Do you know how much bandwidth your cell phone provider gives you on your mobile phone contract?
We know – why does it matter how much our providers charge us for bandwidth? The Internet is free, right?
Yeah… not so much.
Continue reading "How much bandwidth does your cell service provider give you?"
Thanks to everyone who took the time to visit Web Watch in 2011. For those of you who haven’t been able to visit every day, let’s take a look at what you did come and see while you were here:
The top ten most viewed Web Watch articles for 2011 were:
Continue reading "Year in Review: 2011′s most popular Web Watch articles and searches"
This is an open letter to the marketing staff at MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Sands, and other casino corporations. And if you’re part of the marketing staff at a different type of company, you may want to pay attention to this as well – since the core takeaway here applies to you as well.
Continue reading "An open letter to MGM, Caesars, Sands, and other casino companies regarding social media"
How many Facebook friends do you have?
No, really — how many of the people you have “friended” on Facebook are really, honestly your friends? People that you know IRL (that’s “In Real Life” for those of you who don’t know), that you would talk to anyway over the matter of course?
Yeah, we thought so. You really only know about what – 130 people, tops? So whatcha doing with that Facebook friend list that’s hovering around the 462 person mark?
Continue reading "Top 10 Reasons You Are No Longer a Facebook Friend"
So Web Watch is in the process of packing up some of our video game systems and putting them away. The PS2 and Xbox Classic are no longer needed, and don’t even get us started on the TurboGrafx or Sega Genesis that were also taking up precious shelf space.
We’ll leave the Wii and PS3 where they are as we still use those regularly, as we anxiously await the long-rumored Xbox 720 to come out to replace the Xbox 360.
So what does all this mean? We’re not the only ones with older gaming systems still hanging around and being used.
But what are they being used for? It’s not always what you think.
Continue reading "What PS3, Xbox360, and Wii owners really do with their systems"
By now, you probably have heard about CARRIER IQ, that software that many cell phone manufacturers and service providers had installed on all sorts of cellphones in order to track how well their networks were performing.
The issue, if you didn’t know, is that CARRIER IQ wasn’t a very well-designed application and was recording a lot of each user’s phone actions without that person’s knowledge. Now, Congress has gotten involved and it’s turned into a big ugly mess.
Continue reading "How to remove Carrier IQ from your phone"
Remember how much fun Napster was, back in the day?
Yeah, well Napster is officially gone now.
What about LimeWire? KaZaa? Yeah, you shouldn’t be using those either.
Nope, whether you agree with the legalities (or lack thereof) of those sites, none of the old fun “file sharing” apps and websites are valid anymore, thanks to the movie and music industry.
And the proliferation of $0.99 songs and apps on the iTunes store. That kinda helped a little bit.
Of course, you always have that peer-to-peer sharing via BitTorrent, which is a legitimate way to legally share giant files amongst people who need them. Unfortunately, a few bad apples had to go and ruin BitTorrent for everyone else too, by using BT as a way to throw around pirated movies and music.
Continue reading "If you have ever downloaded anything illegally, you may want to visit this site"
TextAppeal – For Guys! – The Ultimate Texting Guide
A quick survey: how many of you regularly send texts while driving or otherwise sitting behind the wheel of your car?
Yeah, we thought so.
Texting while driving has increased 50% over 2011. 20% of all drivers say that they’ve done this, despite laws and other regulations in place that make it an offense to do so.
Continue reading "Texting while driving will kill you"
Digital Boudoir Photography:
A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Fabulous Images of Any Woman
As is almost always the case with technology, porn leads the way.
It was the case with VHS vs Beta video tapes. It’s been the case with online payments. And it’s been the case with social media.
Porn is a big money-making industry, and the Internet has just made it easy for Anyone to do it. And we’re not just talking about those leaked celebrity sex tapes, either.
Continue reading "How much money do porn websites make?"
Web Watch was visiting an office a few weeks ago when the people we were visiting were trying to log onto the shared computer in the conference room.
They thought they knew the password, but something wasn’t right. After about 20 minutes of trying, they called their IT guy for help. He walked in, went over to the computer, and read the correct password off of a Post-It Note that had been taped to the machine specifically for this purpose.
This was in a high-security building, in a room that only a few people had keys for — and the password was taped to the machine for anyone to use. It probably wouldn’t be a problem, as many people would need to use that same computer, but we’ve been told for years not to post passwords on Post-It Notes.
Continue reading "The Worst Passwords for 2011"
Web Watch knows that we’re a bit of a computer nerd. Some would say that “geek” would be the more appropriate term. To paraphrase a recent episode of CSI, a “freak” is someone who is naturally talented in unusual ways; a “geek” is one who learns how to do the same things.
So we’ll go with “geek”, as all computer knowledge is learned – whether it be via formal school education or by tinkering around with gadgets and on the Internet for hours/days/weeks/years on end to see how things works and to make thinks work better.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were nerds, and they’re proud of it.
Which brings us to our initial question: How big of a geek are you?
Continue reading "How big of a nerd are you? Try taking the 2011 Geek Test"
So you have your very own Twitter account (like we do, at @webgangsta). And you spend time throughout the day sending out various tweets about whatever is going on in your life.
Some of the things you tweet about are about food you’ve eaten and music you’re listening to. Some of the things you tweet about are work-related, such as telling your followers about some cool new thing that’s up on your company website.
Continue reading "Do you tweet work-related stuff? You may not own your Twitter account…"
Starting an iPhone Application Business For Dummies
With all the talk these days of mobile devices and people making millions of dollars by selling apps like ANGRY BIRDS (just a reminder, iPhone app developers aren’t making that much money), the question keeps coming up about whether you should be making an iPhone app or not?
Continue reading "Here’s why you shouldn’t be focused on making iPhone apps"
We all have those friends who tell us, “please don’t email me about that website. We’ve seen it already.”
Web Watch will admit — while we try to make every post we share with you a new and timely one, every once in a while we dig back into our website archives to bring you a link to a site or something else on the web that may be a little dusty in terms of timeliness.
Hey, it happens. We’ve shared literally thousands of links with Web Watch readers over the years — a few of the more common sites may filter through on occasion.
Continue reading "Before you tweet that web address, you should find out how fresh that site is"
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Is that YouTube video legal? Check out the YouTube Copyright School to learn more
Harry Potter and the Order of the Court:
The J.K. Rowling Copyright Case and the Question of Fair Use
Copyright is an important aspect of online life today, and not very many people understand it.
“The Internet is FREE”, they claim. “Everything on the Internet is free for the taking!”
No, not so much. Rule number one of Internet legalities: Just because someone posted it on the Internet doesn’t mean that there is no copyright or that the material is free to be shared/taken.
Fact is, the very act of writing something yourself gives you an automatic copyright to that material that YOU created. Let’s emphasize that YOU created portion again. It has to be original work from YOU for you to claim the copyright – and even then, you can only claim the copyright on the portion that YOU edited.
Even large mass-edited projects like Wikipedia have a copyright… but Wikipedia explicitly says that the individual Wikipedia editors can’t claim copyright on the text that is contributed directly to Wikipedia articles — just adding the text to Wikipedia grants Wikipedia a licence to make that text available for public use. (Content that is already copyrighted outside of Wikipedia and still contributed by the original author falls under a different set of copyright guidelines — be sure to read that WP article for all the copyright details that may pertain to you.)
Continue reading "Is that YouTube video legal? Check out the YouTube Copyright School to learn more" »