David Risley, owner of PCMech, does use a trackball mouse on his Mac Pro. When I say trackball I’m not referring to the old-school mice (mouses?) that were around before optical. Rather I’m talking about the above-surface blood red colored plastic balls that look like the HAL 9000‘s camera eye. Every time I use Dave’s computer box I have...

It’s my opinion that everyone should own a laptop. Two years ago I couldn’t say this because the price point wasn’t low enough. But with the netbooks quickly becoming the new norm of laptops, I can say now that yes, you should own one. And if you needed a reason why, here are 10 good ones. 1. Better resale value. PCs hold little resale value...

If you are looking into build a family tree, from scratch, this can be a pretty daunting task. Instead of tracking the information yourself, you can create a tree on Geni (for free) and have other family members help build it for you. Getting started is pretty self-explanitory, you can either create the tree as you know it, browse the existing last names to see...

One of the more popular open source applications out there is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which is a powerful photo editing application. While you may here it referred to as a Photoshop replacement, if you actually compare the functionality you will see GIMP doesn’t completely measure up (but you sure can’t beat the price). However, if you...

You probably think Blu-ray is the latest, greatest, up-to-datest thing in optical tech right now. You probably think, "Wow! 25 gigs on a single disc! Great!" What if I told you there’s a disc that can hold 20 times that amount to the tune of 500GB? Enter the GE holographic disc. Yes, it sounds like something straight out of Star Trek, but...

Short answer: No. Not on the consumer side, anyway. Consumer products for the USB 3.0 specification will appear in 2010 which is not all that far away. How to recognize USB 3.0 when it’s available? Look for the "SuperSpeed" and "SS" logos, like these:  What new features will be in USB 3.0? SuperSpeed as shown above. It gives a...

If you do most of your work sitting at a computer and have a window nearby, open it up when the weather is nice. Not only will the fresh air be nice, but you can turn off your air conditioner (if you are at home) and save some power as well. If you are at home, turn on your overhead fan or use a small floor fan to keep a nice breeze going. This really can be a...

Digital cameras by and large are marketed in three flavors, that being point-and-shoot, prosumer and professional. Point-and-shoot: Basic. Most functions are automatic and cannot be adjusted manually. Entry level, least expensive. Prosumer: Similar to point-and-shoot but with extra added features such as manual focus. Mid-grade, middle-of-the-road...

It’s most likely true that more than a few of you have heard of DMCA, as in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And if you’re heard of that, you probably have heard the term Fair Use thrown around as well. According to Wikipedia, the plain English definition of DMCA is: …it criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or...

If you do a lot of ‘tech related’ communication or computer walk-throughs, a good screen capture utility is a must have. While there are lots out there (I know I have written about several in the past), another tool to add to the list is the open source Lightscreen. For the most part, this utility has everything you would expect such as hotkey...

I have been a long-time reader of both UseIt.com and Web Pages That Suck. Both concentrate on what’s called web usability. Web usability can be defined by answering a simple question: How easy is it to use your web site? A large portion of ease of use comes from your selection of colors and fonts. Color: Foreground and Background Black on white is always...

Ordinarily I am very, very against "skinning" a web browser because it usually makes it perform like absolute crap. Usually what will happen is that some internal menus won’t work and sometimes it even interrupts web site loading. However, when I saw that Personas was actually developed by Mozilla Labs themselves (i.e. the guys and gals who made...

As you may have found out, the Add/Remove Programs functionality of Windows sometimes yields dead entries. These entries can be the result of corrupt installs or accidentally deleted files. While there are lots of programs out there which can clean these entries up for you, you can always delete them manually in the registry. You can can find all the Add/Remove...

I personally base whether the PC market is saturated or not by asking a very simple question: Is the computer as common in the average home as a television set? That’s a tough one to answer. More on that later. Saturation point in reference to PC sales is the instance where PC manufacturers cannot sell computers because everybody has one. I would hazard to...

Yahoo’s free web page service, Geocities, will be closing it’s doors before the end of 2009. Many of you would read this and say, "Yeah, so? Geocities sucks. Good riddance." And you would be correct with that judgment. However something that most people don’t realize is that Geocities in its present form serves an archive of how the...

If you are a user of Gmail and prefer to monitor your inbox by just having it sit minimized in your task bar, you probably have noticed the order of the page title elements (Gmail – Inbox (x) – email) can cut off the view of new messages when you have several programs open. This is no longer a problem with the Title Bar Tweak from Gmail Labs. Simply...

If you need (or like) to keep your receipts for either tax or reimbursement purposes, you have to be organized. For obvious reasons, having them available digitally is probably easiest since they don’t consume (physical) storage space and are readily available. Of course, scanning these in can be quite a task… or you can just use Shoeboxed. Shoeboxed...

Need your Linux fix? Ubuntu’s new version 9.04 is available today and with it some genuinely significant updates, such as: GNOME 2.26 The biggest improvement (for me) is that GNOME does better multi-monitor setup now with this version. Multi-monitor troubles with a Linux GUI have been a longstanding complaint of mine, and while Ubuntu 8 was a huge...

For many, there will come a time when you’re "connected" to too much stuff on the internet. You know you’re too connected when you simply can’t keep up with everything you’re signed up for. Whether it’s email subscriptions, RSS feeds, YouTube channels, MySpace/Facebook friends, AIM buddies and so on, all this information...

Whenever you download a file in Firefox, unless you have the always prompt for a location option set, it drops everything into a My Downloads folder. If you don’t like this functionality, you can set the option mentioned above or you can have your downloads automatically ‘routed’ for you using the Automatic Save Folder add-in: This add-on will...