22 Posts Found

Last Updated: October 13, 2023 (originally published December 6, 2019)

A password is often the foundation which supports your digital privacy efforts. The way you approach passwords, as with everything privacy related, is a tradeoff of convenience and security.

The key things to understand about passwords are their strengths and weaknesses, how to store and use them, and how to create good ones. It’s also good to … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

You are probably using some WordPress plugins already, but perhaps you are missing out on some others that can improve your site and blogging skills considerably. That’s understandable since there are so many thousands to choose from and since there are some great plugins that do things you didn’t even know you might want to or be able to do. Here is a list of … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Featured, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads, WordPress Tips

Choosing a web hosting company is either fairly easy or a big headache depending on the number and type of sites you want to host and the specifics of your technical requirements. Factors will include amount of traffic, CPU and memory requirements (based on traffic, but also on how optimized your site is), how much disk space and bandwidth you need (hosting tons of photos, … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads, WordPress Tips

Here are three ways you can automatically query Google’s PageSpeed Insights (with Lighthouse and CrUX) to monitor and improve the speed of your site.

Subjects: Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

Cloud syncing services are all the rage—and for good reason. They are especially useful for keeping important files synced across multiple computers and for securely backing up and storing your files online. Many of them also offer the ability to share files and collaborate with others. In this post I list features worth considering and present the competing offerings. Besides including what I think are … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

Tips and lessons learned from my efforts to increase page speed and performance. Learn about useful concepts, tools, plugins and code snippets.

Subjects: Tips for Digital Nomads, WordPress Tips

You don’t want visitors to your site to become frustrated because it takes too long to load. You also want to please Google and the other search engines; having a fast, responsive, and optimized WordPress site can help in that regard. There are many tools that can help and I will discuss many of them. Special emphasis will be given to Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI). … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Featured, WordPress Tips

Whether you are developing a new WordPress site or planning to make any kind of significant change to an existing one, having a development version on your laptop can be immensely helpful, especially for safely testing new plugins, modifying your theme, and testing new updates to make sure they don’t break your site. Having this local setup also lets you work on your site even … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Featured, WordPress Tips

I already discussed programs meant to sync or backup specific folders and files. There are other programs, however, that will back up an entire computer, including the operating system, installed programs, and all your files. Basically, everything on the computer’s hard disk (or partition) is included. This type of backup is usually referred to as a clone or a system or disk image. … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

These days, online or “cloud” services are everywhere. Most of the attention is given to the syncing services, but there are a number of backup-only solutions as well. There is nothing inherently better or worse about cloud backup compared to local backup options, though naturally, there are advantages and disadvantages.

One advantage is that a cloud service provides the geographical … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

Cloud syncing services like Dropbox are great, but there are some legitimate reasons to seek out alternatives for local and network backup and syncing, including:

• To save money.
• To sync files that you aren’t comfortable keeping in the cloud (for security or other reasons).
• To sync files that are too large for individual upload limits or that would put you over your

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

I’ve lived a year in Japan and visited multiple times since then. I really love the country, its people and the culture. But, while Japan has long been considered an example of high-tech progress and advanced mobile communications infrastructure, the reality on the ground is quite different, at least from a foreign visitor’s perspective. In fact, while they practically give away prepaid SIM cards in … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Technology, Technology and Communications Tips, Tips for Traveling Better, Tourism (Places)

Windows Live Writer, part of the free Windows Essentials (formerly Live Essentials) suite, is a visual blog editor for Windows. It is also widely considered one of the best offline blog editors available. With Live Writer, you can create an optimized blog post offline and then upload it to your blog when finished, either publishing it directly or adding it as a draft … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

[toc]
Travel Adapters, Converters and USB Chargers
Some countries have different electrical outlet standards than your home country, both in the type of plug used and the amount of AC voltage and frequency. Most operate either at 110V or 220V (plus or minus) and have one standard plug, but occasionally this can vary inside the country as well. Wikipedia has a page detailing the values and … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Featured, Product Reviews, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads, Tips for Traveling Better

UPDATE – June 06, 2015: This is an older article discussing TrueCrypt, which has unfortunately been abandoned. Fortunately, some developers have revived it, calling the new product VeraCrypt. It is essentially the same software and even keeps the same look and feel. Likewise, the operation is identical to TrueCrypt. So, download VeraCrypt but feel free to use these TrueCrypt instructions as they are … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology

It’s fairly common advice to travel with an unlocked mobile phone (quad-band GSM to be the most compatible worldwide) so that you can purchase an inexpensive prepaid Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) card and pay much better local prices. Choosing a service provider is not usually a terribly important decision if you are only going to be in a country for a short duration … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Technology, Tips for Traveling Better

I am not an SEO expert and have no desire to ever be one, especially since the nature of SEO is that it changes constantly, with Google making regular changes and the SEO horde trying to keep up and find ways to beat Google at the ranking game. Having said that, being completely ignorant of SEO is not a good idea either.

SEOmoz is the … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

I travel with a netbook and own the Lonely Planet in PDF version (yes, a legal copy). Until recently I would print out the pages with maps and just read the rest on my computer, but that is inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, and occasionally expensive. After trying to think of useful alternatives, I have two to share with you.
Using Your Digital Camera
Occasionally when I visit a … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Technology, Tips for Traveling Better

Introduction

UPDATE: How to Score 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights
I wrote this back in 2011 and, though it is still relevant, I have since learned a lot more about maximizing page speed and I no longer use W3TC. This post is long, but I encourage to read my epic post on all things related to site optimization.

Most of us mortals, you know the kind that … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Computing, Technology, Tips for Digital Nomads

Introduction
Electronic book readers (eBook readers, e-book readers, e-readers, eReaders)[1] haven’t been around that long but are quickly gathering market momentum[2] and are quite naturally a great fit for the extended traveler. Spend a bit of time searching the Web for reviews and you will rarely come across a less-than-glowing opinion, and most of the negative writing you will encounter comes from … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Entertainment on the Road, Featured, Product Reviews, Technology, Tips for Traveling Better