advice

Adobe has fixed some serious security flaws in their PDF Reader, Acrobat Reader, so you should go to http://get.adobe.com/reader/ and follow the steps to update your Acrobat Reader. While you are there, update Adobe Flash Player also, as it has also been updated with security fixes last fall, http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ is the place for that update. Since many sites use Flash, it is one of those things you should update and, so far, that does not happen automatically with either Mac or Windows.

And, to help avoid some of the exploits that exist for silently installing software on your Windows PC, you should avoid using older versions of Internet Explorer for web browsing and especially for searching. Upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer 8 or use the latest version of other web browsers, like Firefox or Opera.

Reading the newer Word files when you don’t have the latest Microsoft Office Suite is easily done if you download and install the Office Compatibility Pack. Before installing this software, make sure you have installed all of the Office updates. To find more, search for “Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats.”

Water in your laptop
If you spill water on your laptop, act fast and to turn off your computer. Take out the battery and put it in a bag of rice (rice seems to work well at absorbing moisture, that’s why it is used in salt shakers.) And, let the computer dry for two days or so. Then, put the battery back in and try to start up your computer. The key is to wait for the laptop to dry out. And, this process is the same to use for cell phones, also.

Static electricity
If your house is dry at this time of year, you are shocking yourself no matter what you touch, then you might want to ground yourself before touching your computer. It is often enough to touch some metal before starting your computer, or touching other electronics in your house. Just remember to do this every time you sit down at your computer.

Free Documentary Films
“At freedocumentaries.org we strongly believe that in order to have a true democracy, there has to be a free flow of easily accessible information. Unfortunately, many important perspectives, opinions, and facts never make it to our televisions or cinemas (you can watch movies in our media category if you want to know why).”
http://freedocumentaries.org/

1. Subscribe to podcasts so that you can listen to those radio shows you keep missing.
2. Back up data, spend less money ahead of time than you will have to after a hard drive crash.
3. Use less paper and ink, learn to use your printer’s draft mode and figure out if refilled cartridges work as well in your printer. Maybe you should get a laser printer if you print more than 500 pages a month.
4. Try to watch some TV shows on the computer before the winter Olympics in 2010 so that you know how to do it when you want to watch the ice skating.
5. Organize your bookmarks/favorites and get rid of the dead ones.
6. Organize your photos and get rid of the bad ones. And, then back them up.
7. Add more RAM to your computer and learn to not keep so many programs open at the same time.
8. Figure out whether you want Google Voice to handle all of your calls with one number and get voice mail emailed to your. It would mean requesting an invite.
9. Change your passwords, come up with better ones and use something like KeePass for Windows or KeePassX for Mac to record all your passwords.
10. And, learn some keyboard or mouse shortcuts, just for fun.

Don’t get tagged in sending SPAM

Wanting to keep up with everyone to see their latest photos, you feel you should be using the latest in technology and services on the Web. But this can lead to embarrassing moments like signing up just to see some photos from a friend and then finding out that you have given a web service permission to send out further invitations to all of the people in your computer’s address book.

Not to pick on tagged.com but it is an example of one that has been going around in the past few months. It bills itself as a social networking site, like Facebook, but it ends up using your email address book to send further SPAM but using your name to make others think that you are actually sending them something useful to look at. It is sort of like that chain mail psychology that gets people to send on good luck wishes.

You get an “invitation” email, looking like it is from a friend wishing to share some photos and includes a link to view them. You click on that link, you are asked to create an account to use their service to see those pictures and, not paying too much attention to all of the assorted options and checkboxes, you find that you have “invited” all of your contacts (email addresses in your address book) to share in that same goodness. You will start getting messages from some of those friends wanting to know why you are giving their email addresses out to other companies. And, you then find yourself apologizing.

The best advice to avoid this and other problems, is that whenever you are asked to create an account at some website, take a minute to think about what you are really signing up for. Do a search on complaints about that website, for example googling “complaints about tagged.com” brings up a lot of information showing that maybe this particular site might not be one you would want to sign up on.

Actually, spending a few minutes googling any of those panic emails that you get, those ones begging you to send on a message to all of your contacts to prevent some awful thing from happening, may show up some of those messages as “urban myths”.