All posts by Computers Made Simple

Internet, Keep Safe Online, Safe Surfing, Security

Stay Safe Online – Avoid being bullied/stalked/blackmailed

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Here in Canada, we’ve all been shocked by the story of a 15 year old girl who committed suicide after being bullied at her high school as well as being blackmailed online. When this girl was 12, she made a mistake while using her webcam with a man and paid for that mistake for three years, until her suicide in October of 2012. We will not publish this girl’s name but you can search for her incredibly touching video on Youtube. Here are some tips to stay safe online, most of these apply to girls but parents should take note of these tips, as well.

1. As we told you in our Facebook posts, anything you do online can be traced back to you. If you make a mistake, there is no delete button that will make it all better. Before you do something that you wouldn’t normally do, something that might go against your parent’s normal sense of decency, think about it before you do it. Is it worth ruining your immediate future for a silly, seemingly harmless moment online?

2. Recording your webcam sessions is much easier than you might think. Read this post and see if you don’t agree: Video Screen Capture Using CamStudio  CamStudio is free and very easy to use. It records both video and sound. When someone is recording your webcam feed, there is no way that you will know it. Remember that. There is no notification that you are being recorded.

Photo of CamStudio menu
It’s very easy to capture video and sound using CamStudio.

 

3. If you are chatting with someone, how do you know that this person is who they say they are? If you are webcamming with someone, how do you know that the person on the screen is real? Well, as far as chatting goes, have them send you an email. Using our guide, here is the link: Email Detective: Is your email buddy really who they say there are?  , you can figure out if they are where they pretend to be.

If you are using your webcam, and you should only use your webcam if the other person also uses theirs, have them wave at you or, better yet, have them hold up a piece of paper with your name on it. Many unscrupulous people play a recorded video to make you think that the person you see is real. They will often stop the video suddenly or say that their camera is broken. Make a rule for yourself: No webcam without a real person on the other screen.

4. Remember that screen captures work two ways. While someone can record you, you can also record them. This way, should something bad happen, then you have proof of who you were chatting with.

5. If you are on a chat site and you’re feeling a little frisky, don’t show your face. Don’t have anything in the background that people can trace back to you. Wear a mask, if you get carried away. Don’t listen to the people who ask you to show your face, show your this or that. They are the ones who are recording you, most likely. Whole websites have been built up around these videos that they record so don’t play into their game. Common sense will keep you out of trouble.

6. If you use sites such as Stickam or Chatroulette, don’t get tricked into showing anything that you wouldn’t show on the street or while your parents are watching. These sites can be fun but don’t do anything on them that you wouldn’t do normally. Just be yourself and have clean, safe fun.

7. Lastly, don’t get drunk and do crazy things online. Not only will you regret it the next day, one of those things may very well come back to haunt you. One silly flash online could change your whole life. Have fun with your friends, stay away from strangers until you get to know them, and keep your wits about you. If someone seems too forceful or belligerent, block them.

Computers Made Simple advocates safe and fun computing. All of the chat tools are both educational and entertaining but they can be dangerous, too. Young people think they know everything. We know that we felt the same way back in our teens. If you’re concerned about what your children do online, talk to them about it. Let them know that you know about sites like Stickam, Chatroullette and others. If you don’t know, check them out. You’d be very surprised about what goes on there. You don’t have to sneak around behind your kid’s backs, just talk to them openly. Sugar gets better results than salt, right?

Thanks for reading! Comments, questions, opinions are welcome.

Windows, Windows Secrets

Windows 8 – The latest but maybe not the greatest

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Windows 8 is due out in a few days. We’ve tried the evaluation version a couple of times but didn’t get very far with it. After loading it twice, we decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to get to know it. The change was a bit too much from the Windows 7 that we’ve been using. Sure, we love to try new things but, because this was an evaluation copy, we didn’t feel comfortable changing everything around just to see what it felt like.

If we buy a new laptop or desktop, we might be forced into learning the new OS from Microsoft but, for now anyway, Windows 7 works just fine. Did you know that many businesses are still using Windows XP? XP was the last version of Windows that allowed you to run it on several different systems. For that reason alone, we’ve stopped buying anything from Microsoft.

If a Microsoft OS comes with a computer, we’re fine with that but we won’t go out and purchase anything that Microsoft puts out otherwise. Why? Because the pricing of any Windows version is far beyond what we consider a reasonable expense. Apple, for instance, offers their OS X software at surprisingly low prices, even offering a family package that allows the purchaser to load the OS on several different computers.

Yes, Apple sells hardware and their prices for that hardware are atrocious but their lovely operating system doesn’t break the bank. Windows, on the other hand, has to get all of their money from their various bits of software, mainly Windows. Additionally, Microsoft is heavily into Digital Rights Management, something that we feel goes against creativity and the development of new products and ideas. Part of the reason that the U.S. is heavily into a recession now can be traced back to initiative-killing DRM.

Photo of Windows 8
Lots of versions, no native DVD support…many reasons to ignore Windows 8

 

Something that we’ve played with before, and loved, is Linux. We’re in the process of moving towards a version of Ubuntu on one of our laptops, just to see what’s changed since the last type we tried. We’ll post our success or failures as we proceed. For now, tell us what you think of  Windows 8. Have you used it? Did you like it? Let us know what your experience has been like.

Thanks for reading!

Backing up your computer, Basics, Computers

The Click of Death – Another reason to back up your computer

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We turn our computers off at night. To us, there is no sense to keep them running, even though some people leave theirs running 24/7. When we started our main server this morning, we heard a click. Now, computers make all kinds of little noises but a click is one of the scary, alarm signals that you really don’t want to hear. Usually a click means that a hard drive is on the way out. It could be a sticky platter (the things that store the information) or it could be one of the heads (the things that suck up and put down the data). Whatever it is, it spurred us on to back up our drives.

