Welcome to the 15th year of "Double Click." It has been a pleasure giving you computer and tech information each week since January, 2002.
Each January I review the sites I wrote about during the previous year. If the site addresses are too long for print I have shortened them using a branded short domain from Bitly. Read more about it from the following link if you are interested. The links will be preceded by "rd.dblclx.com" followed by various letters and numbers. Copy them, then paste them in your browser’s address bar to visit the sites. They are case sensitive so be careful.
Here they are in their order of appearance with short descriptions of each.
- Secunia, secunia.com – an application updater similar to Windows Update but this is for your individual applications.
- FileHippo App Manager, rd.dblclx.com/1R6077Y – similar to Secunia but much easier to use.
- Chrome 54% (rd.dblclx.com/1Uf9jX0), Firefox 15% (firefox.com), Microsoft Internet Explorer 15% (included with all versions of Windows) – these are the three most popular web browsers.
- Google.com, no explanation needed.
- Ninite.com, an easy way to build a new computer and get many programs set up with one download and one installation.
- Internet Crime Complaint Center, ic3.gov/complaint – here is where to go when you need to notify the government about "bad" sites and scams.
- YouTube for Kids at the Google Play Store, rd.dblclx.com/kidsoutube – where you get all of your Android applications.
- Avast.com – my favorite antivirus for the current time.
- Malwarebytes.org – a vital add-on app to go with your antivirus.
- Facebook.com – you probably are already using this site, if not, do not so you can keep your life.
- Coffitivity.com, RainyMood.com – two programs that add background noise on your computer which may (or may not) help you concentrate on what you are doing. I like a real coffee shop myself.
- DoubleClicks.info – probably one of the most overlooked but most informative sites on the web for computer questions and answers.
- Amazon.com – you know this one but for Christmas alone the Seattle-based company added 3 million new Amazon Prime subscribers only in the third week of December. (A gross income of almost $300 million.)
- Class-Central.com and Coursera.org (MOOC – Massive Open Online Course
- Game Oldies, game-oldies.com – you may be able to find your old favorites here whether, GameBoy, Nintendo NES, Atari, etc. Arkanoid was my favorite.
- Flux, justgetflux.com – this uses your computer’s location and system time to adapt the colors to warmer colors at night and sunlight-like colors during the day (the normal setting). Supposedly better for your brain and eyes.
- Kaspersky Software Updater (kaspersky.com/free-tools) SUMo (kcsoftwares.com) Update Notifier (rd.dblclx.com/1O6gKMq) – all good software "updaters" like FileHippo mentioned at the beginning however, I believe FileHippo is the easiest to use and finds many apps.
- Google Chrome Browser Extensions, rd.dblclx.com/ChromeExtens – this is where you can find many good extensions for the Chrome Browser so it can do more for you. I listed many in the article from June, 2015.
- PCDecrapifier, pcdecrapifier.com– this standalone app removes junk programs and PUPs from your system.
This gets us through June of 2015, next week the last six months of 2015 links. Thanks for reading the column and emailing me with your great questions. I love writing it and hearing from you!
