News - Part 9

Top Five Venmo Security Problems – Does Your Digital Payment Service Have Them, Too?

* * * Today’s post is brought to you by yet another unannounced $6.99 sale on SD Amazon Instant Videos, featuring many Oscar winners and box office hits. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Venmo is the hip new electronic payments service owned and operated by PayPal, which in turn is owned and operated by eBay. Venmo has been generating buzz and gaining in popularity ever since it launched, but the convenience of being able to use the Venmo mobile app to instantly transfer funds to pretty much anyone with an email address or phone number may not be worth the risks. Last July the California Department of Business Oversight ordered Venmo to address twenty different security and operational problems. Here are the top five that are of most concern to consumers. 1….

What’s In The February 2015 Loot Crate

What’s Loot Crate? Loot Crate is a monthly subscription service that delivers a box filled with theme-of-the-month awesomeness to your door each month for $13.37 + S&H (which is about $6 anywhere in the continental U.S., though they also ship to other countries), and the contents are guaranteed to have a minimum retail value of $40. Even though it’s a subscription service, there’s no minimum subscription period and it’s very easy to cancel your subscription at any time—the Loot Crate site’s FAQ page has a direct link to their cancellation page. Digital Media Mom Takes One For The Team This is Digital Media Mom, where I am all about getting my money’s worth and would never personally recommend a product or service that doesn’t meet my very high standards for quality and value. I’ve put up my own money to become a subscriber so I would be able to tell you myself whether or not…

How To Clear Your Amazon Browsing History

* * * the VideoSecu ML531BE TV Wall Mount for most 22″-55″ LED LCD Plasma Flat Screens – up to 88 lb, currently being offered for $29.59 on Amazon—that’s 76% off its regular price of $125. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * You Were Looking At WHAT?! By default, Amazon tracks your browsing history and uses that information to present you with “recommended” and “related” items right there on the front page of the Amazon site. This can be a problem if you share a computer. Maybe you were browsing potential birthday gifts for someone else in the household, and you were hoping to keep those gift ideas to yourself until the big reveal on the big day. Maybe you were searching for something G-rated and a database error caused some X-rated…

Free App Friday for 1/23/15

* * * the Loot Crat, the monthly subscription service that delivers a box of awesome every month! Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Free App Friday! Here are some of the top 100 most downloaded AND highest-rated apps (4/5 stars or better) from Amazon’s Android App Store as of this writing. Note that where a given app has already been included in a Free App Friday post, a different one (still with a minimum 4/5 star rating) will be subbed in. Remember that free apps may include in-app purchase (IAP) options or be ad-supported, but given that these apps have been given very high ratings by MANY consumers, where IAP links or ads are present they must be pretty unobtrusive. Descriptions below are from the apps’ product pages.

Infected Fire Tablet? Here’s A Possible Solution.

* * * the Gomadic Essential Charger Kit for the Amazon Kindle Fire / HD / HDX / DX / Touch / Keyboard (WiFi and 3G), currently (as of 12/31/14) on sale at 33% off and also eligible for Prime shipping. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Moneypak / FBI / Ransomware Virus On Your Fire? Fire tablets infected with this particular monster often bypass the usual startup routine and go right to the virus screen, which makes it impossible for the owner to even reset their Fire to factory defaults. Since that reset is just about the only hope you have of restoring your Fire to full functionality, it’s a problem. This week, I learned of a possible solution (from an Amazon Discussions poster who never explicitly granted me permission to…

Kindle And Audible Won’t Sync!

* * * the Kindle Powerfast International Charging Kit, currently being offered at $23.99 — that’s 40% off the regular price of $39.99! Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Immersion Reading When you own both the Kindle and Audible editions of a given book you can take advantage of Immersion Reading: you can follow along in the Kindle book while an Audible narrator reads the text aloud, and watch as each word is highlighted as it’s being read. And by the way, engaging both your sense of sight and hearing really deepens reading comprehension. To do this, first you must ensure that both the Kindle and Audible editions are downloaded to your device. Then, when you open the Kindle book you’ll see a right-pointing “play” icon at the bottom of your screen…

Facebook-ery: How To Add Free Facebook Stickers To Your Comments & Messages

* * * Today’s post is brought to you by the Shakespeare Insults Mug, which I own and love! Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Did You Know About Facebook Stickers? Facebook stickers are little, ready-made icons you can insert in your private messages and in comments you make to others’ status updates and posts when you’re using the full Facebook site in a web browser—functionality will vary in the mobile app and mobile version of Facebook. There are lots of sets, many of them featuring licensed characters like Snoopy, Om-Nom from Cut the Rope, Adventure Time and World of Gumball, and they’re FREE! **UPDATE** It appears that stickers are not enabled on Fan Pages, only on individual Facebook users’ timelines/profiles and in private messages.

FREE Internet Arcade Brings Classic Video Games To Your Browser!

* * * Today’s post is brought to you by the Canon PIXMA MX922 Wireless Color Photo Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax, a more recent model of a multifunction machine I’ve owned (and loved!) myself. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Classic Arcade Game Lovers, Rejoice! Your Favorites Are Back, And They’re FREE! The screenshot below only shows a small selection of all the great arcade classics you can now play online, for FREE! The already fantastic Internet Archive, which painstakingly organizes and archives past internet content such as web pages, ebooks, digital audio and video files, has become even more fantastic with its recent launch of the Internet Arcade.

Malware Update: FBI Moneypak / Ransomware Virus On Kindle Fire and How To Avoid It

* * * the Amazon’s 50% Off Sale On SD Memory Cards. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * Yes, The FBI Moneypak / Ransomware Virus Is Starting To Show Up On Kindle Fire Tablets, But… …that doesn’t mean ALL Kindle Fire owners EVERYWHERE need to worry about it. Be alert, sure. But as I explained in my original DMM post about this particular virus, so long as you only get your apps and other content from Amazon, don’t hack or “root” your Kindle Fire, and don’t open any suspicious email attachments from within the email app on the Fire, you can relax because your chances of getting this beast are very, very slim and provided you haven’t “rooted” your Fire or sideloaded the app/file that brought Moneypak along with it, getting rid of…

DMM Mailbag: When You Google Someone, Will They Know?

* * * Today’s post is brought to you by the Zmodo PKD-DK0855-500GB 8-Channel DVR Security System with 8 CMOS IR Cameras, 500 GB Hard Drive and Remote Web/Mobile Access, a terrific home or office suveillance / recording system that’s currently on sale at 46% off its usual price. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. * * * What Does Googling Get You? You can “Google”, or do a web search, on anyone. It’s not illegal, and in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with it. After all, when we’re talking about ordinary people (as opposed to famous people, whose private stuff becomes unexpectedly public in hacks all the time) the only results you’ll get are for pages, photos, text and records that are already available to the public, and things the person him- or herself…