I saw someone over at DailyTech ask a question about building a Mac and watched him take machine gun-like shots over and over from PC and Mac fanboys for asking a stupid question. You know it’s bad when you have both sides of the computer world bashing you. Of course you can’t build [...]

There is a way to directly send a Google Maps location to just about any mobile Garmin GPS device (StreetPilot, nuvi, zumo, etc.)
Step 1.
If you haven’t done so, install the latest Garmin USB drivers.
Install the Garmin Communicator Plugin (this is so your web browser can “talk” to Google Maps correctly). Remember to restart your web [...]

In the corporate world, larger companies build what are called “disaster recovery” centers. This is an off-site building that houses a miniaturized version of the entire company’s computer network. Its sole purpose in life is to be there in case a disastrous situation happens at the primary data center (fire, explosion, etc.) so the company [...]

Last week, Jason authored an article on reasons why to use Linux. Jason is a real fan of Linux and I was part of the “heated discussion” he refers to at the beginning of his article. His article really did touch a nerve and has quickly become one of those most popular articles on all [...]

When you use the internet long enough you basically sign up for every instant messenger account on the planet. AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN/Live, and so on. You also sign up for a bunch of social networking sites as well, such as MySpace and Facebook. Maybe you even use one of those micro-blogger type sites like [...]

Verizon (for those unaware) is a humongous telecommunications company with a very large presence in the United States. It’s more or less guaranteed that anyone you talk to in the US knows what Verizon is and what they do.
Verizon’s infrastructure is also humongous (obviously). This means they can offer anything to do with telecommunications. So, [...]

A Miami-based vendor called Psystar is attempting to rain on Apple’s parade. They have created, essentially, a Mac based on PC hardware. They then ported Apple’s OS X Leopard operating system over to it, all for a package price of $399.
It goes without saying that this price tag is $200 cheaper than even Apple’s Mac [...]

Damn. Whoah. And at the same time, yeah.
This is how I reacted when I saw a story which cites a pair of Gartner analysts saying that Windows is “collapsing”. They go on to say that the situation is “untenable” and that Microsoft must make radical changes to the OS or risk becoming old news.
According to [...]

Rather than posting a news item from the tech industry, I simply HAD to share this story with PCMech this morning. As I sit here, I am at Panera Bread working on the MacBook Pro. Why? It isn’t for the coffee. No, it is because some Bright House contractor managed to completely kill all communications [...]

If you’re in a pinch and need a job right now doing something in the Information Technologies industry, here’s a few quick tips to get you on your feet.
Job that is always available: Help Desk / End User Support
Help Desk, a.k.a. “Technical Support Representative” positions are a dime a dozen with a very high turnover [...]

Yep, that’s right. I turn 33 today, so you can clicky-clicky on your mouse on over to here or here and send a card to rich@frostedside.com.
Being that I was born smack dab in the mid-70s (1975), my generation was literally the last that experienced the world before internet. As a matter of fact, my generation [...]

Dave Winer, a famous blogger who pretty much invented the concept of RSS and who’s work has led very directly to what so many of us (including me) do for a living, published his own view of what is wrong with Wikipedia.
As Winer puts it, Wikipedia is devalued because the content on it can be [...]

We’re all users of the Internet. We pay bills online. We have our identity out there online. We also have credit cards - usually several of them. All of this adds up into one thing…
Your identity is digital. It is portable. And it is in other people’s hands.
And this means it is a matter of [...]

What’s one (of the many) reasons why Google employees love what they do? It’s because they can run any operating system they want and any software they want. I’m not kidding.
If an employee @ Google wants to run Windows, fine. Mac? No problem. Linux? Sure, why not? Messengers, music programs, and the like? Go ahead.
Some [...]

About a month ago I did something only the few and brave do; I stopped using Gmail.
Number of times I’ve been tempted to switch back since then: 0.
Honestly speaking I thought I was going to go into GWS (Gmail Withdrawal Syndrome). I thought that going back to using e-mail with a client (Mozilla Thunderbird in [...]

The beta edition of IE 8 was released so I downloaded it and gave it a go.
First I will state that this is a beta product and certain things don’t work correctly, so unless you’re a web designer/developer, stick with your current browser (be it IE 7, Firefox, Opera or whatever you currently use).
The short [...]

Windows XP will be officially retired in June 2008. And maybe you’re the type of person that says "Well.. I like my computer the way it is and I really don’t feel like buying a new computer or changing the operating system. How long can I continue to use XP before it’s unusable?"
The answer is [...]

Back in the days of olde (i.e. late 90s) web browsers were distinctively different in the way they worked as far as user commands were concerned. Today all of them act more or less identical to each other. I personally feel this is good because when going from one browser to the next there’s not [...]

General rule of thumb for all PCs: The colder it is, the better it runs. Some jokingly say that a computer runs best with a "frosty dew" on it. The reason that’s a joke is because condensation in any form that’s physically on the motherboard (aside from cooler units) is obviously bad, because water and [...]

Most people out there that think "open source" is synonymous with "freeware".
Not really.
Taken literally, open source is a set of principles on how to write software, with the full source code for said software openly available to you, the user.
Freeware (whether ad-supported or not) can be closed source. Just because an app is free doesn’t [...]