I am a big fan of two factor authentication where possible for high value logins. This is where you enter a changing number to go with your password. This number comes from a device you carry with you. In particular I use the free Verisign mobile token on my iPhone. They make it for many other cell phones. You can install and use it for free with services like paypal, ebay, some banks and even with the free service called PiP (Personal Identity Portal) from Verisign.
You can get a pip account and use it for any site that supports openID. Giving you two factor authentication even for a lot of blog commenting and forum systems. PiP can be found at: https://pip.verisignlabs.com/
Verisign has a quick demo video of the mobile token on youTube. Check it out and add some extra protection to your accounts. Especially if you use eBay or paypal.
I have an older WindowsXP based Media Center pc made by HP. It is the model z545. This is a discontinued unit which is too bad. I liked how the black case fits right in with your entertainment gear.
Last night my wife says the remote control quit working. This happens now and then, but a simple reboot usually fixes it right up. This unit is connected to dual Directv receivers. I found to my dismay when the system rebooted it claimed something was corrupt and could not see any tuners. Spending my weekend rebuilding the OS was not something I looked forward to.
After some poking around here is what I did to fix it. Otherwise it was time to look into a Mac Mini as a media center. I just liked having my xbox360 be able to pull tv from the directv over my network.
The media center stays powered on all the time. So it can record shows at any time, keep the guide updated etc. So I turned it off and unplugged it. Charge can build up in hardware. Since things were working and suddenly quit this was the most likely main issue.
I found I still had two older movie programs installed. Cinemanow and Movielink. Cinemanow tends to update itself every now and then. It was one thing acting odd and we don’t really use them. So mark these for uninstall.
Since I was getting messages about corruption and suspect Cinemanow did something I rediscovered System Restore Point. This is something I have always ignored.
So after the full power off and leaving unplugged to discharge for 15 minutes I restored to a system point from last month. Then I uninstalled the unnecessary extra media software that might try and update components in the future. Rebooted and everything was working again. Both the unseen hardware components and software component corruption was all fixed up.
We updated our FiT wordpress tonight. Also we added the good iPhone iPod plugin. So check our the site from your iPhone or iPod touch.
We did retire the forums. No one had the time to keep them updated and spam hack free. Right now we may consider using Disqus for commenting instead of the native wordpress comment system to offset the shutdown of the forums.
Look for an increase in posts on. Variety of different topics. Some will be just blog posts. Others may new audio or video.
I had been waiting on Belkin to get this unit out since I heard of it. Finally on Monday I stumbled onto it at the Apple Store. It is a nice little three ac outlet travel surge strip with two additional USB charging ports. It will even charge Motorola phones which are notorious for only charging with units made just for them.
Many of us have or are new owners of the Nintendo Wii. A wonderfully fun gaming console. Even my wife loves it. Well loves to kick my butt in bowling anyway.
We like to see our friend’s Miis next to us when we bowl rather than randomly generated Miis. I talk about how to setup your Miis to Mingle on your friends Wii consoles without having to actually send them your Mii itself.
Victor Cajiao and George Starcher review the Eye-Fi SD Card. The Eye-Fi is a 802.11G wireless memory card. It lets you upload your photos to your computer and even sharing sites like Flickr straight from your camera as you take photos.
There are times when you want to give out a phone number but you do not want to give out a live direct number. This happened to me when making some contact information cards for the library classes I volunteer teach. I certainly did not want to be giving out my cell phone number to just anyone who showed up for the classes. So I dusted off something I setup a while back. Grandcentral.com.
Grandcentral is now a Google owned property. It lets you pick a phone number you can keep effectively for life. The fun then begins. You can import the contact information from your computer and teach it how to route calls based on who is calling. So you could setup one number and if it is your spouse it rings your cell number and work number effectively forwarding the call. If it is an unknown stranger you can have it go to voicemail instead. Then Grandcentral will even email you a link you can click to play any recorded voicemail. Optionally you can have it SMS your cell phone to notify you of voicemail.
You can setup rules so certain contact numbers only get forwarded to certain real numbers for you such as home, work and cell. You can do this by grouping those contacts as well.
So if you have need to share a common number but want the control to protect your direct number privacy then Grandcentral is a great tool. It is free so create an account and give it a whirl.
PS You can even change the routing rules based on callerID from the call logs. So if someone starts bugging you, just route them to call blocked… =)
The other day my dad got me some new type nimh rechargable batteries from costco. They are called Eneloop made by Sanyo.
I have been using them for several weeks now. Both in my Altec Lansing inMotion ipod portable speakers and in my Canon S2 IS camera. They last amazingly long and recharge way faster than my Energizer batteries. Usually the energizers can go dead within a few days. They also take over 30 minutes to charge on their own 15 minute speed charger. The eneloops can last over a year charged without use. They even come charged in the package. I also just charged a set of four AAs in 10 minutes on my Energizer charger.
