The Computer Tutor

I use Google Maps all the time. By far, the feature I use most is the GPS aspect. When I make an appointment on my Google Calendar, I put the address in the “Location” bar. Then, when it’s time to go to that address, I open up my Waze app on my phone, and the address is listed there so I just tap it and follow the verbal street-by-street directions. It’s really an amazing process that we just take for granted now.   BUT – there are some other things that you can do with Google Maps that are really interesting. It seems like Google is always trying to come up with something new and exciting, so I wanted to share a few of these things with you today. First we have Street View with History – http://tinyurl.com/ml3lvc8 Most people already know how Street View works. You plug in an address in Google Maps, and find that address. Then you click on Street View, and instead of looking at a map, you now have the view as if you’re standing in the street looking at that address. It’s helpful if you’re traveling to someone’s house for the first time, because now you know what their house actually looks like. In fact, back when Street View, wasn’t quite so widely known, I would kind of enjoy freaking people out a bit. They would be giving me directions to their house by phone for an upcoming appointment, and at the same time I would be looking up their address and seeing the street view. So before they had even finished with their directions, I might say something like, “Oh, okay – so your house is the brown one with the 3 bushes in front of the screened porch?” Not such an amazing trick today, but a few years ago it was pretty awesome. Now that Google has been sending their little Street View cars all over the place for several years, they have an archive of older street views which is pretty interesting. I believe it goes back to as early as 2008, but it really depends on the actual address being viewed. Here’s an example that’s in my little city of Safety Harbor, Florida. This first picture is the most recent one taken by Google, and it was about a year ago. There were some condos being built at that time (they are now fully built and occupied):   But if you want to see what that lot looked like before the construction started, you just have to go to Street View for that address, then look up in the top left corner of the screen for the little clock and click it:   That gives you the option to choose a date and see what the Street View picture was for that date, at that location. In my example, I can go back to 2011 for this address, and back then it looked like this:   Next, Google Maps offers us the ability to Explore a Sunken Ship – http://tinyurl.com/lvz5ulo The USS Mohawk was originally launched in 1934. She was used extensively during World War II, and then became a pilot boat on the Delaware River for over 30 years. You can get more details about this ship at this Wikipedia entry. Currently, the Mohawk enjoys the status of being the first military ship reef dedicated to veterans. She was sunk in 2012 off the coast of Captiva Island. This memorial sign is on the side:   And if you click this link, that sign is one of the first things you’ll see. Google has created a “Street View” of the sunken ship so you can navigate all around just like you can use Street View in your local neighborhood. Pretty cool. And finally, you can explore the moon. Yes, Google Maps has mapped the moon. To do that, just go to maps.google.com and start zooming out (so your view is getting farther and farther away from the earth). When you’ve gone out as far as you can go, look in the lower left corner and click on the little window that says “Earth”:   After it changes to Earth view, keep scrolling out until you see the 3 options in the lower left corner: Earth, Moon and Mars. Click on Moon:   Now you can go exploring on the Moon just like you went to astronaut school. But without the bulky suit and breathing apparatus. Or if you choose Mars, you can visit there too. If you’re really into this idea of exploring the world and space using your computer, you should consider getting Google Earth. Google Earth itself is not new, but they are updating it all the time. In the current one (version 5.0) here are some of the moon-related features:   And for bonus points – in the comments below, enter the phrase that this man is saying to this woman: The post 3 cool things you can do with Google Maps first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Last week we talked about the fact that even though it might appear that your email got hacked, it probably didn’t. In most cases it’s just a spammer using your email as the “From” address. But what about when your email actually DOES get hacked into – meaning some malicious person has gotten into your account and has control of it? What should you do?   The easiest solution to this problem is also probably the most obvious – take precautions so that it doesn’t happen in the first place. This means having a strong, unique password for your email account. These are some of the most commonly used passwords today, and they are really weak:   A good password is just a series of random numbers, upper and lower case letters, and maybe a character like a dollar sign or pound sign thrown in somewhere. I try to usually make mine 10 or 12 characters in length. The longer the better! Good passwords: zP#CuY&^Bnt8 e7PpW6!m$2vq Rs3*JA5N&PB6 And of course you won’t be able to remember that password, so you will need to have a good password manager program to generate good passwords and keep track of all of them for you. I use LastPass and it works great. But for today, we’re assuming it’s past the “prevention” point – your email has been compromised. Some scammer or spammer, somewhere in the world, has been able to log in to your personal or business email account. And you need to take action – quickly. I sometimes see people with this problem, wondering what they should do next. It’s very common to see this question asked on Facebook: “My email has been hacked into. What do I do?” And the one answer offered by all of their friends (none of whom are computer security experts of course) is: “Change your password!” Yes, you do need to change your password. But that is only part of the solution. Just changing your password does not solve the problem. A lot of people will change their password (and even the new password will be one that is easily guessed and one that they have used on dozens of other accounts). Then they’re surprised to find out that their email gets hacked into again after a short time. In order to keep your email account safe, you also need to change your security questions. You know what I’m talking about – the questions that your email provider asks to confirm your identity, that only YOU should know the answer to. Or at least the answers would be ones that some spammer in Russia wouldn’t know about you. When you log into your email account online, you should see a link to your profile. That’s usually where you go to change your verification questions. In Gmail it looks like this:   The reason you MUST change your security questions is to prevent the same hacker from getting in again. One of the ways to hack into an email account is to click the “Forgot password” link, and answer the security questions. If the questions you chose originally have already been easily answered by a hacker, then they can be easily answered again by the same hacker or even a different one. In a lot of cases, the answers to those security questions can be found just by going through your Facebook page! Hackers just have it too easy these days – we need to make things at least a little difficult for them. Bonus security: answer the security questions incorrectly This is a trick some people use as an extra layer of security. You can answer the security questions with answers that are wrong, or even answers that don’t make sense. Here are some examples of this: Question: What is your mother’s maiden name? Answer: September Question: In what city were you born? Answer: Peanut butter Question: What is your favorite sports team? Answer: Saving Private Ryan Do you see the power in this? A hacker could guess every sports team name in the world but he would never get it right. Same for the other answers. Obviously, just like a strong password, you won’t instinctively remember these nonsense answers. So you will need to keep a record of them. This is another great feature of LastPass – there is a whole section for each account where you can store information like this and always have access to it. In addition to the security questions, you should also have on file: A current phone number (preferably a cell phone that can receive text messages) An alternate email address that you can access With these, your email provider can send you a text message to confirm your identity, or they can email you a link to change your password if it gets compromised. HOWEVER – just like it’s too late to buy fire insurance when the house is burning down, you need to set up these things in your email account while you still have access to it. Once some lowlife gets in and controls your email account, it could be too late. Because a smart ha

A few times each month, I’ll get a phone call or an email from someone who thinks their email account has gotten hacked into. And why do they think that? Because their inbox is filling up with emails that are bouncing back, that say “This email message could not be delivered”. They might get a few of these bounced emails, or a dozen, or even a hundred. At first glance, it looks like all of these emails were sent from this person’s email account. But in most cases, no one has hacked into their email account. Let’s say I wanted to send someone an email, and I wanted to make them think it came from someone else. For example, maybe my friend Maria is a big fan of Oprah Winfrey and I want to play a little prank on Maria by sending her an email “from” Oprah Winfrey. Do you know how easy this is to do? Pretty easy. You do need an email program though, such as Outlook. If you don’t have Outlook, you can use Windows Live Mail (which is free). My email program is Outlook so I will use that for the example screenshots. If you already use Outlook for your email, it’s already set up with all of your genuine account information – that’s how it’s able to send and receive your email. But for this little trick, you need to go into the email settings and change a few things. The settings window looks like this:   You can see there are 3 main sections. In order for your email to send and receive properly in your account, the “Server Information” and “Logon Information” sections cannot be changed. However, with few exceptions, you can put whatever you want in the first section, “User Information”. So if we want to pretend we’re someone else that sent the email, we just change the information in that top section. It might look like this (I don’t actually know Oprah’s email address):   With those settings in place, I can send out an email to impersonate Oprah. When my friend Maria receives it, she would see something like this:   If she clicks “Reply”, her Reply email will be addressed to [email protected] (not to me, even though I actually am the one that sent the email). If the email that I sent bounces, it will bounce back to the “From:” address (not to me, even though I sent it). That’s the important thing to note here – anytime an email bounces, it bounces back to whatever address is listed in the “From:” field. So with that example in mind, let’s look at how this is used in the real world – by spammers. A spammer might have a list of a million email addresses that he wants to send to. He wants to send his spam email out to those millions of people, but of course he doesn’t want them to know that HE is the one that sent it. So he puts a different email address in the “From:” field. He might even put YOUR email address as the “From:” address. See where we’re going with this? He sends out those million emails, and most of them get delivered to the proper recipient (even if they go to the Spam folder, they at least made it to the right email address). But with that many emails, some of them are going to be outdated or incorrect. So they bounce. And guess where they bounce? You guessed it – they bounce back to the “From:” address, and if that’s your email, they start showing up in your inbox. That’s how you end up with all those bounced emails in your inbox, that appear to have been sent from you, but they really weren’t. And the spammer didn’t have to hack into your email account in order to make that happen. All he needed was an email address, and he happened to use yours. Bad luck for you, but at least your email account hasn’t been compromised. It’s like if you mailed out 100 letters by snail mail, and instead of your own address in the top left corner of each envelope, you put your neighbor’s address. If the Post Office returned any of those, they would be returned to your neighbor, not you. How to verify that your email account is safe: just look in the “Sent” folder and see if any of those bounced emails show up there as actually having been sent from your account. If they aren’t there, your account didn’t send them. Disclaimer: there are exceptions (although very unlikely) to this explanation. And the scammers and spammers are constantly dreaming up new ways to game the system. But for the most part the scenario I talked about is the most common procedure. And as always, if your email password consists of one or more pronounceable words, or is easy to remember, it’s going to be easy for the bad guys to guess – so change it to a strong one today! The post Help – my email got hacked! No, it probably didn’t first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Many millions of people have Google accounts. I have several myself. And whenever I want to look something up on the internet, I use Google because it seems to come up with the most accurate search results, which means I don’t have to waste a lot of time weeding out stuff that is not relevant to what I was looking for. But did you know that Google stores your history of searches – for quite some time?   There are two points I want to make you aware of today: Google stores your search history for kind of a long time You can control the amount of information that is being stored To show how this works, I’ll use my own Google account. The first step is to open your web browser and go to: http://google.com/settings/accounthistory That will bring you to a page that shows the 6 different things that Google can keep track of for this account. Those are: Your searches Places you go (like if you used Google Maps for GPS) Your voice searches and commands (usually this is the “OK Google” function, which you might not even use or be aware of) Information about your devices (contacts, calendars and apps on your laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.) Videos you search for on YouTube Videos you watch on YouTube That’s quite a bit of web activity that is possibly being tracked. Those 6 areas are displayed in sections on the page, like this:   As far as the way the “history storage” works, each of these categories works pretty much the same way so I’ll just explore the first one, “Searches and browsing history”. First step is to click on “Manage History”.   When you do that, you’ll see a list of your most recent Google searches (assuming you did those searches while you were signed in to your Google/Gmail account). And it’s a very detailed and accurate list. In fact, it shows the search term you used, and then under that is the actual site(s) you clicked on in the search results. For example, someone this afternoon was asking me about a site called Ixquick, so I did a quick Google search on it, then clicked on the Ixquick site. These two actions were recorded and stored in my Google account history, like this:   Above the list of searches, there are a couple of graphs. These show your search activity by the hour, and by the day. As you can see, I do more Google searches on weekdays rather than weekends, and I don’t do many searches between midnight and 4 am:   Now let’s get to the more interesting part. To the right of those graphs is an Activity calendar.   You can click on any day on that calendar, and it the page will show you your complete list of Google searches and clicks for that day. As you can see, it’s also color coded. Light blue means fewer searches, darker blue means more searches:   Obviously I use Google quite a bit. So I started clicking to go back to previous months, to see how far back this history goes. I was surprised to see that it goes back to May of 2013. Almost 2 years of my Google search history – 8,044 searches to be exact. Why does Google need to have that much detail about what I search on? Because most of their billions of dollars of revenue each year comes from advertising. And the more they know about what I’m interested in (based on what I search for), the more targeted they can make the ads, which means they can charge advertisers higher prices. One thing you’ll see to the left of each listed search in your history is a little checkbox. If you want, you can check the searches you don’t want stored in your history, and click on “Remove items” at the top of the list. You could remove all of them if you wanted to. In fact, if you go back to the initial screen where you clicked on “Manage history” you see another button there: Pause. This means you can actually turn off the storage of your Google searches if you want to. But if you click that, Google will really try to persuade you to leave it on. This is the explanation they give before having you confirm your decision to pause:   You can pick and choose which areas you want to have paused or enabled, or you can just pause all of them if you prefer. So there you have it. The purpose of this is not to rekindle the continuous debate about how much privacy we do or don’t have. I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of what is happening, so that you can make an intelligent decision about how you want to handle it. More information is always a good thing. The post What information does Google store about you? You might be surprised first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Wikipedia (Wikipedia.com) is one of the most often visited websites on the internet. Virtually any topic you want to research, any well-known person, almost any city – it’s hard to imagine anyone or anything of importance not having a Wikipedia page. However, Wikipedia was launched back in 2001 – and the layout and design of the website seems to have not changed since that date.   It’s usually pretty easy to spot a website that has not been updated in a long time. In some cases, a business might have paid someone to create their website a long time ago, and now they lost contact with that person and they have no idea how to change the site or update it. Or, the website owner might just be unaware that the site looks very dated. But to most people it’s obvious. One of the very popular sites that is extremely outdated is Craigslist. The owner of that site, Craig Newmark, doesn’t care about how it looks, and he has said so. Craigslist was started back in 1995 – can you believe it’s been 20 years? – and the site design is still virtually the same as it was then. That’s the situation with Wikipedia. Even though Wikipedia gets millions of website visitors, the owner, Jimmy Wales, has never seen the need to update the site design to make it look nicer and more modern. It’s still the same boring layout that it’s had for the last 14 years. But it doesn’t have to be that way on YOUR computer. Thanks to a wonderful browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, Wikipedia can have a great new design that’s much more pleasing to the eye. The extension is called Wikiwand, and you can get it at www.Wikiwand.com. It’s free of course. To show you how it makes a difference with the way Wikipedia pages are displayed, I took some before-Wikiwand and after-Wikiwand screenshots. Here’s what the Wikipedia page for the Milky Way looks like usually:   Pretty bland, right? Here’s what it looks like after the Wikiwand is applied:   Having the large image across the top of the article really makes a big difference in presentation. But also, the content itself is just easier to read. It’s actually the same words on the page, but the font size is larger and clearer in the Wikiwand version. How about this one – the Mt Everest page, before Wikiwand:   And after Wikiwand:   To get Wikiwand working in your browser, just go to Wikiwand.com and click the button to install it:   You will not see that installation button if you’re using Internet Explorer, though – it doesn’t work with that web browser. Reason #842 to quit using Internet Explorer. And you should also know this – even after you have Wikiwand installed, if for some reason you want to go back and just see the old boring version of Wikipedia, you can. At the bottom right corner of every Wikipedia page there’s a big W, and when you mouse over it, you’ll see a slide switch to enable or disable Wikiwand:   The post How to make the Wikipedia page look much more exciting! first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Most households and small businesses use a router to distribute the internet signal. You might have purchased the router, or your internet provider may place it with your for you to use, but they still own it. Also, your modem may also be a router (all in one box) or your router might be a separate unit. There’s really no “normal” configuration for all these factors. What happens when your internet service provider’s router becomes old, outdated, or just worn out? That’s when they’ll call you up and say, “Hey there Mr. or Mrs. Customer – we need to get you a new router, so your internet connection is the best it can be!”, right? Uh, no. It doesn’t usually work that way. More often, you start to notice your internet connection speed get slower and slower, and sometimes you might get the familiar “This page cannot be found” error because the internet connection has dropped altogether. A lot of times restarting the computer or the router (or both) takes care of the problem. But if the router is just too old, that’s just a temporary fix. When a router is no longer working like it should, it needs to be replaced. But when an ISP has many thousands of customers and a big chunk of them have old routers that need to be replaced, doing that all at once would represent a huge expense. Why would they want to spend all that money on new equipment when a lot of those people haven’t even complained about it? Instead, they will handle each customer complaint on a case by case basis and replace the routers as needed. So you need to be proactive about it. BUT – you can’t just call them up and say, “My internet is too slow”. That’s just an opinion. You need to have measurable proof that the internet speed is sub-par before you ever make the call. Here’s how you check your internet connection speed: 1. Go to the website SpeedTest.net. If you don’t use an ad blocker, you’ll see some ads that will try to get you to click on them to check your speed or download something. Ignore all those ads. The only thing you want to do is run the actual internet connection speed test right in the middle of the page. After the page has fully loaded, you’ll see a big button in the middle that says “Begin Test”:   2. As you can see, the site figures out where you are located and puts a green triangle there (I’m in the Tampa Bay area of Florida). When you click “Begin Test” the analysis can get started. It only takes about 30 seconds. 3. What you want to pay attention to (you should write them down) are the download speed and upload speed. When the test is finished, it will look like this:   That’s the information you want to have on hand when you call your internet provider. But there’s a RIGHT way to ask them about this, and there’s a WRONG way. The wrong way: “I just checked my internet speed, and I’m getting ___ download and ___ upload. Is that normal?” This is wrong because then it’s really easy for the internet provider to say, “Oh yes, that’s right in the range of what your speed should be based on the package you have purchased.” In addition, they now have the perfect opportunity to try to UPsell you on buying a faster package. You have already indicated that you want faster speed, so you are obviously the perfect candidate for that sales pitch. The right way: “Can you tell me, based on my monthly internet package, what kind of internet speeds should I be expecting?” When you phrase it that way, they have to give you a number first. If it matches what Speedtest said you are getting, then you’re getting what you’re paying for. But if the ISP says you should be getting 50-60 download, and the test says you’re getting 30-40, then you have something to complain about. At that point, your internet provider has already said that you should be getting a certain level of speed and your test proves that you’re not getting it. If that happens, usually the ISP will either have a technician come out to check your installation, or they’ll do some diagnostics on the router and/or modem (whichever is provided by them) and probably give you a new one if yours is too old or outdated. What if YOU own the router? If they run their tests and it comes back that the modem is working fine, the problem could be the router that you purchased and installed. It may need to be replaced. Fortunately, they are not that expensive so it might be time to get a new one. For home use, a router in the $50 – $75 range is almost always sufficient. Personally, I like Linksys routers because they’re really easy to set up, but other brands such as Netgear or Belkin will usually work fine. If you have any trouble with the installation, they’ll have a phone number for you to call their T

