Category: Tech
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The Evolution of … Cardboard?!
When I was a kid, a cardboard box was a cardboard box. No longer! Those days, a cardboard box consisted of several rectangles folded over to create an enclosure. An unusually complicated box might have one to three flaps you could tuck inside. But that was pretty much it. You still see boxes like that.…
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Make Your Own Animated GIFs
Animated GIF files are the rage these days. You know, those digital photos that contain moving objects and people, not unlike the hung pictures at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. Here’s an example: My niece, Bella Tanguay, making her first-ever horizontal dive. She already was doing straight-down vertical dives, headfirst, but needed coaxing from…
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Insert Special Characters
Back in the typewriter age, we knew how to add “special characters” such as exotic punctuation marks: Press a key along the top row for “$” or “%” etc. More common ones, like periods and commas, were among the main keys. Now with computers, we have Unicode characters, HTML characters, extended ASCII characters — more…
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Boomer Proves You Need Your Own Website
Still not sure you need your own website, under your own name? Boomer the Dog proves you do! Before we get to Boomer, here’s a wrap-up of what I’ve been saying about owning your own name: Like it or not, you have a public image. It’s an image magnified many times over by the Internet.…
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Stop CryptoLocker Virus by Showing Extensions
There’s a deadly new Windows virus going around: CryptoLocker. Take all the usual precautions. But if you haven’t already done so — change your Windows folder options to show file extensions. Then don’t click open anything that looks like a data file (PDF, JPG, DOC, etc.) but ends in .EXE. Because then it’s a wolf…
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Rubik’s Robots: Real Life Transformers
Real life is increasingly — incessantly — inexorably invading what was once the privileged domain of science fiction. “Rubik’s Robots” — real life transformer robots based on principles of the famous Rubik’s Cube — are in the works at MIT! Erno Rubik, inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, is one of the fascinating people I follow…
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Are All the Good Domain Names Already Taken?
Are all the good domain names already taken? No, they aren’t! Millions of the best, most valuable website domain names are lying around unclaimed. Ripe for the picking — waiting to be registered by someone just like you. You’ve heard the opposite. The world is full of pundits telling you that all the good website…
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Is It “Egotistical” to Own Your Own Name on the Web?
Is it “egotistical” to own your own name as a dot-com? Elitist? Pretentious? Narcissistic? And does it give you an “unfair advantage” over others? Certain readers have been asking questions like these, ever since I started urging you all to register your own names — whenever possible — as dot-com Internet domains. Like I did…
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There’s Hope Yet for a Clean Energy Future
Two energy related news items give me hope! The first is from David Brin’s “Contrary Brin” blog, davidbrin.wordpress.com — his 13 August 2013 entry. The second was shared by Barney Leith on Google+. Sweden Can’t Get Enough Garbage You read that right: Sweden is running out of garbage, thanks to highly efficient recycling habits,…
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Owning Your Own (Web) Name: Why You Must Grab It NOW
If your name is still available, snap it up. Now. Please! There will never be a better time. I’m referring to your web-name. Specifically, to the Internet “domain name” that matches your “regular” name. Your “regular” name is the one by which people introduce you. For example, if your name is Ed Smith, then your…