February 27, 2009

Replacing Your Old PC with a New Mac

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Yes, I make most of my living writing about Windows and PCs, but when it comes to recommending a computer for my friends, I have to go with the Macintosh.
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February 25, 2009

That Firefox Goodness

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Why are you still using Internet Explorer as your web browser?
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February 23, 2009

Diver Update Overload

Filed under: Main — Tags: , — admin @ 12:01 am

Each and every gizmo and gadget connected to your PC has its own driver, the driver being the software that makes the hardware go. Keeping those drivers up-to-date is important. Or is it?
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February 20, 2009

Lost in Translation

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Thanks to the Internet, sounding like a polyglot is easy. The question you have to ask yourself, especially when you don’t know what polyglot means, is do you want to sound like a polyglot. (Hint: You do.)
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February 18, 2009

What the Heck is That‽

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

There is a question and there is an exclamation. In English, there are special characters for both. For a question there is the question mark. Really? Yes. For an exclamation, there is the exclamation point. Of course! For the common situation when a question is said with excitement, there is something called the interrobang. What!?
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February 16, 2009

How to Pronounce “!”

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Behold the exclamation point! It’s a handy thing to have and use! It adds excitement to each and every sentence that you write! Over-using it is like reading a conversation with someone high on espresso and crack! Caution is advised! On the computer, however, the exclamation point means more than a frantic writing style!
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February 13, 2009

Because You ASCIId, Part III

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Though there are only 8-bits in a byte, and 256 values for those 8-bits, there are far more than 256 characters available for display on a computer. Add in all the foreign language characters, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, plus a host of common symbols from all over and there’s no way you could stuff them all into 8-bits. That’s why computer scientists went to 16-bits and developed the Unicode standard.
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February 11, 2009

Because You ASCIId Part II

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

There are 256 values in an 8-bit byte. Yet the ASCII standard defined only 128 characters, where 128 is exactly half of 256. That meant that a typical 8-bit PC had to come up with 128 more characters to assign to the “upper values” found in an 8-bit byte. Contrary to popular belief, those are not ASCII characters, they are Extended ASCII characters.
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February 9, 2009

Because You ASCIId Part I

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Back in the dawn of the computer age, there existed a thing called ASCII, one of many common and confusing computer acronyms. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, but more importantly it’s pronounced ASK-ee. That was about all you needed to know in the old days.
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February 6, 2009

Listen to This!

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Internet radio isn’t dead. Well, one form of it is. I remember a while back when they tried to do “Internet radio.” That method bombed, but it didn’t signal the end of listening to stuff on the Internet with your PC.
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