What Did He Mean By That? SMS and E-mail Etiquette

Posted on November 2, 2009 by wjimenez275

The other day I was reminded of how important it is when e-mailing or texting that you make yourself “understood”. What I mean by that is when e-mailing or texting, what you write is left to the recipient to interpret the mood or intent of the words. Sometimes the words are taken the wrong way.

I received a request to do something via text and it was followed up a few minutes later with another request by the same person for the same thing. I hadn’t had time to reply to the first text so I jokingly sent out a reply to the second letting the person know that I’d get right on that request. Since it wasn’t anything important that needed to be done right away, and they knew that as well, I thought the reply would be taken good naturedly. Well, it wasn’t. Not sure if the person was having a bad day or not, but they let me know that they weren’t real happy with my flippant reply. When I let them know that it wasn’t meant to be flippant, they let me know that sometimes their phone sends messages twice when they only mean to send it once. Communication breakdown? Yes, but also a good reminder that when e-mailing and texting, there is etiquette to follow:

  • Be wary of the reply all button. Most of the time you would only want to reply to the sender, not to everyone on the list.
  • Don’t type in all caps. That’s the equivalent of shouting. Not nice.
  • Watch for excessive punctuation. There is no need to put 5 exclamation marks at the end of a sentence!!!!! And I mean it.
  • Acronyms. Don’t assume that everyone is going to know what ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing) or TNSTAAFL (there’s no such thing as a free lunch) means. There are some common abbreviations, such as BTW (by-the-way) and FYI (for your information) but some of the others, well, write the words. If you need to find out what something means, check the Acronym List.
  • Let them know how you feel. What happened to me the other day could have been avoided if I had included a smiley with my reply. These need to be added with care, as in less is more, but in this instance, adding one would have let the other person know that I was saying it light-heartedly. Part of the nature of a good one-on-one conversation are the use of visual cues. Since there are no visual or auditory cues with e-mail or texts, users have come up with something called “smilies”. They are simple strings of characters that are typed in the e-mail text to convey your emotions or meaning. The most common example is :-).  Here are some more examples.  – Smileys and Emoticons. Use them to let the other person know what you mean. 😉
  • When forwarding on an e-mail, remove the e-mail addresses that are on the original e-mail. Highlight and delete them before you send. That puts the text that you want read at the top of the e-mail and removes unwanted items. I don’t need to see who the e-mail was sent to before me.
  • Scan through your text or e-mail before you press Send. Check the recipients to make sure that it’s going to the right person(s). See if there are parts that shouldn’t be said or should possibly be said differently. If there needs to be a smiley inserted to clarify intent, do so.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Tips and Tools, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

What Can The Wheel On My Mouse Be Used For?

Posted on October 20, 2009 by wjimenez275

We often get so used to using a device for one or two things that we fail to remember what else it can be used for. Such is the case with the wheel that is on most computer mice.

I use it mostly for scrolling up and down a page, but occasionally I’ll need to enlarge or shrink the text on a page and it’s perfect for doing that as well.

To enlarge the text on a page, hold the Ctrl key and turn the scroll wheel away from you. To decrease the size, hold the Ctrl key and rotate the scroll wheel towards you.

A few other things you can do with the mouse wheel and Internet Explorer or Firefox:

1. Closing Tabs
To close a tab just place your mouse cursor on a tab and click with the scroll wheel. This is more convenient and faster than clicking the small cross on the tabs, although sometimes you may have to click the wheel twice.

2. Opening hyperlinks in a new tab
Very often we would like to open a link in a page in a new tab. The normal way to do this is by right-clicking on the the link and choosing ‘Open Link in New Tab‘.  A much quicker way is to just click on the link with the scroll wheel and the link will open in a new tab. You can even click on the Home button or the Forward/Back button to open the respective url in a new tab.

3. Moving Forward/Back
You can use the scroll wheel as an alternative to using the Forward and Back buttons on the toolbar. Hold down the Shift key and rotate the wheel forward to view the next page or rotate backward to see the previous page.

