You've got friends coming round to watch a movie, or you need your family to watch this one really great YouTube video. Maybe you've just got a slideshow of photos to show off. Whatever the reason you'd rather put your computer's screen on the TV than have everyone huddle around your laptop.

Big fans of the cloud as we are, there's no doubt relying solely on keeping your stuff stored remotely is a risky strategy. Accounts get hacked. Companies fold. And if you don't have backups of your most precious Snapchats and Gmails, then they can disappear in a puff of data center smoke. Here's how to make sure you've got local copies of everything.

These are troubled times for SoundCloud, with staff lay offs, changing CEOs, and talk of emergency investment securing its future for the time being. As with any service that's looking shaky, users will be (and should be) worried about getting their stuff out -- you may have years of playlists, uploads, and podcasts collected on the service. Here's how to get all that audio and data into safer locales.

If your efforts to track down long-lost relatives and obscure musicians (or anyone else you're looking for on the web) stop at Googling their name, you've come to the right place. Here's how to seriously go about searching for people online, including some advice from the professionals who do it for a living. Oh, and if you'd rather not be found yourself, than read on to understand exactly how the pros go about finding those who'd prefer to stay hidden.