Five Minute Computing Guides

Bidding on eBay

2010-03-22T09:40:00.000Z

Buying from eBay couldn’t be easier. Just make sure you’re sure you know what you’re buying.

To search for items for sale, go to the eBay homepage and enter some keywords into the search bar before clicking Search. eBay presents you with a list of items matching your keywords. Narrow your search if you get too many results. Select an entry to view its full advert. This should include current price, end date and time and details about delivery arrangements and cost. Before deciding to bid, check the advert wording carefully. Also examine the seller’s feedback rating to see how many successful transactions they have made before. Remember that you might find the same item for less elsewhere online, so check out some price comparison sites like Kelkoo (www.kelkoo.co.uk) to ensure that you’re getting a good deal. If you’re happy to proceed, click Bid, sign in and provide the highest price that you’re prepared to pay.

When you place a bid, eBay uses a system called proxy bidding, whereby you place the highest bid you can and eBay bids on your behalf, just above the current top bid and carries on bidding until your bid is the winning one or your limit has been reached. If you win the auction, you’re contractually obliged to cough up the money you’ve pledged. The eBay feedback system ensures that sellers can warn others if you don’t pay.

Search results

1
Find Field
Enter the name of the item you're looking for in this box and click Search to see auctions with matching items.

2
Categories
Make your search more effective by narrowing it down to a specific category. Choose one from this drop down list. Click Advanced search to include more search criteria.

3
Search Refinements
Depending on what you’re looking for, eBay may provide suggestions to help narrow down the search further. Here it offers flash drive capacities to slim down the results returned.

4
Feature Requirements
Again, dependant on the area searched, you may have a list of features that are available in items matching your search. Tick a feature to exclude matches without this feature being returned.

5
Auction Types
Use these tabs to narrow down the type of advert that you see. You can choose to view Buy it Now adverts only, auctions only or a mixture of the two.

6
Featured Items
These listings appear first because the vendors have paid more to give them a higher profile. They may not be the best match for your search. Scroll down to see the full listings below these.

Tip
If you have a particular search that you run regularly, save yourself some time by saving it in My eBay. Just search for the item and then click Save this search next to the title of your search results. Give it a name and click Save.

The Bidding Process

1
Be sure before you bid
Once you’ve searched for an item and viewed its listing, read the advert carefully to ensure that you understand what you’re buying. Some adverts include surprises in the small print. When you’re happy that you want to buy, enter an amount and click Place Bid.

2
Confirm the bid
Your bid isn’t placed until you click Confirm Bid. Once you’ve done so, you have effectively committed to buy the item at that price, plus any postage charges levied by the vendor. These should be clear in the advert, which you’ve just read thoroughly, right?

3
Bid Confirmation
Your bid will now be confirmed. If someone else has already bid more than your maximum amount, you may be told that you’ve been outbid already. If your bid is the highest, you’ll be told that you’re the high bidder. In either case, you’re also informed by email.

4
Winning the auction
When the auction ends, if you’re still the highest bidder, you’ll be informed by email that you’ve won the item. Click Pay Now in the email or go directly to eBay to arrange payment as soon as possible. If you’ve been outbid, you’ll be told via email too.

Basics of eBay

2010-03-19T09:36:00.002Z

It's the auction site that provides the widest range of products imaginable. Find out how to get started.

When you start out using eBay it can be difficult to understand all the processes that are going on. Some people are worried about using the auction site because they’ve heard about people getting scammed or losing money. While this does happen, the vast majority of transactions carried out via eBay are successful and there are millions of happy buyers and sellers that use it. If you understand how it works and are careful about what you buy and who you buy from, there’s very little risk.

eBay is not a shop. It’s an online bazaar where a large number of merchants and shoppers meet to do business. When you buy through eBay, you’re using its facilities but you’re buying from an individual or company that is doing precisely the same thing. Just as you can pick up a true bargain or a dodgy deal from a car boot sale, the same is true of eBay. People doing business on eBay are very similar to those who have paid for a spot in a market or craft fayre. They pay for an advert and to use eBay and its partners to find the highest bidder and to handle payment. It is the vendor who is responsible for providing the goods as advertised and to sort out postage, packaging and resolving any problems with the order.

Just as the vendor has responsibilities on eBay, so does the buyer. If you confirm a bid on an item, then you have agreed to pay that price for it, plus any postage charges detailed in its advert. Fail to pay and not only will you not get your goods, but you’ll be punished with bad feedback and may find it difficult to buy from anyone else.

Most sales on eBay are by auction, in which potential buyers say what they are prepared to pay and the highest bid by the closing time of the auction wins the item. However, Buy it Now items are challenging auctions for popularity. Here the vendor sets the price and whoever is prepared to pay that first wins the item. These work a lot like traditional classified ads and they have the advantage of you being sure that you’ve got the item as soon as you’ve accepted the price. If you want something in a hurry, Buy It Now is a good option because you don’t need to wait until the end of the auction period.

When you’ve signed up for an eBay account, you can monitor the auctions that you’re bidding on using My eBay. This is your section of the site that provides key information about your account and includes communication with the buyers and sellers who you deal with. See the annotation for more details.

My eBay

1
Search eBay
This search bar appears on most general eBay pages, but it is reduced in size on individual listings. Just enter some keywords and click Search to look through thousands of auctions instantly.

2
Your Username
This is your username, which will be sent to sellers when you've won their auction. The number following this is your feedback rating, which indicates the number of successful transactions you've completed.

3
Activity
This tab displays your current activity on eBay. It's your main My eBay summary, including items that you're watching, reminders to pay or leave feedback and lists of auctions that you've won or lost.

4
Messages
Move to this tab to read any secure messages you've received from other eBay buyers or sellers. This works very much like a web mail inbox, complete with its own filing system and the ability to search for individual messages.

5
Account
View your account summary here, including any eBay charges that are due, past and present invoices and any credits, payments and refunds that apply to your account. You can change your main account settings here, including your payment method.

6
Page Options
Click here to customise the information that appears in your My eBay summary page. You can change the number of items displayed and the order in which they appear to suit your personal needs.

Tip

A recent development is Buy it Now or Best Offer, where the vendor sets a price, but is prepared to consider offers that are close to that price. They have no obligation to accept a lower price, but there’s no harm in suggesting one in these cases.

Get Aero effects without Aero

2009-10-05T09:00:00.000+01:00

For an attractive alternative to Flip 3D, Joe Cassels shows how to install My Expose.

Flip 3D in Vista is a pleasing effect, but it has limited use because you can’t see the full contents of all available windows. There is a Mac OS X utility called Expose that enables you to pick between animated tiled windows that’s far more useful while retaining the wow factor that Aero fans love. Thankfully it’s been ported to Vista in the form of My Expose, which you can download from http://blogs.labo-dotnet.com/simon/archive/2006/11/08/11485.aspx. Follow the link to binaries. For the program to work, you’ll also need the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package installed on your system so go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=32BC1BEE-A3F9-4C13-9C99-220B62A191EE&displaylang=en and download it.

There are other limiting factors to consider. At the time of writing there’s no 64-bit version available. Your PC also needs to be comfortably capable of an Aero display to use My Expose. Just as Flip 3D doesn’t work in the Windows Vista Basic theme, nor does my Expose. You need a decent graphics capability for it to work.

If you’ve managed to tick the above boxes, it’s really as simple as installing the Visual C++ package, followed by running the My Expose installer. When you launch the program you’ll need to press the trigger key F9 to tile your windows. See the walkthrough to find out how to use and configure My Expose.

If you’re using an earlier version of Windows or don’t have the graphics capability to display Aero, try using SmallWindows. This gives a very similar effect to Expose for all versions of Windows after Windows 98. Get it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/smallwindows/ download and unzip the program and launch the executable. You can now tile your open windows by pressing the Windows key and F12 together or by moving the mouse to the top centre of the screen and clicking. You don’t get the shading effect that you see in My Expose, but otherwise the program works in a very similar way. You’ll need to remember to launch the executable file to ensure that it’s running in the background or drag a shortcut into your startup group if you want to make sure that it’s running all the time.

Expose Your Windows
Use My Expose to switch between open windows more easily than with Flip 3D

1
With My Expose installed and running, press the trigger key, which by default is F9. You’ll immediately see all open windows displayed in a tiled view, spread across the screen.

2
Move the mouse pointer over each window. As it is highlighted the window brightens and increases in size. Click it to select that window. It expands to fill the full screen using an attractive animation.

3
Right click the My Expose icon in the system tray and choose Configure. In the resulting window, you can select the triggers you want. Highlight Keyboard trigger and change the trigger key using the dropdown list.

Run Programs automatically

2009-09-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

You don't have to be present to run programs. Joe Cassels shows how to set them up automatically.

It's often useful to be able to run programs and utilities automatically at specific times or when triggered by an event so you don't have to be standing over your PC to get certain things done. The most obvious example is regular backup duties or items of system maintenance that you want to ensure you don't forget. This is what scheduled tasks were developed for. They've been available in recent versions of Windows, but they've improved significantly in Windows Vista.

By default Vista ensures that your hard drive is automatically defragmented and once you've configured your backup program, this will take place automatically to. This is achieved via the Task Scheduler, which you'll find in System Tools under Accessories. When you launch it, you'll see the list of tasks that are automatically set up by Windows itself, but you can opt to add to this list if you want to run other items unattended.

The walkthrough demonstrates how to add a basic task to the scheduler using a wizard. Each task is composed of a Trigger, which tells Windows when to run it and an Action, which determines what your PC does when the task is activated. In the simplest case, the trigger would be a time reached by the Windows Clock and the action might be launching a specific program. However, you can get a little more involved than that. It's possible to create a trigger for when the computer starts or shuts down. This can be very useful for PCs that aren't kept on all the time or where you have no regular usage pattern. Alternatively, you can set a system event to be the trigger.

Equally, actions can be more complex than just launching a program. You can specify a number of conditions for a program to run under, such as the default folder that it stores data in or which command line switches you want to use. In the advanced properties of a task, you can tell Vista to delay or skip the task if the computer is in use so you don't lose out on performance.

Schedule a Task
Set up a simple scheduled task using the Create Basic Task Wizard.

1
Choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Task Scheduler. Give your permission to continue when prompted. Under Actions, choose Create Basic Task. This launches a wizard that takes you through the process of setting up a task.

2
Provide a name and a brief description of your task, so you can identify and edit it later. Click Next and supply the Trigger, which could be based on timing or a system event. If you choose Daily, you'll then need to supply a time for the event on the next screen.

3
Choose from the actions offered, which include starting a program, sending an email or displaying a message. In the case of running a program, click next and browse to the executable file concerned. Provide any additional arguments if necessary and complete the wizard.

