More people are reading books on computers, phones and gadgets these days, but at times it can be a hassle finding a good selection, much less a free selection of good eBooks. One place that has a good wide selection of books to read – all for free – is Project Gutenburg. The area you’ll probably want to start in is the Top 100, which list the...

Here are two things you should remember about the internet concerning multimedia content:The internet is inherently lo-fi. Good content always trumps the technology it’s presented in.What does lo-fi mean? In simple terms: "Not broadcast quality." In technical terms: Non-widescreen, monaural (meaning not stereo), low-bandwidth multimedia...

Yesterday, the ISP I use, Brighthouse Networks, had a major outage. And wow, was it a doozy. There was not only zero internet connectivity but nobody could contact customer service on the phone either to even report the outage as they were down as well. On top of that, even the main brighthouse.com web site was having problems. Like I said, it was a doozy. And...

There is a proposed federal law that would require ISPs to store logs about their customers for 18 months. Should you be concerned about this? No. Before I explain why, the people I feel most badly for are the ISPs themselves should the law pass; this is because the ISPs at present simply do not have the room – and I mean that literally – to store...

Knowing when you created an account is fun information to know, and in some instances can even be used as geeky bragging rights. Do you have any accounts that are over 10 years old? Yahoo! Step 1. Go to pulse.yahoo.com Step 2. If not signed in, click “Sign In” at top of screen. Step 3. Click “Profile” on left. Step 4. Look for...

VAN is the abbreviation for Virtual Account Number; it is without a doubt the absolute best thing you can use for online purchases of any kind and you’ll understand why in a moment. What is a VAN? It is a virtual number you generate per your primary account, but only exists in cyberspace. When generated it acts exactly like your primary account works,...

After many months of planning, the first intergalactic summit was held at Kennedy Space Center with the Mars Delegation; our first contact with alien species from another planet. Upon the Mars Delegation’s arrival, which comprised of two individuals, senior space delegation official Burton Mercer noted that the two were well dressed for the occasion in...

If you’re currently feeling the pinch of an overpriced privately-owned ISP, watch out because municipality-run, a.k.a. "community broadband" internet is making waves. Currently there are 133 US cities that have community broadband. This map shows you where they are. The red markers on the map are FTTH (Fiber To The Home), and yes that means...

It’s really easy to complain about webmail. After all, no email is perfect. However it’s rare that anyone says anything good about it, and said honestly it really is. Here are some of the better features of the major webmail providers out there. Who knows? There might be features mentioned here in the webmail you use below you didn’t even know...

In the context of this article, "recover" means "make usable again". It’s probably true that there’s more than a few of you out there who have an email address that you’d like to use again but can’t because it’s completely overrun with spam. Yes, it is possible to recover an email address ruined by spam. The only...

Weather Underground is a site just about everyone has visited at one point or another. Personally, I’ve been using the site for years. WU is one of the oldest web sites on the internet, and in fact is so old that that it’s original 1992 (yes, 1992) version was accessed via the telnet protocol. That original version is still accessible today and you...

VLC is an amazing player. Truly. One of the lesser-known features is its ability to play streaming video. What does that mean exactly? It means you can use VLC to play YouTube videos as well as several other video streaming web sites. Example using YouTube: First, get the URL of the YouTube video you want to watch. Launch VLC, click Media and then Open Network...

I really like it when larger web companies actually use the high-valued domains they own instead of letting them sit there and do nothing. For example, when Microsoft allowed people to get live.com email addresses, that was great. Short, memorable, easy. AOL’s new Project Phoenix gets off to a great start by offering love.com email addresses. Yes, free....

It’s been said many times by many smart folks that using anything free on the internet is a fool’s game because you always lose. How? By trusting something that’s free. That trust will be compromised the day your happy-go-lucky free service vanishes completely. In case you hadn’t heard, several services by Yahoo! are on the chopping block...

While Yet Another Facebook Look Change is nothing new to report about – the features of the newly redesigned user profiles is something of which to stop and take notice. Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerburg, appeared on 60 Minutes last night to talk about the newly unveiled profile look for users of the social networking site. As early as yesterday,...

Planning to move? Many people are. When moving to a new area, knowing the crime statistics is very good information to have. Previously, the best place to get crime statistics was from Google Earth, but unfortunately that feature was removed since version 5 of the software. All is not lost however because there is CrimeMapping. This web site lists crime...

Why change your browser’s cache folder? Because the best way to put your web browser in the fast lane is to have the cache directory use a RAMdisk. This is an ancient "trick" that was best used by AmigaOS and why it was able to figuratively run circles around other comparable OSes of the time. Most people can afford to "lose" 100MB of...

Everybody loves a “top” list, and this is a good one. This is a list of the top 20 U.S. “web properties” in the United States. Some of these will be listed as “sites”, meaning similar sites belonging to a single property.Google sites Yahoo! sites Microsoft sites Facebook AOL Glam Media Ask Turner Network Fox Interactive...

Modern day home computing is not as it once was. Not-so long ago it used to be that in order to bring the most potential out of your computer box you had to use proprietary software. Any app that runs solely on a specific operating system is proprietary. And yes there’s still lots of this stuff out there. For the past few years I have been slowly...

According to a recent news story, the official release of IE 8 will not be in 2008 as once planned. Basically put, Microsoft feels it needs more shakedown and testing before becoming official – and to be honest I am in 100% agreement with this. I’ve used the beta version of 8 (which obviously isn’t finished since it’s beta), and while the...