Want to find out your roommate’s Facebook password? Need to have a few “below average” grades removed from your college transcript? Would you like to have some embarrassing pictures removed from Google search results? If you find yourself in need of these or similar services, what you really need is… a hacker!   One thing you need to realize is that the term “hacker” has evolved over the years, and now it doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. In the past, if someone mentioned a hacker, it would conjure up images of someone trying to use their own computer to break into another computer somewhere, like the Pentagon or something. Of course, there are still people that try to do that, and they are still pretty much referred to as hackers. But “hacking” has now taken on a whole new range of meanings. These days, it often means that someone has figured out a way to do something that makes it easier, or a process that just seems to make more sense. For example – if your microwave has old particles of dried food on the inside because of splatter that has accumulated, and you want to easily clean it, here’s a kitchen “hack” – fill a bowl with water and microwave it for a couple of minutes. The steam will loosen the dried-on food, making it easier to clean off. Here’s another one – if you notice little pieces of debris or dirt down between the keys of your computer keyboard, just take a single Post-It note and drag it in between the rows to pick up some of that junk. That’s a “hack” that I’ve been doing for a long time. There’s actually a very popular website devoted to hacks in all areas of life – it’s Lifehacker.com. There are some great ideas on there. BUT… what if you need one of the old-style hackers? You know, the kind of sneaky person that knows how to get into some other computer and change things around or manipulate some information in your favor? That’s when you need Hackerslist! You can find this at Hackerslist.com, and what it’s supposed to be is just what the name indicates – a list of hackers advertising their services for whatever type of computer hacking job you need to have done. You can post your hacking job request, and what you’re willing to pay, and then the “hackers” on the site can bid on your job. In browsing the site, here are some of the hacking jobs being requested: Fiance Gmail Password: “I would like the current password of my fiancé’s GMAIL email account due to work issues he is having that he will not let me help him with that are affecting our relationship. Obviously remaining discreet and professional, thank you.” Willing to pay: $200 – $300 Need to hack a dating website: “I want access to a person’s account on a dating website. I know the person’s full name as well as their username. I am not sure if this project is even possible. I want to be able to see/read this person’s messages and friends. If possible, I want this done without them finding out so that I can access the account multiple times.” Willing to pay: $100 – $1000 Clean driving record: “I need a hacker to clean my driving record in AZ. recently received a DUI and got an “Admin per se” diving with BAC > .08. Also remove any driving tickets i may have. Remove my suspention currently in place” Willing to pay: $100 – $1000 Project Justice: “I have been cheated by my business partner and He has managed to disconnect me from all business contracts. I wanted to find how he swindled the money.” Willing to pay: $500 – $2000 Credit Report: “Fix credit bureau information and erroneous data stored.” Willing to pay: $500 – $2000 Frankly, I don’t know of some of these things are even possible. I’m sure a lot of people would like to just pay some money and have their driving record cleaned up, but my guess is that the Department of Motor Vehicles has their computer system pretty well locked down so that stuff like that just doesn’t happen. Of course, the big exception would be if the “hacker” is really just someone that works at the DMV and has access to make those changes. But would they really risk their job (and possibly jail time) just for $1000? I guess some people would. And what about the one about removing erroneous information from a credit report? That’s something that the owner of that credit report can do for free, but I suppose some people don’t know that. And what if someone SAYS they can hack into Gmail and get someone’s password, but then you pay the money and it turns out they are unable to do the job? The website has anticipated that problem and taken a few steps to protect its users: 1. If a hacker doesn’t maintain at least a 3-star rating or if he has t

My wife Jeanne recently embarked on a new career – she is a nanny for a young couple with a newborn baby girl. She loves babies anyway, so spending her days taking care of one is pretty much her dream job. And of course the baby’s parents love Jeanne because she has tons of experience with kids (successfully raising our own two, plus she taught First Grade for 17 years). When my wife was searching for a family in need of a nanny, one of the services she used was Care.com. That’s an online service that matches up families and nannies. Unfortunately, it’s also a site that is used by scammers to take advantage and steal from kind-hearted people. One of the ways they do that is through the Nanny Scam. How the Nanny Scam works There are a few variations on this scam, but the basics are usually similar. When a nanny is looking for a family, she’ll usually post a profile on Care.com that lists previous experience and availability, and perhaps a photo. The scammer finds that profile as a potential target and contacts her to offer the “job” (which doesn’t exist of course). At some point in the beginning, the scammer sends a message that is something like this one:   Of course, the made-up story really pulls on the heartstrings of anyone that reads it and believes it. A single mother who lost her husband and baby in a tragic auto accident, and now she’s trying to make it with her small son who barely survived but needs a wheelchair. And conveniently, the “mother” can only communicate through text or email so actually speaking with her is not an option. This is the photo that is often sent along with the heartbreaking message:   As you can see, every aspect of this back story is designed to create emotion and sympathy. And it works. Now that the bait is taken, it’s time for the scammer to set the hook. The next message explains that the son – “Joe” – needs some type of new medical equipment such as a leg brace or a wheelchair. So the mother asks if she can send the prospective nanny a check to cover the purchase of the wheelchair PLUS a few hundred dollars to compensate for the nanny’s time. The nanny just needs to deposit the check and then send the money for the wheelchair on to the medical device supplier via Western Union (or some other “same as cash” service). So the poor gullible nanny deposits the check. She might even wait for the bank to confirm that the funds are clear, just to be safe. Then she gets cash from the bank, goes to Western Union and sends the money to the “medical device supplier” for the wheelchair. Once that money has been sent, the nanny never hears from the mother again. She DOES however hear from the bank – telling her that the check was no good and that she needs to pay back that money. Usually the check turns out to be stolen from a company or even from an individual (often taken from the back of the checkbook so it doesn’t get noticed right away). Even though the bank has said the funds are “clear” it often can take a few weeks for them to be notified that the check was no good, which is when they tell the victim that the money needs to be returned. And if she can’t pay back the money? She could very well be headed to jail for grand theft. It’s bad enough when a scam victim gets stung because they thought they stumbled across a once-in-a-lifetime chance to snag a bunch of money. But in this case, the person is victimized because of having a good heart and wanting to help someone. It’s often devastating to finally realize that the very person she was trying to help is the one that stole thousands of dollars from her. Here’s a news story about a young lady who was victimized by the Nanny Scam. Hopefully raising awareness will prevent some kind-hearted people from losing their their money to these scumbags.   The post Don’t get nailed by the Nanny Scam! first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

This week, some fun stuff. It’s good to have computer tips and security alerts and warnings to back up your important data, but sometimes we need to take a break and check out some things that can amuse and entertain us. And really, some of these things can be considered computer-related or technical in some way. Inspector Gadget   What we have here are some cool little items. All of them are: Cheap – around $20, some a lot less Amusing/entertaining – some may actually even be useful Available on Amazon – at least it was when I wrote this Have fun! Wireless LED Motion Sensor Light This little light just sticks up anywhere you have too much darkness, like in a closet or a pantry. It measures 3 inches square and is run by 3 AA batteries. Wherever it is, as soon as it sense motion (such as you getting into your closet to find something), the light comes on. When you leave the light goes off. Could be pretty handy. $15.00     Quirky citrus spritzer I can definitely see where this might be useful. It looks like one end is tubular with sharp edges. The other end is a pump sprayer. You just jam the sharp end into a fat piece of fresh fruit, then use the pump sprayer to spritz the fruit juice on your food. No batteries required, just finger motion. Doesn’t get much fresher than this! $4.99     Talking Toilet Paper Holder Seriously, who would not want one of these things? You can record your own message (and re-record it if you want). Then, when someone pulls on the toilet paper, it plays your pre-recorded message. I can think of a few message possibilities. It’s funny and creepy all in one. $9.99       Laptop cooling pad If you use a laptop regularly, you need one of these. Even if yours does not seem to get excessively hot, it does get hotter than the average desktop computer. The cooling pad pulls the hot air out and away from the computer, meaning it will run more efficiently, and therefore it should last longer. Whenever I am repairing a laptop, it’s on a cooling pad. $9.99     Sport headband with built-in headphones I would use this for when I run or walk. I wear a hat anyway, and I often use headphones. This gadget just combines the two. The only thing I see as a disadvantage is that the headphones are wired (the ones I use are bluetooth-enabled so they are wireless). But I still see a lot of people running with wired earphones anyway, so I’m guessing this would be pretty popular for those that like music and warm ears in the winter. $19.99     Ringtone Annoy-a-tron One of my favorites in this list. It’s a variation on the original, which was simply the Annoy-a-tron. The original was a tiny little device that you stuck somewhere in your victim’s house or office (in a place that it would not easily be found, like the underside of a table or the interior of a file cabinet). Then at random intervals, it would produce a little “beep” or “chirp”. Nothing loud or obnoxious, just enough to be heard and to make the victim wonder what in the world continues to make that noise. This new model mimics some common phone ring tones, and it’s also less expensive than the original, which currently sells for around $35. $20.99     Mini stealth universal TV remote I used to own one of these and it was a lot of fun. Small enough to hang on your keychain, so you can carry it with you everywhere. When you’re at someone’s house you could have the TV randomly change channels. It’s even more effective if you’re not actually one of the ones watching TV – maybe you’re sort of off to the side having a conversation with someone. It does confuse people since they can see the actual remote sitting there and no one is touching it. Even more fun – go to a sports bar on Super Bowl Sunday, and just as one team is about to score, switch the channel to a Hallmark movie. Just make sure no one EVER finds out it was you. $2.72     Temperature sensitive LED faucet light This is one of those things that has almost no practical value. The only real use for it is that you can see by the color whether the water is hot or cold. I guess that’s sort of handy. I just like it because it looks kind of cool, and it’s cheap. I think that whoever wrote the description on Amazon was probably not a native English speaker, as one of the lines read, “Make water colorful and beautiful to bring you good feeling”. $4.39       Stink bombs Now these obviously have LOTS of practical value. If you have a sense of humor like mine anyway. I have used these so many times over the years. The ingredient in these little things is ammonium sulfide. Sulfide like sulphur, or that wonderful “rotten egg” smell, and ammonium like ammonia, to make it really strong. That wonderfully funny chemical is inside a container made of

I recently got an email from my friend Preston, who had this question: “I’m wondering why, when you get a new hard drive, you don’t get the full amount of space that it says on the box? When I got my PC a few years ago, it said I had that 500 GB hard drive, but when I look at the drive, it only says I have 465 GB.” So what do you have to say, hard drive manufacturers? Is this some kind of scam on the computer users of the world?   Not a scam. There’s a legitimate explanation for this. Actually there are a few reasons why this happens. In case you’re not familiar with this, here’s what Preston is talking about. Your computer has a primary hard drive, and it was built to store a certain amount of data. The data is measure in either gigabytes or terabytes (1000 GB is virtually equal to 1 TB). Common sizes of hard drives these days are 500 GB, 750GB, 1TB, 2TB and sometimes even larger. For example, the primary drive in my main computer is 2 terabytes. If I pulled the drive physically out of the computer, you would see right on the label that it says it’s a 2 TB drive. But if I check it while it’s in the computer (you can do this by holding down the Windows key, and tapping the letter E), it shows a different capacity:   That’s telling me I still have 1.5 TB of free space, but it says that the total overall space on the drive is only 1.81 TB. Why would it say that, if it’s supposed to be a 2 TB drive? There are a few reasons for this. First, there could be a hidden partition on the drive. The most common type of hidden partition on a hard drive is a recovery partition. That partition contains the files and folders that would be used if Windows got messed up and needed to be reinstalled. You know how when you first boot up your computer and for a few seconds you see on the screen that it’s telling you to hit F10 or some other key for “Recovery Options”? That what that hidden partition would be used for. Not all computers have this – it really depends on the manufacturer. And why do they hide that partition? So we computer users don’t mess with it and screw it up! But it still uses some of the space on your hard drive even though you can’t see it normally. Second, there is a function in Windows that uses some space. That function is called System Restore. You’ve probably heard of it. This is where you can take your computer back to the state it was in on a particular date in the past, in order to fix some kind of problem that has come up more recently. It’s a handy thing to have in certain situations, but it can use up a good bit of space. Even just storing a single “past date” hard drive system state can be substantial – and if you check your System Restore window, you could find that you have 5 or 10 of them stored! The third reason is the file system of the hard drive itself. The data on your hard drive needs to be stored in an organized manner, and it doesn’t do that on its own. There has to be a system to organize all those bits and bytes. And that system takes up a bit of space on its own. Think of a physical file cabinet, like the one you might have in your office. That file cabinet might have a certain amount of space inside. But can you really use 100% of that space to store your files and folders? Nope. You will need something to hold your folders in place. Usually you start with a frame like this: That takes up a small amount of space on its own. But then you also need the things that hang from that wire framework:   Then after you have that all set up, NOW you can start filing away your manila folders with your important papers. Granted, the frame and hanging files don’t take up a LOT of space, but they do take up SOME space – meaning you don’t really get to use 100% of the space inside that file cabinet for storage of your stuff. So when you see that your 500 GB hard drive only has 465 GB of usable space, don’t worry, because it’s normal. The real scammers? Cereal manufacturers!   The post Why does my hard drive show less space than it actually has? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

After last week’s post and podcast about the dangers of sharing your wifi signal with your neighbor, I had several people contact me about how to keep a computer safe “the other way around”. Meaning, if you are using your neighbor’s wifi signal (with permission of course), what type of precautions should you be taking in order to protect and secure your own computer?   In general, the best plan is to use your computer the same way you would if you were on a public wifi connection and wanted to stay safe and secure. So that naturally brings up the next question – how do you keep your computer safe on a public wifi connection? 1. Don’t have your computer connect to a public wifi automatically This is something I’ve been guilty of. I could be in a place that has a free wifi signal, which I have used at some point in the past. And when I look at my laptop, it has already “remembered” the network and connected to it. Not good! Your computer should only go online when you are aware of it and you intentionally want it to connect to the internet. Usually when you click to connect to a wifi signal, there’s an option to “Connect automatically” – just make sure that box is not checked when you sign on. 2. Use 2-factor authentication for sites that offer it This is a security feature that is becoming more and more common. Slightly inconvenient, yes, but only slightly. 2-factor authentication means that someone would not only need your password to get into an account; they would also need access to your phone. For example, you can have this enabled for a Gmail email account. So if you have your laptop connected to a public wifi network, and you want to check your email, you would go to the Gmail website like you normally would. You enter your email address and your password. But you’re not immediately logged into your account. Instead, Google asks you for a confirmation code as the final step before accessing your account. And you get that code through a text message on your phone. When you enter the code, you get into your email. So even if some hacker somewhere in the world guesses your Gmail password, they can’t get into your email because they don’t have your phone. 3. Turn off sharing When you’re connected to the wifi at Starbucks, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be planning to share any files with the other people on that same network. So you shouldn’t have the various “Sharing” options enabled. Go to Control Panel and open the Network and Sharing Center, and click on “Advanced Sharing Settings”. Turn off Network discovery, File and printer sharing, and Public folder sharing:   4. Make sure you know the actual network name If you’re in some public place like an airport or hotel lobby, and you check to see what wifi is available, you might see a network called “public wifi” or “free wifi” or “guest wifi”. It would be really easy to think, “Hey, that’s nice of them to offer people a free wifi connection!”. But you should not connect to one of them without FIRST verifying where it came from. Yes, it might just be a local business offering it to the community. But it could also be that guy over in the corner with his own wifi hotspot, wanting people to log in to HIS network so he can snoop around on your computer. 5. Consider using a VPN That’s a Virtual Private Network. I’m not going to get into all the technical details about what a VPN is or how it’s set up. The bottom line for you is that you can run software on your computer, log in with your user name and password, and once you’re signed in you’re safe. So whether you’re signing in to your Facebook account or your email account or your Paypal account, all of your communication is encrypted. So no one can intercept it and read it. There are lots of VPNs available for you to use. Some are free, some you pay for, depending on the features. If you want, use the comments section below to let me know which one you like best and why. And in addition to those 5 practices, you should also do the things that are considered common sense: Have strong antivirus/antimalware on your computer Use strong passwords, and a different one for every account. And don’t store them in your browser. Don’t click on a link unless you know where it will take you Do you use your neighbor’s wifi? Do you use public wifi? What precautions do you take? The post How to be safe on a public wifi connection first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Recently I got an email from Barbara in Maine, with an interesting question. She wrote: “I have a next door neighbor who wants to hook into my internet and share expenses. Is that not legal to do? What do I need to know about it?” Great question, Barbara!   I’ll tell you right up front, if I were asked this by one of my neighbors, my answer would be no. For several reasons: 1. I don’t trust my neighbor enough to justify the risk this deal creates for me That’s not to say my neighbor (let’s call him Daniel) is not a nice person, or would do anything intentionally malicious. On the contrary, Daniel and his wife are wonderful people. Always friendly, helpful, just nice to have as neighbors. BUT – I don’t know how secure their computers are. I would be letting their computers into my network, and I don’t know what antivirus or antimalware they use. I don’t know if their software is up to date, or if their computers are even set to install Windows Updates at all. Their computers could already be riddled with viruses and malware, and I would be letting them into the “trusted” side of my wifi router, with the potential to infect all of the computers in my house. 2. I can’t really know who would be accessing the internet through my connection Even if Daniel and his wife are completely up to date and totally secure against any viruses, what about someone else that comes to visit? I couldn’t possibly trust those people since I don’t even know them. Maybe Daniel’s 24 year old nephew, who just got out of prison and needs a place to stay for a little while, goes online with his laptop that is NOT fully protected. That puts all of your computers at risk again. 3. I could be compromising my privacy This would depend on how you have your network set up, but in some scenarios, your neighbor (or his wife, or his criminal nephew Daniel, or Daniel’s buddies that come over) could access the files on your computer. 4. I’m responsible for the activity on my internet account What if whoever is sharing your wifi signal decides to download some illegal music or software? Or maybe they make just a brief (or even an accidental) visit to an illegal porn website? Any activity like that would be traced back to the IP address – and that’s all on you. Are you willing to risk prison time just to share your monthly internet bill? 5. Your internet provider might not allow it If you check the terms and conditions for your internet account, you might find that your internet provider does not allow you to share your wifi signal with any of your neighbors for the purpose of splitting the monthly cost. Of course they are aware that this does go on all the time, so if they do find out about it, they might cancel your internet account without notice. 6. Your internet could slow to a crawl At 10 pm when you just want to get some emails processed, or you’re doing some research on the web, and you notice that web pages are loading really slowly. Maybe you’re just imagining it, or… maybe your neighbor has 3 computers and they’re all logged into Netflix with different people watching separate movies. Hopefully those are enough reasons. For me, I would just rather pay for my own account and have it all to myself. The post Should you share your internet with your neighbor? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

There used to be a traditional set of guidelines that you could go by, and by doing so you could be reasonably sure that your computer was safe from being attacked or infected by a virus or malware. Use a good antivirus, don’t open email attachments, don’t click on a link unless you know for sure where it leads, and don’t visit sketchy websites. Those are all still good and important, and I highly recommend all of those guidelines. But hackers have another way into your computer – advertising on websites.   That’s right – your computer can get infected simply by visiting a website that displays a malicious ad. And before you say, “That’s okay – I don’t click on any of the ads” – it doesn’t matter. The attack does not require you to click on anything. This type of attack is called “malvertising”. Here’s why it can be so effective: 1. It shows up on safe, respectable websites One of the first rules you hear about for keeping your computer safe is that you shouldn’t visit sketchy websites – AKA “internet bad neighborhoods”. These usually include sites that are about pirating software, cracking passwords, downloading music or movies illegally, that kind of thing. When you visit places like that, you should just about expect to get infected. But what if you go to a well-known, popular website that is popular in the mainstream and considered very safe? An infected ad can easily show up there. Websites for companies such as Yahoo!, CNN, Tumblr, eBay – they are all susceptible to this at different levels. When an ad can appear on the most highly-visited, trusted websites, you can’t just filter it out based on the website’s domain because you’d be cutting off access to virtually all of the internet. 2. The attackers can usually remain anonymous It would be easy if a website simply made a deal with a particular company to sell a particular advertising campaign. If that package of ads was found to be malicious, it would be clear who is at fault. But that’s not how it works. Website advertising for the large companies is done by ad networks. This means a website would purchase a “package” of advertising that includes lots of different ads from a wide range of companies. This is a convenient and efficient way of selling advertising, but it also makes it very difficult to dig down and find out which ad served up the malicious content. 3. Hacker attacks can target a very specific group of users One of the greatest innovations in advertising is the ability to focus on a demographic. But this is also a curse, as it allows the bad guys to target just exactly who their victims are. If an attacker creates a pop-up ad that says “Your client records are infected – click here to fix this immediately” he might want to have that only show up on the computers of lawyers and doctors. When they focus on a certain type of user, they can use much more specific language, and even incorporate terminology and geographical references that make the user less suspicious because it all sounds so legitimate. How do you avoid this problem? Since you can’t just avoid going to the websites where malicious ads might appear, how do you keep these ads from infecting your computer? You can instruct your web browser to not display any ads. For my computers, I use AdBlock Plus. It’s free at adblockplus.org. AdBlock Plus is what’s known as a browser extension. This just means it gives your web browser (such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera) additional functionality. In this case the added functionality is the ability to block display ads. I’ve been using AdBlock Plus for quite a few years, and believe me – the web is a much nicer place without all the obnoxious ads to distract you. You can get more details about AdBlocker Plus, and install it in your preferred web browser, at the link listed above. While you’re on that site, click on the “Features” section, and when you scroll down you’ll see this information listed:   This means that not only are the annoying ads not displayed, but also if a website displays content from a known malicious server, that would also be blocked. It’s just another layer of protection against the bad guys. Of course, they are constantly trying to figure out ways to get past security, so this type of protection may not always work (and it may not work indefinitely). So you can’t just install AdBlock Plus and assume it’s safe to visit any website and click on everything in sight. When you are on the AdBlock Plus website and viewing the “Disable Malware Domains” as shown above, click on the “open this dialogue” link and make sure the feature is enabled. This is what mine looks like:   Those items that are

Years ago, hard drive space was an issue that I dealt with more often. Back in the days of 40 gb and 80 gb hard drives, it didn’t take a whole lot to fill one up. Then you started getting the warnings “Drive C is getting low on space”. These days, with hard drives more commonly in the 1 terabyte (1000 gb) range, it’s not as big of a problem (but that creates a different problem, which I’ll talk about in a minute). But even now I sometimes see a client’s computer that is getting pretty full. And by “pretty full” I mean that less than 10% of the drive’s storage capacity is still available.   Fortunately, there are a few things you can do quickly and easily to free up some space. In fact, you might even be surprised at how quick and easy it is. First, you can delete temporary internet files. When you visit a website, your computer will often store the images from that site temporarily on your hard drive. That way, if you go back to that same site tomorrow or next week, the site will load more quickly because you’re loading all those images from your hard drive instead of downloading them from the internet again. As you might imaging, storing those images can take up a chunk of space on your hard drive. You can get rid of them. Second, you can empty your Recycle Bin. I must confess, I don’t do this very often, and my Recycle Bin gets pretty full. Whatever is in there is taking up valuable hard drive space. Third, you can delete temporary files. Wait a minute – isn’t that what we did in step one? Nope! In what might seem like a confusing choice of terminology, these are two different things. These temporary files don’t come from the internet, they come from programs installed on your computer. Some programs are designed to store some files on your computer for a period of time, but they aren’t really necessary for your computer to function properly, so you can get rid of them to save space. Fourth, you can delete Windows Updates that are already installed and working. Don’t worry, deleting them doesn’t actually remove the update itself; it just removes the installer file that was originally downloaded. Sometimes these can take quite a bit of space, and you don’t need them any more since they have already been installed. So there you are, four ways you can immediately save some space (maybe a lot of space). It sounds like you’ll have to jump through all kinds of hoops and follow a lot of complicated steps to do all those things, right? Wrong. It’s easy! (Note: the steps below are based on Windows 7. If you have Windows 8 or 8.1, go to Control Panel and click to open Administrative Tools. Then double click on Disk Cleanup. Then start with Step 4 below. And yes, there are other ways to get to that same place. For another option on how to do this, listen to today’s podcast by clicking on the “play” button above.) Here’s how you free up space on your Windows 7 hard drive: 1. Click the Start button (the MS logo in the lower left corner) and type: cleanmgr 2. At the top of the Start menu, click on cleanmgr.exe   3. Choose the drive you wish to clean up (usually this will be drive C):   4. The program will go through and analyze several areas of the drive:   5. Now you will see the results of the analysis. This is the window where you will look at the 4 areas we mentioned above, check the box for each one. You will see that there is a calculation of the total amount of disk space you will gain by deleting these files. In my case, it was a little over 7 gb. To proceed, click OK and then confirm by clicking “Delete Files”.   6. You’ll see a little progress window as the files are deleted:   When that’s finished, you’re done. If you want, you can go back and check it again and see that the totals have been reset back to zero (or close to zero). You can run this and delete these files as often as you wish. But if you find yourself constantly running out of hard drive space, this is really only a temporary fix – you really need to either replace your drive with a bigger one, or add a second hard drive just for storage. Or, you could just get a new computer – the new ones come with huge hard drives and you’ll probably never lack for space. One more thing. I mentioned above that the newer machines with the really big hard drives cause a different problem. That problem is disorganization. When your hard drive is small and you only have limited storage space, you tend to be organized, and frugal about what you put on the drive. Now, with the larger drives, many people just download everything and store stuff all over the place. Since they don’t have to be concerned with running out of space, they tend to be careless about how much they download and where it all goes. You can of course use your computer an

I have 3 mysterious questions for you this week. Don’t worry, there will be a computer-related tip before we’re done here.   Mystery number 1: Why can’t I add simple numbers in my head? This is just a simple addition problem. But you cannot use a calculator or a pencil and paper. This must be done completely in your head. Try it: Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. Now add 10. What is the total? I’ll put the answer at the end of this post. No cheating! Come up with the answer in your head and see if you got it right.   Mystery number 2: Where did the other dollar go? This one has been one of my favorite word problems for many years. It seems so simple, but can be so confounding. Here’s the story: Three men are traveling and stop for the night at a hotel. They decided they want to save some money and share a room. The clerk tells them that a room for the night is $30. So each man pays $10, and they go up to the room. A little while later, the clerk realizes that he made a mistake. The room was only supposed to be $25. So he gives the bellhop $5, and tells him, “I overcharged the 3 men – go and give them this $5 back.” The bellhop heads toward the room, but he’s not very honest. On the way to the room, he decides to keep $2 for himself. He goes to three men and only gives them back $3 (which of course is a refund of $1 each). Now let’s think about this. We started out with the men paying $30 total, right? So originally each man paid $10. Now each man got a dollar back, which means that each man has now paid $9. $9 x 3 men = $27. The bellhop kept $2. That’s $29. Where did the other dollar go?   Mystery number 3: Why do people continue to pay for a service that they no longer use? This question is the one that’s computer/internet related. A long time ago, back when the internet was still a new toy to a lot of people, America Online was a very popular Internet Service Provider. Most people still had dial-up service. And no matter where you went, there was a display of AOL computer discs – always free – that would install the AOL software on your computer. This would create an account for you to connect to the internet, and back then it was like $9.95 per month. It gradually grew to $12 and later $15 per month. That monthly fee was what allowed the customer to actually connect to the internet.   Fast forward to today. Most people now use cable or some other type of high-speed internet connection. There are still some people (like those in very rural areas) who use AOL’s dialup internet service, but that number is steadily declining as high-speed access spreads. But guess what – many of the people that no longer use AOL to connect to the internet still pay AOL for that monthly subscription. It’s true. The average AOL “subscriber” currently pays $21.35 per month and AOL continues to increase the monthly fee by adding on additional “services” such as antivirus and premium tech support. But millions of those people don’t even use AOL’s service because they have switched to a high-speed internet connection. In fact, in the most recent fiscal quarter, the division of AOL that includes dialup service took in $139 million. With a continually declining user base, the one thing keeping AOL alive right now are these millions of people that are paying for nothing. For some of these people, I know the reason why because I have talked to them personally. They think that in order to keep their AOL email address they need to keep paying their monthly subscription. This is not true. AOL email is free (and in my opinion, even that is overpriced). So here’s the computer tip for today: if you are still paying AOL just to keep your email account, stop! Cancel your AOL subscription. You won’t lose your email address. And when you do cancel, check your credit card statement to make sure they don’t just “forget” and keep charging you anyway – that’s the standard practice for AOL. And the correct total for the first mystery question is 4100. Most people, myself included, come up with 5000. Get a calculator and check it. The post Questions that seem to have no answer first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

There was a time when I used and recommended AVG as a reliable option for a free antivirus. I stopped using it about 4 years ago, mainly because the software itself wasn’t really compatible with all Windows computers. When I make a recommendation, I try to make sure it’s something that won’t freeze up your PC. Now, AVG has given us some new reasons to not use their software. AVG has become one of the “bad guys” – now they’ll try to sneak malware and junkware on to your computer.   Kind of ironic, isn’t it? One of the companies that asks you to trust it to keep your computer clean of viruses and malware actually ends up trying to put that junk ON your computer. To verify this for myself, I went through the process of installing the free AVG antivirus program on my computer. At the AVG web page, the first button to click on is a big tipoff: You can see that the big green button indicates that the download is not coming from the AVG website, but rather from CNET – probably better known as Download.com. Back in the early days of the internet, CNET was a great source for technology news. And I used to go to Download.com all the time to find new software and try it out. But that has all changed, a good while ago. Download.com is one of the biggest sources for deceitful junkware and malware on the internet. Rather than delivering quality content, they now make their money by sneaking garbage on to your computer. I downloaded and ran the installer. Of course, the first thing that comes up is to accept their terms and conditions. Nothing to be surprised about there, really – just about every software installation has this now.   I was a bit surprised at the size of the Agreement, however. I copied it into a Word document and checked the size, and it came to 23 pages – 11,814 words. That’s a lot of legal talk for a free program. Wonder why their lawyers had so much to say? Here’s the big “fork in the road” during the installation process where many people make the wrong choice. You can do the “Standard” install or the “Custom” install. Of course “Standard” is pre-checked because that’s what AVG wants you to do. And look at the “Custom” option – it says it’s for “advanced users”. How many people would consider themselves “advanced users” – just that phrase would intimidate some people and they would choose the Standard install just because they assume it will be easier.   Here’s a tip for whenever you are installing software on your computer: ALWAYS choose the custom installation option. Here’s how you should really read it: Standard install: We have a ton of junk we want to put on your computer, and you’re agreeing that we can put ALL of it on without giving you any further warnings. Custom install: We’ll show you the list of junk we want to put on your computer, and you can choose which ones actually get installed. But for the purpose of this review, I chose Standard installation like a lot of people would. Now the real download begins:   When the download was completed, I was graciously offered the chance to give my email address and get another program – “Quick Tune”. It says Quick Tune can speed up my PC by fixing common computer problems. This is crapware that you don’t want, but the makers of Quick Tune have paid AVG to offer it to you as a “benefit”. I declined. And now the onslaught begins. Shortly after the installation, I got a pop-up on my screen:   This is where the true irony comes in. One of the primary purposes for having security software is protect against something called browser hijacking. Browser hijacking is what has happened when you suddenly notice your home page has changed to a different website. A true hijack also changes your default search engine and your “new tab” page (the website that shows up by default whenever you open a new tab in your web browser). That pop-up from AVG wants to do all of those things. If I allowed this (as a lot of people do, when they see the big “OK” button there), then every time I open up my web browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) it’s going to automatically go to the AVG Secure Search page, rather than whatever page I currently have it going to. And when I open a new tab, that new tab is also going to display that page. And whenever I do a web search, I won’t be searching on Google now – I’ll be searching on “AVG Secure Search”. So by clicking on the AVG pop-up that is offering to protect my web browser, that very thing is going to infect my web browser with all those changes that I don’t want. No thanks, AVG. What we’ve gone over so far is more than enough to tell you that AVG is no longer one of the good gu

This is a scenario that’s repeated many thousands of times on the internet, every single day. Someone has a file on their computer, and it’s in a particular format, and they need it to be in a different format. For example, they have an MP4 video, and they want it to just be an MP3 audio file. So they go on Google and search for “how to convert mp4 to mp3” and they see lots of free software that offers to do this. They click to download and install one of them, and within minutes their computer is infected with pop-ups, fake virus alerts, and in some cases, actual viruses. There are some actual legitimate programs that will do this, but depending on what type of file conversion you need, it can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You could spend a lot of time experimenting with the ones you find by searching Google before you find one that does what you want without putting a bunch of garbage on your computer. I recently came across a service that offers file conversion, and it’s entirely web-based – which means you don’t install anything on your computer in order to use it. And it’s free (though the free option has some limitations – I’ll get to that in a minute). As you know, I don’t recommend anything here unless I’ve used it myself. So I tried it out. The site is called Zamzar. You can see it at Zamzar.com. No idea where they came up with that name, but that doesn’t really matter. On the home page of their site, they claim to be able to do over 1200 different types of file conversions. If you click on the link at the top of the page that says “Conversion Types” you’ll see the list of the conversions they offer, and it’s pretty impressive. As I was browsing that list, trying to decide which one I wanted to try as a test, I saw that one of the options was to convert a video file (MP4) to an audio file (MP3). That sounded like a good one to try. This would come in handy if you have a video on your computer, like maybe your nephew giving a speech in school. But you want to listen to it in the car, so you only need the audio portion rather than the whole video. So I chose a video file that I had already stored on my computer, and began following the simple instructions on the Zamzar website: Step 1: Choose the file   Step 2: Choose what format you want to end up with     Step 3: Enter your email address so they can send you the link for the converted file   Step 4: Click the Convert button to start the process (Zamzar’s Privacy Policy includes: “Zamzar does not rent, sell, or share your personal information or email address with any other companies.”)   Since my file size was nice and small, I almost immediately got the notification that the file was successfully uploaded to their server:   They say their goal is to do all conversions in 10 minutes or less. For this one, it was less than a minute – the email showed up with a link for me to click.   I clicked the link, downloaded my newly-created MP3 audio file, and it played perfectly in my media player program (I use VLC Media Player, but you probably already have Windows Media Player installed on your computer for this). Overall I was pretty impressed at the speed. A larger file would probably take longer of course. But the thing I really liked about this whole process is that there was never any chance for me to accidentally click to install malware or junkware on my computer. The website is supported by ads, but I didn’t see any deceptive ones that tried to trick you into clicking. Your experience with their ads might vary (and when I turned AdBlock Plus back on, I didn’t see any of their ads anyway). The ads are one way the site makes money. But probably the bigger revenue for them is selling the paid version of their services. As you might expect, the free version (the one I tried out) has some limitations: Your original file has to be less than 100 mb in size (some video or image files can be much larger than that). Paid accounts can convert files that are up to 1 gb in size. Your converted file is only stored on their server for you to download for 24 hours. Paid accounts get up to 100 gb of storage space that you can use continuously. Conversions for free accounts are only done if there are no “paid” conversions being processed. Paying customers go to the front of the line. Paid accounts also get an online “inbox” where you can manage your various files. Their least expensive paid account is $9 per month. They also have an “intermediate” account for $16 per month, and a top paid account at $49 per month. Here’s a comparison chart for the various paid accounts (click the image to see it larger):   Personally, I really can’t see that it would be cost effective to pay monthly for a service such as this. If I’m doing that

