The Computer Whisperer » Efficiency

Become an Anti-SPAM Warrior!

Curt — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:31:53 +0000

This morning, I opened my personal email account to find a SPAM email. Very obviously one, sitting right there. So, rather than just delete it, I took a moment to look at it and it revealed some clues as to how it got to me, and by way of that analysis, I can tell you how to begin your own anti-SPAM campaign!

Not only was the email addressed to me, but to a number of local business people I know, but do not correspond with via that email address, if I do at all. Most are people I have met networking and have their cards, so I know who they are. Point 1: I could see all their email addresses.

It didn’t take much scanning to figure out point 2: I can guess with about 99% certainty who has been sending out emails with this list of addresses. I get them from him, too, and in this email account.

Point 3: Because of his method of blasting his email contact list “in the clear” using the “to:” and “cc:” fields, he now makes all his contacts vulnerable to be collected and used, increasing the quantity of SPAM traffic on the net, not to mention annoying (at the least) and infecting (at the worst) all those computers of your friends and family and business contacts.

Putting all those puzzle pieces together, he’s how you can save your friends, family and business contacts from more of such a fate:

1) If you feel inclined to send something out, put their addresses in the “Bcc:” field. Then any recipient will only see their names, and no one else, and therefore, if this email finds it’s way into someone’s email account where they farm email addresses to send out SPAM to, you’ve put up a simple firewall on that activity.

2) When you get that forwarded 20 bizillion times joke, or offer for Bill Gates to donate $1 to your favorite charity, do this: Right after you click on the “Forward” function of your email, hilight and delete all the other lists of emails that are visible in the body of the message. Besides saving someone from being SPAMed as a result of you inadvertently helping SPAMers collect their address, think how much better a reading experience those who receive it will have when they don’t have to scroll down 37 screens to read the relevant material?

Summary: Put email address for blast work in the “Bcc:” field and remove any visible lists of email addresses in items sent to you, if you forward them along!

Laptop Batteries – Keep them in/plugged in!

Curt — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 03:53:32 +0000

A few weeks ago, listening to The Tech Guy Leo Laporte, I found out I have been operating, and advising people, on old information.

The modern day laptop batteries are just fine being plugged in pretty much all the time. I had been telling people to let them run down when you could, then when the system told you you were about out of power, to plug them in to help them get the most out of their life spans. Leo says that’s a procedure based on a study done years ago, and turns out it was flawed.

So, if you’ve been regularly running your battery down, so it lasts longer…don’t worry about it. Leaving it plugged in just fine.

Understanding Your Digital Landscape Seminar 11/16/2010

Curt — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:04:26 +0000

From the flyer, regarding the Seminar I’ll be conducting to help business owners, who are not technically enabled, to better understand what makes their business function:

Understanding the Digital Landscape

What is it?
How do you find it?
How do you use it effectively?

Computers save us time in everything from information storage and retrieval, calculation, graphic design, and report preparation. E-commerce allows our websites to keep our businesses running 24/7.

A failure at any point, from our office records to our online presence, can quickly snowball into a technological disaster, especially for a small business that doesn’t have an IT (information technology) staff in-house.

Seminar leader Curt Middlebrook, The Computer Whisperer, provides insights into the equipment, computer programs, and office and internet support services out there, and the people who provide them. You’ll learn how to maximize your online efficiency, and how to track the success of your online marketing.
This is a Lunch & Learn program, part of the Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber of Commerce Success in Business Series. Your registration includes detailed information for evaluating every aspect of your company’s digital landscape, as well as a light lunch.

When : Tuesday, November 16; 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Where : Park Station, 5851 Park Blvd., Pinellas Park, Room 202

Cost : $19.95 Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber Members
$24.95 Non-members

Call Chamber Manager Larry Steinlauf at 544-4777 to register.
You must be registered to attend.

Soldier’s Angels VALOur-IT Fund Drive 2010

Curt — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 20:01:20 +0000

Technology moves ahead in unpredictable ways, sometimes.

History lesson below, for the interested. For those who are ready and need to donate and move on: Click here.

