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1) As soon as you notice you are infected, unplug your internet connection or turn off your wireless.  This will prevent the infection from spreading, and will isolate the offending program from its source.

2) Boot into Safe Mode

3) Run your favorite antivirus/anti-malware program.

This post is really about Safe Mode – how do you get there?  There are a couple of ways depending on the operating system you are using.  Here’s the Microsoft Page on the topic.

Windows XP

If XP is the only operating system installed on your computer, boot into Safe Mode with these instructions.

• If the computer is running, shut down Windows, and then turn off the power
• Wait 30 seconds, and then turn the computer on.
• Start tapping the F8 key. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears. If you begin tapping the F8 key too soon, some computers display a “keyboard error” message.  If this happens, resstart the computer and try again.
• Ensure that the Safe mode option is selected.  If you are trying to clean a machine that is virus laden, choose Safe Mode Without Networking.
• Press Enter. The computer then begins to start in Safe mode.
• When you are finished with all troubleshooting, close all programs and restart the computer as you normally would.

If you don’t want to bother with function keys, you can use the System Configuration Utility method.

• Close all open programs.
• Click Start, Run and type MSCONFIG in the box and click OK
• The System Configuration Utility appears, On the BOOT.INI tab, Check the “/SAFEBOOT” option, and then click OK and Restart your computer when prompted.
• The computer restarts in Safe mode.
• Perform the troubleshooting steps for which you are using Safe Mode.
• When you are finished with troubleshooting in Safe mode, open MSCONFIG again, on the BOOT.INI tab,  uncheck “/SAFEBOOT” and click OK to restart your computer.  THIS STEP IS CRITICAL.  If you don’t change this back, then the computer will continue to boot in Safe Mode until you do.

Windows 7

Safe Mode in Windows 7 is basically the same as XP – use F8 to get to the Safe Mode startup screen.  MSCONFIG is slightly different – Safe Mode is called Safe Boot, but otherwise the process is the same.

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There are lots of methods to use to secure your wireless network.  The most common is WEP, but that is being replaced by the newer (and better) WPA protocol.  You can also secure the network by allowing only specific computers on the network.  This is simple to do, and doesn’t require security keys and messy settings.  The problem with it is that the data you send wirelessly is not encrypted.  With WEP and WPA, the data is encrypted.

What are these things anyway?

WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy (see the Wiki for more info) is an encryption protocol developed in the late 1990’s to secure wireless networks.  It offers 64bit and 128 bit encryption using a key generated by a passphrase you enter, but is easily cracked.  Despite this, there are a ton of people who still use WEP since it is the default protection on many routers.

WPA (WiFi Protected Access) is the next generation encryption algorithm that replaced WEP.  WPA uses 256bit encryption keys, and is far more secure than WEP.  It’s not the be-all-end-all, but is very good.  As with WEP, you have the option of generating a security key using a passphrase so that you don’t have to remember a string of random hex digits.  This is great, BUT you have to be careful about the passphrase you use.  DON’T use things like your pets name, your kid’s name, your street, or anything that can be guessed.

The clear answer is to secure your network with WPA.

BUT – do you have to secure your network at all?  The safe answer is yes.

What happens if you don’t secure your network?  That depends on where you live, how close your neighbors are, and how you secure your computers.  Most wireless routers have a range of 150 feet.  That means that if your neighbors are more than 150 feet away, they will not be able to get on your network unless they are standing outside your house with their laptop.

If you don’t change the default security settings on your computers, chances are that even if someone did get on your network, they wouldn’t be able to do much.  By default settings I mean:

• No shared hard drive locations
• Remote control disabled
• Firewalls up and running on every computer
• Anti-Virus up and running on every computer

Of course, this is not always realistic – I have lots of shared directories, and remote control enabled on my machines because I like to be able to work on any machine from anywhere if I need to.  For that reason, I like to secure the network so that if someone manages to get on they won’t get to my personal files.

The bottom line on security for wireless networks is best practice is to secure your network using WPA.  That said, if you live in a remote area where no one will likely be in range of your wireless, it’s not really necessary, just a good idea.

