TechByter Worldwide (formerly Technology Corner) with Bill Blinn

TechByter Worldwide will return on 1 January 2017. Thanks for your support this year and best wishes for 2017.

Landscape Pro isn't something for your garden. Instead, it's a new application that will improve your photos, and not only landscape photos. If you'd like to look like a video or HTML5 genius, Adobe's free on-line Spark application will do the trick and, if you're a Creative Cloud member, you'll get some extra benefits. In Short Circuits: Tis the season ... for fraud with a capital F. You'll find...

A new browser from the developers who created Opera may be worth your review because it offers several imaginative features, but beware the bugs. When you want to print a huge image for display on a wall, upsampling is helpful and an Alien Skin application makes quick work of the task. In Short Circuits: Amazon is testing a new kind of grocery store in Seattle, one with no cash registers and no ch...

You can help crooks plant malware on your computer, but I can't exactly recommend it. I can, however, share some warning signs to watch for. The 2017 version of Adobe Dreamweaver has some exciting new features, but also some disappointing bugs. In Short Circuits: Research suggests that many people are willing to use on-line chat sessions (and even automated "chatbots") instead of working with huma...

Happy Thanksgiving! This is last week's program.

Alien Skin's Eye Candy allows photographers to add unique effects to photos, but it really shines in the hands of designers. After using Firefox as my primary browser for more years that I can remember, I started thinking about swapping it out for something else. In Short Circuits: Running out-of-date apps on a mobile device is just as dangerous as doing that on a desktop or notebook computer -- m...

The 2017 version of Photoshop adds surprising features in surprising locations. Microsoft goes after designers and artists with its new Surface Studio, but makes some of the same mistakes it made with the Surface Pro. In Short Circuits: Microsoft patched 68 vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday, which also happened to be election day. Kaspersky Lab says that there's a shortage of people who want to sea...

If you're a creative in any sort of media, Adobe wants you. Sometimes Windows users need to boot into Safe Mode, but getting there is more complicated than it used to be. In Short Circuits: Microsoft is unhappy that Google released information about an exploit that can be used against Windows users. Have you considered a career in the exciting field of COBOL programming? In Spare Parts (only on th...

Last week's distributed denial of service attack that rendered large parts of the internet useless was only a preview. There's more to come. You might want to consider using a DNS service that's not provided by your internet service provider. In Short Circuits: Alien Skin's SnapArt4 makes it easy to add striking effects to your photographs. Some websites invite hacker attacks. Police in Europe hav...

TechSmith has released updates to both Windows and MacOS versions of Camtasia, with a host of new features in both and narrowing the gap between the MacOS version and the Windows version. Microsoft plans a significant change to how system services are handled in Windows and the result will be improved reliability when the changes are released in 2017. In Short Circuits: About half of all cloud-bas...

If you look at a display of Wi-Fi signals in your area, you should find that they're all on channels 1, 6, and 11, but you probably won't because somebody misunderstands how the system works. Apple's operating system for notebooks and desktop systems is now called MacOS and a new version has some useful features -- but good luck getting the update file downloaded. In Short Circuits: I was reminded...

Whether you use it as a plug-in for Photoshop or Lightroom, or as a standalone application, Alien Skin's latest version of Exposure is a winner. Some people love Firefox. Some hate it. Many do both. I have some suggestions for making Firefox a bit more lovable. In Short Circuits: Why backup is so important. That dating application on your smart phone might be giving away a lot more information tha...

You have a smart phone, but it repeatedly accepts calls from scammers and spamers. That's dumb, so let's fix it. Are you thinking about replacing a desktop computer with a notebook? You can do it, but be prepared for some surprises. In Short Circuits: Despite what you may have seen on the internet, Brad Pitt is still alive. Microsoft wants to be part of your future connected car. Tracking your sle...

What happens if you turn on the computer and it won't boot? Now is a good time to prepare for that somewhat unlikely possibility. When you're using a computer that isn't yours, having a thumb drive with a bunch of portable apps can be helpful and obtaining them is easy. In Short Circuits: Some things that look like fraud might not be, but paying close attention to the details is really important a...

Windows 10 was, to many people, the best version of Windows ever and the Anniversary update made it even better. Whether you agree or not, there's always room for change. The change might be an improvement (if it does something you want) or not. So this week we'll take a look at some of the changes you can make to Windows 10. In Short Circuits: Training for dangerous jobs is itself dangerous and v...

September 11th is an appropriate date for discussing the threat posed by having our own technology turned against us. There's nothing at all amusing in this week's program, but we should start thinking about what the next attack will be like because there will be one. In Short Circuits: Bring your own device (BYOD) to the office and you'll expose your employer to new threats, but that's nothing co...

Recently I rediscovered an anti-spam application that I had used until Windows 10 was installed and I forgot to reinstall Mailwasher Pro. It's back on my list of favorites. Maxthon's new MX5 browser has some winning features, particularly for website developers. But there are many features that any user will appreciate. In Short Circuits: Malwarebytes has a new feature in the premium version that...

If you've upgraded to the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10, how's it working for you? Results have generally been good, but there are problems. We'll also consider what passes for public relations at Microsoft. In Short Circuits: Trusting Jellyhead Industries and a new plan to eliminate spam. Then in Spare Parts (only on the website): An appealing offer from Opera for Android users, the 2017 edit...

If you use an Android tablet or smart phone to send and receive email, there's an app you should take a look at. Business email compromise attacks have become the in thing for scammers. In Short Circuits No operating system is perfectly safe, but a surprising find shows that even operating systems that are considered to be more secure sometimes aren't. USB-C is just around the corner and faster sp...

People who are looking for ways to learn but aren't concerned about earning a degree from learning have lots of free resources to choose from on the internet. Analysis of pay-per-install schemes reveals how these annoying ride-along bits of crapware can be added to your computer when you think you're installing just a single application and how the business monetizes itself. In Short Circuits: Thi...

If you connect your mobile device to a public Wi-Fi network and you don't yet have a virtual private network application, you're asking for trouble. I've found what looks like the perfect solution. The good old scams were better. A fake Nigerian prince could be spotted at 50 paces, but now ransomware can take over your computer and the crooks don't always give it back when you pay the ransom. In S...

We've looked at various components in Xara's collection for photographers, website developers, publication managers, and graphic designers. This week it's Xara Designer Pro X365's turn. That's the program for all of those people. In Short Circuits Even a much-diminished Yahoo was worth nearly $5 billion to Verizon. Don't panic, but PornHub has been hacked. There's a good reason and I'll explain wh...

Apple makes hardware. Microsoft makes hardware. Each of them gets some things right and some things wrong. Let's take a look. The operating systems that run on the hardware also have pluses and minuses. We'll consider Windows, OSX, and Linux. In Short Circuits: Are you ready for the Windows 10 anniversary edition? Antivirus developers seems to be busy acquiring each other. In Spare Parts (only on...

With the help of a few useful plug-ins, Thunderbird is a highly capable email application that runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux. One of the most useful utilities in Windows, the Event Viewer, is used by fraudsters to frighten users. Here's what you need to know to avoid the con. In Short Circuits ... The Washington Post offers a year's worth of free on-line access to anyone who subscribes to almost...

How secure is your Wi-Fi router? [An editing error resulted in my swapping the correct term (gigahertz) with an incorrect term (gigabit) on the podcast.] You're probably not running a completely open router, but there may be ways to improve it. The podcast is now 10 years old -- 500 episodes -- and TechByter (formerly Technology Corner) has been around for 30 years, so I can't help but look back a...