for a graph of the usage of these…

Programs, processes, handles, and threads—what are they, and how do they link together? It can get confusing, particularly given the way that both Task Manager and System Explorer present running programs, processes, and threads. Programs are a series of files that are combined to provide you with the tools and functionality you use on a daily basis, from a web browser or office package to your game collection. They can also include underlying Windows programs (such as File Explorer) and lower level Services, which work in the background to provide features such as networking and automatic updates. Processes provide resources to run a program, which are stored in “virtual address space,” a reserved portion of RAM. They comprise the program, open “handles” to system objects, which determine what resources are…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CONSOLE You need the muscle of a current-gen box running the absolute latest firmware. WINDOWS 10 Xbox One requires Win 10, but Win 8.1 will do the trick for PS4. WHY, DEAR READER, should you be chained to your TV when you want to play a console game? And—sacrilegiously—why should you feel tied to the (awesome) cycle of constant upgrades your PC requires to keep up with the latest gaming standards? Maybe you’ve got a laptop, a supremely portable but doggedly non-upgradeable machine. What then? Well, fear not. If you’re happy with the quality of console gaming, and you’ve already kitted out your lounge with a modern console, you can stream your gaming to your PC, and play anywhere in the house (or, in the case of…

While XSplit hides many of its features behind its subscription fees, Open Broadcaster Software (www.obsproject.com) is a free, open source way to get your footage streaming online. It’s less user-friendly than Gamecaster, and there’s a reason the majority of streamers favor XSplit, but OBS might be a good move before stumping up the cash. It structures itself into scenes and sources, which you need to create before you can start streaming. A single scene can contain multiple sources—images, games, webcams—and setting up multiple scenes before streaming means you can transition smoothly between them. Grab OBS Studio for the most up-to-date version; it’s still in development, but it works just fine.…

You can add just about anything to your Gameshow streams. We’ve discussed media files, a category that covers images, videos, and audio. Then there are screen captures, encapsulating windows, monitors, and games. You can also add text boxes, either static or drawn from an RSS feed, and make them scroll if you wish. You can pull in your Twitch chat, giving your viewers a chance to see their carefully chosen words (or hastily typed Kappas) on the stream itself. There’s a social media widget, which is a quick way to publicize your social feeds, as well as a live Twitter layer, which compiles your latest tweets. You can even run donation drives, as long as you’re signed up with imraising.tv and have an API key. If your desired layer isn’t…

1. DEFINE SERVER KEYS Open the configuration file you’ve just created using sudo nano / etc/openvpn/server.conf at the Terminal. We’re going to focus on the bare minimum settings required to get your server up and running. Start by scrolling down to the “# SSL/TLS root certificate…” section, and changing the “cert server.crt” and “key server.key” lines to point to the files you created in step four of the previous walkthrough. 2. IMPLEMENT EXTRA ENCRYPTION Now press Ctrl-W, and type “tls-auth”—you’re taken to a line marked “;tls-auth ta.key 0.” Remove the semi-colon from the beginning of this line (a process known as uncommenting) to enable it. Now add the following line underneath it, as shown in the screenshot above: “key-direction 0”—this ensures that the extra TLS authentication that you set up…

YOU’LL NEED THIS KEEPASSX Store your passwords securely on your machine with this free tool from www.keepassx.org. Wherever you go these days, you need passwords. The number of websites that expect you to provide a username and password to access all their content is even greater than the number of sites providing helpful advice on good and bad practice for passwords. So what are we to do? You should already be using a secure operating system, but any system is only as secure as its users. Passwords are less effective once they are written on pieces of paper stuck to the sides of monitors, or saved in text files. The three questions we will try to answer here are: How should I choose my passwords, how can I check that…

YOU’LL NEED THIS HARDWARE Suitable low-end PC, NAS, or Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. PLEX MEDIA SERVER See www.plex.tv. IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A MEDIA SERVER that doesn’t just enable you to organize and play your media, but shows it off in the best possible way, you need Plex. It works across just about any device you own, and enables you to watch across multiple platforms, both at home and over the Internet, picking up where you left off watching on another device. The biggest issue with Plex is choosing the server to run it on. A PC is an obvious choice, but it needs to be left on 24/7 for unlimited access. You’re better off installing it on a dedicated low-power device, such as a high-end NAS, like QNAP’s…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY Pi The brilliant mini-computer costs under $45. See www.raspberrypi.org. ONE STAPLE IN FUTURISTIC FILMS is that everyone has a handy panel on the wall showing their appointments for the day. While we have calendars on our smartphones and tablets, now, thanks to the Raspberry Pi, it’s possible to have an economic wall-mounted calendar in your home or office. Given that we have just admitted that we could, for instance, use a calendar app on our phones instead, is this just a novelty, or are there any advantages to doing this? Well, mounting your calendar on a wall is certainly more aesthetically pleasing than many smartphones, but the main advantage is that it enables you to share a calendar with others, by putting it in a public…