Look up an IP address

2009-09-21T09:00:00.000+01:00

Do you need to find out where an IP address originates? Joe Cassels demonstrates a Who Is search.

One of the problems that many people associate with the internet is the apparent anonymity afforded to its users. People sometimes hide behind this and use it as an excuse to behave badly. It’s not unusual to see people posting on message boards or via instant messaging using far more blunt language than they would face to face. There’s also a significant minority who get involved in crime, scams or cyber bullying.

It’s important to remember that communication online isn’t anonymous and that everything is ultimately traceable. Every PC connected to the internet has an IP address that can identify it. IP addresses leased to ISPs can be tracked and the ISP logs can be used to find out who was responsible for it at any particular time. This is how media companies find and prosecute people who have downloaded films and music illegally via BitTorrent. Usually a complaint is lodged with the ISP, followed by a threat of legal action if the relevant part of the log file isn’t disclosed.

This means that it’s also possible for you to find out the IP address of anyone that contacts you or who drops by your web site. Many web hosts enable you to check log files that contain the IP addresses of PCs that have requested your pages and email headers contain the IP address of each computer that the message has passed through. Headers can be forged, but you can usually find at least one genuine IP address in one.

Once you have the IP address that you want to investigate, you can use a WhoIs reverse look up to find out the company or ISP that’s responsible for the address,. This information is held at the registry for that part of the internet. European IP addresses are managed by RIPE www.ripe.net, American ones by ARIN www.arin.net and asian pacific ones by APNIC www.apnic.net. There are other registries covering smaller geographic areas, but these are the main ones. To look up an address go to one of these sites and use the WhoIs tool. The walkthrough demonstrates DNS Stuff www.dnsstuff.com which includes a search that polls each of these registries in one go.

Find that IP
Use a reverse look up search to find the location of an IP address

1
To find the IP address of an email sender, select the message in Outlook Express, right click it and choose Properties. Move to the Details tab and scroll through the header to find the IP address that you want. Select and copy it.

2
Browse to www.dnsstuff.com and scroll down to the tests. Copy the IP address into the IPWHOIS Lookup test field and click WHOIS. This polls all the main registries to find the IP you want.

3
The WHOIS results provide you with geographic information, including contact details for the ISP hosting the IP chosen. If the IP belongs to a company, then you'll get its contact details. You can report unpleasant behaviour via its abuse address.

Online Bookmarks

2009-09-14T09:00:00.000+01:00

Store all your bookmarks safely online so you can get to them from any PC

The web continues to grow and it’s not easy to keep track of all the sites you’ve bookmarked in your browser. If you use more than one PC or rely on internet cafes and public terminals you can’t really carry your list of favourites with you. Yet if you store them online, you can always access them from any computer that has an internet connection.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service which enables you to upload existing bookmarks and categorise them using tags. You can keep them private for just your use or share them with friends or the whole world. This means that you can benefit from other people’s recommendations. Sites that have been bookmarked thousands of times are likely to be more useful to you than those favoured by only one other user. Thus del.icio.us isn’t just a storage service; it enables you to get some idea of the quality of certain sites before you visit them. You can use the popular and recent links to find new or well-liked sites.

The walkthrough demonstrates how to sign up for the service and how to upload your existing bookmarks. For this to work, you need to have exported them from your browser in a bookmarks.htm file. You can do this in Internet Explorer by choosing Tools, Menu Bar, then File, Import and Export, Export Favourites and completing the wizard. In Firefox choose Bookmarks, Organize Bookmarks followed by File, Export and save the resulting file.

Once you have a list of bookmarks in del.icio.us, you can begin sharing them. By default all imported bookmarks are private until you share them. When you add a new bookmark directly to del.icio.us, you’re given the choice whether to share it or keep it private. Next to each entry in your bookmarks are links to edit, delete or share it if it isn’t already shared. Click Share, followed by Yes to share a link with the world. To change a bookmark, click Edit. You can do this to add or remove tags. These are keywords that you can use to group your bookmarks together. Click Save to complete editing that bookmark.

Upload your bookmarks
Store all your existing bookmarks or favourites online in del.icio.us

1
Browse to http://del.icio.us and opt to register. Provide your details including an email address and password. You’ll need to activate the service by clicking a link in the confirmation email before you can log into your account.

2
Return to http://del.icio.us and log in using your username and password. Follow the settings link. Here you can edit your profile and manage your account. Click import/upload to import your bookmarks.

3
You now need to browse to your bookmarks.htm file which you can export from your browser. Click Import now to upload the file. This uploads pretty quickly but it can take a few hours for your bookmarks to be imported but you can leave the site to let this happen.

Dalek Voices

2009-09-10T15:07:00.002+01:00

Have you ever wanted to "exterminate" with authenticity? Here's how to do the dalek voice.

Even before the renaissance of their parent series on TV recently many people were fascinated by them. This tutorial will enable you to record your voice and make it sound similar to the iconic aliens. However, we should point out that the intellectual property rights in copyright, trademark and anything else dalekky belong to the BBC and the estate of Terry Nation. If you decide to record some novelty phrases using this method, it's best to do so in the privacy of your own home and not as a public performance. We've recorded some sample sounds to accompany this tutorial, but these steer clear of any trademark phrases as no violation of rights is intended. It's just a bit of fun.

Audacity
We'll be using the open source sound editor Audacity to create this effect. It's freely available for download at h ttp://audacity.sourceforge.net/. Download and install the latest stable version for Windows. This enables you to record and edit sound recordings and you can also process the recordings with various plugins.

The dalek voice on the TV series is performed by actor Nicholas Briggs, who has had many years of practice creating the perfect voice. It's a combination of his own vocal performance and a piece of equipment called a ring modulator. Details of the precise settings are probably a closely guarded secret, but with a little trial and error and the willingness to make a fool of yourself, it's possible to come up with something that sounds pretty close to the real thing.

When preparing your own performance bear in mind that daleks tend to talk in a sing song manner, using staccato syllables in a rather nasal monotone. The pitch varies from dalek to dalek and it's the grating quality that the ring modulator brings to the mix. You can get a similar effect without digital processing by performing an opera singer like vibrato as you speak. You need a goodly amount of phlegm in the throat and a willingness to send yourself hoarse to pull it off though. It's better to use a ring modulator filter in Audacity.

To do this you'll need to install both the filter and a converter to make sure that it works in Audacity. This involves downloading some files and extracting them to the correct folder on your PC. The following annotation demonstrates how:

Audacity Plugins
For Audacity to support a ring modulator, you need to add some plugins.

Click on the image to see it full size

1. Plug-Ins folder
Make sure that the plug in files that you need to use are unzipped and copied to C:\Program Files\Audacity\Plug-Ins.

2. KillerRinger Ring Modulator
You can download the ring modulator from here. This was written by Toby Newman. It's a zip file, which you'll need to extract and then copy killerringer.dll to the plug ins folder.

3. VST Bridge
Killer Ringer is a VST plugin, designed to be used with Cubase, a commercial program. However, you can get it to work in Audacity by installing the vst-bridge.dll in the plug-ins folder. You can get it from here. Download the zip file, extract it and move the DLL into the folder as above.

Performance

Now you've got the plugins in place, you're ready to record your voice. Connect a microphone to your computer and launch Audacity. Do a few test runs to make sure that the position of the mic is OK and that your voice is being picked up properly.

The following walkthrough demonstrates how to record and process your voice to get the distinctive sound that we're after. We use a couple of different filters after the ring modulator one to help lift the sound and make it as alien as possible. Feel free to alter the settings and experiment a bit, but bear in mind that you really don't need much processing. If you're too heavy handed with it, you voice may become completely garbled and impossible to understand.

That alien sound
Are you ready to take over the universe? Limber up your voice now.

1
Record yourself
Launch Audacity and connect your microphone. Ensure that microphone is selected as the source and click the record button. Speak the phrase that you'd like to say, remembering to use a clipped, sing-song kind of voice.

Press Play to hear an example.

2
Add Ring Modulation
Stop recording and select the portion of voice that you want to process. Choose Effect > Killerringer. Set the sliders to very low levels. Try Root pitch 0.003, Speed 0.01 and Amount 0.01. Click preview and alter these if necessary. Click OK to apply the change.

Press Play to hear an example.

3
Normalise the sound
The ring modulator removes portions of the sound, so it becomes quieter. You'll need to boost it a little, so with the sound highlighted, choose Effect > Normalise. Keep both boxes ticked and click OK.

Press Play to hear an example.

4
Add Delay
You should have a pretty convincing sound by now, but if you want to make it sound more like it's coming from a PA system, you can always add some delay. Highlight the sound and choose Effect > Delay. Don't apply too much; we found decay amount 5, delay time 0.04 and number of echoes 1 worked well.

Press Play to hear an example.

To save your finished recording, choose File > Export as WAV and provide a filename. This leaves your alien voice as a .WAV file which you can playback or even set as a ringtone or SMS alert on your phone.

Control your start up list

2009-08-03T09:00:00.000+01:00

Take control over what begins when your computer boots.

Your startup list includes all programs and utilities that launch when you boot into Windows. Many applications add themselves to the startup list when you install them so that they are running in the background all the time. This is useful if the program is something that you need to run all the time like Google Desktop Search, which is constantly indexing your documents, but in many cases it simply provides an overhead which hits performance without giving you a lot back.

Spyware often adds itself to startup, as it wants to run continuously. You might also find that legitimate utilities may cause conflicts at startup when you only really need to use them once or twice a year. Clearly, gaining control of what runs when is desirable.

Startup entries can be found in the Startup group on the Start Menu. You can add or delete shortcuts from here by browsing to C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. You may also find some in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. To add an entry, just drag its shortcut here. Right click an unwanted item and choose Delete to get rid of it.

Only a small proportion of startup list entries are launched via the Start menu though. Most use the registry and can be found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. The reason many programs and most spyware items choose this route is that it’s much harder for a user to find and remove the offending article. Editing the registry is not for the faint hearted and should only be done once you’ve taken a backup.

However, help is at hand in the form of the System Configuration utility or MSConfig. This enables you to see which items are installed in the startup list and provides details on their location. It also provides an opportunity to temporarily disable entries so that you can find out if your PC starts ok without them. By disabling any startup programs that you don’t recognise or don’t want to run, you could improve performance and clear a number of irritating glitches at the same time.

Improve performance by editing your startup entries
Managing the startup list enables you to remove unnecessary items and troubleshoot glitches.

1
Choose Start, Run and type msconfig into the Open bar. Click OK. This launches the system configuration utility which enables you to investigate startup list entries. You can disable all of them by choosing Diagnostic Startup, or opt for Selective Startup to enable or disable individual items.