There are a lot of reasons why your computer might be running slowly. But one of the biggest reasons is that you have too many programs running at the same time. This can be deceiving, because you might look at your screen and it seems like only a few are running. It’s the ones that are running that you DON’T see that could be causing the problem. Here’s the basic fact: the more programs you have running, the slower they all run. That means you don’t want to have any programs running if you don’t need them at the time. The secret is to find the list of programs that run automatically every time you boot up the computer, and tell them not to run every time. Here’s how you find that list: In Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7: 1. Click the Start button (the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner) 2. In the field with the blinking cursor, type: msconfig and hit Enter on the keyboard 3. In the new window that comes up, click on the “Startup” tab. There’s your list. In Windows 8 or 8.1: 1. Hold down CTRL and SHIFT, and tap the Escape key 2. Click the “Startup” tab. There’s your list.   So now you’re looking at the list of programs that run automatically, every time you boot up your computer. Getting to that list is the easy part. Now you have to decide which items you should disable. Important note: disabling or unchecking a program in this list does NOT remove it or uninstall it from your computer. It’s still there. It just doesn’t run automatically every time you hit the power button. The items that I see all the time and disable or uncheck include: iTunes QuickTime Adobe Reader Microsoft Office Anything related to your printer GoTo Meeting Apple Push PaperPort anything Nuance anything Skype Spotify RealPlayer anything There are others for sure; these are just the ones that come to mind because I see them fairly often. Of course, you might leave one or more of those checked based on your situation. Some people like to have Skype on all the time, so that the people with whom they communicate can see when they’re online. Or maybe you want Spotify to automatically start streaming your music every time you boot up. There’s no problem with that. What causes the problem is that so many of these programs insert themselves into the “auto startup” group without needing to be there, and without even asking your permission to be there. Like Adobe Reader. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for Adobe Reader to be constantly running in the background on your computer, but if you check the MSCONFIG startup list, it’s very likely you will find it there. So what happens when you UNcheck that box to disable it? It changes nothing as far as your ability to use it. When you click on a PDF file, it will open up in Adobe Reader just like it always does. But Adobe doesn’t care about how fast your computer runs. If you take Adobe Reader out of the startup list, guess what happens after the next Adobe Reader update? Yep, it’s right back in the list again. AND – you’ll see an icon on your desktop for Adobe Reader. This is absolutely the most useless desktop icon ever. No one clicks on that to open the program. You just click on a PDF file, and it opens in Adobe Reader by default (unless you use a different program to read PDF files). But we’ve known for a long time that Adobe doesn’t care about your computer’s performance – every time you go to Adobe.com to get an update to Adobe Reader or Adobe Flash, it will still try to sneak other junkware on to your computer – like McAfee or Ask.com garbage. How do you know which items to uncheck or disable? My general rule is this: if you don’t know what it is, leave it there. But even if you uncheck something that you shouldn’t have, you can always just go back to the list and check it or enable it again. Some things are obvious. The items I listed above don’t have to run all the time, just when you need them. Other programs in the list you might not be so sure about. What you can do is note the program name, and then do a little research on it. Find out what it does. You might discover that it’s part of the software program that goes with a printer or scanner that you don’t even use any more. Or it might be malware. On the other hand, you will probably see your antivirus program listed there – definitely want to keep that one. You should of course also keep your program that you use for automated online backup, since that should run without you having to manually activate it. It’s a good idea to check the MSCONFIG startup list maybe once a month or so, just to be sure things haven’t gotten in there when they shouldn’t be there. Usually there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find something that you’ll want to disable. The post Tweak your s

I love Google Chrome. I use it as my default web browser and it works great. Probably what I love most about it is how I can customize it with extensions. I can put on ad blockers and all kinds of things so that websites look and behave based on my personal preferences. Chrome has one drawback though – it tends to use a lot of the computer’s memory (RAM). Here’s how you can see this for yourself. Open Google Chrome, then open a website in a new tab. Then open another web page in another new tab. And another. And keep doing that until you have a bunch of tabs open, each one on a different web page. For this example, I opened 15 different tabs and each one is displaying a different product on Amazon. So the top of my Google Chrome browser looks like this:   Now, with those 15 tabs open, let’s see how much memory is being used by Chrome. To do this, we need to open Windows Task Manager. The quick way to open that is to hold down the CTRL and Shift keys, and tap the Escape key. When Task Manager opens, click on the “Processes” tab. If you look in that list of processes, you should see Chrome listed several times (once for each tab you have opened in Chrome). And each one will tell you how much memory is being used. Mine looks like this:   I didn’t add up all that, but you can see that it can pretty easily get into several gigabytes of memory. That will tend to slow things down. Of course, you might not typically have that many Chrome tabs open at the same time, but there are probably situations where you have quite a few open. I certainly do sometimes. Thankfully, there’s a way to save the website or web page addresses for each of the tabs, but combine them all into just one single tab. It’s through a Chrome extension called OneTab. You can get it free at One-Tab.com. Just go to that website (using Chrome) and click to install it. You don’t even need to restart Chrome. When it’s running, you’ll see a little blue funnel at the top of the window:   When you click that funnel, it takes all of those individual web pages and puts them into a list of clickable links – on just one single tab. At that point, you can restore each one individually if you want, or you can restore all 15 tabs back to the way they were originally.   And the big benefit – the reason we did this in the first place – was to save on memory. Take a look at Task Manager now: That’s a big difference! If your computer has lots of memory installed, like 8 gb or 16 gb, you might not notice a huge change in the speed of operation. But if you’re working with 4 gb of memory (which is pretty common on most computers these days) but difference in speed might be very noticeable. And by the way – OneTab is available for Firefox also. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments! The post Combine multiple browser tabs into ONE tab to save memory first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

I had an experience recently that I knew almost immediately would end up as a blog post and podcast episode. It’s another example of how someone came up with a great idea about yet another use for technology, and we can all benefit from it.   When you go on vacation, what are the biggest expenses for which you have to plan? Airfare of course, if you’re flying. But the next biggest one could be where you’ll be staying. Obviously you need a place to store your stuff and a place to sleep every night. Typically for most people that means finding a hotel. The price for a week or two in a hotel can vary widely. You could stay in a very nice one and pay a few hundred dollars each night per room, or you could find a cheaper place for possibly less than $100 per night. Either way, it’s going to represent a pretty big part of your travel budget. What’s really nice is if you’re traveling to visit family or friends, and they have extra rooms so you can just stay with them. Think about this: wouldn’t it be nice if you had some family or friends to stay with wherever you went? That’s kind of what we can do now. Kind of. Let’s say you’re traveling to Clearwater Beach (one of the greatest beaches in the world, of course). You can obviously book a hotel room (or several) and stay right there on the beach. And you pay for that service and convenience. If it’s around Christmas, or Spring Break, you’ll pay even more. But think about what else is in the area. There are some privately owned homes that are sitting empty. Either because the owner is traveling somewhere, or the property is no longer occupied because it’s for sale, or a variety of other reasons. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just contact the owner and stay there, at a lower rate than a hotel? It’s good for you because you’re saving money, and it’s good for the homeowner because he’s making some money from this house that would otherwise just be sitting there empty. What’s been missing in the equation is how the property owners can be connected with the people that need a place to stay. That has now been solved, thanks to a service called AirBnB. You can access it at AirBnB.com. The basic premise is pretty simple. The website summarizes it in 3 steps: Step 1 is to decide where you want to go, and what kind of place you want. There are actually hosts in 190 different countries, and TONS of them here in the US. You’ll find more options in highly populated areas of course, but even in rural locations you should have a few places to choose from. You can filter your choices based on location, price range, and whether you want a private room, an entire home, or even a shared room (sharing a room – that sounds like more of an adventure than I would probably want).   Step 2 is to book the reservation. This is where you actually send a request to the host and tell them what dates you want to reserve, how many people, those kinds of details. At this point, all of your communication is done through the AirBnB website. You don’t have any direct contact with the host until your reservation is accepted (hosts have the option on whether or not they will accept a reservation). Payment is also made through the website. AirBnB will charge you the advertised room rate. Added to this in some cases is a cleaning fee charged by the host. And, AirBnB will add their own “Guest Fee”, which ranges from 6% to 12% based on the room rate.   Step 3 is – go! Show up on your check-in date, meet your host, ask any final questions, and then enjoy your stay. As I mentioned, I recently had my own first experience with this type of travel accommodations. I was scheduled to attend a writer’s conference about a month ago over in Delray Beach, Florida (about a 4 hour drive from where I live in the Tampa Bay area). Getting there was no problem of course, since it was a reasonable driving distance. However, the conference was Wednesday through Saturday so obviously I needed to find a place to stay for 3 nights. The conference was at the Marriott right on Delray Beach. Beautiful facility, but at $200 per night plus tax, it was more than I wanted to spend. So I started looking around for alternatives. There were hotels that were less expensive, but they weren’t very close by. That meant I would be driving 30-45 minutes each way from the my hotel to the conference hotel. Not exactly ideal either. That’s when a friend told me about AirBnB and I started checking out the possibilities there. There were several hosts within just a few miles of the Marriott, and the prices were very reasonable. Since I was traveling alone, I only needed minimal space so I limited my search to private rooms rather than a whole house or apartment. I decided on a host that offered a private room with my own full bathroom – and it was only $60 per

Every week here on my blog I talk about some type of practical tip or trick that you can do with your computer. Hopefully you find some of them practical and useful. But you know what? Being a geek, I sometimes like to come across computer tricks that may not seem to have obvious practical value. That’s what today is going to be. And who knows, maybe there is some actual usefulness for this. If you find it useful in some way, please let me know in the comments below.   You’ve probably always wondered, “How can I created a folder on my computer, and give that folder a completely blank name?” Well, you can stop wondering. Here’s how you do it. For our example, we’ll create a folder on the desktop so it will be there along with your other icons. First, do a right-click in an open area of the desktop. In the menu that comes up, move the cursor to “New”, and then choose “Folder”. At this point, you have a folder called “New folder”:   Do a right click on that new folder, and choose “Rename”:   Now the folder is ready for you to give it a new name. Hold down the ALT key on your keyboard, and tap the number “9” nine times (that’s 999999999) from the number pad on the right side of your keyboard. NOTE: it won’t work if you hit the 9 in the number row at the top of the keyboard – it has to be the number pad on the right side. Now let up on the ALT key, and hit Enter on the keyboard. There you go, a folder with no name:   And that’s it. Hey, at the very least, maybe you could bet an office co-worker that you can create a nameless folder and win a dollar. For me, I just find stuff like this interesting. It’s kind of fun when you know how to do something that most people don’t. The post How to create a Windows folder with no name first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular email programs in use today. I ‘ve been using it for years and I like it. Yes, it’s a little quirky at times but overall it’s pretty reliable and has a lot of great features. However, one of the things not included in Outlook is an easy backup process. Other programs have that built in so you can just click File – Backup and send all your data to a separate drive, but not Outlook. No problem though – I know how to do it and today I’ll show you how.   The fundamental thing you need to know about Outlook is that it stores ALL of your Outlook data in one single file, called a PST file. So that one file includes: Emails Email folders Email attachments Contacts/Address book Calendar Tasks Whatever other Outlook features you use It’s kind of convenient to have everything in that one file, so all you have to back up is that file. But it’s also a little dangerous, since if you lose that single file, you’ve lost everything. That’s why backing up your Outlook PST file is so important. The actual backup process is not really difficult. It can be summarized like this: How to backup Outlook: Find the Outlook PST file Copy and paste it to your external drive Sounds easy, right? The trick is finding the PST file in the first place. The location of that PST file depends on what version of Outlook you are using. (Please note – the file locations listed below are the default settings. It’s possible to move the PST file to another location.) In Outlook 2003, the PST file is found at this path (but if you’re still using Outlook 2003 you really need to upgrade to a newer version): C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook In Outlook 2007, the PST file is found at this path: C:\Users\username\App Data\Local\Microsoft\Outlook In Outlook 2010 and 2013, Microsoft finally woke up and decided to put the PST file in an easier location, the Documents folder: C:\Users\username\Documents\Outlook files The change they made in the more recent versions of Outlook was smart. Not just because the Outlook PST file is now easier to find, but because people that back up their data almost always include the Documents folder as part of the backup. And since “Outlook files” is a folder inside Documents, the email gets backed up automatically as part of that process. Once you’ve actually located your PST file, just do a right-click on it and choose “Copy”. Then plug in your external drive and open it. Create a folder called “Outlook backup” (you could also include today’s date in the file name). Then just right-click and choose Paste to copy the PST file to that folder. Last step – disconnect the external drive. Not so difficult, right? A few things to be aware of: 1. If your PST file is not where it “should” be (the default locations listed above), you can just do a search for it by searching for: *.pst (that’s an asterisk followed by a period followed by “pst”). 2. Having your PST file backed up to an external drive is definitely better than no backup at all. However, it would not be good to have this as your ONLY backup, if your email, contact list, etc. is critical to save. The external drive could fail, just like your computer’s hard drive can fail. And, if you have to remember to do it, it most likely won’t get done every day. An automated online backup process would be a good way to make sure it gets done every single day, without your having to even think about it. 3. A PST file can be large. If you have years of emails (some with large attachments), a big contact list, etc. the PST file might be quite large. I’ve seen some go over 1 gb in size. I just checked mine and it’s about 2.3 gb. So now that you know how to back up your Outlook, go do it while you’re thinking about it! The post How to back up Outlook email and contacts first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

If you use Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird or some other email software on your computer, this is something you (or your tech) has dealt with. When you set up a new email account, one of the questions is whether or not you want the email protocol to be POP or IMAP. What’s the difference between them? Does it matter which one you use?   First, you should know this: if you get your email by going to a website, the POP vs. IMAP question doesn’t really apply to you. You just go to the email website and there’s your email. You can read it, delete it, send email, whatever you want to do. The POP/IMAP issue only applies when you are running an actual email software program on your computer. In the past, POP email protocol was the most popular choice. IMAP is now gaining in popularity mainly because of everyone getting email on their smartphones and tablets. The main difference between the two has to do with syncing your various devices. When you use IMAP, for example, your laptop that uses MS Outlook would always be in sync with the inbox that you access via the web (such as the one at Gmail.com). So if you open Outlook on your laptop, read an email and then delete it, the next time you go to Gmail.com you will see that it’s automatically deleted there as well. The website version of your email will always be the same as your Outlook version on the computer. On the other hand, if you use POP, the devices don’t sync up automatically. You could check your email in Outlook on your laptop, and then if you go to the Gmail.com website, you would still see those same emails there in the Inbox. Should you use POP or IMAP? It’s really a personal preference. For my email, I use POP for a couple of reasons. The “not necessarily logical” reason is that I’ve always used POP and I’m used to how it works. I know what to expect. There is some value in familiarity, and it does work for me. The other reason I like it though is because it means I always have a backup of my emails on the Gmail.com web server. I know that even if I accidentally delete an email in Outlook on my computer, I can go to Gmail.com and that email will still be there. And it will really be there indefinitely, since Google gives you so much email server space to work with. I’ve had my Gmail account since they first came out in 2004, and right now I am only using about 30% of the available space. I have to say though, the trend is moving toward IMAP. This is mainly because of people having so many different devices. One person might have a desktop, laptop, iPad and smartphone – and probably gets email on all of them. With IMAP, all of those devices are automatically synced with each other so if you get one email you don’t have to delete it from 4 different devices. That’s efficiency. But, you better make sure you have your email backed up somewhere, because once you delete it from one device, it’s gone from all of them automatically. The post What’s the difference between POP and IMAP? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

