Techreluctant.com

The term “viral video” sounds scary. Is it a video that carries a computer virus on it and can infect your computer? Nope. It’s much less harmful, well, unless you’re the unwitting star of a viral video. Viral videos are online videos, such as YouTube videos, that become very popular and spread like wildfire, usually through emails, blogs and even Twitter and instant messaging. No one knows what makes a video go viral. They are often funny or could be embarrassing for the person in the video. Recent examples are the ruckus that happened during the auditions for America’s Top Model, or my current favourite, Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog:

So, the next time someone sends you an email with a link to a video and you forward it on, you may actually be helping to create the next viral video. I’d love to hear from you about your favourite viral video.

Google has become a verb in our language so that if you want to find something out you google it. Google (www.google.com or www.google.ca for the Canadian version) is a search engine for the Internet and there are others like Yahoo and MSN, to name only two, but I’ve been a fan of Google since before it was cool so I’ll stick with it unless they change their clean and crisp site to something flashy and cluttered.

As much as I like Google, a tool is not much good if you don’t know how to use it. It can be pretty straightforward of course. Just type a keyword into the little box on Google and press the search button but the problem is that you will probably get millions of results and lots of them won’t be anything you’re looking for. The key to good googling is knowing how to find what you are looking for and Google provides plenty of ways to do it.

First of all, if you are looking for a specific phrase or sentence, just put quotes around it. This is especially true if there are words like “the”or “and” in your phrase since these words are so common Google just ignores them if you don’t use them in a phrase with quotes around them. So when I did a search for Canada council for the arts I got 759,000 results but when I put quotes around “Canada council for the arts” I got 220,000 results. Still a lot of results, I know, but a big difference and that difference makes it much more likely that you’ll find what you want. But note that when using the quotes, you have to be careful. If I searched for “fish and chips”, I wouldn’t get results for “fish n chips” or “fish & chips” so make sure you know what you want.

Another thing you can do with Google (and many other search engines) is add a minus or plus sign. Let’s say you’ve been hearing about glucosamine to help with your arthritis. If you want to know more, you can type in arthritis glucosamine and find lots of sites that want to sell you glucosamine but you want to get some real information, not sales pitches from GlucosamineRus, so you simply put a minus sign before the words you don’t want included in your search. If you try arthritis glucosamine -shop -buy -order you’ll find 77,800 results. That may sound like a lot but if you just type in arthritis glucosamine, you’ll get 178,000 as of  today. It’s much more likely now that you’ll find relevant information. A plus sign in front of a word will ensure that the word will be included in the search since, as I mentioned before, Google ignores some common words. So if your search really needs the word “the” in it then make sure you use +the in your search.

Google also has a number of other cool features that can help you with your searches. We’ll check those out next week on Tips & Tricks Tuesday.

Phishing is when someone tries to get your information by pretending to be someone they are not. It is called phishing because they’re trying to hook you, or, more specifically, hook information from you such as your banking information, credit card numbers, social security/social insurance number or usernames and passwords for your Internet or email account. Once a person gets these they can take your money, steal your identity, and/or use your email account to spam, or for who knows what kind of illegal activity. So it pays to be careful whenever you receive an email asking for such information.

Phishers are good. I know all about them but they almost fooled me once. I mean they almost had me hooked, I had my mouth open ready to bite but I knew to be careful and was one of the lucky ones that got away. It was a very official looking email from my email provider, or at least I thought it was. It said there were problems with my account and to log in using the link provided. The warning about my account was scary and my first instinct was to address it right away. But then I thought to be cautious and I hovered my mouse over the link in the email (using my mouse, I put my cursor over the link in the email but I didn’t click).  Doing that, I saw the actual address the link would send me to and it was not the address of my email service provider. This is one way to avoid phishing scams. But again, be careful because they might use a simple misspelling to trick you. Instead of “yahoo.com”, the link might send you to “yahooo.com” and by just glancing at the real URL (web address), you might miss that extra “o” and get into a heap of trouble. You could get to the site they linked you to and it would look exactly like the website of your bank or that auction site you always use, but looking up at the address in the top of your browser, you’ll see it is not that site.

