13/05: Mouse Pointers
Joe Asks:
“I just started my first class in computers and I don't know to much about them, sometimes when I am on the computer a small hand with a exclamation point on it pops up. What is that? Am I doing something wrong, or to slow? I use the computer at my mom’s work to practice, is this little hand telling me to do or not to do something.”
Hi Joe,
That is a mouse pointer and you are not doing anything wrong. The mouse pointer or cursor is usually a hand or an arrow, but it also has other graphics to show you what your computer is doing. It may show your computer is busy processing a task with an arrow and a small hourglass or it might change to an arrow with a question mark to show there are help topics available. You can also download different mouse animations from the web to change your mouse animations. My guess is this is what happened on your mother’s computer is she loaded new mouse animations and one has an exclamation point or it could mean that the loaded animation is now missing. To find out what it means for sure you will have to go to your mouse properties in control panel:
Windows XP
> Start
> Control Panel
> Printers and other Hardware
> Mouse
>Click the Pointers tab
Windows Vista
> Start (the little circle in the bottom left)
> Control panel
> Under Hadrware and Sound click “Mouse”
> Click the Pointers tab
Then just scroll down the list until you see the pointer with the exclamation point and it will tell you what it means. I hope this helps and thank you for your question!
“I just started my first class in computers and I don't know to much about them, sometimes when I am on the computer a small hand with a exclamation point on it pops up. What is that? Am I doing something wrong, or to slow? I use the computer at my mom’s work to practice, is this little hand telling me to do or not to do something.”
Hi Joe,
That is a mouse pointer and you are not doing anything wrong. The mouse pointer or cursor is usually a hand or an arrow, but it also has other graphics to show you what your computer is doing. It may show your computer is busy processing a task with an arrow and a small hourglass or it might change to an arrow with a question mark to show there are help topics available. You can also download different mouse animations from the web to change your mouse animations. My guess is this is what happened on your mother’s computer is she loaded new mouse animations and one has an exclamation point or it could mean that the loaded animation is now missing. To find out what it means for sure you will have to go to your mouse properties in control panel:
Windows XP
> Start
> Control Panel
> Printers and other Hardware
> Mouse
>Click the Pointers tab
Windows Vista
> Start (the little circle in the bottom left)
> Control panel
> Under Hadrware and Sound click “Mouse”
> Click the Pointers tab
Then just scroll down the list until you see the pointer with the exclamation point and it will tell you what it means. I hope this helps and thank you for your question!
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking site that allows you to post or send messages to all of your friends at once. For example someone asked me how I was this morning. My response was “Fantastic! It’s such a beautiful morning!” This surprised the other person, because usually I am not that coherent. Not all my coworkers may have known that I was having a fantastic day and so avoided talking to me until after my morning coffee. If I used Twitter and they followed me, I could have left a “tweet” about having a fantastic day and everyone would have known that I was in a good and approachable mood. A business might use it to promote new products, sales or promotions. A new mother could use Twitter to text all the cute things her baby did like smile, laugh, or poop. Family and friends might be interested in every little thing that the baby did and would like this information, but couldn’t be there it see it all themselves. I like to think Twitter lets us be our own John Madden only instead of football we are calling a play by play of our everyday life. Just remember you’re limited to 140 characters per “Tweet”.
Click Read More to Learn More.
06/04: Super Easy MP3 Ringtones
Last week, I promised a really cool and easy post that would make you all look like geniuses. Today, I fulfill that pledge. Some of you may remember a post about creating MP3 ringtones awhile back and you might be thinking “I’ve already done this why are you rehashing something I can already do?” Well the simple answer is I found a much easier method that requires no software to download. In fact, you don’t even need a MP3. I’m going to show you a quick and free way to create one.
The first thing you need to do which is the absolute hardest thing during this entire process is to think of what you want as a ringtone. Do you want a song or maybe you have a favorite TV show? I like the Family Guy. In my example, I’m going to use a song by the Plain White T’s because it’s my fiancée’s favorite band and it’s going to be her ringtone.
Click read more to see how.
