Author: Awais
You can turn canned soup and freezer staples into a hearty chowder in just 20 minutes.This recipe uses only five ingredients for simplicity.Customizable toppings like avocado or bacon bits let you tailor each bowl to your taste. My husband and I are big skiers, which means winter weekends are a blur of late-night drives after work and checking into rental houses, always chasing that perfect powder. On those nights, dinner is usually an afterthought, which quickly devolves into a hangry scramble to find somewhere—anywhere—that’s still open. That was until last winter, when a little desperation sparked a new tradition that…
This is a typical case for Self-Service BI with Excel data. A few days ago, a client asked me the following question: I have an Excel sheet with numbers and text in one column. I want to import this sheet into Power BI and perform analysis on the numbers in that column. How can I separate the numbers from the text in that column? Remember that I need the text in that column as well. I had never been in this situation, so I first started using the technique I knew. I created a Dummy Excel with the same problem,…
SAVE $100: As of Dec. 16, the De’Longhi 15-bar manual espresso machine is on sale for only $99.95 at Amazon. That’s a 50% price drop and its lowest cost to date. $99.95 at Amazon $199.95 Save $100.00 Most espresso machines come with major sticker shock, so finding one for under $100 is a huge deal. Whether you’re looking for a last-minute gift for less than $100 or you want to treat yourself, this De’Longhi espresso maker is on sale at Amazon for its best price ever.Typically $199.95, which is already a pretty solid price for a countertop espresso maker,…
Good business to consumer marketing (B2C marketing) is the lifeblood of any consumer-facing business. Even Apple, the best-known and most valuable consumer electronics company in the world still invests heavily in B2C digital marketing and advertising. Here’s a brief look at some of the trends driving the shifting B2C market: Recent data shows email marketing, paid social, and content were the top three channels for B2C brands. 63% of customers prefer to do their brand research on mobile devices. Google accounts for 94.4% of global mobile searches. In this guide, I’ll dive into the strategies driving these trends. We’ll also…
There’s a bit of a misconception that it’s “too late” to get started as a creator in 2025. Sure, the TikTok boom of 2020 is behind us (RIP days where videos of your sourdough starter got 10K views), but that doesn’t mean you’ve missed the boat.For one thing, it’s probably never going to be as easy as it is right now, ever again. The space is crowded, but it’s only getting more so. And another: there’s still plenty of room for authentic voices to make their mark.”Your voice and your perspective matter,” says creator and marketer Aarushi Singh. “There’s room…
Obscura VPN just passed its first independent auditLeading audit firm, Cure53, couldn’t find any major security vulnerabilityObscura VPN is a new service built on an innovative multi-hop VPN system Obscura VPN is still fairly new, but its first independent audit has just proved that whatever it’s doing, it’s working. The VPN service passed the test with flying colors.The report from Cure53 independently verified several aspects of Obscura VPN, including its innovative two-party VPN protocol, and found “no major security vulnerabilities.”This successful audit could bring Obscura VPN closer to making it onto our ranking of the best VPNs, although its limited…
Most Excel users spend their time navigating ribbons, building formulas, and formatting cells, all while completely ignoring the status bar at the bottom of the window. It sits there quietly, doing its job, and rarely gets a second glance. Much like mastering Excel shortcuts changed how I navigate spreadsheets, learning to use the status bar properly has saved me many clicks and unnecessary formulas. You can customize it, copy values from it, and use it to troubleshoot issues, all without touching the ribbon. The status bar handles a surprising amount of functionality for something so easy to overlook. You can…
Google rapidly expanded AI Overviews in search during 2025, then pulled back as they moved into commercial and navigational queries. These findings are based on a new Semrush analysis of more than 10 million keywords from January to November. AI Overviews surged, then retreated. Google didn’t roll out AI Overviews in a straight line in 2025. A mid-year spike gave way to a pullback, suggesting Google moved fast to test the feature, then eased off based on user data: January: 6.5% of queries triggered an AI Overview July: AI Overview visibility peaked, appearing in just under 25% of queries. November:…
Byte-Sized Brief Firefly adds natural language video editing.New tools add camera motion control and video upscaling.Firefly Video Editor enters public beta. Adobe is expanding Firefly with tools that give creators more control after a video is generated. A new Prompt to Edit feature lets you make specific changes to a clip using natural language instead of having to start over with a new clip. You can remove objects, swap backgrounds, adjust lighting, or reframe the shot, all while keeping the rest of the original footage intact. Firefly also adds camera motion controls that work by uploading a starting frame and…
Following the release of GPT-5.2 last week, OpenAI has begun rolling out a new image generation model. The company says the updated ChatGPT Images is four times faster than its predecessor. If you’re a frequent ChatGPT user, you’ll know it can sometimes take a while for OpenAI’s servers to create images, particularly during peak times and if you’re not paying for ChatGPT Plus. In that respect, any improvement in speed is welcome.The new version is also better at following instructions, including when you want to edit something the new model just generated. You can ask the system to add, subtract,…