2
Move to the Startup tab and disable a startup list entry by clearing its box. Now reboot to see if its removal affects Windows. If it does, return to MSconfig and reinstate it. For a general Startup investigation, disable the lot and enable them one by one.

3
Once you’ve worked out which entries that you can do without, find out where each item is located using the location column. Some will be in the startup group on the start menu. Others may be in the Run key in the registry. If so, choose Start, Run and enter regedit. Now browse to the entry and delete it.

Verify Windows

2009-07-27T09:00:00.000+01:00

Make sure you're running genuine Microsoft software.

Unless you bought your copy of windows from market trader for a fiver and it came on a handwritten CD, it’s got to be genuine, right? Sadly, this isn’t the case. Large scale pirates can produce remarkably authentic looking CDs and have been known to pull the wool over the eyes of legitimate software vendors.

So how can you be sure that your copy of Windows is Kosher? If it came preinstalled on your computer, there should be a holographic sticker on its case, displaying the product key. This is a certificate of authenticity issued by Microsoft. If you installed your own copy, Product Activation provides a double check and prevents you from using one copy on multiple computers. To deal with the misuse of volume licence copies, Microsoft has introduced Windows Validation. This is the quickest way to check that your Windows installation is legitimate.

Microsoft is determined to ensure that its genuine customers enjoy tangible benefits compared to people using illegal copies of Windows. To this end, it has launched the Windows Genuine Advantage programme. This requires you to pass a simple Windows validation test before you can download additional Windows components and free programs developed by Microsoft. This makes items like Microsoft’s Antispyware program and non essential updates unavailable to anyone who can’t prove that their copy of Windows is genuine. Critical updates are still provided to all without Windows Validation, as Microsoft believes that these are vital in the battle against global viruses.

Once you’ve validated your copy of Windows a validation key is stored on your PC, so that you can quickly access all the downloads and features that are reserved for Genuine Windows customers. Browse here and follow the tabs for XP or Vista depending on which version of Windows you're running to find out the advantages of ensuring that your software is genuine.

Should your PC fail Windows validation, head to www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/ to find out more information about how to recognise genuine Microsoft software. You may need to report the matter to your software supplier. The validation tool provides you with a report to show your vendor.

Validate your Windows
Double check that your copy of Windows is legal and above board.

1
Browse to www.microsoft.com/genuine/. This page describes the benefits of Windows validation, including the availability of new free software and additional updates and functions for Windows . You can also initiate the validation process here.

2
Under Validate Now, click Validate Windows. This initiates the download and installation of the Windows Genuine Advantage validation tool. You may need to OK the download due to your browser’s security arrangements.

3
Once the software has installed and run, you should receive a confirmation message. In some cases, you may need to provide additional information, including the Windows key from your certificate of authenticity, which you can find on your PC case or with your installation media.

Undo a browser hijack

2009-07-20T09:00:00.000+01:00

Joe Cassels demonstrates how to use HijackThis!

It’s estimated that around 80% of all PCs suffer from spyware infection. Symptoms can range from a general slow down of the computer to strange behaviour caused by software conflicts. The most annoying spyware trick is undoubtedly the browser hijack, where your home and search pages are forcibly reset to whatever the author wants.

Internet Explorer is the most targeted browser due to its support of ActiveX and its widespread use. Service Packs for Windows XP tightened security a little as did IE 7, but it hasn’t completely stopped hijackings in their tracks. If you run an earlier version of Windows, you’ll have little protection. Some internet security suites protect your home and search pages, but they’re not always good at informing you of spyware infection, which is where HijackThis comes in.

Originally designed to enable users to find and remove the cause of a browser hijack, HijackThis has evolved and now provides valuable information that can help you to determine if your security has been compromised. It lists all running services, processes and browser extensions, providing a text file of the results which you can share with an expert or publish on an internet forum to get advice from others. Most, if not all of these entries will be legitimate and relate to Windows or the software that you’ve installed. However, if there is any known spyware activity, someone in the know would be able to spot it. There’s no signature file; HijackThis isn’t designed to automatically recognise and delete spyware. It’s simply a diagnostic tool to help you to find out what’s going on in your PC.

You can use HijackThis to delete processes and add-ons that you’ve identified as undesirable, but it can’t tell you which are legitimate and which aren’t. The beauty of this approach is that you don’t have to rely on a third party, who may have a vested interest, to define what is and what isn’t spyware. You may need additional help and advice to use the program effectively, but you don’t have to worry about invasive processes being reclassified as not spyware due to a legal challenge.

Hijack your spyware
Use HijackThis to examine your system to identify rogue entries

1 HijackThis comes as a zip file containing an EXE file. Extract the file to a suitable place on your hard disk and launch it. From the quick start page, choose “Do a system scan and save a log file”. This examines your PC for spyware processes and hijacking attempts.

2 The scan results are saved in a text file and displayed in the main window. You can select each item and chose to remove it. However, many are legitimate, so you may want to show the contents of the text file to a knowledgeable friend or on an online forum to get advice.

3 From the quick start screen, choose Open the Misc Tools section. You can use this to examine running processes or produce a startup list log. This saves a list of start up items in a text file. Open ADS Spy searches for hidden data streams, which may be evidence of spyware or hacker activity.

Customise context menus

2009-07-13T09:00:00.001+01:00

Do you feel you could be getting more out of right clicking? Joe Cassels introduces FileMenu Tools

The context menu that you get when you right click anything in Windows Explorer can be very useful. It gives you the ability to cut, copy and paste files and folders as well as quickly sending them to numerous locations among many other options. When you install new programs that integrate with the Windows shell, like WinZip, you'll find different options added to the context menu. Many of these are useful, but some are unwanted and get in the way. If you're not careful your context menus can balloon out of control.

FileMenu Tools gives you ultimate control over what does and doesn't appear in the right click context menus. You can banish any unwanted options by simply launching the configuration program and clearing the relevant boxes, but this utility's got more tricks up its sleeve than just yet. It offers a number of very useful additional tools that you can just as easily add to the menu to speed up the way you work.

For example, if you use the command line quite often, you'll know what a pain it is to change directory manually using the cd command. There's a lot of typing involved if you need to navigate to sub folders with long filenames and one spelling mistake can send you back to square one. Thankfully, FileMenu Tools includes an option called Command Line From Here. If you enable it, you just need to navigate to the folder that you want to use in Windows Explorer, right click and choose that option to open a command line prompt in this very directory.

If you want to be able to change the context menu options on the fly, make sure that you enable the Configure FileMenu Tools option. This gives you right click access to the configuration program, so you can quickly enable or disable different options.

If there's one simple change that you can make that will improve your computing experience it's taking control of your context menu. Stop putting up with the options offered by default. Use FileMenu Tools and get the menus you deserve.

Manage your menu
Change what appears in Windows Explorer right click context menus with FileMenu Tools.

1
Once you've installed FileMenu Tools, launch the configuration program. This enables you to change the right click options. The Commands tab provides a list of additional commands that you can add to the right click menu.

2
Check each command that you want to add. Now move to the Send To... menu tab. Here you can clear any boxes next to options added to Send To by third party programs that you don't want to use. To add a new location, click Add command and provide the details.

3
Move to the tab marked Commands of other applications. This enables you to remove commands added to the context menu by other programs. Clear the boxes next to those you don't want to see, so that your menu becomes more manageable. Click the green tick to confirm.

Check what's hogging your hard drive

2009-07-06T09:00:00.001+01:00

Even the biggest hard drives can fill up quickly. Joe Cassels shows how you can find the space hogs.

Hard drives just keep getting bigger, but it seems that we’re able to fill whatever space we’re given. With large video files, ISO images and drive image backups it’s easy to fill even the biggest disk in very little time.

The trouble is that many of us tend to use hard drives in a similar manner to a cupboard that’s used to house all the stuff that we’ve got no other room for. Open the door, throw it in and forget it. This approach is fine until you either need to find something or you need some more cupboard space.

Indexing tools like Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search have made the first problem easier to solve, but that of making more space can be difficult, especially if you’re unable to lay your hands on a virtual pitch fork to muck the drive out. Ideally you need to know what folders and files are taking up the most room and what file types are involved so you can archive or delete them to make more room.

Right clicking a file and choosing properties quickly enables you to find out its size, but it’s not practical to do this for all the hundreds of different files on your system. This is where a tool that enables you to visualise your hard drive space comes into its own. One such free tool is WinDirStat, which you can get at http://windirstat.info/.

The program interrogates your hard drives and gives you the result in a drive map. You can see at a glance the file types that are taking up most room. Depending on the type involved, you may be able to archive them for more space. It also helps to be able to quickly see how much room each folder takes up. You can reveal this information by expanding the drive in the top pane. Selecting a folder or file type results in the corresponding area on the drive map being highlighted. This treemap shows different file types in different colours and gives you an easy overview of the distribution of data on your drive.

Disk View
Find out exactly what’s taking up room on your disk and where it is.

1
Unzip WinDirStat to a convenient location on your hard drive and launch the executable file. Opt to examine all your disks. You’ll see some Pac man like animated characters moving backwards and forwards as your hard drives are examined.

2
Once complete, you’ll see a report on each disk, showing the percentage space used. On the right hand side, there is a break down according to file type, while at the bottom of the window is the treemap, which shows the position of the files on your disk.

3
Select a file type on the right to see it highlighted on the treemap. To include free space in the map choose Options, Show Free space. Select a folder to see the files inside it highlighted. This enables you to see which folders or file types are taking up most space.

Flowchart: When you can't browse the web

2009-07-03T19:57:00.004+01:00

If you can't connect to your favourite web page, try working through this flow chart. It covers the most common causes of web failure and shows you how to fix them. Click on the chart to see it full size.

Manage File Associations

2009-06-29T09:35:00.001+01:00

Joe Cassels shows you how to change which program opens a particular file type by default

A file association is simply the default program that opens a file type. When you double click a file in Windows Explorer, the association determines which program is launched. In a clean installation of Windows XP, you can expect most picture files to open in Paint for editing.

It’s possible to convert a file from one type to another if you open it in a program that supports both file types. For example, you could open a bitmap file in Paint and then resave it using Save As, changing the file type to JPEG. By doing this you have created two similar files of different type, but you haven’t altered the file association.

Things can get a bit more complicated when you have more than one program that could open a particular file type. A good example is if you install a photo editor like Paint Shop Pro. Photo file formats, such as JPEGs would now open in Paint Shop Pro instead of in Paint, as they would if that were your only picture editing program. The file association between JPEG and Paint was changed when you added the new software. When you install a new program, it often changes file associations in its favour. Well behaved applications ask what files you want to associate with them during their installation routines, but some sneaky programs don’t do this and just assume that you want them to take control of the relevant file types.

