Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: I was kicked out of my own Facebook group. How can I regain control of it?

Posted on January 24, 2019

Question from Daniel: I’m in desperate need of your help with recovering a Facebook group that was stolen from me.

Back in 2015 I started a group about camping. I worked real hard at promoting the group and over time it grew to over 32,000 members.

I used this group to sell camping gear that I would ship directly to the customers from my brick and mortar store.

About 7 months ago I was approached by a woman who runs a fitness website asking if we could cross-promote each other’s products in our two groups.

I agreed and granted her admin access to my group and she reciprocated by granting me admin access to her group.

Her group only has about 12,000 members but I was making several sales a week from my posts in there.

All was well until this morning when I discovered that I’m no longer a member of either group.

I tried logging in with my email address and password and neither group will accept them.

It appears that this person has hijacked my group and kicked me completely out of it. Can you tell me what I need to do in order to regain control of it?

I reported the theft to Facebook but so far I haven’t heard anything back from them.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Review: Pawtec External USB 3.0 Aluminum 8X DVD-RW Optical Drive

Posted on January 22, 2019

pawtec-external-usb-aluminum-dvd-drive2 — (#ad)

Many new laptops now come without an optical drive built-in, and that’s fine if you no longer have a need to play music or movies from DVDs, install software that’s distributed on discs, or back up your data onto blank writable DVDs.

But what if you still need access to an optical drive on occasion?

The easiest way to solve this problem is to purchase an inexpensive external USB optical drive. Just like external USB hard drives, these drives simply plug into an open USB port, allowing you to do everything you could do with an internal optical drive without the burden of the extra weight.

I recently had the opportunity to check out the Pawtec External USB 3.0 Aluminum 8X DVD-RW Optical Drive (#ad), and I really like it. [Read more…]

YouTube takes action to ban dangerous ‘prank’ and ‘challenge’ videos from their site

Posted on January 18, 2019

For years people have been making dangerous “prank” videos and sharing them on YouTube hoping to see the videos go viral.

A lot of those dangerous videos did end up going viral, inspiring thousands of copycats to attempt to recreate the prank.

As one might expect, many of those copycat pranksters ended up getting seriously hurt while filming their own versions of the stunts.

Things became even worse when the prank video makers started actually challenging viewers to make similar videos of their own.

[Read more…]

Get ready for the arrival of huge Solid State Drives (SSDs) at affordable prices

Posted on January 6, 2019

Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been around for a good while now, and it’s no secret that replacing a hard drive with an SSD can put most any computer on virtual steroids.

But it’s also well known that SSDs have one huge issue that has been holding them back from mass adoption in the PC marketplace…

Compared to traditional spinning hard drives, SSDs are both expensive and relatively limited in storage space. [Read more…]

Q&A: Do you think I should buy a TV with a damaged screen?

Posted on January 4, 2019

Question from Barry K.: My neighbor has an almost new 32-inch flat screen TV that he’s offering to sell to me for $45. The thing is it has been damaged.

The right half of the screen got crushed when his little boy hit it with a golf club. He says he had it checked out and they told him it just needs a new screen (the screen doesn’t work at all).

My question is do you think this TV is a good deal at $45? I don’t mind paying to have it fixed if it costs less than $75.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]