Consumed Consumer . org

If you’re a webmaster or blogger, there are a few little things you can do to improve your reader’s experience and make your website more functional. You can, for instance, add small widgets to help your visitors pass on your page or a display your code more professionally.

What if we told you that you can buy a cheap laptop and, for the price you would normally pay for a Windows based one, you can get a laptop running a much more stable operating system AND send a similar laptop to a child in Africa?

You're traveling to a new country and either because you have a prepaid in your home country without roaming privileges, or because roaming is too expensive, you want to get a local SIM card to send and receive text messages (SMS), check your email and use Google Maps for directions. Where do you go and what do you get? In this series, we’ll have an answer (or more) for you for the countries we are travelling to most often. Today, Canada.

I recently had an ISP service interruption at home, leaving me without a working Internet connection for a few hours. I used my iPhone to tether into my 3G connection, did a few speed tests, and wondered how it compared to my regular (cable modem) internet connection. Here are the test results.

Recently, my Linksys VoIP adapter malfunctioned. Here's my adventure in customer support.

First released in 2006, the guide ranks 18 top manufacturers of PCs, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. Though controversial, this guide has had some impact on the industry.

Google has just announced more improvements to their free translation services. To celebrate, we are releasing the best way to introduce Google Automated Translation to your website, using a self-updating drop-down list with a few featured languages.

We recently learned that Canada's Competition Bureau (7) took the unusual step of warning the public about several hoaxes perpetrated on the Internet and not only (9). This is a good opportunity for this article, since after getting for the nth time a chain email from a friend, I had already decided it's about time I write this little ditty, in the hope that if I am to receive more junk / chain mail from friends, they will at least be more interesting / innovative.

Given a recent study on weight gain during the pandemic, we look at conventional wisdom advice on dealing with weight gain and the omnipresent menace of diabetes.

We grieved when we learned that Skype had been bought by eBay. Either Google or Yahoo would've made a much better sugar daddy and had strong commitments to customer service, while eBay's public goodwill was slowly being eroded by inept practices. An official announcement will be made tomorrow, but whoever will take it over is bound to be a better owner.

  The Beijing Olympics are in the center of the world's attention, exemplifying what the Chinese leadership has deemed the "peaceful rise". We take a quick look at smaller consumerist happenings in and from China.

As the Economist Debate series (1) -currently on education - is quickly approaching its end, we find that we can no longer postpone writing our article on debating.

Every now and then, we're hit by nuggets of wisdom from peer-reviewed scientific journals that confront our pre-exsiting beliefs, or by articles from less-than-scientific publications that confirm our biases in spite of all scientific evidence to the contrary. We dutifully share them with you.

I have recently received a Valentine's Day card from Google. But rather than signs of love, I'd much rather get signs of respect, for where there is no love, it's just (corporate) lust.

One of the most annoying "features" in Windows is the "Compressed Folders" feature, where Zip files are displayed as folders. While this may be nice for some, most users accumulate a large number of zip files in a folder, making it unviewable in Windows Explorer. We look at how to get rid of it.

BcS is the target of numerous demands and criticism. As no major overhaul is in the books, numerous hacks have mushroomed to respond to its users’ desires. We’ll be looking at: A. Embedding the comment form, B. Numbering comments, C. Show Author Photo in Comments, D. Highlight owner’s comments, E. Recent comments, F. Top commentators, G. Add Reactions

The Internet is made of computers and porn. But wherever humans with emotions get involved, emoticons and smileys abound. Which is why we’ll be looking at adding emoticons where no smiley has gone before.