Adobe’s Flash player is now very common (reports are that 90% – 99% of all browsers on the internet have flash player installed).

So, security and privacy concerns are now starting to appear with Flash Player.

In particular, are Flash “super cookies”, also known as Local Shared Objects (LSO).

Compared to normal browser cookies, these objects can store a huge amounts of data… the objects are not cleared, and can be used to “re-create” normal cookies that you thought you removed…

As far as I can see, it just takes a Flash security flaw to enable virus writers to create websites that will infect your PC via LSO… and then keep re-infecting it.

So I’ve decided to play it safe and install a firefox plugin called: BetterPrivacy

This will not block LSO from being installed, but it does remove them once you exit the Firefox.

You can get BetterPrivacy from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/

Posted by Computer Help as Browser, Review, Technical at 4:23 PM UTC

No Comments »

This is something that can happen to many people:

You think you entered your windows password correctly, but then you realise it wasn’t what you thought it was… and you have tried all combinations you can think of.

Or: Your 7 year old son decides to change the password, but 24 hours later (about a 10 years in child-time), he has forgotten it!

So what do you do?

I have found 2 utilities that work well at clearing the password, so that you can, once again, login to the computer.

Of course, you must have access to another computer, in order to create the CD/USB-Drive that will allow you to reset the windows password.

These techniques rely on starting the computer from a CD or a USB drive, so that the password can be cleared from the main windows drive… while windows is not running.

The best utility I have found to reset passwords is: Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

Negatives: It does require more technical skills to use, as it does assume you understand something about your computer.

Positives: It can clear the password for any Windows system: from windows NT, up to Windows 7. The user interface is text-based, so it will work just about any type, speed and age of computer.

The default settings are worked out intelligently, so that you don’t really need to think too much about what to do… but if you stray too far from the defaults, then you run the risk of corrupting your windows system.

.

Another utility I have found is: PC Login Now

Negatives: The Graphical User Interface will fail on some of the more modern PCs… since there is no text-based fall-back, you will not be able to clear the password using PC Login Now in these cases (and it happened to me!)

Positives: The Graphical User Interface means just about anyone can use this, with a minimal risk of stuffing up.

.

My favourite is Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

Your mileage may vary.

Posted by Computer Help as Review, Technical at 4:32 PM UTC

2 Comments »

As some of you will know, I’ve been hosting computer-aid.com.au with netfirms for nearly 2 years.

My netfirms hosting plan ends in November 2010, but after a welcome improvement in service when Dan Kershaw took the reigns earlier this year, I found that customer service took a serious nose-dive once Dan and Netfirms parted company.

So I decided I cannot wait until November, I’ll bail out now.

So I switched to Hostgator.

Besides the unknown of switching to a new host, I wasn’t looking forward to the huge effort in moving my website and wordpress blog to another host. Its particularly difficult because Netfirms do not use the standard Cpanel, so I would need to get my hands dirty and do database transfers, etc.

I then noticed that Hostgator will actually transfer 1 website (or multiple websites if hosted via a single cpanel), as part of the signup deal.

Wow!

OK, on the day, there were some little problems with the transfer (eg getting US and Australian timezones mixed up, and a strange Apache password problem with my wordpress admin area, but all the time, the hostgator people responded quickly, and fixed the problems.

Overall, hardly anyone noticed that I had changed hosts… which is the way it should be!

So, although its early days yet, I can say hello to Hostgator!

And goodbye to Netfirms (and good riddance!)

Posted by Computer Help as Rant, Review at 4:20 PM UTC

2 Comments »

At first, it looks like a cross between an iphone and an ipad.

The device needs a bigpond broadband internet connection and a phone line.

