If you’re a member of the Tin Foil Hat club (even if just a part-time member), privacy matters to you, so here are 5 tools that should keep the po po‘s from kicking in your door. 1. Tor Link: https://www.torproject.org/ Tor is a way of browsing the internet anonymously. I tried out Tor before, and I find the best way to run a Tor browser is...

HijackThis is a utility from Trend Micro known to many for the removal of unwanted settings and/or files from your computer. Trend Micro has recently decided to move the source code over to an open source location, namely here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/ It’s stated that TM will still be actively developing the software, and if you’re a...

Ever wish Windows could show the date like this in the taskbar? Most people operate Windows using a single-tier taskbar. As most people know, you can make the Windows taskbar any thickness you want, but generally speaking, people want it to be the smallest single-tier size just to stay out of the way. The tradeoff is that when you do that, only the time is...

If you shop online at all, you need to have your address listed correctly. If you don’t, sooner or later something you ordered in the mail won’t make it to your residence. Sometimes the dumbest things can cause the things you order delivered not to be delivered, even if it’s as simple as separating one address line from another because you...

Gamers do the VoIP (Voice-over-IP) thing a lot because it’s easier to talk rather than type because the hands are busy playing whatever game is being played. While there are many ways to do VoIP (Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, etc.), the problem is that most VoIP servers cost money. A 15-user Ventrilo server for example is 6 bucks a month. Cheap, yes, but whenever...

Even though I use Google Chrome as my primary browser these days, I admit with no hesitation that Firefox completely obliterates every other browser in the plugin/add-on/extension department. To this day, nothing else comes close to the extension options that are available for Firefox. Some people when browsing just want a simple-as-possible on/off toggle for...

Dot matrix printers may still be used in business (they’re particularly good for printing double and triple-copy receipts, as in the white-yellow or white-yellow-pink kind), but in the home they’ve been gone for decades, replaced by inkjet and laser. I’m pretty sure nobody will argue with me when I say the dot matrix printer was one of the...

Some good news from the FCC – they just put into effect tighter rules against telemarketing and spam texts. The rules basically state that written permission (which means on paper or electronic) is now required before reaching out to bothering people with prerecorded or direct sales calls. My question to you, the reader, is this: Do you receive junk calls...

Google Earth, which easily wins the award for Best Free Standalone Mapping Tool That’s Ever Existed, introduced a feature in version 6.2 (the latest as of this writing) that’s easy to miss but is very cool – the ability to easily share out screenshots. You’ve heard not only myself but other authors from PCMech go on about how Google Plus...

Whenever I list anything that’s classified as a toy for the computer geek crowd, I try my best to show things that are actually usable, even if only to a small degree. Geeks, after all, are a practical bunch. With that said, here are 5 toys that are both cool and usable. 1. USB Memory Brick ThumbdrivesWhere to get it: Here These are both functional and...

CCleaner (formerly known as "Crap Cleaner") is a free Windows cleaning utility that I’ve been using for years, and is the only one I’d recommend to anyone. I use CCleaner on both my tower PC running Win7 64-bit and my netbook running WinXP 32-bit. Said up front, no, CCleaner hasn’t paid me me to say any of this; I just like the...

Designing a web site, said very honestly, is a pain to do because it’s never been easy. Granted, today it is a lot easier, but it’s still not simple. If you like the idea of having a website but hate the idea of designing it, Twitter might be just the thing you were looking for. With most small businesses, the primary purpose of having a web site is...

For the longest time, my home page was the anti-home page, about:blank. That address is nothing but a blank white screen and I used it because my browser started up faster that way. These days however, my home page is StartPage. The trials and tribulations of what to set your home page to Content providers and search engines have been trying for years to come up...

Mozilla recently released version 10 of the popular Thunderbird email client. While Thunderbird works in Windows, Mac and Linux, it’s arguably one of the best free email clients right next to Windows Live Mail on the Windows platform. Version 10 incorporates the same "add-ons will be compatible as new versions are introduced" way of handling...

KMail is one of those email clients that’s really easy to miss, mainly because it’s been around for so long. People hear KMail and think, "Oh, right – that’s the KDE mail client thing in Linux that’s been around forever." Yes, it’s been around a long time, but it’s arguably in the top 3 graphical email clients...