4. Scrolling

On most mice with wheels, you can press down on the wheel once and then by just moving the mouse up or down, the screen will scroll. The further down the page you move the mouse, the faster it will scroll. To turn this off and return to normal use, click the mouse wheel down again.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Tips and Tools | 7 Comments »

So What Is It Good For? Flash Drives v. External HD

Posted on September 1, 2009 by wjimenez275

I had someone call me the other day saying that they had plugged their USB thumb drive into their computer and it wasn’t recognized. When they plugged it into another computer, it came back saying that it wasn’t formatted and need to be. They had been storing files on it and it had failed.

I recommended that for backing up files, the better option would be an external USB hard drive. They have much more capacity for storage, have a small footprint, easily fits into the computer bag, and hold up better than thumb drives do.

I’m not knocking flash drives. I have several that I use but for me there is a convenience in having something I can put in my pocket as I’m repairing computers. For most people, who need something to backup and store files on, I wouldn’t recommend it.

External USB drives are very inexpensive, have enough capacity to back up your entire hard disk, often times come with backup software to automate the task and most of the time will last for several years.

Flash drives have a purpose, it’s just not as a backup device. Use an external hard drive.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Maintenance, PC Tips and Tools | 3 Comments »

Printing Long Documents so they come out in the right order

Posted on August 10, 2009 by wjimenez275

I just installed a new printer and printed a multi-page document. Most inkjet printers will stack the printed pages face up. Laserjets usually come out face down so they stack properly. Well, my printer, being an inkjet,  printed from the first page to the last, which was nice, but what wasn’t so nice is that I then had to go through and reverse the order of the pages since the first page was at the bottom of the stack with the last page on top.

In order to not have that happen every time I print, I went into my printer settings and was able to change a setting so that printing will occur in reverse order, meaning that the last page prints first on up to the first page printing last but at the top of the stack.

In Windows, you can do this by clicking on the Start button, double clicking on Control Panel, and double clicking on Printers and Faxes.  Right click on the the printer you want to modify and left click on Properties. Under the General tab, click on Printing Preferences. Every printer will it’s own unique settings, but try to find an option for Page Layout, Page Order,  or something similar. If you can’t find that, look through the different tabs until you find an option for copies or document options. Usually, you’ll find a check box there for Reverse Order. Check it and save your settings. From then on, everything you print will come out stacked correctly.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Tips and Tools, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

How Strong are the Passwords You Use Online?

Posted on August 6, 2009 by wjimenez275

When it comes to online passwords, most people have no idea how to create strong ones. Many people use easy-to-crack passwords: pet names, birthdays, and common dictionary words. Additionally, they rarely ever change their passwords.

Along with that, a lot of people use the same password for every site they’ve signed up for. You may not think the password to your webmail account is valuable but anyone that might steal your information can use it to send spam and ruin your online reputation. More seriously, you may have entered the same password at an online banking site, or a site where your credit-card number is stored for easy ordering, such as Amazon.

You can see whether your current passwords are rated “strong” by using Microsoft’s online Password Checker.

According to Microsoft – Strong Passwords: How to Create and Use Them

What makes a strong password
To an attacker, a strong password should appear to be a random string of characters. The following criteria can help your passwords do so:

Make it lengthy. Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or longer is ideal.

Many systems also support use of the space bar in passwords, so you can create a phrase made of many words (a “pass phrase”). A pass phrase is often easier to remember than a simple password, as well as longer and harder to guess.

Combine letters, numbers, and symbols. The greater variety of characters that you have in your password, the harder it is to guess. Other important specifics include:

• The fewer types of characters in your password, the longer it must be. A 15-character password composed only of random letters and numbers is about 33,000 times stronger than an 8-character password composed of characters from the entire keyboard. If you cannot create a password that contains symbols, you need to make it considerably longer to get the same degree of protection. An ideal password combines both length and different types of symbols.

