I’ve been teaching myself computer stuff for almost two decades now. From computer applications to programming, to web design to any other coding needs. Part of that learning list was teaching myself some CSS.

I recently found the Stylizer application from the folks at Skybound. The Stylizer app allows you to design, manipulate and see the CSS functionality of what you’re working on as you’re working on it in a live display.
What’s interesting is that CSS is one of those things where seeing it for yourself and watching how the coding syntax changes initiates changes in the display you’re looking …read more

I’ve been playing around with a few ideas lately and one of them involved thinking about all the different tools I use for blogging throughout the day. I work with a number of clients that get started blogging or using WordPress as a CMS solution.

Frequently when talking to them about how to get started I begin talking about some other great tools that I use to organize your thoughts and create your posts and pages for your website. Most of these tools are free, or free with premium versions as well. All of them have been incredibly useful to …read more

My friend Patric Welch, a.k.a. Noobie, just found this blog post that lists the writer’s top 10 applications to install on a new PC to get things started out on the right foot. The other nice benefit of this blog post though is that all the applications listed are 100% free.

The article shares a a list of 10 applications that you can get completely free. The apps vary from security, image and graphics or office productivity. Dustin Wax provides a full description and reasoning behind his choice for each of these applications. Be sure to read his entire post for …read more

Do you want to be able to type faster? David Pogue from New York Times has listed applications that could help you become more productive through faster typing apps.

The following are these applications:
TypeIt4Me, Typinator and TextExpander for MAC.
TypeIt4Me is also available on the iPhone
AutoHotKey, ActiveWords and Texter for Windows
AutoCorrect feature for Microsoft Office applications
In-depth discussion of the typing application and features can be found here —
Typing-Expansion Software.
In an excerpt:
Of course, you can get the same effect within Microsoft Office (Mac and Windows), using its AutoCorrect feature. That arrangement has one profound advantage: the expansion happens even …read more

A number of years ago PC Magazine started providing collections of downloaded files, tools and applications to users to help them manage their systems. These programs used to just be available on the CD-ROM’s that you’d get when you purchased an issue of their magazine, or they’d send it to you when you paid for a subscription.

Now those applications have become worthy software components of their own. One of those programs that have been developed and tweaked over the years into a robust and very useful application for many users is Startup Cop 4, which is now celebrating it’s …read more

One of my personal computing pet peeves is to have a cluttered and ridiculously overloaded system tray of applications and processes that are running at boot-up. For one thing, having all kinds of unnecessary processes running at start-up on the chance that you might use seems like a waste of resources to me.
If you’re running Windows XP Professional there’s a really easy way to configure at the operating system level what applications have set themselves up to run on startup and to disable them.
Just follow these steps:

Go to Start > Run
Type in “msconfig” in the window (minus the quotes) and …read more

In my last post I shared an extremely helpful, but very low-tech tool I use to help keep the various computers I manage running in tip-top-shape. I regularly serve as “tech support” for a variety of friends and family members and I have a thumb drive that I carry with me with a variety of little apps on it to help clean-up and service those computers.
Before I share my list of tools with you though, I’m very interested to see what you all are using in your own software toolboxes. What apps do you use for anti-virus, spyware, registry clean-up, …read more

Image via WikipediaToo many sites today do a top 10 list of all the greatest things. Top 10 songs, top 10 amazing chemistry videos, top 10 urinals — They’re all the same, the top 10 best of something. I thought it might be fun to figure out the top 10 worst PC applications of all time.
I want your suggestions. After I get a list of worst apps that you can think of (leave comments, email jesse dot middleton at b5media dot com, or hit me up on Twitter), I’ll go ahead and review them myself and bring a team of …read more