For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
If you own an Android-powered smartphone or use the Google app on your iOS device, it's a good bet you've fallen in love with Google's voice-powered search. It works freakishly well.
What you may not know is that you can enjoy a similar experience on your PC. All you need is Google's Chrome browser.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Google Chrome does a lot of things well, but it's not the greatest when it comes to mouse-wheel scrolling.
Indeed, you may have noticed that when you turn your wheel, the page lurches up or down in "steps," instead of scrolling smoothly. This isn't the end of the world, of course, but certainly the experience could be better.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
As I slowly learn my way around Windows 8, I continue to uncover a few features I didn't know existed. (You'd think Microsoft would include a live tile or something that calls out these new features—"Hey, look what we've added!"—but, no.)
One such hidden perk is File History. Like Apple's Time Machine, it archives copies of older versions of your files, and does so automatically and in the background, while you work. It is, for all intents and purposes, a real-time backup tool.
One caveat, though: It's not a full-system backup tool like Windows Backup; by default it preserves only those files in your Libraries: documents, music, photos, and other media. You can add other folders if you wish, but only by adding them to your Libraries. (You can also exclude folders if you don't want, say, your videos to be backed up.)
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Remember Ceton Companion? It let Windows Media Center users control their PCs from any Android, iOS, or Windows Phone device.
Now the app is available for Kindle Fire, Nook, and Windows 8 as well, and it has a new name: My Media Center.
Why the name-change? In part to avoid errors like the one I originally made: The app works with Windows Media Center whether you have a Ceton tuner installed or not.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
If you're a Netflix junkie like I am, you're no doubt always on the lookout for ways to make the service better.
Of course, half the battle in using Netflix is choosing the movies that are really worth watching. Netflix provides only a "best guess" rating based on your viewing preferences, which means if you want some serious crowd-sourced reviews, you need to look to a site like Rotten Tomatoes.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Lately I've noticed that whenever I play a YouTube video on my PC, it's jerky. Choppy. Call it what you will—it's really frustrating.
Semi-expert troubleshooter that I am, I did what I always do when experiencing a problem inside my browser: I tried a different browser. Specifically, I switched out of Chrome and into Internet Explorer.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
When it comes to keeping my PC secure, I rely on a small handful of tools: Windows 7's built-in firewall, Gmail's spam filtering, Web of Trust's helpful browser plug-in, and Microsoft's free Security Essentials anti-virus utility.
At this risk of jinxing things, here's my score to date: My PC: 1. Malware of any variety: 0.
However, I recently needed to troubleshoot a program that wasn't working properly, and, as always, the tech support department's first suggestion was to "disable my antivirus program."
