It’s happened to all of us. Your Windows XP slows down, and for the life of you, you can’t figure out what is causing it. There is a way you can figure it out, but you need to be careful playing around in this area of your computer, so please follow along carefully.
While there are many social bookmarking options out there, (del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, amongst many more) most people still like to have their bookmarks saved on their physical computer, myself included. The largest hassle with this is if you have multiple computers, say at home and at work, it can be a nightmare remembering which computer has which bookmarks, and always making sure that that you have your latest favorites on each.
This is where bookmark synchronizers can come in extremely handy. While there are many of them out on the market, my hands-down favorite has to be Foxmarks. As the name would imply, this is a tool built only for the Firefox web browser, but as we have said before, it is the one we highly recommend everyone use.
The system is fairly simple in that you download a small additional piece of software for your browser, known as an “extension”. This, like any other extension, is just a small item that will help your Firefox do more tricks and helpful tasks, thus extending its functionality. To download the extension visit their page on Firefox’s site here.
What happens is once you’ve installed it, you will be asked to set up an account, just like you would any other service. Once done, it will make a copy of your bookmarks and upload them to a central computer, a server, in their system. You then will go to the second computer and download the extension again. The difference here is that instead of creating an account, you will sign in to the one you created on the previous computer. Once you have signed in, you will be asked if you want to upload what is on this computer and replace what is on the server, or if you want to start merging them what is on the server instead. You want to start with what is on the server as this will simply merge your two sets of bookmarks, the other way will overwrite what you already saved.
Once you have gone through this process once, you will never have to do anything again except occasionally wait for them to finish syncing before you shut down Firefox, but it will warn you whenever this happens. From here on out, the extension will automatically detect when you have made changes to your bookmarks, upload them again to the server, and when you go to the other computer, it will automatically download the changes. Your bookmarks will now be constantly merged so they will look exactly the same on every computer you add this to. You can do it for home, work, your laptop, any computer that you own. I do, however, recommend you never do this on a computer that is accessible by users other than yourself as it would give them access to all of your bookmarks as well.
It’s a brilliant little system, and something all of us here at StarterTech use all of the time to sync across all of our systems.
As I write this, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States is $3.69 according to GasBuddy.com. Just running out to the mall now to look for clothes, music or even gifts for the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday.
It’s times like this that online shopping seems like a more and more tempting solution to do your shopping as so many companies offer free or reduced shipping costs. Places like Amazon.com
So if you’re out there shopping online, how can you safeguard yourself to make sure the site you are using is trustworthy? There are a couple ways that you can tell if a site is secure, and while there won’t always be the ultimate answer, they will certainly help you to head in the right direction.
Secure Certificates – These aren’t quite as prevalent as they used to be, as most big name sites don’t feel the need to display them, but you can still find them on lots of sites.
These tell you that the site is using an encrypted Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and that your personal information is being sent via this service. If you click on the button, you will see verification that the certificate does belong to the domain name that you are visiting, and what sort of encryption it is using.
Secure Lock Indicators – For those sites that don’t use the obvious secure certificate badges, there are other symbols you can look for that will let you know if the site is secure. In this image to the right provided by Microsoft, you can see that you can look for the normal “http://” in a web address to change to “https://” which means that the page is secured.
You can also look for the padlock icon to change from an unlocked position to a locked one, and that tells you the information is locked.
Both of these systems will be good indicators, but you also have to decide for yourself if the site looks trustworthy. Does the deal seem to be too good to be true? Do you know the company from elsewhere? Have you read reviews anywhere about them?
There are many people out there that say shopping online is totally unsafe, but in all my years on the Internet, I have never had a problem (-knockonwood-), but I try to practice to safe shopping habits as much as possible. If you just check for the things we listed above, you will be much closer to a safer online shopping experience.
We’ve already discussed How To Pick A Domain Name, but now that you’ve picked one, how do you buy it?
First off, let me just say that it is nowhere as scary as it may sound to most people. It can be a little confusing the first time through, but so long as you read all of the instructions, you should be fine.
