GEEKNOTE:  Some weeks are crazy busy with everyone just trying to keep up with the work coming in the door.  Other weeks are like the past one where we all get the chance to catch our breath and learn some new tricks.

I’ve had some new web authoring tools to play with for several weeks now, but finally got the chance to spend some quality time with them.  I have nothing earth shattering to show off yet, but I’m still working on a couple of project / demo sites.

I also had the opportunity to sit through a webinar on a new product that we were thinking about offering to our corporate customers.  I wasn’t impressed, so we won’t pursue it.  I have several more webinars scheduled over the next week or so.  Most of them involve new products that we may find interesting enough to offer our customers.    I’m particularly looking forward to learning more about Intel’s new Haswell processors and the new 9 series chipset.

I took delivery on a couple of new low power motherboards this past week.  These boards are potential replacements for the Atom boards we first got a few years back.  The beauty of these boards is that they don’t require any cooling fans for the CPUs.  One of the boards has a dual core processor and the other has a quad core processor.  If they live up to expectations, they might well be a good foundation for inexpensive custom systems for our customers who use their computers primarily for surfing and email.  My goal is to have both test systems built out by this time next week.

I’m looking at what promises to be a very busy couple of weeks between now and the end of June.    I have three separate webinars and a computer training class  on Tuesday alone!   Look for a report here on any of the really cool stuff you can expect to see in the near future.

Tim and George also spent some quality time last week honing their skills.  This is an example of how we work hard to be the best at what we do and take advantage of what otherwise would be down time.

The summer t-storm cycle has started, so we can expect storms most afternoons.  Make sure your computer is protected from power surges.  We have UPS / battery backup systems in stock.  We also carry the more common power supplies in case you lose one due to a surge.  If your computer won’t turn on, more times than not it is the power supply.  If we’ve got the right one in stock, we can frequently replace it while you wait.

As always, keep us in mind for all your computer needs.

 

Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek.

 

GEEKNOTE:  Are little green men watching us?  Did ancient astronauts pay us a visit?  Back in the late 1990’s, an enterprising group at Berkeley came up with an idea on how to find out if someone else is out there.  They started by getting time on various radio telescopes to gather data.

Looking for extraterrestrials in the mountains of data that quickly accumulated was a daunting task that could quickly cost millions of dollars for the super computer time needed.  They hit on a brilliant idea:  Instead of using millions of dollars of time on a few expensive super computers, what about using donated “extra” CPU time on millions of inexpensive individual computers?  Thus was born SETI@Home.  Owners of home computers were enlisted to run a program that would download a small data set, run an analysis on it, and then upload the results, all while the computer was otherwise sitting idle.

The program grew in leaps and bounds and it became clear that other computing challenges could benefit from the same approach.  They developed the “Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing” (BOINC).  There are now some four dozen projects using the BOINC software.

I’m still partial to the original SETI@Home project.  The thought that I might be the one of millions of supporters who’s computer discovered an ET signal is cool.  I’ve probably got more of a chance of that than winning the Power Ball lottery and it doesn’t cost me anything other than some processing time.

If you’d like to know more about SETI@Home, visit their website at:  http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

What do you do with your computer when you aren’t sitting at the keyboard?

 

Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek
Gulfcoast Networking, Inc.

GEEKNOTE:  It has been said that the Internet is forever and there is a certain truth of the saying.  You lose control of anything you post.  No matter how foolish you may have been in a weak moment, future employers and everyone else can likely pull it up to view.

The same goes for cell phones.  The good news is that we can get back your pictures if you inadvertently reset your phone and wipe the internal memory.  The bad news is that the next owner of your cell phone can do the same thing.  Teens and others prone to lapses in judgement should give that some thought before they take an “Anthony Weiner” style picture of themselves or their friends.

If my cell phone is stolen or otherwise compromised, the thieves will get away with my collection of stained glass window shots from the First United Methodist Church of New Port Richey as well as assorted pictures of my grandkids and similar stuff.  That’s about as exciting as it gets on my phone.

Today’s smart cell phones are nothing more or less than hand held computers with a cellular radio built in.   You need to treat them as such.  When you delete a picture or other file on a computer, you are simply deleting the pointer that tells the computer where to find it.  The picture is still there until the location where it is is reused for something else.

With cell phones starting off with 16gb or more of non-volatile memory for storing your pictures, music, etc., there is a LOT of storage space to use before the old stuff starts getting reused.

This past week, my business partner saved all the pictures one of our clients thought she had lost when she reset her phone.  I was able to recover a bunch of pictures and important documents on another client’s external hard drive Saturday morning using a program that identifies deleted files and lets you recover them.  It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about a cell phone memory card or a hard drive.  The pictures are stored in exactly the same fashion.

If you consider all the OTHER stuff stored in the memory of your cell phone, you can see the sort of problem you create when you trade in your old phone or sell it when you buy a new one.  There is a pretty good argument to be made to physically destroy your old phone when you are done with it.  We do something similar with old computers.  We pull the drives and physically destroy them.  The old cases and the other stuff gets recycled, but the drives that store data are destroyed.

In any event, the best solution is to think before you take pictures with your cell phone in the first place.   You will want to email them to your personal computer so you can make backup copies.

Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek
Gulfcoast Networking, Inc.