If you’re looking to help an old Sailor out, then “push” the button for Navy. Know this: It all goes into the same pot, but, the need to poke at our fellow military members doesn’t go away easily, so…resist the urge to help any service team other than Navy…..

Now to some background:

Barely 5 years ago, a “MilBlogger,” and Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss, ended up on the wrong end of an IED when on patrol in Iraq and subsequently in Walter Reed Medical Center. Having been a fairly active poster, when a Soldier’s Angels representative asked if he needed anything, he asked for a laptop so he could blog from the hospital, since he’d be there a while. They bought one off of eBay.

He had injuries to both arms, leaving him with one in a cast, and the other in a halo. Typing, as you may surmise, was pretty tough. He posted indicating he sure could use some help…maybe so he could talk to his computer.

Some people helped him out getting Dragon Naturally Speaking. As a result, Chuck’s Blog came back to life.

As a result of that, the idea that this mashup of existing tech would be able to help others. The conception of the idea came from one of Chuck’s reader’s, Beth (FuzzyBear Lioness in the comments section), who thought if it worked for Chuck, who else might it help?

So, the first use of the Project’s Name happened 8/18/2005.

Now we are but 5 years and a few months later, over $600K collected, about 50 bloggers on the teams, and begging for air time on the big websites (and getting some!), with close to 6000 laptops delivered. They are new. They are good ones, and they are provided at the Major military medical facilities, and, they can be requested, if someone has slipped by the system unnoticed.

I believe it was last year, they added the purchasing and providing of Nintendo Wiis, which has helped with physcial therapy for the injured warriors. GPS units are now also provided to those who are getting out and about, to compensate for the short term memory loss issues as a result of TBI and severe PTSD injuries.

The “gateway” to the many pages of information and the project blog is here.

One particularly descriptive post titled “Laptops Save Lives?!” has the words of the real “end users” of the charity of the donors of this work. It may be from 2007, but the truth is right there. This is a great project, which really “gives back” to those who entered the services and gave much of themselves.

Besides just the close to the problem connection, from a problem solving standpoint, I see this as a job training program for the majority of these wounded troops, as they will be medically retired/discharged. If they have used a computer to get and stay in contact with their families, friends and “Battle Buddies,” they sure will be able to draft up a business letter, surf the net to do research and learn to crunch numbers with Excel for the employer who wants a person who looks forward into life and works to achieve their potential.

I could go on for many pages, having personally met Chuck and Beth, and Patti, the Founder of Soldier’s Angels via these campaigns over the 5 years. The stories are real, the ideas amazing, and the unselfish acts to take an idea from one person to many is a lesson in building relationships.

Once more: Donate here to Team Navy!

Some Will Be Horrified, Others Drawn Closer…

Curt — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 03:00:53 +0000

From across the room, you wonder…”what is that?” You see no “My Computer” in the upper left side of the screen, but you see the word “Inspiron” (somehow, it is strangely familiar, but you can’t place it.

Walking closer, the screen background shows a large, powerful animal starring at you with coal black pupils, set in a wintery background.

Arrayed along the bottom of the screen are many icons, laid out as you think you may have seen before, stylish, and visually engaging, but still…you wonder what has attracted your attention.

You gaze intently:

And now you need a closer look, as you dare to be consumed by your curiosity:

OMG!!!!!1111!!1111!!!! HOW CAN IT BE!!! IT’S FREAK OF DIGITAL NATURE!!!!

YOU SCREAM ALOUD TO YOUR SELF “PLEASE LET ME NOT DREAM OF THIS HYBRIDIZED ELECTRONIC MASHUP ANY LONGER!” but you do…and you wish you had one, don’t you?

Oh, yeah, and I have it…..:)

And check your calendar: It’s not April 1st and no, it’s not a PhotoShop hack job to fool you either.

On a pragmatic note: I don’t need the monster TV Studio in a 17″ laptop bag all the time. I can use something like this for about 85% of the work I do on a mobile basis and it will work fine. When I’m doing streaming video, it will certainly become an easy to haul along “monitor,” that I can use to check the viewer’s view of my video output, as well as the sound setting to make it better on the other end of the experience.