First you need to choose a registar to work with. While most webhosts will provide you with registration options, I don’t always like that idea because web hosts have a tendency to go out of business and disappear, and that could leave you with a lot of headaches. So for me, I prefer going with a company that has a heavy focus on domain registration as the main focus of their business.
A lot of people choose to go with GoDaddy due to their pricing, but my personal choice is Network Solutions. They tend to be a bit higher priced, but they have been around for as long as I can remember, always reliable, and are easy to work with. The only drawback to them is that they will try to sell you a ton of over priced add-on services as you go through the registration process, and I say just skip them all. You can get all of these same services for far cheaper at other locations, but they are very reliable for maintaining your domain name.
Now, a lot of people think they can’t have their domain name some place other than where their website is actually hosted, and that’s not true. Each web host is different, so you will need to ask them for help, but you can easily have your site hosted by company x, and your domain with company y, just so long as your point the Domain Name Servers (DNS) to the place where your files are stored, and like I said, your webhost will give you their instructions on how to do this since every one is a bit different.
The other thing you can always do if you don’t have a web site built yet is to just go ahead and buy the domain name so you have it locked in. I currently own around 10 domain names that I plan to work with, but I simply haven’t had the time yet. The rule of thumb though is if you find a name you want to use, you have to buy it as quickly as possible so no one else might swoop in and purchase it after you’ve done all of your work with that name in mind.
So, what else do you want to know about domain names? let us know in the comments!
Not long ago, we discussed Why StaterTech Exists, and this gave me an idea to discuss with you the path one takes to start a website.
Obviously we had identified what we saw as a need, so we had the basic theme of our site in mind. Now came the arduous task of choosing a domain name.
As one can easily imagine, with as long as the Internet has been around, the majority of the really desirable domain names have been taken. There are lots of other extensions out there besides .com (such as .net, .org, and so on), but .com is the first one every one always thinks of when they hear a domain name said. This should always be your first thought, but sometimes it just isn’t possible to find the one you like, and, whatever you do, never use a hyphen in a name, no one ever remembers it.
The way I always start out when trying to pick a domain name is try to think up words that are relevant to what your site will be about, but not always obvious. I realize this may not be the current trend as Web 2.0 companies seem to use any word that can throw together, but it is always my policy to try to use real words. So we went through many, many word arrangements that related to “a technology site for people who need answers” to come up with “people just starting out in technology”… Starters… Tech… StarterTech. Trust me, that took a couple of weeks.
You might think you can pick any old name, but remember that even more so in a traditional brick & mortar type business, your company name is your total identity on the Internet. It is your brand, your street address, it is your everything, so very few decisions are quite as big as picking that domain name.
There are sites out there that can help you with the naming process by letting you enter just a few words and then it suggests something to you, and also tells you if the domains are taken.
BustAName.com – BustAName allows you to enter every day words and it will try combining them for you into different orders to help you find an available name.
Domize.com – Is probably the fastest of the three in that it does checks as you type each letter of your desired domain, and will also suggest alternative spellings while it is working on this.
Squurl.com – Of our three suggestions, this is probably my least favorite as it is very literal with no suggestions given. It is pretty speedy for checking to see what’s taken, but it doesn’t do much beyond that.
Once you’ve found the domain name you want, you need to register the domain name with with a domain registar, and we will cover that in our next post as it has it’s own set of issues you need to consider.
Everyone here at StarterTech is big on the use of the web browser, Firefox, because it is just generally a more pleasant browsing experience than any of its competitors. So we’re always going to be giving you little tips about using our favorite browser in the hopes that you will also give it a try.
Remember, just because Internet Explorer came with your computer, it doesn’t mean that’s the only thing the will work for you!
Sometimes when you are in the middle of a heavy surfing session you just want to make a quick bookmark to a site without going through all the hassle of adding it to a bookmark folder, and then later you have to remember to go back and delete it. It can be a hassle and just plain old annoying!
