How to Ensure I Will Read Your Email

Recently I read a very pertinent and apropos blog which I have taken the liberty of plagiarizing –at least, to some extent.






If you want your e-mail ignored do these things:

1. Leave the subject line blank
2. Put your entire message into one, long, 300-word sentence
3. Use cutesy, curlicued font styles that cannot be deciphered
4. Make sure you use lavender backgrounds and neon green type (or other ghastly combos)
5. Add in-line photos of such huge dimensions that they take forever to download even on fast connections
6. Use super bad grammar and never ever bother with spell checks apostrophes full stops and other archaic helps to comprehension that might actually allow the long suffering recipient to understand what on earth you are talking about
7. Treat emails like examples of speed texting on mobile phones with high priced plans and low end technology …and so on. I'm sure you can think of other offenses against the good will of fellow netizens.

So, how can you contribute towards a more calm and courteous communication between us all?

State, as explicitly and simply as you can what your message is about in the "Subject" line. That's that line with the label 'Subject' up in the 'Header' section of the email. Messages with vague subjects such 'Hi, Hello, How are you?' and, even worse, left glaringly blank, invite instant deletion by those of us who do not get paid on word counts of emails read each morning.

Remember that many of us are savvy enough to have set our spam deletion rules to filter emails that use all capital letters, an excess of exclamation points, and words typically seen in spam. I'd give examples, but my spam filter would trap them and refuse to send the email. I don't use these kinds of expletives myself, I do not treat my recipients to samples of what used to be called the 'gutter press' so please don't do it to me.

Messages that are one long paragraph with complicated details (rather like this one) will often not get read either. Do yourself and your longsuffering recipient a favour and break up your message into three or four small paragraphs. Unless you are sending a draft copy of the annual 'Address to the Nation' a reasonable limit, it seems to me, is three or four paragraphs. After that I think it likely that most of us will start dozing. If your email has to be lengthy consider providing a one or two sentence overview. Even a quick bulleted list of topics to be covered introduced with an explanatory, "I have a complicated issue, which will take a bit of explaining. Here is the gist and below is the lengthier explanation." Or, "I need help with xyz. If you have time to help, I've provided details below." If you need answers to a series of questions and/or you need to make several points, why not number them? This will make replying easier as the answers can be numbered accordingly thus saving the need to restate each issue or question.

If you want to share a link, please don't just stick the URL in the e-mail, particularly if it's a long one as is often the case. Most email utilities, such as Outlook and others will allow you to use html and code it into the source so that you can create a clickable link and all the gobbledygook is hidden. Another courteous trick (read technique) is to use TinyUrl. This will allow you to enter the long URL and convert it into a shorter version. It's quite free and you can add a toolbar shortcut for frequent use.

Now for photos: This can be a real issue, especially for those longsuffering souls among us who still labour with dial-up and other slow connections. If you need to share a bunch of photos don't just attach them by the dozen. If there are more than three or four courtesy demands they be zipped or posted to a site such as Flicr (the link to my public photos on Flickr). You can then email the link and the burden of a huge download is not laid uninvited upon your recipient. An excellent free compression utility is 7-Zip.

More on Photos: Further, when sending images please reduce them in size. A dozen 4-megabyte photos of your last picnic will not win your friends and allow you to influence people towards your latest favourite thing! Learn to use an image resize for reducing the size of images for exactly this purpose. Microsoft has a free one for XP as part of its Power Toys collection. There's one for Vista too, if you're afflicted with that particular OS.

Videos: While I'm on topic let me discuss sending 10-megabyte videos of birds using tools. Now vides are fun, but attaching a video in e-mail is so passé. If you look I'll bet you'll find it on YouTube. Here's a way to send big files when needs must. There are several places on the web where you can upload large files for free as well as paid services. Try LargeFilesASAP, or Huddle. Provided it's not something super private these are good options to crashing your friend's machine!

Turn of Your Antivirus Blurb: Most people who have any sense today do have their own Antivirus programmes running and scanning their incoming and outgoing emails. This means they do not need to see your AV program's blurb at the bottom of your e-mail telling them it has scanned the email before sending. Take a moment to check out your AV programmes Options and just turn it off please. Thank you.

OK. That's about it, for me. I think I've made my contribution towards world peace and goodwill with this little blurb. My appreciation to my muse -you will recognize some of it, but not a whole heap I'm thinking.



Happy emailing my fellow netizens.

The Serious Sickness of PC Rage!

Hi! Folks,
It's winter time here in Kiwiland (That's New Zealand for the uninitiated!), and with all those lurgy's floating around I thought I should weigh in with some advice against one particularly common affliction: PC Rage! Here we go…

Save yoursef from "PC Rage"!

Symptoms: This affliction is often evidenced by strange noises coming from those you know for normally being of a calm and peaceful disposition. The early symptoms are often a low mumble, which can progress into loud yelling, even screaming. This may well be followed by loud bangs, thumps and explosive sounds, even breaking glass as windows are shattered and large objects are sent hurtling into outer space!

If you have ever been tempted to enquire into these events you may find yourself in George Bush like situations, dodging that infamous shoe. Only this time it could be keyboards and other low flying objects of a technological nature.

Further enquiry will often reveal a very sick and tired computer user frustrated by their machine taking forever to start up and load programs, crashing randomly and performing other forms of unsolicited behaviour.

Prescription: I am happy to be able to prescribe cures for this affliction. Follow these steps at routine intervals and all should be well. Sadly, this is not a 'once only' cure, as the bug circulates and always returns.
Here is my prescription for curing 'PC Rage' when the symptoms become apparent.

1. Delete Temporary Internet Files. When you visit a new website as its content is stored on your PC and takes up hard drive space. Go to "Tools", then "Options" – as each browser is a bit different, click through tabs to find an option for deleting temporary files and cookies. (A cookie is a small piece of code, usually innocent, but not always, that performs certain tasks of, usually, but not always, a benign nature.)

2. Use a registry cleaner such as Registry Mechanic, or one of the excellent free versions that PC Care can install for you. Windows® registry can be a common cause of crashes, slow performance and error messages. Registry cleaners will stabilise your system and help improve its performance.

3. Ensure automatic Windows® Updates is turned on. You can turn this feature on via the Control Panel and then click on Automatic Updates to configure the settings. My recommended setting is to set Windows to download updates but for you, the user, to decide when to install. This way you will be sure of getting the updates.

4. Eliminate unused files & desktop shortcuts. Every file and application that sits on your desktop takes up extra space, delete them to free up your hard disk space. This is called 'good housekeeping' and PCs really benefit from systematic and routine cleaning.

5. Uninstall unused programs. The more programs you have installed the slower your system will become. You need to use the "Uninstall" command in the Add/Remove program feature in the Control Panel. Caution: You can't remove a program just by deleting its folder and files. Full un-installation may require the use of the registry cleaner to clean up stray references left in the Windows Registry after un-installation. Again, caution: You should consider carefully all the files your cleaner offers to remove and backup the Registry beforehand.

6. Empty the Recycle Bin. Files that you delete from your computer are still stored in your recycle bin and will continue to take up a valuable hard drive space.

7. Schedule regular anti-virus & anti-spyware scans with your antivirus programme. You do have an antivirus programme running and up to date on your machine, don't you? A quick daily scan followed by a full weekly scan is what this doctor orders. Computer viruses and spyware can take over your computer's memory and slow down performance.

8. "Defrag" your computer regularly. Each time you work with a file your computer stores changes in a different place on the hard disk. A good defragmentation tool is Desktop Maestro, or you can check with PC care for recommended free versions. Warning! Don't just download and install the first Registry Cleaner you come across (or any other programme for that matter) there are con jobs out there that masquerade as legitimate software but are, in fact, wolves in sheep's clothing! They will hijack your machine and prevent you doing any work until you pay large amounts of your hard earned dosh -and even then you won't get free of it. Alternatively, you can use the free defrag utility packaged in Windows. However, you may have to stop all running apps to prevent them writing to disc and stopping the defrag process. The Windows defrag utility can be tricky, but if you want to give this a whirl you should find it in XP under 'Accessories' from 'Start' and then 'Programmes'. For Vista it will be elsewhere.

Current Threats: For your interest here is the Current Crop of Top Threats identified by Malware Research:

• Backdoor.Emogen • Backdoor.Turkojan • RogueAntiSpyware.VirusMelt • Trojan-Downloader.Agent.VB • Trojan-DDoS.VFI • Trojan.Adclicker

Best regards,
John

Confidence in the Face of Conficker

Conficker is a worm. That is to say it is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network, any network, including the biggest one of all, the Internet, to send copies of itself to other computers on the network and it may do so without any outside help -I.e. without you or I clicking on anything, intentionally or unintentionally. It is different to a virus in that it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Are they dangerous? Yes and no. They almost always cause at least some harm to the network, if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a targeted computer. The Conficker worm is also known as win32 Conficker, Win32 Downup, ConfickerA, Net Worm Kido and possibly by other names as well. It appears to do a variety of things that are most often of nuisance value. However, its early days yet, and the bad news is that there could be more surprises down the line.

We do know these things:

• SpywareProtect2009: Reports are identifying SpywareProtect2009 as being another of the specific scareware tactics being used after Conficker's latest update. The victim receives a warning and is prompted to purchase the removal tool @$49.99. When you do the download streams in from the Ukraine and compounds the problem. Do not under any circumstances follow instructions from one of these prompts.
  
• Microsoft has purportedly put a bounty on the head of its creator, to the tune of $250,000.00.
  
• The Department of Homeland Security has also, I believe, issued a removal tool for its federal, local, and state governments and commercial vendors.
  
• High Infection Rate Already: I have also read that this worm has already infected between 9 million and 15 million systems.
  
• Known Actions: It saves a copy of its .dll (dynamic link library) files randomly in the Windows System folder and then load each time you boot Windows.
  
• Potential Harm: Once entrenched it can potentially disable system devices, reset and remove restore points, and stop automatic updates. This is in addition to stopping Windows security, Windows Defender (Microsoft's antispyware utility) and Error Reporting. This worm possesses the latest technology to help spread its destruction and avoid detection and removal.
  

Systems that are affected are: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 (beta thru RC), Windows 7 beta and all the beta versions.

Steps To Avoid Harm

1. Update all Definitions: Ensure all your antivirus and antispyware programmes are kept updated
   
2. Windows Updates: Ensure Windows is up-to-date with the latest patches. If unsure visit www.microsoft.com.
   
3. Configure Windows Auto-Update: Make sure Windows is configured to automatically download and install all updates.
   
4. Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool: Download, install and run Microsofts Malicious Software Removal Tool, keep it updated and run at random intervals.
   
5. Strong Passwords: Use strong Password Protection. I'll post an article on strong password shortly.
   

Tip of the Month

I get so many requests about avoiding net nasties that I thought I would try to come up with an occasional Tip of the Month that would help save you from potential infection. So, here's my first thought:

Avoid the Habitations of Lions.

You cannot go to sites such as Bearshare, Limewire or other questionable sites and seriously expect to stay malware free. Music download sites in particular carry great inherent risk. Music files are large provide huge opportunities for programmers to hide malware of all sorts in amongst the code. But they are not the only sources of potential infection. Many sites use what has come to be called 'Drive by Attacks'. With the web page is executable code that launches an action that can harm your PC without your knowledge. If you employ anti-pop up software this can save you much of the time, but hackers can get past those forms of security by cloaking their code and/or using a delayed execution method. Ultimately your only protection is your own self discipline and net savvy. Make it your business to learn the kind of sites to avoid and then avoid them like the plague. You have been warned! Don't act all hurt, innocent and surprised when you find you've been infected by a virus, worm, Trojan or other net nasty when you were directly responsible for your own foolish actions on the net. After all, if you go walking in the jungle at night where the big cats are known to prowl, who is really to blame when the inevitable eventually happens –the wild animal or you?

This should be obvious too, but downloading illegal music or visiting questionable sites will cause you grief sooner or later. Blokes, you need to know that if you download pictures and movies of alluring ladies you are high on the risk scale. Finally, NEVER click a popup that says "Your Infected…Click here to remove this threat", because that will guarantee that you become infected, as surely as night follows day.

Here it is: Cloud Backup for SMBs

The name is Zmanda, and trust me on this, it is the solution you have been waiting for.  The Cloud, what all savvy PC users in the 21st Century know is the new buzzword for cyberspace is where it happens.   Out there where we all roam free as the birds there's a new land to occupy.   For SMBs (that's another dreaded acronym for Small to Medium Sized Business), and individuals, this equates to generous slabs of cheap storage space available external to your business premises.   The mantra for all wise business managers is, and always will be, backup, backup, backup…and again, backup.    The best backup is done off-site and away from your business premises.  A fire or other disaster can destroy onsite storage never to be seen again.  You should backup locally, but off-site is vital.  No backup is suicidal.  Of course, off-site has the same risk, but  a reputable third party will also backup their servers and anyway, life's a lottery, the secret to work the odds in your favour.   Enter Zmanda Enterprise 3.0.  To quote their own blurb, this Windows based little beauty offers a fully-supported solution for backing up Windows files, applications, databases and networked devices to the cloud.   Of course it is fully automated for regular backup and easy to use.  Further, it costs the massive amount of US$50 one-time fee for the software and storage fees with the all new Amazon S3 is the unbelievable US$0.20 per Gigabyte per month.  For SMBs and private individuals with manageable amounts of data that is very low cost.  You can read more about Zamanda at the Zmanda Home site.  You can download Zmanda here: Download Zmanda.  

Safe Social Networking

Scams, traps, cons and swindles abound on the Internet. Here’s some tips to keep you socially safe online.

Social networking has come of age. If you’re not socially networking life may be passing you by –maybe! The fact is, millions are and sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live Spaces are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.

With the rising incidence in popularity of these social sites, so do the risks of using them. Identity thieves, crims, hackers, spammers, virus writers along with other weird practitioners of arcane cyber wizardry follow the traffic on these sites with the intention of catching the unwary.

Avoid being fleeced, ripped-off and otherwise taken advantage of –read these tips.

1. Unsafe Clicking: Count ten before you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social Web site. Treat links in messages on these sites exactly the same as you would links in e-mail messages.
2. Practice Healthy Suspicion: Never trust that a message is really from who it says it's from. Hackers can and do break into accounts and send messages that look like they're from your friends, but aren't. A suspicious message is best treated as fraudulent and the use of an alternate method employed to contact your friend and check they did in fact, contact you. This most definitely includes invitations to join new social networks.  (I.e. SN sites new to the web. 
3. Protect your friends: Never allow social networking services to scan your e-mail address book. When you join a new social network, you typically receive offers to enter your e-mail address and password to find out whom else is on the network. They will likely offer to use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even everyone you've ever sent an e-mail message to with that e-mail address. Many responsible social networking sites explain that they're going to do this, but some do not.
4. Lazy Clicking: Here’s a tip you should be already aware of. Type the address of your social networking site directly into the ‘Open’ command of I.E. or the address bar if you use Firefox, or use your personal bookmarks that you know you can trust. If you click a link to your site through e-mail or another Web site, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen. Further, links in emails and on web pages can hide the real link and be masquerading as the legitimate link.  This is similar to what we call ‘phishing’ and I’m sure you’ve read the stories bout the ever growing incidence of phishing emails arriving in mail boxes.
5. Choose Your Friends Carefully: Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves do create fake profiles in order to get information from you. This is known as social engineering and is more prevalent than many realise.
6. Haunt the House: Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. Read the information that is immediately available and do a Google search of the site. You never know what you might discover about it. Don’t immediately believe negative reports, but, the old adage, ‘no smoke without fire’ is worth remembering. After all, you will be providing personal information to this site, so, here’s a thought: use the same criteria that you would to select a site where you enter your credit card details!
7. Your Footprint On the Web Is Long Lasting: Did you know that what you write on a social networking site is long lasting and almost permanent? Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print the information or save it to a computer.
8. Think Before You Act/Download: Installing extras on your site is chancy. Frequently social networking sites invite or make available software and third party apps for you to download that allow you to do more with your personal page. Cyber criminals may use some of these applications to steal your personal information –and more. Again, Google the app you’re interested in first and find out what others are saying about it. An excellent site for information on software in general is www.cnet.com. Check out their reviews and read the views of others besides the publishers themselves and/or the editors. Get a balanced picture and then make up your mind whether you want to add that app to your list of installed programmes on your computer.
9. Mixing Work & Socialising on the Net: Some employs accept/allow responsible extra curricula activity while you’re on their clock. Others don’t –for obvious reasons. If you value your weekly pay-check think about whether this is what you should do or not.
10. Parents: Kids Social Network a lot. Your children probably know far more about it than you! Talk to them about social networking. Be wise, maybe you can find out what they know and whether they are being safe online by asking for help and advice yourself! They may be keen to demonstrate their sites and show off their knowledge. Then you can adroitly (there’s a good word) suggest safety tips. Don’t, whatever you do, show shock or anger. All you will do is wreck any chance you have of monitoring their activities and fostering safe socialising on the net. That would not be smart.

There you have it.  Have fun, make friends, enjoy the web –and be safe while your at it.  John

Summer Freeze

Here in Kiwiland we are enjoying warm beautiful, even hot, weather.  Summer is here and great to be alive –until your PC freezes, that is. 

Yep, that’s right.  The dreaded freeze.  You know what I mean.  That machine in front of you just stops working and refuses to respond.  No matter what you do –or say(!) – nothing will make it do what it’s supposed to do.  Not for you anyway. 

Well, good news and bad news.  It happens to all of us.  Even PhDs in computer science face the dreaded catharsis of PC Freeze from time to time.  So, don’t feel so bad.  You’ve come to the right place  The bad news: well, sometimes it can be quite serious, but, more good news, most of the time it’s easily fixed. 

Here we go…

Just a wee commercial right here though –If you live in Hamilton, New Zealand, if this doesn’t solve your troubles right away, give me, Hamilton Office & Home PC Care, a bell on +64274412623 and you can drop it off and we are sure to be able to get it going for you. :-) 

Please note that these words of wisdom (I hope) are primarily for XP users.  Vista will be able to do similar things but you will have different paths and terms for the same tasks.  Sorry about that. 

Back up now! The golden, and I do mean golden, rule of PC Care is BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK,  BEFORE the freeze and before any sort of trouble strikes.   Scroll through these blog articles for more on PC Maintenance to help you with this.

Access Task Manager: Press the Control (Ctrl) + Alt + Delete keys now, commonly called the ‘three-fingered salute’.  This will open the Task Manager and then look under the ‘Applications’ tab, usually the one that opens first by default, and look to see if any running apps have stopped responding.   You will be able to see if this is so because the offending app will say, ‘Not responding’ right beside it.  If so, click on and select then click the ‘End task’  button at the bottom of the Task Manager window. Chances are, this will fix the problem immediately by closing the faulty app and you will find you’ve regained control of your PC. 

Re-launch the Application: Re-launch  the app that failed responding and start back over.  Hopefully, you won’t have lost too much data in the process.  Of course, you can avoid losing too much work by saving your work as you go along.  Every sentence or so you should develop the habit of pressing ‘Alt+F+S’ in Windows which is the speed key to save your work without lifting your hands off the keyboard.  I’m doing it all the time as I type now.  In fact, I just accidentally closed my Windows Live Writer window and, if I hadn’t been saving as I go along, I would have lost it all! 

Further Checks:

Caps Lock & Number Lock: You might have accidentally presseed the Caps Lock or NumLk keys on your keyboard.  If you have take a look and see if the indicator lights for those keys have changed.  Usually they are located at the top RHS of your key board, but they many be elsewhere.   You can check that they are working OK by pressing the ‘Function (fn) button + Caps Lk’ and see if the Number Lock button lights up.  Then do the same with the ‘CapsLk + Num Lk’ buttons and check that as well.  It may be just a matter of having accidentally switched on or off these controls.

Led Lights: Look and see if your Hard Drive activity light is flashing?  If it is, windows is working hard for you performing some necessary task and you need to pause and let it get on with it.  As soon as it has done whatever pressing job it must do, it will yield control back to you.  So, be a little merciful and allow your (sometimes) faithful machine to do it’s work.  Go and make a cup of coffee!  You wouldn’t believe the amount of work your machine has to do to serve your every wish! ;-)  It may be the hard disk is working too hard and you should be merciful and add more RAM. 

Just another wee commercial right here though –If you live in Hamilton, New Zealand, give me, Hamilton Office & Home PC Care, a bell on +64274412623 and you can drop it off and we will add more RAM for you in flash –or maybe two flashes! :-) 

Mouse Worries: Mice do need a bit of care and attention now and again.  They actually benefit from a careful cleaning once-in-a-while.  To do this examine your mouse carefully and see if you can open it up and then use some compressed air and/or a soft bristled brush and clean the parts that provide the contacts in the vicinity of the ball.  If unsure, you can check with us or simply buy a new one.  PS2 mice are very cheap to replace these days.  If it’s wireless mouse the batteries may be simply flat –they don’t last forever you know! 

Chick All Your Peripheral Devices:  You may need to unplug them all one by one systematically and check to see if one of them is malfunctioning and causing a conflict or other problem.  Sometimes your machine may be performing a security scan of your devices (USB storage devices etc) and you may need to allow it to finish.  Or, it may have stalled in the process and run into a glitch of some sort.  Remember to stop all USB devised properly using the facility provided by Windows.  If you are unsure about this consult your hardware/PC manuals.  I’ll do a Blog on USB devises shortly to help with this.  Unplug all unnecessary USB devices such as printers, scanners, iPods and USB drives.   None of these wonderful and immensely useful gadgets do not last for ever, sadly.  So, one of them may have simply stopped and you will need to replace it.

If none of  the above steps helps and/or solves the problem, you may well have a major on your hands.  This could range from overheating issues, other major hardware failure, serious software failure, driver conflicts and more.

Hardware Failure: Hardware failure can be anything from an improperly seated or bad memory module to a failed hard drive or system board. The very first thing to do is to run a hardware diagnostic test. To do this it may be best to ask a PC tech to help such as Hamilton Office & Home PC Care on +64274412623 if you live in Hamilton, New Zealand.

I hope the freeze is of short duration and the long happy days of summer return.  John