Webhead

Taken from Cook's first epistle to the Face Book comunity Chapter 1, verse 1-3

Hello all!

I bring pre-Xmas good cheer to you all from the Geek at the seaside, having received my umpteenth warning about a virus/trojan/rootkit/ boy/girl genius hacker, I thought I would just slip on my anorak and send out words of comfort to all those Facebookers who have been so worried that their machines and those of their friends will be reduced to so much beige colour plastic if those evil genii get their mitts on them – then changed my mind and decided to opt for the full on rant...are you sitting comfortably, no me neither, think its these trousers...!

So if you get an email/attachment/invite/postcard/smoke signal or ethereal message from the unknown realms, 99 times out of 100 you can feel free to open it, ignore, ponder its unearthly meaning or laugh at the foolish American with no fear of crashing your hard drive, taking over your address and emailing information to all your friends about your love life or links with known terrorists groups; inviting all your mates to sign up for the 'Glen Miller appreciation page' on MySpace or causing your PC to immediately disassemble itself, pack the bits neatly and return them to the manufacturer.

Despite the assertions of various big budget films and small minded TV shows its actually quite hard to 'hack' into a PC and do any real damage - always assuming of course that you the user have decent and updated anti-virus (which of course you all have...haven't you?) and a firewall set to block all the usual ports – and the software will know which one these are.. There is, however, some danger in opening attachments from people you have never heard especially if the said attachment has a file ending with something like .exe, .scr or .bin - opening these from an unknown source is not dissimilar to covering yourself in gravy, plaiting your hair with Antelope burgers and climbing into a lions cage at feeding time.

Most warnings about how, if you let Mr X into your on-line life you will find yourself the helpless victim of his extraordinary 'hacking' prowess are complete myths, their purpose is to either get Mr X kicked off one forum or another or to simply spread the warning around the net as far as possible - big clue here, the warning always claim to be genuine and tell you to tell all your friends. They want to see their warnings spread as far as possible. Are these people idiots? In the words of Churchill, the insurance dog. 'Oh yes!'

There *are* viruses on Facebook, the 'Storm worm' is one that springs to mind, but it needs you to actually click a link which is an .exe file and takes you to an external site and no one would be silly enough to do that, would they! Hmm....seems to have gone a bit quiet out there...

So a few tips

1. if you get a warning about a virus, check in out before you pass it on - www.snopes.com is an excellent site for this.

2. Ignore spam email, if you click the 'take me off the list' link, you have just told the spammer this is an active email address, expect invites to buy Viagra and Rolexes soon!

3. Official organisations seldom ask for personal information by email! Seldom in this sense is defined as never, if your bank or similar does - find another bank.

4. Be wary of pictures and other files from unknown sources and watch for those with .exe endings.

5. Never give bank details or similar out on the internet, its highly unlikely that any bank would ask for these details. If you are asked, ignore the email link and go to the site by typing in the URL in the address bar, look for a URL that starts 'https:// that 's' is important it means the site is secure.

6. If you are not sure what you are doing, don't do it. If in doubt ask. Lots of geeks about the place, myself included, who will be happy to help. You may have to put up with sentences which includes acronyms like SSH and TCIP and possibly even some references to operating system architecture but at least your computer will be safe.

OK so rant over, but the number of these warnings is getting silly..So with a little caution and a lot of common sense we can all rest easy in our bed knowing that tomorrow our is another day for us and our computer...

PS: Amazingly Facebook tagged this message as possible spam and suggested I send a nice picture instead....sigh!

Decided to use my Twitter account; for no other reason than it might attract some more clients my way. The attempts to form my own business have been less than successful and things are looking a little bleak at the moment. Not sure that this Twitter thing will do much, but I suppose I do have to try.

My account is http://twitter.com/wanderjahre everyone is welcome, not just webheads, so maybe see you there!

The business site is at http://www.wanderjahre.co.uk

Bit a little busy recently, lots of things to do and some of them didn't involve computer, although most did. I have been working on a new version of my website. Its not been getting the hits I was expecting and part of the reason for this was that written entirely in flash, Google was having trouble indexing the site.

Since realistically, Google is the only search engine worth the effort in this day and age I decided a HTML rewrite was in order. I used KompoZer also called Nvu to do the work and was surprised how easy the HTML editor proved to be. KompoZer also provided useful tools to let me embed the original flash site inside the HTML one, which meant that I had the benefit of both versions. In browser which don't supply or flash installed, the HTML should render without too much trouble. The only problem I experienced was persuading the editor to put frames where I wanted them as to where it thought they should go.

As always with sites it took three hours to create the basic site and then several days to make it look the precisely the way I wanted.  it. Coding in HTML is always an inexact science, since browsers can alter the way that HTML is displayed, especially colours and the defailt font used so the trick with HTML sites is to make them as simple as possible, links to the left or right, text in the centre and any RSS or widgets on the opposite side to the links.  You can view the close to finished product at Wanderjahre, feel free to comment, all suggestions, except the anatomically impossible are welcomed.

