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Ports are used for communication in computing. It would go too far to describe the technical details involved but you can think of ports as doors that allow interaction with a device.

Common ports are TCP port 21 ftp, port 23 for Telnet or port 80 for the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).

While it makes sense to keep certain ports open on your system, as you would not be able to use services associated with them otherwise, it is usually a good idea to make sure only ports that you require are open.

Most Windows PCs ship without installation disc or any other form of physical product that you can use to re-install the system. While you do get options to create recovery discs, it is not the same thing.

The same is true when you purchase upgrades online from Microsoft. You don't get a disc anymore unless you purchase it directly, and even if you do, you will notice that some versions of the operating system are not available as physical media.

It is unclear why Microsoft made it difficult in the past to download installation media directly from the company.

A lot can go wrong if you are using web browsers to watch streaming videos on sites such as Twitch, Dailymotion, UStream, Livestream or the thousands of other sites that offer them.

First, you need to use a browser or plugin that is supported. If a site requires Flash or Silverlight for example, you cannot do anything about it but to install the plugin to watch the streams in your browser.

You may notice heavy resource use while streaming, lags or even pauses, and don't get me started on the security implications of running those plugins in the browser.

Mozilla added the new tracking protection feature to Firefox Nightly for Windows, Linux and Mac systems in November 2014.

The feature uses block lists of domains and sites that are known to track users. When enabled, communication is blocked to those servers on the Internet to improve user privacy.

The pdf format is highly popular and there are so many third-party tools and programs available that manipulate pdf documents in one way or the other that it is difficult to keep an overview of them all.

If you need to crop documents, you may want to take a look at the open source program Briss for Windows.

Note: Briss requires the Java Runtime Environment on the system or it won't work.

It allows you to extract contents from existing pdf documents easily by selecting them in the program interface.

Email is without doubt not the best format when it comes to file transfers. While it works great for small files, mail server limitations prevent it from being useful for larger files.

Companies like Google or Mozilla added features to their clients to use file hosting services to overcome the issue.

Secure Folders is a free program for Windows that is available as a portable version and installer. It can be used to hide or lock folders, set them to read-only or block the execution of files.

If you share your computer at times, for instance in your family or when friends or colleagues ask you whether they can access it, then you may want an option to protect certain files or folders from accidental exposure.

While Mozilla is still hard at work to integrate the multi-process architecture e10s in Firefox which is a prerequisite for sandboxing in the browser, add-on developers are already one step ahead of the organization.

Microsoft plans to launch the Windows 10 operating system in 2015. One of the changes that the company introduces in it is a new start menu that mixes the classic Windows 7 start menu with app-specific features such as tiles.

While that is a step forward for users who disliked the removal of the start menu in Windows 8, it may not be enough for some.

Microsoft added customization options to the Windows 10 start menu that users of the operating system can make use of to remove all app tiles if they so desire.

Security and privacy is not really at the top of the list of features that most consumers want when they select a smartphone or a smartwatch.

It does play a huge role for some users, many ComTeks readers for example, but the masses seem more interested in looks and having the latest and greatest features than anything else.

Digital comic books are often provided as simple archives in the formats cbz, cbr or cbt to name a few which include all the pages of the comics as images.

That's why it is possible to open these files in compression software like 7-Zip to access individual images or extract them all.

The images that are included in a comic book archive may have different resolutions and quality levels usually ranging from a width of 1024 to 1920.

Google Chrome is a great browser, but sometimes it just starts acting odd. Then we are left with no choice but to re-install it to bring back order. But at times clicking on the Uninstall Google Chrome shortcut in the Start menu has no effect, neither does clicking on the “Remove” button in Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel. Then how to remove it manually? Is there any way?

Microsoft revealed in May 2014 that it is working on real-time translation for Skype. While machine translation is not a new concept, real-time translation of voice communication in this magnitude is.

Translation services such as Google Translate or Bing Translator have been part of the Internet for many years. They can be used to translate text or web pages from one language into the other.

Firefox is not only available for desktop systems but also for mobile operating systems such as Android (and probably iOS as well in the near future).

This means that Firefox users can sync their data, passwords and bookmarks for example, between devices so that they are available everywhere.

While it is possible to sync passwords and make use of them, and to save new passwords to Firefox for Android, password management itself is not available right now.

Microsoft rolled out an update recently that changed the interface of the Internet Explorer Developer Tools significantly.

Most modern browsers ship with a set of developer tools included. These tools can be used for a variety of purposes, from checking what gets loaded when you connect to a website to a website's source code and JavaScript that gets executed.