Tag: financial - Part 4

All The Free Short Stories You Can Read On East Of The Web

the current ThinkGeek.com sale (up to 50% off!) on clothing and outdoor items, running through 3/2/14. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to keep bringing you great content for free, so thanks for your support! * * * Next time you’re looking for something short to read, head on over to East of the Web’s Short Stories portal. There, you can find thousands of short stories to suit every taste—all for free! Each listing includes a brief description, an average review rating, a recommended minimum reader age rating, and even the story’s length in pages. The stories can be read online or printed out in hard copy. Kindle / Paperwhite / Kindle Fire owner tip: If you have a pdf converter program, you can click on the ‘printable view’ link for any story, print to pdf format from your browser, and then transfer the story to your Kindle, Paperwhite or Fire…

Technically Correct vs. Practical: Can Rechargeable Batteries Overheat Or Not?

Its battery shouldn’t overheat, but that doesn’t mean it can’t. From time to time I’ll get a comment or email from a tech-savvy person who’s read my post, Rechargeable Battery Problems: Overcharging, Leaving It Plugged In, and says I’m wrong about the possibility of rechargeable batteries becoming overcharged or overheated, because modern Lithium-ion rechargeables are designed with specific features to prevent this very problem. Every so often I’ll also get a note from an engineer or scholarly type saying one of my other posts isn’t technically correct for some esoteric reason or other. But I’m not here to provide technically correct details that would satisfy the most stringent engineer or scientist, I’m here to help consumers get the best and most economical use from their devices.

Can My Overcharged Battery Be Fixed?

I’m sorry to tell you this, but in a word, no. It doesn’t mean your device is totally useless, however. I’ve written here before about the dangers of overcharging your thingie’s rechargeable battery, and more recently I’ve been getting questions from site visitors about what to do once that damage is done. Before we go any further, see this post for a simple rechargeable battery test you can do at home with no risk to yourself or your device. If the results show your rechargeable battery is damaged, read on. 1. If your thingie is still under warranty, return it to the place where you bought it for a replacement. If you’re going to replace it with the exact same thingie, back up your content first so you can re-load everything onto the new device. Click here for my post that explains how to do this for a Kindle Fire. For other types…

What Happens When You Buy A Pirated Kindle Book?

Today there’s a pirated edition of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye available for sale in Amazon’s Kindle Book Store. It’s very obviously a pirate copy, and here’s how you can tell: 1) No mainstream publisher name is listed in the book’s details, only “Amazon Digital Services” 2) The author’s name is misspelled right on the cover of the book 3) The cover is one of those generic ones that can be easily created using Amazon’s own Kindle book cover creation tools, and it’s the same as many self-publishers use to publish public domain works for sale in the Kindle store 4) The book is priced at $1.35—much lower than a mainstream publisher would go, unless they were running some kind of crazy (and probably highly-publicized) sale 5) Pretty much everyone in the book biz knows the real Salinger’s heirs have never given their permission to have his works released in…

When And How To Stop Sharing A Family Account For Your Digital Content

Many of you may have grown kids starting off in college or permanently moving away from the family home, and you might be wondering if it’s the right time to break up your family digital content accounts (e.g., iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, etc.). The answer is: it depends on your specific situation. But after reading this post, you should have all the information you need to make an informed decision. A Single Family Household Can Share Content From an earlier DMM post, Can I Share Content From My Thingie?: Apple Thingies: Apple Content Is Controlled Through iTunes Every individual Apple thingie (iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc.) is tied, or registered, to a specific Apple iTunes customer account and content library (music, movies, podcasts, apps, etc.). A single iTunes account can have multiple Apple thingies registered to it, and everything in that iTunes library is available to all the thingies registered to that…

Do You Need To Worry About the FBI Ransomware / FBI MoneyPak Virus On Your Mobile Thingies?

I recently got a question about The FBI Ransomware Trojan, which is also known as the FBI MoneyPak virus. A commenter raised the question in the comments section of my earlier post, Does Your Kindle Fire Need Virus Protection? What’s “FBI Ransomware”? This specific Trojan / virus is an especially nasty one, as it essentially locks you out of your computer or mobile device until you pay whatever fee it’s asking in order to release the lock. It’s got “FBI” in the name because the extortion pop-up says the FBI has identified some kind of threat on your machine and will remove it in exchange for a fee, usually $100, to be paid by credit card. So these hackers get $100 immediately, plus the duped consumer’s credit card number. Making matters worse, making that payment won’t necessarily unlock your computer or device. Even if it does work, it’s only a matter of…

If You Own A Kindle, The PowerFast Charger Is A Must-Have Accessory

Regular readers know I am nothing, if not frugal. But I’m not penny-wise and pound foolish, as they say. For the longest time I refused to invest the twenty bucks (it’s priced at $19.99 as of this writing) in Amazon Kindle 9W PowerFast Adapter for Accelerated Charging, because I didn’t think it made sense to buy yet another charger when my drawers are already littered with the many that have come with the various gadgets my kids and I have accumulated over recent years. But it was always a bit of a frustration, having to babysit my charging Kindle Fire and check on it frequently to see when its battery was back up to full, so as to avoid overcharging it. And with a standard charger, it would take hours to refill that little battery indicator in the menu bar. Even so, I thought, “How much faster could the PowerFast really be?” The…

The Differences Between Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Cell Connectivity

Bluetooth speakers, 4G tablets and external hard drives with Wi-Fi, oh my! Here’s how these three types of connectivity technologies differ. Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is the type of connection you need to wirelessly connect various devices to a wireless network. It could be your home network, the network at your workplace, or the biggest global network of them all: the internet. Yes, the internet is a network. It seems obvious when you realize that a network is just a collection of technology devices that are all set up to communicate with one another. So where at home, you use a network to send a document to a printer that’s located far from your computer, on the internet, computers and servers send web pages, files and messages to other computers and servers that are located as far away as the other side of the world. So if you’re considering buying some device, and…

Kindle Fire HDX Antivirus – Do You Need It?

I’ve previously written about the pointlessness of antivirus protection for the Kindle Fire line of tablets (see my post, Kindle Fire Antivirus: You Still Don’t Need It), but the new HDX line of Fires adds a new wrinkle since they all come with the option for 4G cell service connectivity. In my prior posts on this topic, I discussed how some hackers target cell phones specifically to add bogus charges to the phone owners’ bills. Many, if not most, cell phone owners won’t notice small charges scattered across an entire month, but they add up quickly. Some hackers go for broke right out of the gate and try to make a single, large bogus charge to the phone owner’s bill (usually masquerading as some kind of pay-by-the-minute service, like a party line or psychic reading service). They sometimes get away with it because these types of charges are made to the phone owner’s account immediately…

Audible Tip: How To Avoid Using Member Credits When Buying Sale Audiobooks

I recently picked up some deeply-discounted Kindle books on Amazon, and noticed that the companion Audible audiobooks were also being offered as add-on purchases at ridiculously low prices. I’m talking a couple of bucks for the Kindle books and another buck to two bucks for the Audible audiobook. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the prices listed for Audible audiobooks because I’m an Audible member and I’m usually “buying” audiobooks with my Audible member credits anyway. I currently pay about $23/mo to get two Member Credits per month, which is a great deal if the audiobooks I’m “buying” with my credits are normally priced at $12 or more. And they usually are priced higher; in fact, they’re usually priced anywhere from about $17 – 25 each. Sometimes I’d like to get one of these deeply-discounted add-ons, but I don’t want to spend my Member Credits on them because then I’m not…