They just rock. Finally what rechargeable batteries should have been all along. I definitely recommend these to anyone who wants to be a little green and not use disposable batteries.
Our tax refund came in last week. My wife just loves to do our taxes, have it direct deposit to her checking account and then dole an allowance to me. Of course she almost always uses it to update something on the house. But this time I got to spend a little on something. A nice new Roomba 560 from Linens and Things.
Cnet had a good review on the 560 last fall. It has an improved vacuum, traction etc. You can read the review HERE.
The trick to buying an item like this from Linens and Things is to print off the 20$ discount coupon from the Internet. Here is a link to the 20% Coupon. It expires Dec 31, 2008. I was able to get the 560 for $305 including sales tax using the coupon.
The first one I got was dead out of the box. Would not power up or charge at all. Linens and Things exchanged it with no questions asked. The second one worked perfect. It made a little musical tone the moment I pulled out the battery protection tab from the bottom of the unit. Then I let it charge over night. It has been great. Our hardwood floors even feel cleaner when walking around in bare feet. Not that we ever had a messy house. It just makes so much difference in the feel of the floors and quality of the air having the roomba run twice a week during time we are out of the house. You can schedule the 560 for one time during any day of the week. So you can schedule say twice a week at 930am during the day while you are at work.
I was listening to Techometria with Phil Windley on IT Conversations. I just found out OpenDNS has added more category blocking now. It goes beyond just Phishing and Adult content. Say you want to block p2p, file storage and webmail for your organization to reduce likelihood of someone getting to sites to bypass your protections. Now you can. Just setup a login and you can block the categories you need. Very cool.
Yet more records get lost by businesses this year. Some closer to home for me than others. So just to be safe I decided to track down my Fed guaranteed annual credit report. Here is all you have to do if you are a USA resident. If you go to any site but this one they could be selling you a service. This is the site the agencies setup in response to the Federal law to provide the annual free report. If you do not want to check it online you can request it via phone or mail.
Make sure your antivirus, antispyware is up to date and run a scan. Just to check for any obvious spyware on your machine. I would not do this from a public hotspot either.
Pick all three credit agencies during the process.
Make sure you don’t pick the part to get your credit score, just the report please and thank you.
I would not give them my email either, sure they will mail you to remind you next year to check it again but then they will likely nag you with other stuff too.
Once you finish the process of filling out various sensitive bits of information to confirm your identity it will give you a nice summary.
Save it in a safe place preferably encrypt it in case you need it later. Personally I printed to PDF and then encrypted the file with blowfish encryption. Windows users can use the latest winzip for a nice level of encryption.
Since it is a new year I was updating things in my iCal on my mac. I got to wondering if there was a way to subscribe to iCalendars (RFC 2445) shared calendars. Not import but actually subscribe so they stay up to date. I found an open source project called Remote Calendars. The latest version is v6.3 on May 19, 2007. So its fairly current. If you are a windows users and want to subscribe to iCalendars you can give it a try.
I just wish more groups used iCal feeds for their schedules. I was looking up our local library to see what they offered for computer classes and see if it was something I could volunteer to help with. The schedule is on the web page only and as a PDF flier.
Alternately if you are not an outlook user, there is always Mozilla Sunbird. It is a free calendar program that supports iCal subscriptions.
Putting up your prefab Christmas tree? Does it give you a hard time going back into the box? Rather than get a case of the prickly arms trying to squeeze it into the box try a towel or multiply trash bag. Just lay it around the section of the tree you are working on and squeeze it back down into storage shape. It will be much more comfortable and easier to get it into the box for storage.
Those of us who travel for work have already heard about the new guidelines from the TSA regarding carrying Lithium batteries onto planes effective January 1, 2008.
But you should take this into account all the time. My dad twice has had his pocket get really warm all the sudden from spare batteries in his pocket shorting with contact from keys and change. He takes lots of photos so he carries a spare set all the time. He recently gave me a small plastic case made for carrying my spare batteries when I am out taking pictures. He now carries his this way. Unfortunately I cannot find the simple 4 battery case online to link here. BUT I did find a nice 8 battery case meant for photographers to toss in their bag. You can find the case over at B&H Photo for $9.00 USD. If only cyberguys carried like a five pack of the four battery plastic holders. I would buy that in a minute.
I was browsing the Sunday sales flier for a not so best purchase price establishment. $129 for their team of specialists to “protect your new pc.” Gets you Antivirus, antispyware, installation and a so called speed and performance boost. Ok. Let’s start with antivirus. AVG is FREE for home users. Antispyware? How about Microsoft Defender and occasionally run Adaware, again both are FREE. Top that with setting up your system for OpenDNS and you can block phishing, adult content etc. How much? You guessed it, FREE again. Lastly. Speed and performance boost?!? Are they kidding? On a new pc what are they going to do, remove all the crapware that comes on the pc while replacing it with some half junky bloatware AV package they love to sell in their ads? Any IT person with experience knows the two “classic” AV packages nearly rate as viruses themselves in what they do to Windows stability and performance. Do yourself a favor. Apply the $129 toward a nice iPod Nano, subscribe to some podcasts and use these free solutions instead. Don’t forget going into add/remove programs and removing all that crapware is free too with a few mouse clicks.
A lot of folks got GPS units this year. Remember like any computer they require updates. My dad gave us a Garmin 2820 for our wedding gift last year. I had been forgetting to update the firmware and voice module until yesterday. We were over a whole version number behind on the firmware. It can update interface bugs, bluetooth firmware to interoperate with your phone etc. What got me on the path was we gave my inlaws a Garmin 650 for Christmas. They were driving down to a wedding in Florida this past Friday. Somehow a unit that has no bluetooth module came up on the screen to discover a bluetooth device. Talk about a bug. It completely froze his unit and he could not get control. So he called me and I found that the unit has a reset button off to one side he had missed. Pressing that then powering back on fixed the issue.
Map updates always cost money every year. But most firmware updates are free. So be sure to register your unit, install the software on a pc, connect the gps via usb cable and run your updates.
I cannot stress the importance of having an offline backup. An offline backup is a copy of all your valued data to a backup medium such as an external hard drive that is stored on a shelf, in a safe etc. Anywhere but plugged in. Ideally you put it off site as well in your bank’s safe deposit box.
Storage is cheap these days. Just check out all the holiday sales on external usb drives. Get yourself one, copy all your data to it once a month then store it someplace safe where it is not plugged in. I use my safe here at home until I can move it to my safe deposit box away from the house.
I just spent two hours trying to recover data for my wife’s friend. The internal hard drive of the computer claims to be 2TB. A heck of a bargain when it originally was 40GB. The external drive she was using for backup is also toast. It sounds like a bomb waiting to go off. The reason for the loss? A nasty storm and only using a surge strip. Surge strips are a waste of money for anything but the most basic of electronics. Computers, game systems etc. Get yourself a UPS. That might have saved this person from the loss of all their data except what I could piece together from their ipod and a few usb thumb drives.
Still the best solution is an offline copy of all your data where no power hit or fire can affect it.
I love The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. A fun family oriented old style radio program. The Evil Dr. Steve stole one of Dr. Floyd’s time machines. He uses it to go back in time to steal historical artifacts to sell on Ebay. Dr. Floyd and crew must thwart Dr. Steve’s dastardly plans.
They release great holiday songs each year. Now they have posted them for download in one spot. The Dr. Floyd Jukebox. Give them a listen over at http://www.doctorfloyd.com/jukebox/
“I Want Presents” and “One Meatball” are two of my favorites. If you like the entertainment check out the main show page at http://www.doctorfloyd.com/
Scratch is an awesome visual programming environment made by folks at MIT. Drag and drop coding with color and shapes to each object. It is perfect for teaching programming to kids. It even has a social component in that you can click a button to submit your creation back up to the Scratch site to share with everyone. At the time I write this over 49,000 projects have been shared on the Scratch site. It is free for both Windows and Mac OSX.
Here is a snapshot from the Scratch Introduction PDF showing how a small program is built.
Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.
Today I saw an article from Computerworld on a Gmail flaw. Basically if you are logged into your Gmail account, then visit a compromised site it can let malicious folks add filters to your Gmail forwarding email or email with attachments to another place.
The lesson here. LOG OUT! When you are done with Gmail, or your Banking site, or any other site that deals with your private information and money. LOG OUT! Find the link on the page and click it BEFORE you do anything else. Particularly if it’s money related. Paul and Larry talked about the same issue over on Pauldotcom. They don’t visit any other site or check email while doing online banking. Then they log out, close their browser completely and open it again for normal browsing. Why not check email? Think how much email you get that acts like a web page (aka HTML Email). Those can cause exploits to run.
So remember. Safety first. When dealing with your private information and money. Do just that task then log out. To be extra safe close your web browser completely then open it again for less important web work. If you don’t log out your session can still be active until you restart your browser. All it will take is one spam email laden with an exploit for a popular service like Gmail or a major bank. Or even a targeted attack at folks who blog with wordpress. They could take over or spam your blog through your own logged in session. Then lots of people will wish they clicked those two words. Log Out.
