Pinterest is a virtual interactive bulletin board, similar to a handy filing cabinet full of folders and papers, but without the paper.  Forget clipping magazine pictures and thumbing through recipe books. Instead, find your favorite things anywhere on the web, pin them onto bulletin boards, and save them forever in one convenient location.  Create your own collections, as well as post comments, share interests, passions, and humor with friends and new people.  It is so easy to find exactly what you are looking for, along with many more valuable resources.

I use Pinterest for daily motivation and inspiration.  It is exploding with creativity and ideas!  You won’t believe what you can find; tips on everything! Find “how-to’s”, DIY projects, ideas for fashion, home décor, travel, arts & crafts, recipes, and lesson plans for educators. Planning a birthday party, wedding, or baby shower? Trying to decide which digital camera to purchase? Need dinner ideas? Pinterest is the answer!

Pinterest is the perfect place to get inspired and be inspiring!  It certainly increases my productivity.  I have fun planning and achieving my goals.  It is a visually appealing way to interact with ideas, collections, and people! You will be addicted in no time.

Collaborate, explore, and enjoy Pinterest!

(Ref: Manta Minute)

ii.    Thou shall always have your Antivirus definitions updated

iii.    Thou shall be careful where/what you are downloading on the Internet

iv.    Thou shall delete an email if you don’t recognize it’s sender and it has an unknown email attachment

v.    Thou shall not try to fix something that isn’t broke

vi.    Thou shall not try to fix a broke computer unless you know what you are doing

vii.    Thou shall always backup your data!

ix. Thou shalt not spam and forward chain email letters.

x. Thou shall realize that if an internet offer seems too good to be true, it always is.

Is your provider actually giving you the internet speed you are actually paying for?

There is a quick and easy way to test your Internet speeds. Just go to Speedtest to test what your upload and download speed is. Make sure that you have some sort of Internet connection or else you won’t be able to access the site.

With the results, compare it to your broadband internet provider’s service contract to see whether you are actually getting what you are paying for. If you don’t have that information, call them up to ask what speeds you should be getting.

It may be wise to make sure that your computer is working correctly first and to rule out that the problem is not related to your computer, network or router itself. If you are not comfortable doing that, seek help from a computer savvy person or contact a computer professional.

Once you have ruled out that your computer, network or router is NOT the problem and if the speeds are indeed slow(er) than what you are supposed to be getting, the service provider will likely troubleshoot the problem further. You may have a bad cable installation in your house, bad cabling outside your house, or they might have made a mistake and given you a lower tier internet speed.

We have had experience in the past where some customers were paying for the fastest internet speed available and the provider was giving them speeds indicative of the lowest (cheapest) tiered internet service. They didn’t know that until we ran the Speedtest utility!

Your broadband provider might even have their own speed test site. Click the official links below if you use the relevant companies:

• AT&T Speed Test
• CenturyLink Broadband Speed Test (Quest)
• Charter Speedtest
• Cox Data Transfer Test
• FrontierNet Network Speed Test
• FGCI Speed Test
• Knology Speed Test
• Midcontinent Speed Test
• Sprint Network Speed Test
• SureWest Internet Speed Test
• Service Electric Speed Test
• Verizon FiOS Speedtest
• XFINITY Speed Test (Comcast)
• Zoom Internet Speed Test (Armstrong)

Due to the growing number of free blog, photo-sharing, and social networking websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Where are You Now? (WAYN), loved ones do not have to wait to hear about your trip.

Choosing a Social Network or Photo-sharing Site

There are multiple websites that allow users to share photos or to publish a more in-depth blog, including the following:

• Flickr
  - Online photo management and sharing application
  - You can control permissions
• Picasa
  - Software download that helps you organize, edit, and share your photos
  - You can control permissions
• Traveljournals.net
  - Online travel journal, allows you to share pictures and stories
• Tumblr
  -No time to write a long story of your experiences? Why not just add short paragraphs and pictures by micro blogging.
• WordPress or Google Blogger
  -Write (or Blog) your experiences and stories for people to read
• Skype or Oovoo
  -Chat and talk “live” with your friends and family for free
• Facebook & Twitter
  - Keep up with friends and upload photos

Once you choose the site you would like to use, you’ll have to create a user account for that site before you can begin sharing your vacation.

What Technology to Pack

Before leaving for your adventure, be sure to bring the following items:

• A digital camera or camera phone
• A computer (either your own laptop, or a computer located in a hotel, library, cyber café, cruise ship—the options are increasing, daily)
• A media card reader, if your laptop doesn’t have one
• For travel outside of North America, a power adapter for recharging your mobile phone or laptop

How is it different from Windows XP and Windows Vista?

Which one you would buy will depend on the features needed from a home or/and business perspective.

Here is a chart to help you:

Here is a more detailed chart:

(Image courtesy of www.crs-uk.biz)

Yes, we can!

It would be just as if we were physically in front of your computer, at your house or business establishment. You won’t have to lift a finger, just follow our simple instructions over the phone, sit back and let us do the work*.

