You can do lots of interesting things when you give social media tools permission to connect with each other and with other third-party apps. But beware, in doing this you also giving up your privacy.

I think it is safe to say that many of you don’t put much thought into clicking “Yes” when those little permission pop-up messages appear on your screens during an app installation (usually at the end when the app is already installed or starting up for the fist time). And further, I’m sure most of you don’t fully realize how many permissions you have granted …

Some of you were lucky enough to have Santa leave a new computer or laptop under your Christmas tree. That’s great news. Now for the bad news: Unfortunately, most new computers come preloaded with a tons of junk software you don’t really want or need. These can be trial versions of various programs, including mainstream ones like Microsoft Office Online, one of the popular security suites, toolbars, utilities, games and other programs you have never heard of (and will probably never use).

Nice to have a chance to try some of these programs out, but in the long run you …

Do you want to quickly see two windows side-by-side on your desktop? Yes, you can manually resize them by dragging and dropping the edges of each window, but there is a much faster way.

In Windows 7, you can easily arrange two windows next to each other by dragging them to the left or right side of your screen. Left-click on the taskbar (the bar across the top of each window) and drag and drop the window to the left or right side. Release when the entire window is highlighted.

In Windows XP or Vista, hold the Ctrl key down …

Once or twice a month I hear from people who are struggling to open docx files. Read on for the reasons why this happens, and what to do about it.

Office 2007 introduced new file formats – docx for Word, xlsx for Excel and pptx for PowerPoint (formally known as the Office Open XML format). Unfortunately, people using Office 2003 or earlier versions of Office (and there are still a bunch of them) will find they can’t open files in these new formats.

The solution is simple. If you are using Office 2003, or one of the earlier versions of …

Do you dread moving to a new computer because you have reinstall all your software? If so, you need to know about Nitite. This amazing free service automatically downloads and installs more than 90 popular no-fee apps. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Skype, Google Talk, iTunes, Hulu, Spotify, QuickTime, Flash, Java, Adobe Reader, Dropbox, Evernote, Mozy, Google Earth to name a few. Am betting most of these apps are on your computer.

Ninite fully automates the installers to run offscreen. No Clicking Next, Next, Next… It also automatically says “No” to toolbars and other junk. The Ninite installer always installs …

Collecting a network of contacts is the very essence of LI. Here are some tips for building a good collection of LI contacts.

Do consider the quality, not the quantity, of your LI contacts: We all want to be popular but ultimately, the quality of your contacts is more important than the quantity. While a high number of LI contacts may look impressive at first, potential clients will dig deeper and judge you by the details in your profile and the quality of the people in your network.

Do make it easy for people to connect with you: LI allows …

Box.net recently announced that it is giving away 50 GB of free storage to anyone who uses a free Box Personal account on an iOS device. This promotion only runs for 50 days (Starting October 12).

To get your free space in the cloud, follow these steps:

1. Visit the App Store and download the Box app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
2. Log in to your account or register for a new one directly from the app.
3. Start sharing and collaborating in the cloud.

And another bonus: Your account will have an increased file size upload limit of 100MB …

Most of us have many screens of apps on our iPads and iPhones. Sliding multiple screens of icons back and forth is really easy, but it can be a pain finding a particular app if you’ve downloaded tons of apps. For faster access to your apps, create application groups. They are collections of apps within a single icon.

Creating an application or app group is dead easy. Touch and hold your finger on an app icon. After a few seconds, all the app icons on the screen should start shaking. Simply drag one app over top of another and an …

You’re reading something on a website that’s longer than your browser window — perhaps a judgment, or the latest posts on Slaw. How do you scroll down the page? If you’ve got a scroll wheel on your mouse, you may be adept at rolling along with that, or you may have set the wheel to advance a screen at a time with a click. But you’d be surprised how many people I’ve seen who still fuss to get the cursor into the scroll bar at the right and to make sure it stays in the empty zone between the …

Ever seen someone get up to do a PowerPoint with no clue about how to advance (or reverse) the slides. Ouch!!! Here are four neat tricks for navigating through your PowerPoint slides.

First, remember to use the space bar to advance to the next slide – one tap on the space bar will jump you one slide ahead. Of course, you can use PageDown or the right or down cursor keys to do the same thing, but the space bar is a much larger and easier to hit target if you are nervous or your hands are shaking.

And please …