This can be a pain if you wanted to continue running your older program. However, you can edit the file association yourself to rectify the problem. In any Windows Explorer window click Tools, Folder Options and Switch to the File types tab. You may well be surprised by how many different file types your computer uses. In Vista, you can use the Preview option to view programs that could associate with the file type in question. Now click Change to alter its associated program. Select the program you want to use from the list and click OK. The walkthrough shows these steps in detail.

Different Association
Alter the default program that opens a particular file type in both Windows XP and Vista.

1
File associations are quite easy to alter in Windows XP or Vista. Right click a file of the type you want to alter and choose Properties. On the General tab, you’ll see the file type and the default application that it currently opens with. To alter this, click Change.

2
The resulting dialog in Vista shows a selection of programs. Choose the program that you want to use to open the file and click OK. You may need to click Browse and locate the program’s executable file. You can also get to this dialog by choosing Preview, Choose Default Program.

3
The dialog is slightly different in Windows XP, but it does the same job. Either select from the recommended programs or browse to the executable file as necessary. You can also get to this dialog in Windows Explorer by selecting Tools, Folder Options, File Types and clicking Change when you’ve highlighted the file type you want.

Partition Your Hard Drive

2009-06-26T15:42:00.001+01:00

Repartition your hard drive to make it more efficient and stable. Joe Cassels shows how to do this for free.

By dividing your hard drive into two or more partitions, you can almost have the benefit of two separate smaller drives in your system. This means you can separate the files that make up Windows from the data ones, preserving your valuable documents, images music and videos should the worst happen to Windows. You have to be careful when partitioning. It’s a good idea to have a full system backup before your go ahead.

GParted is a free, non destructive partitioning program and you can get it from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php. It’s an ISO image, which you’ll need to burn to CD using the disc burning program of your choice. You can then boot your computer from this disc and use the program to change your partition set up. You may need to enter the BIOS to enable booting from CD, if your computer doesn’t start from the disc. Just restart the computer pressing [del] repeatedly and then make a change to the boot sequence.

The walkthrough demonstrates how to use GParted to resize your existing partition and create a new one for data and backups. It’s as easy to use as its commercial rivals, but doesn’t cost a thing. It enables you to manage all major file systems, including the two most commonly used in Windows: FAT32 and NTFS. The former was used for Windows 9x and is less efficient and secure than NTFS. Some PC vendors still ship computers running Windows XP on FAT32 drives. You can improve performance and reduce the chances of a crash by converting your FAT32 partition to an NTFS one.

GParted enables you to format and resize both file systems, but you can’t convert between them without destroying your data. However, you can change a FAT32 partition into an NTFS one without damaging its data in Windows XP by using a command line tool. Open the command prompt by choosing Start, Run and typing cmd into the Open bar. Click OK. Now type convert d: /fs:ntfs, where d: is the drive letter of the partition you want to convert. You will need to provide the volume label and agree to dismounting the volume if necessary.

Add a new partition
Change a single partition system into one with two separate virtual drives using GParted

1 Once you’ve burnt the GParted ISO file to a CD and set your computer to boot from the CD drive, restart your PC with the disc in place and press enter at the Boot prompt. You will need to specify the language used, screen resolution and colour depth before the program launches.

2 Select your existing partition and choose Partition, Resize/Move. Click and drag the partition to the new size that you want, bearing in mind that yellow area denotes used space. You can’t make a partition smaller than the data it contains. Click Resize to return to the main screen.

3 Select the unpartitioned area and choose Partition, New. Opt to create an extended partition to include the rest of the disk space. Click Add. Now select this partition, choose Partition, New and opt for an NTFS logical partition to fill this space. Choose Edit, Apply to complete all your operations.

Fix AutoPlay menu problems

2009-05-25T09:00:00.000+01:00

Stop AutoPlay offering you options that no longer exist. Joe Cassels shows how to tame this menu.

AutoPlay is designed to save you time hunting for supported software whenever you insert a removable drive to your PC. In theory you should get a short list of actions that relate to the media that you connected, be it a flash drive, a pre-recorded CD/DVD or a rewritable disc. You can opt to set a default action that will run automatically or select one from the list. This is much quicker than sifting through the start menu to find the right program each time you want to use a disc.

You can edit the AutoPlay menu in Control Panel if you’re using Vista. Choose Start, Control Panel, Play CDs or other media automatically. For each media type you can then specify the action required from the drop down list. Choose Ask me every time if you want to see the AutoPlay menu when a disc is inserted, otherwise you can set a default action for the media type. In Windows XP, you’ll need to open My Computer and right click the device that you want to manage. Select the AutoPlay tab. You can now select the content type you want to edit and then select the action you want triggered by this kind of content. To display the AutoPlay menu, ensure that Prompt me each time to choose an action is selected. Click OK to confirm.

Editing default actions is all well and good, but what about AutoPlay entries that point to programs that no longer exist? Not all applications clean up after themselves properly when you uninstall them and a common piece of litter left behind is an orphaned AutoPlay entry. You can’t remove these in Control Panel, which is why you’ll need to use CleanHandlers to tidy up for you. This is a standalone executable that supports both Windows XP and Vista. The program is designed to scan the AutoPlay menu and display the options that it contains. You can manually delete items if you wish or get it to find and remove orphaned ones automatically. It’s a great way to keep your menu tidy with minimum effort.

Tidy up AutoPlay
Find and fix orphaned AutoPlay handlers with CleanHandlers

1
When you insert a removable disk or drive, you’re presented with a list of AutoPlay options. What’s on the list will depend on the kind of media you’re using and the software that you have installed on your PC.

2
In some cases you may have entries that refer to software that has been uninstalled. To clean it up, download and unzip Clean Handlers from http://windowsxp.mvps.org/autoplayhandlers.htm. Run the executable file from its location to see the contents of your list.

3
Select an entry to see which kind of media it supports. Click Scan and Fix invalid entries to check each AutoPlay handler and remove any orphaned ones. This shouldn’t take long. Click refresh to see the updated list.

Secure Your mobile (2)

2009-03-23T09:11:00.004Z

More ways to keep your mobile device safe online.

Secure Wi-fi connections
If you want to use wireless connections at home, make sure they’re encrypted.

Wi-fi enabled phones and PDAs support encryption. If you want to use them at home, make sure that your access point is set up securely. Go to your wireless router’s setup page and choose Security. The location of the WPA settings may vary from router to router. Choose TKIP if the option is available and opt for Pre-shared key (PSK) as the Authentication method. Select passphrase as the pre-shared key type, and then enter your passphrase. If possible, opt to only allow connections from WPA clients.

Back at your phone select Data Connections under Settings and opt to modify your Wireless LAN connection. Check that the SSID of your network is displayed, select it and choose Modify. For Network Authentication, choose WPA-PSK and use TPIK for Data Encryption. Enter your passphrase when prompted and confirm the change. You can now connect to your encrypted network using your phone in the usual way.
Make sure that you use the strongest encryption that your mobile device and wireless router can support.

Essential steps
Six simple ways to boost your mobile device’s security.

1
Use secure passwords to protect accounts and don’t save them on your device. You can make use of the secure password generator at www.grc.com/passwords.htm. Keep a record of them, but not with the mobile.

2
Most phones and PDAs are Bluetooth enabled. If you don’t use any Bluetooth accessories, disable Bluetooth completely. Make sure that your Bluetooth devices use authentication if you have them and don’t leave your phone in Discoverable mode.

3
More and more phones and PDAs can connect to wireless networks, which works out cheaper than other kinds of connection. Make sure that you use WPA encryption where supported if you want your phone to connect to your wireless access point.

4
Remember that a mobile browser can fall prey to the same problems as a desktop one. Launch Internet Explorer from the Start Menu and choose Options, General. Opt to clear cookies every so often or block them if you’re not going to use your phone with online retailers.

5
Also in Internet Explorer Options choose Memory. Here you can clear the history and other temporary internet files. Clearing these will prevent anyone else who gets access to your phone from following your internet trail.

6
If your mail server supports a secure SSL connection, make sure that your phone or PDA makes use of it. In your messaging options, edit your email account settings and ensure that Require SSL connection is ticked.

Getting Started with Twitter

2009-02-01T21:51:00.002Z

Join the exciting micro-blogging site, along with the rest of the world.

Twitter's http://twitter.com been around for a while, but recent high profile endorsements have definitely kicked it up a gear. The micro-blogging service enables users to post short messages whenever they feel like it. These build up to produce a life picture that conventional blogging can't. It's popular with celebrities because they can communicate directly with fans while retaining some control over what's sent out. Dedicated users gather mutual bands of followers who they can bounce ideas off and discuss matters of great or little significance.

When you first use Twitter, however, you could be forgiven for not understanding what the fuss is all about. When you've signed up at https://twitter.com/signup, you're invited to search for other friends who may be using the service, then you're deposited at a blank page with a text entry bar at the top labelled “What are you doing?”. You can enter a brief message here to start your twittering or click Find Friends to follow more people. When you follow someone you see his or her updates on this page, alongside your own ones. This page shows your twitter feed plus those of anyone you're following.

Following

Things don't really get interesting until you're following a number of people and you've begun to pick up your own followers. If you've found anyone you already know, follow them and they'll probably follow you back. To ensure that you've got some stuff to read, try following some news services like Guardian News http://twitter.com/guardiannews, CNN breaking news https://twitter.com/cnnbrk or BBC Technology https://twitter.com/bbctech. Doing this will make sure that you've got some messages to follow, but none of these services is likely to follow you back. You could also try adding some celebrities for interest. Stephen Fry https://twitter.com/stephenfry has nearly a hundred thousand followers at the time of writing and it's rising all the time. Philip Schofield https://twitter.com/Schofe is a very enthusiastic twitterer, as is Jonathan Ross https://twitter.com/Wossy. To follow one of these, go to the page indicated after signing into twitter and click Follow underneath the display picture. Click Home and you'll see updates from the people you're following.

Replying

Now try replying to one of the messages. Rest the mouse pointer on a message to highlight it and to the right you'll see two icons appear. One is a star, which you can click to add this message to your list of favourites. This is just like browser bookmarks only you're placing the short message or Tweet into your favourite list to retrieve whenever you click Favorites (sic) in the right hand pane. The other icon is a curved arrow, indicating a reply. Click this and the cursor will jump to the message entry box at the top of your home page. At the beginning of the message you'll see an @ sign, followed by the twitter name of the person you're sending it to. e.g. if replying to something Philip Schofield said, it will display @Schofe. Enter your message and click Update. It will appear on your home page and that of the person you sent it to. If you're message was to someone you know, you're likely to get a response. Celebrities with thousands of followers tend to get so many incoming messages that responding isn't practical. Stephen Fry wrote a blog entry to try and explain some of the challenges having such a vast number of followers presents. It's at www.stephenfry.com/blog/2009/01/29/twitter/, and well worth a read once you've got to grips with the basics of twitter.

