Rick's Daily Tips

Review: RAVPower 3-Port 30W USB Travel Charger

Posted on November 5, 2018

We all seem to have multiple portable devices these days, and keeping them all charged up and ready to use can be a challenge. And if you travel often it can be even more difficult.

That’s why always having a good portable wall charger on hand is a must.

The RAVPower 3-Port 30W USB Travel Charger (#ad) is one of the handiest chargers I have ever used. It’s small enough to easily carry it around in a pants pocket, yet it supplies a respectable 30 watts of charging power to up to two devices. [Read more…]

Great news: You’ll get free shipping on every order you place at Amazon through December 22, regardless of the amount of the order!

Posted on November 5, 2018

(#ad)

In a world where most of the news we hear tends to be bad news, it’s really nice when I can deliver a bit of great news on occasion.

Well, today is one of those days…

Amazon (#ad) has eliminated their $25 minimum purchase threshold for free shipping for all orders placed between November 1 and December 22 of this year!

[Read more…]

Do you use a free Flickr account to store your photos? If so, brace yourself for a major change.

Posted on November 5, 2018

Flickr has long been one of the most popular free photo storage services on the Internet.

However, that’ll almost certainly change once these changes the company just announced take place on January 8, 2019.

[Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a good, but relatively inexpensive DSLR camera kit for a student?

Posted on November 4, 2018

Question from Helen C.: My son is going to be taking a photography class next semester with an eye towards eventually become a professional photographer.

He needs a DSLR camera to get him through this class, and hopefully beyond. I’m planning to buy him one for Christmas and I need some advice.

I really don’t know that much about cameras in general, and virtually nothing at all about the DSLRs that are currently on the market.

Can you recommend a good, but relatively inexpensive DSLR that would be a good choice for a photography student?

If possible, I’d like to get something for around $600 or less, and a few included accessories would be nice (yeah, I’m a dreamer lol).

Thanks for your help in advance. (Love your site by the way!!!)

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

How to keep your WordPress blog free of broken links

Posted on October 28, 2018

Update: Unfortunately, it’s been discovered that the “Broken Link Checker” plugin mentioned in this post has a very serious security flaw and the plugin’s author has chosen not to fix it.

Therefore I can no long recommend the use of this plugin.

I now recommend using the web-based broken link checking tool on this page.

Note: The original post continues below…

Broken links are a blogger’s worst nightmare. In addition to providing your blog’s visitors with a poor user experience, they also give your blog a bad reputation with the major search engines, and your search rankings can suffer as a consequence.

Even worse, if you sell advertising on your blog, broken links also make your ad space less valuable.

Tracking down broken links used to involve a boatload of manual labor. We had to visit each page and post and click on all the links to see if they were still valid. But now a nifty WordPress plugin called Broken Link Checker makes it easy to find all the broken links on your entire blog without lifting a finger. [Read more…]