Firefox reaches 1 billion downloads

After the great Internet Explorer (IE) vs. Netscape browser wars of the 90s, it didn’t appear that Internet Explorer would ever be challenged again…thus Microsoft’s complacency with updating IE. Then just 4+ years ago, Mozilla Firefox burst onto the scene with a small, fast, and safe browser that caught fire quickly. As spyware and other malware all but crippled IE users, Firefox became stronger and stronger...

The Castellini Approach to Internet Security

This past week I saw way too many people who are not taking advantage of the free information we give out on the show and the web site. Their computers were suffocating from a preventable disease…viruses and spyware. Yes, preventable, almost 100%. And fighting the war on our home computer security front does not have to be costly or time consuming. We talk about this subject quite a bit on the program and the web site...

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 released – Get it!

Mozilla released version 3.5 of their  browser, Firefox, less than two weeks ago. I jumped on the update the day  it came out and have had zero problems. You already know that I recommend everyone use an alternative to Internet Explorer for daily browsing. If you aren’t using an alternative browser yet, then now is the time to jump in and start using something other than Internet Explorer. Mozilla Firefox 3.5 shored...

Email of the Week – 006

QUESTION Name: Kathy From: Grand Junction OS: Windows XP ———————- When I go into different web sites I get this message: ERROR A runtime error has occurred? Line 30 ERROR: Object required Yes No This occurs quite frequently can you tell me why and what I can do about it? ANSWER This error is usually due to some programming and setting problems in Internet Explorer. You can...

Make reading the web easier than ever – Vide...

Although we now have 19″ and larger monitors on most new desktop computers, the text seems to shrink. Why is that? It has to do with screen resolution (how much information can be displayed). Screen resolutions on today’s monitors are up to 3X that of monitors we used just 6-8 years ago. We can see a lot more information, but often the text is too small to view for some computer users. Never fear. Using this...

Another plea for you to use Mozilla Firefox

Over the past six months, the spyware problems infiltrating both Windows XP and Vista has become almost mythical. Spyware is the junk that gets into your computer and slows it down, prevents antivirus software from doing its job, halts Windows updates, can disable your CDROM and/or USB drives, and much more. The vast majority of it turns out to be self-induced. By self-induced, I mean that the user willingly downloaded ring...

The spell checker in Firefox works everywhere!

  If you are a Mozilla Firefox user, and you should be, you may be overlooking one of its greatest features…the built-in spell checker. It works on any web page, in any text box you need to enter text. Look for any words that have a red, squiggly line underneath them for misspelled words. To correct the word, RIGHT click one time on the underlined word, then click the proper spelling from the list of suggestions....

Remember the tabs!

Every day I make my appointed computer help rounds, someone marvels at my use of browser tabs. Tabbed browsing started almost 9 years ago with the Opera browser and continues today with the excellent implementation in Firefox. Internet Explorer finally got on board a couple of years ago and tabs work ok with it too. If you are not using tabs in your Internet browsing, then you really aren’t browsing, your floundering...

Windows 7 – First Impressions

I just finished installing the Windows 7 Beta version released by Microsoft on Friday. I installed it on my Toshiba Intel dual-core processor with 4 GB of RAM. It was running Windows Vista which took more than 4 minutes to fully boot (I consider the boot up process to be finished when the hard drive stops spinning and I don’t have to compete with a still booting computer to do what I want to do), and running any...

Thwarted by online poker

Today marked my second Linux/Ubuntu casualty in almost 2 dozen attempts. As I’ve learned more about Ubuntu the past couple of years, I carefully selected clients who would have little problems dealing with a non-Microsoft operating system. You may have read my take on Ubuntu usage for the average computer user before, but here it is again to setup the rest of the story: I believe that any computer users who uses only...

Switch TODAY!

On my way out the door today, I came across this article outlining one of the largest security breaches yet with Internet Explorer. I have been recommending for years that you switch to Mozilla Firefox. Today, I’m taking a harder line and recommending that you should never use Internet Explorer except in the extremely rare instance where a site truly requires Internet Explorer (IE) to run properly. For your safety and...

Pandora Internet Radio – Video Tip

Pandora.com qualifies for yet another Web 2.0 application. Pandora started as a project to find the similarities in music and why we like certain music and why we don’t. The Pandora folks eventually made all their study of music into an amazingly customizable and accurate music service. To sign up is free although I recommend paying for the service if you use it a lot. Once you sign up, you start by building your own...

Rick’s Answers his email Videocast – 0...

Questions about converting to Firefox, malfunctioning keyboards, WordPress consulting, Norton 360 problems, video editing, the Magic Jack phone, and more are brought to you by Dixie, Kitty, Jill, Anne, Diane, Elaine, Amber, Norma, Rich and Mike! Have a look!! ...

Searching within a Web page – Video Tip

This tip falls in the category of “wow, that’s easy to do, I wish I would have known about it long ago!” When you are on a particularly long web page and need to find a term or phrase, click on Edit from your menus, then Find (or Find in page on some browsers). The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + F. You will be presented with a small window that allows you to enter a word or phrase and then the computer will...

Backup Your Favorites (Bookmarks) – Video Ti...

Many years ago, I shared with you how to back up your address book. We have talked about how to back up your favorites, but never written it down. This tip will walk you through saving your favorite places in case of a disaster. Even if you have thousands of favorites, they will easily fit on a floppy disk (if you still have one) or better still, a USB Flash drive. Internet Explorer Open Internet Explorer Click File from the...