OOoooooo (said in a spooky way) What are the two words Bill Gates is afraid of?

Asks the Advertisement that wants you to subscribe to their newsletter. The answer to that question is cloud computing. Now whether or not Bill is afraid is not of any concern to me, who cares. It's not like Bill is not going to be a billionaire tomorrow.


Anyway, cloud computing in a nut shell is using applications that are somewhere on the internet (the cloud) instead of running the same type of application on your home or business computer. I'm writing this article using blogger's software that is being run in my web browser. I could be doing the same thing on a MAC, or with a computer running Linux, this software doesn't care what my operating system is. The article is going to be saved on a server owned by google. I don't need to save anything on my personal computer.

Other "cloud computing" programs that I and many of you use are services like Yahoo mail or Gmail; Google docs is a whole office suite online. Documents can be shared and collaborated on by anyone who has prilages to do so. The last company I worked at used Google docs to share word processing and spreadsheet documents with employees and with customers. We were all able to update the documents collaboratively. And the cost was nothing.


So how could all of this theoretically scare Bill Gates? Well, when you consider that Windows costs hundreds of dollars, and Microsoft Office costs hundreds of dollars just on one PC, then you could imagine how much money a large company could save by simply not buying Microsoft products. Using online free products along with an operating system like Linux could save a company millions.



In my opinion Google has made a great effort to be at the forefront of cloud computing. This week I needed to share some very old documents with my extended family, I figured I needed a free an easy web site. Sure enough Google had that, Google sites provided me a free and easy way to whip out a web site so I could post my files so my extended family could have access to scanned in photos I wanted to share.

I have used Yahoo mail for over 10 years and it's always come through for me, I never use the email provided by my internet supplier because I never know if they will irritate me and I will move on. I have had several internet suppliers but my email is always there for me supplied by Yahoo. I also use my Yahoo calendar to keep me informed about birthdays and other important events. I personally prefer using Yahoo's email over Gmail but Gmail has something that Yahoo doesn't have for free and that's the ability to forward messages. I have several Gmail accounts and have them forward messages to my Yahoo email account.


Next time you go to Google click on More, then even more and you will be surprised at the cloud computing options being offered to you. Yahoo is my home page because I can check my Yahoo mail, Gmail, and Facebook accounts at a glace. All cloud computing applications. Oh and I use Wikipedia a lot for links in my articles another fine cloud computing effort.



Happy computing and I'll see you on the cloud!
Dan


 

How to protect your computer from Malware for free

Yes, that’s right you don’t have to spend any money at all to protect your computer from viruses, malware, Trojans, and other assorted bad guys. Here is how:

Linux:
First off if you’re running the Linux OS of any kind then you don’t need any virus protection software. I don’t want to go into great detail about Linux security, all you really need to know is that permissions on Linux make it impossible for viruses or Trojans to execute without your permission.

MAC OSX:
Today, the number of viruses actively attacking OSX users is about none.
However, that doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever or that you won’t be passing a windows virus on to your mom in an email attachment. ClamXav is a free virus checker for Mac OS X.

Windows:
Microsoft designed Windows to enable outsiders to execute software on your system. Microsoft justifies this by saying it enriches the user experience if a Web site can do "cool" things on your desktop.  In reality the only people being enriched are the companies selling you security products for your Windows based computer.
Viruses, Trojans, and general malware in Windows are usually spread by email clients, browsers, or Instant Messages. These programs will accept these nasties from other computers, and then place them on your system. The malware authors then execute the programs to do their bidding without asking for your permission.
Now how do we go about protecting our Windows based machines for free?

Update your browser:

• First step is to make sure that your browser is updated. Browsers security is a cat and mouse game so check to make sure you are updated. In Firefox this is done by clicking help and then clicking update in top menu of the browser.

Next Firewalls:

• What is a firewall? A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting authorized communications.
• Do you need a firewall? Yes, but you may already have one installed. If you have a router connected to the internet connection coming into your house it probably has a built in firewall. Check your documentation. If that is the case then you are good to go.

• If not and you have Windows XP or newer then simply turn on the built in firewall. Windows with complain to you if it isn't turned on and help you. It will also complain to you even if you have a firewall in your router, I just ignore the complaint.
• If you have Windows installed that is older than XP or if you want to try a different firewall then you will need to download a free firewall program. Here are a couple of them: Comodo or Outpost 

Next Antivirus software:


My favorite is Avast Antivirus software. Avast will provides a great barrier against nasties coming into your computer. I love it when you end up at some web site that tries to upload malware to you, it pops up a big warning and allows you to abort the connection. It provides real time scanning and free updates.
Avira is also a very good choice, I'm running it on my Windows 2000 machine. The only thing that is a little annoying is a page that pops up occasionally trying to get you to upgrade to their pay version. 

