For some reason, you want to erase your online tracks. We’re not going to discuss why – I’m sure you have an excellent reason to do so. The process involved in deleting your history and all the files associated with it depends entirely on what browser you happen to be using.  We’ll start with Google Chrome. Chrome: First, click on the...

Netflix, as most subscribers to that service area aware, is Silverlight powered. And as any Linux user who has tried to get Silverlight working on that particular operating environment knows, it’s not easy. Not impossible as there are workarounds, but not easy. As to the question of whether Netflix will ever support Linux? Nope. The alternative to Netflix...

In the context of this article, a self-publishing website is any place where you create the content, post it for sale through their system and get paid via direct deposit, mailed check or PayPal. Examples of sites like these are Zazzle, Lulu and CreateSpace. Self-publishing doesn’t always refer to books whether printed or e-book, as it could also mean...

Social networks are great, aren’t they? They let you share your thoughts on Life, The Universe, and Everything with, well…everyone and everything in the Universe, really. You can tell everybody what you ate for breakfast! You can let your friends know how awesome (or terrible) that new cafe that opened downtown is! You can tell advertisers and...

The Steam client has, unfortunately, porked up quite a bit over the years. Even though it needs to go on a serious diet, you can still fortuantely slim down the client by purposely choosing “Small Mode” and disabling a few features to get it running relatively speedy. Check out the video below to see how it’s...

This is going to be one of those blogs where I go into Old Man Mode, and bear in mind I’m only 37. Whenever I go into a big box retail electronics store (Best Buy, hhgregg, etc.), beforehand I have gone online, found the exact thing I need, confirmed it is in the store I will be going to via that store’s website, and written down the SKU number along...

I think you’d be hard pressed to find a single human being who isn’t aware of YouTube on at least some level. As more or less the most popular video streaming site on the ‘net, it’s spawned a wide array of copycats and poor imitations. At the same time, it’s caused the birth of a number of rather excellent addons, features, and...

YouTube launched in 2005. Prior to that it was very difficult to share video on the internet, and video streaming was almost nonexistent. Yes, there was RealPlayer streaming, but nobody offered this capability for free. The way people used to share videos before YouTube was to manually share static video files via email, newsgroups and websites. An example of...

Not everyone likes Google+, and I make it no secret that I don’t exactly care for it. G+ fanboys always give me grief whenever I pan the G+ service, but that’s par for the course, so it’s expected. Anyway, there is a way to delete your G+ profile without killing off your YouTube (or Gmail) account. The written directions on how to do it are...

In this edition of Layman’s Terms, we’ll take a look at a few more definitions related to the web. Specifically, we’re going to look at some of the languages in which the Internet is coded; a few of the languages which makes it what it is. HTML: “HTML” stands for “Hyper Text Markup Language.” Now, that’s not really...

In yet another maneuver by a big internet company that takes away yet more privacy, YouTube is now, shall we say, strongly urging users to use their real name to comment with via their G+ accounts. I’m not saying this is bad, but I’m not saying it’s good either. I suppose it depends on the application. Sites like the Chicago Tribune recently...

This isn’t your traditional computer-related article, but it does have to do with a computer you use every day – the one in your car. Computers that handle engine stuff have been in cars for a good long while, although generally speaking the ones that can be easily connected to are vehicles made from 1996 to present; this is because of the advent of...

Sometimes it’s tough staying focused. No matter how hard you try, your brain simply doesn’t want to co-operate with you. The presence of the Internet certainly doesn’t help matters, either – it’s way too easy to click away from what you’re working on, and then realize you’ve been looking at pictures of cats for five...

Craigslist is one of those sites that I personally consider one of the best places to buy and sell stuff on the internet. Or get free stuff for that matter (like Tampa Craiglist’s free section). Cars get listed all the time on Craigslist, but unfortunately when performing a search specifically for used vehicles, it sometimes takes a while to find exactly...

The ability to use text templates is a feature every cell phone has but few people use simply because they didn’t know it was there. A text template is nothing but a predefined phrase that you can load in while composing a text message or replying to one. Even on the cheapest cell phone made, you can usually have up to 10 phrases set. What should you use...

While the Toshiba Satellite line of laptops are fairly high-quality and packing some reasonably high-end components, they aren’t exactly perfect. One of the most common issues I’ve come across involves the sound card. For some reason, after coming out of sleep mode, the system will occasionally forget that it can play sound. The card simply stops...

If articles like this one get you a little concerned about whether what you’re posting to SkyDrive is “acceptable” or not, you can simply put your files into 7-Zip archives, put a password in front of the archive and encrypt it to safeguard your stuff. Note: This is not an invitation for people to post obviously-bad things to SkyDrive. However...

Cloud storage is being touted as the best thing since cushioned toilet seats. But is it really? I personally don’t think so. Now before continuing, I’m going to be a little more specific. Technically, anything stored on the internet is “in the cloud”. If you use webmail for example, that’s in the cloud. What I’m specifically...

This may be a bit of a departure from our usual fare here at PC Mech, but some things are just too awesome to leave unreported. Everybody remembers IBM’s legendary computer “Watson”, right?  You know the PC that defeated both the legendary Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Jeopardy? The system with rudimentary AI that allows it to answer...

Y’know, sometimes I just don’t understand Big Cable. According to recent quality reports (like this one), in many areas of the United States you now are getting what you pay for concerning your ISP, and in some instances even getting a little extra. What this means is that if you’re in the US and using a Big Cable provider (AT&T, Time...