Besides ensuring that a link is for real, there are some very simple things to remember in order to avoid phishing scams. Banks, Internet Service Providers, online auction sites like eBay, or payment sites like PayPal, will not email you in order to ask for your account information or your credit card information. If in doubt, call the company or contact the company on their website by typing their website address into your browser. If an email includes a form for you to fill out, asking for any personal information, usernames, or passwords, don’t do it. And beware of sensational subject lines meant to make you scared enough to forget common sense security, such as “urgent - your account details may have been stolen” or “Online Banking Alert”.

Here is a link to some more tips about phishing from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). My last piece of advice about how to avoid being caught in a phishing scam is to doubt all emails from organizations. You can’t be too careful and no respectful bank, credit card company, or any other organization that deals with your private information, would ask for that information over an email anyway. Again, if in doubt, contact the organization (but not through the email they allegedly sent you). And when the bad guys go phishing, make sure they end up empty-handed.

Whenever I need to go somewhere and I’m not sure how to get there, I turn to Google Maps. I know it’s already a popular thing but maybe some of you tech-reluctants haven’t tried it out yet. Google Maps in Canada, the US, and a number of other countries allow you to browse a map and to search for a location based on longitude and latitude (which we all have handy when you’re looking for the location of a kid’s birthday party, right) or street address and city. Once you get the location you’re looking for, you can print the map or, using my favourite feature, click on directions and enter your current location. It will then give you turn by turn directions on exactly how to get where you want to go. You can even choose if you want driving directions, walking directions, or public transit directions. I like trying to get Google Maps to give me wrong directions, but they haven’t steered me wrong yet (oooh, bad pun). Google Maps also allows you to choose different views of your map like satellite images or terrain. You can also find photos, videos. or Wikipedia articles related to the area you are displaying on your map. You can really spend a lot of time fooling around with the features of Google Maps, if you are so inclined or you could just use it for directions. Either way, it’s a piece of technology that can make your life easier.

Oh, and if you’re feeling really tech-adventurous, you can, depending on your location, make your own Google Map. Who knew maps could be so interesting?

Can a website take you away from your desk and bring you right back to your childhood? This one can. I Found My Childhood on eBay is a blog from Karen Chappell (of the also great Bitstop.ca). Karen posts pictures of items she remembers from childhood and finds on eBay. There are plenty of memories there, from Hinterland Who’s Who booklets to an old calculator to a Veg-O-Matic. If you’re tech-reluctant, I’m just guessing that you’re probably old enough to get a pleasant smile from the pictures on her blog. Beware though, it can be addictive and you might find yourself staying up late or missing that deadline because you got caught up in all the reminiscing.

If you’ve shopped for a digital camera lately, you have probably noticed lots of them touting something called face detection. This doesn’t mean the camera can detect a certain face, although that technology is well underway. It just means that the camera, while in autofocus, can detect a face (or faces)  in a photograph and adjust the flash, focus, and exposure for them. It looks for the pattern of a human face and, depending on the camera and the algorithm it uses, it may scan for just eyes or for a nose, eyes, and mouth . It will only detect faces within a certain distance, again depending on the camera, so in group shots it won’t  focus and flash for the back of the group. It’s only supposed to work with humans, not pets. I have a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS with face detection and while it works most of the time, sometimes it will think my dog’s ear is a face or that part of the carpet is a face (poltergeist, perhaps?). Regardless, face detection can make your phototaking life a little easier, especially when it works. And if you don’t like, most cameras will let you turn it off. What’s not to like? Now, the face recognition software where you can find all the pictures of Uncle Jim on your computer, based on his face… I’m not really looking forward to that.

You’ve seen it, down in the lower left corner of the keyboard, between the Ctrl and Alt keys. A key with the windows logo on it. It either looks like the picture in this post or, with an older keyboard, may have an older Windows logo on it.

Maybe you’ve even used it to show or hide your start menu, or maybe you don’t know that it can do that. It can. But in combination with other keys, it can also do a number of other things to make life easier. Here’s just a few you might find helpful.

