Bored?
Looking for something fun to do?
Why not take a few minutes to poke around with Google?
(“Hey, Web Watch – we already know how to use Google,” you say. Of course you do. But here’s how to have FUN with Google search…)
Continue reading "Feeling Lucky? How to use Google for Fun!"
So the other day, Web Watch was out on the road and needed to get from our hotel to a restaurant a few miles away.
We definitely had choices available, as taking a taxi wasn’t our only option — and we didn’t necessarily need to have door-to-door service as being dropped off anywhere in the general neighborhood would have been perfectly acceptable.
But being on a tight budget, we wanted to know ahead of time how much our taxi ride was going to cost us.
Continue reading "How to find out how much a taxi ride will cost you"
Inbox Zero.
Web Watch hears this phrase thrown about at the office by managers who feel overwhelmed by the constant influx of arriving email messages.
All they want to do is get their email inbox to read “0 messages”…. and hopefully keep it that way.
Web Watch understands the desire to have 0 waiting messages, but INBOX ZERO is a goal that not everyone can achieve — especially us, who receives upwards of 1000 emails a day across multiple email accounts. Granted, the vast majority of those messages are ones that can either be filed away or deleted without even being read or addressed — but that still is going to leave a few hundred emails each day that still need to be processed in some manner.
Yeah, achieving INBOX ZERO isn’t always possible for everybody…
Continue reading "How to reach Inbox Zero"
“How much is my domain name worth?”
It’s a common question that Web Watch is often asked, and surprisingly comes up in more casual conversations than you may think one would experience in an average week.
Of course, let’s get the important piece out of the way: you DO own a domain name or two, don’t you?
If not, you know you can always buy one from any number of domain name registrars that you may find online.
Right. So now you have that ultimate, desirable domain name. So what next? Are domain names really good investments?
Continue reading "How to find out how much your domain name is worth"
Admit it – you’ve looked at naked people online, even if it was only accidentally.
And there are some of you who purposefully go out of your way to look for online porn photos. It’s okay, we won’t report you — looking at naked adults of consenting age and profession is perfectly healthy… or so we’ve been told by the collegiate Human Sexuality 101 class we took a few years ago.
But it seems that everywhere you look online, you have to be wary of running across Yet Another Porn Site. Heck, just turn off Google Safesearch while viewing image search results, and you’ll be inundated with naked bodies across your screen no matter what your original search term happened to be.
Which brings up one question that Web Watch was asked recently:
The other day, Web Watch was talking with an Internet-savvy friend of ours about the cool stuff we see online, and they surprised us by not knowing anything about the latest smartphone gaming craze, DRAW SOMETHING.
Seriously? The game has been out for over 2 months now, been all over the news. And while we haven’t explicitly mentioned it here, we figured that many of our faithful Web Watch readers had already installed it over their copy of Angry Birds.
What it really showed us was that our friend was living in their own little bubble world that they had created, to isolate themselves from the ‘net fluffernutter so they could concentrate on the really good stuff.
You know, kinda like what we do here every day at Web Watch.
Continue reading "25 Ways to Tell that You’re Living in a Bubble"
Have you ever sexted?
You know, sent a sexy text message to someone?
Yes, “sexting” is all the rage these days, apparently. Everyone from schoolkids to businessmen and government employees are sending naughty pictures of themselves with abandon, to everyone and anyone they know.
Web Watch has talked about how much money porn websites make, including those sites that are the beneficiary of randomly sent sexy text photos.
If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, take a good look at who your friends and followers are.
Take a look at who you’re following yourself.
Chances are, YOU DON’T KNOW EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE PEOPLE IN YOUR CIRCLE OF CONTACTS IN REAL LIFE.
Yup, IRL doesn’t apply to your social network. It’s just a bunch of names of people that you have no idea who they really are.
Should you be surprised about this? Probably not.
Continue reading "Almost every Facebook friend and Twitter follower you have is imaginary"
As long-time Web Watch readers know, we’ve been a huge fan and support of TiVo over the years. We’re all set to pony up and buy the Tivo Premiere Elite
But that was all before all the APPLE TV rumors started to crop up again this week.
And if these rumors about what 2012 will bring in terms of an Apple living room experience, we may need to reevaluate our decision to invest in another TiVo, no matter how much it pains us to consider this as an option.
So let’s dive into what the rumors are, as well as present our own wish list of what the ultimate APPLE TV experience should be, after the break.
Continue reading "Will Apple Buy TiVo?"
Talking on the Phone While Sitting on the Toilet
Show of hands — how many of you have used your cell phone while using the bathroom?
Web Watch has one friend who does most of their best talking while sitting… although they are polite enough to not flush while the call is going on (we hope that they are only being that courteous while at home rather than being THAT person at the office who doesn’t flush).
Women, we can understand — they’re used to having full-blown conversations with the other gaggle of women who go to the bathroom en masse. So picking up the phone to take care of business while they’re actually Taking Care of Business is not a surprise. But men have that unwritten rule about no talking in the restroom, so when some D-Bag come barrelling in, yammering away on their Bluetooth headset as if they’re More Important Than Everyone Else kinda ruins the silent sanctity of the Men’s Room.
Continue reading "Read this if you’re wondering whether your cell phone is covered with fecal matter"
Showroom: The Saga of a Family, a Car Business and the Seven Deadly Sins
By now, Web Watch is sure that you’ve heard of the term “showrooming“, where consumers go to Target, Best Buy, or other major retailers simply to browse the aisles – cell phone in hand – with the explicit purpose to NOT buy anything that day.
Web Watch will admit, we’ve done this on plenty of occasions: we go to an electronics department to look for a specific item — maybe so we can get a close-up of the box, or a better idea of the specs — and we do our own little bit of online price comparison.
Continue reading "Are you a Showroomer? When retail stores fight back against the Internet, we all lose"
When it comes to Customer Service, what retail companies come to mind?
We’ve heard countless stories about companies like Costco taking back anything that they sell, no matter how long ago you purchased it… but while Costco is an awesome place to shop, the long lines and lack of salespeople on the shopping floor can turn some potential shoppers off, as getting out of there with a purchase can be a bit more difficult than it needs to be.
Web Watch enjoys the staff at the local Home Depot and Lowe’s, but there are times when both stores struggle to answer our seemingly simple questions.
We do’t ask for much – we just want each shopping experience to be superior to the last outing.
Continue reading "Amazon.com has the Best Customer Service. (Zappos ranks high, too)"
The Erotic Engine: How Pornography has Powered Mass Communication, from Gutenberg to Google
In 2006, the US adult industry made over $13 billion in revenue.
In revenue, porn brings in more money than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, and Earthlink combined.
Let’s say that last word again: combined.
Yes, online (and elsewhere) we can safely say, “porn is king”. Just like the porn industry is credited with the rise of VHS over Beta, the porn industry is also credited with pushing the technology envelope and make today’s Internet what it has become.
Continue reading "How much money do porn sites make?"
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"
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Has your website been plagiarized?
Web Watch has been around for quite a number of years now, having presented our faithful readers with thousands of websites, videos, news articles, and other tidbits of helpful information along the way.
And with that type of success online, we’re also subjected to having our content stolen.
It’s true — and we’ve had to file cease & desist notices to a number of websites that copied our original content and presented it as their own.
Silly rabbit – just because it’s posted on the Internet doesn’t mean that it’s free for the taking.
Continue reading "Has your website been plagiarized?" »