Archive for December, 2009

There are so many antivirus programs out there. It’s hard to know what is good and what is bad. For example, I will never place another norton antivirus product on a machine ever again. Why? Not only does it let viruses get through, but it can be so intrusive that it is a pain just to have sitting in the background.  Luckily there are researchers out there that test these products. In the past I have had some misgivings with the research as they have labeled certain antivirus programs as good , when I know from the field that they are horrible ( yes norton I’m looking at you).

Microsoft’s antivirus has been making waves, yes it’s free and its excellent. If you need a better antivirus , or any antivirus, I would recommend it. As so do independent tests. you can grab it here : Microsoft Security Essentials

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Like many people, you may have received a new computer for the holidays.  If you’re already an avid user you know how to set it up, install your favorite apps and get to work/play.  But if you’ve just moved to a new operating system (Windows 7, OS X or even Linux) you may be a little lost as to the new functionality in your new toy.  Luckily lifehacker has put together a great list of tips and tools for whatever system you’re baffled over.  Take a look at this list and let me know if you have another cool trick you’d like to share.

image from bolti22 on flickr

That’s right, my fellow Blackberry addicts, after the short outage on Dec 17th it looks like there’s another Blackberry internet and email outage.  And this one looks like it might last a while.

Reports are coming in from all over the internet but there’s been no confirmation so far from Research in Motion about how long this service interruption will last.  Hopefully everything will be up and running by tomorrow but this certainly isn’t a great early x-mas present for the email junkies out there.

Photo from malyousif on flickr

If you are using Office 2007, you know by now that files are automatically saved in a format (.docx, .xlsx) incompatible with older versions of Word, Excel, etc.  Do you have problems sharing documents because of this feature?  You can, of course, change the format manually when you are initially saving your file – just by using the pull down menu as shown below.

But if you want to alter the default settings in Office 2007 to always save in a format compatible with Word 97-2003, it is easy to do.  Here is how:

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If you’re like me you have a ton of icons on your desktop, but they’re all over the place and sometimes difficult to keep track of. There’s a great free application that you can use on any version of Windows XP and up (XP, Vista and 7) called Fences by Stardock.

Fences allows you to group your icons within individual…well…fences. Each fence is re-sizable, movable as a group of icons and has it’s own label. All you need to do to create a fence is right click and hold and drag a box around the icons you wish to group together, like in the video below.

The free version allows for an unlimited number of fences, quick hide abilities, auto scaling of fences for when you change resolutions and the ability to save configurations before you makes changes and revert if you don’t like your new setup.  They offer a paid version that gives you the ability to automatically grab files by extension, date, name, etc, set different opacity levels for different fences.

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Have you gone numb responding to the request pictured above?  This security feature built into Vista and Windows 7 is meant to keep your PC “safe”, but it is more likely to drive you insane.  You can make it stop!

Yes, you will get a foreboding message about putting your PC at risk.  The UAC is built to prevent low level executables from running; say you go to a website that is infected and it tries to auto launch a file in the background of your processes, the UAC would give you a chance to catch and block it.  It is likely you have an anti-virus running, whose primary job is to do this anyway.  UAC gives you a second chance; it offers redundancy.  It is a personal choice to disable the UAC.

I posted how to disable the UAC feature on Vista in an earlier post, but for those of you running the vast improved Windows 7, I offer you this detail description of how to keep these pop-ups from constantly interrupting your work flow.

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Apparently there’s a newly released exploit in Encapsulated Postscript Files (.eps) files that can allow malicious code to run (i.e. viruses and the like).  Why don’t I find this to be particularly horrible news?  Because this shouldn’t affect anyone who’s paying attention anyway.

Zero-day Adobe bug overshadows impending Flash fix – The Register

There are viruses that can infect your computer through dozens of file types, among which are .avi, .pdf, .doc, .xls, .zip files (holding .exe’s) .scr, .pif, .bat and many more and through web technology such as Active X controls, Flash videos, Javascript, sql injection, xss, etc.

Just take a look at a top 20 list of Internet security problems, threats and risks

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Garbage

Back in the fifth grade, I was in a school musical, The GIGO Effect, in which the evil Glitches attempted to corrupt a computer named Mabel with “dirty power.” The point of the show was that technology is unable to produce intelligent results without intelligent direction, a truism encapsulated in the formerly popular computer acronym GIGO, “garbage in, garbage out.”

I don’t think any business leaders are inclined to get their insights on running IT from a bunch of singing fifth-graders, but they could do worse (and generally do, to tell the truth). Intelligent direction is a product of competence, which IT professionals view as a mix of technical knowledge, creativity and judgment.

Everyone prefers competence. Everyone wants to do the right thing. But just as IT pros act and react logically according to their perceptions, so do the executives who employ them. Both approach IT with the same intention, but the outcome — for lack of a better term — sucks. And it sucks more as time goes on.

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