Nokia Recalls 14 Million AC Adapters – Gearlog

Posted on November 9, 2009 by wjimenez275

Anyone who bought a Nokia cell phone recently listen up: Nokia has just launched a recall program for certain Nokia-branded AC adapters.

“We have determined that the plastic covers of the affected chargers could come loose and separate, exposing the charger’s internal components and potentially posing an electric shock hazard if certain internal components are touched while the charger is plugged into a live socket.”

Sounds fun. Engadget Mobile reports that the affected chargers are models AC-3E and AC-3U, manufactured between June 15 and August 9, 2009, and model AC-4U, manufactured between April 13 and October 25, 2009. Check out Nokia’s dedicated recall Web site for more information on obtaining a free replacement.

via Nokia Recalls 14 Million AC Adapters – Gearlog.

Filed under: Instructional, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

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 »

The internet’s 40th birthday: anniversary of Arpanet – Telegraph

Posted on October 27, 2009 by wjimenez275

On 29 October 1969, two letters – LO – were typed on a keyboard in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and appeared on a screen at the Stanford Research Institute, 314 miles away.

The computer scientists had intended to type LOGIN, but the connection was lost just before the G. Nonetheless, this was the first time a message had been sent over a telephone line between two computers.

It was not called the internet – that name was not coined for another five years. It was called Arpanet, for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, and was developed by scientists in the US Defense Department.

Nor was it the World Wide Web – that was created by the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, now Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at Cern, the Geneva physics laboratory that now houses the Large Hadron Collider, 20 years ago in March.

And email had existed for a few years before that, between different terminals on single mainframes; the first true email sent between different computers was not sent until 1971.

But 29 October is as good a birthday as any. Those two letters, typed by an undergraduate at UCLA called Charley Kline on an “interface message processor”, were the precursors of everything from the eBay Buy It Now button to LOLcats, Kara’s Adult Playground (we won’t link to that) to Google Wave.

They say life begins at 40. It will be extremely interesting to see where the next 40 years take us.

via The internet’s 40th birthday: anniversary of Arpanet – Telegraph.

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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 »

Fake security software in millions of computers: Symantec by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech

Posted on October 19, 2009 by wjimenez275

There’s a lot of money to be made in malware. That’s what keeps it going….

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –

Tens of millions of U.S. computers are loaded with scam security software that their owners may have paid for but which only makes the machines more vulnerable, according to a new Symantec report on cybercrime.

Cyberthieves are increasingly planting fake security alerts that pop up when computer users access a legitimate website. The “alert” warns them of a virus and offers security software, sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee.

“Lots of times, in fact they’re a conduit for attackers to take over your machine,” said Vincent Weafer, Symantec’s vice president for security response.

“They’ll take your credit card information, any personal information you’ve entered there and they’ve got your machine,” he said, referring to some rogue software’s ability to rope a users’ machine into a botnet, a network of machines taken over to send spam or worse.

Symantec found 250 varieties of scam security software with legitimate sounding names like Antivirus 2010 and SpywareGuard 2008, and about 43 million attempted downloads in one year but did not know how many of the attempted downloads succeeded, said Weafer.

“In terms of the number of people who potentially have this in their machines, it’s tens of millions,” Weafer said.

It was also impossible to tell how much cyberthieves made off with but “affiliates” acting as middlemen to convince people to download the software were believed to earn between 1 cent per download and 55 cents.

TrafficConverter.biz, which has been shut down, had boasted that its top affiliates earned as much as $332,000 a month for selling scam security software, according to Weafer.

“What surprised us was how much these guys had tied into the whole affiliated model,” Weafer said. “It was more refined than we anticipated.”

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Gunna Dickson)

via Fake security software in millions of computers: Symantec by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech.

Filed under: Instructional, PC Security, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Setting a Default Program to Open a File

Posted on October 12, 2009 by wjimenez275

I received a call today from someone who was having problems opening a pdf file. Whenever she clicked on it, it would open in WordPad, even though she had Adobe Reader installed. She said she could could right-click on it and choose Adobe Reader from the list and it would open but when she double-clicked on it, it would still open in WordPad.

I knew right away what had happened, and it’s very easy to fix. What happened was that she received a pdf file but hadn’t yet downloaded and installed Reader. When she tried to open the pdf, the computer couldn’t associate it with the correct program so it prompted her to choose a program. WordPad was suggested so she took it. That automatically associated the opening of pdf files with WordPad. It didn’t matter that she later installed Reader.