Top it off with I will have a real, live, running copy of Snow Leopard 10.6.3 (I’m told 10.6.4 isn’t stable in this environment just yet), so I can reestablish my proficiency in the Mac World, that I used to have, before being forced (under duress) to “The Dark Side!” (MS-DOS was a step back in the late 80s…before Windows was to be!).

Me? More full featured, more “on top of it” and with improved opportunities to prevent thinking I’m still young and strong. Now I’ll let the “wise” take over for a bit. This move was one of those few wise moments I have had lately.

Curious about how this happens? Read more @ Gizmodo!

Is Your eMail Connecting you to Your Brand?

Curt — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:45:24 +0000

Question: What is the domain of your email you hand out for business?

Another: Is it the same as your website?

One more: If not, why not?

Don’t risk leaving your contacts out in the cold…actually, leaving you out of the loop if you need to switch your home internet service provider (ISP). If you’re not using an email that is part of the website for your business, you risk getting lost, or, at the least, not looking as professional as you might, when you show up to network with a Hotmail/GMail/Yahoo mail account.

The advantages of having your email associated with your own domain are many. The disadvantages of not doing this are also many. Which many do you choose, as having a domain based email wipes about about all the disadvantages or not having it that way.

In most all cases, you have at least a few, if not way too many email accounts you can set up as a function of the cost of your hosting service for your domain name and website package. You should check into that. If it’s not easy to figure it out, call the person who set up your website and ask them to configure an email for you.

You don’t have to even have Microsoft Outlook to get access to this type of service. Again, in all likelyhood, you have free email client software on your machine, or you can get something like ThunderBird to use.

So, avoid being disconnected from your suppliers, prospects and clients by merging your communications with your website!

Android – To the Rescue!

Curt — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:48:41 +0000

Google, that monstrosity, is sweeping the market.

While iPhone 4 is amazing, the Android phone OS is a juggernaut. I was looking to see if an app, like one I saw on an iPhone was in the Android market, when I stumbled upon this one, useful for extraction from bad dates, meetings, etc:

FakeCall Pro

Come on, it’s paid for, but what’s your sanity worth?

Microsoft Ends Windows XP Service Pack 2 support today

Curt — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:37:09 +0000

And what does this mean to the average small business computer user?

< a href="http://consumerist.com/2010/07/security-patching-for-xp-service-pack-2-ends-today.html">“Security Patching for XP Service Pack 2 Ends Today”.

It costs money to have teams of people, like fire fighters, employed for the “in case of emergency” situations. Yes, while they aren’t responding to the latest hacker attacks, they can be doing productive things with their product line, but consider Microsoft has two other fully functional PC operating systems they have to support as well: Vista and Windows 7.

Short translation: If your computer(s) is (are) running Windows XP, and you haven’t updated beyond Service Pack 2, then you are potentially at risk if the hackers figure out a new way to end around the security features of XP/SP2.

The good news? Make sure you’ve installed Service Pack 3. Microsoft will still have resources that keep that “vintage” of XP updated and patched for security holes.

In the long run, it’s notice to consider drafting your plan to upgrade your operating system software, and possibly your systems. I have been using Windows 7 on various machines for about a year now, the first installation on a very old computer, and I did it just to see if it worked…it did. Not that some of the others I’ve upgraded haven’t had a few issues with finding drivers, but it’s time. Besides, it runs fast like XP, yet is pretty like Vista!

If you need help laying out a plan and a budget for your business, contact me!

They show up at the most vulnerable spots…

Curt — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:00:41 +0000

July 9, 2010
1:00 pm
1:00 pm

The “bad guys” on the Internet have long had a habit of finding the biggest security holes with the greatest potential impact. That’s one reason why the Apple computer line has remained effectively virus free (I caught at least one in the early Mac days (Scores), so don’t tell me there never has been any Mac viruses).

