We have all heard of laptops, notebooks and netbooks, but a new breed of portable computers has now entered the market, called “Ultrabooks.” The allure of the Ultrabook is it’s sleek, thin, lightweight and ultra-portable design. Let’s face it, would you rather go into a meeting with your 3″ thick black laptop that takes a year to boot and will only run for 30 minutes before plugging it in, or a sleek, thin, sexy, laptop?
The Ultrabooks aren’t going to provide you with all of the comforts of a full fledged laptop. Most Ultrabooks have a 13″ screen or smaller, has a smaller hard drive, don’t have a DVD drive, and only have a few ports, but in giving up these creature comforts you end up with a laptop that has a larger battery life, is under 3lbs, and can fit easily in your purse or briefcase. These laptops aren’t designed for everyone, but for those constantly on the road and those that need more power than a tablet or iPad can provide, the Ultrabook line is right up their alley.
Any user of Outlook has probably come to rely on the autocomplete feature where it will automatically remember and fill in an email address as you start typing. The only annoyance is that Outlook will also automatically remember any bad email addresses that you type in as well. Luckily there is an extremely easy solution that will make us all wonder why we didn’t think of this before. Next time you are typing in someone’s email address and you see a bad entry in the list here is what you do:
- If you have Outlook 2007 or 2010 you can simply click the X next to the entry that you want to delete.
- If you have an older version of Outlook, use the arrow keys and highlight the one you want to delete and hit the delete key on your keyboard.
IT IS ACTUALLY THAT EASY
Yesterday I presented to a PTA for a local high school about some of the risks and threats facing our children online, and how to mitigate these risks. I thought it would be a good idea to post these for everyone, so feel free to download the presentation.
IT and Children
The American Academy of Pediatricians helped Microsoft develop age-based guidelines for children and internet safety, so I thought I would include those here:
Up to age 10
Here are some safety tips to consider when you go online with your 2-10 year old:
- It’s never too early to foster open and positive communication with children. It’s a good idea to talk with them about computers and to stay open to their questions and curiosity.
- Always sit with your kids at this age when they’re online.
- Set clear rules for Internet use.
- Insist that your children not share personal information such as their real name, address, phone number, or passwords with people they meet online.
- If a site encourages kids to submit their names to personalize the web content, help your kids create online nicknames that don’t give away personal information.
- Use family safety tools to create appropriate profiles for each family member and to help filter the Internet.For more information, see Windows Live Family Safety, Windows 7 Parental Controls, or Windows Vista Parental Controls.Help protect your children from offensive pop-up windows by using the pop-up blocker that’s built in to Internet Explorer.
- All family members should act as role models for young children who are just starting to use the Internet.
Ages 11 to 14
Children this age are savvier about their Internet experience, but it’s still a good idea to supervise and monitor their Internet use to help ensure they are not exposed to inappropriate materials. You can use Internet safety tools to limit access to content and websites and provide a report of Internet activities. Make sure children this age understand what personal information they should not give over the Internet.
When your kids are this age it might not be practical to physically supervise their Internet use at all times. You can use tools such as Windows Live Family Safety, Windows 7 Parental Controls, or Windows Vista Parental Controls.
Here are some safety tips to consider when you go online with your 11-14 year old:
- It’s a good idea to foster open and positive communication with your children. Talk with them about computers and stay open to their questions and curiosity.
- Set clear rules for Internet use.
- Insist that your children not share personal information such as their real name, address, phone number, or passwords with people they meet online.
- If a site encourages kids to submit their names to personalize the web content, help your kids create online nicknames that give away no personal information.
- Use family safety tools to create appropriate profiles for each family member and to help filter the Internet.For more information, see Windows Live Family Safety, Windows 7 Parental Controls, or Windows Vista Parental Controls.
- Set family safety tools on the medium security setting, which should have some limitations on content, websites, and activities.
- Keep Internet-connected computers in an open area where you can easily supervise your kids’ activities.
- Help protect your children from offensive pop-up windows by using the pop-up blocker that’s built in to Internet Explorer.
- Encourage your children to tell you if something or someone online makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened. Stay calm and remind your kids they are not in trouble for bringing something to your attention. Praise their behavior and encourage them to come to you again if the same thing happens.
Ages 15 to 18
Teens should have almost limitless access to content, websites, or activities. They are savvy about the Internet but they still need parents to remind them of appropriate safety guidelines. Parents should be available to help their teens understand inappropriate messages and avoid unsafe situations. It’s a good idea for parents to remind teens what personal information should not be given over the Internet.
Here are some safety tips to consider as you guide your teens online:
- Continue to keep family communication as open and positive about computers as you can. Keep talking about online lives, friends, and activities, just as you would about other friends and activities.Encourage your teens to tell you if something or someone online makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened. If you’re a teen and something or someone online doesn’t seem quite right, then speak up.
- Create a list of Internet house rules as a family. Include the kinds of sites that are off limits, Internet hours, what information should not be shared online, and guidelines for communicating with others online, including social networking.
- Keep Internet-connected computers in an open area and not in a teen’s bedroom.
- Investigate Internet-filtering tools (such as Windows Vista Parental Controls, Windows 7 Parental Controls, or Windows Live Family Safety) as a complement to parental supervision.
- Help protect your children from offensive pop-up windows by using the pop-up blocker that’s built in to Internet Explorer.
- Know which websites your teens visit, and whom they talk to. Encourage them to use monitored chat rooms, and insist they stay in public chat room area.
- Insist that they never agree to meet an online friend.
- Teach your kids not to download programs, music, or files without your permission. File-sharing and taking text, images, or artwork from the web may infringe on copyright laws and can be illegal.
- Talk to your teenagers about online adult content and pornography, and direct them to positive sites about health and sexuality.
- Help protect them from spam. Tell your teens not to give out their email address online, not to respond to junk mail, and to use email filters.
- Be aware of the websites that your teens frequent. Make sure your kids are not visiting sites with offensive content, or posting personal information. Be aware of the photos that teens post of themselves and their friends.
- Teach your kids responsible, ethical, online behavior. They should not be using the Internet to spread gossip, bully, or threaten others.
- Make sure your teens check with you before making financial transactions online, including ordering, buying, or selling items.
- Discuss online gambling and its potential risks with your teens. Remind them that it is illegal for them to gamble online.
I thought I would dedicate this smart wire to all of us that are constantly on the road, and hopefully provide some helpful tips and tools for using technology while traveling. I have included my top 5 “road warrior” tools in this Smart Wire, but would love to hear yours.
- We all have the need to quickly move files around and/or share files with others, but one of the most important things that is overlooked is securing the data that resides on thumb drives, because let’s face it, we are all guaranteed to lose one of those at some point. I recommend a fully encrypted flash drive that protects your data from unwanted access. Take a look at Kingston or Imation.
- I carry around a MiFi wireless hotspot from Verizon or Sprint, which does a great job of connecting just about anywhere. Now for those of you that don’t want to foot the monthly bill take a look at the Zuni Connect. This device will allow you to plug in to an existing wired network connection and create your own secured wireless network, or you can connect it to an existing wireless network and create your own secured wireless hotspot.
- When I travel I have my laptop, ipad, iphone, MiFi, etc… So no doubt I have a ton of cables to charge and interconnect everything, but I don’t want to lug around the individual chargers because they just take up space. Kensington makes a USB charger that allows you to charge up to 4 mobile devices simultaneously and comes with European power adapters.
- I have mentioned LogMeIn in previous Smart Wires, but for the Road Warrior it is almost indispensable. Inevitably you will run into a document or file that is on your computer or server back at the office. LogMeIn will allow you to securely access your desktop and get to anything you need.
- Last but not least is an ingenious tool that allows you to organize all your cables, devices, etc… into one place, the GRID-IT. Not sure why I didn’t come up with this, but it is a simple product with interlaced elastic bands that allow you to easily slide cables etc… under them for a tight fit.
Faxing has almost become a thing of the past. In this day and age I see more people scanning and emailing items than faxing, which is definitely what I prefer. That being said there are still those rare times when you need to send and/or receive a fax. Now I don’t know about you, but I can’t see paying $30, $40 or even $70 per month for a fax line when I only use it once a month. Luckily there are faxing alternatives that do a great job and won’t break the bank, so today’s SmartWire provides some information on alternatives, as well as some recommendations.
You are probably wondering, how do I receive or send a fax without having a physical fax machine. The way these services work is that incoming faxes are automatically captured and sent to your email address. Outgoing faxes can be handled by scanning a document in to your computer and sending it, or simply emailing the document to the fax service itself. The sending and receiving piece is handled by the faxing company itself. The best part is that they cost a fraction of what you would pay for an actual fax line
There are numerous faxing companies out there, but here are my top three picks:
- Nextiva: This happens to be the service I use and the cost is $4.95 per month for up to 500 pages.