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Sysomos also does research into twitter usage and in their blog report  that 24% of all tweets are bots and other programatic postings.  Not surprising since the top contributors are posting 150 tweets and more a day.  Interestingly, they also put together a list of the top posters who have 5000 or more followers, and less than 50 posts per day.  The assumption is that these are reall posters, not bots.  Chris Brogan tops that list.  Who is he?  He’s a guy that helps businesses use social media.  Practice what you preach I guess.

Lots of other interesting facts.  55% of tweeters are women, 78% are caucasian.  The number of African American twitter users is well above the average for African American internet users.  I have no idea what that says about African American internet users, but there it is. The demographic information on Twitter is from quantcast.  A very cool stat site for websites.

So what does this all mean?  Be careful who you follow, and don’t feel bad about dropping the people who post too much – they are likely just a bot anyway.

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The list of apps they like so far is here.

Notable inclusions are TweetDeck, Skype and Kindle – three of my personal favs.

Thanks AppVee!!

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1) Stop Outlook from suggesting names in the TO field.

This is related to the .nk2 file I blogged about awhile ago.  If you don’t like that outlook suggests names for you, then you can turn this off.  Go to Tools, then Options.  From there choose the Preferences tab, then click the e-mail options button.  In the e-mail options dialog, click the Advanced E-mail Options button.  Uncheck the radio button for “Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields”.  Click “ok”.

2) Configure Outlook to NEVER send read receipts.

Personally, I think read receipts are annoying.  Some people love them, and who am I to judge, but I’d prefer to keep when I read your mail to myself, so I turn this “feature” off.  To do this, go to Tools, then Options.  From there choose the Preferences tab, then click the E-mail options button.  In the E-mail options window, choose the “Tracking Options” button.  Look for “Use this option to decide how to respond to requests for read receipts. Only applies to Internet Mail accounts.”   There are a couple of radio buttons – choose “never send a response”.  Click “ok”.

3) Remove the System Tray icon for new email

Another love it or hate it item.  I like this one, but when the system tray gets cluttered, out it goes.  To remove the icon, once again go to Tools, Options and from there choos the Preferences tab.  On the Preferences tab choose the E-mail Options button.  In the E-mail options dialog choose the Advanced E-mail Options button.  Under the “When new items arrive in My Inbox”, uncheck “Show an envelope icon in the notification area”.  Click “ok”.

4) Configure Outlook to empty the deleted items folder when you exit.

This is really helpful if you have limited mailbox space.  Deleted items count toward your mailbox space limits, so you either need to remember to empty your deleted items, or have outlook do it for you when you exit the application.

To configure Outlook to empty deleted items on exit, go to Tools, the Options, then choose the “Other” tab.  Under “General”, check “Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting”.  Click “ok”.  Your sysadmin will love you ;)

5) Add Holidays to your Calendar

Outlook support iCal, so there are thousands of calendars you can add to Outlook.  To add holidays from the default list, go to Tools then Options, then choose the Preferences tab.  In the Calendar section, click the Calendar Options button.  In the Calendar Options window, click the “Add Holidays” button.  Scroll through the resulting list, click the radio button next to the ones you want, then click “ok”.

Just a few things for now.  I’ll add more another time.

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Here are a few things that make Windows 7 neat.  Big thanks to Tim Sneath for most of these.

1) Windows Management – in XP, your choices on what you could do with arranging windows on your screen was somewhat limited.  You could maximize a window to take the whole screen, you could manually shrink it to the size you wanted and move it to the side, iconize it, etc.  In Windows 7, several “docking” features were introduced that make moving things around on your screen really easy.  If you press the Windows key, then the left arrow, the current window will dock to the left side of the screen.  WIN+right arrow will dock to the right, WIN+up arrow will maximize the window, WIN+down arrow will restore the window.  In addition to the WIN shortcuts, you can drag windows to the top to maximize it (double clicking the title bar still works too), or you can drag the window to the left or right to dock the window there.

On a related note, in a multi monitor setup, you can move windows from one screen to the other using WIN+SHIFT+right or left arrow.  Now were talking!

2) Get rid of the noise – Have you ever been working on a document and been annoyed that all of you other open windows are just in the way?  Press WIN-Home in Windows 7 and all windows but the current are minimized.  Press WIN-Home again to restore the windows.