In other business, I have finally joined Twiitter. I held off for quite a while because frankly I didn't understand its purpose. Having been using it for several days, I have to confessto being none the wiser. As far as I can see Twitter is a mini blog so might suit someone who doesn't want to doesn't feel comfortable with the full blown blog. My youngest daughter uses a blog for part of her personal development at university (I think its about teaching kids to write in something other than text speak!) and Twitter would suit her, especially with its ability to link to other Twitter feeds. I may well pass its benefits on to her! My own plans for Twitter are to use it as a "heads up" for content on my website, even if it doesn't work, it will be an interesting experiment to see who might come to the business via this route. I'll keep you posted - or even Twitter!

Home

Professional Hacker at work Click here for a link to the pages!

This is a fascinating account which highlights how easy it is with a little research to hack a major company.

http://battellemedia.com/archives/004817.php

Interesting short article on Google Latitude

See also
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/02/latitude.html
For some background information

Wanderjahre IT

Tell me if this rings any bells?
You have a house PC; a workhouse which serves for email, browsing, playing music and watching videos. You probably store pictures, music and other media on a hard drive somewhere between 80 and 250 gigbytes. Its a nice machine but you seldom get to use it because your children are seemingly camped out next to it using internet messenging, watching Youtube and even using it for their homework. The fact of the matter is you need a second PC.

Your choice.
In these cash strapped times shelling out £300 plus for a new machine is a non starter for most of us so if you have set your sights on a second PC then second-hand could be the answer. But before you head off to your local second-hand computer shop its time to sit down and give some thought to exactly what you want your new rig to do.

A quite basic specification can handle browsing the net, email and playing music. Any machine built in the last 10 years should be capable of handling that load. But it's worthwhile going to the armed with at least some idea of what you want! When buying your 'new' old rig the thing to look for is a decent processor - memory, storage and graphics can all be changed without putting a hole in your bank account. But the CPU is a crucial and potentially hard to change item. You should be able to find a PC with a reasonable processer for under £100 (details of suggested spec...) for that money expect 512mb of RAM and 10 gigs of storage as a minimum. The CPU will be a Pentium 2 or 3 or Duron. Better if you can get it, but this will handle your basic needs. It also provides a platform for potential upgrades.

Ram(ming) speed!
The more RAM your computer has the faster it is likely to work. With the exception of the latest DDR3 RAM prices have never been so cheap and you should be able to get a gigabyte for around £20. When you buy your rig make sure you know the type of RAM it takes. (types of RAM noted here.) Fitting it is simple but if you don't feel inclined to open the machine up, any competent repair shop could do the work in minutes. The people selling your rig may upgrade it but watch the price! Its always worth checking prices at places like Ebuyer www.ebuyer.com before starting. A little research can save you a lot of money.

Hard-up Drive.
The easiest way to add a hard drive to your rig is via your USB ports. Don't buy a machine at any price unless it has at least 2 USB ports. You can find USB hard drives that will plug straight into your rig in any decent PC shop. Internal drives are cheaper because they don't need an enclosure but again do need you to open the case. The majority of modern operating systems will recognise a USB immediately and away you go. These drives are more expensive than their internal equivalents but need no skill to install. Again Ebuyer and similar are your friends.

Network of the non-Facebook Kind.
If you are still on dial up, stop right now and sign up for a Broadband deal from one of the major providers. Dial up is tortoise slow compared to the most basic ADSL package. It is possible to share dial up but compared to broadband and a decent router its hard work and unless you are planning only the most occasional usage your phone bill is likely to go through the roof.

If you are planning to add your new rig to the network, and there is every reason you should, your option are to either hard wire (ethernet) or fit a wireless adaptor. Hardwiring is simply connecting your router to the phone line and your PC to the router. Follow the instructions on the router and you should be up and running in minutes. Wireless connections are slightly trickier. For one thing your router will need to be wireless capable. and success will depend on the type of wireless adapter you fit to the computer, the distance between the PC and the router. I could write reams on routers but the short version is buy the best router you can afford and if you are installing a second PC in another part of the house make sure you install a PCI card, internal to the PC rather than a USB device, you are likely to get better reception that way.

Need more detailed advice or want a custom build - email me

This is an interesting little Web 2.0 application that I got the heads up from a friend in London. Wordle is an application that allows you to create Word Clouds, pictures from a group of words. Just insert some text and watch Wordle do its thing.  To make this slide show I started in Wordle and having created each picture took a screen shot of the finished item, once I had done all that, it was time for phase 2 of the project.  Animoto is an online slide show application. You can upload a series of images and Animoto will turn them into a slide show. Because its classic Web 2.0 you can export the finished product to a variety of different social networks and blogs. In this case, I copied the embed code to this blog. The result a simple but effective online slide show with animation and music to suit. Result is a professional looking slide show that required me only to know how to upload some pictures...

Link to Wanderjahre IT

Sources suspect Microsoft is plannng to give the public a Release Candidate of Windows 7 before the final version is ready. A timeline for these versions is not disclosed.

This first beta is the most stable Microsoft has ever given out, and that alone has led to speculation that Microsoft wants  the successor to Vista out this year. A move likely to please users who are finding Vista slow and awkward (according to the forums at least this would be quite a lot of them!)

Officially, Microsoft has always said the release would be 3 years from the last. Windows Vista was released on January 30, 2007 but an earlier arrival in the stores looks likely with October 2009 being where the smart money is going. With the beta looking good and people already saying this is what Vista should have been, for once things are looking good for the Richmond boys and girls.