Computing Tips

According IDG News Service — when Bruce Schneier, the chief security technology officer at BT, an authority on cryptography and frequently speaks and writes on security-related issues, tried to sell a used laptop on eBay, he got rwice a sale aborted twice - first by a scammer using a hacked eBay account and then by a buyer who tried to trick Schneier into sending her the laptop after she cancelled payment.

Schneier's first attempt to sell the used Sony Vaio TZ-series on eBay appeared to be successful within hours of its listing, but eBay cancelled the sale saying the winning bid came from a hacked account, he wrote in a blog post on Friday. A second attempt to sell the laptop also appeared to be successful within hours of being listed on eBay.

The buyer paid for the laptop using PayPal and requested that Schneier send it to her using FedEx. She then canceled the payment by disputing it with PayPal, apparently hoping that the laptop would be shipped before Schneier found out. "But PayPal was faster than she expected, I think. At the same time, I received an e-mail from PayPal saying that I might have received a payment that the account holder did not authorize, and that I shouldn't ship the item until the investigation is complete," Schneier wrote.

The experience left Schneier frustrated and looking for a buyer interested in the used laptop. "I'm willing to make Attempt 3, if just to see what kind of scam happens this time. But I still want to sell the computer, and I am pissed off at what is essentially a denial-of-service attack," he wrote. At the time of writing, an eBay representative could not be reached for comment.

You can make it easily just using keepvid.com/

If you find out in your mail box such mail as this one, be sure that’s scam!

"Dear User,

We are sorry to inform you that we are currently working on securing our server, during this process account which is not manually verified by us will be deleted, Please confirm and submit your information for manual verification by one of our customer care. Information which is to be provided is below: User Name: User Id: Password: Date Of Birth: Country (At Sign up): Upon confirmation of information from you, we will manually verify your Yahoo! Account and reserve it not to be deleted, We are sorry for any inconveniences this might have cause providing your information over the email. Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently. "

 

This is definately a phising email,  no respectable company (especially one like yahoo) would ever email you asking for your password, thats the giveaway. Take no heed of what these scammers said.

No doubt all of us enjoy watching streaming video online and there are many different reasons we do that. But however sometimes some problems don’t let us to get complete pleasure on the way in case your videos take much longer to load and buffer than they do to play, especially when the video is constantly being interrupted to buffer or load.

 

 There are some tips which can help you to make watching streaming videos much easier. First of all there are many ways to download the video onto your computer where it will not have to interrupt play. Otherwise, there are a number of steps you can take to decrease buffer times.

So, the first step is to free up some memory on your computer so that videos can load more content at a time. Just use Task Manager, or Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination, or by using Start -> Run, typing, qttaks, and hitting Enter, there you can see what processes are running and you can end ones that you don't need.

Search and Destroy is also a great tool. Using it (in Advanced Mode) you can set what programs will run when Windows starts. Delete programs that you know aren't necessary. The fewer programs running, the better. If you watch videos in an external player rather than in your internet browser, close the browser while they are playing.

If you are on a network sharing an internet connection, making yours the only computer on the network can also help. If nothing else works, you might consider upgrading your internet connection to a faster plan.

In the age of  electronic communication and getting information trough the microprocessor-based machine, along with great software we use ultimate tool dealing with not just text, but pictures, video and more. Therefore the broadband service you have chosen plays an outstanding role in quality of your communication with the world. We need to be able to receive as well as send, right? And here the data transmission speeds of your computer, its ability for downstream and upstream, exceeding 200 kilobits Kbps (bits per second) or 200,000 Kbps is really very important thing, isn’t it?

 

It’s said that knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. So today you have a great opportunity to find out practically any information you need including potential benefits of any broadband service, to check your available ADSL, cable or mobile broadband speed, compare broadband, get advice and tips then finally to find your best deal that meets all your requirements. There are many perfect comparison websites offering comprehensive help on the way to pick up the right broadband allowing you to get best access to the highest quality Internet service though it were streaming media, VoIP, gaming or interactive services.

Well known actor, comedian, author and television presenter Stephen Fry's feed on the social networking site Twitter is one of the most popular in the world, BBC reports. He shared with his thoughts why he believes the web is such a wondrous thing on.

At the time of going to press I've got 103,000 Twitter followers, which means I'm getting new "Tweets" all the time. And some of them are very amusing and some of them are rather silly but most of them are entirely charming, he said.

