More of Steve’s favorite wastes of time.
TechBite
TechBite: Using a PC? You Definitely Have Annoyances…
This week’s post is a collection (okay, a hodgepodge) of ways my PC annoys me, with, of course, work-arounds.
Steve Bass’s Time Wasters – Cobra Pits, Baby Penguins & Snow Rollers
TechBite: Gas Saving Tips (‘Cause the Prices are Killing Us)
By Steve Bass
Internet resources
to help me (and maybe you) get the best deal on gasoline
— and better mileage.
TechBite: How to Fix Common PC Annoyances
By Steve Bass
PCs are annoying. They do unexpected things and act like
little children. I know, because my computer’s always
troubled — and from the e-mail I get, so’s yours.
This week: Solutions for some of the computing troubles
and annoyances you’ve asked me to fix.
Steve Bass’s Time Wasters (Games, Videos & More) – April 2011
TechBite: A Nifty Spam Tracking Trick
By Steve Bass
There’s nothing you can do to prevent a third party from
exposing your e-mail address. But there’s a handy trick to
monitor if a company you’ve given an e-mail address to is
using it to spam you. And then block it so you’ll never
see it again.
TechBite: Shopping for Bargains on the Internet
By Steve Bass
That’s this week’s main topic: The sites I regularly visit
with daily bargain-priced products, those with coupon
codes for discounts or free shipping, and the tools to
make bargain hunting easier.
More of Steve Bass’s Time Wasters
TechBite: A Nifty Way to Make Free Internet Calls
By Steve Bass
I found a
sure-fire winner for letting home users make free calls
within the United States and pennies per call overseas.
More of Steve Bass’s Time Wasters
TechBite: Podcast Heaven
By Steve Bass
I’m surprised how many people aren’t taking advantage of
the Internet’s wealth of truly wonderful, enjoyable,
educating, entertaining — and free — podcasts.
TechBite: iPhone Meets the BBQ
By Steve Bass
Have $100 to burn? (Gawd, I certainly don’t.) If you do, splurge on iGrill’s fancy probe. It’s another thing specially designed for Apple aficionados.
TechBite: Recycle Your Electronics for Cash
By Steve Bass
It’s unavoidable. With a desk covered with business cards, flyers, and dozens of flash drives filled with product information, CES is still on my mind. And because it is, here are more short takes on products you might find useful. Or not.
Steve Bass’s More Great Time Wasters
TechBite: CES Wows and Duds
By Steve Bass
I found a handful, maybe a dozen, innovative and smart products in out-of-the-way booths, and a few “oh, wow, I gotta have that” gems. I’ve got a few to tell you about this week — like the gizmos that help you save energy at home and earbuds that’ll knock your sox off.
Steve Bass’s More Great Time Wasters
TechBite: 12 Smart Firefox and IE Add-Ons
By Steve Bass
Fix Up Your Browser
I can’t get enough of the handy-dandy freebies that clump onto Firefox (and Internet Explorer) and make the browsers smarter and easier to work.
TechBite: A Very Serious Threat
By Steve Bass
You’re at Starbucks, busy working on your Facebook page. Bad news: The guy at the next table is a hacker, and he’s also working on your Facebook page. Sit tight, I have a few ways for you to make yourself invisible to hackers.
TechBite: Eliminating The Windows “Corrupt Files” Message
By Steve Bass
I did the unbelievable — a beginner’s mistake, if I ever heard one. I unplugged of a USB-attached device without using the Safely Remove Hardware applet. And up from the depths of the system tray came the here-comes-lunch “Windows – Corrupt File” message.
TechBite: 2 Useful Gadgets & a Bass Rant
By Steve Bass
Commercials are loud now, louder than I can ever remember…what can you do about it?
Worried your toddler (or for many of you, your great-grandchild) may reach up, grab your large-screen TV, and get bonked on the head? Or maybe you live in California or Nebraska (Nebraska?) and you’re frazzled thinking about earthquakes…what can you do about it?
TechBite: Extra Online Protection: Free, Easy, Effective
By Steve Bass
Okay, yes, you already have a security tool. But I have three smart, free, no-fuss browser tools that’ll give you an extra edge against cyber criminals.
TechBite: Oh, Bass, What Did You Do?
By Steve Bass
On March 21, 1991, I stopped using Norton’s security programs.
But I like to see what the dark side is up to, so I recently switched back to Norton. And I’m really happy I did.
Of course, knowing how you always like to hear the dirt, I’ll tell you the back story.