Luckily the folks at Firefox thought of this and they added the “bookmarks toolbar” a while back to the popular web browser.
This is a toolbar at the top of your browser window, generally located right below the address and tools bar. As you can see in the image to the left here, we’ve highlighted it for you. Typically you will use this bar as a quick way to add a site to your bookmarks, whether it be something you think you will only need one time, or if it is something you just access every day and feel the need to get to quickly on a regular basis. Personally, I tend to keep a mixture of them on the bar, deleting what I don’t need on a regular basis.
So, how do you get the bookmarks on to this toolbar in a “quick” fashion? In this image to the right, we’ve highlighted the pink “M!” for Mashable.com to show you what a “Favicon” is. Anytime you see a little symbol like this in your browser, it is an icon made to represent the site. Now, if you click on the favicon with your left mouse button, and hold it, you can drag the favicon down to the bookmarks toolbar. Unfortunately this action won’t show up in a screen shot, but you should be able to get in 1 or 2 tries. Once you have dragged it down to the bar, you can arrange it anywhere on the bar you like, and if you end up with too many, you’ll end up with a drop down menu you can choose from. it somewhat defeats the purpose of the bar, but it is an option.
To delete anything you’ve added to the bar, simply click on the item with your right mouse button, and from the pop-up menu that appears, click “delete”, and it simply goes away.
I still recommend you use the normal bookmark system for the majority of your sites, but for something you need to just remember quickly, this is by far the easiest way.
For all of the time I have been using computers my son, Sean, has been my guiding light and my technician. He started with computers at a very young age with a Commodore 64 and has graduated to more equipment than I can understand and even writes professionally for technical blogs. We have seen the computer world evolve from dial up modems and clunky consoles to wireless connections and sleek portables like my iPod Touch.
But all of the improvements don’t mean that everything has become easier or necessarily simpler to understand for new or older users. On the contrary some improvements present a whole new set of problems.
On a recent business trip my husband, who occasionally accompanies me, met his frustration wall. He is fairly new to the world of computers and age wise he could even be considered an ‘old dog’. He checks his e-mail and plays games and that is about the extent of his day—anything more takes guidance and patience on the part of my son and myself. We almost always stay with one particular hotel chain and Wi-Fi is almost always their connection of choice. Passwords are necessary with such Wi-Fi service as generally there are clusters of hotel around offering wi-fi service and you need to connect to the right one. Sounds simple-huh? Well it is generally pretty simple but only when the hotel help at 11:00 o’clock at night give you the full password. No matter how many times he tried the ‘pass word’ wouldn’t work. Multiple calls were made to the front desk—is the modem working? Is there a problem? Is the password correct? Finally it hit the boiling point—the desk help was rude, we had to threaten to call their corporate office about the rudeness and my husband ended up yelling at me. I was all of the sudden the reason his limited grasp of the situation made the password not work. Confusion, stress and hurt feelings ensued. I finally convinced the help to call the night manager and guess what? The password wasn’t right.
This is how StarterTech was born. I do not feel it is fair to anyone –no matter what age or involvement in computers to be so frustrated that their head hurts or their blood pressure rises. I know there has to be a better way—this is a place to make that better way happen. If you are frustrated please come here—ask questions, ask for help. Believe me—we understand and if we don’t know the answer we find it for you. Welcome to the family!
Following up on our How To Dust Your Electronics piece, now we’re going to deal with your insides.
No one likes a dusty house, and no matter how much you may dust the outside of your computer tower, there is still dust getting inside of the actual CPU (central processing unit), and you really need to get it out.
On the back (sometimes, but rarely, the side) of every computer there is a cooling fan to keep air circulating through the interior of the system. While you may not be able to see the dust on the outside of the computer, believe us, there have been dust particles sucked into the body of the system. While you may not think this is a problem since you can’t see it, but as it coats the components of the system, this will cause them to overheat, and heat in a computer is never a good thing.
