A Secure Home for Less Than 200 Bucks
For less than 200 bucks, you can protect your home with a camera/sensor unit that will alert you to intruders, film them in the dark, back up the videos to the cloud, and let loose with a 95 DB alarm if a bad guy is detected. It’s smart enough to know the difference between a […]
Keep the Hackers Out of Your New Toys
Many of you got new internet-connected goodies over the holidays. Make sure they’re not open doors to hackers. If the devices are capable, update each one to the latest version of firmware. Look for a setting to check for updates, and apply them if available.
Is Vinyl Really Better?
I hear a lot of reminiscing about how much better vinyl sounds than digital. All I can say is that those people either weren’t there in the day, or else they have bad memories. Record albums all have a measurable degree of warp, and it induces infrasonic sounds that used to blow out woofers. They […]
Send that Retired Computer to a Good home
Donating older computers (within reason) is good for everyone. There’s no call for anything pre-Pentium, except for possibly a museum, but Goodwill and the like can put computers ten years old and newer to good use. Make sure you wipe your files, though. A good tool for that is Disk Wipe (http://www.diskwipe.org/). It’s 100% free, […]
Get Your Money’s Worth with Amazon Prime
Are you using Amazon Prime? Did you know that it includes streaming video? Many people only know about the free two–day shipping, but if you have a Roku, a smart TV, or the Amazon app on a mobile device, you have access to a slew of TV series, specials, and movies at no additional charge.
Put That Phone to Work!
Are you using your smart phone to its full potential? What’s your favorite hobby? Do you have an app on your phone to assist you? Example: Do you love fishing? Do you have an app helping you?? Apps take things like weather conditions, tides, moon phase, and time of year involved to tell you what’s […]
Hardware Lasts a Long Time
Those of us who got into computers in the 90’s were driven batty by the advances in chips and other hardware. My 1993 486 was obsolete within a year. Nowadays, the advance in speed has slowed, and five-year-old hardware is still relevant. In fact, if you’ll install an easy-to-use Linux distro like Mint, that old […]
How Simple Is Apple’s World?
Is the i-World really that simple a place? That depends. If you’ve never touched a smart device before, an iPhone or iPad will probably prove very user-friendly. However, if you’ve gotten used to running Android tablets and phones, switching to Apple will be a frustrating, confusing experience until you get used to the different layout […]
Don’t Lose Track of What’s Most Important
Technology makes it easy to connect with friends and family members all over the world. But don’t forget that face-to-face contact is the best kind. Don’t let the world of high-tech cause you to miss out on actually spending time with family members and friends. Facebook shouldn’t be your only contact with those you love.
Keep Your Home Network Safe
Your home network is as safe as your router, your router password, and your wireless password. Make sure your router is updated with the latest firmware, and make sure you have a fairly complex password for your wireless network. Make sure you have a tougher password for your router. A hacker has to be nearby […]