If people want to announce their new this or their new that, they're going "I'm not going to do an interview, I'm not going to sit in the Dorchester for seven days having one interviewer after another come to me, I'm just going to Tweet it, and point them to my website and forget the press". And I think people must understand that about the internet - it is a new city, it's a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don't pull down London because it's got a red light district. For some of us a MySpace page is just pretty low rent. It's a pink, sparkly thing that's very charming for a 14-year-old girl, but a serious adult with a MySpace page has a problem.

And Facebook is becoming a bit low rent too. In the same way, if someone's email address is hotmail or AOL, you kind of think "Hmmn, I see, they're not a real player, are they?" I mean please don't be offended if you're thinking "How dare you - it's a perfectly respectable address", of course it's a respectable address.

I doubt you can find any sentence describing how human learning has degraded now that isn't congruent to a similar sentence written at the time of rise of the novel - about how people were no longer reading sermons and classical literature, but were reading novels from subscription libraries instead.

The literature at the time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, describing the contempt that the learned establishment had for the rise of the novel - and then of course later with the rise of the penny dreadful and sensational literature as more and more people came to read it - again there was a great cry of despair at how there would be nothing but illiteracy in the world, or at least a kind of refusal or inability to engage in proper, serious study. And we hear the cry again.

No doubt opening my mail box I should realize that not everyone on the internet is my friend and getting mail "this is the file you asked for" from someone unknown I should not open it but…. It just happened, I got the mail “you’ve got greeting card” and run it because it was exactly the day of my birthday, I thought that someone decided to send me congratulation then… I hope you guess what is next. My computer got idiotic virus named Trojan mIRC then 5 days long I tried to get it out.

My antivirus program AVG detected a Trojan but could not manage with it. Now I’ve changed my anti-virus program for Spyware Doctor that is not only perfect protection to secure PC against privacy and tracking threats including trojans, keyloggers, spybots and tracking threats but easy to use anti spam filter which is protecting your Inbox against unsolicited junk email. So, it solved my problem successfully.

 

Now I’m sure that if anti spam firewall, this comprehensive filtering solution that check all arriving at my mail server and network emails for spam and virus was installed on my computer I did not get the describing problem.

If you thought this pretty girl is me you are wrong. This is my friend Olivia, who just can’t imagine her life without her laptop. She has become a great profi in computing deals. So right now she is learning some Google tips she didn't know about.

Definitions - Pull up the definition of the word by typing define followed by the word you want the definition for. For example, typing: define bravura would display the definition of that word.

Local search - Visit Google Local enter the area you want to search and the keyword of the place you want to find. For example, typing: restaurant at the above link would display local restaurants.

Phone number lookup - Enter a full phone number with area code to display the name and address associated with that phone number.

Find weather - Type weather followed by a zip code or city and state to display current weather conditions and forecasts for upcoming days.

Track airline flight - Enter the airline and flight number to display the status of an airline flight and it's arrival time. For example, type: delta 123 to display this flight information if available.

Track packages - Enter a UPS, FedEx or USPS tracking number to get a direct link to track your packages. Pages linked to you - See what other web pages are linking to your website or blog by typing link: followed by your URL. For example, typing link:http://www.computerhope.com displays all pages linking to Computer Hope.

Find PDF results only - Add filetype: to your search to display results that only match a certain file type. For example, if you wanted to display PDF results only type: "dell xps" filetype:pdf -- this is a great way to find online manuals

 

Power Tools
Power Tools are in-depth sessions, each focused on a specific application or tool. These sessions strive to help you better understand processes, features and best practices with workflow or business issues. Each Power Tool class involves two (2) days of instruction. Pre-registration for a specific Power Tool class is required when registering.
Session topics include:
•    System Imaging & Deployment
•    AppleScript
•    Mastering Directory Services
•    Teleworking 2009: A Technical Guide to Being & Managing a Remote Workstaff
•    Total Network Awereness: Tools & Techniques
•    Mac OS X Server - Behind The Box
•    Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite
•    Learning Flash CS4
•    FileMaker

Today's world computer technologies are able to provide you fast and reliable computing that meet all your entire home or business needs. In case you need your computer repair there are many professional, high-quality online services offered any help on the way and that's also great.  

Actually how this is really great, sitting in comfort your own home at long cold winter night, and taking a glass of old kind whiskey, open a personal blog (do you have a personal blog?) to type there: I'm falling in love with... then to write out a soulful, full of feelings, love story. Hah, if things were so I would do it with a pleasure. But the fact is - I'm not in love now (is it bad?) and my best friends, good music, whiskey and my computer brighten up my life and you know what? I must confess I love these long hours spending in silence and peace.

 

By the way, if you want to make your own blog to write there about your loves or whatever you want, you can use sites that offer free blog hosting and free blog layouts, Today there are many places in Internet you can do that.

