Sometimes, even when you run professional antivirus software and anti-malware apps, your computer may still start acting a bit screwy – leading you to wonder whether it’s possible some new virus somehow made it past your many defenses and onto your computer. Sometimes it’s nice to have a quick app you can run for free to perform a full system scan for all known viruses.

Mobile devices provide lots of tools that allow you to become far more productive than ever before. No matter where you are, on a moment’s notice, you can connect with the outside world, fix problems remotely, and get things finished that otherwise would have had to wait in the generations before mobile devices and mobile Internet. This brave new world is both a blessing and a curse.

One of the best things about having a tablet is the fact that I can be productive just about anywhere. While I didn’t opt for a tablet with 3G or 4G, I can still work anywhere that I can find a wireless network, which is surprisingly lots of places – restaurants, coffee houses, hotels and even some retail stores.

This year for the holidays, we decided to do something a little different. Instead of staying at home or visiting family for Christmas, we planned to take a family vacation to Boston throughout the entire holiday. That’s a family vacation for 4 days and 3 nights. The planning phase of this trip had me rethinking my usual process, and how my new Android Prime tablet could help in the process.

Now, using a webmail service to host your domain email isn’t anything new. Matt covered how you can set up email on your domain using Google Apps. But is Google really the only act in town? Isn’t there any other service out there that provides high-quality free online email service with the added bonus of letting you host mail there for your own domain?

Since Outlook is about as common as Word and Excel on most work computers around the world, I’d like to share with you a few tips about how you can use the really cool Journal tool in Microsoft Outlook to track your day – including every task, every email, every phonecall and everything that you do throughout the day. This is a one-click time management system that pretty much beats most anything else that you might download for free.

One of the things that we’ve always covered well here at MakeUseOf is screensavers. It seems like there’s no shortage of really cool ways to make use of your computer when you’re not using it and it’s idle. Even if you don’t want to give up your CPU time to some outside cause, there’s an endless choice of great free screensavers that’ll have people turning their heads to check out your screen every time your computer goes idle.

Picture this. You’re on vacation up in the mountains. You were hiking along, and decided to explore an interesting side trail. Before you know it, the trail disappears into a mess of weeds and trees, and as you turn around in every direction, you realize that you have no idea where the trail is. Then it dawns on you. You’re lost. Being lost is no fun. I speak from experience. So, let me tell you what helps.

So how do you know how well your battery is holding up? And if you just got a new Android, how can you make sure you are getting the most efficient use of your battery power? Are you burning up the juice with services like GPS or Wi-Fi that you may not always need? Isn’t it a pain to keep turning those things on and off? How does a person manage all of that and stay sane?

I have to say that I have been on some really cool adventures in Google Street View. I’ve strolled down cobblestone streets in Italy, cruised along the mountainous shoreline of northern California, and creeped along the quiet streets of abandoned towns. Every now and then, I will experience a very surreal moment when I spot an extremely odd or unusual object or situation that got captured by the Google Street View team.

Let me just tell you straight away that when it comes to video games, I absolutely love racing games above nearly any other. War games may be the one exception, but racing games are at least at the very top of my list, and it’s mostly because I’d love to drive like that in real life, but if I get a couple more speeding tickets, I’m likely to lose my license. So, I must live vicariously through video games.

For a programmer or a technology enthusiast, the concept of a database is something that can really be taken for granted. However, for many people the concept of a database itself is a bit foreign. SQL calls, queries, tables, records, keys – all of those terms and more make up the field of database design and database management, and there’s not a whole lot that’s simple about it.

A small blank square and a blinking cursor. A window through which the entire world exists. You only have to say the right word – any word – and your every desire will be delivered. But traveling to the wrong place can bring very real tragedy and horror to a family, and traveling there is as simple as typing in the wrong word into that little square box. Then there’s the question of those monsters and demons. What are they, where are they, and how dangerous are they? We took a long, hard look.

Over the years, Microsoft Word has become one of the best word processors in the world. I’m sure there are people out there that disagree – particularly Linux or Mac folks who would really rather not give Microsoft so much credit. But, lets face it, Microsoft has established a very large foothold in this area, and they’ve evolved Microsoft Word over the years to the point where it is extremely efficient and easy to use.

Wolfram Alpha. For anyone that has never used it or heard of it, it sounds like the name of one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For people familiar with it, it’s like having access to that magical hand-held device Dr. Sam Beckett had in the popular TV show Quantum Leap, that was linked to the computer known as Ziggy. In fact, it’s almost identical to Ziggy. In the show, Ziggy was ultra-specific to the point of being too literal at times.