This file association also occurs when installing some programs, especially media programs. If you choose the default installation, many times that program will associate all media files to open it that program, even if you don’t want it to. I always choose the Custom Installation option so I have more control over what gets installed and where.

Anyhow, back to the situation at hand…How to change the association so that her pdf’s open with Reader. There’s a long, involved, confusing way to do it, and then there’s a much quicker and easier way. I’ll cover the quicker and easier way.

I had her right-click on a pdf file she had on her computer and had her left-click on “Open With”.  This brought up a list of programs that she could choose to try to open the file with. I had her click on “Choose Program” or “Choose Default Program” depending on your Windows version. Under Recommended Programs, Adobe Reader was listed so I had her select that and then check the box at the bottom next to Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. If the Program you need isn’t listed under Recommended Programs, you may find it under Other Programs or you may have to Browse for it, but always check the box at the bottom when you find the correct program.

That tells Windows what program to associate that type of file with. Now, when she double-clicks a pdf file from her computer, or opens a pdf attachment from e-mail, it always opens in Adobe Reader.

This will work with any file type you need to associate, or re-associate with a program.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Skipping the Voicemail Greeting on Cell Phones

Posted on September 28, 2009 by wjimenez275

The other day, I was calling a friend and had to sit through a lengthy greeting. It made me think that there has to be a way to skip over the greeting and just leave a voicemail. I looked at the different carriers and lo and behold…there is.  In order for this to work though,  you will need to know their carriers. Here’s how to skip the message and get right to leaving a message.

AT&T: press #
Sprint: press 1
T-Mobile: press #
Verizon: press *

Filed under: Instructional | 4 Comments »

Sending a SMS Text Message to a Cell Phone From Your Email

Posted on September 14, 2009 by wjimenez275

Every now and then, I’ll be on my computer and I’ll want to send a text message to a friend’s phone. I’ve realized that it’s much quicker for me to type the message in my email program and send it than to pick my phone up, enter the text and send.

If you know the carrier your friend or family member uses, it’s easy to enter their information in the To field of your email, type a subject and then the message. When you click send, it’s delivered to their phone. When they reply,  the reply is returned to your email.

The following is a list of carriers and the format you would use to send the message to someone.

Mobile Carrier – Maximum Characters – Email Address
Virgin Mobile – 125 characters – PhoneNumber@vmobl.com
Beyond GSM – 160 characters – PhoneNumber@txt.att.net
Cingular AT&T – 160 characters – PhoneNumber@txt.att.net
Verizon – 160 characters – PhoneNumber@vtext.com
Boost Mobile – 140 characters – PhoneNumber@myboostmobile.com
Nextel – 140 characters – PhoneNumber@messaging.nextel.com
Sprint – 160 characters – PhoneNumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile – 140 characters – PhoneNumber@tmomail.net
Alltel – 140 characters – PhoneNumber@message.alltel.com
Qwest – 185 characters – PhoneNumber@qwestmp.com
MetroPCS – 185 characters – PhoneNumber@mymetropcs.com
Cricket – 143 characters – PhoneNumberMMS.mycricket.com

Filed under: Instructional, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

You don’t have what? No Antivirus?

Posted on September 8, 2009 by wjimenez275

Twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve had people come up to me with strange pop-ups on their computers. When I ask if their antivirus programs were up-to-date, their response was, “I don’t know if I have an antivirus program.” Sure enough, when looking at their computers, there was nothing installed.

The belief of some is that the computer came with an antivirus program, so it must be there. Reasonable enough. What’s not is that the program that came preinstalled on the computer is usually only valid for 60 to 90 days and then it stops updating.  At that point, you either need to pay the vendor to continue with the updates, or you need to install a different antivirus program.

There are several very good free antivirus programs, such as Avira, AVG and Avast. These continue to get very good reviews and being that they are free, there’s no excuse not to have one.

What I recommend, after a user gets these strange pop-ups, is to go to malwarebytes.org, download their anti-malware program, run it to clean your system. Then, go to an online antivirus scanner, such as Panda Software’s Free Online Scan or Trend Micro’s HouseCall. One other tool to run at the Trend Micro site is RUBotted to see if your computer has been hacked and is now a Bot. After that, install one of the free antivirus programs above and make sure it is set to automatically update.

Even with all that, there’s no guarantee you won’t be infected when a virus comes out, but it’s a whole lot better than having no protection at all.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 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 »

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