• Use the entire keyboard, not just the most common characters. Symbols typed by holding down the “Shift” key and typing a number are very common in passwords. Your password will be much stronger if you choose from all the symbols on the keyboard, including punctuation marks not on the upper row of the keyboard, and any symbols unique to your language.

Use words and phrases that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess. The easiest way to remember your passwords and pass phrases is to write them down. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with writing passwords down, but they need to be adequately protected in order to remain secure and effective.

Dos and don’ts to keep your passwords safe

Do use a password manager such as Roboform, which I told you about here – What was that password again?

Do change passwords frequently. Don’t reuse old passwords. Password managers can assign expiration dates to your passwords and remind you when the passwords are about to expire and generate new passwords for you for a site.

Don’t use passwords made up of dictionary words, birthdays, family and pet names, addresses, or any other personal information. Don’t use repeat characters such as 111 or sequences like abc, qwerty, or 123 in any part of your password.

Don’t use the same password for different sites.

Don’t use the “remember me” or automatic signin option available on many Web sites. Have your password manager fill in the information for you.

Don’t enter passwords on a computer that’s not yours — such as a friend’s computer — because you don’t know what spyware or keyloggers might be on it.

Don’t enter a password or even your account name in any Web page you access via an e-mail link. These are most likely phishing scams. Instead, enter the normal website address  for that site directly into your browser, and proceed to the page in question from there.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Security, PC Tips and Tools, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Email File Attachment – How Can You Find Out if it’s Virus Free?

Posted on July 15, 2009 by wjimenez275

One can’t be to careful these days, when opening an attachment in an email from a “friend” can create all kinds of trouble to your computer and your life.

Everyone does it – seeing an email from a friend or family member you automatically open the attached file, because if it’s from someone you know, it must be okay, right? NOT!!! Yes, most of the time it’s okay to do, but there are times when it just doesn’t feel right, but you’re not sure, so what do you do? Open it? Delete it? Wouldn’t it be nice to have someplace to send the attachment to that will check it out for you and let you know that it’s okay to open?

Well, VirusTotal is just the place to do that.

VirusTotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines:

  • Free, independent service
  • Use of multiple antivirus engines
  • Real-time automatic updates of virus signatures
  • Detailed results from each antivirus engine

You can upload files from your computer, or you can forward that email with the attachment to them for testing. VirusTotal will scan it with over 40 different antivirus engines and will return an email with the results. A note of warning, it could take a few hours for the results to be returned so don’t give into the temptation and open the attachment anyway.

Sending files by email

Create a new message or forward the message with the attachment with  scan@virustotal.com as destination address of your email.

Write SCAN in the Subject field.

  1. Attach the file to be scanned. Such file must not exceed 20 MB in size. If the attached file is larger, the system will reject it automatically.
  2. You will receive an email with a report of the file analysis. Response time will vary depending on the load of the system at the time of placing your request.

If you’re sure that the email and attachment are clean, open away, but if you have any doubt, be safe with VirusTotal (http://www.virustotal.com/)

Filed under: PC Security, PC Tips and Tools, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Making a Web Page Link Do What You Want It To Do

Posted on July 7, 2009 by wjimenez275

Most people happily go about their web page surfing, left clicking on links as they go, just accepting that the link will either open in a new window, a new tab, or replace the page they are currently on, but never knowing what it will do until it’s clicked. If the last one occurs, and you weren’t ready to leave that page, you’re stuck hitting the back button to return to the page you were on but then you lose the page you linked to. A vicious cycle occurs.

Did you know that if you right click on the link, instead of left clicking, you can choose to open it in a new tab or new window yourself? That comes in real handy if you are doing research and want to keep different pages/tabs open.

Additionally, depending on which browser you are using, you will find other options under the right click menu. For example, you can copy the link, bookmark it, save it, WOT it, email it, etc.