GEEKNOTE:  I’ve got several possible topics for this week’s GEEKNOTE, including an update on companies that are too big to have a clue, the hazards of installing apps on your smart phone without reading the fine print, the imminent demise of Windows XP, and my political plans for 2014, but I think I’ll write instead about something that I’ve been doing a slow burn over for the last couple of weeks:  Online rip-off artists.

For the last couple of months, we’ve seen a series of instances where someone has had their email credentials stolen and their email has been used to send out pharmaceutical spam messages.  The messages originate from all over the world and the one common thread seems to be the use of free anti-virus software (eg. Microsoft Security Essentials).

Two weeks ago, we picked up on another of these incidents with one of the folks we have provided with email service for years.  We immediately blocked the email and contacted the customer.  This is where things got interesting.  This particular customer is in his 80’s.  He got a message several weeks ago that his machine needed service and he was directed to a company in the Miami area who proceeded to sell him a $600 support package that included an anti-virus product of dubious reputation.  Notwithstanding the fact that the support package they talked him into cost more than his computer is probably worth,  his machine was still compromised and his email credentials were stolen.

After hearing his story, I came to the conclusion that his referral to the Miami company didn’t pass the sniff test.

We cleaned up his machine, installed real AV software, and set him up so that we could help him if he had any problems in the future.  The Miami company called him a day or two later to tell him that his machine needed more service from them.  He advised them that he had found someone locally and didn’t need their help.  Their concern immediately turned to whether or not he was going to demand a refund for what he had already paid them.

This scenario has played out several times over the past year.  Someone sees a “Microsoft” message pop up on their screen warning them that their computer is infected or needs some sort of fix.  Alternately, they get a call from “Microsoft” telling them that their computer has a problem and offering to check it out if they let “Microsoft” take control of their machine.  If they fall for the scam, the caller will generate a report that claims to show all sorts of problems and offer to fix everything for $200 or more… $600 in the case of my 80 something year old customer.

This sort of thing makes my blood boil.  I’ve seen far too many people fall for these scams.

Please protect yourself.  Microsoft absolutely NEVER calls to inform you about problems with your computer.  Popup warning messages are frequently bogus.  If a popup message isn’t from your AV program, ignore it.  Whatever you do, do NOT allow some stranger who calls you on the phone take remote control of your computer.

Finally, please avoid installing extra toolbars on your computer.  At least one of these also installs a custom search home page that includes very prominent bogus warning messages about supposed computer problems.  If you click on one of these warning messages, you will be directed to one of the scammers, who will be happy to separate you from your money.

We’d love for you to consider us if you need help with your computer.  We offer fixed price contracts or you can pay us based on the time we spend on your machine.   We have a local office and you know where to find us.

If you’ve got a parent that needs to have someone to call if they see anything odd on their computer, we can help.  We’ve got a fair number of seniors who feel free to call us whenever they have a question about their computer.  We’ll pop in, identify whether or not there really is a problem, and pop out, often in just 3 or 4 minutes.  Most of the time, it’s just an update that needs to be accepted, but occasionally, it’s something malicious that we can nip in the bud.

Please be safe this coming week and New Years Eve.  We’re planning on reviewing how well our predictions last year worked out and making some predictions for the new year in next week’s GEEKNOTE.

GEEKNOTE:   One of the nice things about the Internet is that there are a lot of good things available on the net that are totally free of charge.  The flip side is that there are some “free” things on the net that are ultimately quite costly.

Antivirus software is a prime example.   I can’t prove cause and effect, but I’ve seen a pretty strong correlation between using free AV software, especially Microsoft Security Essentials, and badly compromised machines.

Another example is the sort of website you see advertised on TV that guarantees to fix your computer:  They often have some website name that implies how much faster or better your computer will be if you visit them.  We’d probably suggest truth in advertising, eg:   http://ScrewUPMyPC.com.

What these sites generally offer is some sort of registry optimizer that claims to identify errors, typically thousands of them, and then offers you the opportunity to have them fixed for a nominal charge of a few hundred dollars.  Keep your credit card in your wallet.

A number of “free” offers involve the installation of browser helpers that set your computer up so you get a constant stream of advertisements.  I’ve collected quite a list of these programs that I automatically remove when I see them on a computer that comes into the shop.  At the top of my list are any products by Conduit, any toolbars other than perhaps one from Google or Yahoo, MyPCBackup, and pretty much anything with the word “spyware” , “antispyware”, speedup, or “Regfix” in the name.  Individually, none of these are horrible, but combined, they can turn your formerly fast PC into a slug.

If you want to take advantage of some GOOD free anti-malware utilities, I recommend Malwarebytes and Spybot Search & Destroy, both of which are available at http://www.downloads.com and both of which are quite useful in their free versions.

I recommend you stay away from any of the registry cleaners and fixers.  There are some very good registry utilities available, but they are like a sharp knife and they can hurt if you don’t know what you are doing.

I’m a strong fan of F-Secure Antivirus products.  They start at $40 a year (for up to three machines) and they simply work.  We sell them.  There are several other very good commercial AV products.  The key is to stay away from the free stuff.

If you want backup software, stick with one of the legitimate services like Carbonite or F-Secure Online Backup.  Avoid any PC backup software that just appears on your computer.

The key thing to remember is that free stuff you find on the Internet is generally free for a reason.  Be sure to consider what strings come attached before you accept the offer.

Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek
Gulfcoast Networking, Inc.