So, you’ve got this awesome website that you visit a lot. More than any other page you happen to surf to. Trouble is, this website tends to favor a ridiculous, unnecessarily long URL (something like http://www.bobssuperawesomefavoritewebsiteintheuniverse.com). Typing something like that in every time? That’s a pain. Unless you favor carpal tunnel...

There have been several articles published about the dangers of cell phones, specifically concentrating on what most of these stories call "radiation". The word used in that context is, of course, used to attract readers, much like I used DOOM in mine. In factual terms, a microwave oven radiates a whole lot more than a cell phone ever would. Or a...

In the early days of home computing, the two most-used types of displays were television sets and monochrome monitors. I’ll talk about TV sets first. In the 1980s, TVs were cheaper than monitors. All you needed to do your computing was acquire the cheapest TV set you could find, hook up your computer to the television via the built-in TV OUT port to a RF...

Stand back, folks. This article’s going to be just a touch more technical than some of my other stuff. So, here’s the deal. You see a new desktop processor on the market. It runs at about….2 GigaHertz. Now, those of you with any computing experience will know right off that 2 GigaHertz in a desktop is a pretty abysmal clock rate (the rate at...

Most of you are probably familiar with the "Guest" account in Windows (which has been around for a long time), but Ubuntu 11.04 makes using a guest account so easy it’s awesome. All that’s required on the Ubuntu desktop to quick-change to a guest account is to simply click the power icon at top right, and switch. That’s it. Yeah, I...

A problem that quite a few people deal with routinely are webmail servers where the outbound filter is overly aggressive. Outbound mail is either deferred or the system prompts you "enter this code to continue" crapola just to send mail. Either way, it’s very annoying. Here’s an example of how this problem manifests itself: Let’s say...

So, let’s say you’ve been hearing a lot about Google’s new Chrome OS. Problem is, you don’t particularly want to buy a Chromebook quite yet. You’d rather give the OS a test run, see how it runs- take a look at how it functions. Thankfully, you’re in luck. There’s a fellow named Liam Mcullough-goes by the nickname...

To be internet-social basically means to have a shareable public profile with contact connection options. If you don’t understand what I mean by that, you will in a moment. The profile is easy enough to understand. The contact connection options means whatever system you decide to use has some way of people adding you to a friend or ‘follow’...

Everyone likes to save a buck or two when shopping for stuff online, and generally speaking there are two types of online product discounts – coupons and specials. The difference between a coupon and a special is that a coupon usually requires the use of a promotional code under certain purchase conditions to receive the discount; the special on the other...

Chances are, you’d want to game with your Xbox controller instead of the archaic mouse-and-keyboard setup. Maybe you’re frustrated with the traditional controls and want to try something different. Could be you’re playing a game that originated on a console, and you want to capture that authentic feel. Hell, maybe you just bloody well feel like...

On a laptop, I will admit widescreen is better not for visibility but for a completely different reason – it’s easier to carry around. When a laptop is closed, a rectangle shape is easier to deal with compared to a square. Under the arm, the likelihood of you dropping a widescreen laptop is less compared to if you were holding a square-shaped one...

On my personal web site I do list an @aol.com email address as the way to contact me. Why? Mainly because I’ve had the address for years, it works, and I really couldn’t give a crap what techies say about it. Techies typically scream out "GMAIL! GMAIL! GMAIL!" I don’t care because Gmail periodically breaks as does Hotmail as does...

A lot of people don’t know what a “torrent” is, or what “torrenting” involves. Considering how torrents have become such a large part of the internet in recent years, that’s rather problematic, wouldn’t you agree? There should be a guide of some kind – something to help the newbies along on their way and introduce...

I’ll note up front that if you have a DSL modem and not a cablemodem, that’s fine – go ahead and rate it by posting a comment below. I’ve gone through several cablemodems and one DSL modem over the years. The majority of them were provided by the ISP directly, and in a few instances I had to use what the ISP provided because they would...

Here are two things you should remember about the internet concerning multimedia content:The internet is inherently lo-fi. Good content always trumps the technology it’s presented in.What does lo-fi mean? In simple terms: "Not broadcast quality." In technical terms: Non-widescreen, monaural (meaning not stereo), low-bandwidth multimedia...

In this issue of “In Layman’s Terms”, we’re going to look at a few terms related to a computer’s start-up process. BIOS BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. If you strip away the primary operating system of your computer, you’re left with the BIOS. It’s essentially the software that controls things behind the...

In this issue of “In Layman’s Terms”, we’re going to look at a few terms related to memory and processing. Bit In terms of memory, a bit (short for binary digit) is the smallest possible unit of data on a computer system. A single bit is basically a tiny electrical ‘switch’ that’s either ‘on’ or...

Every time I think I’ve seen it all on the internet, I come across stuff I never thought would exist in cyberspace. One site that will probably be both entertaining and disheartening to you is ObsoleteSkills.com. The A-Z skill list is here, and no matter what your age is, you’re guaranteed to find something in there you know that’s now...

Pretty much any new keyboard today is purposely built to have a quiet typing experience; this is especially true on laptops which all use short-profile keys where you can barely hear the keyboard as you’re typing away. There is something to be said for noisy typing in the respect that in a sonic sense it just feels better. There is a musical quality with...

Wimamp is a great audio application. There are many people (for instance the author of this post) who seem to be addicted to it. I especially like the earlier versions that didn’t have all the fluff of today’s multimedia apps but, unlike them, could play a clear sound. I have been living under Linux for many years and I certainly don’t miss...