GreatestJournal.com - Based on the same software as LiveJournal, offers free voice posts, 1GB of photo hosting, and space for up to 2,000 user icons.

InsaneJournal.com - Another site based on the Danga software that runs LiveJournal, offers free and paid accounts, paid benefits are only enhancements.

JorunalFen.net - Runs on the Danga platform, very much directed towards various “fandoms” (i.e. Harry Potter, various Television shows) and is meant for users 18 and older.

LiveJournal.com - One of the most well known of the blogging hosts. Offers multiple account types such as ad-supported and paid. The center of a few controversies recently.

Blogabond.com - A site dedicated to travel blogs with map integration and more.

BlogCheese.com - A video blogging website.

BusyThumbs.com - A blog site specifically for your text messages and camera phone images.

Freevlog - Designed for video blogging and completely free.

Trippert.com - Create and share blogs of your travels.

Ufem.com - Blogging site specifically geared towards women. Offers multiple themes and plugins.

Word Count Journal.com - A new blogging format that is also part challenge. Write one word on the first day, two words on the second day and so on, at the end of the year you’ll have written 66,795 words.

Xanco.com - Another moblogging site for you to share all your mobile communications with friends and family.

Blogetery.com - Offers multiple templates, anti-spam, free sub-domain and more.

BlogRox.com - Runs on WordPress and offers 50MB of free online space.

Blogsome.com - Based out of Ireland, this site uses the WordPress MU platform, large choice of themes.

Edublogs.com - WordPress powered blogging for educators.

WordPress.com - Not only can you install WordPress on your own sites, you can use the same software on their site and save yourself all of the technical work.

Blog.com - Offers free blog hosting with unlimited bandwidth for their free package, more benefits for paid members.

Blog Ladder.com - All blog entries show up on the main ladder as well as inside your own blog.

Blogger.com - A great starting site to get a taste of blogging, very easy to use.

Blogr.com - Allows you to blog, host photos & videos, and podcasts.

BlogSpirit.com - European based blogging site, offers 30-day trial and subscription thereafter, but offers quite a bit of storage.

Blogster.com - Offers free image hosting in addition to free blogs.

BlogYx.com - Blogging site with extras such as chat boxes so you can interact with your readers.

Bloki.com - Lets you build a blog site and even open it up for collaboration.

Bravenet.com - Free blog hosting with RSS feeds and more.

ClearBlogs.com - Free blog hosting and offers templates, friends only posts, IP-Banning and more.

Etribes.com - Based in Europe, allows you to create all sorts of websites including a blog.

Multiply.com - Mixes blogging and social networking, with photo galleries and more.

Besides, there are same paid resurses as well, provided more different servises.

HostMonster
Best Host  Host Unlimited Domains / Unlimited web space / Best Support / FREE Domain /  $5.95/
Host Monster Review - Submit Host Monster Reviews 
2. BlueHost
Best PHP Host  FREE Domain Included / Unlimited Bandwidth / SSH / Unlimited Web Space / Unlimited Domains for $6.95 month
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3. IX Web Hosting
Best Dedicated IP Host  1 Dedicated IP addresses / Up to 3 FREE Domains / Unlimited Space/Sites for Only $4.95 a month
IXWebHosting Review - Submit IX Web Hosting Reviews 
4. iPower
Best vDeck Host  1500 Gigs Storage Space for Only $3.98/mo. Domain Host  Google Webmaster Tools / 250 GB Monthly Bandwidth / PHP & MySQL / 5 Gigs Storage Space for Only $3.99

5.McKremie offers quality web hosting as well

 

Do you happen to have met boot sector repair problem? In case you do you can see my point. I just would like to won you that approximately 75% of all hard drive booting problems, partition access failures, and generic "hard drive failures" are the result of an overwritten or otherwise corrupted Master Boot Record or partition boot sector. How to solve the problem? Looking for a partition recovery software solution youy can find out tons of links to choose from. You can use the Exact data recovery software that can extract needed data from failing drives, BootMaster Partition Recovery, designed as an expert system to provide a safe, easy-to-use method for recovering from MBR and boot sector related failures on Windows 9X, 2000 and XP computers, Avira Boot Sector Repair Tools or something else.

What is a boot sector? If you dont know all disks and hard drives are divided into small sectors. The first sector is called the boot sector and contains the Master Boot Record (MBR). The MBR contains the information concerning the location of partitions on the drive and reading of the bootable operating system partition. During the bootup sequence on a DOS-based PC, the BIOS searches for certain system files, IO.SYS and MS-DOS.SYS. When those files have been located, the BIOS then searches for the first sector on that disk or drive and loads the needed Master Boot Record information into memory. The BIOS passes control to a program in the MBR which in turn loads IO.SYS. This latter file is responsible for loading the remainder of the operating system.

