Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Passwords have been the primary means of authenticating the identities of computer users for decades, but that might not be the case for too much longer.
A consortium known as The FIDO Alliance (aka Fast IDentity Online) has just released specifications for alternate methods of verifying a user’s identity using biometric sensors and physical identity tokens. [Read more…]
I guess you could file this one under the “Now I’ve seen it all!” category.
Clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger is now selling a jacket that comes with detachable solar panels that produce electricity for charging the mobile devices that you carry around in your pockets.
Regular readers of this blog are well aware that I’m all about innovations in technology, but there are just some innovations that are perfectly welcome to pass me by. And a solar panel jacket is one of them.
Don’t get me wrong – I can see the benefits of having your clothing power your gadgets, but it just seems to me like there are tons of alternative options out there that are a lot less expensive and, quite frankly, a lot more attractive. [Read more…]
If you use Facebook to promote your business, come mid-January you’ll have to start paying to promote your posts if you want them to be seen by your followers.
For some time now, Facebook has been using their “EdgeRank” algorithm to reduce the number of followers who see unpaid posts in their newsfeeds, prompting many business owners to pay to promote their posts to a wider audience.
Thanks to Edgerank, as of today small business owners can choose not to pay to promote a post and it will still be seen by approximately 16% of their followers. But that’s about to change pretty soon. [Read more…]
If you’ve been computer shopping recently, you’ve no doubt noticed the plethora of laptops priced around $200. It seems they’re everywhere these days, and even the big name-brands are selling them.
If you’re wondering how the computer manufacturers can afford to sell a Windows laptop for $200, it basically boils down to one reason: Microsoft’s release of Windows 8.1 with Bing.
At its core, Windows 8.1 with Bing is exactly the same operating system as the standard Windows 8.1, but two things differentiate Windows 8.1 with Bing from standard Windows 8.1: [Read more…]
I have never been all that keen on password manager apps because if a miscreant is able to compromise your master password, ALL of your passwords become available to the crook.
Not it seems that my paranoia concerning password managers was justified. The nasty Citadel malware that’s been compromising the websites of banks and other institutions of late has started attacking password manager apps via a special keylogger that’s built into the malicious code. [Read more…]