3) Browser load times – This is really an IE8 tip, but I’ll include it here.  If IE is taking a long time to load, it may be because of the add-ons you are running.  Go to Tools/Manage Add Ons and you will see  a list of what IE loads at startup.  The neat thing is if you scroll to the right in the list, you can see the load times for the Add Ons.  This is a great way to see where the bottle necks are.

4) Quick start for taskbar apps – you can use WIN+1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 to quickly go to or start any of the first 5 apps in your taskbar.

5) Look at the desktop – Another helpful feature is WIN-space bar.  This combo lets you look at the desktop and see any icons or widgets you have.  You can also click on the rectangle all the way in the lower right hand corner – this is the old “show desktop” icon.

6) Additional instance of an open application – there are a couple of ways to do this, but by far the fastest is to hold the shift key while left clicking on the taskbar icon.  Way better than going through the start menu again, or right clicking and choosing to open the app.

7) Running with elevated rights.  If you hold CTL-Shift while clicking on a taskbar app, you will bring up a new instance with full administrator rights (assuming your account has permissions).  When Windows 7 is deployed in an enterprise, this will be GREAT.

8) Specialized Window switching – this one I love.  If you are like me, you have tons of windows open all the time.  In XP if you want to switch between windows you can ALT-Tab through them all, or you can click on the taskbar icon and guess which window is the one you want.  In Windows 7, you can essentially Alt-Tab through all of the open windows associated with a specific application without scrolling through every open window.  You do this by holding down the CTL key, then clicking on the taskbar icon for the application you want.  Windows will “scroll” through the open windows as you click the icon.  This is great if you want to scroll through all of your open Outlook windows, for example, but don’t want to run through everything you have open.

9) Move focus the taskbar – this is neat keyboard shortcut.  If you press WIN-T you will move focus to the taskbar.  You can then use the arrow keys to move through your taskbar apps to choose the one you want.  For keyboard shortcut junkies, this is great.

10) Open windows explorer keyboard shortcut – Press WIN+E.  This will open up and explorer window at the Computer Node.  Note that SHFT+click on the explorer icon opens at the Document Library Node.

More to come -

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This is where I know I am just not a visionary – I can see this a something that is neat and probably even valuable to some, but I just don’t have a real sense of why you would need this except for gaming.  Now I love my iPhone games (Wild West Pinball rules) but they suck the life out of the already quick to drain iPhone battery, so to me, gaming is limited.  Synaptics says the new screens are designed for low power use, but the proof will be in the pudding.

Popular Mechanics points out an interesting use for the multi touch points – the ability to detect differences in touch pressure.  In theory if you press harder, your finger spreads out.  Since the touch points are designed to be smaller, you should be able to tell if lots of points are pressed close to each other – a hard press – vs a smaller number of discrete points.  Synaptics isn’t saying they can do this, but it would be nice.  I see lots of uses for this in gaming, but also in regular apps – pressing harder in a drawing app gives you darker or thicker lines as a simple example.

Innovation is good, and it is a bit of a if you build it they will come advance.  I’m sure there are really clever developers already thinking of ways to incorporate more than two fingers into their applications.

• Outlook for the iPhone? eWeek is reporting that a Microsoft Executive, Stephen Elop, while speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo hinted that Microsoft will eventually release a version of the Office suite for mobile devices, specifically the iPhone.  I think this is important for a couple of reasons.  It further emphasizes MS' current move......
• Well that didn't take long - iPhone 3Gs jailbreak is released Independence day for iPhone 3GS users is here.  George Hotz has released an application that will unlock the 3GS so that you can install whatever applications you want, not just what Apple wants you to have.  The blog post with instructions is here.  You need Windows (but not windows 7),......
• Growl for Windows Growl v2.0 beta 18 was recently released for Windows - should you care?  If you are like most people, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with everything happening around you on the web.  Twitter, facebook, email, calendar, IM - the draws on your attention are almost overwhelming. ......
• iPhone 3.0 release date - June 17, iPhone 3Gs details released Apple announced at WWDC 2009 that the iPhone 3.0 software will be available to current iPhone users on June 17th.  At the same event Apple announced that the iPhone 3GS will be available for purchase June 19th, 2009 in 16GB and 32 GB models for $199 and $299 respectively.  They......
• iPhone 3.0 installed I've been using the iPhone 3.0 software for a couple of days now and other than a minor installation glitch (my fault) the upgrade was painless.  Everything seems to work as advertised, and so far, I like what I see. WiFi improvements - One of the things that really bugged......

