Many web-based businesses use PayPal as their online payment processor, and occasionally it becomes necessary to change their PayPal business name for one reason or another (for example, they wish to accept payments via more than one website).
 
 Many people who find themselves in this situation find it quite difficult to figure out how to submit the name change because PayPal doesn’t make the process available through the regular account information update menus. Here are the steps required to change your PayPal business name:

1. Log into your PayPal account.
2. Click the “Help” link in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
3. In the search box type:  Change Business Name
4. Click the “Search” button.
5. Click the link that says “How do I change the business name?”
6. Click the “secure form” link in the Answer field.
7. Select the “Business Name Change (business name)” option.
8. Click the “Continue” button.
9. Type the new business name in the box.
10. Click the “Continue” button”.

That’s it – you’re done. The change takes place immediately!

It’s a good bet that by now you have seen those amazing clocks that set themselves automatically, even adjusting for the time changes in the spring and fall.

Although they are sometimes mistakenly referred to as ”atomic clocks”, they are actually controlled via a 60 khz radio signal which is broadcast by NIST Radio Station WWVB near Fort Collins, Colorado.

WWVB retrieves the official Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) from a true atomic clock, then it transmits an encoded radio signal containing that official timestamp to most of North America where it is received by tiny 60 khz radios embedded in countless radio controlled clocks located in homes and businesses across the continent. Although every radio controlled clock receives the same timestamp, they display the correct local time based upon the time zone setting selected by the owner.

The beauty of these amazing clocks is their virtually perfect accuracy. Although their timing crystals might allow them to gain or lose a fraction of a second over a period of time, the next synchronization signal from WWVB always arrives in plenty of time to ensure that the displayed time is accurate down to the nearest second. As long as one of these clocks is working properly and located in a place where it can easily receive the radio signal, you can rest assured that the time it displays is always accurate.

Of course another great advantage of radio controlled clocks is the fact that you never have to set them. All you have to do is set a switch to reflect your local time zone and then wait for it to receive its first complete radio signal sequence from WWVB. From that moment on, you’ll never have to set the clock even once.

Cheria and I have one of these wonderful clocks hanging on our office wall, and we absolutely love it. Now all we need are a couple of those trendy radio controlled wristwatches that are beginning to “spring up” everywhere!

Well, it has been a little over a year since Microsoft unleashed Windows Vista on the world, and even though it is already a cash cow for the company, it has been a rather rough year indeed.

Vista was released with much fanfare on January 30, 2007, and almost immediately it became one of the most vilified software products ever. Of course Microsoft has never really had a stable version of Windows in service, and despite the claims that Vista would be the first, it sure didn’t turn out that way.

During the course of its first year Windows Vista encountered several Public Relations snafus as well, and this short Sizlopedia article pretty much sums everything up.

The first computer I ever owned was the original Radio Shack TRS-80, and even though computer technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since then, I have never owned a machine that I loved quite as much as that simple gray and black plastic number.
 
In 1976 the home computer industry was in its infancy. An young engineering student by the name of Steve Wozniak designed and built a computer from scratch using spare parts that he had scrounged from the local Hewlett Packard facility, and the Apple Computer Corporation was born right in the garage of his friend Steve Jobs. Today the company is one of legend.
 
Recognizing the huge potential of selling simple computers to the masses, Radio Shack put their engineers to work designing what would soon become the TRS-80. It was a very simple machine featuring a Zilog Z80 1.77 Mhz CPU, 4 kilobytes of RAM and a 4 kilobyte ROM chip that contained a very primitive operating system based upon the BASIC programming language. The monitor was a 12″ monochrome jewel that was quite literally an RCA black and white TV – with the tuner missing! Programs and data were stored on standard audio cassette tapes.
 
Everything except for the monitor and cassette tape recorder/player was housed inside the overstuffed keyboard case, relegating most future system expansion to an optional external unit referred to as an “Expansion Interface Unit”. During its lifetime several options and upgrades became available for the original TRS-80, some from Radio Shack itself, and many others from enterprising 3rd party companies.
 
