Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Have you ever wanted to text someone without having to stop using your computer or tablet and pull out your phone?
Well, with a great free app called MightyText, you can.
MightyText lets you send and receive standard SMS text messages right from your PC, Mac or Android tablet using your Android phone’s number. I’ve been trying it for a while now, and it seems to work quite well. [Read more…]
Question from Janna: I’ve noticed that many of the status updates appearing in my Facebook newsfeed are now being printed in huge, ugly bold letters.
And unfortunately, my own status updates are being printed the same way.
Several of my friends have even messaged me and asked me why I’m shouting at them!
I hate this large text and I’m not doing anything (that I’m aware of) to make the text size bigger.
My question is why is this happening and how can I make my posts be displayed with the normal text size?
Ricks answer: [Read more…]
Apple is planning to release iOS 10.3 before long, and with that update will come several significant changes to the operating system.
I believe most of those changes will be good ones, but there’s one that concerns me.
Beginning with iOS 10.3, Apple will start “analyzing” your iCloud data to “help them improve intelligent features and services such as Siri and other similar or related services.”
In a nutshell, that means Apple will soon start scanning your email, your notes, your contacts, your photos, your calendar, Keychain, Find My iPhone, your iTunes items and all the various files you have stored on iCloud. [Read more…]
Question from Randy F.: My hard drive started making a combination of loud whining and clicking sounds last night.
I did some research (thanks Google!) and found a forum post that said to run chkdsk to see if the drive has any bad sectors. It then said if bad sectors are found to run chkdsk/r to fix them.
I ran chkdsk and it did find a bunch of bad sectors. I started to run chkdsk /r to fix the bad sectors but then I remembered reading a follow-up post that said running chkdsk /r can kill a hard drive outright.
What’s your advice on this? I’d like to fix the drive and not have to replace it if that’s possible, but I don’t want to lose my pictures and other files by killing the drive. I need some advice on how to proceed.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Aaron P.: When my PC died I decided to build my own computer instead of buying one off the shelf to replace it.
This is a list of the parts I used in the build:
After the parts arrived I put everything together but I can’t get it to power up. The screen stays blank and there are no beeps or sounds of any kind except for the case fans and PSU fan noise.
I’ve double-checked everything I know to check. Any ideas?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]