Direct Messages

Your replies to anyone are publicly available. They appear on your twitter page at www.twitter.com/username (assuming that your user name is “username”). If you want to send a private message, click Direct Messages in the right hand pane. You can then opt to send a message directly to someone who is following you. Select the recipient's name from the drop down list. You can only send direct messages to people who follow you. Twitter users often refer to a direct message by the abbreviation DM.

Retweeting

If you see a message that starts RT, followed by a username it means that the person posting it has forwarded the message on from the original sender. This is known as a retweet or RT for short. It's a lot like an email forward, although you have to copy and paste the original message if you want to pass one on. Adding RT @username is a courtesy to the original poster.

Your Feed

What you can see and what other people see on Twitter can be quite confusing at first. When you click Home, the messages that appear on your home page are those that you've sent, plus any from people you're following. You'll also see public replies from people who you are following to other people you're following. If anyone has sent a message to a person you're not following, you won't see it here, but you can see it by clicking that person's username, as it will be listed on his or her profile.

Profiles

To see someone's profile, click their username. You'll see their short bio, a picture and whatever design they chose for their profile. The most recent tweets (that's the name for each short message, remember) that they've sent appear on this page, including any public replies they've made. What you won't see is any messages they've received from other people; you can get to these by clicking the username of someone who's been replied to. This action shows the original sender's profile, which will include the message they sent to elicit that reply. Confusing? Yes, but it makes sense once you go back through some replies to see the rest of the conversation. Give it a try.

This should be enough to get you started. More to follow!

Secure your mobile (1)

2009-01-23T09:03:00.005Z

Make sure that your smart phone, laptop or PDA doesn’t get compromised. Joe Cassels provides essential advice.

As we lead more and more connected lives, we’ve come to expect to be able to get online pretty much anywhere. With the latest generation of web capable mobile phones and wireless PDAs, it’s possible to walk around with the internet in your pocket. Sadly, along with the benefits of getting access to information at your fingertips come the disadvantages associated with connectivity. As laptops and handheld devices enable us to have portable computing, we also get portable viruses, spyware and Trojans.

Any device that’s able to execute code is vulnerable to virus attack. If it’s also got the means to connect to the internet, it can be used to propagate viruses and other malware. Add in the fact that most people also carry sensitive information around on phones and PDAs and you have a security nightmare waiting to happen. Portable devices are easy to steal and if they provide access to information that could enable someone to steal your identity or access any of your accounts, they’re far more valuable than the cost of the devices themselves.

Any security risk that could threaten your desktop PC is just as likely to threaten a laptop. Phones and PDAs lag behind PCs in the number of attacks that they sustain, but while many people don’t think about security considerations relating to these devices, hackers are going to increasingly target them.

There are a good number of viruses that have been specifically written to exploit SmartPhones and palmtop computers. It’s therefore a good idea to invest in an antivirus for your device. On a laptop you can use the free AVG antivirus, which you can get at www.free.grisoft.com, but you’ll need something a little more specialised for smaller computers and phones. F-Secure produces a mobile version of its antivirus for SmartPhones and PDAs running Windows for Pocket PC or Windows CE. It costs £24.95 for a single licence including a year of updates. See http://www.f-secure.co.uk/home_user/buyonline/avmobile.html for more details and information on which devices are covered. The short walkthroughs demonstrate how to scan your phone for viruses and how to update the mobile Anti-Virus.

Viruses are just one part of mobile security. Bear in mind that Trojans, spyware and even diallers could be developed to take advantage of SmartPhones. Antispyware software for mobiles isn’t yet a mature technology, because security software is reactive by its nature. Therefore your best bet to avoid these emerging threats is to remain vigilant and be very careful what content you open on phones and PDAs and be wary about the software that you install. Avoid unnecessary applications and always buy games and other content from reputable suppliers.

If other devices can connect to your phone then it’s vulnerable to hackers. Even if there isn’t any juicy data stored on your device that might be of interest, its connectivity is desirable in itself. If connected to a wireless network, your mobile could be used as a relay to help disguise the location of the hacker. It could also be pressed into service as a zombie to forward spam or other data when it is connected to the net.

The key to securing a portable device like a SmartPhone is in thinking of it as a computer. Any threat that could exploit your PC could also be modified to work on a phone. You therefore need to take the same kinds of precautions to protect it. In addition to running an antivirus, consider installing a firewall, especially if your phone is used online a lot. Consider the ways that your phone can send and receive data. If it has an infrared connection make sure it’s disabled when not in use. Do the same for wireless and Bluetooth connections. Where you are using such connections, ensure that you apply whatever security features your device supports, be it encryption or password protection. Think about what might make your mobile attractive to hackers and head them off.

As most mobile browsers support full web page access, they’re just as vulnerable to being abused by unsafe sites and data harvesting methods. Consider blocking cookies if you don’t log into services and need to be remembered. These could be used to track your online activities. It’s also a good idea to avoid storing passwords for web services on your mobile. Should it go missing, you could be losing more than just the phone.

Other data harvesting techniques such as phishing are just as effective when applied to mobile devices as they are on computers. Treat emails appearing to come from financial organisations or other services requiring you to sign in with suspicion. Avoid following links in emails, use your favourites or enter the web page directly. This may be fiddly if you’re using a phone, but a little

Hotspot Security

Make sure that your security is highest when logging into a hot spot.

Hotspots are very convenient places that enable you to go online with minimum fuss using a laptop, PDA or mobile phone. You can find hotspots as open networks; the security is applied after you connect to the network, enabling the provider to charge you and limit internet access. However this means that your laptop or PDA may be vulnerable when connected because other hotspot users may be able to access your device.

To ensure that no one can take advantage of this vulnerability, make sure that you have a firewall installed that can set up your wireless adapter as an internet device and not one connected to the local network. On a laptop, your best bet is probably the free Comodo firewall, which we featured in last issue’s complete guide. You can get it from http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com.

It’s also a good idea to make sure that you have no shared resources on your laptop. If your firewall failed these would be visible to all as network places and, depending on your settings, your files could be read, modified or deleted. Shared folders have a little hand underneath the folder icon in Windows XP or earlier. This shows as a small icon depicting two users in Windows Vista. To unshared a shared folder in Windows XP, right click it and choose Sharing and Security and clear the box marked Share this folder on the network. Click OK to confirm In Vista, right click the folder and choose Share, Stop Sharing.

Comodo Firewall helps prevent other hotspot users connecting to your laptop.

Scanning a SmartPhone

Use F-Secure Mobile Antivirus to scan for viruses

To start the antivirus choose Start, Anti-Virus if you’re using a smartphone, otherwise opt for Start, Programs, Antivirus under Pocket PC. To start a manual scan, if you’re not already prompted to run one, choose Scan All

The program examines each file on your portable device. You can click Cancel at any time to stop the scan. If an infected file is found, you’ll see a message. Click Yes to see more detail about the infection.

If your phone of PDA has a virus infection, you’ll find it in the infections view. You can opt to quarantine or delete infected files. If you think the file has been flagged by mistake, you can opt to release it. Rescan to ensure that there are no more infections.

Secure Google Calendar

2009-01-18T21:27:00.003Z

Google calendar can unwittingly be used to send you spam. Joe Cassels closes this loop hole for you.

PC security and the fight against spam are ongoing battles. Just as new ways to improve your security are developed, crackers and virus writers look for other ways to compromise your computer. Spammers are no different and as antispam technology improves, they have to look for other ways to peddle their wares.

One loophole that’s become popular for spammers to exploit is the feature in Google Calendar that enables you to invite other people to events that you’re holding. It’s intended as an easy way to let colleagues know about a coming meeting or to invite friends to a drinks party without going through the rigmarole of contacting each one individually with details of date, time and place to find out who can and can’t attend. However, the default settings on Google Calendar make this an easy exploit for spammers because all they need to have is your Google Mail address.

The calendar is set by default to add invitations to your appointments automatically when you receive them. New appointments can also be set to automatically remind all guests by email a short time before the event starts. As the email comes from your calendar, it’s very unlikely to be filtered as spam because this is a trusted address that will probably be white listed. The result is that a spammer is able to pollute both your inbox and your calendar with appointments for get rich schemes, sexual enhancement seminars and all the usual rubbish that he or she is peddling.

It’s pretty easy to fix the problem. Just log into your calendar and change the default setting that automatically adds all invitations to your appointments to one that doesn’t. You might also want to turn off the utility that displays events that you’ve declined if you have started receiving this kind of spam. The walkthrough demonstrates how to use this simple tweak to secure your account.

As the problem becomes more widespread, it’s likely that Google will change the default setting so that spammers can’t just add you to their appointments. However, until this happens, you can protect yourself by tweaking your settings.

Stopping Google Calendar Spam

Spammers can add you as a guest to calendar events. Here’s how to stop them.

Out of the blue, you receive an email reminder from your calendar, telling you about an appointment. When you open your calendar, there it is, advertising a product peddling the usual sleaze that spam does so well.

The spammer was able to add it to your calendar by finding your Google mail address and adding you to an event set up on his calendar. Your calendar automatically accepted the event and reminded you of it.

To prevent this kind of spam, open your Google calendar and choose Settings. On the General tab, scroll down to ‘Automatically add invitations to my calendar’. Change the default setting to No, instead of Yes and save your settings.

Bumper Christmas Guides

2008-12-23T20:19:00.011Z

Joe Cassels demonstrates ways to include your computer in the festivities.

As the year draws to a close we find ourselves caught up in the inevitable festive season. With its heady mix of parties, traditions and excited children, you can be forgiven for finding Christmas a tad stressful. However, your PC may well be able to help out. Computers and Christmas may seem to be unlikely bedfellows, apart from being given as presents. But there are key ways that a PC can help out during the holidays to improve organization, keep you in touch with loved ones and make the season more fun.

We’ll demonstrate a number of festive uses that you can put your computer to over the long dark evenings of the solstice. You could start by making a list of everyone who’s sent you greetings this year. Put the names and addresses into an Excel Spreadsheet or a table in Word and you’ll be able to use it for your card list next year. You could even get word to print the envelopes for you.

There are other important ways to help stay in touch with friends and relatives at this time of year. Very few people have no email address at all, so you could make use of the speed of electronic communication and send Christmas greetings by email. We’ll show you how to put together some festive stationery to give your messages a little sparkle. If you’ve been disorganized and not managed to get your cards out, why not send out Christmassy emails with a little disclaimer on them saying that you haven’t sent out cards to save on trees? It’s becoming quite fashionable to send emails or e-cards instead of Christmas cards and then make a donation to charity of the money that would have been spent on cards.