The first thing you need to do which is the absolute hardest thing during this entire process is to think of what you want as a ringtone. Do you want a song or maybe you have a favorite TV show? I like the Family Guy. In my example, I’m going to use a song by the Plain White T’s because it’s my fiancée’s favorite band and it’s going to be her ringtone.
Click read more to see how.
25/03: April Fool’s Day Virus
You may have heard about a new virus that is scheduled to detonate on April 1st. The worm is called Confixer/Downadup and it has been around since November despite the $250,000 bounty that Microsoft has put on the creator. A third variant has been found and is set for massive infections on April 1st. This third version is quite the upgrade from the previous versions of the worm. This time, the virus takes a defensive stance by setting up roadblocks against measures to prevent it from being installed. These roadblocks include:
Disabling Microsoft automatic updates.
Preventing access to Microsoft Windows Security Center.
Resetting and Deleting System Restore Points.
Preventing any attempt to connect to a variety of antivirus software services or websites.
Shutting down tools used to monitor for malware and that could potentially remove it from the system.
Another upgrade from the previous versions is this varient will generate 50,000 web URLs a day, up from 250 per day, making infection much more likely.
At least once a month I receive a question from someone that received a warning e-mail, panicked and forwarded that same message to fifty billion friends and myself. Generally, the request is to make sure we and all Cap Rock Internet subscribers know about it. The e-mails are always hoaxes or extremely exaggerated, at least all the ones I have ever gotten. However, just in case one of those e-mails, someday, is legitimate let's say 99.9 percent of them are hoaxes. This way I cover myself in case you ever do get a real one.
The forwarded messages almost always say “This is real, I checked with insert source here” Never take their word for it, you don't know the original perpetrator of this e-mail. In fact, this is a big neon sign telling you it's probably fake. Do your own checking and I’m not talking about links in the e-mail, web pages are easily doctored. One of my favorite places to verify authenticity is snopes.com. Let’s use an e-mail I received today as an example of how to verify authenticity.
The forwarded messages almost always say “This is real, I checked with insert source here” Never take their word for it, you don't know the original perpetrator of this e-mail. In fact, this is a big neon sign telling you it's probably fake. Do your own checking and I’m not talking about links in the e-mail, web pages are easily doctored. One of my favorite places to verify authenticity is snopes.com. Let’s use an e-mail I received today as an example of how to verify authenticity.
19/09: The MailBag
I received this question from a customer this morning and thought it was a good one to answer on Ask A Geek.
“All of my out-going email arrives at the other person's computer marked spam....why is this and how can I stop it?”
It has a way to do with how you are sending your e-mail. Do you send it out with a huge list of addresses in the “To:” field? Most Anti-Spam and Junk Mail folders will flag your message as spam if you do. Try placing those addresses in the BCC field instead, it may help, it may not. Everything really depends on the recipients spam settings.
“All of my out-going email arrives at the other person's computer marked spam....why is this and how can I stop it?”
It has a way to do with how you are sending your e-mail. Do you send it out with a huge list of addresses in the “To:” field? Most Anti-Spam and Junk Mail folders will flag your message as spam if you do. Try placing those addresses in the BCC field instead, it may help, it may not. Everything really depends on the recipients spam settings.
18/06: FBI Battles Zombies!
That’s right the FBI is taking its fight against spam to the Zombie’s! What does that mean?
Internet hijackers use malicious software to take control of your machine without you even knowing it. Once the software is installed the hijacker is able to remotely control the PC using it in coordinated internet attacks, hosting illegal file sharing and send an estimated 55 billion in spam every day. An estimated 55 million computers are infected with this malicious software. The infected machine is in essence turned into a zombie and once enough computers are compromised the hijacker has a robot network or “Botnet”
The FBI is trying to take down these botnets, but they are huge sometimes containing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of personal computers. Operation Bot Roast is an ongoing and coordinated initiative to disrupt and dismantle these robot networks and to put the hijackers behind bars. The FBI has already put three of these major hijackers behind bars. They have also identified about 1 million computers across the country that have been compromised and will be contacting the PC owner to notify them so the owner can take steps to remove the infection on their PC.
Don’t think you are one of the hijacked machines? You could be, very easily. Most likely the machine you are working on right now is compromised with some type of spyware. Your home machine is probably worse and if you have children that use the internet, good luck keeping it secure.
