Rick's Daily Tips

Check out this jacket that can charge your mobile devices. Yes, really.

Posted on December 9, 2014

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…]

Save time by signing into Facebook with your username

Posted on December 8, 2014

Facebook is a wonderful tool for communicating with family and friends, sharing photos and stories, and keeping up with your favorites music groups, charitable organizations and other interests. And as we all know, it can also be a huge (albeit fun) time waster.

But one part of the Facebook experience where most of us don’t really want to waste any time is the login process. To log in to Facebook, we first have to type in our email address, then our password. And if the email address is a long one and/or it contains several special characters, typing it in can be both time consuming and prone to errors (especially if you’re using a smart phone). [Read more…]

Review: Hello FAX – Send FAXes for free without a FAX machine

Posted on December 8, 2014

Most folks probably think FAXes are about as obsolete as Morse Code in today’s digital world, but the fact is there are still times when we need to send and/or receive an occasional FAX.

But that doesn’t mean we need to keep a physical FAX machine plugged in and waiting 24/7.

In fact, we no longer need a FAX machine at all in order to send the occasional FAX. Instead, we can use one of several popular online FAXing services.

I recently found myself needing to send a FAX for the first time in years, and since I had ditched my old FAX machine several years back I found myself scrambling to find a good online FAX service. One that really stood out to me was a service called HELLO FAX, so I decided to give it a try. [Read more…]

Q&A: What’s the fastest web browser for a slow Internet connection

Posted on December 5, 2014

Question from Camille I.: I have cable Internet through Charter and it’s usually pretty fast, but during the evenings it sometimes slows to a crawl. I read somewhere a while back that some web browsers work better on slow Internet connections than others. Can you recommend one?

Rick’s answer: I sure can Camille. For overall speed it’s hard to beat Google Chrome, but if you have a slow Internet connection Opera running in turbo mode is amazing! What makes Opera so much faster over a slow connection than other browsers is their data proprietary compression system. [Read more…]

Display notifications from your Android device on your computer screen

Posted on December 3, 2014

Have you ever found yourself in a situation similar to the following?

You’re expecting an important text message that you really can’t afford to miss, but you’re at work and you simply don’t have time to pull your phone out of your pocket or purse every time it buzzes to see if it’s the message you’ve been waiting for.

Well, now you don’t have to.

Desktop Notifications is a free Android app / Google Chrome or Firefox browser extension combo that lets you display all of your Android device’s notifications right in the corner of your web browser! [Read more…]