If you have a webcam but are not not satisfied with the features it offers, a freeware package you might want to take a look at is Yawcam (Yet Another WebCAM software): Yawcam is a webcam software for windows written in java. The main ideas for Yawcam are to keep it simple and easy to use but to include all the usual features.The features I find most...

It should be a surprise to nobody that whenever you visit a page on the web, information is gathered from you for the purposes of statistics and advertising. If you are conscious of this and want to keep an eye on, and possibly block, some of the companies capturing your data then the Firefox add-on Ghostery is for you. Ghostery sees the invisible web –...

If you like to constantly be changing the look and feel of your Windows 7 installation either by changing themes or modifying background animations then you will probably be interested in this Windows Club post titled the "Ultimate list of tools, links and guide to customizing Windows 7". The tools this article links to include:Windows 7 Start Button...

If you or someone you know has a Mac and has forgotten the password, fear not as you can easily reset it following one of the methods discussed this appropriately named article "How to Reset Your Forgotten Mac OS X Password". There are two options discussed, one using the system recovery disc and the other involves a few command line calls to trick the...

If you do any amount of work or are interested in learning about the multitude of tools available from the Windows command line, a great resource to get is this downloadable command reference file. This download describes the use of the command-line tools used to perform various tasks related to Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008,...

Many of you probably have one or many older USB drives which are tiny in size (less than 256 MB) which makes them almost unusable. So a good use for one of them might be to make a Windows 7 password reset disk. If you forget your computer password, you can use a password reset disk to create a new one. We recommend that you create a password reset disk when you...

I read an interesting article in the New York Times titled “A Baby Photo Becomes an Internet Meme” where a father uploaded pictures of his newborn baby approximately 10 years ago and found that this picture had become an Internet meme. To give you an idea, here are some of the ways he found this image of his son used: He was surrounded by cartoonish...

For those of you who like to keep an eye on comments posted to the PCMech articles, there are a couple of options offered which are better alternatives than visiting the respective page(s) and checking manually. Right above the start of the comments thread starting point at the end of each article are the options to subscribe to comments by either email or RSS....

There are tons of Windows shell extensions, applications and tricks out there which do everything from copying the current folder location to the clipboard to file splicing and merging. If you have lots of these types of tools that you make use of, you may want to give the free utility, FilerFrog, a look. FilerFrog is a swiss-army knife for Windows Explorer...

You may have heard about the latest Facebook privacy gaffe where popular applications (i.e. Farmville and Mafia Wars) were collecting and selling user information -including info marked private- to advertising networks. The purpose of this post is not to pile on Facebook as, realistically, this should not really be a surprise to anyone, rather point out the...

Computers depreciate in value probably faster than anything else out there. When you buy a new computer, it is pretty much out of date in month and a better model is available for the same price (or cheaper) than what you paid for yours. With that in mind, purchasing used computers and parts makes fiscal sense, but the question is how much do you trust used...

If you find that you do not use some of the options in the Firefox menus or think they could be arranged more optimal to the way you use them, the a must-have add-on is Menu Editor. Rearrange or remove menuitems from the main context menu (right-click menu) and main menubar (File Edit View etc.). Usage of this add-on is very straight-forward as you simply...

If you are into digital photography and are looking to create some professional looking panoramic photos, then check out the open source application: Hugin. Panorama stitching and more. A powerful software package for creation and processing of panoramic images. Reading about this a bit, some users complain the interface is a bit difficult/convoluted to work...

I have previously written about the Everything tool which quickly searches your hard drive for particular files. The problem with this utility is it only searches based on the file name and not the contents. For for situations where you need to search for text inside of a file, check out the File Searcher utility. File Searcher allows you to search any file in...

This week, Facebook introduced a new feature called “one time password“: [W]e’re launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports. If you have any concerns about security of the computer you’re using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead...