You may have read my 2013 post entitled How to Easily Resize Images in Windows.
Thanks to a comment from a reader the other day (you rock, Nick!), you don’t need Windows Live Photo Gallery anymore.
There’s a free tool available from a Microsoft engineer that you can grab and make your life WAAAY easier.
You can even resize multiple images at once anywhere on your puter – in just a few clicks and without firing up any application!
You may have heard about the new-ish web browser in town: Brave.
The trouble is that it’s a bit hard to wrap one’s head around exactly how Brave is different – and supposedly better.
Brave was created by Brave Software, a company that was founded by Brendan Eich. In case you didn’t know, Eich is the creator of JavaScript. JS is basically the web programming language that powers literally everything on the internet these days.
So, when a dude like that says, “Hey, I have an idea for a better browser!” it’s probably a good idea to at least take a good look at it…
Until now, apps were for smartphones and tablets. But that’s all about to change with PWAs: Progressive Web Apps!
PWAs are a new(ish) type of app that is web-based.
In other words, PWAs are literally web sites + JavaScript encapsulated in a window on whatever gizmo you want to install them on.
That means you can use the same app on your phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop – whether you use Windows, linux, or Mac.
Progressive Web Apps also work differently than normal apps, making them a bit more secure and privacy-oriented than traditional native apps.
So, what are these things and how do they work?
Another new version of Windows 10!
A new update to Windows 10 was released a few weeks back, and this time the roll-out seemed to be way smoother than the last version – which is nice.
I got the update fairly quickly this time around, which almost never happens.
The update went off without a hitch. Naturally, I immediately started poking around to see what changed.
Well, not much… But as usual, there are a few things to re-tweak!
I’m always amazed at how many people these days still use webmail.
From Gmail to Yahoo Mail, it seems everyone enjoys the convenience of no crappy e-mail program, easily accessible e-mail from any device, and free data storage In the CloudTM.
In the case of Gmail, you can even use the same e-mail account on your smartphone. Yay, even more data for Google!
Naturally, there are huge drawbacks to the webmail approach, the biggest of which is privacy.
From Day One, webmail has been hoovering up all kinds of data. Recently, the world discovered that – duh – it’s worse than we think!
Oopsy!
With Firefox version 66.0.3, you probably found that all your add-ons have disappeared.
Firefox disables them and tells you that they are not compatible.
Not to worry: There’s a super-easy fix to get them back.
And you don’t have to reinstall them or anything…
If you’ve ever tried to do any kind of serious audio processing on a Windows puter, you know just how crappy the basic Win audio mixer and controls are.
Want to connect a digital mixer via USB to your puter? Good luck getting your recording software to work properly with both audio in and out.
Want to route audio from one app to another, like from recording software to Skype? Good luck with that, too.
Fortunately, a buddy of mine recently introduced me to a fabulous range of (free) software that turbocharges Windows audio.
Did I mention it’s free?
Well, okay, that’s not entirely correct.
It would be more accurate to say it’s the #1 piece of advice that no one ever remembers to take – at the right time.
I’m talking, of course, about the Almighty Restart.
But I don’t just mean rebooting Windows…
Or linux, or Android, or macOS, or whatever…
These days, WiFi is everywhere. Even your washing machine probably has it. 😉
I typically don’t recommend using WiFi due to the huge amount of evidence indicating that it’s probably not the best thing for your health.
But there’s another reason to go back to cables…
WiFi is quite often WAAAY slower than most people think. In fact, it’s very rare that you will get anywhere near the maximum speeds advertised when you buy a WiFi access point or router.
What to do, what to do?
In May 2018, I posted this article: Speed up your browsing with CloudFlare’s public DNS
In that post, I recommended CloudFlare’s DNS, 1.1.1.1. At the time, it was quite fast, and worked perfectly.
Fast forward to today, and I’m afraid that’s no longer the case.
If you switched to CloudFlare’s DNS and you’ve noticed that things like paying via PayPal have become almost useless, read on!
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