There have been several incidents in recent memory in which a service provider has stopped providing a free service or stopped providing service altogether. Most recently, the developers of TrueCrypt, a disk encryption product, announced that they were stopping all development and support of their product. They went so far as to alert users that the product should not be […]
Do You Use Free Programs and Services?
Check These Facebook Settings!
Let’s start out with one reality: You are NOT the customer of Facebook. You are the product. Rather, your attention is the product. Facebook is delivering your attention to advertisers. Since YOU aren’t paying for use of Facebook, Facebook stays alive by receiving money from advertisers vying for your attention. So it is in Facebook’s best interest to deliver as […]
More Cores is the Key to Multitasking
Multi-core processing is one of those terms that geeks love to use when they tell people about their computers because having multiple cores means wonderful things. Let’s start on what a processor is: A processor is a component that processes instructions from the different programs and makes outputs. That’s obviously a simplified explanation, but that’s what it is and what […]
How I Use Evernote to Keep Track of Stuff
It has become an increasingly busy world, hasn’t it? Seems like there’s never enough time to get to everything I want to do, and remembering everything I want to remember is nearly impossible. Technology has helped, and although I still love the feel of a pencil and paper for certain things, it’s just not feasible to pull off the […]
Why Does Microsoft Keep Changing Stuff?
If you know me—at all—you know that I use a lot of different forms of technology, from different providers. This gives me the foundation to be able to tell you authoritatively that it is not just Microsoft that keeps changing stuff. Let’s start by saying that, although a horse and buggy is an adequate way to get around and […]
How to Contact a Professional
I want you to feel comfortable and confident in dealing with a lot of your computer conditions. But there is a point when you should NOT try to do it yourself. That point is where you don’t feel comfortable, and when there is too much to lose. Most computer problems that people have are NOT hardware related, they’re software […]
What is “Piracy” with Regard to Technology–and why should you care?
This is a subject that is difficult to get information on that isn’t heavily biased in one direction or the other. I’m going to do my best to present baseline facts and leave it to you to form your own opinion, but I will also try to present the viewpoints of both sides. When we use the word “piracy” with […]
This Thing Called the World Wide Web
I remember when there was no World Wide Web, when the Internet was not called the Internet. For today’s emerging generation of computer users, however, computer use IS the Internet or the Web. The journey from a room-sized machine churning out processed data to global information access from a handheld device weighing less than a pound probably does not fascinate […]
What can I get rid of, and how do I NOT mess it up?
I had a reader question on this subject, and this is a very good question. There are things that DO need to be on your computer, and things that DON’T. Knowing the difference between the two can determine whether or not your computer still runs after you’re done fixing it. These instructions pertain to Windows operating systems. If you need […]