How to win on Ebay: buy low and sell high

Posted on 10. August 2010 by torbengb

I’m observing a few items on Ebay these days, mostly out of curiosity. It’s remarkable how ignorant and counterproductive most people are about Ebay, but they’re not to blame because Ebay deliberately trains people to behave that way because that brings more profit to Ebay. This post explains a few simple and proven principles that will help buyers to win at lower prices, and help sellers get higher prices for their auctions. Continue reading →

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I’m leaving Facebook because they don’t let me control my information

Posted on 8. May 2010 by torbengb

Enough is enough. This article in Wired is but one in a sea of cries against Facebook, and they’ve all got a very good point: Facebook is actively undermining the privacy of the users, but we users should be able to control what information gets published about us or not.

So I’m preparing to leave Facebook, and I’ll make sure to delete all my information in there in an attempt to protect my privacy. I’m going to focus on this blog instead, so that people who really want to follow me can still do so.

Incidentally, here’s an article on Lifehacker describing what you could do, if you agree on the above.

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Faster DNS = faster Internet!

Posted on 4. December 2009 by torbengb

If you don’t know what “DNS” means, then never mind this article. But if you are familiar with DNS, then you’ll likely appreciate this tip. Google has recently provided a Public DNS service which is often significantly faster than your ISP’s DNS, especially if you’re outside the USA. My own tests verify that it’s a lot faster than using my ISP’s DNS servers. YMMV.

Skip right to the good stuff — use this:

Google Public DNS
Primary DNS Server: 8.8.8.8
Secondary DNS Server: 8.8.4.4

Read up on why this might be useful for you:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

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Windows 7/Vista — make the navigation pane expand to the current folder

Posted on 28. August 2009 by torbengb

It annoys me when stuff suddenly works differently for no obvious reason, and even more so when the result is a lot worse than before. (Here’s a tip, Microsoft: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!)

One such annoyance is Windows Explorer in Windows 7 and Vista. When you dive into sub-folders by double-clicking in the right-hand pane, the left-hand pane doesn’t expand to reflect where you are. That’s a pity, because that has been in there ever since Windows 95, a brief 14 year-long period of doing it right.

Here’s how to fix it: Continue reading →

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Word of the day

Posted on 9. July 2009 by torbengb

Hi all. I felt like posting a short message about what’s going on at the moment.

Continue reading →

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