For help in getting rid of spyware and keeping your machine secure visit this post.
Internet hijackers use malicious software to take control of your machine without you even knowing it. Once the software is installed the hijacker is able to remotely control the PC using it in coordinated internet attacks, hosting illegal file sharing and send an estimated 55 billion in spam every day. An estimated 55 million computers are infected with this malicious software. The infected machine is in essence turned into a zombie and once enough computers are compromised the hijacker has a robot network or “Botnet”
The FBI is trying to take down these botnets, but they are huge sometimes containing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of personal computers. Operation Bot Roast is an ongoing and coordinated initiative to disrupt and dismantle these robot networks and to put the hijackers behind bars. The FBI has already put three of these major hijackers behind bars. They have also identified about 1 million computers across the country that have been compromised and will be contacting the PC owner to notify them so the owner can take steps to remove the infection on their PC.
Don’t think you are one of the hijacked machines? You could be, very easily. Most likely the machine you are working on right now is compromised with some type of spyware. Your home machine is probably worse and if you have children that use the internet, good luck keeping it secure.
For help in getting rid of spyware and keeping your machine secure visit this post.
Are you still e-mailing your photos to friends and family? Why? Not only is it time consuming and outdated, it’s a little boring. There are hundreds of websites that will host those pictures for you and allow you to arrange, categorize, and update your pictures with a few clicks of a mouse, not to mention you can use it as a backup. Flickr, Bubbleshare, Fotki, are all popular photo sites that will host those precious pictures for you for free. These sites allow you to create sets or albums to categorize your pictures. You can make the photos private allowing only certain people to view them or make them public and share with everyone. There are also websites like Dropshots which allow you to not only share pictures, but video as well. If you decide you want a little more functionality then the free websites offer, alternatives like Photosite have a premium service that includes customizable photo albums, a photoblog, professional online printing service, and your own domain name (familynamephotos.com). Each of the services offers something a little different and you can take a tour or browse the site to see what each service offer and which one is the right choice for you.
I currently use Flickr. It only required a yahoo account, something which I already had. If you don’t it’s free and easy to join just click the signup button and follow the instructions or if you have a yahoo account, like me, just use your username and password to login. Soon as you are finished logging in it will ask if you want to upload photos. You can upload six pictures at a time. I usually make them public but this choice is up to you. That is all there is to getting started. Don’t be afraid to play around and find your own way, creating sets, making comments on or about your pictures. There is a lot to do on Flickr so have fun! You can visit a set of spring time pictures Barbara took HERE and see why this method is so much better then sending photos via e-mail.
EDIT: Flickr appears to be experiencing difficulties and running slow. If you can't get to it now. Check back later and try again. The other sites are working if you would like to to view them. - Thanks.
In analog phones the voice is transmitted directly to another phone with no conversion. Analog phones are more prone to interference and eavesdropping. With digital, voice is converted to a digital format called binary. Which are ones and zeroes that electronics can read. Unwanted noise can then be filtered out to reduce interference. By doing this Digital phones make it harder to eavesdrop making your calls a little more secure. Also digital phones have the ability to offer you more features such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, and Voice Mail.
An easy comparison between the two technologies is to think in terms of music. Analog phones are represented by an old record player while digital phones are CD players.
Digital cordless phones can also travel over a higher frequency called gigahertz increasing the quality of the sound and extending the range of the handset.
An easy comparison between the two technologies is to think in terms of music. Analog phones are represented by an old record player while digital phones are CD players.
Digital cordless phones can also travel over a higher frequency called gigahertz increasing the quality of the sound and extending the range of the handset.
04/04: Tournament Outcome
In the NCAA Tournament Bracket Contest the runner up was Ricky Martinez. However, the Georgetown Hoya’s killed his chances of taking home the crown. The winner and champion of the Cap Rock Bracket is…
Barak Harlan!
He was able to pull out a win by picking the Florida Gators to take it all. Congratulations Barak and thanks to all that participated in the event. I hope you all had fun!
Barak Harlan!
He was able to pull out a win by picking the Florida Gators to take it all. Congratulations Barak and thanks to all that participated in the event. I hope you all had fun!
