All posts by Computers Made Simple

Social Networking, WeChat, WeChat, Weixin, WhatsApp

WeChat vs. WhatsApp

January 20, 2014 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

We’ve been shouting about WeChat for quite a while. In fact, one of our posts on it is the most popular piece we’ve ever done. WhatsApp has been around a bit longer and claims more users than WeChat but the figures don’t include the hundreds of millions of users in China. We think that in a worldwide comparison, WeChat would have more users. As more people leave Facebook, it seems they are turning to other social networking apps to keep in touch with friends and to meet new people. Today we’ll take a look at these two, relatively new instant messaging tools.

Photo of WeChat Instant Messaging — **WeChat is still our favorite IM app.**

Who’s Got Your Number?

Only WhatsApp asks for your mobile number so we’ll start with a warning. Do you really want instant messages from anyone on your phone’s contact list? We don’t. That condition alone would keep most people from choosing WhatsApp over WeChat. The only time WeChat gets your number is when you give it to them in order to link your mobile contacts with it. It is not a mandatory part of the signup process. Ten points for WeChat.

Which App Helps You Find New Friends?

Only WeChat lets you search for new friends and it does it in a very unique and fun way. Shake your device and you instantly find others users who are doing the same thing. Why is this important? None of the other instant messaging apps allow for this kind of reaching out to users who are searching for friends. WhatsApp relies on your current contacts, blindly assuming that those contacts are the only people you are interested in messaging. Clearly, judging from the huge success that WeChat has found with its Shake and People Nearby features, this isn’t the case. The beauty of WeChat’s Shake is that both parties are shaking at the same time, essentially telling each other that they are open to new contacts. There is no misinterpretation and no privacy issues with Shake. You only use it when you have time and the inclination to search the world for potential contacts.

Free? We Love Free!

WeChat wins here because it is free, totally free. WhatsApp is only free for the first year, after which it costs a whopping $0.99. OK, so ninety-nine cents isn’t anywhere near whopping but you get the point. We’re not sure how WeChat makes any income from their app but the fact that it is still free after several years of being available, they must be getting income from somewhere. There is word of Tencent selling accounts to retail and commercial clients, so far we’ve only seen that as an opt-in choice. This means that you can choose to follow a retail chain, let’s say American Apparel, and get their directed messages but that’s it. Nothing that you didn’t already ask for comes your way. More points for WeChat.

Photo of WhatsApp Instant Messaging — **WhatsApp is popular only because people don’t know about WeChat, right?**

Privacy. Who’s On and When Did You Last Show Up?

With WeChat, no one knows if you are online or sleeping or in the middle of a meeting. Your contacts can send messages and you might, or might not, respond immediately. With WhatsApp, users are shown as offline, online or ‘last seen at’. Add this to the problem we mentioned before, that of receiving instant messages from anyone on your contact list who uses WhatsApp, and we think WeChat wins again. WeChat asks you first if it’s OK to receive a message from a stranger.

We think you get the idea by now. WeChat is a free, full-featured instant messaging app that protects your privacy but let’s you have fun, too. As far as features go, WeChat wins hands down. You can send any kind of message you can think of: video, text, voice, photos, links to web pages…instantly. WhatsApp has recently added Group Chat and some other features but WeChat has had these for a lot longer. Which apps do you use? Let us know what you think is best and why. Make a comment below or, better yet, Like us on our Facebook page and comment there. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook We’ll be glad you did.

Thanks for reading!

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Snapchat, Social Networking

Snapchat Explained

January 17, 2014 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

Snapchat is one of those quirky but fun mobile apps that grow to be very popular then disappear completely. Right now Snapchat seems to be booming but we expect it to vanish sometime in the middle future. That’s a bit sad really, at least for its creators. Why? Because they turned down an offer of three billion dollars for their company. The offer was from Facebook, believe it or not. We’re not sure what Facebook was going to do with the app but they didn’t get it. Here’s what Snapchat is all about.

Basically Snapchat represents the fleeting moments of time that we use to wish we could share with others. Whether by photos or short snippets of video, Snapchat allows you to capture a moment in your timeline of life, share it, then watch it disappear forever. (Sort of. More on that later.) Users have a list of friends and send these snippets out to them, singly or in groups.

Snapchat Logo

Since there is no way to find other users, meeting strangers is difficult. Because of this, users can feel reasonably safe when they share a moment with a friend because the person they share it with is usually just that, a real friend. They may also feel safe because the things they share disappear as soon as the recipient sees them. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

In reality, thanks to the screen capture feature built into virtually every mobile device, a savvy user can receive a Snapchat image and save it to their phone. The snaps are also stored on Snapchat’s servers for a certain length of time, perhaps forever, just in case the justice system needs them for reference. If you do happen to give Snapchat a try, keep in mind these two ways that a photo just might come back to haunt you later.

