Tags:
Internet
OK,
seriously - in the last few days my Twitter
followers have doubled (and here comes yet another one. What the
heck did I do to suddenly attract all these new followers? And how
do I do it again??
Actually, on closer examination, most
of these new followers seem to be pretty spammy. Is this the way
to try to sell on Twitter now? Follow as many people as you can,
hoping they'll follow you back? I made that mistake, following someone
who repeatedly sent out a link to buy a $97 book on how to get more followers
on Twitter. Uh, no thanks - time to Unfollow.
So yeah, I'm using Twitter again. And
feeding it to Facebook again too. And I still don't know that this
is such a good idea. But I figured it's worth a shot again. What
else would I do, work? BTW, follow me at http://twitter.com/GoodComputerGuy
.
Tags:
Internet Software
I
think everyone has now heard of the Conficker virus that is out there.
How could you miss it, it's made a lot of main-stream media. Call
me crazy, but I suspect this is the next Y2K scare. The media needs
to be able to scare people into listening/reading/watching them, so they've
made a big deal of things. I suspect that come tomorrow... nothing
is going to happen. If I'm wrong though, this post may be the first
thing to go... :)
Tags:
Internet
Everyone
on Facebook
knows about the recent home page redesign, and not too many people are
very happy about it. Facebook is now rolling out some tweaks to appease
some of the most vocal complaints. My favorite new change is the
ability to hide updates from individual third party applications (those
annoying quizzes, etc) that clutter up the News Feed. To do so, just
click on the little drop-down arrow to the right of the update, then hide
it (not your friend, well, unless you WANT to hide your friend, too.) Ahhhh
- much better now...
Tags:
Software
This
issue came up on the Frambors e-mail list lately when someone lost a bunch
of old data. People usually don't back up until it's too late, of
course, so now is the time to make sure you have a good backup. Copying
to CDs or Zips (remember those?) just isn't adequate. One, the hardware
can die, and two, the media can die. Those old CDs and DVDs aren't
going to be readable forever. They're also a pain to deal with. Finally,
what happens if your house or business burns down?
Off-site backup is the way to go and
there are some very simple ways to securely do it. My favorite is
Carbonite
for $55/year - unlimited, online backup. Install it and forget about
it - it doesn't get any easier (no, I don't have a stake in the company,
I just like them.) Your data is automagically, securely stored on
Carbonite's servers, ready to be reinstalled if necessary, simply by dragging
and dropping back onto your computer (or ordering a CD if you've had a
major blowup.)
The other option is using an external
hard drive, but that doesn't save you from a burning building. To
be really secure, get at least 2 hard drives. Keep one on your computer
and throw the other one in your car if you don't have any place else to
bring it. Swap them out every week. At least it's out of the
house/office and away from the computer which you are trying to protect.
There are a lot of backup programs out there but I like Acronis True
Image Workstation. Easy to use, and allows you to "mount"
a backup as an image - great for reinstalling a computer or recovering
a file.
Whatever you do, though - put a backup
plan in place NOW, not after you have a drive crash.
Tags:
Software
There
is a big conspiracy theory sweeping the Internet today about a Norton file
called pifts.exe that apparently is trying to access a server at Symantec.
Symantec has apparently quenched any debate about it in their forums,
which seems to have fanned the fires. Now, I've never been a big
fan of Symantec anyway - I much prefer AVG. I spend a lot of my time
uninstalling Norton, installing AVG, and cleaning up the mess that Norton
left behind. But if you are unfortunate enough to still be using
Norton, this big pifts.exe scare is probably nothing to really be worried
about. It looks like it probably is a routine part of Norton that
DOES "phone home" but doesn't look any more malicious than any
other Norton product.
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