Some easy to understand and up to date tips for Facebook safety are at the following site

HOW TO: Be Safe on Facebook | Geek Beat Technology News

If you are a Facebook user then you should definitely check these out.

 

Once again here is a list of websites and articles you might find interesting

Don't forget monthly Mullies meeting is on again tomorrow Thursday 27/7/11 - 7pm at Ulladulla CRC
Bring your questions, problems or ideas to share - See you there

Best Websites

Here is a list of the 107 best websites as voted by makeuseof.com

Gojee
Gojee is like a recipe search engine - Google for recipes. You tell it what you like, what you dislike and what ingredients you have and it comes back with recipes for you
Has fantastic pics of the dishes so go forth and release your MasterChef!

How To Find & Fix Bad Pixels On Your LCD Screen

If your LCD computer screen (or tv) has a problem you may be able to fix it DIY
Caution - incorrect repair could make the situation worse!

Test Your Computer For Security Misconfigurations With Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Test and fix security issues on your PC using this free tool from MS

Senior's Guide to Computers - A Beginner's Tutorial for the Microsoft Windows PC, hardware, software, security, accessibility, internet, backup and email

This website bills itself as a Senior's Guide to computers but really it is a pretty good site for any Beginners computer user

Download Office 2010 Training Courses for Free

Free training for using Office 2010 - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc
There are links to similar training for Offcie 2007 and 2003 versions as well

OpenDNS > FamilyShield!

Want to keep yourself and your family and friends safe whilst surfing the net.
Try using this free DNS shield

Gmail's New Features: A First Look | PCWorld

Preview all sorts of documents including the contents of Zip and Rar files
Change the way your inbox works

Once again Gizmo's Freeware brings us a fantastic list of (mostly) free resources for our computers
Check this list anytime you need a free security program - click the link/s below

Which ones do you use and recommend?
Comment below to let us know

Probably the Best Free Security List in the World

 

First off a BIG REMINDER - Mullies monthly meeting is on this Thursday 26-05-11
7pm at the Ulladulla CRC (St Vincent St) as usual
The topic this month is FREE - Free things you can do with your computer, like

• Games,
• Communication (email, chat, video),
• Publications - magazines, newspapers, books,
• Groups

And lots more - see you there

Below are a couple of items worth reading

Adobe tops security risk list - News - PC & Tech Authority

Article above lists the top 10 programs that pose a security risk on people's PCs. many of the vulnerabilities are for the same programs, especially Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash.

For the average user I have 2 suggestions:

1. Don't use Adobe Reader. Try Foxit PDF Reader or even better PDF-X change Viewer instead
   FoxIt will look a little more familiar to users of Adobe but I highly recommend PDF-Xchange viewer for all the extra features. Both are free and much smaller and faster than Adobe
2. Use Secunia PSI on your computer to make sure your programs and add-ons such as Flash player are kept up to date. Secunia PSI is also free

Sleep and hibernation: frequently asked questions

Many of us are moving to using laptop computers and away from desktops for the first time. With the relative prices these days it is not surprising.
New users might not understand what all the different 'shut down' settings mean so this Microsoft site will give you a quick guide

Four Ways to Make Your iPhone Battery Last Longer - NYTimes.com

For those of us blessed/cursed with an iPhone these tips will likely be of great assistance

 

About a month ago Four Corners aired an episode talking about the dangers to be found on the internet and the prevalence of cyber crime.

For those (like me) that missed it you can go to the Four Corners website and view the video, read the transcript of the show and read some other details and interviews.

The ABC do a really good job of putting their content online following in the footsteps of the British BBC who have the best media website and content I have seen.

Check out the Four Corners report Fear in the Fast Lane

Please find some brief information on a few topics, most of which were discussed at the Mullies last week

How The Internet Works – I.P. Addresses

We discussed what an I.P or Internet Protocol address is and why some ISP (Internet Service Providers) might provide a static address for your connection.

