How-To Geek

Manually typing data from a printout or a screenshot into Excel is time-consuming and error-prone, but you can skip the data entry grind by letting Excel do the heavy lifting. Whether you're on your phone or your computer, the Data from Picture tool turns image rows into digital cells in seconds.

There are so many smart home devices these days, it's hard to know where to start. A lot of smart home devices can be expensive, but a $7 smart plug is still one of my favorite smart home upgrades.

Ethernet is the backbone of any healthy home network and you're probably not using enough of it. It's the gold standard for home networking, but it's also often misunderstood.

It's amazing how many of the futuristic features that I saw in sci-fi shows growing up already exist. Video calling and talking watches seemed like the stuff of fantasy, but now they're so ordinary we barely register them. The same is true of smart home tech; there are plenty of Home Assistant integrations that often make me feel like I'm living in the future.

Your Obsidian vault was supposed to be your second brain—but at some point it became a second junk drawer. Routine maintenance can keep things tidy, but if you’re anything like me, you probably enjoy capturing notes more than organizing them. The good news is you don’t have to untangle it manually. Claude can scan your entire vault and reorganize it into a clean, logical structure in the time it takes to make coffee.

Similar to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, the free and open source GNOME desktop found on Linux PCs can be radically customized using extensions. Which extensions are worth installing is a matter of taste, but there’s one that I can easily recommend to just about everyone.

I bought my Philips OLED television eight years ago, but I have yet to have any real bleed-in, burn-in, or anything close to it. It is thicker than TVs you can get today, and its quality has dropped over time, but there's nothing else wrong with it. My experience shows that while the risks are physical, you can manage them. Getting the best picture quality requires more conscious care than other technologies do, but the organic panel can last a long time if you have the right habits.

The Kindle is the go-to choice for anyone who wants to read eBooks. But if you don't already own one, don't rush out to buy it just yet. You already own a lot of devices that work pretty well as eReaders, and some might even suit your needs better.

I used to think that every captured thought, meeting note, and research snippet helped create a complete personal knowledge management system in Obsidian. It pushes the daily notes so you can make a "second brain." Unfortunately, the more information I captured, the faster my vault turned into a fragmented mess. My notes were stuck in strict folder structures, not connected, making it a frustrating memory test to find something. I got really frustrated when I realized I spent more time keeping my knowledge system working than actually using the information in it, at least, before I learned about the plugins.

If you’re like me and have a drawer full of Raspberry Pis that are sitting unused, pull them out and turn them into something useful. I chose to create a Docker Swarm cluster with mine, and I think it’d be a great benefit to your homelab, too.

The high-performance American sedan is a vanishing breed. V8 engines, manual transmissions, and a rear-wheel-drive platform that rewards everyday drivers on the way to work and skilled ones on the track. True, hybrids and electrified vehicles are sometimes faster and more powerful, but there is nothing like a classic V8 performance car with a beefy exhaust.

The BMW X6 effectively created a new category when it arrived in 2008. By blending the higher seating position of an SUV with the sloping roofline of a sporty coupe, it challenged the idea that a utility vehicle had to look like a box.

Samsung has dominated the foldable phone space ever since the introduction of the first Galaxy Fold in 2019, followed by the vertical flip-style Galaxy Z Flip in 2020. While plenty of other brands have tried to challenge that early lead with their own foldables, none have really come close—except for one underdog, and believe it or not, it’s Motorola.

Home Assistant is one of the most powerful smart home platforms around, but even Home Assistant has its limitations. That’s exactly what the Home Assistant Community Store aims to solve, and it does a killer job at making your Home Assistant installation much more capable.

Paramount+ has a solid lineup of new movies and shows on the way for the month of May (and Battlestar Galactica has found a new home there, too). But as we transition into all that new stuff, there's plenty to watch on the documentary side of things, if you're into riveting real-life stories that are stranger than fiction could ever be.

What streaming platform do you think of when you hear the term "comfort shows?" There are plenty of great comfort shows over on Netflix, or maybe available with an HBO Max subscription. But for me, I always think of Peacock.

Vibe coding has made it possible for anyone to create their own custom components for Home Assistant. Many of these integrations are shared on forums for other people to use, but using them could put your smart home at risk.

Old Android phones and tablets make better security cameras than cheap IP cameras. You'll find a lot of apps designed for repurposing phones into live security cams. The apps generate a live stream that you can view inside a browser. However, you can also hook it up to a network video recorder to record or re-stream the feed from the Android device. That way it can seamlessly integrate into your existing security system.

I've had a computer in some shape or form for too long to mention now, and have been building my own PCs for 20 years. Those two decades span multiple desktops, including some that were technically the same PC that evolved multiple times over years of upgrades. I'm also the designated tech person for a number of my family members and friends, which means I'm often saddled with old PCs that they don't know what to do with anymore.

If your aging PC is struggling to keep up with the demands of a modern Windows version, you are not alone. It's pretty common for older hardware to be left behind as software evolves. However, that doesn't mean your system is ready for an e-waste dump.