Over the years, operating systems have been “hardened”, so the bad guys have become creative and looked towards other avenues, to the point that Mike Cox in an article “Social media attacks dominate first half of 2010 malware trends” on eChannelLive tells us what is now going as as the biggest impact by the bad guys:

“Cyber criminals are putting increasing emphasis on using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as effective ‘spread mechanisms’ for malicious software,” said Arvid Gomez, Norman vice president, OEM and Technology. “In the past, they put nearly all of their efforts into compromising PC operating systems. As social media use becomes part of the fabric of our daily life, Internet users need to make certain they are taking the necessary steps to protect their privacy and security.”

He then goes on the discuss the koobface malware that has come through FaceBook since 2007. I encountered this at a client’s site about 4 months ago.

Another method to not only frustrate you, but also get some money, or your credit card number for use in, in the least case fraud, and the worst case, identity theft, are the “scareware” or “rasomware” programs that take over your system and basically demand that you buy their removal tools, which…are pretty much garbage anyhow. Mike has this comment:

Norman security experts also note that fake antivirus programs continued to plague many home PC and business users. Rogue antimalware programs have been around for a long time. In recent years however, they have become increasingly widespread, and represent a major problem. These programs can be difficult to eradicate, as they often consist of many different malicious elements.

I spent a better part of Wednesday ripping one of these attacks out of a laptop of a client’s office machine. I’ll say this: About 6 months ago, I could find these and get around them and eliminate them in about an hour. That was thanks to having seen several in a short time frame. They all had different file names, and loaded themselves from different places on the drive, but they all used the same methods. The one I ran into Wednesday had grown far smarter. I found it pretty quickly, but it had done many things to mask itself, and had placed some more hooks in the registry than I was used to deleting. Additional, I found a browser web director trojan in there, too. It may have arrived as a package deal, but it took 6 hours to find it, delete the offending things, much of the time was spent running scans, which found more things with each delete/reboot/scan cycle. It’s gone now and they are back to work, without having to just wipe the drive and begin all over, but it was a long day, when some elements have become smart enough to even force a load, regardless of some settings you applied to keep them from coming in a boot up.

I know many people don’t want to learn about the specifics of keeping your computers free of malware and other bad things, but your choice, as I see it, is to commit to some training by your local computer support person/people/staff/support company, or you can call us up and pay by the hour to undo what was maybe a 5 second decision on what to do about the question: “XXX is requesting to run. Do you want to block or allow it?” from your firewall protection. Because of the bad guys, you must get some education in how to keep from your system from becoming unavailable for a few hours (at best) to days (worst case).

Good rule of thumb: You can unblock accidentally prohibited functions. You will lose time and money if you let something in out of “I don’t have time to deal with this, I just want to get back to work!” frustration.

Read Mike’s article and practice intelligent computing!

WordPress Marches on!

Curt — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:21:07 +0000

Yesterday was the day that the final release version of WordPress 3.0 made it’s way into the hands of those who wait for “final releases.”

Recently, one of the people who does a lot of lectures on Social Media wandered off the tracks long enough to say he wasn’t a web designer, but people should have their websites done in Joomla or WordPress of they are getting ripped off.

He is sort of right. Having spent since 1996 playing with websites, I’ll say he’s right if you need a functional, right away site to just say who you are and what you do. After that, his comments need to be modified based on what you need to show/display/convey about you and your business. You may need something beyond WordPress, or not.

If you’re on a limited budget, and/or you have time to maintain all aspects of you website, and that means learning about links, setting up categories, placing privacy policy statements, setting up webforms for contact info, and keep spambots at bay, then yes…WordPress is a suitable candidate for you.

In the meantime, communicate clearly what you need to your web designer and work with them. Know that the more you have thought about the content of your website before you talk with them, you will pay them less, as they won’t be spending time tracking your content down, and making change upon change upon change. That’s a money saving tip…you can use.

The great news is WordPress 3.0 has broken through the barrier of not just being a great blogging platform, but has “grown up” to be a fully functional “CMS” (Content Management System).

Questions? Contact me and let me help you see what’s best for your diigital landscape!