It’s all too easy to point out the problems with Facebook because, let’s face it, it’s an easy target. On several occasions I’ve blasted Facebook for the dumb stuff they do, but I also do recognize the good that it brings to us. Here are 5 things that are good about using Facebook. 1. No need to remember anyone’s email address For...

I try.. and I mean really try to like Firefox these days, but wow is it tough to do so. As any long-time Firefox user knows, the browser has been getting progressively (regressively?) slower per each release. Yes, it’s true that with every new release of Fx comes some new whiz-bang feature, but unfortunately the majority of the time it’s something...

I know there are more than a few of you out there running blockers of some type. Ad blockers, Flash blockers, NoScript, maybe even Ghostery. Some of you might even be using a custom HOSTS file just to block stuff. If that’s the way you roll, fine by me because I’m not the boss of you. People block stuff to either avoid ads, enhance security (e.g....

I don’t think it is much of a secret that Mozilla (the company behind Firefox) depends on Google to a very large degree for its own existance. Google pays Mozilla a big (yet, undisclosed) sum of money to keep Google as the default search engine in the Firefox browser. Without that revenue, Mozilla probably wouldn’t be here today. In 2011, Google...

During the holiday season the VLC media player automatically switches it’s standard orange cone icon to one with a Santa cap on top of it. You can see this in the top-left and main play area of the player:It also shows up in the taskbar area:This has been around for a while but some of you haven’t seen it yet, so if you’re using the VLC...

Google Chrome like other browsers offers the ability to save passwords so you don’t have to type them in again, however there are certain instances where Chrome will not save a password; this happens either for legitimate reasons or because the web site "confuses" Chrome. A legitimate reason is that the site specifically instructs the browser not...

Every few years or so the electronics industry gets all stupid and introduces way too much of a specific tech at us way too fast. As of right now, which Forbes has confirmed, there’s too much mobile crap out there; so much so that it leaves people literally fatigued. And yes, it is all crap. When you have too much of any one specific type of electronics...

As far as desktop use is concerned, Opera has little to no presence. However, on mobile platforms, Opera is #1 worldwide. Yes, that means Opera is used more than Android’s browser is. Why does Opera have so much popularity on mobile? Because it runs on just about any smartphone that exists. If your phone no matter what it is can run apps and access the...

It was recently discovered that upon a search of the Dell web site, the Inspiron mini line shows an inventory of zero. Uh-oh.. When Dell decides they’re going to stop making a specific computer, the industry as a whole usually follows suit because Dell does have that kind of influence. Now I’m not saying that it’s fact that Dell will cease...

The 800G from LG is a phone available in the US through prepaid carriers Tracfone, NET10 and others. The one I have uses the Tracfone carrier. As I’ve said before on more than one occasion, I’m a cheap cell phone user and hate post-paid cell phone contracts with a passion; this is why I use low-end prepaid cell phones instead. The 800G is an...

The dial-up modem (a.k.a. faxmodem) was the primary way people got online from home in the early days of internet connectivity. Modems came in two flavors, internal or external. If internal, the modem had a very chintzy little speaker on the card or used Windows to send its connection tones through your audio speakers. If external, the modem had its own in-built...

Google basically proved to everyone that background auto-updates work concerning their web browser, Chrome. Initially, people were very against this because they didn’t want "stuff happening in the background they didn’t know about", but then quickly realized that background updating of the browser is convenient, not intrusive and certainly...

I’m going to touch on the subject of Post-PC again by daring to ask if you could live without one. For some of you, even the thought of not having a PC will make you nervous – especially those of you who have been using PCs for several decades. I can’t speak for the masses, so I thought about what I would do if I didn’t have a PC,...

The way operating systems work is that an app’s program data (the "executables") goes into the application installation folder, and any settings for said app in the user folder. Why? There’s several reasons, but the most important is that if there are multiple user accounts in an OS, each user that uses that app can have their own custom...

Not everyone has a fast computer. In fact, it’s probably a good bet there’s a whole swath of users out there with CPUs in their computers that are at least 5 years old or older. Making a computer faster these days has less to do with hardware and more with software. It’s an unfortunate truth that many of the popular desktop apps used today are...

The IMAP mail protocol is something that most people have a love/hate relationship with for those that use it. The love comes from that you can sync mail between PCs and mobile devices easily, and the hate from that IMAP is notoriously "moody" for lack of a better term. Part of the reason IMAP sometimes has problems with synchronization is because...

Next week, a bunch of you are going to be traveling to see friends and family for the holiday season (and probably do it again on New Year’s Eve and Day). Right now is a good time to do a few very simple things to make your travels easier. 1. Make sure your cell phone’s address book is up-to-date Is Aunt Marge’s phone number in your cell...

A standalone wireless hard drive is: A 3.5-inch hard drive in an enclosure where the enclosure on its own has Wi-Fi connectivity. Does such a thing exist? Yes. One such example is the Imation Pro WX, released in 2009 if I’m not mistaken. The Pro WX basically looks like a large-ish wireless router, except it’s a hard drive with its own wireless...

Digital SLR cameras take awesome photos. We all know that. However, any of them built within the last couple years or so usually also include the ability to record videos. Due to the optics of a DSLR, the video quality is AMAZING. They really blow away traditional video cameras in a lot of ways. The newer, more expensive DSLRs come with a lot more bells and...

For those of you running computers that are older and/or slower, your hard drive may be acting as a bottleneck of sorts when loading certain web sites. If you switch over your cache or profile folder to use your RAM instead, this may speed up your browser noticeably. The use of a RAMDisk is nothing new to desktop computing and has been around for decades. The...