As a computer technician, I spend a lot of time doing computer repair here in Safety Harbor, Florida (and remotely for clients around the country). Just about everyone has a computer (or several) these days, and eventually something goes wrong with almost all of them. If there were no computer problems I would have to go look for a real job! But there are certain situations that you might be able to take care of on your own, just by trying one or two steps first.   Problem: no internet connection First thing to do: restart your modem and router The company that you pay for your internet access provides you with a modem. In some cases, the modem is also a router. Or, you might use the internet company’s modem along with a router that you purchased yourself. There are even some cases where all you have is a modem (this is common if you only have one desktop computer and no need for a wifi connection). Whatever your situation is, you need to unplug the modem and router from the electrical outlet, wait a minute, then plug them back in. In many cases, this will bring back your internet connection so your computer is able to go online again. Of course, you could just call your internet provider, navigate through their phone menu, wait on hold for a while, and then the first thing they’re going to have you do is power down the modem and router anyway. Save some time and do that first. Another option: If your computer is a laptop that uses wifi to connect to the internet, you could check and see if the wifi is physically switched on. For some laptops, there is a simple slide switch on the front or side that may have gotten bumped into the “Off” position. Or you might see one of the keyboard keys that has a small indicator light that’s orange (meaning wifi is off) and when you tap it, the color changes to blue (meaning wifi is on). Problem: a program won’t run First thing to do: restart the computer Actually, restarting the computer is sort of a “magic pill” for fixing computer problems. When someone tells me they keep clicking on an icon for a particular program and it just doesn’t do anything, I’ll ask them when was the last time the computer was restarted. Many times the answer is several days or even weeks. Not good! Your PC, whether it’s a laptop or a desktop, should be restarted each day or at least every couple of days. The easiest thing is whenever you’re done using it for a while, just do a restart then. When you come back to it, the restart will be completed and the computer will be fresh and ready to use again. Problem: an error message appears on the screen First thing to do: write down the actual text of the error message So many times I’ll have someone call me and tell me that their computer needs repair. Here’s the typical dialogue: Computer user: “My computer is acting really weird and not working right.” Me: “How is it acting weird? What are you actually seeing on the screen?” Computer user: “Well this error message keeps popping up telling me something something blah blah blah. Do you think it has a virus?” Me: “What does the error message actually say?” Computer user: “I don’t remember.” The actual text of the error message is probably the biggest clue in diagnosing the problem, so write it down when you see it. Your computer guy, whether it’s me or someone else, will want to know what that is. Even better – take a screenshot of it and email it to your computer tech. This might not be possible, depending on what kind of problems the computer is having, but it sure does help explain a lot of things more clearly than just a verbal description.   Problem: printer won’t print First thing to do: check the print queue and clear it if necessary If you try to print a document and for whatever reason it doesn’t print, then no print requests after that will be successful until you clear out that first one that didn’t work. A lot of times I’ll be on a client’s computer and they’ve been trying to print for a while without any success. Then when I look in the print queue, there are 5 or 10 files in there, all lined up but nothing printing – because they’re blocked by the first one that didn’t print. To check the print queue, click the Start button and go to Devices and Printers. Double click your printer, then click on “See what’s printing”. Whatever is in that list needs to be cancelled. Then you can check on the printer (or have your tech check it) and see why the first document didn’t print.   Problem: Outlook won’t send an email First thing to do: delete any emails in the Outbox folder If you create an email and it has a mistake, it won’t be sent. A mistake could mean an email address that doesn’t make sense (like it’s missing the &

A laptop docking station can be a pretty handy thing, if you need one for your circumstances. What kind of computer user would find value in one of these things? Anyone that uses a laptop as their home computer, and also takes it with them to work or while traveling would benefit from a laptop docking station. A laptop docking station is a small electronic device and usually your laptop will sit on top of it. Here’s how it’s used. A lot of people use their laptop as their primary home computer, and they like to have a lot of peripheral items connected to it. These things make the laptop easier to use, and include: a regular keyboard (I type much faster on a “normal” keyboard, rather than the one on the laptop itself) a mouse (easier than using the touchpad on the laptop) an external monitor (if you want the display to be bigger than the laptop’s screen) a printer (even if your printer is wireless, a USB connection is more reliable) an external USB hard drive speakers (since external speakers are almost always better than the laptop’s internal speakers) So think about that. You have all these extra devices connected to your laptop. Then, Monday morning rolls around and you have to take the laptop in to work with you. You know what that means – you have to: disconnect the keyboard disconnect the mouse disconnect the monitor disconnect the printer disconnect the external drive disconnect the speakers And then when you get back home that night, you have to reconnect all of those things if you want the convenience of using them. What a pain! If you find yourself in that situation, you could benefit from using a laptop docking station. Instead of constantly connecting and disconnecting all of those extra items, you just plug them into the docking station. So it holds the connecting ports for your keyboard, mouse, monitor(s), printer, other drives, and speakers. And they all STAY plugged in to the docking station. Then your laptop makes a single connection to the docking station, thereby connecting to all of those other components. When you want to take your laptop out somewhere like to work or on vacation, you just disconnect it from the docking station and take it away – nothing else to disconnect. Easy! Here’s what some other docking stations look like:         Not all laptop docking stations are set up so that the laptop sits on top of it. Some are configured such that it just connects to the laptop via a cable. To find out if there is a docking station available for your laptop, the easiest way is to just go to eBay.com and type in your laptop’s model number followed by “docking station” (without the quotation marks). If one exists, it’s likely to pop up for sale there. The post What is a laptop docking station? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Last week I went over 11 programs and tools I use on a regular basis, and recommend to my clients. And that was only half the list! This week we’ll cover the rest. Of course, this is list is not exhaustive, and you might have other options that you prefer. Not every program is right for every user. Let me know what you think in the comments at the end.     12. Freshbooks (small business bookkeeping) Get it here A lot of small businesses start out with their bookkeeping by just using an Excel spreadsheet to track income and expenses. That’s better than nothing, but it’s a lot easier to use a tool that is designed just for this purpose. Freshbooks is web-based bookkeeping – this means you don’t install any software on your computer. Your account is online and you do everything through the website. They make it really easy to use so there is not a huge learning curve. You can create professional looking invoices, and then email them with a link to pay online (either through Paypal processing, or a regular merchant account). Also, any recurring monthly or annual invoices can be scheduled to get sent out automatically so you don’t have to remember to do it. For a large business, Quickbooks might be a better solution. But if you have a small business like mine, it’s worth checking Freshbooks out with their free 30-day trial. After that, their packages range from $0 to $40 per month.   13. Phrase Express (text expander) Get it here This is a handy little tool that’s free for personal use. It’s designed specifically to save you time if you find yourself typing the same text over and over again. For example, I get technical/repair questions regularly by email. Since I usually can’t diagnose or fix a problem without actually seeing what’s going on, I will often send this response: “Thanks for the inquiry. This is something I would handle through my Remote Support service. You can get the full details on how that works at this page on my website: http://ComputerTutorFlorida.com/remote” Since that same response is used many times, it’s a waste of time to type it out manually each time. Instead, I can set up Phrase Express to handle this for me. I can just designate a certain key combination, such as Shift + Control + R to trigger Phrase Express to type out that whole phrase for me in about a half second. You can set it up to remember something as short as your email address, or as long as a full page of text. It’s designed to run on Windows but can run on a Mac computer with a Windows emulator.   14. Adobe Reader (PDF reader) Get it here Yes, I use Adobe Reader. It’s not as bad as it used to be, even though it still requires regular updates. I’ve tried the alternative programs that will open PDF files, and I always find myself disappointed because they lack the features of Reader. And I’m pretty sure if a PDF file has been password protected when it was originally created with Adobe Acrobat, you still need to get into it by opening it in Adobe Reader and entering the password. Just make sure you keep it updated, and if you go and get the updates manually, make sure you uncheck the box that wants to install McAfee or some other software at the same time. It’s a shame that even supposedly reputable companies have caved in to taking money just to install third-party software on peoples’ computers.   15. Picasa (photo organizer) Get it here Picasa is a free program from Google and it’s one I install on all of the laptops I sell. It does a LOT of stuff. Primarily, it’s a way to visually organize your photos on your computer. The first time you run it, Picasa will look through all your picture folders and display all the images in thumbnail version. Beyond that there are lots of cool special effects you can add to your photos, or you can get rid of redeye, or you can lighten up a photo if it’s too dark. You can also use Picasa to upload your photos to your Google account which makes it easy to share a lot of photos with a lot of people (you just email your friends or family a link to see the photos – no more sending photos by email attachment). One thing to note – I often hear clients say “My photos are all stored in Picasa”. This is not accurate. Picasa does not store anything. The photos are stored on your computer (usually in the Pictures folder). Picasa is just a way of displaying those images.   16. Skype (communication) Get it here I use Skype almost every day. There’s a common misconception about Skype – sometimes someone will tell me, “I would use Skype, but I don’t have a webcam”. You don’t need a webcam to use Skype. You can communicate with Skype using text chat, or by audio. A webcam is only required if you want to transmit video as well. The amazing thing about Skype is that any calls are

Last time I did a blog post about the software I use regularly and recommend to my clients – two years ago. Time flies! So I wanted to update that information since a lot of it has changed since then. Originally I was going to cover all of these in one blog post and podcast, but it became way too much so I’m spreading it over two Mondays.   1. Windows 7 (operating system) Get it here Windows 7 is still the Windows operating system of choice. It’s fast, it’s stable, and it will be supported by Microsoft through the year 2020. And what are your options, anyway? Windows XP is outdated and unsupported. Windows Vista was crummy from the start. The most current operating system is Windows 8, and it is not popular at all because they changed so much about it. Windows 9 will be out at the end of this year or early 2015, and who knows – maybe it will be wonderful. I’ll reserve judgement on that for when I can check it out. But for the foreseeable future, Windows 7 is a very safe bet.   2. MS Office (documents, spreadsheets, etc. – paid) Get it here I still use Microsoft Office 2010 as my primary software for when I need to create a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, etc. Since it’s the standard software for use in the business world, I never have any problem with sending a file by email and the recipient not being able to read it. Of course, it’s not free. But not all software is free. If you’re using Office 2010, I can’t really think of a reason to justify upgrading to Office 2013 (I’ve used some of the 2013 programs, and I actually kind of prefer the 2010 versions – maybe because that’s what I’m used to).   3. LibreOffice (documents, spreadsheets, etc. – free) Get it here If you need to be able to create, open or edit Office documents such as those done in Word or Excel, but you don’t want to pay Microsoft for that privilege, LibreOffice is a good alternative. It’s free. This is usually the one I put on my laptops that I sell, unless the purchaser indicates they want Microsoft Office installed. LibreOffice is not a “MS Office knock-off” (as one of my clients recently described it without really understanding it). It’s simply an alternative way to work with these types of files. If someone creates a Word document and emails it to you, you would be able to open it in the LibreOffice app called Writer. If you created a .doc or .docx document (MS Word format) in Writer, you could email it to someone and they could open it in MS Word. It’s all compatible. The primary difference is that LibreOffice programs aren’t laid out precisely the way MS Office programs are, so you have to get used to where to find icons, controls, etc. But you’re saving around $120 to $300, so that might make up for it.   4. MyPC Backup (online file-by-file backup) Get it here I personally do 3 different types of backups. If you saw how many hard drives crash like I do in my day-to-day work, you might too. One of the backups I do is an online, automated backup of my important files and folders. Since it’s done online, my whole computer could be destroyed in a fire or flood and all of my data is safe because it is stored offsite. I could just download all of my stuff to a new computer. The big names you have probably heard of for online backup are Carbonite and Mozy. I have worked with both of them, and have instead chosen a service called MyPC Backup. This is the one I use myself, and I have set it up for 100+ clients over the past couple of years. For most people it costs around $60 annually for automated daily backups.   5. SecondCopy (local file-by-file backup) Get it here I also do a local backup of my individual files and folders to an external hard drive. You can do this manually, of course – just copy and paste from your computer to a corresponding folder on the external drive. But that’s very time consuming, which means you probably won’t do it consistently. You should also NOT use the “backup” software that came with the external drive. I use SecondCopy because it makes it so easy. You just set up a profile for each of the folders you want to back up. To do a backup, you just click on “Run All Profiles” and walk away. I have almost 300 gb of data, and mine takes about 20 minutes total. SecondCopy offers a 30-day fully functioning free trial, then if you want to keep it you pay $29.95 once.   6. Windows System Image (local system image backup) My third type of backup is a System Image. The reason for this one is so that you can be back up and running if you have to replace your hard drive after a crash. The system image doesn’t just back up your documents and pictures. It takes EVERYTHING on your computer – documents, pictures, all of your programs, your wallpaper, all of it – and puts it into a single f

Any website that automatically starts playing sound as soon as it loads up should be on some kind of blacklist. Whether it’s a selection of background music, or a news video, or any other kind of audio – any web designer with a clue knows to not have that stuff automatically start up. You give your website visitor the option to play sound – you don’t force it upon them. Autoplay on a website is rude and tacky, and it guarantees that I leave that site immediately. Can you tell I have a rather strong opinion about this subject? 🙂   What’s even worse is having sound come from your computer, and not knowing where it’s coming from – which makes it very difficult to turn off. Here’s a common scenario: Imagine you are doing some research on a subject for a blog post or a report for work. You have Internet Explorer or Firefox opened up, and you have a lot of different webpages opened – each one in its own tab. So you might have 10 or 15 tabs open, or maybe even more. Everything’s going fine, you’re making good progress, when suddenly… you hear someone talking. You know the voice is coming from your computer speakers. It sounds like a YouTube video maybe? But you can’t tell, because it could be coming from any of the 15 or more web pages you have open in web browser tabs. What do you do at that point? 1. You could just close Firefox or Internet Explorer completely, but then you lose all of those web pages that you want to use as part of your research. It would take a long time to find all of them again. 2. You could go through them one by one, scrolling all the way down the page until you find the source of the sound, and turn off the video or audio player to silence it. That could also take a while. 3. You could hit the Mute button on your screen, or physically turn off your speakers. This could be the quickest, most practical solution to solve the immediate problem – especially if you happen to be in a library or some other place where such noise is frowned upon. But really, the best solution is to prevent the mystery of “which browser tab is playing the sound” from happening in the first place. The way to do that is to NOT use Internet Explorer or Firefox. Instead, use Google Chrome. Chrome recognized this problem and solved it. When one of your browser tabs is on a webpage that is generating sound, the tab itself will display a little “speaker” icon so you can immediately see which one it is. Here’s what it looks like. This is a screenshot of my Chrome browser with 3 tabs open. The first one is Facebook, the second one is MSN, and the third one – the one that’s playing sound at the time – is YouTube. See the little speaker icon next to the X at the right?   Here’s a larger image of the YouTube tab so you can see the speaker more clearly:   So obviously, when you have a bunch of tabs open and you see that one has the speaker icon, you know that’s the tab that is generating the sound. You can either go to that tab and stop the video or whatever is causing the sound, or just close the tab. Internet Explorer and Firefox don’t have this feature. Just one more reason to use Chrome! The post How to know which browser tab is playing sound first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Today’s tip is not going to be very long and elaborate. It’s a pretty common problem with a simple fix (most of the time). But if you don’t know the solution, it can be very frustrating because it seems like something major is wrong with your computer.   Here’s what usually happens: You try to go to a website and instead of the website content, you see a big warning on your screen. The warning is telling you that you should not try to access that website, because the website’s security certificate has expired. The warning would look something like this:   That might look pretty scary – like the website has been hacked and taken over by the bad guys or something. Or maybe the owner of the website forgot to renew the site’s security certificate, which means it is no longer secure to use. Or what if the site has been infected by a virus, and is infecting any computers that visit that website? The most likely explanation is that it’s none of those things. The problem isn’t with the website – the problem is with your computer. But it’s easy to fix. Look down in the lower right corner, where the date and time are displayed. I’ll bet you’ll see the date and time are incorrect. In fact, the date might be off by a decade or more. What happens is this: inside your computer is a small battery, about the size of a nickel. It’s called the CMOS battery. That battery is what enables the computer to remember the date and time and some other things, even when the computer is turned off and unplugged from the wall. Many times, that little internal battery will last the computer’s whole lifetime without needing to be replaced. But in some cases, that battery wears out. You wouldn’t really notice this as a problem as long as the computer is plugged in. But when you unplug the computer, and the battery cannot hold the date and time any more, the system reverts back to a way-earlier date and time. You might not even notice that the date and time are wrong, since you probably don’t look at it very often. But when you try to access a secure website, that’s when the fun begins! Your browser automatically compares the date of the website certificate with the date and time on your computer (since it assumes your computer’s date and time are correct). When it sees that the computer says that we are in the year 2005, and the site’s certificate was created in the year 2013, that sets off the alarm bells.   To the web browser, it appears that something very suspicious is going on – so it throws up the warning to tell you it’s probably not safe to access that website. As I mentioned, the solution to this issue is a simple one. Just correct the date and time on your computer. To do that, right-click on the actual date and time that is currently being displayed and in the menu that pops up choose “Adjust date/time”. That opens a new window – just click on the “Change date and time” button and click OK a couple of times so that the proper date and time are displayed. Now close your web browser and open it again, and see if you can access that same website. If so, problem solved – temporarily. You may need to have that internal battery replaced. It’s a small job and the batteries aren’t that expensive so for most computers it’s no big deal. For some laptops and a few all-in-one desktops, those batteries are a real pain to access, so it might be more of a project. If the computer is showing the proper date and time and you STILL cannot access the website, trying checking a few other sites like Facebook or Google. If the problem is only with one site, then that’s something the website owner needs to address. If you still get that same warning on those other sites, there is probably still some issue with your computer that needs to be diagnosed and fixed. But in most cases, changing the date and time will take care of it. The post Website blocked due to expired certificate? Quick fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

