Archive for the ‘news’ Category

I’ve been hearing a lot about viruses spreading on Facebook and seeing it personally from friends who have been infected on the social media site. Recent infections on Facebook are growing “virally”, pardon the pun. Review these tips and advice to avoid potential problems on the social media website.

You normally get one of these viruses from a friend who was unknowingly infected. They could come from a simple message, or a “video of you”. These viruses can take your personal information to log into your account and cause you to spread them to your circle of friends as well.

The most recurring one, called the “Koobface”, gives you a link to a video with “you” in it, and when you attempt to play it, you get an error message saying you need to download a file to update your Adobe Flash software. Now this “flash_player.exe” file contains the malicious Koobface code.

Another bit of advice involves keeping an eye on and adjusting your privacy settings in Facebook. There is a new privacy setting on Facebook called “Instant Personalization” that shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is automatically set to “Allow.” Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > Instant Personalization > Edit Settings, and uncheck “Allow”. If your Facebook friends don’t do this, they will be sharing information about you.

Just a heads up to keep alert and watch what you click on. Some of the applications on social media websites can spread infections as well. Personally I’ve always stayed away from game applications such as Mob Wars and Farmville, but proceed at your own discretion. There’s always going to be a threat of some kind somewhere, but the point is to be educated about it to avoid headaches in the future.

Cell phones have evolved from huge, heavy, bulky, awkward mobile devices into the slim, light, handheld touchscreen smartphones we see today. They are thought of as handheld computers integrated within a mobile phone that are capable of using literally thousands of online applications. Such applications allow the user to watch movies, check email, Skype, connect on Twitter and Facebook, enable GPS, check weather conditions, access music, and so much more.

These handheld devices come in many varieties, shapes and sizes. Some of the most popular handheld devices include the iPhone, Blackberry PDA and Motorola Droid, and often come equipped with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, spanning varieties such as handheld PC’s, palmtops and PDA’s. Some of the most popular brands include Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Dell, Sharp, Verizon, LG, the Apple iPhone, and T-Mobile Sidekick. From the smaller palmtops and handheld PC’s, these electronic devices bridge the gap between notebooks, netbooks and tablets.

Many people get Android and Droid confused. Droid is a phone created by Motorola sold by Verizon and Android is a cell phone operating system created by Google. The Droid has Android 2.0 installed on it.

One of the newest versatile Android tablets is the Dell Streak. This versatile Android tablet comes in a 5, 7 and 10 inch. This handheld device sits between smartphones and larger notebooks and tablets commonly used today.

To justify it’s existence, the Streak needed to excel over other smartphones and provide a rich multi-media experience. Staying a step ahead of cutting edge technology is the only way for a mobile device to survive. Keeping current and informed about how high tech devices can simplify your life may be advantageous to you.

Next month Microsoft will launch the beta version of Internet Explorer 9 with accelerated HTML5. The intent of this software giant’s next-generation web browser is to allow “a more beautiful web that feels native on Windows,” says Microsoft.

IE9 will be available in a public beta release for the first time on September 15th, 2010 at Microsoft’s event in San Francisco. Microsoft formally releases the new version at its “Beauty of the Web” event in hopes to wow people and fend off any competition from such rivals as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

IE9′s integration of HTML5 with full hardware acceleration is clearly a first step and it is good for Microsoft to be behind HTML5 – Al Hilwa, Director of Applications Software Development at the International Data Corporation

IE9′s features are based upon using the power of the whole PC to achieve the greatest websurfing experience. Internet Explorer 9 began from the premise of the internet delivering HTML5 experiences which feel more like a native application than a website. If you are still using Windows XP and would like to use Internet Explorer 9, you’ll need to upgrade to Windows Vista or Windows 7 in order to run this browser.

In order to find out what version of Internet Explorer you are running, simply go to the ‘Help’ tab on your web browser toolbar and choose the option ‘About Internet Explorer’. To find out what version of Windows you are currently running, click on “Start” on your taskbar, type “run” in the searchbox, and in the run dialog box type “winver” and click OK. A window will display the exact version of Windows you are running and any service packs installed.

Search engine upgrades are becoming more prevalent in just these recent weeks. Yahoo’s gone to Yahoo Pulse, MSN has upgraded to MSN Beta, and Google even allows you to customize your homepage now.

It seems that these search engines are becoming more like social media websites since social media is the growing trend for the last few years, including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Search engines are constantly making it easier to connect with friends and relatives online.

Yahoo! Pulse allows users to add photos, share links with contacts, and connect to social media websites and other sites across the web. There are even applications such as “The Video of the Day”, or you could create a blog to write on for your contacts to see.

MSN has recently upgraded to MSN Beta, allowing it’s users to share photos, add favorites and groups, and customize pages with animated display pictures signature sounds and custom scenes. MSN Hotmail allows you to scroll photos sent to you through email as an album. MSN even has a media player built right into its Hotmail now, making watching and sending videos through email so much easier.

Coderepair went from a 16 to a 95 grade score in under a year according to Website Grader. How did I do it, you might ask. Natural methods of search engine optimization helped my website to gain popularity online.

Writing articles gave me backlinks, or inbound links to my website. A website’s grade is partially based on how many inbound links point to it. Also by subscribing to websites that offer inbound links, I also raised my grade.

Another measure that is used to calculate a website’s score is the number of pages that a site has. By adding a blog post twice a week and adding pages to my resources section, I managed to get my site from 10 pages to over 400 in this last year.

Having an aged domain certainly didn’t count against me. Being this website started in April 2003 gives it a bit of authority according to search engines. So when faced with the decision of whether to build your website on an aged domain or to come up with a new one, I would build on the aged domain.