We came to Snapchat by chance, actually. In doing research for this post, we downloaded the app and tried to sign up for an account. Strangely enough, it seems we already had an account, or at least Snapchat thought we did. Obviously someone had used one of our email addresses to sign up for Snapchat and simply left it that way. We were able to change the password, essentially hijacking the account, and now receive Snaps meant for the other person. Honestly, we don’t think this is a bad thing, specially since we can’t contact the real owner of the account. We did change the profile name but we still get snaps every day from many ‘friends’ who aren’t really friends.

If you’re really stuck and can’t find other users, there is a Facebook group called ‘Snapchat Usernames’. You can post yours or simply look for interesting people to add to your account. Be careful though. There is no age limit on Snapchat and, from what we’ve seen and read anyway, there are many times more guys looking for girls than vice versa. That shouldn’t be news to anyone, right?

If you’ve had some interesting Snapchat experiences, we’d love to hear about them. Our opinion after using Snapchat for a month or so it this: the creators should have taken the money and run. We may be wrong but we don’t think Snapchat is going anywhere. WeChat is still our favorite way to meet new people.

Thanks for reading! Questions, comments and suggestions are all welcome. Comment below or Like us on our Facebook page and comment there. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

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Email, Free Event Invitations, Hotmail

Create Cool Invitations in Outlook (Hotmail)

January 16, 2014 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

We had an opportunity recently to stage an event where everyone was invited by email. While there are a few online sites that will create a nice looking invitation for you, and yes they are free, these places require access to your contact list. We we troubled by this right away. Once a site has access to your contacts, that leaves the door wide open for identity theft, no matter how secure the site tells you they are. We decided on an alternative.

We use Outlook for some of our email accounts. Outlook is actually two things so let’s sort it all out. Remember Hotmail? Well Outlook is the new Hotmail. Instead of hotmail.com, which still works by the way, MSN wants you to use outlook.com to access your online email. That’s one Outlook. The other Outlook is the email app/software that is part of Windows. If you use your ISP’s email, which we don’t recommend, Outlook is what you need to access it. There are other email clients but most people use Outlook. It’s a standalone app, not linked to a browser. Got it so far?

TIP: Another reason for using Outlook for the invitations is this: They won’t end up in a junk mail folder. Your contacts know you and get your emails in their inbox. If you use an online event invitation service, more than likely the email won’t even be read by the recipient, even if it says that it’s from you. Their email provider may sense that something is amiss and place the email in their junk folder.

Today we are talking about the website email, outlook.com. If you use outlook, hotmail, or ‘live’ for sending and receiving emails to your contacts, you can also create decent looking invitations using it alone, no need to use a website where you have to sell your soul to invite people to a party. Here’s how you do it:

1. Once you’re in your email account, click New to create an email. You can either add contacts now or after you’ve got the invitation designed.

2. Up at the top, left of center, look for the word Options. Click on it and make sure that Rich Text is checked:

Photo of Outlook Invitations 1 — **Rich text makes it all happen.**

3. Once rich text is set up, look to the right and use the icons to choose your font size, typeface, type colour, etc. Here are the icons you can use:

Photo of Outlook Invitations 2 — **Bold, Italics, etc. They’re all here.**

TIP: Set up everything and just start typing. If you look for your cursor, it won’t be there and if you click inside the email, you will lose all of your settings. Remember that.

4. Once you have the words, highlighting and colors ready, you can add photos to your invitation. Here’s how:

Photo of Outlook Invitations 3 — ***‘Picture inline’ will add a photo right inside your email invitation.***

5. Here’s what our lame but very quick attempt looks like:

Photo of Outlook Invitations 4 — **For something that is free and private and safe from identity theft, it’s not too bad, is it?**

6. Once you get it all set up, make sure you save it as a draft so you don’t lose it. Then add your recipients, including yourself, and send it out. Outlook/hotmail usually has restrictions on the number of emails you can send at once so you may have to do this all in more than one step .

TIP: Why send it to yourself? Any important email should also include a copy sent to you, either in the email address slot or as a Cc/Bcc (carbon copy or blind carbon copy). That way you know if the email was sent properly. (Bcc means that no one but you can see that you sent the email to yourself or to anyone you Bcc it to.)

You’re done! We’re quite sure that someone with design talents can come up with something better than our effort.

