I’ve always been faintly fascinated with the amount of ire folks on the ‘net are capable of displaying. In a lot of ways, it’s almost as if, one some level, they don’t realize that they’re dealing with another human being. It’s as though they somehow disconnect themselves from everybody else, and as such, feel no compunctions...

For me, social media started with MySpace. That company was founded in 2003, but I remember in 2005 when everyone started getting in on it. I remember the heyday of MySpace, the heyday of Twitter, the colossal failure of Google Buzz, identi.ca (which still exists), Bebo (which AOL dumped), and of the present social-flavor-of-the-moment, Facebook. The only social...

One of the most popular articles here that I wrote back in very-early 2010 is The Mysterious 1e100.net. You might want to read that before reading this rest of this one for reference. That article has been seen many thousands of times from people wanting to know what the hell [subdomain].1e100.net addresses keep popping up in their network traffic over and over...

As time goes on, the internet isn’t necessarily getting larger, but there are more people connected to it and that number will continue to grow exponentially. This means that it’s going to be tougher as times goes on to get a short, easy-to-remember username. A solution to this issue is to do what the pre-internet BBS guys and gals did back in the...

Anyone who’s ever written a paper or article at a post-secondary institution knows the drill. Don’t use Wikipedia. It’s nearly an unspoken rule, a social norm. Some professors will dock a letter grade if their students use it. Others will go even further, giving the student a zero – maybe even expelling them from their class. But why such...

There are a few web sites out there (Flickr being one of them) where if you wanted to sign up a new account, there is the option to use your existing Facebook account to do it with. I strongly recommend against using a Facebook login to sign up for anything with because at some point you may regret it. The reason why it’s an awful idea to use a Facebook...

Most of you out there have at least two email accounts. You have your primary account for all your important stuff and the “throwaway” account for everything else. It used to be almost a requirement to maintain two email accounts as a spam countermeasure. However these days you’re far better off using email aliases just for the convenience...

Hey there, ladies and gents. Today, I’m going to toss a little scenario at your feet and I’m sure you’ve experienced it before. It’s an ordinary day and you’re there going about your merry business doing what you ordinarily do on an ordinary day. At some point, like hundreds of millions of others, you decide “You know, I want...

Everyone uses an online map from time to time, because every though pretty much everyone has GPS today (be it a standalone unit or in the smartphone), seeing the map on a larger screen, as in your computer monitor, is a lot easier to deal with. I find myself using Bing Maps more these days because there are certain things it just does better. Here are three of...

Here’s a situation that’s happened to everyone at some point or another: You’re in the middle of composing an email, and something out-of-the-blue happens. The power goes out, or your browser locks up. Or maybe it was a goof on your part where you closed the browser or hit the “back” button by mistake. No problem, right? Your...