- MyFax: MyFax has a lot of additional corporate features such as multiple distributions etc…and is around $10.00 per month for about 400 pages.
- eFax: eFax is probably the original creator of electronic faxing adn offers a wide range of services, but is probably the most expensive at $14.13 a month for 300 pages.
Now with the money you save in faxing, you can buy a new computer (Wink, Wink)
We are seeing more and more people opt for less expensive alternatives to Microsoft Office, such as Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice, or even Google Docs. The problem comes when you go to send someone a document and they don’t have the same version that you are using. Sure they may be able to open and view the document in another program, but you aren’t guaranteed that the file will be formatted the same or even display the same on their screen. Just the other day I received a presentation created in Google Docs, which I ended up having to recreate because it wouldn’t display correctly.
Luckily there is a FREE way to send documents in a format that everyone can view no matter what. Years ago Adobe created the PDF (Portable Document Format). This format allows a document to be saved, emailed, etc… and just about all computers have the free PDF viewer pre-loaded. Now that we know this is the best format to send documents, how do we create a PDF? You can go out and spend the $249.95 for the full version of Adobe Acrobat and create/edit PDFs until your heart is content, but we have found an alternative that works great and is FREE. Cute PDF Writer is a small application that can be loaded on your computer and appears as a printer. Now whenever you want to create a PDF document, simply print to the CutePDF printer and your document will be converted to a PDF and you can save it to your computer. No more wondering how your document will display on the other end.
Internet Explorer version 9 has been out for a while now and those that have updated either love it or hate it. Those that haven’t updated and are running Windows 7 will actually soon be forced to go to the new version as Microsoft removes support for older versions. That being said we still receive quite a few calls about how to find things and how to use Internet Explorer 9, and one of the most common questions that we get asked is “Where did my Search bar go?”
In previous versions of internet explorer we were all used to the Google or Bing search bar in the upper-right corner, which has now disappeared in IE9. Many of our users thought the search feature was gone altogether, but luckily Microsoft has now introduced a slightly different an easier way to search. At the very top of the Internet Explorer Window where you type in the URL that you want to go to, you will now see a little magnify glass at the end. The entire URL bar is now your search bar. For instance if I wanted to find an excellent Technology Provider with Smart Solutions that are Simply Applied you can simply type in “Smart Solutions Simply Applied” and hit enter and the browser will automatically open your search provider with the results. In addition anything that you type in this space with a preceding question mark is automatically assumed to be a question and will search as well.
Providing internet access to kids is definitely a necessity nowadays. School work is now conducted online, and the computer is a great educational tool when used correctly. The only problem is that providing unfettered access to the internet can be harmful and in the end you never know for sure what sites and content your kids may be seeing.
Luckily there is an easy solution to help protect your kids and ultimately your PC. K9Web Protection is a piece of software that can be installed on your computer (both Mac and Windows). This software will allow you to select what categories and levels of content you want to block (i.e. pornography, drugs, violence, spyware, phishing, etc…). In addition you can set time restrictions and review reports to see where your children are going and what they are looking at. The best part is the software is provided for FREE, and it is an easy installation, only taking 15 minutes.
I recommend that all parents with children have some sort of content filtering in place to help protect their family, so head over to K9 Web Protection and download it today. Your kids may not like it, but at least they will be safe and secure.
Earlier we posted an article on how to setup parental controls for Windows 7, but we didn’t want to leave out those with Macs. Below is how you can setup parental controls on a MAC to limit access to content etc…
- Open the System Preferences Window and click on the Parental Controls Icon.
- You will need to click the lock in the bottom left-hand corner and provide your administrator user name and password.
- Next you want to select the account from the list on the left and then you can start adding/setting parental controls on the right. Here is a rundown of the parental control options:
- System: Under the System tab you can select what system capabilities a user has and also limit them to only certain applications.
- Content: Under the Content tab you can try to limit access to adult websites or only allow access to approved sites.
- Mail & Chat: In this window you can create an approved list of users that your child can email and chat with. You can also provide a mechanism for them to request permission from you.
- Time Limits: Allows you to limit time spent on the computer or limit when a computer can be used.
- Logs: This is where you can go in and see what sites they have been going to and applications based on date and time.
Your kids may not like it, but at least it will keep them safe on the net.
