Tidbits from the computing world
Notes from the computing world will fill the space:
---In the wake of Google announcing “Gmail”, a free mail program offering 1 gig of space, Yahoo has increased its free offering to 100 megs and its paid offering ($20 a year) to 2 gigs. Yahoo has a great spam filter, too. Your attachments can be up to 10 megs in size now, too. I would expect MSN Hotmail to change soon (it offers 2 megs) because Microsoft doesn’t stay in third place for long. You can’t sign up for Gmail yet but expect a launch soon. Everyone is currently going nuts trying to be part of the beta test for the service so they can grab the cool user names…what they don’t know is you don’t want an obvious name, which opens you up for spam. It’s far better to be “jim4532jim” than “jim”.
---Have some stuff you want to Ebay (that is now a verb) but don’t want the hassle? A new service allows you to drop off your items at any UPS store (the brown stores) and a service called Auction Drop will take your item, photograph it and sell it for you on eBay, the world’s largest marketplace. The Auction Drop service takes a big bite of the proceeds (about 35 percent) but at least you get rid of your stuff. (Ebay will take another 5 percent or so.) Another option you have is calling a local auctioneer, who often will sell your stuff locally for less of a bite.
---The alleged next generation of DVD, so-called HD DVD, will have a recording capacity of 20 gigs for recordable discs. The trouble, of course, is that there are about a half-dozen formats fighting to be the next one (VHS versus Betamax, anyone?) and who knows who is winning?
---So many school kids are cheating with their thumbs (sending test answers around the room using text-messages on their cell phones) that some schools now are installing equipment that blocks all cell signals on campus. (So much for writing the quadratic equation on your hand.)
---If you’re not storing your photos online these days, you’re in the minority. Services such as Shutterfly, Ofoto and Smugmug will store an unlimited number of your photos online to share and (they hope) order digital prints. However, the landscape is changing. Bring your digital camera memory chip to nearly any one-hour photo or drug store in the country and you can walk out with prints on the spot. That has led some companies, including Microsoft, to determine that offering terabytes of disc space to consumers for free may not be the best business model. Its service, MSN Photos, will expire on July 2 (if you don’t download your photos stored there by then, they are “poof” gone forever. So it is a good idea to periodically visit your photo storage (and perhaps have two) to make sure you don’t lose your memories.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: One of the more elegant ways to share photos is Smugmug (www.smugmug.com) that is simple to use even for beginners.
James Derk is computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail is jderk@yahoo.com
The good old days
What a mess we’re in now. I never thought I would pine for the good old days in computing, where me and my buddies Jim and Mark would take turns typing in the peeks and pokes in endless listings from “RUN” magazine to make my Commodore 64 actually do something.
I didn’t have to worry about viruses, Trojans, spyware or spam. Instead, I was focused on actually getting my cassette tape drive (what we had before disk drives) actually could load a program in less than 30 minutes.
Now we have this stupid Sasser worm and others like it that reboot your computer every 60 seconds, with no other intention other that to steal your passwords and drive you nuts. I get lots of mails now about how to get rid of these things and I keep having to say the same things over and over; install an anti-virus product (RIGHT NOW) and update it at least once a week. If you don’t update it, your PC will be wide open to the next vulnerability. You can get McAfee for $25 at Sam’s Club and Norton for $35. Pick one and do it.
Secondly, download AdAware (it’s free at www.lavasoft.de) and keep it updated too. Update it and run it once a week and delete everything it finds. (There is a “check for updates” link near the lower right of the main screen.)
The detailed instructions on how to get rid of Sasser or other infections, head to Symantec’s web site (www.symantec.com) and click on Virus Removal Tools.
Without protection, you’re a sitting duck.
Just last week, the “Scob” outbreak unleashed one of the more clever attacks. To be infected by this one, all you have to do is visit an infected Web site, of which there are thousands. The Trojan Horse places a keystroke logger on users' PCs and is designed to capture credit card numbers and passwords and send them back to a server in Russia.
Microsoft is scrambling to create a patch to block the attack but this illustrates the cat and mouse aspect of this problem. Eventually Microsoft will include anti-virus protection in Windows but until then we’re still going to have to visit a number of different places to update our operating systems, our virus software and our ad-blocking software (not to mention spam blockers and application software patches.
I should also remind Windows users to visit Windows Update (hit START and it should be in your upper list or head to Windowsupdate dot Microsoft dot com and let it scan your PC). Install everything (yes, everything) in the “Critical updates” section. This is another thing you should check every week or so. (That weekly list is getting long, isn’t it?
Well, add to that any patches for your software firewall (if you have one). If you use a hardware router for your firewall, it rarely needs updating but I would check for a “firmware” update every six months or so.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Some of the best free entertainment on the Web is the daily White House press briefing. Head to www.whitehouse.gov and click on “Press Briefings” on the left.
James Derk is computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jderk@yahoo.com