Thanks for reading! Questions, comments and suggestions are all welcome. Comment below or Like us on our Facebook page and comment there. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

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WeChat, Weixin

WeChat – Recover your account

January 15, 2014 Computers Made Simple 457 Comments

Our posts on WeChat seem to be very popular. If you haven’t heard of WeChat (Weixin in China), it’s a relatively new and incredibly popular social app for most mobile devices, one that lets you meet people from all over the world. It’s fast, fun and free but sometimes, for various reasons, some users get banned by WeChat. They may use the Shake feature too many times or post a rude photo, something like that, and someone has reported them. Here’s how to get your account back.

Head over to this url: WeChat Account Recovery

This is what you’ll see:

Photo of WeChat Account Recovery Menu — **Fill in the details and wait.**

Complete this form, including the phone number where you want the code sent, and click ‘Send Verification Code’. With any luck, you’ll soon be back cruising the world looking for friends.

TIP: Don’t use WeChat as your only tool to meet people. We’re baffled by the way some users use WeChat for hours on end as if it is their only link to the outside world. Basically, get a life!

Thanks for reading!

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Router, Windows Media Center and Xbox 360

Routers 101 – Connect your PC to your Xbox 360

January 14, 2014 Computers Made Simple 2 Comments

This is the last in our series on routers. Today we’ll connect an Xbox 360 to one of our PCs. We’ll use Windows Media Center to do that. NOTE: You can only do this for free if you are using Windows 7. Microsoft in all of its brilliance has made WMC an extra-cost item for Windows 8. If you are using Windows 8, stay tuned for our XBMC solution for it. Today we are talking only about Windows 7 and Vista only.

TIP: Why are we stuck on the Xbox? We aren’t, not at all. For most of our gaming and entertainment we use the Sony PS3/PS4. Microsoft has made everything extra-cost, including Netflix, while Sony has left its PS line of consoles wide open as far as Netflix and other apps go. The big difference is live TV. There are ways to steam live TV to a PS3 but it’s much easier with the Xbox using Media Center. You still have to jump through some hoops but, in general, it’s easier to set things up on an Xbox 360. We will not be purchasing an Xbox Live but we assume that everything will be pretty much the same on it, except for the lack of a free version of Media Center with Windows 8.

Setting up your network: We know. You’re saying, “Didn’t we just do that?” Yes you did but you have to make sure of one more thing. Even though all of your computers and game consoles are on the same home network, you must make sure that your Xbox and the PC you are going to use to stream HDTV/video from are connected to the same ‘node’. We mentioned this before but this is vital to the success of your setup. Connect your streaming PC directly to the same router that your Xbox is using for its wireless signal.

1. Make sure that you have turned on Sharing in the Media Center on your PC. Decide what folders you want to share and what devices, too. We use a Hauppauge TV tuner which we had to set up in Media Center. It found the channels by itself and even gave us up-to-date programming information. Once your HDTV is working on Media Center, it’s time to move to your Xbox.

2. Fire up your Xbox 360, log on to the Microsoft Network and scroll across the screen to My Video Apps. If you’ve never used WMC (Windows Media Center) before, you may have to download the app first. Click on it and the app will describe itself then give you a key, something like this:

Photo of Xbox Key — **Write down the key and head back to your PC.**

3. Go back to your PC, open Media Center and go down toTasks. Scroll across to ‘add extender’ and click on that. Like this:

Photo of Add Extender Menu1 — **Tasks then over to ‘add extender’.**

4. Once you click those words, WMC asks for the Xbox key that you wrote down previously. Enter that into the spaces and things should begin to happen. Once WMC finds your Xbox, it will start to communicate with it and set up all of the things it needs to work. Ours took a couple of tries but finally worked.

5. Head back to your Xbox and open WMC if it isn’t already open. Everything that you shared on your PC should be available on your Xobx. Remember that you can’t be watching HDTV in two places. If you are using your tuner on your PC, you can’t use it on your Xbox. Click on Live TV and wait until your PC starts streaming your tuner output to the Xbox. Like magic, a crystal clear image should appear on your screen. Move your controller’s center button up or down to change channels.

Yes, there are some steps that you’ll have to figure out on your own but they are very intuitive, nothing difficult at all. Once you’ve got your new router setup, it’s a snap, more or less, to get your PC and your Xbox to see each other. When it starts to work, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this all before. We use the system for sports broadcasts. Instead of simply sitting around watching a game, we can enjoy the home gym we’ve added to the ‘man cave’ at the same time.

Thanks for reading! If any part of this seems obscure or difficult, let us know. Comment below or, better yet, Like us on Facebook and get all of our updates and tips. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

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a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun