Episodes

If no one ever opened a scam/spam email, the spammers would stop sending them. If you have checked your spam folder lately, you know that the flow of spam doesn’t seem to have slowed down much. One reason I like Gmail is that their excellent spam filters keep that garbage out of my inbox. But what if one slips through? How do you identify an email as a scam? Let’s take a look at one of these that showed up in my email recently. Gmail correctly sent it directly to the Spam folder, but I pulled ...

Every day, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of new malicious websites coming into existence on the internet. It’s very common now, when you do a Google search, for many of the search results to be websites that you should definitely not click on. You’d think Google would have that figured out by now, so that those sites don’t show up so well in the rankings. But they are still there, so you have to be very careful. The question is: How can you know if a site is safe or not, unless you click...

Everyone knows what a YouTube video is. But not everyone knows what a GIF video is (even though just about everyone has seen one on Facebook or somewhere on the internet). Did you know that you can easily take a YouTube video, and create a GIF video out of that? Today I’ll show you how. A GIF video is pretty much just a short video that usually plays on an endless loop. Here’s an example of one. In this, you first see the dog get up and run out of the camera range, for no apparent reason. Then ...

Every so often I do a post where I feature several websites that are interesting, informative, funny or just somehow intriguing in some way. Documentary Addict http://documentaryaddict.com/ Whenever I go on Netflix, and I don’t have anything specific in mind to watch, I tend to browse through the documentaries. And Netflix does have a lot of documentaries in their library of things to view. I don’t know the exact number they have, but I would bet that Documentary Addict has a lot more. The cur...

Everyone visits YouTube at one time or another. Some people visit it and watch videos every day. There are even people that spend HOURS each day watching those videos. But I’ll bet there are a lot of people, even those that use YouTube every day, that don’t know some of these shortcuts that work in YouTube. For most media players, such as Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player, the standard keyboard key for pausing the video and starting it again is the space bar. That doesn’t work with YouTu...

Every Windows keyboard has the same row of keys across the top – the Function keys. Those are the keys at the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3 and so on up to F12. One of the questions I get asked sometimes is, “What do the function keys actually do?” As with a lot of questions about computers, the answer is: it depends. What it depends on primarily is what you’re doing on the computer at the time. Each one of them could have a specific task in one program, but a completely different task...

When you get a new computer, especially if you get one of the more recent ones that are running Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, part of the set-up process is setting a Windows password. Most people don’t realize that you don’t NEED to have a Windows password on your computer, but the wording on the screen makes it sound like you are required to create one. I’ve even had some people go through this process without really thinking about it, then the next time they boot up their computer, they get promp...

I’ve used Paypal for years, and you probably have too. If you don’t yet have a Paypal account, you can set one up for free at www.Paypal.com. And with a recent change, Paypal has made it easier for people to send you money. For my computer repair business here in Safety Harbor, Florida, I have an online accounting program that sends out invoices, which makes things really easy. Of course, I have to pay for that service. What we’re talking about here is not so much for business (although it coul...

I use the Google calendar to keep track of all of my activities, both business and personal. It’s super convenient because it automatically syncs between my computer, my phone and my iPad. And since I also use Gmail (another Google product) I can set the calendar to easily send me email reminders for anything. But recently I came across a really annoying problem with the Google calendar – it was tagging each day with names of people having a birthday on that day. Some of the people I knew. But ...

Yes, today’s tip is a little different than our typical “computer” tip. But by using the information I’ll give you today, you can go online and get $25 in cash, or $50 in Starkist tuna – if you meet the requirements. Here’s what happened: A few years ago, Starkist Tuna faced a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit accused Starkist of “under-filling” each of their cans of tuna, by just a few tenths of an ounce each. Who cares, right? Well, apparently someone cared enough to go all the way with a la...

If you have a Dell laptop, it might have a built-in “feature” called Ambient Light Sensor (I put “feature” in quotation marks intentionally). This is not really a widely advertised function so a lot of people don’t know about it. In fact, I personally was not aware of it until my friend Bob did some research and discovered it. Love it when the client comes up with the solution, then tells me about it. Thanks Bob! What is the Ambient Light Sensor? The ALS is something that Dell has built in to s...

Everyone at some point gets really angry at their computer. Either it’s too slow, or it doesn’t do what you expect it to do, or some other thing – and you get really frustrated with it. Want to get even with your computer? Here are some ways to really mess it up! Whenever you see a link, click on it! Lots of opportunities here. Someone might send you a link in an email, or better yet, a friend might put a link on Facebook when they update their status. If you see one that seems to lead to some...

