If you have not heard of it yet, the April Fool’s Day Virus is a legit threat. The real name of this threat is Confickor C and the danger of it is on April 1st (tomorrow), infected machines will phone home for instructions on what to do. Because of this behavior, nobody knows exactly what will happen. [...] Conficker C imbeds itself deep in the computer...

Encarta is Microsoft’s electronic encyclopedia product. It’s getting the axe and will be discontinued this year. For those that remember it, you most likely used it in its offline form on CDs. Encarta is also an online product. But obviously it cannot compare to sites like Wikipedia and the internet in general as an online research tool, which is one...

If posed the question as to what you think the worst possible thing could happen to a PC is, your answer would probably be, "when the hard drive dies". Wrong. The worst possible thing that can happen is fire. This is when something in your computer overheats, catches fire and starts melting the "guts" (motherboard, chips, etc.). Fire is the...

Do you find that you consistently type some of the same things, such as your email address, website, signature, etc. over and over (and over and over) again? If so, a handy application which can really save you some keystrokes is Texter. What it does: Lets you define text substitution hotstrings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of...

The last time I wrote about IE 8 was on March 19. It’s March 30 today, I’ve been using the browser here and there, and here’s what I have to report on it. Is IE 8 good enough to make me switch back from Firefox? Not a chance. When I switched to FF way back in the day when Firefox was still called Firebird, I did so with a clear conscience....

Over the weekend I had a discussion with a friend who has recently switched to Mac, and he brought up an unbelievably good – and I mean good – point. I’ll get to it in a moment. The friend I speak of is a Mac convert. He switched over, is very happy about it and has nothing but nice things to say about Apple. Granted, there are a few things he...

If you make use of the awesome Paint.NET graphics editing application, then this tip is for you. Did you know  about the rather sizable list of available Paint.NET plug-ins? Take a look at the list and see what you like, but here are a few which caught my eye:Pyrochild Plugins Icon, Cursor, and Animated Cursor Format plug-in SmudgeMost all of these plugins...

After reading the title of this post, you are probably thinking to yourself: KVM. This tip is not about a KVM, rather a unique open source project called Synergy. From their about page: With synergy, all the computers on your desktop form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard of only one of the computers while you use all of the monitors on all...

Have you ever had the need to copy text from one machine and then have it available to paste on another computer? If so, there are a variety of ways you can accomplish this such as emailing yourself. However another method is the free “Hey! Paste It” service. The usage is simple:Paste text into the box and then submit it. Make note of the Clip...

Fervent Mac users are quick to say, "You get what you pay for" to justify the price of owning an Apple Macintosh computer or portable Macbook computer. Laptops are outselling desktops like crazy right now and have been for some time – and this counts for Apple as well. Their desktop line, like all other computer manufacturers, have taken a huge...

Today, March 27, is my birthday. I turn 34, and for those that don’t want to do the math, I was born in 1975 at a time when mood rings, bell bottoms and disco music was all the rage. In the late 70s, the family photo included my father in a brown leisure suit. A popular television show of the day was One Day at a Time (one of several Norman Lear shows of...

If you do a lot of buying on eBay, going through the standard interface has some limitations with the most obvious being that you have to refresh the page to get the most up-to-date bidding information. To overcome this limitation and introduce new functionality not available via the web interface, check out eBay Desktop. Features:Access eBay through an...

My father recently spent a little over $90 for a brand new personal weather station, i.e. PWS for short. PWSes are easy to find on Weather Underground. Just type in your city/state or ZIP, wait for the page to load, scroll down and hit the Personal Weather Stations tab, like this: All weather reports start at weather stations. The official ones are called...

Fortunately in modern times most states and towns in the United States have wised up and have informative web sites. But unfortunately these web sites can still be difficult to locate – even with a Google search. Not to worry, there’s a really good web site to help you out with this: StateLocalGov.net I really like this site because it’s more...

Not too long ago, I wrote about a Live Writer plugin which allows you to insert images directly from Flickr. In that exact same spirit, and functionality, here is a Microsoft Word add-in called Flickr4Word which allows you to do the same. Flickr4Word draws on the model of Flickr4Writer and brings the Flickr(tm) services to Microsoft Word 2007. When you create a...

Fun and important “Did you know?” fact of the moment: The only true authorized source to get a free annual credit report under federal law is AnnualCreditReport.com. Here’s where the funny (as in good funny) part comes in. The FTC themselves released two videos explaining why this is:So yes, you can actually get a free credit report without...

Chances are your phone is set up to not accept calls that do not have caller ID. But every so often you get a call from a number from an area code you’ve never seen before. Of course, you don’t answer it, but you’re left wondering, "Who was that?" Most of the time it’s a marketing call, but it is important to find out who called...

Over time your computer accumulates tons of clutter all over the place. Between your temporary files, downloads and ‘forgotten’ files, you probably have a lot of dead weight which you could safely remove. Instead of manually cleaning up these files, automate the cleanup using Belvedere. Keep your desktop or any other folder on your hard drive...

More people these days are getting away from instant messenger programs and using the in-browser way, because there really isn’t too much reason to use an IM app these days. Years ago a large chunk of the IM functionality was provided by the application, but that’s not the case anymore. You can do voice, webcam, manage your buddy/contact list and...

There are some web browsers that are safe in older versions and some that aren’t. The safest (and fastest) web browser in the world is Lynx. This is because it’s 100% text-based. There is no malware, spyware or malicious code that exists for Lynx that I know of. The only drawback is that there aren’t any images in Lynx, nor can you use a mouse....