This week I’m going to show you some interesting things you can do with YouTube. You might not use all of them, but hopefully you will find one or two of them helpful, or at least fun to try out. I love “discovering” these kinds of little-known things and bringing them to you here on my blog, and on my podcast.   Trick 1: Download any YouTube video to your computer, without installing other software Sometimes you might watch a video you really like, so you bookmark it for easy access. But then you go back to YouTube a week later or a month later, and it’s gone. That happens all that time, for a variety of reasons. You can avoid that problem though. Instead of bookmarking it to go back and watch it on YouTube, just download the video to your own computer. Then you can watch it anytime – even if you aren’t connected to the internet. Example: You like this video of this guy ranting about waiting in line at the post office (it actually is a pretty funny video if you want to watch it). When the video is on your screen, look up at the address bar. You’ll see the web address of the video displayed there (it’s also called the URL). It looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDvaJJyUpTs All you have to do is click in the address bar, and change the web address to this: pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=vDvaJJyUpTs and then hit the Enter key on your keyboard. This will take you to a page where you will see a little preview of the video, and links where you can click to download the video. Those links take you to a variety of other sites. Check them out and see which one you like best. Yes, I know you could just go directly to any of those sites and copy/paste the URL of the video itself. The idea with these little YouTube tricks is that you don’t have to remember or bookmark all those other websites in order to download the video. Just add “pwn” to the YouTube address.   Trick 2: Download just the AUDIO from any YouTube video Maybe you subscribe to a YouTube channel that puts out a new video each day or each week, but you don’t really need to see the video portion. For some videos, the only thing to see is the person talking to the camera. Or, maybe you want to listen to the content while you’re driving, and it’s obviously not safe to watch the video then, so all you need is the audio. When you have the audio file saved, you can listen to it on your computer, or you could put it on your MP3 player or your phone for listening at your convenience. Example: There’s a video of Eric Clapton performing unplugged in 1992. It’s a little over an hour long, so if you’re a Clapton fan, it would make a great sound file for while you’re out on a run, but obviously you don’t want to stream the video from YouTube and watch it while you’re running. You just need to do a little tweaking to the URL, similar to what we did in the first trick. The web address of the video will look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w24A2eesrUA You will want to move your cursor up there and change it to this: listentoyoutube.com/watch?v=w24A2eesrUA That takes you to a new page. Look for this image and click the Go button. NOTE: This site has a lot of display ads and you might be tempted to click on things other than what I describe below. Don’t do that. That will take you to a different page, where you’ll see a link to click for your Download button: Finally, you’ll see a button to actually download the audio file in MP3 format: When you click that, the file will be saved to your computer (usually it goes in the Downloads folder, but it might go somewhere else if you have set your preferences differently from the default).   Trick 3: Play a video from a certain starting point You find a video on YouTube, and it shows people walking on a sidewalk where there’s a patch of ice. We all love to watch people fall down, right? The problem is, this video goes quite a way in before you actually see someone fall down. You know if you post this on Facebook, people will get bored pretty quickly if they don’t see some slipping and falling pretty quickly. So what you need to do is “tweak” the URL so that the video doesn’t start playing at the very beginning – it starts playing at the point you want it to. Here’s the video we’ll use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDCwMfUhv24 You check the video and find out that there are a bunch of people that “almost” fall, but the first person that actually hits the ground happens at the 1:32 point in the video. So that’s where you want the video to start playing. First, you have to convert that initial stretch of time to seconds. One minute and 32 seconds translates to 92 seconds total, so “92” is the important number here. All you have to do is add #t=92 to the end of the video address. So the a

It seems like Facebook is always involved with some type of controversy, and it usually involves the violation of the privacy of Facebook users. Of course, if you don’t like Facebook’s data collection practices, you can always just cancel your account (see last week’s blog about how to do that). The latest issue has to do with the Facebook Messenger app that works on a smartphone.   If you’re on Facebook, you have probably heard the recent uproar over the privacy settings on the Facebook Messenger app. This is the little app that goes on your smartphone that allows you to send and receive Facebook messages with other users. If you want to use that app, you have to agree to the terms that Facebook puts on it, including giving Facebook permission to have access to a variety of areas on your smartphone. For Android phones, it wants access to your contact list, the phone’s calendar, your GPS location and your phone’s camera and microphone. That’s quite a takeover! For iPhone users I don’t think it’s quite as intrusive but I’m not sure since I don’t use an iPhone. I’m not going to go into the whole debate about how much information is too much for Facebook to require or if the permissions they need on your phone are excessive. I will say this though – I removed Facebook Messenger from my phone. It’s important to note that there is a difference between the Facebook app on your phone, and Facebook Messenger. The Facebook app lets you see your newsfeed and the stuff your friends are posting, and it’s what you use to make your own posts and check in from wherever you happen to be. Previously, you could also send and receive Facebook messages from within that app. Now, you can only send and receive Facebook messages from your phone if you use the separately-installed Facebook Messenger. And that’s where all the permission requirements are. Oh, but there is one other way, although it’s kind of a hassle. You can access Facebook on your phone the same way you do at home: just open the Facebook website through a web browser. You do this just like you open any other website on your phone. But that means you are viewing the Facebook site through the tiny screen on your phone. Yes, you can send and receive messages that way, but it’s a pain. Hang on, I have the (almost) perfect solution. Here’s what I did: Uninstall Facebook Messenger from my phone Uninstall the Facebook app from my phone Install the Tinfoil for Facebook app   Tinfoil for Facebook is a free app. It only requires a couple of minor permissions (Internet and Coarse Location) and it works ALMOST identically to the regular Facebook app. You can also send and receive Facebook messages from it. The way it works is by accessing the Facebook website – just like your phone’s web browser does. Except the app takes the information from the site and rearranges it so that it looks just like the Facebook app. All of the data is easy to view and using the app is very intuitive. You’ll see when you try it out. There is one difference, that I have not yet been able to resolve. When someone sends you a Facebook message, you don’t get the old notification “ding” like Facebook Messenger provides. So if you are expecting a message from someone, you will need to check it manually to see if it’s come in yet. For me, that’s not a deal killer anyway. If someone needs to reach me, I would rather they call or email. And if someone does send me a message through Facebook, I’ll see it the next time I’m on my computer. If you know of a way to make Facebook for Tinfoil automatically notify about messages, please put it in the Comments section below. I’ve been pretty happy with this app so far. It wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook comes up with a way to keep the app from working, since it circumvents their marketing strategies. But for now it’s working fine, and Facebook isn’t squirming around my phone like bedbugs in a cheap motel. Tinfoil for Facebook  The post Send and receive Facebook messages on your phone, WITHOUT FB Messenger first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

For some people, the novelty of social media has worn thin. Facebook is constantly wanting more and more of your personal information, because that’s their biggest selling point to advertisers. Twitter hashtags are displayed on just about any television show now, and YouTube videos are showing up virtually everywhere. If you get to the point where you say, “That’s it, I’m done – no more social media” do you know how to go about cancelling those accounts? I’ll show you a really easy way today.   Actually I shouldn’t say it’s definitely “easy” – it really depends on what account(s) you want to cancel. Some sites make it a simple process, and other sites make it nearly impossible. But thankfully, there is one website that can guide you through the process for cancelling almost ANY online accounts, social media or otherwise. That site is AccountKiller.   Using AccountKiller is free, although they encourage you to make a donation if you find the site useful (and if you want to cancel some online accounts, it is definitely useful). The site doesn’t actually cancel the account(s) for you. It just tells you how to do it, and even provides a link to the actual cancellation page when there is one available. There is also usually some handy advice or tips on how to go about cancelling, and what ramifications there might be for cancelling your account with that particular site. For example, let’s say you want to cancel your Yahoo.com account. AccountKiller gives you the exact URL for the cancellation page (https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user). They also tell you: If you have publicly visible images posted, those aren’t always deleted even when you cancel your account successfully. It’s a good idea to manually delete them before you cancel the account. Your Yahoo account is connected to your Flickr account, so if you cancel Yahoo, you also cancel Flickr. But if you want, you can go and cancel your Flickr account separately without cancelling your Yahoo account. There are details like that for hundreds of online accounts. They have the various accounts categorized by color: White – easy to cancel, sometimes with just a click or two Black – very difficult or impossible to cancel Gray – somewhere in between If you have an account you want to cancel and you don’t see it listed there (which would be fairly unlikely), you can send it to them as a suggestion and they will research it and eventually post it along with the others. Great resource. http://www.accountkiller.com The post How to cancel any social media account first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Ever try to print a web page? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The reason for this is that website content is designed to be displayed on your computer screen, not sent to the printer to be put on paper. So even though it looks perfect on your monitor, the printed page is often completely messed up. I’ve even had people call me and complain that their printer isn’t working properly, because the words and images are all out of order and misaligned. The problem wasn’t the printer, though. That web page they were trying to print just wasn’t printer friendly.   Some websites are helpful and offer a “printer friendly” version of the content. This usually works, but most non-commercial websites don’t have that feature. And actually even a lot of business websites don’t offer it. But now there’s a solution – and it’s free. It’s an online service called Print Friendly. You can see it at PrintFriendly.com.   Using this service could not be any easier. When you’re viewing a website you want to print, click one time up in the address bar to highlight the address, then do a right-click and choose “Copy”. Then go to the Print Friendly website and paste it in the URL field and click “print preview”:   If the preview looks okay, print it! Here’s an example. I went to an MSN news story. A screenshot of the website article is below. As you can see the screen is cluttered with all kinds of junk – navigation links, social media buttons, ads, links to other stories, and several images. There’s so much stuff that in order to read past the first few lines of the article, you have to scroll down. I don’t need all that extra stuff – all I want to print is just the words in the article.   So I copied and pasted the address, and here is what the print preview showed. Just the title and the text – ready to print!   To print, just hit the link at the top left on the preview. Next to that is the option to make the content into a PDF file, or you could click the “Email” button to send the article by email. There are some other options to control the text size and the appearance of images – you can play with those as you like. I encourage you to experiment with it. It probably won’t be perfect each time, as there are a million different variations in the way a website can be arranged. But it should work okay in most cases. http://www.printfriendly.com The post How to make ANY website printer-friendly first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Last week I talked about 4 bad computer habits that I see happening pretty regularly. This week in part 2, I’ll cover the other 4. If you do any of these things with your computer, knock it off!   Picking up from where we left off last Monday – 5. Clicking on unknown links Every time I get to the point where I think that by now just about all computer users must be aware of the danger of clicking on links that they aren’t sure of, I get a phone call from someone who did just that. Just recently I got a panicked call from a client. She said she got an email from her credit card supplier, and it told her that her account had been suspended due to some suspicious activity. The email conveniently provided a link for her to click on to log in to her account and provide the necessary information. She clicked on that link, and of course the website she was taken to looked exactly like the credit card website – but it wasn’t, of course. She entered her email address and her password, and it “seemed” to log her in, because it then went to the next screen. That next screen was where her suspicion level was raised high enough that she just closed the browser window and started to think “Have I just been scammed?”. At that point, the scammers had the login information to her credit card account. But fortunately, she logged in (to the REAL account this time) and changed her password before the bad guys tried to. It goes back to the same fundamental rule – be suspicious of everything. An “unknown link” is any link that you don’t know for sure where it’s going to take you. If you get an email that simply offers some “generic” text such as “hey check this out” and invites you to click on a link, that’s not a known link. It doesn’t matter if it came from someone you know. It doesn’t matter if it came from your mother – don’t click it.   6. Automatically clicking “Next” when installing software This is such an easy trap to fall into. Almost all software programs have all those legal disclaimers and Terms of Use that you have to agree to, and the simplest thing to do is just click “I agree” or “Next” without really reading what the screen says. Unfortunately, the scammers have figured that out and they’re HOPING you just click those buttons without reading the text. In many cases, when you click those things you are telling the program to install lots of other junk software, extra toolbars, different search engines, and to change your home page to something else. So many times people will bring me their computer that is practically unusable because of all the pop-ups and other garbage, and they don’t know how it got there – “all I did was download a free desktop weather program”. There’s a reason some programs are free – they make money when you don’t pay attention and all that other stuff gets installed. 7. Going days or weeks without rebooting Your computer should be restarted every 1-2 days. Each time it starts up, it has fresh memory and will just work better. In fact, when someone has a problem and the computer is not working properly, one of the things I will ask is, “When was the last time the computer was restarted?” Sometimes I find computers that have been on for several weeks or even months straight. Restarting often fixes whatever problem is happening. Think about it like this – how long could you go without taking a shower or washing your hair? For most people it’s probably a day or maybe two days. Sure, you COULD go a week or even a few weeks, but think about how awful and dirty you would feel. Would you really be at your best if you went that long? And then imagine after all that time being able to take a nice long hot shower – how refreshing! That’s how your computer feels when you restart it after it’s been working for a while. It’s much happier. 8. Not having any backup Of course – you didn’t think I could talk about bad habits and not mention the lack of a regular backup did you? That’s because it’s important! What would you do if you hit the power button tomorrow morning, and the computer didn’t come on? Or the screen displayed the message “No disk found” (which indicates a hard drive crash). If that would cause your heart to skip a beat because of all the important documents and pictures that are stored on there that are not backed up anywhere else, it should be one of your priorities TODAY to get that taken care of. And if I asked you right now, “Do you have all of your important stuff backed up?” and your answer is, “Well, I guess it’s backed up…” that means you don’t have a backup. The backup process doesn’t just set itself up. You have to do it delib

Since we use our computers just about every day, sometimes all day, it’s easy to get into a routine. As human beings, we have a set of habits. That means we don’t necessarily do things a certain way because it’s the safest or most efficient, but rather it’s just because we’ve always done it that way. These are some of the most common bad computer habits I see. I’ll cover 4 this week and 4 next week.   1. Weak and reused passwords No one would ever guess your dog’s name followed by your birth date, right? Wrong. You have to get out of the mindset of thinking “this would be hard for someone to guess” or “no way could anyone ever know this about me”. That’s because in most cases, the bad guy is not sitting at his computer trying to guess your password. He has software that can do that at a much higher rate of speed, and it can work tirelessly for hours. Or days or weeks. And even if you have a really strong password (random numbers, and upper and lower case letters and other characters), it’s just as unsafe if you use that same one across multiple accounts. If someone happens to get into one of your accounts, they can get into most of the others as well. Don’t be an easy target. Lesson: use strong, unique passwords on every account. 2. Searching for a website when you already know the address This one really drives me nuts. I used to work with someone who would do this. Here’s an example of how he would do it. Let’s say he wanted to go to Yahoo.com. Here’s the process he would use: Open Internet Explorer and in the address bar, type “www.google.com” When Google comes up, click in the search field and type “www.yahoo.com” When the search results came up, Yahoo would be the first one listed, so he would click on that and it would take him to Yahoo First, this is extremely inefficient. In step 1, he could have just typed “yahoo.com” and gone straight to the Yahoo website. That’s the quickest way to do it if you already know the website address (URL) that you want to visit. And if you go there regularly, make it a bookmark or you could even make it your home page. Second, and probably more important, this is a dangerous way to visit websites. If you’re in the habit of typing a URL in Google’s search field and then just blindly clicking on the first search result in the list, there will come a day when you will click on something and it will take you to a malicious website. The scammers and hackers know that a lot of people do this, so they make websites that are designed to come up high in the search results. Or they will even purchase an actual Google ad, so that it definitely shows up at the top (it will technically labeled as an ad, but a lot of people won’t notice that and will just click on it anyway). As soon as that site is visited, the computer could be infected. Or it could pop up some fake “update” message that could trick you into clicking and downloading malware to your computer. Lesson: If you know the actual website address, just type it in the address bar and hit Enter – no need to use Google. 3. Ignoring error messages Sometimes I’ll get a phone call from someone, and the problem with their computer is this constant error message that keeps coming up. It’s really bugging them because it comes up every time they turn on the computer. My first question of course is, “What is the error message?”. Most of the time they don’t know because they didn’t write it down. My next question is when did this first start happening. In many cases, the client tells me that it started happening a long time ago, like several weeks or even months. They’ve just been ignoring it. Bad idea! That error message could be indicating a serious problem – if so, it should be fixed quickly. You might not see any obvious symptoms or other things happening, but that doesn’t mean it’s having no effect. And from a practical standpoint, sometimes an error is easily remedied if we catch it right when it starts coming up. Even a System Restore could be a potential fix – but not if the error is 3 months old. Lesson: Take action when you first see an error message. 4. Storing files and folders on the desktop This is another pretty common one. There might be a folder that has some documents in it that you access all the time, so you want to be able to get to it quickly. So it goes on the desktop. Or maybe you download pictures from your phone regularly, and the easiest thing is to just thrown them in a folder on the desktop. Before you know it, your desktop is covered with files and folders, and you probably notice your computer running more slowly. The desktop is not really designed for storage and having a significant amount of data there will slow down the computer. However, I understand th