Common areas we can help you with:

-Computer diagnostics and fixes
-Computer tune-up
-Email help
-Printer help
-Software installation
-General training and operating system usage

Unfortunately, we can’t eliminate viruses remotely. That would have to be done at our shop. As viruses are getting smarter and smarter, we have found that it is not as effective (and in some cases impossible) to clean out the viruses without cutting off the remote access connection that we were using to control your computer. We also feel that virus removals are best done without an internet connection present (i.e. the computer was offline and unplugged from the internet). If it is more convenient for you, we can pick up (and drop off) your computer at your house or business establishment.

For more information on our remote support services and service rates, don’t hesitate to contact us.

*High speed internet access will need to be available. This service is not supported on dial-up connections.

Cloud computing is the utilization of software or hardware through the internet. The software or hardware is housed at an external company’s server/site; as opposed to software/ hardware on your computer or business establishment. Neither software nor hardware has to be purchased, installed or maintained. Think about it as leasing a part of a server hardware or software application for a fraction of the price and without the headache of setup and maintenance.

With a fast enough internet connection, you will be able to use cloud computing seamlessly. Cloud computing is broken down into 3 category types: Infrastructure as-a-service (e.g. data center, web hosting, network equipment), Platform as-a-service (e.g. operating systems and databases) and Software as-a-service (e.g. software applications you use on a daily or continual basis like a word processor or spreadsheet program).

The term “cloud” is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams…. — Wikipedia

For example, we may utilize the Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) aspect of cloud computing through web hosting i.e. building your webpages for the world to see, and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud computing when someone uses Salesforce.com (a tool for companies to track, organize and communicate with potential/ current customers).

An example of Software as-a-service (SaaS) within cloud computing would be in a word processing scenario. You have the option to purchase Microsoft Word and install it on your computer or use Google Docs (on the internet) to type it. Utilizing Google Docs (a cloud computing service), allows you to log into your created account (through your internet browser), type your document, save it on their servers and access it from any internet ready computer.

You may be already using a cloud computing service with free email providers on the internet like  Google Mail, Yahoo Mail or Microsoft’s Hotmail. Other examples of cloud computing may include online data backup/ storage, project collaboration (e.g. Basecamp or Zoho), accounting (e.g. Quickbooks online), spreadsheets/ word processing (e.g. Google Docs) and databasing (e.g. Zoho Creator).

The video below explains a section of cloud computing.

What are the main advantages of using Cloud computing?

1) Ease of use and the convenience of accessing the service 24/7 anywhere and everywhere on a computer with an internet connection

2) The lower costs, especially for individuals and small businesses. Cloud computing is much cheaper than investing on actual hardware and software. Most cloud computing services charge you a minimal monthly fee per user/company which can save money as compared to the cost of hardware/ software purchase, installation and maintaining it. In some cases, you can use cloud computing for free! With Cloud computing, sophisticated technology is no longer out of reach for smaller businesses.

3) Easy collaboration; you don’t need to work together in the same building or office, everyone could be miles apart and still work together using the same software/ hardware.

… And the disadvantages?

The glaring disadvantage is that if you don’t have a reliable enough internet connection (or none at all), your documents or the services are inaccessible.

There are inherent risks and privacy/security implications associated with Cloud computing. Understand those risks and implications to determine whether Cloud computing is a good fit for you and your business. Questions you should ask are “How reliable is the company you are using as a cloud service provider?”, “What is their up-time guarantee?” and “What are their security measures in protecting your data?” Moving to a cloud based service is a big decision that should not be taken lightly.

Here is a video that explains how it all works. It’s humorous, but it does get the point across.

A cloud computing demonstration.

PC Ninja uses Cloud computing for several expects of our systems – the ease of use and accessibility to certain parts of our systems while on the move makes it invaluable. If you need help on further understanding Cloud computing and how it may potentially fit you, contact us. We will be happy to help you put the pieces of puzzles together on *working with Clouds*.

List of free cloud services:

Alternatives to Microsoft Office

• Open Office
• Google Docs
• Zoho Docs
• Abiword (Word processing)

Email (alternatives to Microsoft Outlook)

• Thunderbird
• Windows Live Mail (replacement to Microsoft Outlook Express)
• Eudora
• Pegasus Mail
• Opera Mail
• Mozilla SeaMonkey

Online Calendars

• Google Calendar
• Yahoo Calendar
• 30boxes
• Famundo
• Cozi

Data Backup

• Cobian (to be installed on your computer)

To do lists

• Tadalist
• Todoist
• Toodledo
• Remember the Milk
• Wipeelist
• Voo2do

Online file storage

• Box.net
• Dropbox
• Microsoft Skydrive

*Cloud computing image courtesy of Brian Keith May.

That’s a good question. The answer is, a lot!

To put it in perspective, we’ve created a table to show how much you can store. (Note these are just estimates as data sizes may vary)

The table above is a reference for both external and internal hard drives.

*1 TB (Terabyte) = 1000 GB (Gigabytes), 1 Million MB (Megabytes) or 1000 Million KB (Kilobytes)