• Windows logo+D One of the One of the keyboard shortcuts I use the most is the Windows logo+D. That combo will show you the desktop right away. When you have a number of windows open, this simple shortcut can be a huge time saver.
• Windows Logo+F1 Need help with Windows? This combo will display Windows Help.
• Windows Logo+R This keyboard shortcut displays the Run command.
• Windows Logo+E This one opens My Computer. Why, the E, you say? For Windows Explorer.
• Windows Logo+M Now this one, as with the Windows logo+D, is useful when the boss comes by and you’re checking in on facebook instead of doing that monthly report. Windows Logo+M minimizes all open windows.
• Windows Logo+Shift+M Yup, you guessed it, once the boss is out of the way, it restores all minimized windows.
• Windows Logo+F This combination will bring up the Find or Search area so you can search for files or folders.

There are more shortcuts that use the Windows logo but I think these are the ones the tech-reluctant might want to use the most.

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Techreluctant.com is a site for reference purposes only. Any opinions expressed by the author of posts are those of the author alone. Please use discretion when using any of the information provided on this website. The user assumes all risk for personal or property damage incurred while accessing or using the Web site and any information contained herein. Techreluctant.com and its owner will not compensate you in any way (including direct, incidental, consequential, indirect, or punitive damages) if you ever happen to suffer any kind of damage or inconvenience because of, or while making use of information, in this blog.

In other words, I’m just trying to give you some helpful information here. If you install some software I’ve recommended and something happens to your computer, it’s not my fault and please don’t blame me. Consider me like your techie friend who might say “yeah, I found this free software and it really works for me”. Nothing more, nothing less. Any software you install on your computer could conceivably cause a problem with your system so always use discretion when following any advice or recommendations on this or any website. Buyer beware and this is especially true when what you’re buying is free.

If you’ve sent or received many emails, you probably already know about Cc when sending a message. It’s the place you put the email addresses of people you want to send copies of your email to. Cc stands for carbon copy. But do you know about Bcc? Bcc is short for “blind carbon copy”. A weird thing to do with an email maybe, but not really. It just means that the email addresses you put in the Bcc section of your message will not be seen by the recipients of the email. Sounds like a big deceptive device to secretly send copies of emails to friends but it really serves a legitimate purpose and one you should try to use if sending an email to a bunch of people.

When you forward that funny email you received that you just know everyone will love (but will they really?) to everyone in your address book, every person who receives that message now has the email address of every other person you sent it to. Then if one of the recipients of your email finds that funny and decides to forward it, they also get the addresses that you sent it to as they are usually included in the forward. And so on and so on until someone finds the email address of her ex-husband’s new girlfriend in an email and things get ugly. Or maybe one of the recipients of your email has a virus that sends out email on his computer . Now, that virus has all the addresses of your contacts and can use their addresses for its evil purposes. There are many reasons not to show the addresses of multiple recipients of emails, but mostly it’s just good netiquette. Adding the names to Bcc is as simple as adding them to the Cc section but the problem is, some email software doesn’t show you the Bcc section and you have to do a bit of work to see it. Read the rest of this entry »

After I upgraded to Vista, I found that a lot of my software no longer worked on it. That inluded my very old version of photoshop. But I fiddle with photos a lot and need to resize them and stuff for webpages so, what’s a girl to do? On a complete shot in the dark I googled for a free photo editor, expecting lots of garbage programs full of spyware and God knows what else. To my happy surprise, I found a little gem called Paint.Net. It is completely free, although paypal donations are accepted if you find you really like it and use it a lot. Originally developed to be a replacement for Windows’ Microsoft Paint, the developers (as part of an undergraduate college senior design project) went on to create this “powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool”. I’ve loved using it. If you’re not sure about how to use it, there are great forums to help you with your questions and a web-based help section, both accessible from the Paint.Net’s Help section. I use it mostly for resizing and you can do that by going to Image–> Resize. But there is plenty more you can do with it. And best of all, it’s free. The one caveat is that you need to have the .Net framework installed on your computer. If you have Vista, don’t worry about it, it’s there already but if you have an earlier version of Windows, you can find the installation for most Windows version at Microsoft’s website. There is more about that at Paint.Net’s website and much more on their blog.