TechBite: Two Monitors? Heck, Make it Three!
By Steve Bass
Listen to this concession: “Okay, yes, once you’ve used a two-monitor setup, going back to a single monitor sucks.”
That from my wife who last year resisted using a second monitor. It’s so darn quaint when she admits she’s wrong.
Judy found that out when I brought home a friend’s PC for repair, needed a monitor, and borrowed hers. (First rule of computing: Use someone else’s equipment whenever possible.)
The repair was taking longer than I expected — funny how computers do that to you — and, my pobrecita was feeling deprived.
TechBite: Great Troubleshooting Tips and Tools
By Steve Bass
Sure, there are God-only-knows how many Registry fixer-uppers that purport to get your computer back on track. And every few months, a slick magazine will promise that its 20 Secret Insider Troubleshooting Tricks article will restore your PC to pristine condition. The nerve of those annoying insiders keeping secrets! (Here’s a revelation: I used to be one of those insiders)
TechBite: Google Voice is Cool & Free
By Steve Bass
For the last year or so, Google Voice (formerly called Grand Central, a name I loved) was available only if someone invited you. Yeah, I know; I never did. It’s now open to everyone in the United States (stop whining) and I suggest you look at it.
TechBite: Why I Said No to Free Off-The-Air Reception
By Steve Bass
No doubt, watching a TV show or mobile in high definition is miraculous. The picture is sharper than sharp (so much so that like it or not, you can see the pores on an actor’s face).
I’m a DirecTV subscriber, but I’m too cheap to pay their extra fee for high definition service, so I decided to try an HDTV indoor antenna.
TechBite: The Straight Skinny on HDTV Calibration
By Steve Bass
A while back I gave you some advice for calibrating your PC monitor or high-definition TV. I thought it was pretty good stuff, but the very foundations of the Internet began to rumble and experts started writing. (I never know who’s reading my newsletter.) Here’s what I learned.
TechBite: Adios USB 2.0–Hello USB 3.0
By Steve Bass
It’s not like I have anywhere important to go to, but I still hate to wait. That’s why I’m enjoying USB 3.0.
Let’s get the numbers out of the way; then I’ll talk practicalities.
USB specs are inflated… they always are. USB 2.0 is rated at 480 Mbit/s (about 57MB/s) while USB 3.0 is 4.8 Gbit/s (572 MB/s). In the real world, the only users getting these speeds are the marketing people who dreamed up the specs. On my PC, USB 2.0 moved files at 25MB/s and USB 3.0 can get up to 55MB/s.
TechBite: A Smart Printer with $4.99 Cartridges
By Steve Bass
I think we’ve got the razor-blade method of marketing printers figured out: Sell the printer for a couple of bucks, then gouge and exploit us on cartridges. I hate it.
Lexmark makes its money the old-fashioned way. It sells printers at higher-than-competitor’s printers, but then sells the ink cartridges at reasonable prices.
TechBite: Free iPad Beta Testing Scam & Copy Machine ID Theft Risks
By Steve Bass
Privacy risks now extend to very legit looking sites and even your office copy machine. Yes, the copy machine!
TechBite: 7 Handy Firefox Add-ons & Tweaks
By Steve Bass
Make Firefox Even Better
I know many of you still stubbornly use Internet Explorer (hello, Carl). I used to, as well. But Firefox, with all its lovely add-ons and tweaks, is just more fun to use.
TechBite: 10 Unusually Useful Web Sites; Password Revealer
By Steve Bass
I spend lots of time patrolling the Internet, looking for sites that can help me with my life. Some are pin-pointed to something I might need right away, like Contact Help, a way to get the phone number of a company. Others are spots I know I’ll need someday, such as instructions for recovering a ring from a drainpipe or how to wrap an extension cord like a pro.
TechBite: 5 Cool Tricks & Sites for Cell Phones
By Steve Bass
Spend some quality time with your cell phone and landline with these 5 great web sites and services.
TechBite: Keyboard Spring Cleaning
By Steve Bass
My keyboard’s always catching junk — dust, bread crumbs, and unidentifiable schmutz. I know for a fact that a clean keyboard lets me type faster and more intelligently, and more important, lets me finish this newsletter more quickly.
TechBite: 2 Weapons to Fight Spam
By Steve Bass
I wrote about “plus addressing” years ago in PC World. It’s a trick to spot where spam is coming from and stop it from landing in your inbox. Basically, you use a unique e-mail address when you sign up for a newsletter or Web service. If you start receiving spam at that distinct e-mail address, you know it’s been compromised.
TechBite: Got Duplicate Files? Dump Them
By Steve Bass
No matter how neat you are, I guarantee your drive has duplicate files. How can you find them?
TechBite: JDownloader -Open Source, Free, and Terrific
By Steve Bass
For years I used FlashGet to download freebie tools and legitimate movies and TV shows. FlashGet works fine, but it just hasn’t kept up with a few innovative — and downright lovely — features in my new favorite…
TechBite: Secret Shopper Scam – Don’t Get Nailed
By Steve Bass
My mother got a letter from a company in Canada. The cover letter, on decent-looking stationery, and with a real signature, congratulated her for agreeing to be a secret shopper. There were three pages of instructions and an honest-to-goodness Citibank check for $1,500.
The letter said she was to cash the check, use the money to buy items at Sears, Best Buy, and a supermarket, and then rate the stores. On top of that, she could keep whatever she purchased — and get a $300 fee for her time. Sweet, no?
TechBite: 5 Net Tricks to Save You Money
By Steve Bass
Frugal? Thrifty? No, Cheap!
"You’re a bargain hunter," one of my more polite friends says. My wife’s more to the point: She calls me a cheapskate. I like being frugal, but what do I know? Call me whatever you want (you will anyway), I don’t like paying retail and I’m always looking for a deal, especially when shopping online.
The Internet gives me the chance to comparison shop, see how shipping figures into the price, look over specifications, and feel confident I’ve found the best buy. Here are some of the sites I use.
TechBite: Fixes for 3 PC Annoyances
By Steve Bass
I know you’re not always happy with your PC, so here are three
fixes to some of the annoyances you’ve sent to me.
TechBite: Use the Web to Find Anyone in the World
By Steve Bass
Find Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime (Almost)
"You find my long-lost buddy and I’ll paint any room in your house." I was talking to a couple of friends about how I had tracked down a wayward YahooGroup moderator.
It was a sweet deal (the kitchen has three colors, lots of cabinets, and needs painting) and I was up for the challenge.
TechBite: 5 Free Tools to Tickle Your PC’s Fancy
By Steve Bass
I know you like new tools to try (I do too), so here are a stack. Play with them, see if they fit your working style, and maybe you’ll find a couple of keepers.
TechBite: 5 Killer Word Tricks
By Steve Bass
Have It Your Way
Microsoft Word: I can’t think of another application I’d like to have re-written to meet my needs. I’ll kvetch some more another time. Today, I have five tricks to fire up the way you use Word.
TechBite: Stream Movies from Your PC to Your TV
By Steve Bass
Watch movies on my PC? No way." I was talking to one of my cousins, not one of the brightest bulbs in the family. It took me a few minutes to explain how he could send downloaded movies — as well as other Internet content, such as TV shows — to the TV in his living room.
For the last few months, I’ve tried two devices that sit near your TV and grab video content from your PC. Even in this dreadful economy, neither one I tried is terribly expensive — and there are no monthly charges.
This week I’ll cover the hardware; next week I’ll tell you where to find movies and TV shows on the Internet. I’ll also tell you about a MediaGate portable media player.
TechBite: 6 Useful Things You Can Do with Google
By Steve Bass
You use Google, sure, but if all you’re doing are searches, you’re just scratching the surface. Here are a few things you might not know about Google.
TechBite: 14 Smart, Handy & Free Web Sites
By Steve Bass
I have some Web sites for you that are kick-in-the-butt cool; others are just plain handy, the kind of thing you save for only occasional visits. How about an image resizer and a nifty online walkie-talkie? And I use TimeZone Converter to find out what time it is in Singapore (so I can call my friend at 2:00 a.m. his time to see if he’s in yet from club hopping).
TechBite: 10 More Super-Duper Firefox Extensions
By Steve Bass
I love it when you write and pass along handy ideas. I received hundreds of messages (okay, 50, but who’s counting) sharing Firefox add-ons, extensions, and tips — and I’m successfully using many of them. Here are some of the most useful of the bunch.
TechBite: 7 Tools to Make Firefox Shine
By Steve Bass
Firefox users? Clear the decks — I have cool extensions for you to download! Here are a few of the cooler Firefox add-ons I’m using. Give them a whirl and let me know what you think.
TechBite: How’s Your Hard Drive Doing?
By Steve Bass
Hard drives are about as dependable as a teenager promising to come home by midnight. The more you know about your drive–the brand-specific idiosyncrasies and the diagnostic sounds that drives produce–the better prepared you are for the inevitable crash.