Sony has definitely seen better days. The company posted a fiscal loss of 5.8 billion (yes, billion with a big fat B) in 2011, and the shucking of the optical drive subsidiary is part of their restructuring plan. For those shopping around for optical drives, you may in the near future see Sony-branded optical drives selling at fire sale prices just to get rid of...

You’re going to find this both cute and probably slightly disturbing at the same time:So what we have here is yet another demo of a walking robot, this one ant-like with its six legs (if it were spider-like it would have eight). When you start to see this thing walking, then running, that’s when it gets creepy. If I saw this thing coming at me and...

What I’m talking about here isn’t the physical desk your computer sits on but rather the files and shortcuts on your computer operating environment’s desktop. It is easy (almost too easy) to plop things on the desktop and simply not care about it. However over time it can turn into an organizational nightmare. Now I will admit before...

RSS is something that’s been around for years (well over 10), works exactly like it should and easily keeps you up to date on your favorite site’s content (including this one). The web in general tried and pretty much ultimately failed to get all of us to “share” our news via social site to keep us abreast of the latest/greatest info....

I had done up a written article about this, but it’s better to show it in video to get a better idea of how to go about use basic messaging from SMS to email and vice versa. Any cell phone can send a text message to an email address, however the *reply* has to be done in a specific way. The video below shows you how to do that and the tools you need to get...

KernelEx is freely available on SourceForge and allows you to run apps that require Windows XP to work in Windows 98. Note that this only works for some apps, as you’ll see in the video below. For those of you running older Win98 computer boxes (most likely for retro MS-DOS gaming), you can now eke out a few more good usable years from the aging Win98...

A situation that’s happened to all of us at one point or another: You’re typing up something inside a web browser. Could be Facebook. Could be email. Could be a blog editor. Whatever. Then it happens. *Poof*, everything you typed is gone. It happens instantly and there’s absolutely no way to get your text back. It’s gone forever....

In a not-so shocking report, 47% of US consumers feel they don’t need 4G LTE. When it comes to network speed improvements/upgrades, eventually you get to a point where faster isn’t better and turns into hurry-up-and-wait mode. For most people on mobile, that’s exactly what 4G LTE is perceived as. 4G (and even 3G) connectivity in all honesty is...

This is a quick tip for anyone that encounters annoying pausing or freezing when attempting to empty the Windows Recycle Bin. The #1 reason why the Recycle Bin pauses when going to empty it is probably because you have an external hard drive connected to your computer. When the external drive isn’t in use (even if powered and connected), Windows will spin...

I’m sure more than a few of you have seen “Sent from my iPad” or “Sent from my iPhone” or “Sent from my [insert other smartphone here]” taglines in emalis and possibly forum posts. Personally, I think the best answer to that ridiculousness is to use a tagline stating you sent the message from an item that would be...

(continued from part 1) A quick about how POP mail works Post Office Protocol mail works in such a way where in the inbox and only the inbox is downloaded by a mail client such as Thunderbird. In other words, anything not in the inbox is not downloaded. Move everything in webmail from “Incoming OLD” to the main inbox Yes, I know, this may take a...

In the way I personally do email, I perform an annual cleanup. When January rolls around, I download all my email, store it locally using a mail client, then back it up to media. After that I delete everything that’s stored in the web account. I pretty much have to do this because if I don’t, my email becomes unmanageable. During the course of a year...

Home security isn’t cheap and never has been, and this is why people look into fake security alternatives. But does it work? That answer depends on what the fake security is and how it’s applied. Here are a few of the more popular fake security items out there. Fake “Protected By” stickersThis is a fake security item that people have...

There’s an old saying that presentation is everything. There’s a lot of truth to that, and it’s also true you can see some electronics presentations at their worst at Wal-Mart. Recently, I went into a Wal-Mart to pick up some AA batteries. The electronics department is usually the best place to go for these because you’ll find choices not...

There really is no good reason for an IRC client to be bulky. It should be very small, lightweight and run very fast. While there are a few good IRC clients for Windows, my personal pick is XChat 2 for Windows, a free Windows version of the popular XChat software. For those of you who bounce between Windows and Linux environments, you probably already use XChat...