You can use it to surf the net, and has many built in “apps” like:

• make a phone call (surprise surprise).
• web browser
• online yellow pages & white pages.
• youtube.
• weather.
• news.
• facebook.
• sms.
• calendar.
• internet radio (but limited in some ways).
• video (can also play videos from an SD card and USB drive).
• music player (again, also works with SD card and USB).
• photo frame (also works with SD card and USB).
• a few other built-in apps.

but:

• you cannot customise the layout of existing apps.
• you cannot get more apps.
• you cannot use VOIP services like skype.
• the on-screen keyboard could be better… you have to hit the “number” button to enter numbers… a problem if you are entering something that has text and numbers (like a WiFi password).
• The battery life if very limited (I’ve heard reports of between 15 min – 1 hour). I would expect this device to have at least 2 hours for something like this… particularly if you want to use it as a phone!
• the internet radio is limited to telstras selection of radio stations.
• you cannot make video calls as it has no webcam (you should get a netbook with a webcam to do this)
• the price is $299. I think that for an extra $100, you are better off with a netbook laptop.

All up, Id say the t-hub is interesting, but it has many limitations in its current form.

For me, the biggest limitations are:

• battery life.
• you cannot expand its functionality in the same way as the iphone & ipad, etc.
• high price (particularly given its lack of application expandability).

To make the t-hub a real success, I’d say a price of $29 is appropriate, given its current capabilities.

So why are Telstra pushing the t-hub?

Most people agree that its an effort to stop people leaving the land-line service, by offering something, that telstra hopes, will get people back to using the old-fashioned land-line.

I think its going to be a dead duck.

Sure, some people will like it, but I doubt many people will go and install a land-line phone service, just to get a t-hub… particularly when it effectively forces you to use telstra services, and deliberately locks you out of competing services (like skype).

I think Telstra need to pull their heads out of the sand; see the writing on the wall, and need to decide to really beef up their mobile network as a full replacement for landlines.

Posted by Computer Help as Review, Technical at 4:20 PM UTC

2 Comments »

I finally got sick of my 3 year old Navman GPS satnav.

Around Easter, I saw a TV ad for a Tomtom unit for $150.

Given that I like the way Tomtom do their map updates over the internet, and also allow you to get map corrections for free, then I decided to upgrade to something more modern.

After having used it for a few weeks, I can now report on the good (and not-so-good) aspects of the tomtom.

Given that this is an upgrade from my older Navman ICN320, I should find it significantly better than my old unit.

Anyway, the screen is big and clear, and after exploring the various touch-screen options, I could find most of the essentials.

There are no useless extras like bluetooth and MP3 players built in… so I like that.

One problem I had initially, was adjusting the volume of the spoken directions. Its not intuitive to touch the speed indicator (bottom left-hand corner), to adjust the volume. After a lot of searching, it seems that thats the only way to do it.

Another annoying problem, is finding a street, without knowing the suburb… I often know the street, but the suburb might not be correct.

The Start will always insist on a suburb… and if the street doesn’t exist in that suburb, then you have to trial-and-error some surrounding suburbs, until you find the correct one… Once I was in a hurry, so I had to look in the “paper” map book, to find the suburb, so I could enter the @$!% street.

And this gets even more confusing if a “new” suburb is formed. At one point, I wanted to go to a street in Scarborough. I knew the street was there, but the satnav said it didn’t exist. Only after exploring the “browse maps” section, I noticed (accidentally), that part of Scarborough is now called Newport… Grrr

An obvious solution is to offer to search nearby suburbs for the street.

Anyway, the voice directions are very clear, and there is a huge range of voices to choose from (and if you are a Doctor Who fan, you can even download the “Dalek Tom” voice… its really cool).

It doesn’t have “lane guidance”… but I found the directions clear enough, that I doubt I’ll be wishing for that feature.

The routing is good… it gives you an alternative if you don’t like its initial suggestion, and it usually finds the quickest way to your destination.

After having done the “school run” for a few weeks, I notice it always tries to take me a particular way (which I know takes longer)… I usually go “my” way… it is quicker. But it would be nice if someone could develop “smart” software that learns from the routes taken, and then uses the information it gathers to figure out better routes (ie software that learns as you drive”. I guess the technology just isn’t there yet.

The on-screen display is a bit slow to update when you go around a sharp corner, but not enough to be a problem.

It has a lot of potential to customise (eg you can customise the startup and shutdown screen, the day and night map colours, voices, etc)

The unit is incredibly small and light, so it doesn’t block your vision in the same way that a larger one would.

