March 2015

There is no such thing as perfect security. Given enough knowledge, resources, and time any system can be compromised. The best you can do is to make it as difficult for an attacker as possible. That said there are steps you can take to harden your network against the vast majority of attacks.

DonationCoder, a community of programmers and software enthusiasts, turned 10 recently, an impressive feat for a site that keeps its programs clean and its site ad-free .

My first review of a DonationCoder program dates back to 2006 and I have followed the site and its output ever since. In total, I have reviewed more than 130 programs or updates since that first review and several of the programs have a permanent place on my hard drive or troubleshooting Flash drive because they are that good.

My mother made the decision recently to switch from a regular smartphone contract to a prepaid contract. It simply did not make sense for her to pay €30 per month for making a couple of calls, sending some SMS and using WhatsApp.

Along with the change came a new phone number. While it was easy enough to inform all her contacts about the new number, it took me a while before I discovered how to move all WhatsApp data to a new phone number.

It is rather surprising that previous versions of the Android operating system did not ship with a battery saver mode that you could enable on the device to make sure the battery of the device lasts longer before it needs to be charged.

That's probably the core reason why battery apps are popular for Android. Most third-party manufacturers of devices have added their custom solutions to Android.

Google added a battery saver mode to Android 5 which you can enable to extend the time between charges on the device.

Global hotkeys can be quite useful as they offer advantages over application-specific hotkeys. First, they work everywhere on the system regardless of program or windows that is in the forefront. Second, they activate or launch core features of the operating system such as printing (print), opening the System control panel (Windows-Pause) or Explorer (Windows-e).

Sometimes or even frequently though, you may activate a hotkey accidentally. Maybe it is too close in proximity to a hotkey that you are using or it just gets in your way for another reason.

My Internet connection stopped working suddenly yesterday and did not come back up after cutting power to the router for a couple of minutes.

And so began my two-hour calling technical support odyssey. I talked to four different employees of the company which all suggested things that I knew were not going to solve the problem.

The upgrade to Windows 10 of an existing Windows 7 system looks like a good deal on paper. You don't pay a dime for it if you upgrade in the first year after release, and it remains free afterwards.

While there is no direct need to leave Windows 7 at this point in time as it will receive security updates until 2020, doing so adds a couple of extra years of support before the operating system needs to be switched again.

Many companies track emails, usually by adding small pixels or images to those emails which inform them when emails has been opened by recipients.

This is done for a number of reasons from tracking responses to getting detailed information about clients (IP, location..).

Ugly Email is a new extension for Chrome, a Firefox add-on is in the making according to the project homepage, that highlights emails that use tracking when you open your Gmail inbox.

Whenever you search on Facebook, information about that search is saved in a search history that Facebook maintains for all of its users. While you don't get access directly to the storage, you get the next best thing.

The information is displayed in the activity log, a mix of first and third party information related to your account either directly (things you did on Facebook) or indirectly (things others linked you with on Facebook).

If you are plagued by spinning loading icons and buffering interruptions while watching videos on the Internet, you are not alone.

While the viewing experience is fine for many broadband users, even they may experience buffering issues from time to time that reduce the experience.

Opera Software introduced a feature it calls Video Boost in Opera Coast, a bare bones browser for Apple iOS devices two days ago.