Java is one of those things that most if not all of you have installed in Windows. It is something that’s a necessary "evil" of sorts to run certain things. Certain web sites need it to launch Java applications or you may require it for a locally installed program (such as OpenOffice). Everything Java does can be controlled via the Java Control...

We’ve been told ever since we started using web browsers that it’s a good idea to clear out your cache and cookies periodically. This used to be a pain in the neck to get done, but with modern flavors of web browsers you can clear this information out easily. In IE8 and Firefox you can use the keystroke CTRL+SHIFT+DEL, then in IE8 choose to clear...

Windows Live Mail is a great email client, no question. But one very longstanding complaint is the way it renders fonts. Whereas in other mail clients it’s stupidly easy to make mails look a specific way for text, in Windows Live Mail (and the previous Outlook Express) it is, put politely, a challenge. This tutorial is how to get the fonts to look...

If you hadn’t heard, Google is intending to shake up the way it does advertising by customizing it based on your search patterns. How does the big G know how to do this? They’ll be reading your browser cookies to make it work. If this doesn’t bother you, browse as you normally would. If it does bother you that the big G is going to be reading...

The Microsoft Windows operating environment introduced something called "font smoothing" right around the time Internet Explorer 4.0 was released in 1997. Even way back then (this is before the release of Windows 98) Microsoft understood that type on screen must be as legible as possible. ClearType, another Microsoft way of making fonts look better,...

Periodically I get asked how to get videos uploaded to YouTube to look better. The easiest possible way to do this is to simply capture/import and export your video file as 640×480 resolution for great video quality. Here’s a quick tutorial for those who use Windows Movie Maker: Import at 640×480 If you are importing from a camcorder, you can...

A router is any device that acts as a gateway between 2 or more separate networks. In our case, that means that the local network is connected to the Internet, and vice versa. The router ignores traffic local traffic or traffic it is not configured to handle, but when Internet access is attempted from within the local network, it springs into action. With NAT...