Workers' Edge

Four time-saving iPhone tips

Whether technology saves more time than it squanders is an open question. Some of us may dream of a life off the grid and out of range, but by choice or necessity, we spend much of our waking life connected to the world through some electronic device or another.

If your network device of choice is an iPhone, these tips will improve the quality and perhaps reduce the quantity of the time you spend online. (Note that many of the tips also apply to the iPad.)

Bypass the lock screen to control music or take a picture In last month'… Read more

The right way and wrong way to use Twitter

"Thank you for sharing" takes on an entirely new meaning when using social media. Most of the people who use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks intend their posts to enlighten, amuse, or inspire their friends and followers. It doesn't always work out that way.

For businesses, Twitter is primarily about customer relations, but this can backfire, too, as Customer Think's Trish Miller points out in the Top 10 Twitter Mistakes of 2012.

The first time you sat behind the wheel of a car you didn't just turn the key and head for the freeway … Read more

Free services make Gmail, Google Drive, Google search more private

It's no secret that any information you provide to a Google service is no secret.

When Google changed its terms of service last year, the company granted itself and any other company it chooses complete, unfettered access to anonymized (we hope) versions of all the messages you send and receive via Gmail, all the files you upload to Google Drive, and all the terms you enter in the Google search box.

As CNET's Rafe Needleman reported in April 2012, Google's rights go beyond simply perusing your personal information. Google's terms of service include the following:

When … Read more

Three essential security add-ons for Firefox, Chrome, and IE

If you ask people what they like least about the Internet, the three items at the top of their list of complaints will likely be trackers, ads, and viruses.

While you may not be able to eliminate these and other Web nuisances, you can minimize their effect on your browsing via three free add-ons for Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer: Ghostery, Adblock Plus, and Web of Trust. (Note that Adblock Plus is not available for IE; blocking ads in Internet Explorer 10 is accomplished by using the program's Tracking Protection feature, as explained below.)

Do-it-yourself do not track … Read more

How to prepare for your last log-off

Technology doesn't just complicate our lives, it also does a number on our deaths.

Imagine the challenge of accounting for all of your digital assets once you've shuffled off to Buffalo. Even if you consider your e-mail, text messages, and social-media posts disposable, you've probably stored photos, videos, and very personal documents on one or more Web services. You probably want to bequeath some or all of these items to family and friends.

If you run an online business, ensuring a smooth transition in the event of your demise becomes even more important. To ease the burden … Read more

How to lock the Windows 7 Start menu (if you really must)

Three things I don't get:

Face tattoos The popularity of books, movies, and TV shows about vampires and zombies Windows users' devotion to the Start menu

The one thing all three of these mysteries have in common is that they will eventually run their course and fade away -- well, maybe not the face tattoos, at least not without a series of laser treatments.

Since the introduction of Windows 8 late last year PC users have been clamoring for the return of the Start menu. There's more to the widespread disdain for Win8's Start screen than just … Read more

A fix for the multifile-selection glitch in Windows 7 and 8

Sometimes you wish Microsoft would let customers decide when to delete a feature. Reader Dan Baechlin depends on Windows Explorer's ability to retain the selection of multiple files after changing the sort order. The feature has been removed from the version of Explorer in Windows 7 and 8. As Dan explains:

My job requires the ability to highlight multiple files or folders in a directory, and to retain that highlighting while re-sorting them by different fields (modification dates, thematically-based titles, etc.) Windows provided that feature -- until version 7. My work unit indexes, manages, and compares policy documents that … Read more

Prepare for and respond to a lost or stolen smartphone

How bad is the smartphone-theft epidemic? San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon accuses phone companies of profiting from stolen phones, as Michael Scherer reported last month on Time's Swampland site. Gascon is one of several leading law-enforcement officials calling for carriers to be required to implement technology that permanently deactivates stolen phones. It is simply too easy for thieves to resell smartphones.

One year ago, the major cellphone services announced via the CTIA Wireless Association plans to create a database "designed to prevent GSM smartphones reported as stolen from being activated or provided service." The database was … Read more

How you may have inadvertently participated in recent DDoS attacks

The risk that an Internet-connected computer is infected with malware will never be reducible to zero. It's just the nature of software that errors happen. Where there are software-design errors, there are people who will exploit those errors to their advantage.

The best PC users can hope for is to minimize the chances of an infection and to mitigate the damage a piece of malware can inflict -- whether it intends to steal a user's sensitive data or to commandeer the machine as part of a cyber attack on servers thousands of miles away.

Last week, Internet users … Read more