TechKathy.com

Conficker Set to Strike

Kathy — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:46:55 +0000

One of the biggest computer worms in recent history, called “Conficker,” appears set to strike on April 1, 2009. No one knows exactly what this worm will do, but you can be sure it won’t be good. If you’re running any Windows operating system (including Mac users who have Windows installed), you could be at risk.

To be sure that your computer won’t be one of the millions affected, please take a few minutes this weekend to protect your computer. First, visit Microsoft’s update page at http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/ to make sure that you have the latest version of your operating system and any patches that are available. (Microsoft has released a patch for all the current versions of its operating systems to combat Conficker.)

Second, disable Auto-Run / Auto-Play on your computer. The How-to Geek has simple instructions in this article.

And third, use your anti-virus software. Download any available updates to your anti-virus software, and then allow it to scan for and remove any worms, viruses or other malicious software on your computer. If you don’t have anti-virus software, please get some! There are many out there, and some are even free, including AVG.

To learn more about Conficker and what you can do to avoid it, please check out Wikipedia’s page on Conficker, the Conficker Information site or some of the many articles on Conficker that have been published in the news lately.

Good luck, stay safe and, as always, thanks for reading my blog!

Quick Tip: Free Calendars

Kathy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:48:58 +0000

As you might imagine, it’s rather time-consuming to write the in-depth articles I post to this site about technology news, products and services. I discover things almost everyday, but I haven’t shared many of them, because I just don’t have the time to research them thoroughly, look at alternatives and write about my findings. So in the interest of reducing my work a bit, while still sharing more information with you, I’m introducing a new post format that I’m calling Quick Tips.

Quick Tips will be short posts on simple things you can do and/or use to make life a little easier. These will include websites that offer great services, simple tricks or shortcuts you can use on your computer, cool online freebies and other worthwhile tech discoveries. I hope you’ll find them helpful!

My first Quick Tip is for making free personalized calendars with ePrintable.com. The site allows you to create weekly, monthly and yearly calendars that you then can download as PDFs and print. Each calendar format on ePrintable.com leaves room for a small photo and text—the site offers a dozen or so stock photos and inspirational quotes to choose from or you can upload your own photo and write your own text. The entire process is simple, and you can have your very own calendar ready to hang within two minutes!

I hope you’ll find this Quick Tip (and future ones) useful, and, as always, thanks for reading my blog!

Putting Your Photos to Work for You

Kathy — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:29:07 +0000

I posted a short article on my personal blog yesterday about how one of my photos had been discovered on Flickr and chosen for inclusion in an online travel guide on Amsterdam. It was a nice surprise for me, and, since the online guide will include a link to my photos on Flickr, it will likely increase the number of people who see my photos.

The experience led me to think more about what I do with my photos and what I could be doing with them. I typically shoot photos, upload them to Flickr and other photo sites, make albums of them for my husband and I, and share them with family and friends. But then I just let them sit. Periodically, people will find some of my Flickr photos through searches they’ve done, but otherwise the photos remain on my computer and hard disks, taking up space.

Of course, I love having these photos, and I certainly wasn’t thinking of deleting them. But I started to wonder if there was anything else I could do with them. I now have more than 4,000 photos in my digital photo library, and many of them are travel photos that feature cities and other destinations—and a few of them even resemble photos I’ve seen in guide books and on websites.

By doing a little research online, I discovered that many professional and amateur photographers authorize their photos to be used as stock photographs. Stock photographs are photos that people have already taken that can be licensed to others for free or for a fee. The fees vary, based on the quality, size and relative popularity of your photos, but it appears that a good amateur photographer can earn a decent amount of extra spending money by making their photographs available. And good photos are in demand, as many guide book publishers, website designers, advertisers and others are choosing to use stock photography rather than hiring photographers to save money.

There are a number of stock photography sites online—Flickr is actually one. If you’re a member of Flickr and interested in allowing others to use your photos for free, you can learn more about it by reading Flickr’s Creative Commons page. If you’re a member of Flickr and interested in allowing others to use your photos for a fee, Flickr has partnered with Getty Images, one of the largest suppliers of stock photography in the world. For more information on that, you can read Flickr’s FAQ on Getty Images.

I found a few other good stock photography site recommendations through an article on Freelance Switch and a podcast by the Digital Marketer. Many stock photography sites are picky about what they will accept from photographers, so I do recommend that you read a site’s instructions to photographers, their terms of service, their payment schemes and their FAQ’s before you join. But once you get through the initial hurdles of setting up your account(s) and uploading your photos, you can sit back and hopefully start making a nice passive income!

