Republished from October 2009 “Bytes” contribution to our local parish Newsletter.

1. Give your desktop a new look

If you bought your PC with Microsoft Windows XP in the UK it will probably have the default windows background called Bliss. This is actually a photo taken in Sonoma County, California, and then digitally enhanced. Microsoft give you a few others backgrounds, but they’re hardly inspiring!

www.interfacelift.com provides free desktop backgrounds of various styles and dimensions, usually releasing a new background every day. They also provide backgrounds for dual (triple & larger) displays and even for your iPhone or Nokia phone background. So go on, give your Windows Desktop something new.

To check your current screen resolution, check Control Panel > (Appearance & Themes) > Display > Settings tab, or visit www.screenresolution.org/. Download some backgrounds that you like to My Pictures. Then to set your Windows Desktop to one of your new backgrounds, Control Panel > (Appearance & Themes) > Display > click the Desktop tab, and click Browse to find your background in My Pictures.

2. Prevention is better than cure

It is far better to prevent infection of your computer, than to have to track and remove a problem after it has happened. Bytes have previously covered Firewalls and anti-virus programs, but there are other equally useful tools to add to the protection of your computer.

SpywareBlaster (www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html) is an excellent free utility for preventing your browser(s) from loading a suspect page. It prevents the installation of ActiveX-based spyware and other potentially unwanted programs. Blocks spying / tracking via browser cookies, and restricts the actions of potentially unwanted or dangerous web sites. If a friend or contact accidentally sends you a link to a suspicious web-site, SpywareBlaster prevents your browser from opening that page. At time of going to press, they hold about 13,000 suspicious web-sites in their database. They also have a $10.00 option for automatic updates, including a discounted Family Pack for all your home PCs.

3. Getting rid of Spyware

Fortunately there are a number of free resources to help you check for and then eradicate the devil that is Spyware. This isn’t a definitive list, but covers the ones I use and recommend.

I always recommend Spyware Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/) which will trawl through your PC checking for and reporting suspect stuff, with a summary of what’s been found, before your remove the miscreant from your PC. It also reports back any open firewall ports to alert you to possible firewall breaches. For example, Skype might use firewall port 443 or 61482, but what else is open?

Microsoft Windows Defender (Search “Defender” www.microsoft.com) provides both protection and detection/removal. It performs automatic updates from a Microsoft server and regularly prompts you to run a quick or full scan.

Microsoft OneCare also provides a Free PC Safety Scan (http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/) which will detect and remove malware. This is probably a teaser to sell you Microsoft OneCare as part of a complete anti-virus & anti-spyware package (See http://onecare.live.com for details) Cost is £38 per annum.

All images are © their respective owners.

By Nick Harrington

Tech Tech

Republished from October 2009 “Bytes” contribution to our local parish Newsletter.

1. Give your desktop a new look

If you bought your PC with Microsoft Windows XP in the UK it will probably have the default windows background called Bliss. This is actually a photo taken in Sonoma County, California, and then digitally enhanced. Microsoft give you a few others backgrounds, but they’re hardly inspiring!

www.interfacelift.com provides free desktop backgrounds of various styles and dimensions, usually releasing a new background every day. They also provide backgrounds for dual (triple & larger) displays and even for your iPhone or Nokia phone background. So go on, give your Windows Desktop something new.

To check your current screen resolution, check Control Panel > (Appearance & Themes) > Display > Settings tab, or visit www.screenresolution.org/. Download some backgrounds that you like to My Pictures. Then to set your Windows Desktop to one of your new backgrounds, Control Panel > (Appearance & Themes) > Display > click the Desktop tab, and click Browse to find your background in My Pictures.

2. Prevention is better than cure

It is far better to prevent infection of your computer, than to have to track and remove a problem after it has happened. Bytes have previously covered Firewalls and anti-virus programs, but there are other equally useful tools to add to the protection of your computer.

SpywareBlaster (www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html) is an excellent free utility for preventing your browser(s) from loading a suspect page. It prevents the installation of ActiveX-based spyware and other potentially unwanted programs. Blocks spying / tracking via browser cookies, and restricts the actions of potentially unwanted or dangerous web sites. If a friend or contact accidentally sends you a link to a suspicious web-site, SpywareBlaster prevents your browser from opening that page. At time of going to press, they hold about 13,000 suspicious web-sites in their database. They also have a $10.00 option for automatic updates, including a discounted Family Pack for all your home PCs.

3. Getting rid of Spyware

Fortunately there are a number of free resources to help you check for and then eradicate the devil that is Spyware. This isn’t a definitive list, but covers the ones I use and recommend.

I always recommend Spyware Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/) which will trawl through your PC checking for and reporting suspect stuff, with a summary of what’s been found, before your remove the miscreant from your PC. It also reports back any open firewall ports to alert you to possible firewall breaches. For example, Skype might use firewall port 443 or 61482, but what else is open?

Microsoft Windows Defender (Search “Defender” www.microsoft.com) provides both protection and detection/removal. It performs automatic updates from a Microsoft server and regularly prompts you to run a quick or full scan.

Microsoft OneCare also provides a Free PC Safety Scan (http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/) which will detect and remove malware. This is probably a teaser to sell you Microsoft OneCare as part of a complete anti-virus & anti-spyware package (See http://onecare.live.com for details) Cost is £38 per annum.

