Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Steven D.: Rick, I recently bought a brand new Kingston 64GB USB flash drive off of eBay, but it will only format to 2GB.
I’ve tried every format option there is but the result is always the same. How can I tell if the drive is bad or if I’m doing something wrong?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Harlan F.: I have a problem Rick, and I’m really hoping you can help me solve it.
I have a WordPress blog that uses the Genesis Framework and the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin to display ads on my blog. I pasted my Adsense code into the genesis_after_content hook in order to have an ad displayed at the end of every post (and page).
It works great, but the problem is it also displays an ad after every post snippet on the home page. As you probably know, this is a big no-no since Google limits us to three Adsense ads per page.
My question is how can I get Simple Hooks to display an Adsense ad at the end of each post without also displaying them on the home page?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Apple has just announced a critical security flaw in both iOS (on smart phones, tablets and iPods) and OSX (on laptops and desktop computers).
This threat has been classified as severe because the flaw can allow hackers to see and intercept your encrypted web traffic under certain circumstances.
This security threat only applies to devices running certain versions of iOS (including iOS 7), but it’s very easy to see if it applies to yours. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Question from Cassie: Hello Rick. I have a Nook HD and I like it pretty well. I’d really like to buy a Kindle Fire HD but it’ll be a while before I can afford one.
In the meantime I really need to be able to take screenshots on my Nook HD every once in a while and email them to my friends. I’m pretty sure this can be done but I can’t figure out how to do it. Can you tell me?
Rick’s answer: The Kindle Fire HD is a fantastic tablet Cassie, but the Nook HD is a good one as well. I hope yours continues serving you well until you’re ready to buy your Kindle. When that time comes, you might want to check out the Kindle Fire HDX as well as the regular HD model.
To answer to your question, it’s actually pretty easy to capture a screenshot on your Nook HD. Here’s how to do it: [Read more…]
Another insidious scam is making the rounds on Facebook. This one is perpetuated by a “free” browser extension called Profile Visitors for Facebook.
The website that’s hawking this fraudulent extension (I will not publish the URL for obvious reasons) claims that it will add a new menu option to your Facebook page that, when clicked, will tell you who has been looking at your Facebook profile. [Read more…]