• Silk Screen Dealers -> Antiques -> Asian For anyone who enjoys Asian art, an antique silk screen can make a gorgeous addition to your home. Paintings and even silkscreened prints with an Asian theme can give a room a distinct atmosphere, but there’s nothing quite like a paneled screen that can be......
• 13 Reasons Why Palm Pixi is Better than the Apple iPhone [/caption]The Palm Pixi is coming out in less than a week. With that in mind we thought we'd highlight some of the advantages that the Pixi has over the iPhone. Keep in mind that Pixi is aimed to be a cheaper, low-end device, so it's intentionally missing some features found......
• Acer Iconia Tablet PC Review - W500 This is a review about the Acer Iconia Tablet PC (model: W500-BZ467). Iconia is a 10.1" multi-touch display Tablet PC released by Acer. It has a unique cool looking design, when compared to other models of Tablet PC (Silver colored?). Its a hybrid design of Netbook + Tablet PC. Yes,......
• Top 5 Apple iOS Games For May 2011 Here are Top 5 Games that I've been playing on my iPhone 4 these days. The games are available for Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. If you know any other interesting games, post in the comments below. 1. Doodle Jump - BE WARNED: Insanely Addictive! [Full Version $0.99]......
• [How To] Jailbreak iOS 4.3.5 using redsn0w 0.9.8b4 Apple recently seeded iOS 4.3.5 and good news for jailbreakers is that iOS 4.3.5 can still be jailbroken using redsn0w 0.9.8b4 (which was used to tether jailbreak iOS 4.3.4). This will work for all devices except the iPad 2. The jailbreak is tethered though, meaning that you'll have to connect......

• iPhone 3.0 will have landscape mode, Skype for iPhone I took a deeper look at the 3.0 release and there will be landscape mode for email and SMS messages.  Check out the preview here.  It's about time that Apple put this out, but the proof will be in the pudding. On a related iPhone note, I installed the Skype......
• Kindle iPhone app After using the Kindle app for iPhone for a few weeks now, I'm totally hooked.  At first, I thought the small screen would be annoying, but I'm really loving this app!!  In my less busy days I used to read a lot.  These days life has taken over and I......
• 35 best iPhone apps of the year so far AppVee (www.appvee.com) has released their list of the 35 best iPhone apps of the year so far. If you don't know about AppVee, they are awesome. Basically, they look at every (well almost every, they do ignore the nonsense) iPhone app published and winow out the good from bad. They......
• Adding multiple emails accounts on your iPhone If you are like me, you have too many email accounts. Work account, personal account, account for public use (spam mostly ends up here), blog email account, side business account, test accounts from various services. Too many to check all the time. What do I do to manage them all?......
• Romanticizing Technology I've been thinking a lot lately about why we love and hold on to technology gadgets when they are not necessarily all that great.  I can think of several things I've bought or used at work that were "the next big thing" or just new and cool that turned out......

• The Twitter Fallacy - Social Media Strategies That Don't Work. You can follow these few steps to recalibrating your social media presence right away, by making a few simple changes to both your Twitter account, as well as your "approach" to accumulating followers on Twitter: 1. Start Tweeting! I find thousands of people on Twitter who don't tweet anything......
• What Not To Do In Social Networks! Using different social networks to make contacts and send traffic to your website is a good idea, but some people take it a little to far.  I check my facebook account maybe 3 times a day regardless of  when I check my account the same guy is blasting the same......
• Save Time, Money and Space in Over 80 Ways If you're looking for handy gadgets, tools and various items that can save you time, money or space (or all three!) this list of more than 80 top products is just what you need. Everyone's got saving money on their minds these days- whether your at the grocery store, or......
• Easy Tips for Better Hammering There is a multitude of different ways that you can improve your hammering, or just make working with a hammer easier for you. If you are into home improvement or wood working, then you probably end up working with a hammer a lot, and there is always room for improvement.......
• Green Building & Energy Recap 3.25.10 > The ultimate water-saving toilet is a hole in the ground. The high-tech version of that is the outhouse, and the high-tech version of that is the composting toilet. None of these use water, and the waste eventually decomposes back into soil good enough for your garden. Of course, these......

