Category: Geekness

Protecting Your Computer

THIS IS AN OLD POST, this was written in 2008. there is better information out there. Still, back up your shit. Seriously. No one, not Dell, not Apple or Microsoft, not Google not Best Buy, no one NO ONE but you are responsible for your digital belongings. Your pictures, your music, your documents and emails, all of these things are yours, and you need to be proactive in keeping them safe.

-j

If you use a Windows computer you need to protect it from the internet. The following is by no means intended to be an end-all be all list. Nor is it one that will last forever. See the date of this post? If it has been longer than a year, I’d do some research to make sure these are still good solutions. Computer technologies don’t stop.

Firefox: (mozilla.com) Web Browser. The best thing you can do for your computer is not use Internet Explorer. Most viruses/ad/spyware comes in to your machine using exploits through IE. This is _not_ to say that Firefox is immune to this, or that this is the only way to be infected. This is a simple first step at protecting your machine.

AVG (Grisoft.com) Anti-virus. High quality, it will scan your system, scan incomming email and help clean and quarrentine infected files.

Adaware (lavasoftusa.com) Free. This removes ad/spyware from your computer. You know that random pop-up window that appears when you aren’t even in Internet Explorer? this will help with that.

Spybot Seek and Destroy (safer-networking.org) Search and Destroy () Free, use with adaware. Where Adaware shines with adware, spybot shines with spyware. Spyware is used to collect information from your computer and send it to another computer. This is usually bad.

Backup, backup, for the love of all that is holy, backup!

caveat emptor! Becareful of what you download! Where did you find it? Is the site reliable? Has the software been reviewed on other sites? Check these things out. A bad software download can cripple your machine.

Seriously. Back up. Get an external hard drive. Get a thumb drive. Burn CD’s or DVD’s. Print them out! Imagine this, if i came in and took a hammer to your hard drive, what would you lose? what would you need? Now take those things and back them up.

I am a Mac user. The luxury of that at this time is I don’t need any of these things. Linux too provides more security than a Windows machine. The trade-off? You would need to learn a new operating system. Not all your software can be found (and most would need to be repurchased).

Software for Writers, part one

I’ll probably write a few posts on this sort of stuff. There are so many tools out there availible for a writer (or any artist for that matter) it is hard to know what to pick. Most of my posts will be about free software. Why? Well, as a starting writer, free is a good thing.

The idea being that your creativity shouldn’t be hindered by your wallet. Perhaps you won’t have that sound studio, or that top of the line movie editing deck, but you can get tools that well get you there.

So let’s start with some basics.

You need a word processor. For a writer, this is a part of your creative process. For an artist in general there are countless reasons why you’ll need to sit in front of that blinking cursor, from resumes to reviews. There are two great choices out there that are both open source, and free.

AbiWord (http://abisource.com)

Simple. Light. Easy to use, but still powerful. AbiWord is just a word processor, but it does its job efficiently. Most of the tools you will need are here.

OpenOffice.org (http://openoffice.org)

This is a monolith. Openoffice.org is a competitor for Microsoft Office. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet app, presentation, even web and database tools. There are forums everywhere to help with the program.Templates, tutorials, all availble online. If you are thinking of buying an Office Suite, try this one first (it’s free!) and see what you think.

Both of these programs can save in either MS Word formats (.DOC) or in Open Document Format. The advantage of ODF is that it is an open standard, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to open them down the road. The disadvantage is that Word can’t open them natively, so you may have to convert to DOC or RTF before sending them out to friends or editors.

Are these the only two options? Not a chance. There are lots of open source word processors, and some closed source, but free ones, like Google Docs, for instance.

That’s a start, there will be more as we go along.

What if Train: Apple and Yahoo

(So I started this before Microsoft’s Bid this weekend. Figured I’d finish it anyway)

Recently, Steve Jobs went to a Yahoo conference and gave a speech to Yahoo about themselves. He told them “The company with one of the largest Internet user bases can do and achieve anything…” Steve Jobs was giving Yahoo a pep-talk.

So this has made me start to wonder. Let’s take a trip on the what-if train, shall we?

What if Apple wants to buy Yahoo. Microsoft has has MSN for quite some time now. While Apple has .Mac, it pales in offerings as compared to Google or Yahoo. Yahoo has the componets already. Not to meantion, Microsoft has expressed a desire to purchase Yahoo. Apple would be wise to prevent Yahoo’s aquisition by Microsoft.

Yahoo has made great efforts in the Mobile internet offerings. Apple has the phone, Yahoo has the services, the two put together would create a great package for iPhone users.

And the thought of intergrating iPhoto and Flickr makes me giggle.

Ok, so let’s not go quite that far on the What if Train. What if Apple is looking to partner more with Yahoo? They already have Yahoo on the iPhone and integrated into the Leopard Address Book (iCal and iPhoto next?), Apple could certainly use a company like Yahoo to provide more Mac specific tools for its users.

Let us not forget Zimbra, which fits into both of these senerios. Zimbra, the opensource groupware program is one of the leading competitions for Exchange. While the Zimbra team is making efforts to increase Mac compatibility, it isn’t quite the Windows+Exchange package. Zimbra + Mac OSX Server + Pretty GUI Admin panels and you have an option for those people who don’t want Exchange. Plus, Zimbra is already compatible with the Blackberry, adding iPhone capability would turn the iPhone into a full-fledged business machine.

In the end, this is just a ‘What-if’. In the end, Apple probably has no concern either way over Yahoo!. Despite some integration features, such as Flickr – iPhoto, messeger – iChat, (probably many more) the addition of Yahoo wouldn’t be worth it to Apple. Yahoo certainly should start providing more interoperability between their services and Macintosh users (hint hint), which would pull users their way, who, let’s face it, are left out a lot of the time.

And maybe Mr. Jobs was just there to give a pep-talk.

But, what if?