Disinfecting boot sector viruses. Boot sector repair is best accomplished by the use of antivirus software. Because some boot sector viruses encrypt the MBR, improper removal can result in a drive that is inaccessible. However, if you are certain the virus has only affected the boot sector and is not an encrypting virus, the DOS SYS command can be used to restore the first sector. Additionally, the DOS LABEL command can be used to restore a damaged volume label and FDISK /MBR will replace the MBR. None of these methods is recommended, however. Antivirus software remains the best tool for cleanly and accuarately removing boot sector viruses with minimal threat to data and files.

Creating a system disk. When disinfecting a boot sector virus, the system should always be booted from a known clean system disk. On a DOS-based PC, a bootable system disk can be created on a clean system running the exact same version of DOS as the infected PC. From a DOS prompt, type:

SYS C: A:
and press enter. This will copy the system files from the local hard drive (C:) to the floppy drive (A:).

If the disk has not been formatted, the use of FORMAT /S will format the disk and transfer the necessary system files. On Windows 3.1x systems, the disk should be created as described above for DOS-based PC's. On Windows 95/98/NT systems, click Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and choose the Startup Disk tab. Then click on "Create Disk". Windows 2000 users should insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, click Start | Run and type the name of the drive followed by bootdiskmakeboot a: and then click OK. For example:

d:bootdiskmakeboot a:
Follow the screen prompts to finish creating the bootable system disk. In all cases, after the creation of the bootable system disk, the disk should be write protected to avoid infection.

(via antivirus.about.com)

Choosing Right Laptop

Dell XPS M1730 has a reputation as best desktop replacement and 3D gaming laptop, then what is good suted for games also good for office multitasking and video editing.

 

So, Dell XPS M1730 has

Processor 
Intel® Centrino® Duo processor Technology - Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T9500

Operating system 
Pre-loaded Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
 
Memory 
4GB2 (2GBx2) Dual-channel 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
 

Harddrive 
2 X 250GB SATA Hard Drive
 

Monitor 
17.0" UltraSharp™ Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife™
 

Graphic Card 
Dual 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8700M GT graphics with NVIDIA SLI Technology
 

Optical Device 
8X DVD Burner*
 
Wireless Network Card 
Intel® 4965 Wireless-N Mini-card

 price is varied from 1400 to 1900 (in euro) depending on modofication

Besides that getting started by browsing the products menu on Promotional USB Drives you will find a wide range of memory capacities and offer customers, a variety of logo branding options for all your promotional needs including custom USB Flash Drives, and iPod MP3 Players to a variety of office "dwellers" such as mugs and pens.

There are plenty of different mobile deals out there in the marketplace at the moment that it can be rather difficult to know where to start. Luckily there is a mobile phone price comparison website out there that can help. Best Mobile contracts not only compares mobile phone contracts, they compare mobile broadband deals as well. This area is growing fast and you can get some truly tremendous free gifts when you take out a new contract, such as a free laptop.

 

 Of course not everybody feels comfortable taking out a contract, be it for broadband or for mobile phone usage, so Best Mobile Contracts also compares pay as you go phones to ensure that you get a mobile phone deal that is truly right for you. So why not check them out today? You could be saving yourself some serious cash.

I'm sure you use many keyboard shortcuts and combinations but if not here is the list of the most common shortcuts used while working with a Windows operating system.

Windows Key: will open the Start menu
Windows Key+Break: will display the System Properties dialogue box
Windows Key+D: will minimize the windows to show the Desktop
Windows Key+E: will open Internet Explorer
Windows Key+F: will open the Search option for files and folders
Windows Key+F+CTRL: will open Search option for computer
Windows Key+F1: will display Help/Assistance option
Windows Key+L: will lock your Desktop
Windows Key+M: will minimize or restore all windows
Windows Key+R: will open the RUN option
Windows Key+TAB: will switch between open items
Windows Key+U: will open Utility Manager
ALT+ Hyphen: will display the Multiple Document Interface child window’s System menu
ALT+ ENTER: will view the properties for the selected object
ALT+ ESC: will cycle through the items in the order that they were opened
ALT+ F4: will close all the window that is open
ALT+ SPACEBAR: will display the System menu
ALT+TAB: switch from one open program to another on your taskbar.
F1: used to request help/assistance
SHIFT: If you press and hold down the SHIFT key while inserting a CD-ROM it will skip the automatic-run feature
SHIFT+DELETE: will delete the file permanently
CTRL+ESC: will open the Start Menu

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the newest browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

 

Internet Explorer

 Internet Explorer (IE) by Microsoft is the most common Internet browser today. IE was introduced in 1995 and passed Netscape in popularity in 1998.

