Rick's Daily Tips

How to make completely anonymous phone calls in the age of Big Brother

Posted on May 21, 2015

pre-paid-phone Unless you live one hut down from Gilligan on that infamous remote tropical island, chances are you have heard that Verizon and some other carriers have been handing over the phone records of every one of their customers to the federal government for some time now.

That’s right, your private calls, texts and Internet communications aren’t private, and they haven’t been for a while.

Does this scare you? It should, even if you live life on the straight and narrow. This policy throws the entire concept of probable cause right out the window.

So how can you ensure your privacy when using your cell phone? [Read more…]

Review: TweakBit FixMyPC

Posted on May 19, 2015

If you spend much time at all on the Internet, you have surely seen tons of ads for the “Fix My PC” style programs that are out there competing for your hard-earned dollars. And trust me, there are plenty of them out there.

All of these programs promise to scan your Windows installation and fix any errors they find, enhancing system stability – making your computer run faster as a result.

Every now and then I’ll download one of these programs and check it out. I recently saw an ad for TweakBit FixMyPC that caught my interest, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. [Read more…]

Bing to start giving “Mobile Friendly” sites higher priority in their search results

Posted on May 18, 2015

Back in February Google announced plans to start giving “mobile friendly” web pages higher prirority in their mobile search results.

That makes plenty of sense to me. After all, if I’m searching for info while using my smart phone, I would prefer that Google recommend pages that are optimized for my phone’s small screen.

Well, now Bing is getting ready to jump onto the “mobile friendly” bandwagon. Microsoft has just announced that they will be rolling out changes similar to those made by Google within the next few months. [Read more…]

Q&A: Will using ReadyBoost really speed up my computer?

Posted on May 18, 2015

Question from Beverly W.: I recently read an article that said using ReadyBoost with a flash drive will speed up your computer. My laptop is pretty slow so I decided I wanted to try it.

But now I’m confused because when I asked a friend of mine how to set it up he told me not to bother because it doesn’t really help.

I hope you can clear this up for me. Does ReadyBoost work or not? I don’t want to buy a flash drive to use with it if it won’t really do me any good.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]