We have a new 3 T (terabyte) external drive from Western Digital. Here’s what it looks like:

Photo of WD External Drive
3 T of space.

 

This is what we’re using for the backup. Once the data is safe, we’ll probably burn it all to BluRay data discs, just to make sure it is even more secure from hardware failure.

 

We’ve discussed backing up your computer before. Here the some of the posts: Back up 1, back up 2 . There are others, too, so check around the site.

Backing up your computer isn’t necessarily to save things that you have downloaded. Those items are going to be around for a while, they won’t disappear tomorrow. The thing you don’t want to lose are things that are irreplaceable. Those would include family photos, family videos, things you’ve written, etc.

The click of death that we heard may be nothing but we’re not taking the chance. You shouldn’t either. Back up your computer now. Schedule weekly backups or use the software that is included with the My Book Essential drive. The drives are not expensive, ours was under $130 CDN. This isn’t much when you consider how bad you’d feel if you lost all of the memories on your computer.

Thanks for reading!

Download MP3s, File Sharing Sites, Free Software, OffLiberty, Sound Recording

Easy MP3 Download – using Offliberty

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We’ve told you how to download music before using Freecorder. This is the link to that post:  Freecorder downloads videos and music.   In that process, you record the music from the video in real time. In other words, if the song/video is five minutes long, it takes you five minutes to download it. Here’s another way to do the same thing but in much less time:

1. Go to Youtube (or any other video site that has music videos…except Myspace), and find the video(s) that you want to save to your computer.

2. You don’t have to click on the video, just find a list of songs like this:

Photo of Youtube menu
Find the video you want and right click it then choose ‘Copy link address’.

 

3. The link to the video is in the blue area, the hot link. All you have to do is right click, choose Copy link address. Do that then go to the next step.

 

4. Head over to http://offliberty.com/  . Off Liberty is a website that automatically saves any url that you give it. It will save a webpage or a video or music from that video. Here’s what you see:

Photo of OffLiberty,com
Click in the space, right click and choose paste. Then hit Off.

 

5. The link is pasted into the slot,  then you hit the word OFF. OffLiberty goes to the site and saves the video and audio that it finds. Let it do it’s work and this is what you see:

Photo of OffLiberty menu
The yellow is the MP3. Follow the instructions.

 

6. The instructions are quite simple. Again, we are right clicking on something and choosing from a menu. Right click the yellow box and choose ‘Save link as…’. Here is the menu:

Photo of OffLiberty Menu
Choose ‘Save link as…’

 

7. What you are doing here is saving the MP3 file, complete with whatever title the video had on Youtube. The file will be saved to your normal download folder. Just click OK and you’ve got the file on your computer. You can always rename it later, don’t worry about. You can change it something that you will remember, as opposed to the title on Youtube.

 

There you go! Fast, relatively easy and totally safe. You’ll never have to use a torrent or Peer to Peer site again. Let us know how this works for you, OK?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Facebook, Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups – Not as scary as you might think

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Facebook groups can be a lot of fun, just remember that you can’t opt-out of being added to one. As we said in our last post, any of your friends can add you to a group…without your consent. As soon as you are notified of this, you can leave the group easily. Aside from that little bit of weirdness, Facebook groups serve a real purpose. Here’s everything you need to know about setting one up:

1. On the left side of your normal Facebook page, as opposed to your own timeline, look down near the bottom for the words ‘Create Group’.

Photo of Groups 1
Click on Create Group.

 

2. This menu opens up once you click on Create Group:

Photo of Groups 2
Here is where you decide what kind of group you want to create.

Read this menu carefully. Make sure you know what you’re getting into if the group is anything other than mainstream. The tip below has some points. Once you decide, make up a group name and then add at least one member. Facebook won’t let you create a group unless there is one member besides yourself. Then click Create.

TIP: As far as we can tell, even if the group is ‘Open’, there are no notifications of its presence on any non-group member’s timeline, even when a member makes a post. There is nothing to say that a person is in any group whatsoever. Right now, we don’t see the difference between the Open or Closed or Secret setting. We stand to be corrected but we think the setting has more to do with who can be added to a group, more than what notifications your friends see.

 

3. When you are adding members, simply start to type the friend’s first or last name and the drop-down menu will give you various names to choose from:

Photo of Groups 3
We typed z and still got some names to choose from.

 

4. Choose an icon for your group. This is probably handy when you’re a member of many different groups.

Photo of Groups icons
Choose an icon next.

 

5. Now you get a chance to edit your group’s settings and choose an email address for the group.

Photo of Groups 5
After the group is created, head over to ‘Edit Group Settings’

 

6. Here is where you can decide how members are added, set up a group Facebook email address and adjust posting permissions.

Photo of Groups 6
Check this menu out carefully.

 

7. Why not set up a group email address? Members can then email in messages or posts from anywhere.

Photo of Groups 7
Don’t leave spaces in the name and keep it short for convenience.

 

8. Now for the most important point. If  someone adds you to a group but you don’t want to be in the group, go to the group page and click on the word Notifications. This menu will pop down:

Photo of Groups 8
This is how you leave the group.

 

As time goes on, we’ll see if our theory on group privacy is different from what we’ve written here. As far as we know, these settings have been in place since 2010. If you can add some information about who sees what in the news feed re: groups that your friends are in, please comment below. Right now, we can’t see how anyone else knows what groups their friends are in, even if they are Open groups. If we’re wrong, let us know.

As always, thanks for reading!