• Tip of the Week: Super Fast website addresses
• Headwhack of the Week: How do I know if a website is safe?
• Geek Speak of the Week: Cache
• Small Business Tip of the Week: Scrubbing data from old computers
• News: Charitable Credit Card Thieves???
• News: Hackers to liberate the iPhone
• News: Where are my kid and my car?
• Weekly Advice Column: Buying tips for Digital Photo Frames
• This Week's Radio Show: E-mail Pet Peeves!

Tip of the Week: Super Fast website addresses

Depending upon how long you have been surfing the web, you may still be in the habit of typing "www.", then the name of the site, then ".com" or even more comical is watching a n00B (newbie) type a complete web address into Google instead of the address bar at the top of the browser.  You can generally leave out the "www" for most websites these days, but here is a tip that will make all of it even easier:

Simply type the name of the site you wish to visit without any of the www or .com and then hit Ctrl-Enter, which will automatically fill in the www and .com for you! (Works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.)

Headwhack of the Week: How do I know if a website is safe?

We continually warn you about rogue websites that will attempt to perform a "drive-by download" silently in the background when you simply visit the home page, which begs the question: How the heck am I supposed to know if a website is safe or not?"

In general, we recommend you steer clear of sites that are offing anything that sounds too good to be true, but another safeguard that you can put in place is a program that will inspect every website you try to visit and stop your access when it detects anything suspicious.  It turns out our favorite Internet filtering program is also a great tool to keep you (and anyone else that uses your computer) from going to sites that clearly have the traits of a malicious page.  The best news is that it's FREE and available at:  www.k9webprotection.com