NOTE: This is an older article, please see my latest Computer Security recommendations here. AVG released the new version of their security software about two weeks ago. Many of you have asked, should you upgrade and if so, how. Follow these steps and watch this video on how to get through process quickly and correctly. It is imperative that you… Read More »How to upgrade to AVG 8.5 Free – Video Tip
NOTE: This is an older article, please see my latest Computer Security recommendations here. AVG 8.5 is still free (for home users), it is being offered now, but it isn’t at all critical to get yet. If you still haven’t upgraded from 7.5 to 8.0, then go the whole nine yards and get 8.5. But if you are using 8.0,… Read More »No rush to get AVG 8.5
Are you really still using Internet Explorer after all these years of me promoting and talking up Firefox? If you are, Microsoft released IE 8 last week, and already people are running away from it because of compatibility and stability problems. Like always, hold off on these types of upgrades for at least 3 months and let others be the… Read More »Hold off on the Internet Explorer 8 upgrade
I helped a retired aged computer user today who was cajoled into using Facebook by his family. His Facebook friends hammered him daily about posting some pictures to his online profile. But like many computer users, he juggled time between three different photo management programs. One of them, luckily, was Google’s Picasa and I configured Picasa to locate all his… Read More »Add photos to Facebook quickly and easily – Video Tip
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. If you need a spell check in smaller text box like an email subject, you might need to RIGHT click in the text box, then click Check Spelling from the menus to force a spell check for that text box
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 around the Internets. Learn to use tabs, you can do it. Use my video tutorial (click here) to learn this helpful and time saving technique that will change the way you look and use the web.
If you ever have the need to create a PDF file so you can share it easily with others, or have the need to convert a PDF file into a word processing file, then I recommend giving PDF Online a try. In just a few steps, you can upload a file you want to convert to a PDF or upload a PDF file you want converted to a Word file. Once the file is uploaded, it takes just a minute or two for the service to perform its magic and give you your finished product. Amazingly simple and amazingly accurate.
Some of the nastiest spyware infections can be dealt with easier than previously thought if you try the following steps immediately after becoming infected:
I have had good success with this routine if the infection is caught quick enough (usually within a day or so).
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 the safety of all of us connected to the Internet, please download and use either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.
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 radio stations based on your favorite songs or artists. After you build your first station, Pandora starts to play songs related to the song or artist you started with when you built the radio station (which entails that you simply type the name of a musical artist or a song name and click Create).
As the songs play, if you tell Pandora whether you like the selection or not (via a click on a thumbs up or thumbs down icon), it will continue to more accurately pick music for you. You must see the short video below to see how it works, and better yet, give it a try to see why it is such an exciting and useful Web 2.0 application!