Swype got purchased by Nuance — the people who make Dragon Naturally Speaking, and several other very famous apps — back in October of 2011. Along with Swype, Nuance got Swype's lucrative contracts for the provision of Swype on most phones, as a default, uninstallable, some-would-call-bloatware, phone-maker-provided…

Hmm. Interesting. I don't know anyone who would ever sit down at my computer — notebook or desktop — and just start using it without my permission...

Plain old telephone service (POTS) on copper wires provides superior audio quality, no metered minutes (or disconnections if a given conversation goes on too long), truly unlimited both minutes and long-distance (if you pay for that), use of the phone even during power outages (assuming you're using an old-fashioned…

What Linn needs to do is go to the Clerk of the Court in the county where Amazon's corporate headquarters is located, spend $300 (give or take, depending on the county) on the filing fee, and sue Amazon (co-naming Jeff Bezos, personally). She might even be able to do it right in her home town court (a quick chat with…

@RvLeshrac: You clearly just want to fight... simply for its sake. Young, geeky men with lots of testosterone surging through their veins, and no meaningful relationship on which to focus it, are often like that. So, then perhaps my "punk" characterization was more spot-on than I originally thought.

@aegeon1: I'm not sure what you mean, because this, here, isn't email. It's commenting beneath an article.

@jannaeday: I haven't checked in a while to know if Amazon still sells the specific one(s) that I mentioned in my comment; but it at least used to. And most any "art supplies" type website should sell them. Just type exactly this (quotation marks, capitalization and all)...

@RvLeshrac: I'll try to keep YOUR standards in mind when writing, here, in the future.

@jason_G: Prey is excellent. However, like Lookout, one must pay to get its additional features. Of course, if you don't need those, then Prey is VERY cool... as is also true about Lookout if you don't need its premium features.

@JoanW2002: Avast scored VERY well in independent testing when it comes to the pure task of finding and doing something about viruses and other malware. It was actually "number 1" at that particular task, in that particular study (by AV-TEST.ORG last March).

I and my 35+ years in IT, and my fairly seriously good Android smartphone knowledge and skills (which, of course, are only as old as are Android smartphones... but I'm still pretty darned good at it, finally) actually rather deeply-researched this particular kind of Android app about nine months ago; and then I…

@slaw: Excellent info! See! I KNEW if I just blurted-out stuff that might or might not be right, but was at least kinda' sorta' almost close, someone would save me having to research anything by chiming-in with what they already know to correct me. [grin] Just kidding... er... well... you know... sorta'.

The FreedomPop devices look identical — and I mean IDENTICAL — to the ones that CLEAR.COM uses.

Whenever and/or if ever one wonders if one's ISP is, in fact, throttling or otherwise "shaping" one's bandwidth because of bit torrent (or several other kinds of) traffic, one may fairly accurately and freely test for it using the Max Planck Institute for Software Research's "Glasnost" test.

PrivacyFix is good. I've also tried Ghostery, and Do-Not-Track-Plus. It's the last of those that I'm now using, for whatever that's worth.

Truthfully, I can get better overall results with one of Gary Fong's original "LightSphere" diffusers. Sadly, he no longer makes those. The original LightSphere came in four sizes, which, across the four of them, fit pretty much any camera out there. What he sells now is a universal size, with a strap, that…

Dear czadd,

The Woxom SlingShot is a VERY cool product...

Most of these kinds of emails tend to be easily disprovable urban legends and whatnot; and I've found that by writing an authoritative piece which first shows that it's an urban legend, and then shames all who forwarded it, I end-up getting both hateful responses, and ultimately removed from lists.

Then there's also, for phone-as-camera users...