As always, thanks for reading my blog, and good luck putting your photos to work for you!

To Tweet or Not to Tweet…

Kathy — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:41:15 +0000

I thought that was one of the big tech questions of late, but I was surprised to find out from some friends that their question was actually, “What’s tweeting?” or more precisely, “What’s Twitter?”

With all the buzz Twitter receives in the tech world, I assumed that everyone had heard of it and that I was a relatively late adopter. (I created a personal account in December 2008, and I created a TechKathy account in January 2009.) And while it has taken me a few weeks to understand what all the fuss is about, I have to confess that I’ve grown to like the service.

In a word, Twitter is “microblogging.” What does that mean? If you think of blogging as writing about your thoughts, feelings, activities, secret crushes and other things on your own personal site, then imagine Twitter as a miniature version of this. You get your own page (mine is http://twitter.com/techkathy), and you write about whatever you want in 140 characters or less. How much is that really? Here’s a post I wrote that’s exactly 140 characters:

I made my first animated gif using a cool Twitter logo I found thru Smashing Magazine. My new gif is now at the bottom of www.techkathy.com.

Obviously, you’re not going to tell your life story in 140 characters. Twitter tells you to just answer the question, “What are you doing?” One thing I really like about Twitter is that only people who actually WANT to know what you’re doing will see your Twitter posts. When you join Twitter, the site prompts you to find friends to follow so you see their posts, and it allows others to choose to follow you. You’re never spamming people with your posts, and you’re not getting spammed either—what you see or don’t see is completely up to you.

I have chosen to follow tech writers like David Pogue and Gina Trapani and tech-related organizations like Macworld and WordPress, so most of what I see on my Twitter homepage is tech-related news.

Most of what I write and post on Twitter is also tech-related. When I first joined Twitter, I started out writing rather mundane things, but it recently dawned on me that I could use the service to provide additional small tech tips to people as I discover them. My tips are usually for websites and services that I’ve found useful that I may or may not have time to write a full blog post about. You can see my tips, and all my Twitter posts, without having to join by visiting http://twitter.com/techkathy. If you do decide to join and choose to follow me, you’ll get my posts delivered to your Twitter homepage automatically.

If this all sounds interesting and you want to learn more, please check out this two-and-a-half-minute introductory video from the Common Craft:

And for still more on Twitter, here are a few articles:

Twitter Tips for Beginners, by David Pogue,
What is Twitter?, by BBC Panoramic, and
How to Use Twitter Like a Pro, by Sean Tibbitts, (a response to Pogue’s article).

As always, thanks for reading my blog, and happy tweeting!

Protect Yourself from Windows Worms

Kathy — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:40:37 +0000

More than three million Windows computers around the world have been hit by a malicious worm, but your computer doesn’t need to become one of this growing number. Just a few simple steps can protect you and save you hours of trouble.

A computer worm is a self-propagating piece of malicious software. Computer worms use networks (like the internet) to send copies of themselves out to other computers on those networks. Since no action is necessary on the part of computer users for a worm to infect their systems, users are often unaware they’ve been infected, and they unwittingly allow the worm to infect other users.

On Friday, the BBC reported that, in this particular case, “the malicious program, known as Conficker, Downadup or Kido was first discovered in October 2008.” Microsoft released a patch specifically to stop this worm from infecting machines, but it remains a problem because many owners of Windows computers have not downloaded and installed this patch.

To ensure you don’t get infected, you only need to take a few steps:

Go to your computer’s Control Panel—you’ll find this under the Start menu.

For Windows XP users, find and double click on Automatic Updates. Depending on the configuration of your computer, you’ll find this under System or Performance and Maintenance. If you can’t find it, just run a search for Automatic Updates within the Windows Help Center.
For Windows Vista users, go to Security, then Windows Update and then Change Settings.

Your Automatic Updates should be set to “Automatic” and the computer should be checking “Every day” at a time when your computer will be on, if you have broadband internet access. If you’re using dial-up service to connect to the internet, choose a day of the week and a time that you’re usually connected to the internet.

To be sure your computer is up-to-date right now, use Internet Explorer (hopefully you’re using the most recent version, which is IE 7 right now) to visit Microsoft’s update site at: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Click on Express, and Microsoft’s site will check for you.

For more information and advice on security from Microsoft, you can consult their website or your computer’s Help Center. And for more information on the latest worm and the damage it has caused, you can read the BBC’s full article Three Million Hit by Windows Worm.

Good luck keeping your computer protected, and, as always, thanks for reading my tech blog!