March 18, 2010
MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON TRICKS
By this time you’ve probably learned all the cool keyboard and mouse tricks for your new Windows 7 computer, right?
- You’ve been using Ctrl-X (Cut), Ctrl-C (Copy), and Ctrl-V (Paste) for ages.
- It’s old hat to drag and drop with the right mouse button instead of the left button so you can choose from a menu to copy, move, or cancel.
- Windows 7 brought the lovable Windows Snap routines to expand a program to fill the whole screen, or either half, with quick mouse movements.
- Those of you with dual monitors picked up
[…] continued
February 26, 2010
GROOVESHARK – MALWARE WARNING
Be careful out there!
I went to Grooveshark tonight to listen to some music. (Here’s what I wrote about Grooveshark recently. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to link directly to the site tonight.)
Within a few seconds, the Internet Explorer window vanished and was replaced by a typical malware window claiming that my computer was infected with terrible diseases.
The malware came from a poisoned advertisement. Web sites that display advertising don’t put the ads there individually. Instead, they sign up with an ad network that’s responsible for supplying the ads to fill a space […] continued
February 18, 2010
MORE HACKING ATTACKS
The Wall Street Journal reports today: “Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.”
This is apparently not related to the attacks from China that caused Google to make noises last month about closing its operations in that country. In fact, the New York Times calmly notes that this is a relatively small blip in the world of compromised […] continued
January 25, 2010
FIREFOX 3.6
Mozilla has released Firefox version 3.6, with increased security, faster display of web pages and Javascript, and some new features for add-ins and themes. Here’s a description of the new release and a video demonstrating some of the new features.
If you are running Firefox, you can get the new version by clicking on Help / Check for updates. Presumably it will soon be offered automatically when you launch Firefox.
Switching from IE is easy: start at this page and you’ll be given lots of information about what to expect. Firefox imports favorites and passwords from IE […] continued
January 20, 2010
UPDATES
I’ve prepared a list of computer safety tips for years. Over time, the advice to keep critical programs up to date has moved to the top spot on the list. You don’t have to spend all your time reading technology news but you do have to be able to identify which reminders are legitimate when they pop up from the system tray.
There’s a weird news story to illustrate why updates are important: the entire network of computers at the University of Exeter has been locked down and taken offline for days because a virus has […] continued
January 19, 2010
COMPUTER SAFETY 2010
Here’s an updated list of ways to be safe and secure with your computer.
Install updates from Microsoft promptly. Look in the lower right corner for the gold shield (WinXP) or update icon (Win7/Vista).
Install updates to Acrobat, Flash, Java, and Quicktime promptly. Each will alert you from the lower right corner.
- An easy and safe way to keep up with updates: visit Secunia Online Inspector once a month and follow its suggestions.
Install antivirus software and keep it up to date.
Know the name of your antivirus software. If you get a security
[…] continued
January 11, 2010
ONLINE PASSWORDS AND LASTPASS
Previously:
Passwords: computer login
Passwords: e-mail
Passwords: Google Accounts & Windows Live ID
Password: password managers
LastPass will help you manage all of your online passwords. You should learn about it, install it, and use it every day. This is seriously good stuff.
LastPass is a free program that memorizes each password typed into a web site and automatically fills it in when you return to the same site. Once it’s up and running, the master password for LastPass is the only password you have to remember.
The feature that makes this genuinely exciting: your passwords […] continued
October 28, 2009
WINDOWS 7 TASKBAR
Windows 95 introduced the Start menu.
Windows 7 represents a big step away from it.
Probably the most noticeable change in Windows 7 will be in front of you all the time, down at the bottom of the screen. The reworked taskbar is an ambitious rethinking of the whole concept of launching and running programs. I expect it will cause some anguish for everyone who resists change – and really, that’s all of us, isn’t it?
I can tell you that it gets better and better, the more you use it and discover its features. Almost against my […] continued
October 2, 2009
READING BLOGS
There’s an easy way for you to keep up with web sites you visit regularly. If you’re not using some kind of a news reader or feed reader to keep up with blogs, news sites, and other frequently updated web pages, it’s time for you to take a look.
If a page is updated regularly, it almost certainly has an RSS feed. You can set up software that will automatically read the feed and let you focus on the new items from that site. All of your favorite "feeds" are presented in a single place with a consistent look, more […] continued
September 3, 2009
64-BIT GLITCHES
Many of you – most of you – will get the 64-bit version of Windows 7 on your next computer, so you can use more than 4Gb of RAM. Even if you don’t buy more memory than that at first, you’ll want the comfort of knowing you can add more later. You’ll recall that many devices that connect to the computer (printers, scanners, etc.) will need a new driver specifically written for a 64-bit operating system. Fortunately, those are becoming widespread and many of them are included with Windows.
Setting up the 64-bit version of Windows 7 on my […] continued