Search providers are not so nice.

Ask.com, for example, has decided it is ok to change the default keyword search provider in Firefox without asking or notifying the user.  What makes this especially annoying is that it is not a setting easily found or changed without some digging.  What is the default keyword search provider?  If you type a word into the URL window instead of a web address, most browsers assume you want to search for that word and will use a search engine to look it up.  This is called a keyword search.  The search engine your browser uses for this task is the keyword search provider.  If you don’t specify one, the browser uses the ISP’s default, which is why you can sometimes get an Optimum Online search page, or Roadrunner search page if you don’t tell the browser what you want to use – a entirely different level of annoying ;)  Not all browser’s let you make this setting, so it is very helpful to use one that does, like Firefox.

So, back to the problem – how do you change Firefox’s default keyword search provider back to something that works from Ask.com’s “search” engine?

First, you have to get to the advanced options page for Firefox’s defaults.  These settings are accessible from the about:config page, and are stored in a file called prefs.js.  In the URL entry bar, enter about:config to bring up the settings page.   CAUTION – these are advanced settings and messing with them can make your browser do things you don’t expect.  Be careful changing things!  It’s a good idea to write down what you change, or better yet, make a backup of the underlying settings file (for Vista/Windows 7, the file is here C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\profileID.default\prefs.js).

Second, use the filter to search for “keyword”.  You should see the keyword.URL entry – this is the one you want to change.  It looks like this:

Next, double click on the keyword.URL line to bring up a dialogue box into which you can enter the search engine of your choice.

Lastly, enter the URL you want.  For Google, use "http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=". There are a couple of other examples here.

That’s it -

• Windows 7 - First impressions So far so good - I installed the beta on a couple of laptops in the last month, and so far I like what I see.  It's very much Vista centric, but without the sllllloooooowwwwwness.  Boot time is much improved (under a minute) and there are some added features that......
• WEP vs WPA Another question I get asked a lot is on Wireless security.  People get very confused by the security options out there, and the industry doesn't help by adding acronym after acronym.  So what do you do?  The answer is fairly simple - secure your network with WPA!! There are lots......
• Bypass the Recycle Bin in XP I have a love hate relationship with the Recycle Bin.  When I need it, I'm glad its there, but for the most part it is just a pain in the rear.  Most people forget to empty it (don't we all hate taking out the trash?) and end up with loads......
• Growl for Windows Growl v2.0 beta 18 was recently released for Windows - should you care?  If you are like most people, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with everything happening around you on the web.  Twitter, facebook, email, calendar, IM - the draws on your attention are almost overwhelming. ......
• 10 Facebook Privacy Settings You NEED to Know. I will summarize here, but the full article by Nick O'Neill from www.allfacebook.com is a great read, and something I wish I had written.  Facebook is a great tool, but in a world where information and identity theft is rampant, you need to know how to protect yourself from, well, yourself.......

• Choosing a Domain Name 2: Considerations for a UK Business Choosing a domain name for a UK business is something that requires careful thought and informed choices. If you get your domain name wrong, you will make things unnecessarily difficult for yourself when it comes to getting listed well by the search engines. Search engines look at lots of......
• Search Engine Optimization Glossary Algorithm. A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the pages contained within its index in response to a particular query. No search engine reveals exactly how its algorithm works, to protect itself both from competitors and from those who wish to spam the search engine. Back......
• Increase Wordpress Blog Traffic With 7 Simple Methods It is true that wordpress blogs are meant for profits and when utilized properly, you could achieve a lot with your blog. When you take your blog as a business, you have to definitely drive a lot of traffic and more important, targeted traffic. Traffic is the source of business......
• Prosper Site Update 12/2007 Verbatim from amf of Prosper... All, Tonight we did a bunch of back-end work and made a couple of changes that you might notice...   Lender overview changes We've received a lot of feedback from lenders that the "Active loan summary" box on the "Your Account > Lending" page is......
• Google SEO for WordPress Blogging If you have been in the internet marketing scene at all, even just for a short time, then you are already probably aware of the fact that blogs that are search engine optimized properly tend to achieve greater and faster rankings in search engines like Google than other websites and......