You read this blog. You also probably listen to my podcast. You most likely know that I do computer repair here in Safety Harbor, Florida (and remotely all around the country). So you know that I’ve been telling people, “Don’t upgrade to Windows 10 yet”. It’s too early, and there are bugs (as we knew there would be). I’ve had a few clients just this past week who went ahead and upgraded to Windows 10 anyway, and now their printer isn’t recognized. Or they can’t go online because the wifi doesn’t...

Today’s tip won’t take long to explain, but I can tell you that whenever I show someone how to do this, it is almost always a huge relief. People get very frustrated by MS Word because their top toolbar keeps disappearing and they don’t know how to make it stay there for good. First off, even though many users call it a toolbar, that’s not the actual name for it. It’s called the “ribbon”. At least that’s how it’s referred to within MS Word, so that’s the term I’m going to use here. What I’m ta...

These days just about everyone takes videos with their cell phone. It’s actually pretty handy to have that ability, whenever you see something happening that is worth recording, to be able to immediately make a video of it. But sometimes, you might record the video with the wrong orientation – so it plays on your computer at a 90 degree angle, or even upside down. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to fix this! With a regular picture (a still image), rotating it to the proper orientation is easy....

Sometimes I like to take a break from my “regular” computer tips and just show you some of the interesting websites I’ve run across recently. These are a few sites that are either helpful or informative in some way, or just plain entertaining. Account Killer https://www.accountkiller.com/en/# You probably have a lot of online accounts at various social media sites. Let’s face it, they all make it very easy to sign up, and then you’re suddenly sucked in and overwhelmed by everything that comes w...

You’ve probably heard in the news lately that Adobe Flash continues to have security problems. There are constantly new vulnerability issues being discovered. Then they patch up those holes, and more are found. It’s a constant race to find a problem and patch it up before the hackers can exploit it and do substantial damage. Some people say you should just uninstall Flash from your computer completely. Some say you should just disable it in your web browser. Today I’ll show you what I think is t...

I love exposing online scams. Really the biggest benefit is that you, the reader of this blog, is more likely to be suspicious of something if you’ve already read about similar things here. But in addition to that, I just like the idea that I’m ruining some scammer’s chance to steal money from people that actually worked to earn that money. I try to stay up to date on the latest scams and what the bad guys are thinking up to try to trick people out of their money. But you know what? Sometimes t...

Have you ever needed to tell someone exactly where you are standing, or where you’re parked, or even where you are at the moment if you’re driving or walking or biking? If you’re not near a street sign, or at a place where you know the actual address, telling someone your location can be sort of difficult. Recently I’ve found 3 ways that make this easier. Here’s why I am interested in this type of thing at the moment. Later this summer, there will be a race here in the Tampa Bay area called th...

As the owner of a computer repair business, I spend my days solving computer problems for my clients. That often means removing viruses, but it also includes fixing things that no longer seem to be working properly, getting software set up correctly, getting a printer to work, those kinds of things. But there are a few questions I get from clients that just don’t have an answer. Maybe a better way to say it is that I cannot answer without some more clarification. A lot of what I do is interpret...

This past week I was talking to my friend Sue. She uses Facebook sometimes, and she was asking about videos that show up on her Facebook news feed. As you scroll down looking at all the things that get posted, you might notice that if someone has posted a video, it just starts automatically playing when you see it. You can turn off Facebook video auto-play if you want. There are a couple of reasons why you might want to turn off video auto-play (there are probably others, but these two come to ...

I’ve written blog posts about LastPass, the online secure password manager. I have been using it for quite some time, and I have set it up for several of my clients. You may have heard recently that LastPass may have been compromised. I wanted to clear up what (may have) happened, and what you need to do if you use LastPass (and yes, I continue to highly recommend that you use it). I’m not going to go into all the details of how LastPass works and why I recommend it – that is all covered in gre...

Last week I wrote about what to do with the little “Get Windows 10” icon that showed up, and after that I got a number of questions about Windows 10 in general. Lots of people are wondering how it will work, what it will be like, and other details. So here are the answers to some of the questions you might have about the soon-to-be-released Windows 10. What actually happens when I click to reserve my upgrade? It might appear that nothing happens. But in the background, the Windows 10 upgrade is...

On June 1, 2015 – about a week ago – you might have noticed something new on your computer. You would have seen this if you are using Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1. It’s the Windows 10 notification, encouraging you to “reserve” your free upgrade to Windows 10. That morning, I started getting questions from lots of my clients who noticed it and wondered what to do about it, if anything. So I sent out a “special edition” email newsletter to advise this: You can ignore it for now. In fact, ...