One thing which really amazes me is how many people use (extremely) ‘relaxed’ language in professional communications. Be it email, memos or data entry notes, whenever you are communicating as a professional, take the time to use proper case, punctuation and spell check. It can be a really poor reflection on yourself if you do not. I’m not...

Twitter, the service you either love or hate, will be offering a geo-location service soon. This is something other web sites like BrightKite have tried to get other people to start using. You go somewhere then announce where you are by means of GPS coordinates. Consumer location-aware tech is still something that’s relatively new. There are certain things...

Yesterday I posted a tip which involves updating your Firefox about:config settings. This data is essentially the registry of your Firefox install as it controls many aspects of how the browser behaves. So if you are going to do some experimentation with these settings, it is important to have a backup just in case. This article walks you through the process of...

A touchscreen was something only limited to high-end electronics at one point, but now they’re available on just about anything mobile, such as Nintendo DS, all automotive GPS devices, smartphones and so on. Something that has been very slow to adopt the touchscreen are digital cameras. Canon in particular seemingly refused to do it, however that’s...

Firefox 3 added a much improved location bar which searches your URL history, bookmarks, tags, etc while you type. For power users wanting to control/tweak the behavior of the location bar, check out this article titled ‘Firefox 3.5 Location Bar Preferences‘. The author gives you a detailed explanation of exactly how the location bar behaves as well...

Note: There is a video at the bottom of this post of my 10v, so be sure to check that out. As I had been saying many times since 2009 started, my plan was to get a netbook as my next laptop. So I bought a refurbished Dell Inspiron Mini 10v. My overall opinion of the unit is that it’s a decent solid build and is definitely the right size. However the one...

Have you ever wanted to hide certain programs from people that may be looking over your shoulder? If so then the free program, Window Hider is for you. You give Window Hider a list of programs and a shortcut key then when it detects you pressing that shortcut key it hides those windows in your list. While the author makes the case of using this to hide programs...

I very recently posted an auction for my old Dell Inspiron 6000 (take a look if you like). She’s obviously old and has seen better days, but hopefully somebody will find it useful as a parts laptop. The challenge here was to make an older laptop look half-way decent in an eBay listing photo. How to do it? Here’s how:Yes, I know the laptop is old...

For the observant, you’ll notice that a ton of computers are made in the nation of China these days. This is occurring so much that some people absolutely refuse to buy anything made from there, similar to the all-too-familiar MADE IN TAIWAN labels on so many products of the 1980s and 1990s. On the computing front, many refer to Chinese-made computers as...

A handy utility to have on your flash drive is a screen capture program. This can be especially useful if you are troubleshooting an issue and want to get a snapshot of the data or error messages you are working with. A program which offers this functionality is FastStone Screen Capture. FastStone Capture  is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen...

Back when Windows 95 was first released there was an optional add-on purchase called Microsoft Plus! This added in screen savers, wallpaper, some styling changes and of course, WAV sound effects. Several of these sound effect packages are still available direct for download from Microsoft’s web site. You can get them from...

In a very short period of time I’ve found that in order to get along with a netbook properly, there’s 10 things you absolutely must do. 1. Use Google Chrome Those who know my browser preferences find this a bit of a shock being that I’m a diehard Firefox user, because I’ve made it no secret that I can’t stand the Chrome web...

If you are ever considering testing the web hosting market, unless you service a niche market, you almost have to have a ‘control panel’ available to your users. When you do your research, you will quickly see these are not cheap. If you have several customers already, this is typically not a problem, but if you are starting from ground zero price...

Simply put: something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. No matter the item and regardless of what it is appraised for or what ‘book value’ says it is worth, it boils down to what someone can actually sell it for. A great way to find out what virtually anything is worth is by using eBay’s completed listings tool. By using a...

If you find yourself performing repetitive tasks over and over (and over) in Photoshop, setting up a batch process is the way to go. Basically you ‘record’ your actions and then ‘play’ them on a group of files at once. This can be useful if, for example, you have 500 digital pictures you need to resize. For a quick guide on how to set...

VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol. It’s a general term used to describe voice communications over a packet-switched network (such as the internet). In this article I’m going to touch on the several different ways you can use PC-to-PC VoIP. Important note: Yes, VoIP obviously includes the ability to communicate via PC-to-phone and vice versa. But...

In our last episode.. I talked about how much web browsers suck. But now it’s time to discuss how great they are. The best way to describe the greatness of modern web browsers is to point out the features we have now that most people take for granted. 1. Tabbed Document Interface Most people know this as simply tabs. This was one of the best improvements...

The old saying goes “if it isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it”. This is a good approach to existing, functional device drivers on your system. However, if you are installing a new device going with the most recent stable driver is probably the best bet. Whenever you purchase a retail device, it almost always comes with a driver CD. Instead...

The web browser is the most used application on your computer, period. Even when you’re not using it, it’s probably minimized to the taskbar/dock/panel. Unfortunately web browsers still to this day have a fair degree of suck factor. Here are 5 reasons why web browsers suck: 1. Plugins are the browser’s own worst enemy I call them plugins. Call...

You may have heard the statement that having a black background uses less power than a non-black background. Google even switched to a black ground a while ago to attempt to save energy. Logically, this seems true because your screen doesn’t light up as much, however this is not the case. For proof, check out this video (ignore the advertisement)…...