Included is a picture of the fake email and the associated link.

If you have children that regularly use the computer and you are concerned about their exposure to harmful content on the internet then you should seriously consider installing parental control software. “1 in 5 children aged 10 to 17 have received a sexual solicitation over the internet”  I have been using Net Nanny on my home computers and have been very pleased at the level of protection it provides. One license will allow you to install a copy on up to 3 computers.

Net Nanny has a number of ways that it targets areas that can be potential avenues for harmful content. It also allows you the parent full control over who has access or not. It also has a robust reporting feature that allows you to receive regular email or text updates on potential violations of the policy.

Areas that Net Nanny targets are:

PC Game blocking

Do you have a child that loves to play games, who dosen’t! I’m concerned about some of these games out there that have violent content that I wouldn’t allow myself to watch let alone my children. By incorporating a rating system from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) Net Nanny is able to block games based on these categories.

Social Networking

These social networking sites seem to be all the rage now, like facebook, Myspace etc…  Where anybody can be your so called “friend”. As a parent you should know who your children are friends with. Net Nanny allows you access to view your child’s profile online.

Instant Messaging

Who doesn’t use instant messaging, even big corporations have adopted I.M. as a viable means of communication. It’s even more popular amount the young people. Net Nanny will help you monitor IM chat sessions to see who your children are chatting with.

Website filtering and blocking

The World Wide Web is wide open to all types of undesirable content. Even if someone is not specifically looking for it you can inadvertently click on a link and it could take you to a place you just don’t want to go. Net Nanny has a great filter system that does a good job at blocking content by categories. You can even setup Net Nanny to restrict access to just certain websites or block all internet access alltogether. Net Nanny also integrates with all the popular search engines and will block all searches based on the content you set.

Reporting

My favorite feature of Net Nanny is the reporting aspect. Net Nanny will allow you to monitor your childs internet use. You can receive updates through email or Cell phone on what your children are doing on the internet.

Net Nanny is an all encompassing tool that does the best job I have seen at keeping your child safe from harmful content while they useing the computer. However good Net Nanny is it’s just a tool and this tool doesn’t replace the responsibility the parent has in talking with their children and warning them about the harmful content on the internet so they can learn to choose to avoid it.

 
Happy and safe internet use.

Have you ever needed to completely remove all formatting from a document and couldn’t? I have found this free software called  StipMail that will completely remove all the formatting from an Email, Word, HTML or even PDF document. It does a good job of striping all formatting out even characters “>” and “|” from forwarded e-mails.

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Gnet Solutions Forums

I thought this tool was very useful for resizing large images. It allows you the option of choosing different sizes that will best fit your needs. After installing the program just right click on the image you want to resize and you will see an option to resize the selected image. If you want to resize multiple pictures at once then just select all the pictures you wish to resize and right click on pictures and it will resize them all to your desired resolution. Check it out and let me know what you think.

• ImageResizer for Windows XP – 32 bit
• ImageResizer for Windows Vista/Windows 7 – 32 bit
• ImageResizer for Windows Vista/Windows 7 – 64 bit

Thanks – Aviraj Ajgekar

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Gnet Solutions Forums

Jing is a free screen capture utility put out by the makers of Snagit. I’m a big fan of Snagit and it’s feature rich screen capture capabilities. Jing is like it’s little brother, it doesn’t have all the features and power of Snagit, but I think it more than makes up for it in ease of use and the ability to upload and share your content directly to FTP site,  Flicker, YouTube and Screencast.com (Screencast.com is TechSmiths own content management system) as well as a local folder or network drive.

One cool feature of Jing is the so called Sun Launcher that resides on the edge of your desktop.

When you hover over the Sun Launcher it expands and presents you with the option to capture a screen image.

Jing also allows basic annotes features such as text box, arrow, highlight, or rectangle.

Here is a tip that may seem obvious but I just haven’t fully appreciated until recently. Do you want more screen real estate, why not hide your windows taskbar. If you’re like me and have increased your taskbar double fold then hiding it  adds about an inch more to your screen real estate after it’s hidden. Now It really feels like I have a 19 inch monitor Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Here’s how to turn on the Auto-hide option:

 1. Right-click on the taskbar and select “Properties” from the context menu. The “Taskbar and Start menu Properties” window should open.
 2. With the “Taskbar” tab open, put a check in the box labeled “Auto-hide the taskbar”.
 3. Also make sure there is a check in the box labeled “Keep the taskbar on top of other windows”.
 4. Click “OK” to save the changes and exit the properties window.

The Taskbar should now disappear. To make the taskbar visible, simply move your mouse cursor right to the bottom of the screen.

1. Right click on your desktop and choose New -> Shortcut.

2. Type “RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll” for the location. After that, change the name of the shortcut. I had renamed it to “Remove USB Drive“.

3. You should have a USB icon on your desktop. You can click it and now choose which device to remove.

For those of you who still like to use Internet Explorer over Firefox, I know there must be a few of you still out there,  There is a application called Maxthon that runs off of IE’s core program and adds many cool and useful features that you only wish IE or Firefox had.

Tabbed Browsing 

Tabs aren’t new and other browsers have them but Maxthon in my opinion does the best job of implementing them in there browser.

Groups

You no doubt have heard of favorites but have you heard of groups? Groups makes it easier for you to save groups of favorites and instantly bring all them up with a click of a button. This really saves time when I want to look at all of my geeky websites, I just go to my geeky website group and one click brings them all up.

Magic Fill

Magic fill is a spin off to IE’s remember your password, it allows you to easily manage your passwords and edit them as you change passwords.

Screen Capture

We all know Snagit rules the screen capture scene but if you need to quickly capture something there is no beating Maxthon’s screen capture tool for ease of use.

Ad Hunter

Enough with those pesky ad’s and popus, Maxthon stops them cold and easily allows you to edit any website where you find the ad to irresistible to resist.

Built in RSS Reader

If you haven’t discovered RSS then your wasting a lot of time on the internet. See here for more info on what RSS is. Maxthon has it’s own built in RSS reader to display your favorite feed’s all in one place, albeit it doesn’t have all the features as the big boys but its convenient to have all of them in one place to look at while your still browsing.

These are just a few features that make Maxthon the best browser in my opinion.

 I discovered this useful utility that allows you to map a drive letter to your FTP site. For those of you who don’t know, FTP stands for File Transfer protocol. An FTP site usually resides on your website host providers computer. For example if I want to upload files to my site at gnetsolutions.info I would connect using FTP and upload or download files. If I wasn’t’ using NetDrive I would have to use a program like Filezilla which allows me to connect to an FTP site. NetDrive now allows me to facilitate connecting to my FTP site and treat that connection like a drive letter on my local PC.  Now when I start my PC NetDrive auto maps to my FTP site which I can access through Windows Explorer. Try it out and let me know what you think.

1. Choosing  your Components – A list of efficient, stable components for building a Windows Home Server.

2. Assembling your Components – Steps on assembling your components.

3. Installation, Bios Tweaks and Software Additions – Installation of WHS, Bios tweaks and software additions.

4. Final Thoughts, Recommendations – After thoughts on the process of setting up Windows Home Server. 

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Forum