The windscreen mount feels solid and secure… but only time will tell how well it holds up against a Queensland summer.

And speaking of summer, I’m curious how long the LiIon battery will last in the heat.

It also changes the colour of the indicated speed, if it thinks you are going faster than the speed limit.

I’d say the best feature is being able to connect the Start to the computer, so that I can download internet updates via tomtoms map share software.

After a week I did have a problem with actual unit: it would no longer be recognised by any computer (but the navigation still worked well). After trying all sorts of ways around the problem (including a factory reset), I eventually took it back to the store and had it exchanged.

Something that some people will not like (particularly with left-hand drive countries like Australia, great Britain, and South Africa), is that the power button is behind the unit… top right-hand side. Since I like attaching it to the far Right-hand side of my window, near the door pillar, I can’t reach the power button without reaching up behind the unit, from below… quite awkward. Its obviously been designed with right-hand drive countries in mind!

In conclusion: Satnav units will probably never be perfect, but its pleasing to see just how far this technology has evolved in the last 3 years.

Update: my second unit has now developed the same problem as my first unit. The error is: “USB device not recognized”. It seems like the TomTom start has a serious flaw. I assume that having the problem happen to 2 devices signifies a significant problem with these devices.

Since the main reason for buying a TomTom is so that I can do web updates, then its looking like I’ll have to pick a more expensive model… I’m not happy!

Posted by Computer Help as Review at 4:17 PM UTC

2 Comments »

I’ve always wanted to test one of these units, and today I finally got one (since the price has dropped significantly since I first saw them).

My main  worry was that it would not support SMB (windows) sharing.

When I first investigated the HMNHD, the only information I could find, would never mentioned SMB, and just mentioned using the iomega “sharing software”.

The last thing I want is to install special “custom” software on each PC in the network… if you add a new PC a few months later… you need to dig out the CDs (if they haven’t been lost), and install the software on the PC… and since MS seems to be churning out a new Windows every other year, there is a good chance that the CD software won’t be compatible… then you need to wander the iomega website looking for the @#$& software.

So, when I plugged it into my home network, I logged into my router, found out the IP address of the HMNHD (grrr, I wish iomega had given this thing a better name… even something like HoMeNeHa…)

Anyway, I used my browser to connect to the HMNHD, and quickly found that it does support SMB. woohoo!

My next step was to give it the workgroup name I use in my network, and then I could find it in “my network places”, and a test copy and delete of a file showed that it was working well.

Next, I went to search the iomega website for updated firmware.

My unit had V2.040. The iomega website didn’t make it easy, but I finally found what I think is the latest firmware (2.063) at: http://download.iomega.com/english/hmnhd_firmware-2063-d31505205.zip

A few minutes later, the firmware was updated, and by this stage, the unit had been running for 3 hours… yet there was no sign of overheating (which I always look for in 3.5″ external drives)

All up, I’m very impressed with this unit.

It has features that I’m not really interested in, but its useful to know it does interesting things like: facebook uploads, flickr uploads, youtube uploads, auto image resize and “watermark, email distribution list, torrent downloads, FTP, etc

Keep in mind that I haven’t stress-tested the HMNHD, but with 1 Tb of storage, it should be more than adequate for most homes and small businesses.

Posted by Computer Help as Review at 4:50 PM UTC

3 Comments »

I had a customer who wanted to buy a PC so he could play flight simulator.

He said he would buy from me, but he ended up buying from Dick Smith… But thats OK.

He asked me to help setup the system, but I soon started noticing some shortfalls in the system.

First of all, it had built-in video, but he had purchased a decent video card, so it should be OK.

But then he said he wanted to run 3 monitors… but the PC only had 1 PCI-E slot… so that meant only 2 monitors…

The salesman had told him that he could “easily” plug a monitor into a USB port via an adapter…

I don’t like where this was going…

After a bit of research, I found that the best option was the UV Plus+ 16 (UV-16).

So I ordered it, and gave it a test run.

