Some call it crapware. I prefer bloatware. Whatever you call it, the name applies to software pre-installed on a computer. Sometimes the software consists of useful tools, such as anti-virus, the Acrobat Reader, or even a productivity suite. Recently the trend has been for actual malware to be pre-installed, which I find a bit unsettling.
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March 11, 2015The Saga of Pre-Installed SoftwareMarch 9, 2015But the Word isn’t Spelled Correctly!My spelling is atrocious. I initially spelled that word “attrocious,” which is one T too many. And how I knew the word was misspelled was that a red zigzag appears beneath it. So what happens when you knowingly misspell a word and the red zigzag doesn’t show up?
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March 6, 2015Mobile Bookmark Speed TrickI’m all for creating bookmarks of your favorite web pages. Building such bookmarks on a phone or tablet works the same as on a computer. Using the bookmarks, however, works excruciatingly slow on a mobile device. So I’m offering a clever shortcut.
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March 4, 2015Ooops.The file I wanted was in a weird format. TZ. I searched the web and found a compressed file extraction utility that would deal with it. Being in a rush, I failed to read the dialog box before I clicked the Install button. Hello, unwanted crap!
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March 2, 2015Microsoft Word 2016Sometime this year, Microsoft will supposedly release the next version of Microsoft Office. Along with it comes the next version of Microsoft Word. In my mind, that looming event raises one singular question: What will they screw up now?
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February 27, 2015Computer Book Publishing, Part IIAfter the slaughter of 1982, no big New York publishers would touch computer books. That job was left up to independent publishing houses. They thrived, of course. After all, the computer hobbyist of the day still wanted good information.
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February 25, 2015Computer Book Publishing, Part II never knew my job existed before I took it. In fact, I’m sure a lot of people who purchased, read, and even enjoyed computer books didn’t consider that an entire computer book publishing industry existed.
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February 23, 2015CookiesWhen used with regards to the web, the term cookie is widely accepted but narrowly understood. What exactly is a cookie?
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February 20, 2015Barcode Scanning
What is that thing, that weird design? You see them all over, but in fact the marketing drones are using them less and less. They’ve become passé in some circles, like the Comic Sans font (which is another story).
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February 18, 2015A Fouled Up FontBefore the GUI, no one cared about fonts. Then along came the Mac and Windows and suddenly the word font was more than just a snooty way to refer to a fountain.
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