Aww, the famous ball style rolling mouse. They’re easily characterised by the hard ball which rolls underneath the mouse. They have been around for donkeys’ years, and have since been replaced with the more reliable “optical” mouse (An optical mouse has no ball underneath; instead, there is a bright red “laser” light). However, they are still kicking around in millions of homes and businesses. The problem with this style of mouse is that they begin to fail when the internal rollers get dirty. By failing, I mean that the cursor on the screen will no longer move fluently when moving the mouse. The cursor may skip, jump, or stop altogether. Thankfully, there is a quick and easy way to clean this classic ball-style mouse. Today we are going to walk through the cleaning process, and hopefully save millions of mice from being chucked into the rubbish bin Read the rest of this entry »

Malware is software that is dangerously intrusive in nature and installed without the computer users’ consent. The word “malware” is a combination of the words “malicious” and “software.” There are many common terms that people use to describe computer “bugs” such as viruses, spyware, adware, trojans, and worms. These are technically different types of malicious software, yet all fall under the umbrella of malware. Malware can refer to any of the aforementioned computer “bugs,” and others too! Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best ways to share multimedia on the internet is by using a filesharing program.  A filesharing program is a computer program which uses the internet to send out and receive multimedia files including pictures, songs, and videos. Basically, you first designate a folder on your computer as sharable. That is, everything in that folder will be available for other members of the filesharing network to download. You can also search to see what other people are sharing. So you can give (upload) files to others, and take (download) files from others. Thats how it works. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have to enter your password to login to Windows everytime you start your computer, you may be wasting your time. Entering a password to get into the Windows system may be good for some applications, however unnecessary for most single-user home machines. For example, passwords are a must in the world of corporate security at work; you don’t want just anybody jumping on the machine and accessing the data. In contrast, most people at home don’t want the hassle of having to enter their password every time they start up the machine; its just another time-consuming step. Unless, of course you want to keep your children off the computer, and your childrens’ friends, and their friends… In this case, keep the passwords right where they are! Otherwise, say adios password screen. On that note, we are going to walk through the process of disabling the Windows login screen. If you don’t want a password on your system, REMOVE IT Read the rest of this entry »

The famous Microsoft Double Click. Computer users across the globe have become accustomed to double clicking on EVERYTHING! It’s like we were born a bred to double click on a computer; quite frankly I don’t ever remember being taught to do this. It was instinctual Seriously though, many computer beginners, novices, and even intermediates still do not know where they should be double clicking, and where they should be single clicking. Well, today we are going to make things a whole lot simpler. It is a little known fact that Microsoft has provided the option to single click where you would otherwise have double clicked. We are going to walk through the simple process of setting this up on a Windows XP / Vista based machine. I think this option is great for seniors who sometimes do not have great finger dexterity. Heck, it makes life easier for everybody - Even I use the single click option! Read the rest of this entry »

Website popularity is measured by how many visitors a particular website receives over a given period of time. Each time a webpage is visited, it is known as a “hit.” If somebody visits my Company Website 8 times, I would count that as 8 hits. Website “Traffic” is a broader term to describe how many unique visitors a website gets. Lets take a look at the Top 10 most popular websites in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

In the introductory blog entry about RSS titled “What Is RSS?,” I made a promise at the end of the post. As stated, I’m now going to show you how to setup your very own RSS Reader! This is a piece of software which allows you stay up to date with websites that update their pages on a frequent basis. An RSS reader is also known as an RSS aggregator. So now you know. Are we ready? Ok, lets gets started Read the rest of this entry »

E-Book is a short form for “Electronic Book” (I bet you can guess what the “E” stands for in E-Mail). E-Books come in a variety of file formats, but all share one common characteristic - there is no paper to be found in these books. E-Books are read on the computer, and are distributed via the internet. Some E-Books cost money - you must pay to download them. The authors make money on the books just the same as if it was bought from a store at the mall. Fortunately, other E-books are available FREE on the web. How cool is that? Read the rest of this entry »