March 20, 2011
I wrote a few weeks ago about how Google was changing search results dramatically by including more and more semantic information – or what Google likes to refer to as Rich Snippets. Most recently, this was in the form of recipe meta-data, such as ingredients or cooking time. If you’re running a WordPress blog based [...]
March 18, 2011
Don’t pay someone else to do it for you! If you’re prepared to get your hands dirty and learn something in the process, DIY computer repair is a great little hobby, and will save you hundreds in support costs when you’re paying 3 or 4 times as much as the cost of the replacement component [...]
March 13, 2011
Self-hosted WordPress is a fantastic system, no doubt about it. It is simply the best choice for anyone from beginner bloggers to large corporations to run a simple yet extensible content publishing system. But with a few plugins installed, a elaborate theme with lots of stylesheets, some Javascript jQuery effects – well, it can become [...]
March 11, 2011
In what I’m hoping will be the first of a regular new MakeUseOf series, each month I’ll be showcasing 5 stunning new free iPad games (and sometimes the iPhone games too). So welcome to part one of the series. If you haven’t already done so, now would also be a good time to download my [...]
March 6, 2011
Last week, Google helped to advance the internet in another giant leap forward as they announced that they would now be making use of semantic meta-data in their search results – specifically in the form of a new kind of search category for recipes. Recipes?! Yes – users of the US-based Google will now notice [...]
March 4, 2011
WordPress is a powerful blogging platform, and many thousands of people start a WordPress blog every day – whether it’s self-hosted on your own web server or with a free WordPress.com blog. Many bloggers give up after a few months though, often because their blog isn’t as popular as they would like it to be [...]
February 27, 2011
A few months back I showed you how to install a second SATA drive, appropriate if your computer was bought sometime in the last 5 years or so. We also taught you all about partitions and formatting drives, and to completely replace your old drive with a new one – but I skipped over the [...]
February 25, 2011
For those of you who don’t know, DD-WRT is an open-source replacement firmware for household Internet routers that greatly enhances their functionality as well as providing increased performance. Though I was initially daunted by the sheer range of additional options that the DD-WRT firmware provides, I’m pleased to report there is a hell of a [...]
February 21, 2011
In the last year or so, I think we’ve all come to realise that our internet communications are really quite insecure. Using a public WiFi connection? FireSheep will easily grab your social network network passwords in seconds, giving anyone on the same network instant access to your entire life. There are a lot of things [...]
February 20, 2011
In home networks, IP addresses aren’t usually fixed, but they do fall within specific ranges. Your router will assign a new IP address automatically if another computer joins the network, or if your configuration changes. For the most part, this works out just fine – you shouldn’t notice a difference to your Internet performance or [...]
February 18, 2011
If you took my advice and haven’t yet upgraded to the 4.x iPad software, because you’ve been awaiting the latest jailbreak, then good choice. The time has come. The latest version of GreenPois0n is out, and it brings with it an “untethered” jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how [...]
February 13, 2011
WiFi running a bit slow lately? If your router is still using old security methods such as WEP, then there’s a very real possibility that someone has hacked in to steal your WiFi. In my article on Cool WiFi Devices You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, I showed you a $100 commercially available router that would [...]
February 11, 2011
From its humble beginnings some ten years ago, peer-2-peer file sharing has evolved in leaps and bounds, with the majority of Internet traffic now focused on the “torrent” protocol. Torrent clients are now so advanced that they don’t even need a centralised tracker anymore – just give them a torrent and they can seek out [...]
February 6, 2011
Every website on the Internet needs to be stored somewhere, and that’s what we refer to as “hosting“ – but what exactly does that mean? With so many different ways of hosting your site, it’s easy to get lost in the internet tubes. Let me guide you through some of the many ways you can [...]
February 4, 2011
One problem I’ve found when attending job interviews in the past is demonstrating a range of technology skills, without having to show full projects to a client or take expensive specialised certifications. For most of us, we may know a little CSS / PHP / HTML, but how can you show this certificate information to [...]
