Techreluctant.com

Maybe nothing scares the tech-reluctant (or even the savviest of techies) than the thought of a virus on your computer. Antivirus software is a must-have on any windows computer and most new systems come with trial software, usually from McAfee or Symantec, installed. But what happens when that trial expires? You get messages popping up on your screen telling you that you are not protected and that your virus protection can no longer be updated. And maybe you let it slide because you figure you have most of the viruses covered and how many new viruses can they be coming up with anyway? Don’t kid yourself. New viruses are coming out daily. Just because they’re not all in the news, doesn’t mean they’re not out there. You have to stay updated and protected but luckily, there is a free and good antivirus program called AVG.

AVG comes in a free, basic version or if you feel you’d like more protection you can pay for the pro version. The free version comes with antivirus and antispam software and a few other perks. It’s easy to install, easy to use and checks for updates every 4 hours by default, so you’re always up to date. There’s no support from AVG Technologies with the free version but there is an AVG user forum where you can find help from fellow users for most problems.

There are other free antivirus softwares out there. I can’t tell you much about them. I can tell you that I’ve been using AVG free for a long time and that I often install it on the computers of friends and family who don’t have antivirus software. Of course, you could buy antivirus software too but, for me, AVG’s free antivirus software works just fine. You can download it here.

Since we talked facebook yesterday, today I want to tell you about Lexulous, one of my favourite things about facebook. Lexulous used to be Scrabulous on facebook but the Scrabble people didn’t like that they used their game and sued for copyright and trademark infringement. This went on for a while until Scrabulous was eventually yanked with cries of “noooooo” from plenty of us who loved the game. Then Scrabble came out with its own game on facebook. And I think I can speak for many people in saying we did not like it. It was slower and just not the same as Scrabulous. Then a while ago, out came Lexulous which was Scrabulous’s real replacement. The guys at Lexulous had even saved the games we were playing when Scrabulous was yanked from us. Now, Lexulous is not Scrabble. Lexulous has eight tiles not Scrabble’s seven and the tiles have some different values (Z is 12 in Lexulous and 10 points in Scrabble). See the difference? All I know is that Lexulous is fun. You can have as many games going as you want and you can get to it whenever you find the time. There is a dictionary lookup for cheating, a two-word list, you can message inside the game, and if you try a word that’s not real, Lexulous will stop you. If you are on facebook and you like a game of “not-Scrabble” Lexulous is your game. I love it even though I may fall behind on some games and need to get a nudge now and then from my opponents.

Many of you, even the tech-reluctant have heard of facebook and may very well already be part of facebook. But for those who are wondering what all this is about, let’s talk facebook. Facebook is another one of those things referred to by the way overused and all-encompassing term of social networking. Basically, facebook is a way to catch up with your friends. Once you sign up, you can create a profile where you put information about yourself and a picture of yourself. Well, it should be a picture of yourself but I find a lot of my facebook friends turn out to be cats or cars or, more often, children. You can include your address, workplace, web pages, email addresses, etc. on your profile but note this profile will be available to anyone if you make your profile public or all your “friends” if you restrict it to friends only. So, provide information carefully.

You’ll note that I put the word friends in quotes before and I did so for a reason. A facebook friend is anyone who asks you to be a friend and you accept or vice versa. So along with you best friend and your sister, you might also end up being friends with an old classmate you barely remember or the parent of your child’s classmate who you met twice at birthday parties. So, again, be careful of who you become friends with and if you choose to have more friends that you don’t really know well, be careful what you share on facebook. Do you really want that fellow Kindergarten parent to see your picture from a drunken night in Cuba?

Yes, you can add pictures to facebook and video as well. That’s one of my favourite parts of facebook. I like looking at other peoples’ pictures and catching up with old friends without having to call or meet them and look at the pictures of their kids in real life. Maybe at first glance, that last line sounded sad, that I would rather meet people in cyberspace than in real life, but if I had to keep up with all the people I keep up with on facebook, I would have to spend hours with people every day and travel from here to Florida to Texas to Vancouver and well beyond. And really, while I might want to see an old teacher’s retirement party pictures, I don’t necessary want to call her and speak to her about it. Take note, though, that when you add photos and videos, pay attention to the privacy settings. You can choose who can see your photos and videos and the choices include everyone, friends of friends or friends only. I always choose friends only but I know lots of people don’t because I can see their photos even though I’m not a friend. Even choosing friends of friends means hundreds and probably thousands of people you don’t know can now see your photos or videos.

Then there’s the status updates on facebook. Like Twitter, these updates are people letting you know about what is happening in their lives, from the mundane to the exciting. There are all kinds of status updates and I’ll refer you to a post on my other blog at tinachaulk.com to get a taste of what they are.

Each person in Facebook has a wall where you can post messages to the person. Again all the friends can see the wall so private messages are best handled by another feature, a kind of email service in facebook so you can send private messages. There is also facebook chat for people who want more immediate discussions with friends. There are so many other things you can do on facebook like play games with friends, invite people to events, join or create groups, post interesting links, tell people what music you like, recommend books, I could go on and on. The easiest way to find out more about facebook is to join yourself and start looking for your friends. But a warning, it can be quite addictive.

