Articles by Patrick Nelson

Setting up a brand-new phone can involve numerous aggravations, but if you don't rely on one of the majors like Yahoo and Gmail for email, one of the worst is surely the manual email server configuration. If you use a customized domain name, your Android device's email client is likely to need this extra step This could become an even more prevalen...

Having been asked by a neighbor to help haul her kayak onto her SUV one weekend morning last summer and finding it quite difficult -- that's with two of us doing the lifting -- I saw myLifter as an obvious choice for this week's TechNewsWorld Crowdfunding Spotlight. myLifter is a smartphone-controlled mini-winch now looking for funding on Kickstarter...

Books in a multimedia environment bring certain advantages not available on paper alone or via classic audiobooks. Among those advantages are audio accompaniment for text and cloud syncing of notes and highlights. Add to that the lower distribution costs of multimedia over paper and the browser becomes a good tool for books. You don't need an e-re...

Twitter has been rolling out some new features in recent months. Two of the most useful are crisis alerts and the ability to preschedule your tweets for marketing purposes Here's how to use these handy new tools....

Small, lightweight and efficient solar panels coupled with lithium batteries are making inroads into the outdoor retail market as a solution for charging mobile devices. ...

Air Display by Avatron Software is available for US$9.99 in the Google Play Store....

Some years ago, an antinuclear activist named Phil Zimmermann created a data encryption program for computers. He designed a key-generation and encryption-and-decryption system called "PGP," or Pretty Good Privacy, for the bulletin board systems that were the precursors to forums, email and the Web Civil libertarians and e-commerce lapped it up ba...

Despite the ever-increasing sizes of mobile-device screens -- many smartphones are now close to or even more than 5 inches -- it's still a pokey and fiddly affair to configure them -- or even look at them, for that matter. Stabbing around those minuscule on-screen keyboards can be a tedious affair However, there are PC-based solutions out there tha...

If you've ever had the opportunity to sit through a retailer's comparative demonstration of high-end audio equipment, you'll know that the more expensive the living room audio gear gets, the better it sounds. Amazing, but true -- they're not lying The big problem, once you've sat through one of these comparisons, is that you're going to come to the...

Kubo is a cargo-carrying electric scooter now seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter that offers potential far beyond the realm of personal transportation Ask any e-commerce analyst what the hottest upcoming trend will be in e-commerce circles next year -- the Amazons and eBays of this world -- and you're likely to get the same answer: Same-day or eve...

GoToMyPC is available for free in the Google Play Store, but accessing machines costs US$9.95 per computer. A one- month trial is available....

In this week's All Things Appy, we take a look at the top five free tools for Firefox that will help you navigate the polyglot world The PC-based browser is well-suited to languages, and in this week's piece we recommend the best pop-up dictionary along with a multilanguage search tool and highly efficient translator engines that are superior to ha...

Windows 8's blah reception from many computer users may have been due at least in part to a peculiar trait that we humans have, and that's our obsession with improvement Improving our lot has been a fixation throughout virtually all of human history, so it shouldn't come as any great surprise that Microsoft couldn't help itself when it became time ...

Here's a new take on the point-and-shoot camera: It's the throw-and-catch camera. Called "Panono," this throwable, panoramic device contains multiple fixed-focus cameras that shoot simultaneously, allowing you to capture "everything in every direction," in the words of its creators, who are now seeking funding on Indiegogo....

Here's a look at the top five free Windows 8 apps for the home Among the offerings covered in this week's All Things Appy are apps for Windows 8-based home-tech hacking on the cheap -- or not so cheap -- plus cooking, home repair, gawking and some spiritual guidance....

One of the great things about Twitter is the ability to keep abreast of what's happening. Whether it's local news, influential tweeters or buddies, you can quickly get a snapshot of what's going on that matters to you I've written before about how to get breaking news on Twitter, but the approach I discussed there requires the user's intervention.

If you think about the failings of existing game controls next time you're playing, you might come up with touch feedback -- the game's tactile responses to your actions. ...

Silent Text is available for free in the Google Play Store; monthly charges begin at US$9.95. The Tibetan government, law firms in Thailand and human rights groups in Sudan are all using a relatively new encrypted communications tool -- one that fits easily, if not cheaply, onto your smartphone....

Apple was one of the forerunners in bringing the power of music production to the masses. Recording and music-making gear that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars and occupy dedicated studios first shrank to home-studio-capable sizes when powered by Apple computers in the 80s, and now it can be found on a smartphone or an iPad....

Social media are becoming an ever-increasing part of marketing. If you've been finding one-user, consumer-oriented clients for Twitter and Facebook cumbersome for your business, it may well be time to move over to a social media management tool like Hootsuite These kinds of tools allow you to manage more than one social network; schedule posts like...