Whenever you try to visit a website and it doesn’t come up, it means the site is either totally down or some aspect of your connection (ISP, DNS, etc.) has a problem. As a very simple way to test where the problem lies you can use the appropriately named site: Down For Everyone Or Just Me. Usage is simple, just type the URL you are having problems with and...

It is a well known fact that Firefox can consume quite a bit of memory during normal usage. If you are so inclined to see where/how this memory is being used, simply visit the following URL: about:memoryThis works in the newer versions of Firefox and shows, in great detail, the breakdown behind the usage. If you are curious about what a certain column means,...

When you open Windows Task Manager and go to the Processes tab, there is a great deal of information available to you about the items currently running on your system. In addition to the default columns which are displayed you can view lots of other information by going to View > Select Columns. However, if you want to know what the values in these column...

When it comes to email, whether you use an online provider (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) or a traditional POP client, storage is virtually unlimited. With this being the case, many believe you have no reason to ever delete an email. While I can certainly understand the logic, I have rethought this over the past few months and I now ask myself a couple of...

If following the Royal Wedding isn’t really something you are interested in, but your friends on Twitter and Facebook are inundating you with messages about it, here are some browser plugins and applications which allow you to filter your social networking feeds. Of course, this same procedure can apply to any unwanted topic you have no interest in...

Like many of you, I have dozens of applications and utilities on my system. However, keeping track of new releases for each product isn’t really something I am interested in… unless the new release patches security issues. So for the past few months, I have been using Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) on my system to keep an eye on these...

Many of the major security software vendors offer some form of an online scanner which allows you to take advantage of their respective anti-malware engine to detect threats without installing the client on your machine. This is a great tool because it allows you to get a "second opinion" on your system if you suspect a threat. Microsoft now offers...

If you are looking to have a bit of fun with a Google search on your mobile device, try searching "tilt". From this post on the Google Operating System, it appears that your search results will be displayed… tilted. Additionally, per the user comments, if you visit the mobile search URL (http://www.google.com/m/search?q=tilt) inside of the Google...

Unlike standard cookies which can easily be controlled and cleaned by your respective browser, cookies set and used by Flash are a different animal altogether. Because Flash works outside of your browser, it has the ability to store cookies (aka LSO’s) in various folders throughout your system which is the foundation of how the "super cookie" you...

A very simply trick you may not know about is the ability to easily resize text and elements in Windows with a simple shortcut: hold the Ctrl key while scrolling the mouse wheel up or down. Here are some examples of what happens when you do this in particular location:On the desktop: Icons grow or shrink accordingly. In a Windows Explorer folder: File view is...

Fans of the original Pac-Man game are very aware the game only features a single maze which you probably have memorized. However, if you are looking for a new challenge, a to check out is the World’s Biggest Pac-Man Maze. When you visit the page, your browser is instantly filled with thumbnails of thousands of different Pac-Man mazes… all connected...

The other day, I got prompted that a new version of Java was available and I should upgrade. This got me to thinking "what on my system actually uses Java?". As it turns out, nothing that I can find. Java (not to be confused with Javascript) seems to be one of those things we think we need when in actuality, a lot of us do not need it. Of course there...

For those of us in the United States, today is tax day. If you haven’t submitted your paperwork yet, you are probably working diligently on getting it finished. Appropriately, if you would like to know where your tax money is going, check out the newly available Federal Taxpayer Receipt site: In his State of the Union Address, President Obama promised that...

Windows 7 users may be familiar with the hardware performance score the OS assigns to your system called the Windows Experience Index. You can view your system’s current score by going to Control Panel > System. If you want to impress your friends with a freakishly high score, you can easily edit your system’s rating: WinSAT saves the scores in...

While Internet Explorer is statistically the most popular browser, among tech enthusiasts it is probably one of the least popular. IE6 gave the browser a reputation for being riddled with security holes and while tremendous strides have been made to drastically improve security, IE in its current form is still thought of this way. Over the past several years, IE...