It worked well.

It got confused initially, as it started an online update soon after the install, but once the software was updated (it felt slow to update, with often no on-screen indication of the update progress.

The adapter is actually quite small, and I liked that.

I also did some video stress-testing… and the UV-16 never got hotter than luke warm.

Of course the video speed is not as fast as a dedicated video solution… even the built-in video adapter on a 5 year old PC is faster… but that can’t be helped, as USB speeds are just not fast enough to handle real video bandwidths.

So the verdict:

I wouldn’t use it as a main display, but its great for allowing an extra monitor that doesn’t need to display a lot of fast-changing graphics (eg the instruments on flight simulator).

The only other negative is the cost, as its more expensive than most low-end video cards… so its only a good solution if you just cannot get a video card into a PC (eg some older PCs have absolutely no video card slot).

Posted by Computer Help as Review, Technical at 4:47 PM UTC

2 Comments »

For those who don’t know, there is a new browser out there called google chrome.

What even fewer people realise, is that chrome is based on a browser called chromium.

I really like how chrome operates (but not the user interface, nor the lack of / difficulty in loading, useful plugins.

At first glance, both Chrome and Chromium look identical, except chrome has a small google logo on the top bar.

But dig a little deeper, and you notice a few minor differences:

• chromium has an extra “customize” menu: “new window in profile”. This seems to allow you to create different profiles (eg a “news” profile, with different browser settings)… although this gave me an error when I created a new profile. Yet the new profile got created & worked fine.
• chrome has a lengthy google “terms of service”, which concerns some people.
• Chrome is currently at version 1.0.154.48, while Chromium is at version 1.0.156.0 (ie its newer)
• The Chrome logo is a colourful metallic ball of blue, green, red, yellow, while chromium is a bland metallic ball of grey, blue, blue, and blue

Both are very quick.

Both have a pleasingly simple interface (too simple for me, but I think most people will like it).

Personally, I prefer Chromium, but there is hardly any difference between the two.

Posted by Computer Help as Review at 1:03 PM UTC

11 Comments »

Recently, I’ve been hearing lots of hype about the pepperjam advertising system.

It sound similar to Google Adsense, in that you can place contextual ads on your website.

So I thought: hey, I’ll give it a go.

After signing up (and being accepted), I manually selected who will be able to advertise on my website.

Now this can be both good and bad.

Bad in that either: I might have a limited number advertisers to choose from, or I might have too many (and need to spend a long time vetting them all).

Good in that I can have complete control what appears on my site.

So I selected about 12 relevant advertisers.

Some will automatically allow me to show their ad on my website, while others wanted to check me out first (I presume they check my website, to make sure it isn’t something like a porn website masquerading as a craft website).

I’ve had 2 advertisers reject me (I suspect it might be because they only want US websites, and mine is Australian).

There also seems to be 2 ways I can advertise

• place the adverts manually on my site (each advertiser will give you the code for the type of AD you want to display ie: anything from a simple text link, up to large animated graphic adverts).
• Use the pepperjamADS function

Now, pepperjamADS is similar to google adsense, except you select a range of ads (from the advertisers that are on your “partners” list), select the format of the banner (eg 728X90 leaderboard, 250X250 square, etc)

Once you place the code for pepperjamADS on your website, partner adverts are displayed as 1 or more text links (similar to google).

Since I only have 9 partners in my partner list, then I suspect the ads placed in the banner will be more of a random selection, than a contextual list.

So far, its all interesting, and shows a lot of promise.

But I have had one slight problem:

I tried the pepperjamADS vertical skyscraper/banner, and found that the wording seemed to get truncated (or the space allocated for the adverts wasn’t large enough… I’m not sure which).

The upshot is that many ads will end something like: “… for the best service and”

I figure: Its a new service, its bound to have some teething problems… I’m not concerned.

I’ll just send them a bug report, and see what happens.

I sent the report on Saturday, and by Wednesday night, I didn’t get any feedback.

Now, a small bug doesn’t worry me much, but not getting so much as a short email to say “we are looking into it” is a bit more worrying.