An engineer by the name of Steve Ciarcia released a book that gave step-by-step instructions for “hacking” the TRS-80′s circuit board to make it run faster and add several missing features. And when I say “hacking”, I mean that quite literally since a number of the upgrades required using an Exacto knife to actually sever some of the “traces” on the circuit board. Then you soldered in switches, crystals, wires, and integrated circuits, some of which were piggybacked onto existing components. It sure made the inside of the keyboard case a mess, but each and every “mod” worked like a charm!
 
By the time my own TRS-80 became a paperweight it had been upgraded to the Level II BASIC operating system (in a 12k ROM chip) and 48 kilobytes of RAM. I had also built a 3rd party Expansion Interface Unit from a kit that allowed me to attach a dot matrix printer, a 300 baud modem, and a 180k single-sided, single density floppy disk drive to the system.
 
Before long Radio Shack introduced a new and somewhat improved version of the TRS-80 dubbed the Model II, and the original units were retroactively given the moniker Model I. Although the company went on to release a number of succeeding computer models, my trusty old hacked-up Model I was the only Radio Shack computer I ever owned.
 
I have purchased, used, built and sold dozens of personal computers throughout the years, but for some reason not a one of them has meant as much to me as that ancient TRS-80 Model I. By today’s standards it was a proverbial dinosaur, but to a 17 year old boy from “up in the holler” in Widener Valley, Virginia, it was absolutely filled with magic and wonder.

If you have been sending and receiving emails for more than a day or two, you no doubt receive more than your fair share of suspicious email messages. And unfortunately, the problem is most likely going to get a lot worse before it starts getting any better.
 
By now you have probably been clued-in to the fact that in all likelihood you don’t really have a rich uncle in Nigeria who has passed on and left you millions of dollars or that your bank needs for you to “log in and update your account information”, but the scammers are always coming up with new ways to separate you from your hard-earned money and/or steal your identity.
 
If you’re concerned about protecting yourself from suspicious emails (and you should be), here are a few tips that just might help you avoid a whole heap of trouble:
 
1 – Do everything you can to prevent the bad guys from getting their virtual hands on your “real” email address in the first place by using a “throwaway” email address (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) when signing up for things like newsletters and such. Even if you provide your email address to a reputable company, there is always a chance that it will find its way onto a spam email list, and once it on there you’ll NEVER get it off.
 
2 – Turn on the email filters in your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. By and large those filters do a pretty fair job at weeding out most spam and phishing attempts.
 
3 – NEVER open an email with an attachment unless you know for certain that it really came from a person or company you trust. And don’t assume that it really came from the person or company listed in the FROM line because that is easily faked (and it almost always is if the email is from a bad guy).
 
For example, if you know for a fact that Aunt Rose is going to be sending you a Word document or a photo of her new grandchild, you can probably open it without worrying too much about it. But if it arrives out of the blue and Aunt Rose rarely, if ever sends attachments with her emails, you would be wise to call her up or send her an email asking if it really came from her BEFORE you open it up.
 
4 – Emails from banks, PayPal, or other financial institutions asking you to click a link and log in to “verify your account” or change your password are virtually ALWAYS fake. These organizations will either call you on the phone, send a letter through the mail, and/or put a notice on your account where you’ll see it when you log in if they truly need for you to take some action.

ALWAYS log in to your account by visiting the URL for the institution’s website directly and clicking the login link on the home page. Also make sure that the login page is a “secure” page by looking for the tell-tale https: in the URL instead of the usual http: as well as the little “lock” symbol that indicates you are on a secure page.
 
5 – Along the same lines as what we discussed in #4, NEVER click a link in an email that will supposedly take you to the login page of ANY website that requires a username and password, even if the supposed sender isn’t a financial institution. Internet crooks have many devious uses for honest people’s email accounts, Ebay accounts and the like, so it is extremely important that you prevent access to them just like you do for your bank account(s). Again, visit the company’s website directly and log in from the home page.
 
6 – If you receive an email that seems legitimate but you just aren’t sure (especially if there are no login links), visit Snopes.com and enter any URL’s, phones numbers, emails addresses, or unique phrases included in the email into the search box. If it’s a hoax, the odds are extremely high that others have already received the same email or some variation of it, and Snopes will let you know whether the email is possibly legitimate or if you should simply delete it and move on.
 
That’s it! Hopefully, these tips will help you avoid falling for one of the numerous email scams that are constantly being circulated around the web. Good luck, and happy surfing!