1. UPDATE RASPBIAN AND INSTALL FIREFOX Before you can physically transform your Raspberry Pi into a wall calendar, you need to connect the device to the Internet, and open the Terminal app. Run sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get upgrade to bring your RPi up to date. Next, enter sudo apt-get install iceweasel to install Firefox Extended Support Release on to your mini computer. 2. SET FIREFOX PREFERENCES Go to “Menu > Internet > Firefox ESR” to open Firefox. Visit your calendar address—http://calendar.google.com, for example— and sign in if necessary. If Firefox prompts you to remember your preferences, say “Yes.” Once you can see your calendar, go to “Edit > Preferences,” and click the “Set to Current Page” button to make sure Firefox always displays the calendar. 3. SET…

One of malware’s nastiest tricks is to cripple your PC so it’s virtually impossible to clean. The malware typically suppresses known security tools from running, plus locks down your system in various ways, such as restricting which websites you can visit, barring access to Registry Editor, and even crippling Safe mode, inside which most antimalware tools can at least attempt to clean up the mess. To be fair, Windows 10 makes it hard enough to access Safe mode these days, so we’re not sure why malware bothers, but we digress. The solution here lies in visiting your security vendor’s site to locate recovery media that includes a special version of your antimalware product that has network access to update itself, then focuses on detecting and cleaning malware. Depending on the…

Installing Windows from scratch, particularly if you’re doing it repeatedly, is an absolute pain. Although we’ve talked about ways of installing batches of software at one time in the main feature, that’s not your only option. If you’re deploying a batch of machines, you could do it using a system image— essentially a fully installed version of Windows, with all the software you’re going to need, that you copy wholesale on to a new hard drive. Microsoft provides a tool called the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit to help with this task, which includes ImageX, an application that can deal with the creation and deployment of system images. Find out more and download the Windows ADK at https:// developer.microsoft.com/ en-us/windows/hardware/ windows-assessment-deployment- kit, and make sure you run Sysprep (included with…

Process Explorer can also help track down potential security risks that are running, by comparing a process’s parent file with the VirusTotal online database, which checks files against dozens of reputable antivirus engines. Switch the feature on by choosing “Options > VirusTotal.com > Check VirusTotal.com.” Click “Yes” to agree to the VirusTotal terms of service (these are displayed in your browser), and then Process Explorer will submit the hashes of every running process and thread to the VirusTotal website. It also adds a new VirusTotal column to the main view. You’ll see a list of clickable links reading “0/56” or “3/57.” Each one links to the antivirus scan results for that individual file. Any files listed as “0/57” or similar have been rated safe by all the antivirus engines used;…

The PS4 has been a streaming beast for some time, piping its games to such unloved and unpurchased devices as the PlayStation TV and PlayStation Vita. As part of the April 3.5 firmware update, Sony seems to have admitted such failures, and opened its borders to streaming elsewhere, including, yes, the PC. Start by making sure your PS4 is running at least 3.5 firmware—it should have come through as an automatic update, but if it hasn’t (if you have disabled automatic updates, for example), head to “Settings > System Software Update” to get it installed. Now prepare your PC. There’s not a huge system spec demand—2GB RAM, Core i5-560M —but, obviously, the better your machine is, the easier it’ll cope with the demands of streaming 720p 60fps gameplay with minimal…

YOU’LL NEED THIS GAMESHOW Download and try it for free from www.gameshow.net. STREAMING ACCOUNT Head to www.twitch.tv to sign up as a streamer. THE STREAMING MARKET on YouTube, Twitch, Hitbox, et al is growing quickly. So quickly, in fact, that if you’re not putting out a professional-looking stream, you may struggle to gain any viewers at all. This is easier said than done. Open Broadcaster Software certainly gives you the flexibility to produce a fully custom stream, but it’s among the most ugly and finicky pieces of software ever created. XSplit provides a beautiful overlay and a similarly beautiful interface, but a subscription involves a not-insignificant outlay. The solution? Streaming’s new kid on the block, Gameshow. It’s only been around for just over a year, but the fact that it…

YOU’LL NEED THIS DYNAMIC DNS ADDRESS Get a free one from NoIP www.noip.com/free and point your client at that. UFW FIREWALL Visit https://bit.ly/openvpn-ufw for the steps you need to follow to configure it (substitute nano for vim in the instructions). JUST HOW SECURE IS YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION? The answer is often “not very.” One of the most dangerous places to surf the web or check your email is via a public Wi-Fi hotspot. What you need is a guaranteed form of encryption to keep your business private, and that’s where a virtual private network (VPN) comes in. VPNs are designed to add an extra layer of security to the Internet and other public networks. They basically create a secure “tunnel,” inside which all your data is encrypted before being sent…