When a company doesn’t provide some feedback, then I start to question the quality of customer service.

At this stage I’ve removed all my pepperjamADS vertical adverts, and I’m going to wait and see what happens.

Hopefully, its just a minor hiccup.

Posted by Computer Help as Business, Review at 1:43 AM UTC

3 Comments »

I recently got an email from Mike Duncan from SuperAntiSpyware. He asked me to become a reseller for superantispyware (SAS).

Well, before I endorse anything like this, I need to try it out, and decide for myself.

I have seen SAS once before, on a badly infected PC, so at the time, I instinctively classified it as either ineffective, or as spyware in disguise (and removed it).

So I download the free edition of SAS, and do a scan of my own system (which I knew was safe). In doing this, I found I had to disable the antivirus (antivir guard), as it would often intervene before WD and SAS could get a look at any infected file.

 

Once the scan was finished, it found 3 minor problems:

1. A large number of tracking cookies (and here is my first and second gripe with SAS: I regard tracking cookies as a necessary part of surfing the net… not something that should be detected as “bad” (as unsophisticated users can get themselves into trouble with this). In particular, coookies from google and major department stores should not be flagged. And when I decided to mark the cookies as trusted, I had to process all 200+ cookies manually (one at a time). NOTE: I tried this again a few weeks later, and found no problem un-selecting all cookies with a single mouse click.
2. A false positive: it detected a file from driverpacks.net as an “unknown” infection. (Again, it wasn’t detected a few weeks later)
3. Another false positive: it detected c:\windows\system\driver\win32.dll as the winup trojan (it was actually a file from the cygwin system that I use… Once again, it was not detected a few weeks later. Its good to see that SAS are really serious about improving how their product works.

Ok, some temporary false positives. That’s not a huge problem for me. Its just something to keep in mind for the future.

SAS portray themselves as a responsive company, which will remove the nastiest spyware. I’m also led to believe that new spyware is detectable/removable soon after it is detected in the wild. Unfortunately, thats not something I can easily test in a week or two… but I’ll see how things go over the next few months.

But in the meantime, I thought I’d test it against windows defender (my current favorite free antispyware program).

I fired up my virtual PC, and deliberately infected it with a small number of nasy infections from the past, plus some extra ones from malwaredomainlist.com. This is not a comprehensive test, it just allows me to see if I should keep going with SAS.

The first difference between SAS and WD, is that WD includes realtime monitoring/blocking. From my experience, non-technical users tend to forget to do manual scans, so thats something in favour of WD.

The second difference is that when WD detects a malware infection, it usually cleans it up without needing a computer restart… whereas SAS seems to always insist on a restart.

So here is the malware I tested, and the results of scanning with SAS and WD:

• Ultimate Defender: Both WD and SAS detect and remove, but WD doesn’t need a restart.
• VirusHeat: Both WD and SAS detect and remove, but WD doesn’t need a restart.
• AntiVirus2008Pro: Both WD and SAS detect and remove, but WD doesn’t need a restart.
• SpySheriff: Both WD and SAS detect and remove, but WD doesn’t need a restart.
• SpyRemover (from spyremover.com): Neither WD nor SAS detect it!

So, in summary:

Both SAS and WD seem about the same, except WD is faster, and has some nice features not present in SAS.

Since I charge customers for my time, then the slowness of SAS is a concern in my day to day work, as infected systems are usually much slower than normal systems, so a quick scan with SAS can end up taking over 1 hour. So I’ll be doing a scan with WD first, and then use SAS if WD doesn’t find anything.

Will I keep using it?

Yes (for the moment).

The reason is simple: In the past, I have often come across “new” infections that my current batch of security software is not able to remove (so I need to wrestle with the infection, and eventually beat it into submission ).

If SAS does what its makers say it does (and I must say I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far), then I can save time (ie customer money) by using it as a front-line tool to remove infections that would otherwise take me over 2 hours to remove.

With my own PCs, I’ll continue to use WD for the moment.

Posted by Computer Help as Review, Technical at 1:43 PM UTC

3 Comments »