By Brian Livingston The market dominance of Amazon in online retail is well known. But what’s less understood is the effect the corporate giant’s expansion into superfast delivery services will have on the US Postal Service and private parcel companies. Marc Wulfraat has extensively studied Amazon’s plans in the United States and 22 other countries…
By Brian Livingston There are times when I’m power-mad — I just want the biggest battery available to power my laptop, my phone, and heck, maybe a cup warmer for my coffee, too. I’m not going to drag around a cart with a propane generator just so I can compute. Fortunately, power banks that can…
From the February 8th version of the AskWoody Newsletter By Brian Livingston It’s a well-known subset of Murphy’s Law: Your Internet service provider will go down at the worst possible time for you. When my ISP goes dark, whatever boat I was trying to float becomes pretty much dead in the water. On occasions like…
From the February 1st Plus newsletter By Brian Livingston In the computer industry, too many things that should be simple and easy are instead complicated and hard for the average person to understand. Take Wi-Fi routers — please! In my column on January 25, I showed you a way to protect your most essential computing devices…
From the January 25th AskWoody Plus Newsletter By Brian Livingston I never thought it would get this bad. But it has. There are now more Internet of Things (IoT) devices than there are people on the planet. And the vast majority of those IoT gadgets are wide open, easily taken over by malicious hackers and…
From the January 18 edition of the AskWoodyPlus newsletter By Brian Livingston It’s hard as hell to find out the best device you can obtain to connect to an ISP. This can save you hundreds of dollars that you’d ordinarily pay over time for “renting” one. In last week’s column, I gave you Steps 1, 2, and…
By Brian Livingston From the January 11 AskWoodyPlus Newsletter: If there’s anything I hate, it’s paying $15 or $20 a month for something I don’t want or need. Now our political system — such as it is — has done something about it. A law passed by Congress went into effect just a few days…