Okay, the Conficker C virus is all over the news and with headlines claiming that Conficker is “Set To Explode” or that it will be a “Digital Pearl Harbour”, and 60 minutes spending 15 minutes scaring us about it Sunday night, you’re understandably nervous that this virus may melt your computer on April 1. That’s when this hiding virus, or trojan horse, will do something. No one seems to know what that something is. We do know that if you have this virus, something will happen to your computer, most likely that it will be used to attack servers on the Internet by contacting them while thousands of other computers do the same. In other words, your computer will become part of one huge botnet. That would slow down your computer. Or it could very well do something worse to your computer but security experts again don’t really know.  It could be the biggest ever April Fools Day joke. Does that mean you shouldn’t worry? Well, let’s say don’t worry but be safe. There is a removal tool for this from Symantec (read their instructions) and one from Bit Defender . Download one of them, run it, and make sure you don’t have Conficker C.  Also, make sure your antivirus software is updated, and you have your version of Windows up to date (if you’re not sure, make sure you are in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and  click here). If you don’t have Windows and are not using a PC (maybe you’re using a MAC or have Linux as your OS) then you don’t need to worry as this ugly bug, like most bugs, only attacks Windows PCs. To find out more about it, check out Microsoft’s page about Conficker.

One of the little things I use the most on the computer, and one that most people ask me about when they see me do it, is to open a web page in a new window. Instead of just clicking on a link, right-click the link and you will see a dropdown box. Choose Open in New Window or Open Link in New Window (depending on your browser) and that web page will open in a new window. Now you still have your original browser window open and when you finish reading the new page, just close it. For me, when I surf the Net, I find someting interesting, click on it, go to that page and there’s something interesting there so I click again and so on and so on and so on. Before I know it, I’ve lost where I started and wish I could find my way back. That’s why I love opening in new windows. You may have noticed that most of the links I put on here open in new windows and that’s why, so you can always return to where you started. Now you can do it on any web page.

You can also open in new tabs, both in Firefox and recent versions of Internet Explorer. Again, just right-click the link and the dropdown box will give you an option to open in a new tab. That’s not my preference but maybe you’d like to try that as another way of making your tech life easier.

Hoax emails can be dangerous to people, to bank accounts, to organizations, and to companies. Here’s one I got that, since it was forwarded onto me (more than once), people obviously believe. It read, in part,

** TIM HORTON’S SHOCKER **

A man from Arkansas came up to Canada for a visit only to find himself in the hospital after a couple of days. Doctor’s told him that he had suffered of cardiac arrest. He was allergic to Nicotine. The man did not understand why that would of happened as he does not smoke knowing full well he was allergic to Nicotine. He told the doctor that he had not done anything different while he was on vacation other than having Tim Horton’s coffee.

The man then went back to Tim Horton’s and asked what was in their coffee.

Tim Horton’s refuses to divulge that information. After threatening legal action, Tim Horton’s finally admitted…..

*** THERE IS NICOTINE IN TIM HORTON’S COFFEE

Wow, I’ve heard this rumour for years. And I’m so addicted to the stuff, it is not hard to believe it. But it’s not true and to pass on such information is wrong. Tim Hortons has refuted this and the CBC has also checked this out on the show Disclosure. Tim Hortons coffee was analyzed and shown to have absolutely no nicotine. (The other rumour I’ve often heard, that Tim Hortons puts extra caffeine in its coffee was also debunked. In fact, Disclosure’s analysis showed that of coffee analyzed from Tim Hortons, Starbucks, and the Second Cup, Tim Hortons coffee was, on average, the lowest in caffeine.)

So, if you get this email, stop it in its tracks by not forwarding it.

On Wednesday, I explained what a browser was and told you I’d be telling you about my favourite browser today. And here we are. My favourite browser is Firefox. I haven’t used Internet Explorer, except for work-related stuff, since I first found Firefox. The reasons  are many. For me, I like the tabbed sessions (where you can open multiple websites on tabs inside one browser window) and the fact that if Windows crashes for some reason, you can restart all those tabs just where you were; one-click bookmarks; built in search engine; and a built-in spell checker to mention a few. My two favourite reasons are safety and add-ons. Firefox comes with lots of safety features: anti-malware (to stop viruses, torjan horses, spyware and other Internet uglies); anti-phishing(which you know about because you read my post about phishing); popup blocker, and a download manager. But I think the top security feature might be that it’s not Internet Explorer. If you are someone who wants to make a virus and do maximum damage, you are going to target that virus for the most used browser around like, say, one that comes with Windows as Internet Explorer does. That doesn’t mean that Firefox is 100% safe and you’ll never get a virus, but I feel more secure when using Firefox.

Add-ons are probably the coolest thing about Firefox. There are thousands of them you can add to Firefox to do anything from opening all of your favourite websites in tabs within one browser with the click of one button to tracking how much time you spend surfing the net, to previewing web pages before you open them. Since add-ons can be developed by anyone (but they are tested as experimental first), you can find a huge variety of add-ons that will make your tech life much easier.

