Whenever taking screencasts of an OS that isn’t Windows 7, I’m using VMware Player to do it with. I’ve been holding out with version 3 for the longest time, but I finally decided to upgrade to 5 and there’s a feature called Unity. No, it’s not like Ubuntu’s Unity at all. What Unity in VMware Player allows you to do is run apps...

For a small while now there has been the ability to connect a Y! Mail account using IMAP, even for free accounts. As for why you can do it now and not before is because many mobile users prefer to access their mail via IMAP because it makes for easier synchronization, and also want the same ability on the desktop as well. Now before continuing, in my examination...

Back in the early-early days of the internet, I used to play games in the browser that were Java based like Yahoo! Pool (which amazingly still runs off Java). Back then there was this thing in Windows called Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. The Sun company evidently got all in a twist about that because of copyright infringements and whatnot, sued Microsoft in...

I have a really old Hotmail account (registered in 1998 if you can believe it) that I login to periodically just to keep the account active. When I go in there I check the Junk folder just to see if I get any legitimate emails got dumped there by mistake (which doesn’t happen too often, a nod to Hotmail’s spam filtering system). HOWEVER… I am...

I am old enough to remember when there wasn’t such a thing as anyone having an answering machine or any business having voice mail service. I might have been just a kid during that time, but I do remember it (right along with rotary phones). As it turns out, voice mail isn’t being used as much as it used to be. And when I say “isn’t being...

Windows 7 does in fact include a way to have checkboxes next to files and folders for easier selection for those that use the mouse often. It looks like this:…and also works for saving files, selecting folders and basically anywhere else you would use Windows Explorer. Click the Windows logo and type “folder options”:From the results, click...

Handbrake is free software for Windows (including 64-bit), Mac or Linux that anyone who makes video (for hobby or for pro) should use because it’s just so damned good at what it does. The purpose of Handbrake is to plop a video file in there (such as a WMV, AVI or MOV) and then convert it to MP4 or MKV. It’s most likely true you would be using the...

I find the term online stalker (or stalked online or online stalking or whatever other way the word stalk is used with online) to be rather interesting because it doesn’t mean the same today as it did ten years ago. In 2002, the mere mention of someone “stalking someone else online” struck terror into people’s hearts. Well, not anymore....

A few years back you may have remembered all the hub-bub concerning the “white space” frequencies of what was formerly used for the television band spectrum, which Big Telco, Big Cable and a few others (even Google) fought each other for, tooth and nail. Well, it’s now 2012 and there’s this thing now called “Super Wi-Fi”. This...

While there have been many improvement in Google Maps and Bing Maps over the years, there’s still nothing that beats Google Earth as far as what you can do with it. Some of the features you’ll see below are in Google/Bing Maps, but done done in a way where the functions are separated and/or cumbersome to use. Google Earth, being a true local...

The term “hoarding” is generally considered to be a bad thing, but when it comes to the software you love that you can’t live without, I cannot stress this enough: SAVE THOSE INSTALLERS. This is especially true for Windows XP users. The software you love right now will not be on the internet forever where you can download and install it...

For some of you, this will probably make your whole week knowing this feature exists in Firefox and has more or less ever since the browser came into existence. Here’s an animated GIF of an ant:Press ESC and the animation plus any other animated GIFs will stop animating. Flash will continue to animate, but all GIFs will stop. The only other browser that...

Firefox 15 has just been released, and it’s noted on this Mozilla blog that Fx 15 “prevents most memory leaks” caused by add-ons. I wasn’t so much interested in that, but rather if Fx actually releases memory properly when a tab is closed. From my cursory examination of the browser, yes it does. FINALLY. The test I used was to load some...

Many people are under the delusion that a factory reset of a smartphone device will clear all the user data in it. Not usually. In most devices there are remnants of user data left behind which could easily be used for identity theft purposes. So before you sell off that smartphone device, here are the steps to take to clear everything out. 1. For anything that...

System resets of GPS devices I know for a fact do not clear the data in the unit as I’ve owned enough Garmin GPS devices to figure that out. What I’m going to tell you below specifically applies to Garmin devices, although it can be applied to any GPS device as the data I’ll mention is probably left behind in other brands as well. This is what...