• Extend Power During Outages

    When the power goes out and you don’t have your phone and/or battery packs charged, there are a few things you can do to extend your phone’s battery. Turn on low power mode, turn down the screen brightness, turn off location services and Hey Siri or Hey Google, and close all apps you don’t need.…

  • iPhone Tips, Wi-Fi Help, and Security Updates

    iPhone and iPad performance on the web can be improved by clearing your device’s web browser cache. The onlywarning is that clearing the cache will log you out of sites and clear website per- sonalizations. Each browser has its own technique but you can Google something like “iOS chrome clear cache” to get the procedure.…

  • Screen protectors, Amazon Drive, ChromeOS on old laptops, text-to-speech

    As AI (artificial intelligence) is used more and more on the internet, here is an interesting use: translating jargon into more understandable English. There is an extension Chrome titled Jargon. It appears to have a “limited free trial offer” —no indication if or when that will change. Visit explainjargon.com. If you like to choose a…

  • Is Windows Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Update Needed?

    Windows 11 is coming. Are you ready? Or does it even matter? There has been a flurry of excitement and agony around the system requirements for Windows 11. Microsoft is insisting on a fairly recent version of a security hardware component called Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which can protect against potential malware and ransomware attacks…

  • Spam Calls on Smartphones, free your music, Google Hangout changes

    If you get a lot of spam calls on your smartphone but rarely makes calls yourself, you may have thought about changing your number. In theory, it’s easy: once all your important contacts have your new number, they will be able to contact you. And if you message people through social platforms, nothing needs to…

  • Protecting While Sharing

    When loaning your smartphone to someone else, you can do a few things first to limit what they can do. On iPhones, turn on Guided Access (Settings>Accessibility, and slide on Guided Access), and use Passcode Settings to set a different code from your normal unlock code. Explore Time Limits for other options. Limit use to…