Now, some argue that Firefox is not as safe as Internet Explorer and Microsoft has adapted some of the great parts of Firefox for Internet Explorer (gasp, I know, hard to believe, hey?) and IE 8 was just released last week so it may even have more Firefox features on it, but I love the little fox. Maybe you will too, so if you’d like to try it click on the fox.

It’s Thursday and that means I get to tell you about something I like. Since my little guy turned one a few days ago, I’ve had babies on my mind and it made me think of a little gadget that’s not really that techie but which made my life so much easier. I didn’t know I would want a gadget for a baby but this one is fantastic. Stock up for shower gifts. It’s called the itzbeen.

With my first child I had a notebook where I would try to write down when he’d been changed, when he’d been fed, how long he’d slept, and to keep track of how many wet and/or dirty diapers he had (a must for a breastfeeding mom). Of course, this whole note-taking thing was hit and miss since most of the time you are doing things in a sleep deprived haze or in the middle of the night or…who can find that notepad AND a pen anyway. Shortly after my second child was born my friend Christine gave me an itzbeen and it made life so much easier, I could never thank her enough. The itzbeen (as in itzbeen 2 hours since the last feeding) includes four timers with buttons labelled for diapers, feeding, sleeping, and a fourth that is for anything you need. It can attach to your belt (or, let’s face it, the elastic on your pyjama bottoms, with the attached belt clip), has a little flashlight built in for those many times in the night when you just want to make sure the little one is breathing, and a backlight you can turn on briefly so you can see all those timers at night. I used the timers religiously for feeding and also used it to record diaper changes early on but soon got out of that. Also, I used the miscellaneous timer for medicine. I still use that because even when I make a note of it in my head, I always forget when I gave medicine. You can use any of the timers for anything too so even when the baby gets older, it’s still a handy thing to have around. There’s a lock on the device which allows you to lock the timer so older children can’t reset it when they play with the itzbeen (because they will play with the itzbeen).

Besides the timers, there is a simple little switch that any breastfeeding mother will grow to love. It simply has R on one side and L on the other. No more clothespins on the shirt to try and remember which breast you started them feeding on last time and no more racking your brain trying to remember because you forgot to use the clothespin. I used this switch for every single feeding. Sometimes the itzbeen would get misplaced and the household had to stop until the itzbeen could be found so I would know what letter that switch was set at.

Gadgets and technology are not required for babies, of course, but they sure can make caring for them easier. The itzbeen does that without being too complicated and without trying to do too much with one device (although I would have loved it if there was a simple counter on it so I could have counted those dirty/wet diapers).

Okay,  maybe you know what a browser is but a lot of people don’t. I know this because I used to work on a computer help desk and nine times out of ten when I’d tell the person on the other end of the phone to “open your browser” they would reply “what’s a browser” or “where can I find that”. You are almost certainly using your browser right now to read this web page. That’s what a browser is—a program that reads the code on a website and displays it to you as a web page. You are probably using Internet Explorer, the most popular browser, mostly because it comes with Windows. But there are other browsers out there, other better browsers in my opinion and that’s the reason I’m explaining the word browser to you now. On Friday I’ll tell you about what I consider to be the best browser and why.

Last week, I went over the basics of googling, This week, I’m going to tell you about Google’s advanced search and also some pretty cool things you can do in that little Google search box.

Google has an Advance Search link on their page (in smaller letters to the right of the search box). With this you can do more specific searches without the minus signs and quotes (sure, now she tells me). It also allows you to change how many search results you see on your results page and is a way to search for something on one specific site (or you can type in your keyword in the main Google search page and then type site:[name of site] such as tech site:techreluctant.com). So, that’s most of the basic searching advice and where to find the advanced search, but there are some extras that Google searches can provide and these can possibly make your life easier (don’t forget that instead of clicking on the Google Search button, you can just hit the enter button once you’ve typed your search).

• Google has a calculator so if you type 144+17 in the search box then click Google Search, you’ll get your answer.

• Looking for the definition of a word? Type the word define followed by a colon and the word you want to define  such as define: easy.

• In these days of economic woe, maybe there’s a stock you’re following. If you want a quick stock quote, just type the ticker symbol in the search box and click Google Search.

• I use Google all the time to convert measurements. So, last week when I needed to know how many cups were in 48 ounces, I just typed 48 oz in cups, hit enter and there was my answer.

• Your friends are vacationing in Australia and you’d like to know what the weather is like there. Just type in weather sydney australia.

• Want to call those vacationing friends but don’t want to wake them up by calling at the wrong time? Just type time Sydney Australia and you’ll know exactly when they are (although I couldn’t get this to work for my city).

Probably the thing I like the most about Google though is the way it checks my spelling. I am not usually a bad speller but I do not want to look up the proper spelling for armadillo every time I want to google it (yes, I have searched about armadillos before and I’m not telling you why). Also, I have a tendency to transpose letters while typing. Each time I type Newfoundalnd in a search, Google always comes back and says “Do you mean Newfoundland?” with not a hint of judgment in its tone.

The Internet is a wealth of information. Finding exactly what you want in cyberspace can be the biggest task but your friendly Google (or other search engine) can make that search much easier, especially if you know how to find what you’re looking for. Happy Googling.