You know I’m always talking about having an automated, consistent backup process in place. This is partly because I have people bring me computers just about every week with a crashed drive, and they’re in a panic because they need the files and folders that are on that drive. But it’s also from first-hand experience – just a few weeks ago my OWN primary computer had a complete hard drive crash with no recoverable data. Of course I lost nothing because of my automated backup process.   That automated online backup process (which I can set up for you remotely in about 10 minutes) saves your individual files and folders – stuff like documents, pictures, emails, music, etc. It does not back up programs, just data. This type of backup is very important to have in place, for when your computer’s hard drive crashes. But there’s another kind of backup, called a SystemImage, that I highly recommend you implement. This one is done manually to an external drive, and it serves a different purpose. The purpose of this backup is to get you back up and running with all your files and all your programs as quickly as possible. Let’s consider the scenario of what happens when your hard drive crashes. Nothing to worry about really, if you have your file-by-file automated backup. You swap out the crashed drive for a new one. At that point all you have is a blank hard drive. So you first need to install Windows. Then you need to download and install all the Windows Updates (this can take hours just by itself). Then you have to install your antivirus program and ALL the other software you use, such as Chrome or Firefox, Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, iTunes, your printer software, and whatever else you use. Then you have to configure all of them to work they way they used to work before the crash. THEN you have to copy all of your documents, pictures, music and everything else back from your backup to your new hard drive. It’s a process. You didn’t lose any of your important files, but you will lose some time because it can take a while to get everything back in place. How do you avoid spending all that time to get back up and running? By having a recent System Image backup as well. The System Image is an “all-inclusive” backup. It takes all of the files on your hard drive – your Windows installation, your documents, your pictures, your music, your screensaver, your programs, EVERYTHING – and wraps it up all together into one folder, then that backup is put on your external drive. So let’s say you create a new System Image on Saturday, and your hard drive crashes the next day. All you have to do is swap out your dead drive with a new one, and then tell your computer to restore that System Image you created on Saturday. Within a very short period of time (usually less than a couple of hours), EVERYTHING is back on your computer the way it was before the crash – all of your programs, all of your files, they’re all just like they were before. And you can go on using your computer just like nothing happened. That’s a huge difference! Instead of losing a day (or more) trying to get everything back on and set up like you had it, you start the system image restoration process and go have lunch with a friend, and when you come back it’s all done. That might bring up a question in your mind: “If this backup does all that, why not just use the system image as my ONLY backup?“ The system image is the ideal one to have if the whole hard drive crashes and you have to replace it with a new, blank drive. But what if you accidentally delete a picture, and you really need it back. And you can’t find it anywhere, even in the Recycle Bin. Do you really want to spend 2 hours wiping out your whole hard drive and restoring it just to replace one file? That wouldn’t make sense and it’s not very efficient at all. For a single file, you can just go to your online backup account and download that file again – all done in a few minutes. So you need BOTH types of backup. Here’s how you do a System Image backup: 1. First, you have to get to the right screen. In Windows 7, click the Start button and type two words: back up You’ll see the menu item “Back up your computer” at the top of the Start menu – click on it. In Windows 8, go to the App screen and just type the word “recovery” then click on “Windows 7 File Recovery”. In Windows 8.1, search on “File history” and click on “File History”. 2. When you follow the steps listed above, you’ll be shown a new window. Somewhere in that window is a link for creating a System Image. Click on that link. 3. A new window opens, and it asks you where you want to save the System Image backup. You should have your external drive connected at this time, and select it from the drop-down

Are you someone that would rather talk than type? Personally, I would rather type out words on the keyboard because then I can make sure that the message that is transmitted is exactly what I want to say. The downside of typing is that it usually takes longer since most people can speak much faster than they type. But if you prefer to control your computer by your voice, you can do that. And the software that allows that is probably already in your computer.   I remember many years ago I purchased a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking (company site). This was way back in the mid-90s, and the idea of controlling your computer with your voice was still a fairly new one. I remember that the error rate for the program was pretty high. In fact, it was high enough that I didn’t continue using it because it wasn’t worth the trouble of having to go back through every document and fix all the mistakes. It has improved a lot since then, and it’s still pretty much the standard for voice recognition software usage – IF you need to use a third-party program. But before you go out and spend your money ($75 to $175) on that program, you should check out the speech recognition software that you probably already own – the one that is built into Windows. It’s been included with the Windows operating system since Vista, so if you use Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 you already have it to try out. In some cases, you don’t need anything more than the features that come with the Windows version. To do this, technically all you need is a microphone connected to your computer. But ideally you will want a headset (headphones and a microphone). Here’s how to use Windows Speech Recognition: (these instructions and screenshots are based on Windows 7, but Windows Vista and 8 are similar) 1. Click the Start button and type (or in Windows 8, just start typing) “Speech Recognition” and you’ll see a link to click on with that name (actually you can just type the word “speech” and you’ll see it appear). Click on it and you’ll get your first screen to start the setup process:   2. Then you are asked to choose which type of microphone you will be using:   3. You’ll get a few handy tips on how to use a microphone:   4. And now here’s your chance to finally speak into the microphone. They want you to read a sentence so you can gauge if the microphone volume needs to be adjusted. You should see the volume level fluctuate as you speak – your words should mostly be in the green area. Yellow would be too quiet, and red would be too loud.   5. Microphone is all set   6. If you want the program to learn your particular patterns of speech more quickly, you can have it review your Documents and your Email. This is a good thing to do in order to improve the accuracy of the software, but some people might have concerns about a Microsoft product being able to read and review your documents. Which is kind of ironic, since Microsoft Word was most likely what created those documents in the first place. But you can skip this step if you want, and the program will still work.   7. Now you need to decide how you are going to activate the speech recognition software – manually or by voice. In the Manual Activation mode, when you are using the software and you say “Stop Listening” the program actually turns off, and you have to actually run it again in order to use it. In Voice Activation Mode, the “Stop Listening” command just puts the Speech Recognition program in a light sleep mode. When you want to use it again, just say “Start listening” and it’s running again.   8. On this next screen, you will want to view the reference sheet and print it. It’s a handy list of the common phrases that the software already understands.   9. Now you need to choose if you want to have the speech recognition software run all the time (each time you boot up) or if you just want to run it when you need it.   10. The next screen is another good thing to do, if you are planning to use this feature regularly. Take the tutorial – it will give you the basics of how to control your computer with your voice.   11. Once you are done with the tutorial, you’re ready to just start using the Windows Speech Recognition as part of your regular daily computer use. When the program is running, you will see the small window at the top of your screen, and it will say “Listening” if it is indeed listening for you to give it a command:   It’s up to you how extensively you want to use it. If you want to, you can use it to completely control your computer for just about everything. Or, you can just use it to dictate content into a Word document or an email. For most people, talking is faster than typing. It will take a little bit to get used to, b

My favorite kind of computer tips are those that address a particularly common and annoying problem, and solve that problem with a quick solution that’s easy to implement. And preferably free. Today is a great example of this kind of computer tip.   It’s a common complaint among laptop users. The cursor seems to jump around to random places on the page while you’re typing. If you happen to not be looking at the screen for a few seconds, you look up and you might see that you have typed a few words or even a whole sentence – in the wrong place. If you don’t know what’s causing it, this problem can be very frustrating because you also won’t know how to fix it. Quick fix: Want to watch my screen as I implement this solution? Full “over my shoulder” video instruction is just $2 (two bucks!) Click here for immediate access   Having seen this happen many times, I am very familiar with it. In fact, when a client has a question to ask, and it starts out, “My laptop does the weirdest thing. I’m just typing along, and all of a sudden…” that’s usually all they have to say because I already know what they are going to tell me. The cursor moves around the screen to a different spot, seemingly with a mind of its own. The cause of this issue is the laptop’s touchpad. That’s the little square under the keyboard with the left and right button. It’s sort of the “mouse” of a laptop since you can move your finger on it to determine where the cursor is on the screen. What happens is that while you’re typing, your left hand or your right hand (or both) brushes the touchpad, ever so slightly. It doesn’t take much at all. That tells the laptop that you want to move the cursor, so it just does what it’s told to do. And you end up typing a bunch of text in the wrong place. There are a few solutions to this: Type more carefully. Hold your hands up higher so you don’t accidentally touch the touchpad. This is not really a practical solution. Disable the touchpad and use a regular mouse instead. This solves the problem, but it’s not really ideal. If you use a laptop because its portability, you might not always be in a situation where a mouse can be easily used. Connect a separate keyboard and type on that instead of the laptop’s keyboard. This also solves it, but again can be kind of cumbersome in some situations. Recently I came across what I think is the best solution. It’s a little program called TouchFreeze. You can download it free here. When I installed it to try it out, I was happy to see that the download and installation was very simple. There was no attempt to load any junkware – you just download the file, then run it to install the program. When you run it, you won’t even see anything change on the screen. It just runs in the background. What it does is one thing: it disables the touchpad – temporarily – while you are typing. Stop typing, and you can move the cursor around with the touchpad all you want. There isn’t even a “Settings” menu to bother with. The only setting is whether or not you want it to start automatically each time Windows starts up. Since it does just one job and does it well, you will probably want to run all the time. After installing it, I played around with it by typing with one hand and deliberately tapping the touchpad with the other – and the cursor didn’t move from where it was supposed to be, not even once. This program is elegantly simple and just does its job. Highly recommended for anyone using the keyboard and touchpad on a Windows laptop.    The post Cursor jumping around on your Windows laptop? Here’s the fix. first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

What if I told you I would give you an email account, and it’s all yours to use. You can use it for personal or business email or whatever you want. There’s only one catch: you can only have it temporarily. At some undetermined point in the future, your access to that email account would be cut off and you would not be able to use it at all after that.   Would you use that email as your primary email address? Would you give that address to all of your friends and family? Would you put it on your business cards and give it to all of your clients as the best point of contact? Probably not. It wouldn’t really make sense to be tied into an email address that you will lose at some point in the future. Guess what. YOUR email address might be a temporary one. Does your email address end with: tampabay.rr.com verizon.net or verizon.com roadrunner.net or roadrunner.com fairpoint.net or fairpoint.com gwi.net knology.net or knology.com comcast.net or comcast.com att.net or att.com cox.net or cox.com Can you see what all of those have in common? Each one is an Internet Service Provider (ISP). When you sign up with a company to provide you access to the internet, they also give you an email address (or several) that you can use. If you’re using the email address that was provided to you by your ISP, it’s only yours temporarily. When you change internet providers, you LOSE your email account. I’ve been encouraging people for many years to NOT use the email that comes with their internet service. And it’s kind of ironic that one of the common objections to changing their email address is: “I really can’t change my email address, because I’ve had this one for years and this is how all of my friends, family and customers know how to contact me.” They’re kind of surprised when I tell them that at some point they are going to have to change it anyway, whenever they decide to change internet providers. At that point they kind of throw up a defense that they know is weak – “Well, I like my internet provider so I will just stay with them.” Come on. You seriously expect to be using the same internet service the rest of your life? Technically it could possibly happen, but the odds are highly against it. It’s much more likely that you will move to a different area that your current ISP does not cover, or a different ISP in town will offer a better deal or a faster connection (or both). Or, your current provider might get bought by a larger company, meaning the domain name changes (so everyone’s email address changes). Sound familiar, Fairpoint customers? Why put yourself through all that hassle, when you can have an email address that is yours to use for the rest of your life? And it’s completely FREE? I’ve been using Gmail since it was introduced by Google in 2004. And even though I have changed internet providers a few times in the past ten years, my email address has always been the same one. Of course, you don’t have to use Gmail. There are lots of web-based email providers, and many of them are free also. I like Gmail for a variety of reasons (lots of storage space, great spam filter, Outlook compatibility, etc.). Your other option is to just get your own domain name. This costs about $10 per year. Then you can have whatever email address you want. For example, if I bought the domain name “scottjohnson.com”, I could have the email address [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] or whatever one I wanted – because I would own that domain name. Whatever you decide, my recommendation is that you take care of it now. When you change your email address, it’s good to do it when you have time to proceed strategically and make sure everything goes smoothly. I can help with that. If you wait until you are forced to change emails (because of one of the above mentioned situations), you might miss something important. Let’s avoid that. The post Is your email address just a TEMPORARY one? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

It’s a question that I get asked all the time: Should I leave my computer on all the time, or should I turn it off at night? There are valid reasons for both options, so I’ll present you with the pros and cons and you can decide what’s best for your situation.   Why you should leave it on: Maintenance and backups Your computer has stuff to do just to take care of itself. Your antivirus needs to update itself and do a scan regularly, and Windows Updates get downloaded and installed at least once a month (the second Tuesday of each month, which is known in the geek community as Patch Tuesday). And if you use an automated online backup process (which you should), that has to happen as well. It’s nice if all of these things can happen in the middle of the night, when you’re not using the computer. Convenience If your computer is a bit old and slow, it might take a while to completely boot up. There are ways of speeding up the bootup time, but it is kind of nice to just walk into the room and the computer is already on and waiting for you. Usable life This one is debatable (which is why it’s listed in both categories). There are some people that say it’s better to leave the computer on, because when you turn it on it heats up all the components – especially the processor, which does get pretty hot. Then you turn it off and they cool down again. This constant heating/cooling temperature change taxes the computer’s components and thereby could be shortening the life of your computer. If you leave it on all the time, the processor and other parts generally stay at a more level operating temperature, which means they might last longer. Heat As mentioned above, your computer generates heat when it’s running. My office is usually the hottest room in the house because of several computers running. If you live up north, this can be a nice thing in the wintertime! Granted, it’s not the same level of warmth that a space heater or wood stove would provide, but a couple of computers running can take the edge off on a cold winter morning.   Why you should turn it off: Electricity usage This is probably the strongest argument for turning off the computer when it’s not in use. It uses electricity, and will continue to do so all night even though you aren’t using it. It still uses a little even when it’s powered down, but not very much. So you would most likely see a savings in electricity if you turned off your computer(s) overnight. Usable life This is the flip side of the argument I mentioned above. Some people say that your computer has a limited number of hours that it will run over its lifetime. So theoretically, if you shut it off for 8 hours every night, you could be adding those 8 hours on to the end of its usable life. Room noise A laptop has at least one fan inside, so it does make a certain small amount of noise. The cooling pad that it sits on will have 2 or 3 additional fans to add to the noise. And a desktop computer can have 2 or 3 inside the tower. If your computer is in your bedroom, you might find it difficult to tolerate that noise while you’re trying to sleep. Not to mention the 3 am alert sound that you just got an email. Heat As I mentioned above, with several computers running in my office, it’s the hottest room in our house. Here in Florida, that’s not necessarily a great thing, especially in the summer. In addition to being uncomfortable, it also makes your AC system work harder, which of course adds to the bill each month. So as you can see, there are good points to be made on both sides of this debate. You have to decide which factors are the most important for your situation. There are a few more important points to consider: First, even if you do leave the computer on all the time, you should still restart it at least every 1-2 days. This frees up the memory and allows it to be running as efficiently as possible after the restart is finished. And a restart should not inconvenience you at all – just do it at night, when you are all done with it for the evening. Then it will be nice and fresh when you come back to it in the morning. Also, you can leave the computer on overnight but you don’t need to leave the monitor on. If you use a desktop computer, just turn off the monitor when you’re done for the evening. The computer will continue to function just like it would if the monitor were left on, but you don’t have the screen using electricity or lighting up the room all night. Finally, if you use a laptop as your primary computer, you should always have it on a cooling pad – especially if you leave it on all the time. Laptops run hotter than desktops by nature because all of the components are crammed into that tiny space. A cooling pad (such as this one – $12.48 at Amazon) keeps your laptop running as cool as possible  The post Should you leave your

Last Monday I posted about how to handle a couple of specific computer emergencies (a spilled drink on your laptop, and a failing hard drive). This week in Part 2, we’ll cover two more emergency situations that require to you take action right away.   No need for panic if you plan ahead   Computer emergency #3: Thunderstorm You’re working at your computer, and you hear a rumble of thunder off in the distance. Here in Florida, during the summer this happens almost every afternoon. A storm is coming your direction. How to react: If you hear thunder, or see lightning, unplug your computer(s) from the wall. That’s the policy in our house – whenever there is a sign of a thunderstorm, we unplug all of the computers and the large screen TV. In other words, the expensive things. Be aware – just turning it off does not protect it. You have to disconnect the power cord from the outlet. “It’s okay, I have a surge protector!” Sorry, that doesn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong; a surge protector is a good thing to have. The voltage coming out of your wall outlet can go up and down, and a surge protector keeps that fluctuation from damaging your computer. But it’s no match to defend against a nearby lightning strike. I’ve seen many computers that have been fried, even behind a surge protector. It’s like saying, “I drive 160 mph on my motorcycle, but I’m safe because I always wear my helmet!”. Helmets are good, but if you hit a tree at that speed your story will not have a happy ending. There’s one thing that I don’t bother unplugging: my router/modem. Our internet is Verizon FIOS, so the modem and router are one unit, and Verizon owns it. I leave that plugged in and turned on, which means I can still go online with my laptop (battery power of course) and I can still connect my phone to wifi. Worse case scenario is that the Verizon modem gets zapped, and I’m willing to risk that since Verizon will just replace it with a new one. How to prevent this: If you have a way of preventing inclement weather, I’d like to talk to you.   Computer emergency #4: Your laptop is stolen There are lots of scenarios where this happens. Laptops get stolen at the airport, in the library, at a coffee shop or restaurant, or even from your home. It’s a sick feeling when you realize that’s what has happened. Its’ one of those interesting psychological oddities. Just about everyone knows that it’s important to prepare for this happening, but since no one ever expects THEIR computer to be stolen, most people are caught completely off guard. How to react: There are a few things you’ll need to do right away, and they won’t necessarily be in this order: Call the police. It’s very unlikely that they will be able to use their investigation to recover your laptop and get it back to you, but you should still file a report with all the details (including the make, model and serial number of the laptop). You will need a police report if you are going to make an insurance claim for the loss. Log in to your Prey Project account and report it as missing. This is your most likely method of getting it back. More details on Prey Project below. Regarding your personal files and information, what you need to do depends on how critical and confidential those files are, and what steps you have taken to secure them. Do you have your passwords all stored in a Word document in the Documents folder? When you do online banking, does the computer automatically enter your login password? If so, you need to get to another computer and change all of your important passwords. Encrypting the drive with a good password keeps everything safe from anyone trying to get in (note that I am not talking about just a Windows password here). But not everyone needs that level of security. If this is a concern, get in touch with me and I can help you with this. How to prevent this: Preventing a laptop from getting stolen is mostly common sense. Keep an eye on it, don’t leave it unattended, that kind of thing. If you leave it in your car, cover it up with something and always lock the doors. But these things are not a guarantee. You have to be prepared for this to happen. If you don’t think about this and plan for it ahead of time, it will be much harder to deal with. I’ve written about the Prey Project in the past. It’s free. Set up a free account and get their little background program running on your computer. When the thief goes online with your laptop, the software sends a signal out, telling its location with pretty good accuracy based on the wifi connection. And even better – it will use the webcam to take a picture of the person using it. You might even know the person, which means you can tell the police exactly where to go and recover your laptop. There are lots of stories about th

