How to Fix Anything – PCs, printers, smartphones, cameras, networks–your stuff will inevitably stop working. Here’s how to troubleshoot and fix your most common tech issues.
PCWorld’s 52 Incredibly Useful Sites: The Full List – Here’s our entire collection of the best, most practical Websites, arranged by category.
Chrome 5 Released – Google has announced the official release of Chrome 5, a new stable version of the company’s increasingly popular Web browser. This is the first stable release with official support for Linux and Mac OS X.
New Threat For Wireless Networks: Typhoid Adware – Some users could become “carriers,” unknowingly passing infections to others, university researchers say.
Twitter Gets Greedy With Your Tweets – They might be your tweets, but the money is all Twitter’s: The microblogging service must now get a cut of any advertising sold against Twitter content, even your own content. Nice racket.
The 10 Most Overrated Products – Hype springs eternal. Lots of technologies, products, and services don’t merit the praise heaped on them. Here are 10 tech items that don’t live up to their billing–and 10 that deserve respect that they don’t receive.
Devious New Phishing Tactic Targets Tabs – Most Internet users know to watch for the telltale signs of a traditional phishing attack: An e-mail that asks you to click on a link and enter your e-mail or banking credentials at the resulting Web site. But a new phishing concept that exploits user inattention and trust in browser tabs is likely to fool even the most security-conscious Web surfers.
Facebook breach: user phone numbers exposed but who’s to blame? – The latest privacy breach on Facebook can’t be fully blamed on Facebook. This time, users are the ones putting themselves at risk.
Two Years Later, Apple Still Won’t Fix Safari Hole – Two years after fixing a security bug in the Windows version of its Safari browser, Apple apparently has decided that Mac users can go without a fix.
10 ways to get a network connection when there’s no network handy – Let’s face it. There will come a time when you need a network connection and you can’t find one. And you know it’s going to happen at the worst possible time. What will you do when that network connection is critical, but there’s no usable connection in sight? Well, I have a few options for you. Not all of them are free, but they’re all possibilities in one situation or another.
Off Topic (Sort of):
The Paranoid’s User Guide For Google – Have you ever stopped to think about just how much Google knows about you? By taking some basic — and not-so-basic — precautions, you can minimize your exposure to bad guys, wherever and whoever they are.
YouTube: Pigeon Impossible – A rookie secret agent is faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase. (submitted by Dar)
Boy fixes cracked iPhone screen for $21.95 (photos) – Cracked iPhone screens are an all-too-common occurrence. Have it fixed at an Apple store and it’ll cost you at least $200. But do it yourself and you’re looking at around $20. See how one 10-year-old kid did it.
Google Pac-Man Might Have Cost Us $120,483,800 – Last week, the Google logo was turned into a game of Pac-Man and we all took breaks to play. In theory, we wasted a combined 4,819,352 hours and many, many dollars. Here’s the math.
Oilmageddon will be industry’s Chernobyl – When the history of our time is written the BP oil spill will have done more to harden American attitudes against the oil industry than any other event. All the Earth Day marches in the world, even Al Gore’s most powerful PowerPoint, can’t match the photo above, a still shot from BP’s own “spillcam” taken May 22.
Today’s Quote:
“I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.”
– Elayne Boosler
Today’s Free Downloads:
Unlocker – If Windows won’t let you manually delete a program file or folder, try Cedrick Collomb’s free Unlocker. Once installed, Unlocker comes up automatically when Windows refuses to delete, move, or rename a file or folder, or you can launch it from the file or folder’s context menu. Once up, it shows you what processes are hanging onto the culprit and lets you kill them.
ThreatFire Free – Threatfire supplements your existing security app with highly effective behavioral analysis that can stop malware based solely on what the file tries to do on your PC. I recommend Threatfire as a strong extra layer of defense.
CombineZM – CombineZM lets you make photos with an “infinite” depth of field. Just take a series of three or four photos, each with a slightly different focal point, then use CombineZM to “stack” the photos and combine them so all the in-focus bits are merged into one photo that is sharp from front to back.
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Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts 
In RE to the tabs phishing attack I have an issue with the first sentence in their article “Most Internet users know to watch for the telltale signs of a traditional phishing attack”.
It should read “SOME Internet users know to watch for the telltale signs of a traditional phishing attack”, I thing “most” is a big stretch!
Hey Dave,
Absolutely! I might even go one step further – “FEW”
Best,
Bill
Hi Bill. I tried to go to the Unlock web site, but as always, a pop up reports it as being unsafe. I can really use this tool. Anyway to get around this? As always this is an excellent web page. Thanks, Dave.
Hi Dave,
I assume you’re referring to the Unlocker site. This download site is a redirect through PCWorld, and is absolutely a safe site.
You don’t say what Browser you’re using, or indicate the type of popup – which add-on or application is responsible for the popup. I’ll need that info to answer your inquirey.
Or, you can go directly to FileHippo, and download without the redirect.
I hope that’s helpful.
Bill
‘Unlocker – If Windows won’t let you manually delete a program file or folder, try Cedrick Collomb’s free Unlocker. Once installed, Unlocker comes up automatically when Windows refuses to delete, move, or rename a file or folder, or you can launch it from the file or folder’s context menu. Once up, it shows you what processes are hanging onto the culprit and lets you kill them.’
Hey Bill,
My word processing is frequently interrupted by these problems. Thanks for the solution!