I found the following article today which explains how the Internet works far better than I can/did.

Technology Explained: How The Internet Works – MakeUseOf.com

 

LiberKey Portable Apps

A portable application or program is one that can run without being ‘installed’ in the traditional manner on your computer. As the program runs without prior installation it can be carried on a portable storage device like a USB stick or portable hard drive and run on any computer. This makes the program portable and useable anywhere and also easy to back up and share. There are a good number of portable applications available as well as a number of suites and packages which gather together a number of apps.

I have been trialling the LiberKey portable apps suite and demonstrated it the other day. I quite like it as a front end to a number of small applications. The Liberkey software itself provides a sort of start menu along with an update function and the ability to switch your PC’s file associations over ( and later back) to the portable applications.

You can download any of the 3 suites but I suggest you start with the smallest ‘Basic’ suite. You can then visit their ‘All Softwares’ page to automatically add additional programs to your suite with just a click. For example portable Open Office is not included in any suite but is well worth a try and you can automatically add it to your LiberKey Suite here.

Check out the list of available programs – it is huge!

Of course all programs are free and many are in fact open source. Apart from a good Antivirus Program (see below) any Windows PC probably only needs this suite of applications provided with it to make a very useful and productive machine. Note to use the update functions you need to register at the website first – I did and have not received any spam or so on.

Antivirus – Eset Nod32

Since I have been using Windows 7 lately (the beta and now the release candidate) I have been trialling a few different Antivirus programs. Our old favourite at Mullies – AVG Free – does work with Win7 and is as good as usual – but how good is that.

Well I also tried Avira free and really liked it too. In fact I think it was better than AVG whilst being equally as low on the resource usage. If you are looking for a free Antivirus program then I think Avira is good.

 

However I have since trialled a paid program in Eset NOD32 Antivirus and have found it to be the best Antivirus and Antispyware program I have used. Again it is very light on system resources and does an excellent job. If you are prepared to spend just a few dollars then please don’t buy the bloated Norton or McAfee offerings – you will be happy with NOD32

Some of us may have been following the whole ‘OzCar’ affair amongst our Federal politicians. (see Turnbull denies passing on fake email) . Me – I couldn't care less but I did find it interesting how technology particularly emails and their authenticity entered into the accusations.

At our recent meeting Ross mentioned it made him curious about how the email header worked in his email program and whether he could change it – and he could.

Most desktop email programs – such as Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express or the updated version called Windows Mail or Windows Live mail - will allow you to specify to specify a ‘From’ address with some even doing so on a per email basis. The details you write in the From address don’t have to be the actual address you are using, that is they don’t have to correspond with the address that your Internet Provider or email provider (if you use a Yahoo, Gmail or other address) has given you. This sort of spoofing of addresses is an old way of sending spam which of course looks to come from someone other than the real spammer

The secret is not in the sender but in the receiver because all of the details of the email are contained within the ‘Header’ of most any email message and it isn’t hard to see them if they aren’t shown by default.

Below is an excerpt from an article at MakeUseOf.com that discusses the information contained in every email and the ways in which you can find it for yourself.

How To Trace Your Emails Back To The Source

Most people won’t notice this, but emails actually arrive in your inbox with a ‘receipt’, which contains a lot of information about the sender. In order to find the sender’s identity, we only need to retrieve an IP address, but inside the email header we can also find the originating domain, reply-to address and sometimes even the email client, for example Thunderbird.

Why would you want to find out the identity of the sender? Well, you may have heard of shady email scams or emails supposedly from Paypal inviting you to re-enter your personal information. Now, you can determine if an email is truly from the authentic source.

Accessing the email header is different for every email provider or email application, and sometimes, it is even hidden. In most of the cases however, the option to reveal the full header will be somewhere in the area where the subject and sender name are provided.

So read the article and next time you get a suspicious looking email you can check it out. You never know – it might be from Ross! :)