The Older Geek

When I first started blogging — eleven years ago now! — it wasn’t practical to buy my own domain and web hosting space. For starters, I was just a poor little housewife. I knew very little about the Internet and computing, but I did love to write. It was so convenient to have a “free” [...]

In the previous post, I showed you How to Remove Location in Your Facebook Status. A reader asked me how to do the opposite– how to add a location to your Facebook status. This feat is much easier! Here is how: 1. Log in to your Facebook account. 2. Go to the top of the [...]

In a previous post, I showed you how to create a signature in Windows Mail. Adding an image to an email signature is a little trickier as it requires a little html editing. By far, the best tutorial I have ever seen is one done by Rich Menga. I suppose I could spend hours and [...]

Twitter is pretty simple but sometimes they roll out some changes and features that are very confusing. For example, it’s so easy to create a list and add a person you follow to a list. Let’s say you have a mixed bag of people you follow– friends, business associates, local businesses and news organizations. You [...]

I’m not sure why some users are experiencing this problem: you download Google Earth, install the program, and…. nothing happens. The program application icon does not appear in the Start Menu. It’s not on the Desktop. Nothing. What gives? This happened to me last week. I downloaded Google Earth twice before I did some digging [...]

Microsoft completely changed their premier email client, Outlook, with their release of Outlook 2010. Rather than using their familiar “menu bar” interface of previous versions, Microsoft developed a new interface they called a “ribbon.” They assumed that everyone would love this new “ribbon” which supposedly made it easier to see all your choices at the [...]

Oh how I love fonts! It’s especially nice when they are free! I recently downloaded an entire caseload of free fonts, so I thought I’d share my resources. Here are where I get some of my favorite fonts: Smashing Magazine regularly releases information and screenshots of zillions and zillions of fonts. Many are free. Simply [...]

You can learn a lot from a website’s page source data. Let’s say they have a very cool plugin and you want to know what it is! Check the page source data. Let’s say you want to know what blog theme they are using, or their website has a phenomenal photo or template color that [...]

Browser popups are much more than annoying. Popups are a security threat. Whenever you go on the Internet, an exchange of information is relayed between your computer and the website’s server computer (and sometimes through a number of other server computers along the way) through open doors called “ports.” Internet Explorer opens certain ports to [...]

Face it, Facebookers, there is no such thing as privacy on Facebook. Problems with Facebook: 1. They sell your personal information, and you have no control over who gets it. According to CBS News, Facebook sells your information to third party vendors, such as marketers and advertisers. This policy seems to change from time to [...]

Short version: Start > Run > cmd > ipconfig /flushdns > Enter. Long version: DNS stands for Domain Name Server. It’s an alphabetical value to a numerical string of numbers (namely, IP numbers). Every website– every computer device– is assigned an Internet Protocol (IP) number. The Domain Name Server serves the alphabetical domain name to [...]

I love Google maps. While I’m not a big fan of the company (too big for their britches), I love what they’ve done with geography. One of their best inventions yet is Google Maps. The kids and I love playing with Google Earth and Google maps. Ever see Google Earth on a big computer monitor [...]