Do you know how you react when suddenly you find yourself in an emergency situation? Some people can think calmly and do what needs to be done in spite of the chaos that may be all around them. Other people freeze up or panic and don’t really know what they should be doing – and by the time they figure it out, it could be too late for them to do anything.   When I was a kid, this was my Saturday night   What I’m talking about today is not a car accident or some other life-threatening situation – in those cases your only option might be to call 911 (or whatever the emergency number is in your country) and wait for the professionals to arrive. What we’re covering today are computer emergencies. In fact, I will be talking about four specific situations that happen on a regular basis – two today, and two this coming Monday. Perhaps you have been involved in one or more of these already. If not, pay close attention – your turn might be coming up! Computer emergency #1: Spilled drink It’s late at night, you’re working on your laptop on an important project (or playing on Facebook) and you have a glass of wine/Coke/coffee/water nearby. Somehow it gets bumped and suddenly your laptop keyboard is covered in your drink of choice. How to react: First thing you should do is unplug the power cord (if it’s plugged in). Then, remove the battery. You need to stop the flow of electrical current as quickly as you can. Then, use a dry hand towel to soak up as much of the liquid as you can see. Avoid the temptation to wait a few minutes and see if it will power up again. That could do more damage, since there is still liquid inside – probably pooling up on the motherboard. Liquids, especially water, conduct electricity. So trying to turn it back on before it’s completely dry is likely to just do further damage. Take it to a computer professional to get it back in order. (If you are using your desktop computer, and the only thing that got wet was the keyboard, then it’s no big deal – just go buy a new keyboard and be more careful next time.) How to prevent this: Easiest way to prevent this from happening is to follow a strict rule – no drinks near computers. Or, if you must have your water nearby, make it a bottled water and keep the lid on except for when you’re drinking. Very few people follow this rule, which is why most are surprised when their computer takes a bath.   Computer emergency #2: Hard drive failing You turn on your computer, and you get the message: “Hard drive failure is imminent”. Your computer’s hard drive has an internal warning system, and if it detects that it’s heading toward a crash, it will try to warn you. It might finally die a few days from now, or it could die a few minutes from now – you really have no way of knowing. How to react: If there is anything on this computer that is important, that’s not backed up (such as Documents, Pictures, Music, emails, etc.), turn the computer off immediately and don’t turn it back on. The more you use this computer, the more chance you will destroy the data that you need to save. Bring the computer to your local computer pro so that he can get the data off the drive before it actually does crash. Then, in most cases, you can put in a new hard drive and reinstall Windows, then restore your files back from this emergency backup that was just done. How to prevent this: Frankly, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Hard drives crash, and it’s happening more frequently now than it used to. The latest stats I’ve heard is that 80% of new hard drives will fail within the first 3 years of use. You could run a hard drive repair program on your drive as part of an ongoing maintenance program. That’s something that I do on my own computer, but I’m a tech. The average computer user isn’t going to do that. While you might not be able to prevent the drive from crashing, you can prevent that situation from becoming a disaster. Just set up an automated backup process. I’ll set this up for you and I don’t even charge for my time to do it. I can set it up remotely in about 10 minutes. Contact me for details. Next week: Two other types of computer emergencies that you should be ready to handle (click to read). The post Computer emergencies – Part 1 of 2 first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Sometimes things happen during the routine course of the week, and suddenly I realize – that’s a good topic for a blog post. That’s what happened this past week. If you’re on Facebook, you know there is a high volume of pure garbage that gets “Liked” and shared. I’m not necessarily talking about content that is inappropriate (although there is a lot of that too). What I’m referring to are all the “news” stories that are just plain fake. And especially the photos. And the sad thing is, people post this crap because they actually believe it’s genuine and true. They see it posted by one of their friends, and the story generates some kind of emotion (sadness, anger, fear, whatever – it doesn’t really matter). So they must immediately share it with all of their friends as well. And of course there is no research done to check and see if what they are spreading around has any truth to it. Here is what I saw this past week. Someone I am friends with on Facebook posted a link to a news article. The article was titled “Muslims crucify two teen boys for being Christians” and had a graphic image of a young man who was supposedly one of the guys talked about in the article. It’s not an “extremely” graphic image (you can see the image here and the article that used it is here). The important thing, however, is that the image is not even a genuine part of the article. The article writer (I won’t call him a “journalist”) just grabbed an image from a different news story and used it in his own article. The image was actually originally published a few weeks prior to when this article used it. So that brings up the question – how do you know when a website article or blog post is using an image that genuinely goes with the story? After all, if they’re faking the picture, it really casts doubt on everything else in the story too. There is probably more than one way to check on this. But the easiest way is to use Google Chrome (that’s Google’s web browser – just another program to view websites, like Firefox and Internet Explorer). Chrome is a free download, and it’s the browser I use most of the time now. (Firefox is a close second, and Internet Explorer is a distant third.) Here’s how to use Chrome to authenticate a picture: Do a right-click on the image, and in the menu that appears, choose “Search Google for this image”. At that point, Google will check and see where else this image has appeared recently. You might be surprised at the results! In the example I mentioned above, the story about the 2 young men who had supposedly been crucified for not renouncing their Christianity, the picture that was used had actually come from a different earlier news story that had nothing to do with the one that was posted on Facebook. I figured this out in the 5 seconds it takes to do this simple process in Chrome. In addition to verifying the truth of a news article, there are other uses for this little trick: Craigslist shopping – Maybe you’re shopping for a car on Craigslist, and you come across what seems like an incredible deal. Low mileage, good condition, fairly new, and priced WAY too low. Is it real or is it a scam post? Most scammers on Craigslist don’t just pick one location to post their fake ads. They post in a lot of different locations. So you can search Google for the pictures in the ad. If you see those same pictures in ads in your city as well as other places throughout the US, it’s a scam. Your website – If you have a website and you publish original content, including images, there’s a chance that someone might come across your site and take one of your images to use on their site. Or they might take several. How would you know, unless you checked on it? In the past, I have found people taking my content and reposting it, word for word, as their own. A quick Google search on some of your own original images can help you find out if this is happening, so you can take action to stop it. And now, just for your entertainment, some pictures that were once widely believed to be genuine, and later turned out to be fakes: This picture was supposedly found in a camera that was in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the attack on September 11, 2001. It’s fake.   After Hurricane Irene, this picture emerged and went viral, showing a shark swimming in the flooded streets of Puerto Rico. It’s fake.   And finally – check out this tennis court. The interesting part about this photo is that it is actually real. The big circle is actually a helicopter landing area in Dubai. They set it up as a tennis court for a match between Andre Agassi and Roger Federer in 2005 (story here).   The post How to authenticate a picture on the internet first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Have you ever gotten a PDF file by email, and you had to sign it and send it back by email? For most people, that process is a real hassle. You have to print the PDF file, then you sign the printed copy, then you have to scan that paper back into a new PDF file and save it to your computer, then email it back to whoever sent it to you. It’s a lot of steps for what should be a pretty simple process.   Good news… there is a much easier way! And it does not require any printing or scanning. This is one of the advantages of having Adobe Reader as your default PDF program. I know there are others that are “lighter” and don’t have updates as often, but Adobe Reader has some excellent features (like the one I’m about to show you) that most of the others don’t have. The most recent time this came up with me was when I purchased a new car. My insurance agent emailed me a PDF file, which I needed to sign and return to him in order to confirm the changes to our car insurance policy. The document was very straightforward, and at the end there was a place for my signature. It looked like this: As you can see, there’s a line that needs my signature. But it’s only on my computer screen! What to do? There are actually a few ways to accomplish this. But they all start with this first step: Click on the “Sign” link in the top right area:   Then, in the “I Need to Sign” section, click on “Place Signature” –     This will bring up a new window, and that’s where you will find a few options about how to place your signature where the form requires it to show up:   I’ll cover each of these options individually: Type my signature – This is probably the easiest and fastest option. The downside is that most people that look at it will be able to tell that it’s just a computer-generated signature, not one that you wrote by hand. You just type your name in the box, and the computer displays your name in 4 different fonts so you can choose which one to use. I think the 4th one is the one that would most resemble an actual signature:   Draw my signature – This is where you would actually use your mouse to drag the virtual “pen” on the screen and sign your name. The disadvantage to this one is that it will look like it was written by a monkey with a broken hand. You just can’t control the mouse the way you would control an actual pen in your hand. Here’s what my try looked like:   Use a certificate – This one doesn’t apply to most people. If you already have a digital certificate you probably don’t need an explanation about this anyway. Use an image – This is one of two options that will result in a signature on the page that actually looks like your signature. The disadvantage to this one is that you need to sign a blank piece of paper, then scan it and save that signature image as a file on your computer (all of the common image formats are acceptable). Then you just browse your computer to find that image file and select it for use as a signature. If you sign a lot of PDF files, this might be the quickest way to get a real-looking signature, after you’ve completed the scan and save process:   Use a webcam – My favorite! First you sign your name on a white piece of paper (I just used a regular 3×5 index card, on the blank side). Then you click “Start Webcam” and just hold up your signed index card to the camera so it can read your signature. You need to make sure the signature is on the blue line. You also need to hold it still – I just rested my elbow on my desk while I held the signature card up to the camera. When you like the way it looks in the preview box, click Accept.   When you click Accept, you are taken back to the PDF file itself, and you can drag the signature so that it sits exactly on the signature line (you should make sure that page is already displayed before you start creating the signature). There are editing corners so you can make the signature larger or smaller if needed.   Now the document is signed! At this point you can click “Signed. Proceed to Send” and then you have the option to send it by email through Adobe (requires an Adobe ID), or you can save a copy of the signed document to your computer (for your records) and then attach that to an email. An important distinction to make here is that what we’ve done in the process above is create an electronic signature. This is not a digital signature. They might sound the same, but they are two different things. An electronic signature is just that – your signature on a document, which you did electronically rather than signing the actual printed paper document. A digital signature is done with a security certificate, meaning that it was verifiably signed by you and only you. In most c

If you use Windows 8, you have probably become familiar with the thing called the Charms Bar. Or at least you know what it is and where it resides (the right side of your screen). When you put your cursor in the top right corner of the screen, the Charms Bar slides out from the right side with its “charms”. Really they’re just icons, but Microsoft must have figured since they were changing everything else about Windows they might as well come up with some cutesy names for stuff we already know as something else.   (NOTE: For the record, I am highly recommending that you stick with Windows 7 for as long as possible, which could be through the year 2020 if you want (Microsoft will support it until at least that year). But, I know that some of you already have Windows 8 computers so from time to time I will put up a tip that pertains specifically to that version of Windows.) Not everyone likes the Windows 8 charms bar. If you happen to inadvertently move your cursor to the top right corner, the charms bar is going to slide right out whether you want it to or not. And not just that – at the same time there will be a big block in the lower left corner displaying the date and time, covering up whatever is on your desktop in that spot.   That’s what prompted my friend John to send me this email this past week: Hi Scott – Is there a way to eliminate the charms bar in Windows 8.1 when you point the mouse to corner of the screen? I still want it to work when I press Win + C on the keyboard. I am not afraid to change values in the registry. Thanks, John Thanks John. The good news is you don’t have to go into the registry to make this change. For the average user, editing the registry can be a little scary because just one small mistake can really screw up the computer. Instead, Microsoft has conveniently included a setting that allows you to turn that option on and off based on your preference. Here’s how to disable the charms bar: 1. Do a right click on the taskbar (bottom of the screen) and choose Properties 2. Click on the “Navigation” tab and uncheck the first option in the “Corner navigation” section 3. Click OK Now just check it by moving the cursor to the upper right corner. You should be pleased to see no charms bar. As John mentioned in his email, you can still make the charms bar pop up by holding down the Windows key and tapping the letter “c”. This will work even after you disable the screen corner option.  The post How to disable the Windows 8 charms bar first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Every once in a while I get a phone call from a frustrated computer user. Their complaint? The volume icon has disappeared! Which means they can’t use the on-screen icon that normally allows them to raise or lower their speaker volume. Where does it go? And more importantly, how do you get it back?   As far as how it disappears, I can’t really tell you for sure. Somehow the box gets unchecked. It’s hard to imagine someone accidentally navigating to the place where that checkbox is and inadvertently unchecking it, then clicking OK – all without really being aware of what is going on. More likely, some piece of software does it – whether by accident or design, who knows – and all of a sudden you can’t find the icon. Of course, there are often other ways to control volume: You might have a volume knob on your keyboard You could adjust the volume on the external speakers themselves Some websites, such as YouTube, have an on-screen volume control right under the video Windows Media Player (and others such as VLC media player) have slide controls on-screen But still, there’s nothing like the reassurance of having the little speaker icon in the System Tray, right where you always know you can find it. Unless it’s not there. Note: the steps listed for each of the Windows versions below are based on the assumption that the volume icon is missing because of a setting (a configuration issue), which is most often the case. If you actually have some Windows files that have gotten corrupted or been deleted, the process would be more involved and you might not want to tackle this project yourself. Here are some ways to get back your volume icon: Windows 7 or Windows 8: For these two newest versions of Windows, the process is the same: Right-click on the Taskbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and choose Properties. Under the “Taskbar” tab, look for the button that says “Customize” and click it (this is to customize the notification area). In the new window, look for “Volume” under the list of icons. Out to the right, click the drop-down menu and choose “Show icon and notifications”. Click OK to close that window, then OK again to close the Properties window. Windows Vista: For Vista, the process is similar to 7 and 8. Here’s what to do: Right-click on the Taskbar and choose Properties. Click to view the Notification Area tab Under System icons, check the box that is labeled “Volume” Click OK to close any open windows Windows XP: Let’s face facts. If you’re still running Windows XP, you have bigger problems than a missing Volume icon. Still, you’re here for a possible solution so here is something you can try: Click Start – Run In the text field, type: mmsys.cpl Check the box that says “Place the volume icon in the taskbar” Click OK If these steps don’t work, the fix is going to be a little more complicated and may involve editing the Registry. The average computer user does not want to edit the Registry, since a mistake can really screw up the computer. Take it to a trusted repair shop, or hire me to do it for you remotely. The post Lost your volume icon? Here’s how to get it back first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

When you create a Word document, you know exactly what you are typing. So, you are obviously in full control of what appears on the pages of that document. But did you know that Word “hides” some information in the document that doesn’t actually appear as text on any of the pages? And this might not be information you want to make public. You can check this out for yourself. Go into your Documents folder, and open one of your Word files. At first glance, all you see is the text that you put on the page. But what do you find if you dig a little deeper? You might see: the size of the file how many pages and how many words total time spent editing the file the title of the file (this is different from the file name) any tags that might have been entered any comments that were entered date of original creation, and when it was last modified author’s name, along with anyone else who contributed These are all items that are typically considered “behind the scenes” and not necessarily thing that you as the author want to make available to anyone that reads the file. In Word 2010 and Word 2013, you can see all of that information by using the “Inspect Document” tool. To do that, just open a Word document and click on File – Info. In Word 2007, click the Office “orb” in the top left corner of the document, mouse over “Prepare” and click on Inspect Document. Click the button called “Check for Issues” then click on Inspect Document. You can check the boxes for the type(s) of information you want to see, or just check all of them and see everything. When the information is displayed, it looks something like this:   In some cases, you might not care if everyone is able to see this information. But there are some situations where you would definitely not want these details to be made public. For example, you might be writing a book and you send this file to a publisher. You include a cover letter explaining that you have been working on this book for at least an hour a day for the last 2 weeks. But when the publisher looks at the document information, he sees: Total editing time: 5 minutes. That could be a little awkward to explain! Or, you could be working on a document that will list you as the sole author. But what if, as part of your writing process, you send it to your friend Vanessa to proofread? She makes a few corrections and sends it back to you. At that point, if you send that Word document to anyone else, they can look at the hidden details and they’ll see you and Vanessa BOTH listed as authors on this document. That might raise a few questions about how much of this document you actually wrote. Maybe you’re planning a trip, so you create a trip itinerary to use. At the last minute, you decide to send out the itinerary to your friends and family, just to let them know where you will be on each day in case they need to get in touch with you. But what you forgot was the fact that in the “Comments” part of the document you also noted each of your passport numbers and Social Security numbers so you would have easy access to that information. Nothing wrong with that of course, except that you really don’t need all of your friends knowing these personal identity details. There are other examples but you get the idea. The point is, any document you create in Microsoft Word should be inspected and “cleaned” before you send it to someone else to read or review. And this is even more true if you are publishing a Word document to be visible on the internet (a website can offer a Word document as a simple download link). How do you remove your personal information from a Word document? It’s actually pretty easy. NOTE: this process will remove personal information from a Word document, but some of the other document properties will still be visible such as Total Editing Time. In Word 2010 and 2013, click File – Info and then click the “Check for Issues” button. That will give you a dropdown menu – in that menu, click on Inspect Document. That brings up the Document Inspector window, which will have all of the options already checked:   Click the “Inspect” button, and it will quickly come up with a report. As you can see, this particular document has some personal information that can be removed:   Just click the “Remove all” button. Now, the same document shows these properties:   As you can see, some of the document properties are still there, but the personal information has been removed. Obviously you might not want or need to do this with all of your Word documents, but I’ll bet there are certain instances where it would be a good idea. Also – you might be interested to know that the process I described applies not only to Word, but to most MS Office programs, such as Excel and others. The post How to rem