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 offer Amazon Prime shipping which gives you unlimited two-day shipping for $79 a year, and with their ever expanding grocery selection, it becomes quite a tempting offer.

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.

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.

We’ve already discussed Real Simple Syndication (RSS) once before in Web 101 What Is RSS?, but since this day is officially RSS Awareness Day, it seemed a good time to touch on it again.

Essentially RSS just speeds up your ability to read all of your favorite blogs in one spot, eliminating the need for you to go out to them on a daily basis to see if they have updated. Think of it as a newspaper for your blog reading in that all of the news is put in one place for you to be able to consume it instead of going to each individual news source. (Thanks to Adam Ostrow of Mashable for the analogy) You would never want to have to go the AP newswire, Reuters, United Press or any of the others to see all of the new information they have to share, so the newspaper puts it all into one handy place for you, saving that hassle for you, and RSS does the same.

Here is a short video explaining it in more detail that puts it about as easily as possible.

The reader all of us here at StarterTech use is the Google Reader as we already have Google accounts, so it just makes it that much easier for us to do everything in just one spot.

Why not give it a try? As the video says, it CAN be addictive though, so make sure you don’t over subscribe and find yourself reading so many it ends up taking more time than the old-fashioned way! Why not give our feed a shot so you can keep up with all of our latest tips, and give RSS a test run?

A big thank you to Daniel of DailyBlogTips.com for this wonderful idea of spreading the love for RSS around.

Computer cables can be highly confusing, but they don’t have to be.  If computer makers have done any thing correctly, they’ve made sure the different styles of cables have very different connectors so you can quickly identify them just by shape.

Take this cable to the right.  It does look a bit like a telephone line, but if you saw it in comparison, you would see it is quite obviously broader.  We’re starting a series about cables with this one because it is probably one of the most misunderstood cables.

This one goes by many names, but the three most common are “RJ45″, “Cat 5″ and the most popular, “Ethernet”.  If you aren’t connecting your computer via Wi-Fi network, than more than likely you are using one of these cables.

Ethernet cables are almost always “Category 5″ (hence the “Cat 5″ name), meaning they run at 100 MHz and are used for 100 Mbit networks.  In plain English, this means they are perfect for transmission of data over a home network, and most other networks to be quite honest.  You will usually find  the connection on the back of desktop computers, and on laptops they usually are on the sides, but sometimes can be found on the back.

As with most cabling, the price will vary depending on the length you purchase, but do keep in mind that it is not recommended to go past 100 feet; the longer the cable, the weaker the signal, and the more it degrades.  For people who travel extensively, I always recommend carrying a 25 foot cable in their computer bag as that should allow you to wander around a hotel room pretty well.  While you’re at home, or in your office, I always suggest 14 feet or shorter just for the strongest signal, though I do run some 50 foot ones so I can run cables through different floors of the house and have seen no discernible loss of quality.

A lot of people ask me why you should use a cable over Wi-Fi, and the thing is while it ties you down physically, it is a faster connection, and more reliable.  Wi-Fi can be affected by things such as weather, physical obstacles and any other number of circumstances, but the cable just chugs along.  Being connected by a cable may be “old school” but I see no reason to mess with success when you don’t have to.

What other cables do you wonder about?

There has been a lot of talk about what a problem Windows Vista can be for users: peripherals that aren’t compatible, not enough computing power on some systems, a steep learning curve for some users, etc.

The good news is that until June 30th, 2008, you can still buy Windows XP if you just don’t feel comfortable with going to the next operating system, and there is really no problem with that. All of us here at StarterTech consider our selves fairly tech savvy, but you will not find Vista installed on any of our computers.  We just have too many printers, hard drives and more that wouldn’t be compatible with Vista to make it worth it to us.

So, what happens after June 30th?  Microsoft will continue to sell XP in lower-end systems and portable devices, as well as still offer tech support, but there will be no sales of the OS.  However, some computer manufacturers are trying to find loop holes around this, with the most adamant being Dell.

It seems Dell has found a loophole that will allow them to sell you a computer with Windows XP on it, and include Vista on an upgrade disc in the package.  So, technically they are selling you a copy of Vista, you just have to install it yourself, and it’s your choice whether you ever do that.  They currently plan to continue doing this through 2010 when Windows 7 is set to be released.  The one caveat to this is that Microsoft has never released a new operating system on time, so no one really knows when the next system will be ready.

If you are buying a brand new computer, have no old hardware to deal with, and feel like learning a new system, then you have no reason to go ahead and move up to Vista, but for those of us around here, it looks like we will be buying Dell systems only for the next few years.

Twitter is one of those services lots of people are talking about it, but hardly any one ever explains it.

Put as simply as possible, imagine it as text messaging for the web. You have 140 characters to say whatever you want in the box the provide (image here has been shrunk)

It asks you, “What are you doing?”, which most people ignore, but it’s a jumping off point.  Once done, you click “update”, and everyone who has chosen to “follow” you, sees your message.  You, in return, can follow them, by visiting their profile and clicking the “follow” button, and then whenever they post an update, it will show up in your “timeline” which shows your posts as well as theirs.

If someone posts something like a question, or something you just feel like commenting on, you can reply to them by entering “@” before their name, and this will make sure to notify them that you were talking to them.  So in my case, if you wanted to reply to me, you would enter “@seanpaune and then just type your message to me”.

Sometimes you want to send the person a message only they can see, in those cases you would enter “d seanpaune and the message”, and this would go to them as a direct message that they can only see, and it will also notify them by email if their settings are to do so.

At this point Twitter is mostly about fun, though some do use it for business, but it is overly effective.  Is it made for everyone?  Probably not, but it’s worth checking out just to say you know what it is.  You can find me at http://twitter.com/seanpaune if you want to check out what my timeline looks like, and you can see what it looks like when I receive messages here.

When we discussed What Is Gmail, we mentioned one of the side benefits of using the Google email system was you got access to Google Docs. The question is “What is Google Docs?”, and more importantly, why you should care.

Pretty much everyone is familiar with Microsoft Office, and they are also familiar with the cost. Office has become the standard for productivity software like a word processor and spreadsheets, but no one thrills to the price this staple of workers and students everywhere costs them. There has been a free alternative for a while now called Open Office, but for some reason it never seemed to gain wide-spread acceptance. Since Google Docs is integrated into your Google account, it seems to be getting a bit more attention.

Currently you can create a document (replacing Word), spreadsheets (replacing Excel) and presentations (replacing Power Point). None of the three are quite as full-featured as their Microsoft counterparts, but they are working to catch up as quickly as possible, and also giving you some features you don’t have with the Office-standard.

One of those biggest advantages is the ability to invite other people with Google accounts to work on a document with it, or simply view it. This quickly gives you the added extra of a collaboration tool to work on projects with a co-worker, or someone else from your study group, a service you can usually expect to pay a fee for.

Until recently, the biggest drawback to Docs was you could only work while online, but in early April 2008, that all changed.  A copy of your work is saved to your hard drive locally, making them accessible while you are offline.  With the word processor, you do have limited editing abilities, but with the spreadsheets and presentations, for now, you can only view them with no editing abilities.  Even without the ability to work on them, this is still helpful if you want to go somewhere without Internet access and make your presentation.

Is Docs a perfect replacement?  Not yet (as of April 2008), but Google is very actively working on making it better on a near weekly basis, and it is free, so perhaps you should at least give it a try and see how it suits you.