1. GRAB A BUILD Grab the latest special build from http://bit.ly/2bh9TsJ—these builds retain all previous drivers, including Broadcom wireless, plus untested Realtek and Atheros wireless cards. Note the Cx86OS and Camd64OS builds for 32-bit and 64-bit support, so ensure you grab the correct version for your hardware to make the most of your memory. 2. BOOT MEDIA The 7ZIP file is about 1GB in size, and is a 2.4GB uncompressed IMG file. This needs to be dd ’d to a suitably large USB device or SD card. You are able to run and use Chromium OS from this, but installing it on an internal SSD or HDD is the best option for speed, obviously: 3. START CHROMIUM OS Boot your laptop with the USB stick. You’ll likely need to do…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY PI Any model RASPBIAN Available from www.raspberrypi.org/downloads. THIS MONTH, we’re serving up a selection of “phat beats” using nothing more than a Raspberry Pi [Image A] and Raspbian (which comes with Sonic Pi preinstalled). This is the personal project of Dr Sam Aaron, and the goal of Sonic Pi is to introduce creativity into programming via music, and reduce the friction that’s encountered by children learning to code – for example, the alignment and indentation of code, and syntax errors. Sonic Pi uses the Ruby programming language created in the mid 1990s by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, which was an easy-to-learn and syntax-friendly alternative to the languages of that time. Sonic Pi refines the Ruby language to provide a number of easy-to-use functions that enable learning. In…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY PI See www.raspberrypi.org. MESSAGING CLIENT We’re using Pidgin, available fromwww.pidgin.im. WITH FACEBOOK CHAT, GOOGLE HANGOUTS, Yahoo Messenger, and ICQ, to name but a few, there’s certainly no shortage of chat services available nowadays. The downside of all these offerings is that they’re closed-source, meaning the code used to design them is not released to the public. This makes it harder to detect security vulnerabilities—plus, you have to trust that big corporates are keeping your private conversations safe Federation is also definitely not supported by most proprietary chat software—for instance, someone using the official Google Hangouts app has no way of speaking directly to someone using AOL Messenger. So, how can you get around all these problems? Read on…. 1 XMPP TO THE RESCUE The solution to…

1. INSTALL PROSODY Open Terminal on your Raspberry Pi, or connect via SSH, and run the command sudo apt-get install prosody , then press Y to confirm you want to install the software on your device. In the next step, you’ll need to change your configuration, so run sudo nano /etc/prosody/prosody.cfg.lua . 2. MODIFY CONFIG FILE Scroll to the section labeled “Virtual Hosts” and change example.com to your domain—for example, 192.168.1.2 . Scroll up to the section named “Server Wide Settings” and, under“Admins,” change, to admins = {“admin@yourip”} — for example, admins = {“admin@192.168.1.2”} . Next, search for the words “allow_registration” and change to true . Press Ctrl-X, Y, then Return to save and exit. 3. RESTART AND ADD AN ADMINISTRATOR Run the command sudo /etc/init.d/prosody restart to restart Prosody.…

Once your Voicecommand software is up and running, you can edit the configuration file to add new commands or modify existing ones. Run the command sudo nano /root/.commands.conf to view the configuration file. As you’ll see, most of the lines begin with a # symbol, which means the Pi ignores them. Delete the symbol to activate the line. If, for instance, you want to change the keyword that activates the voice recognition software from “Pi” to “Jessie,” you would change the line from #!keyword==pi to -!keyword=jessie If you use the Firefox web browser instead of Midori on your Raspberry Pi, you may also want to change ~Internet==midori & to ~Internet==firefox-esr & The software can run any command. For instance, to open the desktop by saying the word “desktop,” add the…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY PI AND SD CARD/USB DISK See www.raspberrypi.org. OWNCLOUD Download it from www.owncloud.org. THERE ARE PLENTY OF CLOUD file storage and sharing services, so why would you want the hassle of setting up your own? There are many reasons, beyond the perfectly acceptable “because you can.” Commercial services have limits on the amount of data you can store. They may or may not encrypt your data, but it is their encryption—you can’t be sure that they can’t read it. If you’re sharing between computers on the same network, your data still has to go to their server, over a relatively slow upstream link, before it can be downloaded to another computer in the next room. On the other hand, commercial providers have large data farms, with plenty…

When you went into the Apps section to add the documents app, you may have noticed a lot of other apps. Most of the apps are installed but not enabled. You can either browse the categories, or use the search option to find interesting apps, then you just need to hit each app’s “Enable” button to make it available. The Productivity section includes the usual calendar, contacts, bookmarks, notes, and to-do list type apps, but there are more available, including an email client, so OwnCloud can double as your webmail, too. There is already a photo gallery app in the default OwnCloud setup, but the Multimedia section includes an enhanced option, as well as a music player. All of this can be shared with other users as you desire.…