The Older Geek

Can anyone remember the time before Amazon and eBay and PayPal when we all actually used to DRIVE to stores and hand CASH to a REAL human cashier? The Internet has certainly changed things. Not only is the Internet the “information super highway,” it’s become the shopping megaplex of the world. I remember my initial [...]

I remember Firefox 1.0, way back in… *gasp* 2004! I was an early Firefox fanatic, finding the browser much faster, more intuitive and less bulky than the Netscape or Internet Explorer browsers. Sadly, the sun is setting over my Firefox career. I was very disenchanted with 4.0. It wouldn’t work with some of my plugins, [...]

Is there no end to all the terrific Firefox addons out there? I think not. I’ve already written several posts stuffed full of my favorite goodies. Here are more: No Squint This is a beautiful addon for those of us who need a little visual aide. NoSquint very easily enlarges webpages and manages things like [...]

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 [...]

Got a child using an iPod, iPhone, or iPad? My young son loves my iPod, and I enjoy seeing him have such fun with it. But I cringe inside every time he uses it, because the browser and Apps Store is unfiltered. I know my son wouldn’t go seeking out the filth that’s so abundant [...]

Ever hear of browser cookies? If you’ve been on the computer and Internet for a while, you’ve probably heard of them. Cookies are small files on your machine, placed there by the websites you visit. When you visit a website, an exchange of information ensues between your computer browser and the web server software. In [...]

Cookies. We love them and we hate them (well, I do), especially with milk. Ha ha! Seriously, cookies (as far as computing goes) are small text files placed on your computer by the websites that you visit. Cookies contain information such as website name, date and duration of visit, and other extraneous stuff. Not very [...]

Every computer that connects to the Internet should have a firewall. Windows Firewall is a mediocre firewall offering very limited protection in the event of an attack or security breach. I wrote a post about firewalls and where to find some excellent free software: Free Security Software. So you have a firewall, hurray. How do [...]