How To

I was at a holiday party this past weekend and, for reasons I cannot explain, iPhone battery life became the discussion topic. A slightly overserved holiday reveler was demonstrating how you can extend the battery life of your iPhone by setting the maximum charge to 80% instead of choosing "Optimized Battery Charging" in the Battery Health & Charging section of your settings. I was asked to confirm the veracity of the claim. The answer: "Yes… but…" Continue Reading →

When you're doing a text-to-image prompt for a generative AI model like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, I'm sure you can conjure a Matisse-like image in your mindseye to help you inspire the model to create avant-garde or fauvistic images for your project. Continue Reading →

Have you been getting lots of spam text messages lately? Shelly Palmer talks with Bianca Peters and Kerry Drew about some nasty text scams to look out for. Original Airdate: June 1, 2021 Continue Reading →

More than 500 million Facebook users had their data leaked. What can you do about it? Shelly Palmer offers tips to Bianca Peters and Kayla Mamelak on Fox 5's Good Day New York. Original Airdate: April 6, 2021 Continue Reading →

Tomorrow is April Fools' Day, so today (for obvious reasons) is World Backup Day. If you get April Fooled into clicking something you shouldn't have (because it was funny or looked safe) and your computer is transformed into a paperweight, at least your data will be safe. As I always say, "Back up early and often." Continue Reading →

Want a real education? Back up your own data. That's the lesson students and faculty at New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington learned last week when the IT staff did some routine maintenance. The result: a factory reset of every PC connected to its network and a university of PCs with empty desktop folders and C: drives. Oops! Continue Reading →

Robocalls are back to pre-pandemic levels. Here's how to limit the number of scam and spam calls you get each day. Continue Reading →

There's a reason you're getting more robocalls now: due to the pandemic, many international call centers were shut down. At the same time, the government did its best to reduce COVID-19-related phone scams. All that's over now. Robocall volume is back to pre-pandemic levels, and about 60 percent of these calls are scams or unsolicited telemarketing. Continue Reading →

The FCC just approved the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, which provides a $50 monthly credit on internet bills for low-income families who qualify. Continue Reading →

macOS Catalina is now available for most Mac owners. Do not rush. Actually, let me be a bit more forceful — Wait. Stop. Don’t. 32-Bit Apps Do Not Work in macOS Catalina Before you upgrade your Mac to macOS Catalina be sure the 32-bit apps you use for work have not been left behind by Continue Reading →