Basic Tech Tips

One thing I have noticed is that the shortcuts people use to make their computing lives easier are usually things that someone else has showed them or, more typically, something they discovered by accident. I can remember freaking myself out the first time I moved my scroll wheel with my Ctrl key depressed. At the time, I had no idea that it changed the display in my browser.

In a recent post, David Pogue has put together his list of basic computer tips. The tips he lists are useful and definitely worthy of reading. Even better, however, his comments are open and he has invited others to provide their tips as well. At this point, there are almost 1,000 comments, the majority of which contain handy tips of their own.

This post from David should be required reading for everyone.

My favorites from David’s list:

You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.

Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.

You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

Blocking Cellphone Spam

Spam is the bane of our email existence. Recently David Pogue wrote about how to stop cell phone spam. He explained the problem as:

OK, now I’m really, REALLY annoyed. Within a week, my wife and I have both started getting spam text messages on our Verizon cellphones. I know that this is nothing new, but it’s new for us, and it’s apparently getting worse.

David explains that blocking the cell phone spam is relatively easy. He provides instructions on how to do this for all of the major cell phone services. For example, to block text spam if you have Verizion Wireless:

Verizon Wireless: Log in at vtext.com. Under Text Messaging, click Preferences. Click Text Blocking. You’re offered choices to block text messages from e-mail or from the Web. Here again, you can block specific addresses or Web sites. (Here’s where you set up your aliases, too.)

If you are having a problem with cell phone spam, you definitely want to read this article.

A tip of the hat to Jim Calloway to pointing me in the direction of this article.