What can you do? Well, there is no way to prevent the dust getting inside the body of the computer, but what you can do every so often (say every few months) is open up the computer and give it a good cleaning. Each system varies in how you open the chassis, but over the past few years they have made this far, far easier then it used to be. Do be careful to always discharge static electricity off of you before touching the inside of your computer by touching something metal before reaching in to the systems.
Once inside the computer your going to want to use a soft brush to get the majority of the dust to fall to the bottom of the system, and then use a Swiffer or some other kind of cloth to pick it up off the bottom. Now, this part can be a bit controversial, but I have never had a problem, I use canned air to blow out the deep nooks and crannies, but I never do it as first thing as that just put too much dust in to the air. Just be careful, and try to use it sparingly.
Essentially treat the insides of your computer like your most delicate china, but do know you will have to do this to keep your computer from overheating and running as smoothly as possible.
In a recent post I spoke of using canned air and Swiffers to rid your keyboard and electronics items of the hard to get to dust that seems to accumulate. In this post I would like to expand on the use of Swiffers in my seemingly never-ending dust battle.
I am sure that there are days when you, like I, sit in front of your computer monitor in complete amazement at the thick coating of dust that just seems to be always there. We are not nuts, we are not caught in a time warp—we are living with a fact of electronic life—electronic anything collects dust a rapid rate. It appears that the very electronic gizmos that run our computers also generate the static that collects the dust in thick sheets. It is a never-ending battle and I am always on the hunt for a simple solution.
It seems that I have finally found my answer in the shape of a little rectangle of ‘fake’ cloth (I really don’t know what it is). Swiffers were designed to allow housewives to dust without having to polishes and oils to make their furniture dust free. The one step process would make it seem as though the work was not hard—one step instead of two.
While I have used the Swiffer product line for just this reason the real workouts come when I need to clean my computer equipment. The dust just clings to all of it—the CPU, the keyboard and most of all the screen of the monitor.
My son has probably told me a million times not to use any solutions on anything to try and grab the dust, and that is especially true for my monitor. I have just about gone nuts trying to use a dry cloth (old diapers don’t even work well) to clean the screen and all it seemed to do was move the dust around. Then came Swiffers! I turn off my monitor and with Swiffer in hand I can wipe the screen and the dust clings to the Swiffer cloth—yes, the dust clings! It is a beautiful sight as dust is a virtual enemy of electronics and has been winning the cleaning war for long enough. This process will also work on your TV screen—just be sure to turn the TV off first or you will cause more of the dreaded static and the dust will win again. And while you are in a cleaning mood don’t forget the mini blinds—Swiffers work great there too.
I just installed a new keyboard on my main computer in my office and so far I am very happy with it. The only problem is that it has made my old mouse pad look very old and worn out and in need of replacement. Replacing a piece of foam should be simple or is it?
Mouse pads are basically just pads for your mouse to travel on while you point and click—simple, huh? NO. Mouse pads are made in varying thicknesses, materials and configurations and finding the right one for you can be a bit daunting. My son loves his mouse arena—I can’t use it. It is a mouse pad with a stand attached to keep the wire out of the way and it also provides a wrist rest all the way around it. This is fine for him because he has the longest fingers in America but my digits are stumpy and I am not comfortable at all using it.
Most mouse pads are flat affairs made of foam in different thicknesses and covered with a surface that is supposed to make dragging that mouse around easier. Wrong. I have had mouse pads that were slick and some that felt like a bumpy road. I couldn’t tell which was which while it was in the package but at work or home the truth was there. I have returned mouse pads because they were simply not usable.. If you get the wrong one don’t be shy about returning it—after all that small piece of equipment is used all the time at your computer and you need to be comfortable. The very theme of this blog is to help avoid frustration and I believe that starts with even the most basic items such as your mouse pad.
Take a few moments when you are shopping at your favorite computer wonderland and look at all of the mouse pad offerings. Don’t hesitate to ask the store help for their input—micro pad (really flat – no foam at all) arenas, pads with wrist rests or upgrade to an optical mouse which does not require a mouse pad at all. The whole point is to be comfortable at your work or play space and for you to be happy with your setup