Netscape

Netscape was the first commercial Internet browser. It was introduced in 1994. Netscape gradually lost its popularity to Internet Explorer. The development of Netscape officially ended in February 2008 the development and support of all Netscape browsers. After February 1st 2008, there will be no more development, support, or security patches for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browsers. Users are advised to stop using the browser.

Mozilla

The Mozilla Project has grown from the ashes of Netscape. Browsers based on Mozilla code is the second largest browser family on the Internet today, representing about 30% of the Internet community.

Firefox

Firefox is a new browser from Mozilla. It was released in 2004 and has grown to be the second most popular browser on the Internet.

Opera

Opera is another Internet browser. It is known to be fast and small, standards-compliant, and available for many operating systems. Opera is the preferred browser for a number of small devices like mobile phones and hand-held computers.

Recently I've bought a new optical TEAC mouse for my notebook. I have had my old one for two years I guess but not sure. Anyway the new mouse looks pretty enough:-)

 

Do you know that each optical mouse has a small camera inside allowing to take more than a thousand snapshot pictures every second? A fitted light-emitting diode provides light underneath the mouse helps to highlight slight differences in the surface underneath. This differs from older-technology mice, in which a round ball rolled against a mouse pad to indicate movement.

As regards wireless technologies there are two types of mouse -  infrared (IR) based on optical principle and radio frequency (RF) based on wave principle.

If you are looking for a 100% free, fast, and easy way to add a web counter to your web page check out Superstat Professional that positioning itself not only as responsive and quick loading  counter of the number of visitors to your web sitebut but also  keeping statistics on the number of visits each hour and each day.

 

Hit Counter offers any site counter style serves, it doesn't need  need your email either, which means that someone won't contact you ever! All it needa is:

The website the counter is going (for your stats)
The website counter style you want
What number to start counting from
The number of digits to show
Whether you want your visitors to see your website stats

Rapid Counter -  offers free hit counters for your web site. Get a free web counter and track the visitors to your website. Totally Free counter for counting hits to your page. The counter also comes in a variety of styles.

If you are looking the easiest way to move all your programs, files, and settings from your old PC to your new PC the new computer programm PCmover is perfect chance to do that.

 

This is the only migration utility that will help you to  move all  you want whatever you want then your new computer will have the personality and functionality of your old PC plus all of its own pre-installed software.  Works with almost any Windows operating system, from Windows 95 to Vista.

 

"PCmover can migrate your PC across a network, Laplink USB cable, Laplink parallel cable, Windows Easy Transfer Cable, or any type of removable media that can be read by both PCs. If your computer has multiple users, PCmover gives you the option to migrate some or all of the users at once. The security information about file ownership and access control is preserved for each user. You can even use PCmover to migrate your PC to an Intel-based Mac."

 

The Internet Storm Center reports about the Survival Time on the Internet today. The survival time is defined as:

"The survivaltime is calculated as the average time between reports for an average target IP address. If you are assuming that most of these reports are generated by worms that attempt to propagate, an unpatched system would be infected by such a probe.
The average time between probes will vary widely from network to network. Some of our submitters subscribe to ISPs which block ports commonly used by worms. As a result, these submitters report a much longer 'survival time'. On the other hand, University Networks and users of high speed internet services are frequently targeted with additional scans from malware like bots. If you are connected to such a network, your 'survival time' will be much smaller.
The main issue here is of course that the time to download critical patches will exceed this survival time.

With the help of honeypots, we can measure the survival time. For example, we can use low-interaction honeypot such as nepenthes or amun that emulate common network-based vulnerabilities and deploy them at different locations. The average time it takes to download the first binary is an estimation of the survival time: The honeypots emulate known vulnerabilities and are thus exploited by different kinds of autonomous spreading malware - similar to an unpatched system. At our lab, we deployed ten honeypots in different network ranges and measured different things as I'll explain with the following graphs. These are all based on measurements between August 2007 and July 2008."

Perhaps very soon we will say goodbye to computer mouse that   have stood a good deal for 40 years over. A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years, BBC reports.

 

"The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice.

He told BBC News that his prediction is driven by the efforts of consumer electronics firm which are making products with new interactive interfaces inspired by the world of gaming .