Build an online presence with a good reputation to promote your business. Use natural methods of SEO, write articles and blog posts often to get some inbound links to your website, and an aged domain never hurts.

“Everything’s going digital” seems to be all we’ve heard in the beginning of the 21st century, but now the digital world is evolving. An Apple or a blackberry no longer only applies only to fruit. C++ isn’t in orange juice, Java isn’t just a cup of coffee anymore, and having a bluetooth doesn’t mean you were drinking blue Koolaid.

We are living in exponential times. The things we worry about today including hackers, internet fraud, identity theft and cybercrimes in general weren’t even in existence 20 years ago.

Nokia manufactures 13 cell phones every second, and teens send an average of 2,272 text messages per month. 90% of the 200 billion emails sent every day are spam. The mobile device will be the world’s primary connection tool to the internet in 2020. 95% of the songs that have been downloaded haven’t been paid for.

The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper, and a thousand times more powerful and about a hundred thousand times smaller than the one computer at MIT in 1965. So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, and what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years -Ray Kurzweil

The top 10 “in demand” jobs of 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. Therefore, we are currently preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented yet, to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

There are approximately 31 billion searches on Google every month, and in 2006 that number was 2.7 billion. The first text message was sent in December of 1992. Today the number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet.

What we could write in 10 minutes with instant messenger would have taken a matter of months by letter 20 years ago. Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.

The news is constantly presenting us with signs of the evolution of the “digital age”. As each generation passes the span that digital technology reaches grows more. Six year olds on an iPhone and our grandparents checking their email isn’t as uncommon as it was before. As the perpetual evolution of technology advances we discover that the future is here.

Information Credit: The information included is thanks to the “Did You Know” video series from youtube.com.

The new iPhone 4G released earlier this month promises to be an excellent upgrade from the iPhone 3GS released a year ago. The iPhone 4G comes in a 16GB model for about $199 and a 32GB model at about $299 in black or white. The iPhone 3G no longer will be manufactured and the iPhone 3GS will now sell around $99.

Loaded with awesome new features like video chat, multi-tasking and extreme downloading, the 4G is thinner, under a centimeter thick, has multitasking capabilities, true GPS, an extended battery life, new wallpaper options and an iChat 5 megapixel camera on the front for video chat.

When viewing websites on these future devices being invented, content may display differently than desired. With the website design methods applied by CodeRepair, you can be assured your website will display properly today as well as on future devices yet to come.

Have a look at the video about the new Dell Streak.

There was a need for a new custom CMS website design template for my site and a cleaner layout for easier navigation.  I decided to do an entire new design and change a few things around for the desired look.  Compare the old home page at the left of this blog post and the new one to the right.  By moving the sidebar from the left to the right, using a lighter scheme of colors and changing the fonts, button styles and background, this is a look that I can be proud of to represent my business.

In order to solve the situation with having a clean, easy to navigate website, moving the Custom Google Search Box to the top of the sidebar seemed like a good idea.  Also now it’s easy to add different items into the sidebar exclusive to certain sections of my website.  This clean layout with lighter colors gives my website visitors a more pleasant browsing experience.

As a result, by using a new custom CMS design template for my website, navigation is easier and an improved browsing experience is attained.  Customizing the sidebar for each section is the next step, but for now, enjoy exploring my site for more tips and advice on small business website design.

Filtering spam comments on your WordPress blog can be a nuisance because you have to determine the difference between whether your site was commented by an actual human or is spam from an automated bot that tries to get inbound links to another website. A new WordPress plugin known as SI CAPTCHA forces your WordPress blog visitor to enter a 4 character code, or captcha, to prove they are an actual human visitor and post a comment.

To install this plugin, after logging in your admin dashboard, click the down arrow next to the plugins tab and choose “add new”. Use the search function to locate the “SI CAPTCHA” plugin, click the install link on the right, then click the red install link on the next screen. Click “activate once the plugin is installed and you’re finished. Visit my father’s website and view his WordPress CAPTCHA Plugin Video Tutorial for a detailed step-by-step guide on how to install the SI CAPTCHA WordPress plugin.

With the SI CAPTCHA WordPress plugin, when someone tries to enter a comment they will have to enter a captcha code of 4 characters and press submit comment, therefore filtering out any non human comments that would spam your blog. This makes your job of approving or trashing comments that have been left much easier because only the ones left by humans will appear.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, writing to increase traffic, WordPress advantages over Blogger, ways to come up with post ideas and more.

The main types of malware include adware, backdoor, heuristic, rogues, trojans, viruses and worms. Each of these have their own level of danger and degree of maliciousness.

Adware or spyware is a small program designed to show advertisements on your computer. Often adware reports personal information back to its owners and as a result your privacy could be violated.

Backdoor programs are used to gain access to a computer bypassing its security programs, giving the attacker unlimited rights. Backdoor programs can spy on a user and install other malware on a computer.

Heuristic detection is a technique to detect malware by empirical means without having the specific data, based on observing the behavior of the suspect malware, or perhaps even the pattern of what it does.

Rogue programs are malicious programs that are disguised as a trustworthy anti-spyware program or registry cleaner. These programs are put on the market to scare you into buying them because they either make claims about the safety of your computer, give erroneous scan results or install their own malware on your system.

A trojan horse is a malicious program that pretends to have a particular function, but is actually destructive. Trojans cannot multiply themselves like a virus or worm.

A virus is a malicious program that multiplies and is capable of attaching itself to other programs after being executed. Viruses then cause an infection causing various degrees of damage to your computer.

Worms are often characterized as a malicious application that uses a host machine to infect others. Therefore worms can create enormous damage on networks with multiple computers.

Knowing the main types of malware could be helpful to understand what kinds of dangerous software could threaten your PC. Keep yourself informed in order to avoid a possible threat or attack to your computer system.