Filed under: Instructional, Internet Items, PC Tips and Tools | 2 Comments »

Beware of Tragic/Current Event Emails

Posted on June 25, 2009 by wjimenez275

Just a reminder that following tragic events, there are some who will try to take advantage of our curiosity and will send emails with subjects referencing those events and claim to have links to pictures, videos or special news stories. Beware that most of those links will actually lead to you downloading malware; trojans, viruses, etc. For example: Michael Jackson Video and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

If you receive such emails, delete them right away. To find out information about the event, go directly to news sites such as: msn.com, news.yahoo.com, news.google.com, cbsnews.com, abcnews.go.com, cnn.com.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Security, PC Tips and Tools | Leave a comment »

Disposable Email Address – What Is It Good For?

Posted on June 22, 2009 by wjimenez275

Filling out online forms these days is often times an invitation for disaster. Most of the form is okay, until you get to the part where you’re asked for your email address. Depending on the site, once you fill in that field, you’re setting yourself up for spam, even though the site says it protects your privacy.

That’s where a disposable email address comes in handy. Yahoo Mail Plus, $19.99/year, offers what it calls “AddressGuard“. “It lets you create disposable email addresses to use whenever you don’t want to give out your real Yahoo! Mail address, but when you do think you’ll probably want to receive what this source sends you—a receipt, or an invoice, or some other valid communication. Yahoo! AddressGuard directs messages sent to these addresses into your Inbox so you can see them.

You can create many alternate addresses and access them all from your Yahoo! Mail Plus account. If any of your disposable addresses starts getting spam, you can just delete that address.

If you don’t have, or don’t want to have a Yahoo! address, Anonymizer Nyms, $19.99/yr, is a tool that allows you to create and destroy alias email addresses in an instant. Anonymizer Nyms shields your real email address by allowing you to create a unique Nyms (disposable, email alias) every time you need to provide an email address or send an anonymous email. Anonymizer Nyms allows you to send email anonymously since Nyms email aliases can’t be linked to you. One click turns a Nyms alias address off to stop spam instantly.
You can use a different Nyms alias for every site you visit or correspondent you email.
All emails from your Nyms account are delivered to your real email account. You can set your Nyms addresses to auto-expire after a period of time you choose. (Taken from www.anonymizer.com)

Google mail doesn’t offer disposable addresses per se, but there is a way to set up aliases and filter the mail. There’s a great article on it here.

To sum up, a disposable email address is great when you want to sign up for something online, or when you need to give your email address to someone, and you want the ability to delete that address if it starts getting hit with a lot of spam. The email sent to the disposable address will be delivered to your regular email address but will identified as from the alias email so you’ll know which address is getting spammed. You protect your main email address and have the ability to control spam, by deleting the alias/disposable address when it starts to get hit.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Tips and Tools, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

HP Recalls Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Fire Hazard

Posted on May 26, 2009 by wjimenez275

HP Recalls Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Fire Hazard

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Lithium-Ion batteries used in Hewlett-Packard and Compaq notebook computers

Units: About 70,000

Importer: Hewlett-Packard Co., of Palo Alto, Calif.

Hazard: The recalled lithium-ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: The firm and CPSC are aware of two reports of batteries that overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage. No injuries have been reported.

Description: The recalled lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are used with various HP and Compaq notebook computers.  See the list of models that are affected here

Sold at: Computer and electronics stores nationwide, hp.com and hpshopping.com from August 2007 through March 2008 for between $500 and $3000. The battery packs were also sold separately for between $100 and $160.

Manufactured in: China

Remedy: Consumers should immediately remove the recalled battery from their notebook computer and contact HP to determine if their battery is included in the recall and to request a free replacement battery. After removing the recalled battery from their notebook computer, consumers may use the AC adapter to power the computer until a replacement battery arrives. Consumers should only use batteries obtained from HP or an authorized reseller.

via HP Recalls Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Fire Hazard.

Filed under: PC Maintenance, PC Tips and Tools, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »