WeChat is our most popular topic by far. It always amazes us that people don’t protect their accounts. As the saying goes ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. Protect your account BEFORE you lose it…and all of your contacts.
It’s not rocket science, trust us. It’s all in the settings. The point of this protection is to prevent someone else from stealing your password and locking you out of your own account. If your account is accessed from a new device, you have to verify that device with WeChat.
You can use WeChat on any mobile device, no matter if it’s Android or iOs. We’re talking tablets, iPods, iPads, etc. Since WeChat is an app that you add to these devices, it can’t be used on a PC, neither laptop or desktop. Yes, you can chat on a computer but only with Web WeChat.
Even though you can use WeChat on any mobile device, you still need a smartphone to enable the SMS verification. WeChat limits this verification to one profile per phone number. If you change your phone, make sure you unlink your old number from WeChat. Here’s a post on exactly how to do that:
We’re going to run through all of this in a new series starting next week. Stay tuned.
Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook . Thanks for reading!
Last time, we learned how to get our videos ready for iTunes. Remember that iTunes can’t play every kind of video. We used Handbrake to transcode (change) the videos from one file type to the one that iTunes can play. Today, we’ll do the actual streaming.
Make sure you’ve installed iTunes, that your Apple TV is on and connected to your HDTV via the HDMI cable and you have your video(s) in a folder somewhere that you can find on your PC. Here we go:
1. Open iTunes. Look for the word File on the top left. Click it then look for Home Sharing. Click it and choose Turn On Home Sharing.
Follow the path, it’s easy.
2. On the next screen that comes up, fill in your iTunes account details, just email and password. If you don’t have an iTunes account, you can register from this screen. Use a very strong password. iTunes accounts are often hacked.
If you don’t have an Apple account, get one here. If you do, fill in the details.
3. Once you’ve filled in your account details, click on Done.
You can share the same account on five computers.
4. Next, we have to tell iTunes what we want to share with other people on our network. That’s why we suggested putting all of the videos that you want to share in one folder. If the files are all over your computer, this process doesn’t work as well. Make a new folder on your desktop, put the videos that you want to share into that folder and then tell iTunes that this is the folder you want to share. Click File then Add Folder to Library.
You can share a file or folder but sharing a folder is much easier and faster.
5. Navigate to the folder, select it and choose Select Folder.
Select the folder on this screen. If it’s on your Desktop, it’s easier to find, right?
6. You don’t have to do anything now except wait. iTunes will scan the folder and process the various files that are in it. Just watch and wait, don’t do anything until iTunes is finished.
One file doesn’t take long to process. Lots of videos might take a lot longer.
6. You’re finished with the computer part now. Head over to your Apple TV, turn it on and get its menu up on your screen. No screenshots here so follow this carefully. Scroll over to the right and click on Settings. Scroll down to Computers and go through the Turn on Home Sharing routine using the same iTunes account and password that you used on your computer.
Your Apple TV screen will look something like this.
7. Back out of that screen and scroll over to the Computers icon, just to the left of Settings. If everything is working correctly, once that icon is highlighted, the various things that are in your shared folder will show up on the very top of the screen.
8. Click on Computers and then down to Home Videos. All of the videos that you have run through Handbrake should be there. Click on one and it should play. You’re done!
Troubleshooting: Sometimes Apple TV and iTunes can be finicky. When something goes wrong and you can’t see the videos that you’ve shared, turn off home sharing on your PC and then turn it on again. If that doesn’t work, turn off home sharing on your Apple TV and turn it on again. One or the other always works for us.
Tip: iTunes does not automatically share videos in your shared folder. Every time you add a new video, you have to tell iTunes that you want to share the folder…again. That’s how it works for us anyway. Your mileage may vary. If you cant find your recently added videos, tell iTunes that you want to share that folder again.
Wow, you’re done well! Pat yourself on the back and watch a video on your fancy HDTV. Enjoy!
If you have problems, feel free to ask us for help. Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook .
This is the first part of our series that will show you how to stream a video from your computer to your HDTV, using Apple TV. We’re Windows users here at Computers Made Simple but we have found Apple’s TV streaming device, Apple TV, to be one of the top devices out there, designed solely to put out content to HDTVs.
Here’s the Apple TV device. Small, cool looking and very easy to use. About $100.00
You’ll need some prerequisites for this how-to. Here’s the list:
1. A high-def TV (HDTV) with an open HDMI port.
2. A home network, could be wired or wireless. We prefer wired but a router that uses the N protocol will work just fine. The old G protocol won’t cut it here. G is fine for email and surfing but streaming video requires more bandwidth, something only N can provide.
3. To stream videos using Apple TV, you need a computer, could be a desktop or a laptop. These computers could be PCs or Macs but we’re only talking about PCs here.
4. Handbrake, the free video transcoder. Handbrake is open source. This means that it’s both free, reliable and upgraded on a regular basis. You can get it here: Handbrake . Download it and install it. Make sure you allow it to put a shortcut on your desktop. That way you won’t spend time looking for it in your Start or Program menu.
5. A video. Any video will do here, could be from your digital camera or camcorder, a torrent you’ve downloaded or a video that you’ve saved from Youtube.
6. iTunes. You’ll need an account with iTunes as well as the software itself. If you have any Apple device, whether it’s an iPod or iPhone or one of their music players, you will almost certainly have iTunes already.
TIP: While the Apple TV device is easy to use, it won’t play every type of file. You don’t have to understand file formats or types to stream videos but some basics would help. Here’s an example. Let’s say that most of the world can understand English. In order for an English speaking person to understand Arabic, for instance, the Arabic would have to be translated into another fileformat , in this case English. That’s what Handbrake does. It takes virtually any video file and translates it into something your Apple TV can understand.
The next little bit of this how-to will save you time and frustration once you get your Apple TV up and running. Since the device will only play certain types of files ( .m4v, .mp4 and .mov formats), you’ll want to make sure your video is one of those kinds. Here’s how to ensure that your video file can be streamed. Here we go:
1. Open Handbrake. On the clapper icon on the upper left, choose Add File:
The clapper icon is what you look for, then Open File.
2. We downloaded one season of the Australian TV show, Rake. The videos are in our Downloads folder in Documents. Your location may be different. Here’s the path to our videos:
Click the one you want and then choose Open.
3. You’ll notice that the files already are identified as ‘MP4’. While they may be MP4s, Apple TV won’t play them. Why? Because there are many different kinds of MP4 files, just about as many as there are accents in the English language. Remember our previous example? Scottish people speak English, right? People in the American South speak English. Do the two versions of English sound the same? No, they don’t. Yes, they are all English and yes, the files are MP4s but Apple TV can’t read that particular type of MP4. That’s where Handbrake comes in.
4. Once you have clicked Open in the previous menu, you’re taken back to Handbrake’s main screen. What you’re looking for here are the words AppleTV3 on the middle right side of that screen.
5. We have an AppleTV 3, you might have something else. Choose whatever it is you have and Handbrake will know what file to type to ranscode your video into in the next step.
The choices are on the right, so find out what device you have and press its name on this screen.
6. Press Start and Handbrake will start the transcoding process. One of our files took eleven minutes so, depending on the speed of your computer, you’ll have to wait for a while.
OK, now you’ve got one file ready to stream. That’s all for today. Next time we’ll show you how to get the file from your computer to your HDTV. It’s easy and works like magic.
If you have problems, feel free to ask us for help. Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook .
A GIF, pronounced jif with a soft g, is a moving picture. It’s not a video, just a series of moving pictures, even if the source is a short video. That’s why a GIF can look fairly jerky. This jerkiness seems to add an entertainment factor, since a GIF is usually supposed to be funny. GIFS almost always record silly things that people or animals have done. There is no sound involved so the file size is usually quite small, depending on the size of the images.
There are several ways you can make your own GIF but we’ve found an easy and simple way to do it with the help of a website. Ezgif.com will take your short video or series of photos and create a GIF that you can then download to your computer. Here’s an example of a GIF that we made from a video that we recorded last weekend:
This might take a moment to load but it’s funny.
We’re not sure what’s happening here but it’s quite hilarious. Here’s how we did it, step by step. You don’t have to go through all of the hoops that we did but the principles are the same.
1. Your video can be from your mobile device, your PVR (as it was for us), your digital camera, anything that creates a small movie. You can also make a GIF out of a series of photos. In order to do that, your photos have to be taken over a short period of time and show the same object(s) in motion. The objects could move or you could take several photos as you move around the item.
2. Find the video or series of photos on your computer. It’s easier to copy and paste them onto your desktop. This makes uploading them to the site much easier.
3. Head over to Ezgif.com . At the top of the page you’ll see the following:
GIF Maker or Video to GIF is what you’re looking for.
4. If you have a series of photos, click on GIF Maker. For a short video, click on Video to GIF.
5. The tools are all on site. We can’t explain everything that’s there but the principle is basically the same as the tools in Instagram, for instance. Upload your material, change it and arrange it so it looks good to you, then download the finished GIF to your computer.
6. Once it’s on your computer you can share it on various social media sites or email it to friends. About the only thing you can’t do is post it on Facebook. Renren, the Chinese equivalent (more or less) to Facebook is loaded with GIFs. We’re not sure exactly why Facebook doesn’t allow GIFs but they don’t.
7. Our process was substantially more complicated . We’ll run through what we did, just in case you find yourself in the same situation.
We like NASCAR and record every race we can, just in case there’s an interesting bit of action that we’d like to preserve or archive. We saw the stumbling man and thought it would make a perfect GIF.
Our PVR records in an unusual HD file format. We wanted to cut the funny bit out of a much longer video file, something we usually do in Windows Movie Maker, but the original file wouldn’t work in WMM. Using Handbrake, we changed the .ts file into an MP4, a file that would work with WMM. That process took a while since the .ts file was six gigabytes in size. Once we had the MP4 file, we opened it with WMM and cut out the short section we needed and saved it.
Next we uploaded the small MP4 file to Ezgif.com and took some time sorting out all of the various settings. You can change the size, the number of frames as well as adding a filter, very much like Instagram. Once we had our GIF the way we wanted it, we downloaded it to our computer.
We’ve given you the basics of GIF creation. If you have problems, feel free to ask us for help. Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook .
Everyone gets junk mail, stuff from spammers who hope you’ll click on one of the links in the body of the email. As you know, clicking links in mail from someone you don’t know (or even from someone you do know!) can be dangerous. Today we got an email from wikimedia.org for a certain kind of product that shall remain nameless. Wikimedia? Sending out spam? Nope. Let’s see who it was really from.
1. Hovering over the email in our junk folder brought up this supposed ‘source’:
Hovering on the email in the folder shows this.
2. Here is what the email looks like when you right click it in your inbox and choose ‘view message source’.
Gobbeldy gook, right? Nope. There is some vital information here.
3. Lots of numbers and letters but there’s one set of numbers that lead to the source of the email, in spite of what the address is on the email itself. This is who the supposed source of the email is:
This isn’t who sent the email.
4. This is the IP address of the real sender:
This is the real origin of the email.
5. Here is that IP address copied and pasted into the search line at Who.is :
Who.is can track down an IP address or a domain.
6. The search came up with this information for the REAL sender:
At last, the real origin of the email. Taiwan! Who knew? Who.is did.
7. By the way, here is the real IP address of Wikimedia.org:
Search for an IP source or search for the IP address of a domain.
This might seem like an exercise in futility but these few steps will help you track down the source of many things, not just spam email. Knowing how to check an IP address is important, at least we think it is, plus discovering that Wikipedia isn’t sending out spam is reassuring, isn’t it?
Once you know the tricks, you can feel safer and more confident online. These tricks can be used to track down spam but they can also sort out suspicious emails from strangers who pretend to be from another country. Is your email buddy really from England or Canada or are they actually in China or Africa? Now you’ll know exactly where they’re from.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading! Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook .
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