Closer to the day, you can use the power of the internet and instant messaging programs to link family groups together that couldn’t travel to one another. Set up a webcam, microphone and messenger and you could even enjoy Christmas dinner together.

Television often dominates Christmas, with families gathering to watch old movies or specials of well loved programmes. Your PC can help make sure that you don’t miss your favourite shows by giving reminders or even recording them for viewing later on.

Photos of friends and relations having fun are great to share, but even more fun if you don’t have to wait a long time to see them. By uploading them to a photo sharing website, you can share them with everyone you know and even discuss them over instant messaging. Instead of a round robin Christmas letter, capture the moment in a family blog that others can read and comment on online. If you’re worried about the cost of Christmas, we’ll show you how to monitor your spending using a spreadsheet to help you budget properly for the season next year.

Before you get started, if you want your PC to look the part, why not put up some digital decorations? You’ll find screensavers, wall paper and games with a seasonal feel at CMB Software http://cmbsoftware.com/christmas.htm.

Festive Stationery

We’re used to sending Christmas cards at this time of year, but what about Christmas emails? Both Outlook Express and Windows Mail in Vista enable you to use customized stationery, giving your email a personal look and feel. If you get a card from someone who wasn’t on your list and you don’t have time to post one back, why not say thanks electronically, with a little festive cheer added for good measure?

The easiest way to apply different stationery is by selecting one of the readymade files that already exist in Outlook Express. Choose Tools, Options, Compose. Here is all you need for customising your email. The middle section of this tab is devoted to stationery. You can select different designs for mail and news postings. Check the box marked Mail and press Select. Choose from the various HTML files that contain the graphics for the notepaper. Put a tick next to Show preview and highlight one of the files to view a thumbnail. Try out several options until you find one you like. Click your choice, followed by OK twice. New email messages will now use that stationery.

Alternatively, you can select different stationery for each message you write. With your inbox selected, click the drop down arrow on the right hand side of the Create Mail button on the toolbar. Choose Select Stationery and make your choice. Press OK to open the new mail message using the design you chose.

Outlook Express stationery files are just standard HTML; the same basic format that web pages use. You’ll find plenty of these online, many of which are available to download for free. As long as the file is placed in the correct folder, Outlook Express will recognise it as stationery and provide it as an option to apply as above. The directory in question is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery, where C is the hard drive used to store programs and Windows. Any image files referenced in the HTML need to be deposited here as well.

There are plenty of download sites that offer Outlook Express stationery. Just run a search for email stationery to turn some up. Alternatively, for a set of different Christmas designs, head to About.com:Email, which has quite a selection at http://email.about.com/od/freechristmasstationery/Free_Christmas_Stationery_for_Outlook_Express_and_Outlook.htm.

Design Your Own

Ready-made notepaper isn’t for everyone and you may decide to create your own. This isn’t difficult. The Stationery Setup Wizard steps you through the process neatly. You can select graphics files to use as a header or tiled behind the text as a continuous image. Bear in mind that a strong image repeated all over the page can make your text impossible to read, so exercise restraint.

The wizard is a bit limiting because the range of background colours available is small and several are bright colours, which make text hard to make out. However, there is an alternative. You can make your stationery by creating an HTML file using any web editing program. Word or FrontPage are ideal. Create your design as if you were making a web page and save it as HTML into your stationery folder to make it accessible by Outlook Express.

Assuming you use Word, here’s how to make some very simple stationery. Create a new document and insert a suitable picture or logo from your own collection or from clip art. Select Format > Background and choose a suitable colour or texture from those on show. Now choose File > Save As and browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery. Give the design a name and change the file type to web page (*.htm; *.html). It’s now ready to use.

Add a greeting to your signature

Why not spread a little Christmas cheer whenever you send an email, by adding a greeting to your signature? Signatures are basically blocks of text that you can set to appear at the bottom of your emails. They can be plain text or small HTML files. However the maximum size for a signature is 4KB, so if you plan to use HTML to make it look pretty, you’ll need to use a very efficient web design program or code it yourself. While Word is capable of generating web pages, it isn’t very efficient and won’t manage to create a small enough signature.

On the Signatures tab, press New and give it a suitable name. Now enter the text you want to use, which may be your contact details or just a general observation or quote. If you’re stumped for things to say, check out some Christmassy observations at Quote Garden www.quotegarden.com/christmas.html. Make sure you properly attribute any quotation that you use. Now check Add set to all outgoing messages.

As the day itself grows nearer, your thoughts may turn towards managing the holiday itself. It’s all too easy to forget items in the rush to get things sorted, so take a little of the strain off yourself and use a checklist to get things together? You’ll find some useful advice at WikiHow, which includes guides on how to make cakes, decorations and stockings. Browse to www.wikihow.com and search its archive of advice.

Managing the holiday viewing

Because of the shortage of daylight hours and the poor weather at this time of year, many people find that the Christmas season revolves around the TV. Unfortunately, it can be quite a source of conflict as family members squabble about what to watch. With all the added channels that digital television brings there are bound to be clashes. You may not always be able to resolve these, but better knowledge of the schedules will help, as most programmes are repeated within their first week of broadcast. The trick is to find out when. It helps to have a searchable electronic programme guide that you can check out without interrupting other people’s avid TV watching.

You can get just such a thing in the form of Digiguide. This is an offline programme guide that you can regularly update via the internet. It sorts the schedules according to your preferences and, if you keep it running all the time, it will provide you with pop up reminders and suggestions for things you might like to watch. You can get a free trial of Digiguide from www.digiguide.com. A full subscription costs £5.99 per year. You’ll need to provide a valid email address to get the download link.

Once downloaded and installed on your PC, you’re prompted to configure the guide. First provide your country details, followed by your TV region. You now need to supply details of your TV provider. If you use Freeview, Sky Digital or a cable operator, select the company name from the list. Otherwise, opt for Terrestrial only.

Manage your viewing with Digiguide

Let Digiguide manage your program choices so you don’t miss the best of the Christmas telly.

Head to www.digiguide.com and opt to download the free trial. First provide your country details, followed by your TV region. You now need to supply details of your TV provider. Use the sliders to indicate which type of shows you like. This information will help Digiguide make viewing suggestions and sort the schedules for you.

Depending on your choice of TV provider, you’ll now be presented with some options for additional channels Scroll down the list and tick each channel that you want to view. Click OK and you’re taken to the grid view of programmes currently showing. You can also search for programmes using the find facility.

Once you’ve completed the set up, Digiuide will go online to fetch the most recent listings. You can sort these in a number of ways. Choose Multi-channel grid to see a list of what’s on over the next couple of hours on all available channels. Programmes will be colored to help draw your attention to shows that you might like. Thumbs up symbols indicate suggested viewing. To find out more about a particular listing, right click it and choose Extra programme information. Now when you can see an argument brewing over what to watch at a certain time, open Digiguide and run a search for the programmes concerned. You’ll probably be able to find a suitable repeat to watch at another time or to set your recorder for.

One sure fire way to prevent clashes is to make sure that you can record TV for watching at another time. Windows Media Center in Vista Home Premium and above will handle this for you, as long as you have a TV capture device installed in your Computer. USB Freeview receivers cost as little as £25, which isn’t much to pay to pick up another source of TV recordings. Media Center has its own programme guide and you can set programmes to record well in advance of their transmission. You can also use Media Center to manage your family videos and recordings. The walkthrough demonstrates how to add a folder of video files to your library so you can easily select them for viewing.

If you don’t have Vista, you can still get media centre capabilities by installing a third party program like Media Portal or GB-PVR. These provide similar features to Windows Media Center.

Manage your Christmas recordings

Use Windows Media Center in Vista to catalogue your videos to watch over the season.

Launch Windows Media Center and on the start screen, use the mouse or your remote to scroll through the options until you get to Tasks. Now move across to Settings and scroll down to Library Setup and select it.

Choose Add folder to watch. This enables Media Center to include all the video files in the folder that you choose in the video library. Now you need to indicate where the new folder is. You can add folders from this PC or from the network.

Click Next and browse to the folder that you want to add. Use the buttons with plus signs to expand the folders that you see. To select a folder put a tick in the box next to it. Click Next and Finish.

Share your Christmas photos

Christmas and family holidays are the main times of the year when people take most photographs. Thanks to digital technology and the internet it’s now possible to share your photos with friends and family who are miles away within minutes of taking them. All you have to do is transfer them to your PC and upload them to a website.

The most common way of displaying photos online is as a collection of thumbnails or small versions of the images. When you click on a thumbnail, you get to see a larger version of the picture, although even this one is likely to have been resized from the original which are often hundreds of kilobytes or even megabytes in size, depending on the quality of the camera that took it and the format the pictures was saved in.

A big photo doesn’t look great on a web page, especially if your visitor’s browser is set to a low resolution. There’s also the problem of finite web space and bandwidth. While broadband is widespread, it’s still not a good idea to assume all your visitors are using it. Some web hosts limit the amount of data transferred to and from a web site, too. If your pictures are large, each time someone views one, it will erode away some of your bandwidth allowance. All in all it’s better to resize your images to a manageable size.

If you’re making an online album like this, you’ll need to make your photos a sensible size for the web. You may need to generate the little thumbnails to go with them too. Any photo editor program will enable you to resize pictures, although some provide special thumbnail features. Media Resizer Free is a good one. It enables you to change the size of pictures and add watermarks to claim your ownership. You can get it from www.mediaresizer.com. If you want to batch convert images, you’ll need to get the paid version, which costs £15.78.

Launch Media Resizer Free and click Load Image. Browse to the picture that you want to resize and click Open. Under Resize image, choose the size of the thumbnail that you want in pixels height and width. Also choose if you want to sharpen the image or to crop to an interesting area. Click Add Watermarks and select whether you want to use an image file or some text to watermark your thumbnail. In the case of text, enter the string you want to use, taking advantage of the date and copyright symbol buttons. Choose the position of your text and set the opacity. Click OK and Change Style. Here you can select a style for your thumbnail buttons or place a mask in front of the image to make stars or other interesting shapes. You can also choose to rotate the image in the thumbnail to a certain degree. When you’re happy with your changes, click OK, followed by Save Image.

