Many people who publish videos on the internet (such as PCMech) does put an "intro" on the front to inform people who made it in the first place. Over the course of my video-making I discovered that by and large, people hate intros if they:Are too long. Are too "spammy". Have the word "productions" in it. All of the above.Too...

Unless you use your dial-up modem for faxing or internet you probably don’t have much use for it. However there are some good software titles to make it useful again. PhoneTray is a product (and yes there’s a free version on that site) that will show Caller ID and also has the ability to "zap" telemarketer calls as well. Telemarketing...

A keyboard and mouse, virtually every computer is controlled by this combination. Of course, while the keys and buttons are common between different input models, there are certainly better designs for the purpose of the computer it is controlling. Be it a gaming PC, a media center or just a plain old standard PC, there is keyboard and mouse which is the perfect...

Everyone who uses the internet must user usernames and passwords and that’s just the way it is. Whether it’s for email, instant messaging or any web site that has authentication of any type, passwords are par for the course. Years ago most people would have only a handful of usernames and passwords to remember, but with the explosion of social media,...

Obama grew to be hooked to his Blackberry during the campaign and has famously said that the NSA would need to pry it from his cold dead hands. As a geek, I know the feeling (although, I’m an Iphone guy myself). The concern is security. First, all of the President’s communications are to be logged by law. Secondly, there are concerns about the President’s...

KeePass Password Safe is a free open source password manager for Windows. If you happen to be using something other than Windows there are contributed versions for PocketPC, Smart devices, Linux, Mac OS X, Blackberry and others. One very cool feature of this app is the ability to use custom icons from any image to represent entries. Being that images are stored...

By now, you’ve no doubt heard about Twitter. Apparently, a lot of people have since the microblogging site has surpassed Digg.com in terms of traffic. A lot of people, though, don’t use Twitter on Twitter . They use it remotely using the API. But, there are some issues I’ve been running across that heavy users of Twitter might need to pay attention to. ...

A really awesome utility for system admins or people who manage multiple computers is the PsExec tool from Sysinternals. PsExec is a light-weight telnet-replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems, complete with full interactivity for console applications, without having to manually install client software. PsExec’s most powerful uses...

If you happen to own a 1TB or 500GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, you’re most likely familiar with the firmware error at boot. So, naturally, what people will do is download the latest firmware update from Seagate to fix the problem. The only problem with that is that when applied it seems to be bricking the 500GB versions of the drive. Seagate is very...

Sign of the times: I go into Walgreen’s the other day to pick up a bag of cashews (they’re quite tasty), and in the photo center I spot 4GB USB sticks for $16. Yes, I know you can pick up these things for cheaper elsewhere, but the fact a business primarily known as a pharmacy carries these things is what got my attention. The brand Walgreen’s...

As you have probably heard by now the next Windows release, “Windows 7″, is slated to be released sometime later this year (although my guess is it will probably be pushed to next year). Regardless, there is currently a lot of information available on the web regarding the upcoming release so I thought I would pass along a couple of good links so you...

Some people use cell phones for nothing but texting. And that’s fine. But I thought it would be interesting to do a little comparison on pre-paid vs. post-paid to see which is the better deal overall. The five largest wireless communication providers in order of subscribers is Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and TracFone. These are...

Blogging is something that’s attractive to many because it allows you to express thoughts journal-style with little hassle (if any). However there are many different blog services to choose from. Which should you go with? That’s up to you. Let’s see what’s out there. Blogger This is a Google-owned system. It’s relatively speedy in...

Typically, prefaced before anything which requires you to make a change to your Windows Registry, you see a warning which basically says “be careful because if you do something wrong you can mess up your system”. This is absolutely true. Whenever you make a change to your registry, you should create a backup first. You can do a full registry backup...

The netbook style of laptop is hot right now. Really hot. A big reason for this is because the price for them is really cheap (even as low as $250 brand new or $299 for the Dell Inspiron Mini 9), so yes, they’re flying off the shelves as fast as manufacturers can make them. However as a far as it would suit as a primary computer replacement, the answer for...

“Old media” in the context of this article refers to print publications that have little to no connection to the online world (i.e. the internet) whatsoever. Many of you out there have got the camera bug, so to speak, and would appreciate some ways to make a few extra bucks from the photos you take. In this article we’ll discuss how to get...

Some good news for our gamers out there: Microsoft has dropped the yearly fee of the "Live Gold Subscription Card" to $29.97 yearly (from $49.99). And back in July ’08 the Live service was made free to PC users. For those of you out there that think paying for gaming on an Xbox (or any console) is a bit ridiculous, it isn’t. This is a...

This tip is for tweakers and power users who are looking to take complete control over their Windows installation. If this sounds like you then take a look at XP Smoker (also available for Vista users). XP Smoker allows you to change various settings in the Windows Registry. These settings can improve the performance for your computer drastically. You can also...

When it comes to ‘enterprise’ software solutions, usually they have one thing in common: they are expensive. While many software packages are worth the price, in my experience more times than not they not worth their weight. The perfect solution sometimes is open source and/or free software. The price is right and if you are willing to ‘self...

Every year it seems the middle of April rolls around and people are scrambling to do their taxes. Don’t be one of those people! If you have never filed your taxes yourself, for the most part it is ridiculously easy especially with the software packages available. If you want to give filing your federal taxes a go without any investment, try filing online...