Next: Anti-malware software:

So you have a firewall and anti-virus software running why would you need anything else? Well sometimes tracking cookies are sending information to unscrupulous people or a new trojan horse made it past the antivirus program. It's always good to have a second opinion anyway. Here are two very good free programs than you can use to do a scan anytime you wish: 
Malwarbytes
SUPERAntiSpyware

OK, there you go all the free software you need to protect your computer from bad guys. I only use free software for my security and am very happy with the results.

Xubuntu. Give life back to that old computer

I have 4 computers in my house, one in the kitchen that the kids use, a laptop in the living room, one in my bedroom, and one out in the garage. They are all networked together using a wireless network. None of these computers are particularly new, the one in the garage is a 1 GHZ P3 with 256 MB of RAM, it also is running on Xubuntu Linux. (Click this link for an explanation of Linux). I'm writing this article on the computer in the garage. I normally use this computer to listen to music on Pandora while I'm working on some garage project like fixing the car, but today it gets to help me write this article.

The garage computer originally ran Windows 98 that is no longer support by Microsoft; Win 98 no longer gets security updates or support. Xubuntu is a free open source version of Ubuntu Linux and runs lean and mean on this machine. It gets necessary updates, and comes pre-installed with many free, modern, open source software packages like the AbiWord word processor and the Gnumeric spreadsheet program. Both programs can open and save various formats including Microsoft formats. The installation includes many other standard types of programs that would be used on a Windows or MAC machine, for instance CD/DVD burning and playing programs, and games. Other packages can be downloaded and installed with the easy to use software installer.

The disk image can be downloaded here for free or you can get a CD sent to you for about 4 bucks. The disk image can be burned onto a CD with ImgBurn. If you want to just play with Xubuntu you can have the  computer boot directly off of the installation CD without changing anything about your Windows installation. Another option is to have the computer dual bootable to either operating system. Xubuntu can help you set that up.

One thing I found amazing is how easy it is to install. Windows seems to take all day to set up a computer having to find drivers from disks and the internet to get the computer to work correctly. My experience with Xubuntu has been load it up and everything works with no need to load virus protection software. I was even surprised to see my old Dlink wireless network card working perfectly. I'm not saying everyone will have the same experience I had but it is fun to boot off of the CD for the first time and see a completely different computer staring at you. 

So have fun making that clunker work again, or exploring a whole new operating system for free.

Dan

My hard drive is full! How do I free up space?

What is hogging up my hard drive space? Is a question you may be asking yourself right now. 
My laptop is a little old with only 40 GB of hard drive space, but that may seem gargantuan if you have even an older computer with under 1 GB of space. I found myself saying "how do I find out what is hogging up space without digging through every directory on my hard drive." You can of course un-install programs that are not needed by clicking on Start at the bottom left of your screen, and then clicking on the control panel. In XP click on add and remove programs. A list of programs installed on the computer will be generated, scroll down and select a program that needs to be removed and click on the remove button and Windows will remove it from your computer. But after that what do you do?

I think the first thing to do is to use the built in disk cleanup utility. Click on the Start button, then put the arrow over all programs, then move the arrow over accessories, then to System tools, click on disk cleanup on the list of files. Disk cleanup will then scan the C: drive to determine what it can do to help. The list will show how much space is being used by each item on the list. Put a green check next to the items you would like to clean up. I'm using XP so these steps may be different in your version of Windows. Don't hit OK yet. Click on the More Options tab located on the top of the screen next to the Disk cleanup tab. Find System Restore and click on the Clean up tab next to it and click OK. You should do this because in Windows Me and XP old settings can be reverted back to if a change in your system causes some sort of issue. You may have many restore points if lot of programs have been installed and un-installed on your system, and they can take up a lot of space. I would recommend deleting all but the most recent one. After the program is done cleaning up old restore points click on the Disk cleanup tab and then click OK. Cleanup will finish cleaning up and close. If we had click OK after we selected our green check marks then cleanup would have closed down and we would have had to reopen it to cleanup the old settings.

The next step is to use the free program FilePro. FilePro will display how the hard drive space is being used and what files are taking up the most space. It can show the same information in different ways. It can show statistics in a file format or by directory. My favorite is the TreeMap. TreeMap shows a graphical snapshot of the entire drive. There is a zoom scroll tool or you can use the mouse to get a closer look at a particular file or scroll around to see the big picture. When I was using this feature I found several disk image files that were taking up a very large amount of space. I no longer needed the files and freed up about 3 GB worth of hard drive space. FilePro is also part of the LiberKey suite and can be added to your collection collection via the LiberKey site.

Now you should have lots of extra space to fill up with pictures of fluffy and movies of Juniors first birthday party!

Dan