Instead of making your own web page, you might like to try a photo album service like PBase (www.pbase.com). This provides you with 10MB space for pictures free; if you go beyond this you’ll need to pay. Numerous albums are available for you to browse through and you can leave comments for the photographers concerned. This is a natural progression from the kind

Browse to www.pbase.com. This is a huge collection of public photo galleries. Browse round a few to get a feel of how the place works and have a look at the most popular galleries. To make your own one, click Create your account. Provide your sign up information, including a valid email address, as this is where your confirmation and password will be sent. Your email won’t be displayed alongside your album, so don’t worry about this generating spam. Check out the privacy statement though. Click register. Once you’ve registered, you can sign in using your email address and password. Scroll down the welcome page and take this opportunity to customise your account settings. Add a copyright message and decide how your pictures will appear. You can also decide on who can leave comments on your photos.

Click Update. Now use Winzip or another archiving utility to make a zip archive of all the pictures that you want to upload. PBase handles multiple images in compressed format in Zip or Tar archives. Add the photos you want and save the archive to a safe place. Back at the PBase site, scroll down to Upload Photos to this Gallery. Click Browse and locate your zip file. Click Open, followed by Upload image. If your archive is large the upload may take some time, especially if you’re on a dial up connection. Once uploaded, the images are unzipped automatically. PBase will inform you when all your photos have been unzipped successfully. Browse to your gallery and examine the thumbnails. Click one to enlarge it. Click Edit this Gallery to add more images or to change the titles for each image. Once you’re happy, share the URL of your gallery with friends and family.

Yule Blog

Pictures may be worth thousands of words, but we still need to tell other people what we’ve been up to. Instead of the dreaded round robin letter that some people send out at Christmas, why not put your family news into a blog? It’s easily updated and you’ll save on postage. There are various blogging services available, including Blogger www.blogger.com, Wordpress http://wordpress.com/ and LiveJournal www.livejournal.com. They’re free to use and easy to sign up to. You can enter your posts online or write it using a word processor. A significant development in Word 2007 is the ability to upload blog postings directly. You could only achieve this before by either cutting and pasting into a web interface from Word or by sending your text to a compatible blog service by email. Now you can manage and publish posts directly from Word and you can even include images by defining a location to upload them to.

To create a blog posting click the Office button and choose New, New Blog Entry, Create. If this is your first blog post in Word, you’ll be invited to enter your blog provider details, including the username and password. All popular blog services are included, but you can also post to any service that uses Atom or MetaWebLog by entering the posting URL and your account details. Now all you need to do is enter the title and content of the post and click Publish when you’re done.

Monitoring Christmas Costs

Christmas is a time when you can easily lose track of spending with multiple office parties to visit, various family gatherings and friends to entertain and cater for, not to mention the perennial children’s presents. It seems all too easy to adopt a “pay now, worry about the credit card bill later” attitude, but that road leads to trouble and misery. This is why it helps to put together a spreadsheet to work out exactly what you spend on Christmas this year so that next year you’ll be able to budget for it and you won’t feel the pain the following January.

The spreadsheet that we’ll set up uses three different sheets. This enables us to keep some cells separate from the main data so it doesn’t matter how many transactions appear on the main sheet. The most notable example is where we use sheet 2 to store the totals instead of putting these at the bottom of the table on sheet 1. We don’t have to guess how many transactions we’ll use; we can spread out as much as we like and still see the totals by flicking to the second sheet. We also use sheet 3 to set up the different categories. This gives us room to add new categories later on without having to displace any cells.

Categories are a key part of this auditing approach to your Christmas spending. They enable you to track your finances according to what you’ve spent your money on. When you come back after inputting the data you can quickly see what’s been spent in each category and it doesn’t take much to come up with a total for each. This is a powerful technique which you can also apply to coming up with cost centre totals if you need to file your own taxes. Follow the six step walkthrough to begin putting your spreadsheet together. We’ve used Excel 2007, but you’ll find similar tools in earlier versions of Office.

Setting up your spreadsheet

Produce an excel spreadsheet that will help to monitor your Christmas spending.

Launch Excel with a blank worksheet open. Move to the tab marked Sheet 2 and then label cells A1, A2 and A3 with Total Outgoings, Total Credits and Account Balance respectively. Switch to cell C1 and enter this formula =SUM(Sheet1!D2:D1000). In C2 enter = SUM(Sheet1!E2:E1000). In C3 type =C2-C1

Click the C button at the top of the column to highlight it. On the ribbon, select Home, Number, Currency. This will format all the numbers in this column as money. Highlight rows 1-3 and select the font and size you want to use from the Font section of the Home tab.

Select the Sheet1 tab. We now need to label cells A1 to F1 with suitable headings. We suggest Date, Paid to, Category, Paid out, Paid in, Balance. Make sure that the columns are sized to accommodate the headings and format them in a clear, bold font.

Christmas spending can be quite complex, so it will probably go on beyond one sheet. To make sure that the headings stay visible however far down the columns you move, click in cell A2 and select Freeze panes on the View tab of the Ribbon. Cells below this row will scroll underneath the headings.

Now we need to ensure that the monetary entries are formatted as money. Select columns D, E and F and then choose Home, Number, Currency. Now Highlight column A, and choose Number, and choose Long date from the drop down list.

Most money managing programs enable you to categorise payments so you can track them more easily. Move to Sheet3 to set up your list of categories. Type your first one into cell A1, the next into A2 and so on down the sheet until you’ve used all the categories that you want.

The walkthrough leaves off when you’ve put together a set of categories for your spending on sheet 3. You now need to make these work as a drop down list in sheet 1. Highlight column A which now holds your categories. Select Formulas, Define Name. Enter Category in the resulting dialog and click Add, followed by OK. Sort the categories alphabetically by choosing Data, Sort and selecting A to Z. Click OK. Move back to Sheet 1 and select column C. Choose Data, Data Validation, Settings. In the Allow box select List and enter =Category into the source box. Don’t forget the equals sign or this won’t work. Tick In cell drop down and click OK. If you’ve missed out a category, don’t worry. You can add a new one at any time, by moving to Sheet 3 and adding them to column A. If you want to keep them in alphabetical order, you’ll need to sort them again as we did before.

You’ve now got to enter each cost as it crops up. See how to do this in the box “logging your expenditure”. You now have a basic spreadsheet that will enable you to see how much you’ve spent on mistletoe and sherry which always shows you how much money you have left. You can now look at ways to improve it. Putting the totals on sheet 2 enabled us to sort the data easily, but what if you want to be able to see them while dealing with the main data entry? You can do this by opening a second window.

Select New Window from the View tab on the Ribbon. You may not yet notice a change because you’ll probably have the same view in the second window which has just opened on top of the original. However, choose Arrange All, Horizontal from the same tab and now you’ll see two identical windows, one on top of the other. In the top window, change to sheet 2 so that you can see the totals. You can resize this window so that only the totals show, giving you more room to work with the main data window.

It can be useful to arrange the spreadsheet data so that you see the same categories together. You can do this by sorting the sheet. Select all the columns that contain data; in this case it’s A to F. Now choose Data, Sort and select the column that you want to sort by. Make sure that “My data has headers” is selected. Click OK to sort. You can opt to sort in a hierarchical fashion so that you sort by category first and then by date. Click Add Level to add a second criterion to sort by.

When you’ve completed your spreadsheet and tracked all your spending you can use it to come up with a total cost of Christmas. You’ll see this as you r total outgoings on sheet 2. To spread the cost of next Christmas over the whole year, you need to divide this by 12, allow a little for inflation and put this amount away each month.

The key to a good Christmas is being organized, remaining calm and providing a number of fun diversions. Thankfully your PC can manage most of these tasks, leaving you with a little more time to enjoy food drink and making merry.

Stay in touch at Christmas

If you can’t be with family and friends get your PC to bring them to you.

As Eastenders constantly reminds us, Christmas is a time for family, but it’s not always possible to be with the ones you love on the big day itself. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t spend some time together. Thanks to voice over IP and videoconferencing you can talk and see each other from thousands of miles away.

Programs like Windows Live Messenger (http://uk.messenger.imagine-live.com) and Skype (www.skype.co.uk) mean it’s possible to call your family for little or no cost other than that of your internet connection. Calls to other instant messenger or Skype users are free but you can also stay in touch via their landlines or mobiles by buying Skype Out credits. Hook up a webcam and microphone to your PC and you can watch each other pulling the crackers and share the corny jokes together.

If you opt to keep in touch by email, why not jazz things up with a little festive stationery? It’s easy enough to make your own and you can help spread the spirit of the season. In Outlook Express or Windows Mail, select Tools, Options, Compose. To make your own letter paper, press the button marked Create New. This starts the Stationery Setup Wizard. Click Next to proceed. Select an image or browse to your own picture file. Choose the position of the graphic from the relevant options. Tiling enables you to repeat it to make a continuous image in a line or all over the page. Select a colour if required and click Next. Select a font, point size and colour before clicking Next again. Text appearing over strong graphics looks busy and is hard to read. Create top and left margins to ensure your writing isn’t superimposed over the pictures. Click Next, supply a filename and press finish to complete the creation of your stationery.

Give your emails a festive touch with some specially designed Christmas stationery.

Tuning up audio and video

Make sure that your relatives can see and hear you when you talk online at Christmas.

Plug in your microphone and/or camera. Install the drivers if necessary. Check that they have power. Choose Tools, Audio and video setup. This runs a wizard that checks your camera, speakers and microphone. Click next and select the soundcard or speaker set that you’re using.

Click Play Sound to check your speakers and adjust their volume. Click Next and talk into the microphone and watch the playback indicator. Change the volume and mic position until the indicator stays in the yellow zone when you speak. Click Next.

Select your camera from the drop down list. You should see the picture that your camera is recording. Adjust your position and that of the camera so that the image is what you’d like others to see. If you need to alter brightness or contrast settings click Options.

Logging your expenditure

Once you’ve set up your spreadsheet, here’s how to use it to track costs.

Having got the basic spreadsheet set up as in the walkthrough, you need to enter your Christmas costs. Start by entering an opening balance, which you can take from an arbitrary date before your Christmas spending begins. Put the date in cell A2 and enter Opening Balance in the Paid to column. Put any positive balance into the paid in column. If you’re overdrawn, put it into the paid out column. You can now start entering the transactions that you want to follow. Put the first one into the A3 to E3. Use the drop down list in column C to select a category for this payment.

Into cell F3 we need to put a formula to work out the balance. Enter =F2+E3-D3 and press enter. Type in the rest of your transactions as you make them. To keep the balance up to date, we can use the formula that we used before. Select F3 and choose Home, Copy. Now select the rest of column F below F3 and choose Home, Paste. The formula will be updated for each of the cells below.

Once you’ve logged a set of transactions in this way, you can get Excel to sort them according to the different headings on your spreadsheet. Sorting the sheet at this stage will mix up the opening balance into your transactions. To exclude it, select the second row by clicking the number 2 on the left hand side. Right click it and choose Hide.

Use the drop down list of categories that you created earlier to assign cost centres.

After the holidays

Christmas chores drag on long after the day itself, but your PC can come to the rescue here, too.

Come Boxing day and the long period after, you can find yourself in a house with restless kids, a glut of cold turkey and a stack of thank you letters to write. You can find out things to do with the leftover turkey by going to http://www.leftoverchef.com/ and you can manage the other two problems by helping your offspring write thank you letters mail merging them in Word. To mail merge, you need a data source and a document that contains place markers for the information that changes. The data can come from an Excel spreadsheet, a table in Word, a database or a contacts list.

In Excel create a simple sheet including the name, address and present given by each generous benefactor. Save this and open Word. Choose Tools, Letters and Mailings, Mail Merge in Word 2003 or select Mailings, Start Mail Merge, Step by step Mail Merge Wizard in Word 2007. This opens a Mail Merge pane on the right hand side of the window. Select letter and opt to use the existing document. Under Select Recipients choose Use existing list. Browse to find your Excel file. Open it and choose the first sheet available. You’ll now see the different records in your data source. If there are any recipients that you don’t want to use, clear the check boxes next to them. Click ok and Next: Write your letter.

Enter the text of the letter that you want to keep common to all documents. When you come to a piece of data that you’d like to vary, click More Items under Recipient Information and select the field that you want to use. Click Insert and Cancel to continue typing. Continue to type your letter, inserting different information in the same way. Merge fields that will change in the final document will appear marked by little curly brackets. Complete your writing and click Next: Preview your letters. This will enable you to see the data in place. Scroll through the different recipients to check that the final letters make sense. Once you’re happy that they do work, select Next: Complete the merge, Edit individual letters, All, OK. This merges the data to a new document, which you can further edit or print out for sending.

Make sure your thank you letters get done, by putting together a mail merge.

Share other people's iTunes libraries

2008-12-18T09:00:00.003Z

Sharing music just got easier! Joe Cassels uses Mojo to browse other iTunes libraries on a network.

It’s good to share and many people love to swap music on disc or simply by listening on an MP3 player with shared headphones. However, it’s also possible to share the tracks in your iTunes library with friends or family on the same network. You just need the free Mojo application which you can get from http://www.deusty.com/software/download_mojo.php.

It’s worth noting at this point that copying music covered by copyright is illegal and that copyright law is notoriously complex. In many cases simply copying music to your PC is viewed as an infraction of copyright, so consult a lawyer if you’re considering doing anything with copyright material.

Mojo for Windows works on the local network only, which provides a sensible limitation as you’re unlikely to share tunes beyond the scope of your own home. However, it is possible to get the program working across the internet if you set up a virtual private network (VPN). You can do this with the free Hamachi software, https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp?lang=en if you want to expand the scope of your music sharing. This enables you to add other PCs on the internet to your local network, so it’s important to only use it with people you trust. If in doubt, just use Mojo locally.

To use Mojo, you’ll need to install it on two or more computers that also have iTunes installed. You’ll need the .NET framework installed too. When you install the software it also opts to install the Bonjour service to enable easy communication. You won’t be able to use Mojo without it, so agree to its installation.

Once you’re up and running the walkthrough demonstrates how easy it is to use Mojo to browse each other’s libraries. You can opt to listen to tracks streamed from your friend’s library or to download them to your own one so you can listen to it even if your friend’s PC is turned off. Any tunes you download to your library are added to a Mojo playlist for that friend so you can find them easily. You can share audio books and even video via Mojo and iTunes this way.

Share an iTunes library
Listen to whatever your friend has stored on his or her PC.

1
Download and install Mojo on both your computer and the one your friend is using. When you first run the program it polls the local network to find other PCs running iTunes and Mojo. Any it finds are displayed in the list.

2
Once you and your friend have set up the system correctly, you can browse their iTunes library. Just double click the username or select it and click Browse. You can navigate their version of iTunes using the categories in their library.

3
Tracks that you already have in your version of iTunes are displayed in grey. Those in red are protected by DRM. Select a black coloured track and click Play to listen to it or choose Download to download it to your own iTunes library.

Use ClipX

2008-12-11T09:00:00.003Z

Storing one item on the clipboard can be limiting. Joe Cassels shows how to broaden your horizon.

One of the most useful aspects of Windows that’s been around since the year dot is the clipboard. It enables you to select data in one application and cut, copy or paste it to a different one. Various versions of Office have provided the ability to save more than one item to the clipboard, but what if you want to use different applications? ClipX makes it possible to store a complete history of your clipboard activity, so you can quickly access any of a number of selections without having to open the parent application up and re-select it.

The walkthrough demonstrates how to manage the clipboard with ClipX. The Windows clipboard itself is unchanged; it can still only hold one item. However ClipX remembers every selection you make and stores it ready to transfer to the clipboard quickly and easily. When you have just a few items stored in ClipX, you can access them by clicking its icon and selecting the one you want to use. However, once you’ve stacked up a lot of entries, you may need to use the search facility to find the one you want. To do this, right click the system tray icon and choose Search. This opens a new window showing the different clipboard entries. Type your search term into the bar at the top of the window and the search utility quickly filters the entries as you type. When you can see the one you want to use, select it and click OK.

Even with the search function, you may find times when ClipX is unmanageably full, especially if you’re taking up a lot of Ram with it. Clearing its contents is as simple as right clicking the icon and choosing Clear Current. By default the program remembers the last 25 selections, but you can change this by choosing Configure from the right click menu. On the General tab you can set the number of selections to remember. You can also set keyboard shortcuts to manage ClipX in the Hotkeys tab. On the popup tab you can specify the maximum size of selection for text or graphics, too.

Manage your clipboard
Deal with multiple clipboard entries, search and manipulate them.

1
Install and launch ClipX. Select some text in a document and copy it. Repeat with a different selection. Click the ClipX icon in the system tray to select which item you want to use in the clipboard. You can now paste this selection.

2
You can save the clipboard history to access at a later time. Right click the ClipX icon in the system Tray and choose Clipboard History, Save History. Provide a filename and location. Repeat the action, choosing Load History to load a previously saved file.

3
You can edit existing selections by right clicking the system tray icon and choosing Manage. Select the clipboard entry you want to change and click Edit. Change the text however you like and click OK twice to confirm.

Encrypt files with images

2008-11-18T09:00:00.002Z

Say goodbye to passwords as Joe Cassels demonstrates how to use pictures as keys instead.

It seems that each week we hear news of another missing data disc and worry about the implications of its unencrypted contents falling into the wrong hands. Clearly the importance of encrypting sensitive data has never been felt so acutely. Thankfully there are numerous ways to encrypt data and secure it, many of which are free. Each relies upon an encryption algorithm as a lock and a password or security file as a key so that you can get at your secured data when you need to.

The problem with passwords is that far too many things in our lives are governed by them. Those that are easy to remember are also easy to guess or crack. If you invest in strong passwords, you’re very likely to need to have them written down or stored in a password manager, both of which create a different area of weakness for your security system. Key files are one way to get around this problem. By using a photograph buried in amongst hundreds of others, you can make your key very difficult to find and yet pretty easy for you to remember because a picture is worth a thousand words. The location of the key file is crucial though.

PixelCryptor provides a free and simple system for encrypting data using images as keys. If you’ve ever used an archive managing program like Winzip or 7zip, you’ll find it very easy to operate. You create an archive file in much the same way as in these familiar programs and then stuff the files and folders that you want to encrypt into it. Then, it’s simply a matter of linking the encrypted file to a photo on your system. You can then save the encrypted file wherever you like, perhaps putting it on a removable drive to transport it.

When you need to access the data again, you need to use PixelCryptor to decrypt it. Launch the program and browse to the file that you want to decrypt. You’re prompted to browse to the key image file to unlock the encryption and then you can access the data.

Make an encrypted file
Use your photos to digitally sign your encrypted files

1
Download PixelCryptor from http://www.codegazer.com/pixelcryptor/downloads/. Install and launch it. The initial screen provides you with several options. Choose Encode files, which is the second option from the left. Click this and then use the buttons marked add file or add folder to add extra contents by browsing for them on your PC.

2
Click Next and click the box in the centre of the window to choose a picture file. Browse through the images on your computer until you find one that you’ll be able to remember easily. Open it and click Next.

3
You now need to supply a filename and location for the destination file. Click the folder icon and browse to the place you want to save the encrypted file. Enter a file name and click Next. You’re shown a summary of the encrypted file and its image key. Click Finished.

Make Start Page widgets

2008-11-11T09:00:00.003Z

Add your favourite tool to your blog or start page. Joe Cassels gets web scraping.

The beauty of start pages like iGoogle and Windows live is that they enable you to customise the content that you see on your internet start page, providing you with instant news, stock quotes and even games. There’s a huge variety of gadgets that you can add and Google even provides you with the opportunity to create your own. However, there are still parts of the web that aren’t represented with their own start page gadgets and if you want to regularly refer to them; you have to repeatedly visit their pages. Thanks to the web application Alchemy Grid, you can now generate a widget out of pretty much any web content you like and then add it to your start page, blog or even your personal web site.

You can find the service at http://grid.orch8.net/clippings/grab and there’s a helpful screen cast that demonstrates it in action. The walkthrough below shows how you can create a widget using Alchemy Grid. Once you’ve signed up for an account and logged in, you can browse to the web page that you want to extract content from. This appears within the clipping web page. When you’ve found the item that you want to use, you need to turn on the clipping tool. You can then highlight sections of the page and select them to clip. Once you’ve grabbed the content it’s displayed in its own frame and you can opt to keep or discard the original site’s CSS and JavaScript content. When you’re happy that you’ve grabbed what you want, you can begin customising your widget.

You can provide a title for the gadget and select a colour scheme for it too. You can also specify the width and height in pixels of the gadget. For most popular start pages and blogs, simply click the one you want to use and log into it to automatically add the content. If you want to include it in a web page or your provider isn’t listed, click Other and copy the HTML code to paste into your website. Once published, your widget will appear just where you pasted it.

Scrape your own content
Make a start page or blog widget from any web content you like

1
Browse to http://grid.orch8.net/clippings/grab and log in or create an account. Choose Clippings and enter the URL for the web page that you want to grab content from. This loads into the clipping interface. Continue to browse until you find the content that you want.

2
Click to select some content and then move the mouse to the item that you want to use. Click and choose Grab it! You’ll see your content clipping displayed in a pane. You can turn off the original site’s CSS if you wish. Click Save it!

3
Provide your content clipping with a name and select the colour and size of the widget that you want to use. When you’ve got it looking the way you want, select the start page or blog service that you want to use it with and follow the prompts to add it.