What's New

I run the excellent Autoruns regularly to block programs, services, drivers and whatnot from starting automatically on the system.

While I do take good care of that usually during installation, there are always situations where programs are added to the autostart without me having any control over that process.

While I could run something like WinPatrol to be notified about important system changes, I don't usually for a variety of reasons.

Most people have goals they would like to achieve. Lose some weight, gain muscle, learn a language, travel to Australia or Mars.

The difficult thing is not to come up with those goals but to walk the walk.

Most goals are achieved by working on them on a regular basis. If you want to lose weight for instance, you cannot just eat nothing on a day but give up on the idea on the next and eat a super-sized pizza.

Habbits is a free application for Android that tries to motivate you in a special way. The main idea behind the program is to link activities to create chains.

The Firefox web browser is configured to download and install updates automatically. Updates includes the browser engine and core browser files but also extensions and themes.

Firefox users who have not modified the behavior don't need to do anything apart from restarting the browser when the prompt to do so appears on the desktop.

Up until now it was quite difficult to get your hands on a proper installation disc or USB flash drive to install Windows 8.1 on a PC.

While you can buy a Windows 8.1 DVD, you don't get media if you upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 for example. If you then decide to format the system and start anew or move everything to a new PC, you may have noticed that you need to install Windows 8 first to update it to Windows 8.1.

There are still times where I use text messaging instead of a chat application when I need to contact someone, for instance if they don't use messaging apps.

This can be the case when they don't have a smartphone so that they cannot use WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other apps of that type, or if they prefer not to use those apps.

QKSMS is a free application for Android devices that improves the default text messaging app that these devices ship with.

Internet users have quite a few options at their disposal when it comes to blocking sites on the web. They can use the hosts file for example which blocks them on a system-wide level, configure firewall rules for the same effect, use a DNS provider that allows the filtering, or block specific urls or sites in a program directly.

The last option is not overly effective, especially when it comes to blocking sites so that others, children for instance, cannot access them.

Registry Cleaners don't have the best reputation thanks to scareware products and advertisement that goes along with it.

The majority of programs promise that they improve performance, resolve errors and other issues, and improve the system's stability and while there may be edge cases were users may see a positive effect after cleaning the Registry, it usually does not have an effect on a running system.

E10s, Electrolysis or multi-process Firefox has been in development for a long time but has been prioritized only recently by Mozilla (again) after not being in focus for some time.

Firefox users on the Nightly development channel have two options to try out the new multi-process mode in the browser. Either create a new e10s window by tapping on the Alt-key and selecting File > New e10s window, or by enabling it completely in the browser by toggling a preference under about:config.

If you manipulate pdf documents in one way or the other regularly, then you may have come across PDF Stumbler before as it ships with a collection of tools for just that.

I reviewed the program back in 2013 and found it to be a great program and the majority of commenters on the original review seem to agree with me on this.

If you want to convert media files on a Windows PC you will usually have to use third-party software for that as the operating system does not really support a lot of video formats by default.

There are however plenty of reasons why you may want to convert video files. From reducing file sizes to playing them on other devices such as mobile phones or DVD players.