All images are © their respective owners.

By Nick Harrington

Tech Tech

We operate a couple of web-servers and help manage other colleagues hosted various web-applications.

Where web-traffic significantly increases for a site, or periodically we re-host refreshing upon the latest hardware and operating system, we have to move a number of top-level domains.

Some of the sites we manage are global – (of course a web-site is global) – where the community is literally global we have to be aware of when we kick-off a Host Header IP change.

Where our predominant community is US-based an update at 08:00 UTC will hit the majority of our US community by their morning, between 4 and 8 hours later.

DNS Propagation time is one of those unknown factors in site-management; you just can’t say how long its going to take. We do use this batch file as a simple check, but this is only true from where its executed.

A World View of DNS Propagation

One useful tool we’ve spotted is whatsmydns.net which gives us a nice summary of DNS propagation around the world. This includes A, MX, CNAME where you’re migrating different parts of your identity.

Enter your sitename, select the record type (A for web) and click Search.

This is emrupdate.com part way through its DNS IP change, moving from 216.x to 76.

Its also handy to have a Skype, IM or ooVoo contacts around the globe to double-check & verify DNS migration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t beat a good Google mash-up to complete the picture. Clicking on a green (red) blob shows the IP details for your site at that location. A red blob would indicate no DNS value found.

 

Nick Harrington
team Ambay Software

Hosting, Software, Tech Hosting, Software, Tech

We operate a couple of web-servers and help manage other colleagues hosted various web-applications.

Where web-traffic significantly increases for a site, or periodically we re-host refreshing upon the latest hardware and operating system, we have to move a number of top-level domains.

Some of the sites we manage are global – (of course a web-site is global) – where the community is literally global we have to be aware of when we kick-off a Host Header IP change.

Where our predominant community is US-based an update at 08:00 UTC will hit the majority of our US community by their morning, between 4 and 8 hours later.

DNS Propagation time is one of those unknown factors in site-management; you just can’t say how long its going to take. We do use this batch file as a simple check, but this is only true from where its executed.

A World View of DNS Propagation

One useful tool we’ve spotted is whatsmydns.net which gives us a nice summary of DNS propagation around the world. This includes A, MX, CNAME where you’re migrating different parts of your identity.

Enter your sitename, select the record type (A for web) and click Search.

This is emrupdate.com part way through its DNS IP change, moving from 216.x to 76.

Its also handy to have a Skype, IM or ooVoo contacts around the globe to double-check & verify DNS migration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t beat a good Google mash-up to complete the picture. Clicking on a green (red) blob shows the IP details for your site at that location. A red blob would indicate no DNS value found.

 

Nick Harrington
team Ambay Software

Hosting, Software, Tech Hosting, Software, Tech

I keep going back to check. Yes. 25Gb of disk-space.

Microsoft Windows Live is a collection of web-applications built around Microsoft Mail, Microsoft Live Messenger and related Office add-on applications. Most of us had/have a Microsoft IM (Instant Messenger) account. This is now (cleverly) branded as Windows Live Messenger.

The interesting nugget within Windows Live is SkyDrive which offers, cue drum-roll, lights:

 

25Gb of on—line disk storage!

 

Sign-up or login to Windows Live and click the More button and select SkyDrive. This provides a secure web-folder for you to upload, organize and store your files courtesy of Microsoft.

You can also choose to share documents, Photos or files with your Windows Live contacts, for example sharing the holiday photos with your family and friends. Neat.

They also offer an IE plug-in to support drag-and-drop of files to be uploaded. It might not be quick, but it gives you another place to backup your files, photos, spreadsheets and source.

Playing devils-advocate we usually ask our customers two-questions about data-security:

(1) When did you last do a backup of your files … and (2) Where did you put it?

If all your data-backup is in a single place, then fire, flood, accident, theft aren’t going to save your backup files. Off-site backup is crucial to home and business customers alike.

Nick Harrington
team ambay software

Tech Tech

I keep going back to check. Yes. 25Gb of disk-space.

Microsoft Windows Live is a collection of web-applications built around Microsoft Mail, Microsoft Live Messenger and related Office add-on applications. Most of us had/have a Microsoft IM (Instant Messenger) account. This is now (cleverly) branded as Windows Live Messenger.

The interesting nugget within Windows Live is SkyDrive which offers, cue drum-roll, lights:

 

25Gb of on—line disk storage!

 

Sign-up or login to Windows Live and click the More button and select SkyDrive. This provides a secure web-folder for you to upload, organize and store your files courtesy of Microsoft.

You can also choose to share documents, Photos or files with your Windows Live contacts, for example sharing the holiday photos with your family and friends. Neat.

They also offer an IE plug-in to support drag-and-drop of files to be uploaded. It might not be quick, but it gives you another place to backup your files, photos, spreadsheets and source.

Playing devils-advocate we usually ask our customers two-questions about data-security:

(1) When did you last do a backup of your files … and (2) Where did you put it?

If all your data-backup is in a single place, then fire, flood, accident, theft aren’t going to save your backup files. Off-site backup is crucial to home and business customers alike.

Nick Harrington
team ambay software

Tech Tech