October 2014

I barely look at my Android phone throughout the work day unless I have to make a call or get a SMS but some of my friends seem to use their devices nearly all the time.

These new ways of communicating and being entertained all the time can be quite distracting at times which is not always a good thing.

If you have a work deadline for instance or need to finish reading a book for class, you may want to block all those distractions for the time being.

While it should be easy enough to put the phone aside for the time being, it appears to be difficult for some.

If you have played around on a Windows 10 Preview system you may have noticed that it features an improved command prompt.

While you won't notice that right away, as it looks just like always, you will quickly notice changes when you try and paste into the command prompt or copy contents displayed there to the clipboard.

Direct options to copy and paste are not the only changes though. Once you open the preferences you will notice new feature additions that may make life a lot easier, especially if you use the command line a lot.

If you have configured Firefox to load the tabs from last time on start you are using sessions in the web browser. I use this feature to continue work where I left of without having to worry about saving site information each time before I close the browser.

I did not experience any issues running the Windows 10 Technical Preview up until now. While that has been the case, the state of the operating system makes it more likely that users will run into issues in the future.

That's one of the reasons why it is not recommended to run the preview in a productive environment as issues such as data loss may be experienced.

Mozilla Firefox is without doubt the browser that you can customize and tweak the most. Even the regular options that are made available to all users are quite extensive, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Experienced Firefox users know that there is about:config, a special page that is part of Firefox that displays hundreds of additional preferences that users can modify.

Browser plugins are still required to access contents on many sites on the Internet. Barely any online gaming site does without them for instance and the majority of video streaming services support Flash as well.

While the latter move towards HTML5, there are still some that only support Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight for its functionality.

The majority of extensions are not malicious, dangerous or privacy invading. The last years have seen a rise of an industry however that monetizes browser extensions.

Companies contact extension developers to either purchase successful extensions (based on users) outright, or broker a deal with the developer to include scripts used to monetize the extension or track users of it.

While there are alternatives, most people fall into one of two categories when it comes to technology-based note taking. It's generally either Evernote, or Microsoft's OneNote. Both work on multiple platforms, both computer and mobile.

Now Evernote is testing a new layout. If you visit the service on the web you may receive a pop-up message inquiring if you wish to try out the new Beta version. You're free to ignore it and stick with what you already know, but you can opt in if you're feeling adventurous.

The preview build of Windows 10 has been out for less than a week and feedback thus far seems to be largely positive, especially when you compare the reception with that of the Windows 8 preview.

Microsoft launched the Windows Insider Program along with the technical preview of Windows 10 and promised that users who signed up for it would receive builds "as soon as they are available".

It takes some getting used to time to get accustomed to the new start menu that Microsoft ships with its Windows 10 operating system.  While there is still enough time for changes, it is likely that they won't be major unless feedback is predominantly negative.

One of the things that you can do for instance is to remove all tiles from the start menu. That's handy if you don't use apps at all or don't want them listed in the start menu.