What is a blog?

I am sure that this isn’t the first article posted on this topic at HelpMeRick.com, but hopefully it will be the most complete. There are three ways to define blogs: As news, as journals and as a ventilation system for people who want to be important. In fact you could easily draw a vin diagram showing how most blogs overlap. Blogs as News: Blogs are websites that allow users to build and post to as easily as they...

Top Ten Questions to ask when Buying “Open B...

By Andy Cochran  1. Does the item have all of its accessories? This is a very important question when it comes to things like, battery chargers or special cables for Ipods, MP3 players, or digital cameras, and remote controls TVs. Ask if everything is there before you buy it. Owners’ manuals and most product software can be found online, if it’s MIA at the store. Have a salesperson print the manual, and...

Good bye pay phones – one more thing our chi...

Eighty percent of people now own cell phones and the other 20 percent are standing next to eight people holding a cell phone. Remember pay phones? Remember stuff that made you ask, “What is that?” on the receiver of the pay phone? Remember having to insert more money to continue the call? Remember being at the airport or mall and searching like mad for a pay phone that wasn’t in use? AT&T announced this...

No great holiday computer sales

I was pretty disappointed with the lack of good computer sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Prices for computer have been pretty low since mid-summer, but I was hoping to see some 2GB RAM laptops under $450 and desktops with 2GB of RAM for less than that. Maybe we will see some lower prices before Christmas Eve. Adam didn’t post any outstanding deals on digital cameras either, so I’m assuming that the...

Get “Experimental” with Picasa –...

Picasa offers so many cool tools for anyone who loves digital photography or just owns a digital camera. Most of the features are extremely useful and fun, but there are some very cool, yet obscure, features found under Picasa’s Experimental section. Go to Tools – Experimental Publish via FTP – sends photos to an FTP account – if you don’t know what that is then you won’t find it...

10 Phrases that we never thought we would utter

I know I’m missing some awfully good phrases, but I wanted to write some of them down. Leave a comment and tell me some other strange, modern tech phrases that would be so out of place 15 years ago and before. “How much RAM do you have in the PC?” “Send me a text message on your cell.” “Do you have an optical or laser mouse?” “Does this hotel have free wi-fi?”...

Stop the Photoshop Elements Browser Popup – ...

Adobe Photoshop Elements has a built-in program that searches for all of the photos on your computer and catalogs them. It then displays thumbnails of all of the photos it finds so that you can get to photos faster. This seems great, but Adobe did a pretty terrible job with the program. It is slow and way to difficult to use for a basic program. Picasa is free and it works much better. The worst part of the Photoshop Elements...

Troubleshooting 101

By now many of you have figured out that computers are unruly beasts. They seem to be fine one day and schizophrenic the next. As a person who troubleshoots computers for a living, I’m going to let you in on a little trade secret. When something on your computer seems to be a little left of center, stop and ask yourself three questions: Have I installed or deleted any software (computer program) in the last day or...

Desktop Shortcuts Make Computing Easier – Vi...

Learning to make Windows work for you instead of you working for it can yield many more happy and productive hours using your computer. One highly under utilized feature of Windows is the shortcut icon. Learning to use and manage shortcuts will give you a huge advantage with your computer. A shortcut is simply a ‘pointer’ to a location on your computer. Every entry in your programs menu of the start button is a...

Reconsidering extended warranties

I think that electronics aren’t as well made as they used to be. Correction: I know that electronics aren’t as well made as they used to be. Not only are products more fragile and flimsy but repair costs are rising. Both of these facts have caused me to reconsider my opinion of extended warranties. Not all extended warranties are a good deal, but I used to feel that they were almost always a waste of money....

Another sony proprietary technology bites the dust

For every Apple device that becomes a standard there is a Sony technology that becomes obsolete. Apple and Sony both got off to a great start in the early 80s. Apple introduced the Mac and Sony gave us the Walkman. From that point on, Apple has had only a handful of market failures and Sony has had nothing but. Sony announced their latest casualty this week by discontinuing their proprietary ATRAC audio compression file...

Canon leaps ahead again in DSLR wars

I have made no secret of the fact that when it comes to digital SLRs I prefer Canon over all other brands. I have also backed up my argument with a long list of reasons. Everytime any other company gets close to Canon, Canon announces a new camera that out paces the competition both in features and price. Canon did it again this week. They have announced two new digital SLRs, both will make any serious photographer...

Need for technology proportionate to family proxim...

Two of the past four weekends I have left every piece of technology behind (except for my camera) and taken my family into the mountains. My cell phone, my laptop, my XBox, my projector, and even the portable DVD players stayed behind. The drive to where we were camping was less than three hours and we kept the kids busy the old fashioned way. We stopped at overlooks, rest stops, gas stations and told stories. The kids got...

Busy weekend

My work week isn’t over. I have five computers/hard drives that I’m working on this weekend. My most exciting task is to setup an older XP HP machine with Ubuntu Linux. My customer had a huge XP problem and couldn’t use her restore CD’s to get it going. After some discussion of her options, costs, and time involved, she decided to give Ubuntu a try. This customer is retired, but is writing a book, uses...

Watch for check boxes when installing all software

When it comes to installing new software programs I have two rules that should get you through the process and keep you out of trouble. 1. When in doubt, click on the affirmative (Next, OK, Finish, I Agree, etc). 2. ALWAYS WATCH FOR CHECK BOXES! The second rule is becoming more important as search engines and other sites that provide ad-sponsored services promote themselves by partnering up with other software companies....