Tag Archives: Tips

General Information

Use Your Smartphone As A Scanner

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Most of us take pictures with our phone to store memories of our experiences and share with loved ones, or foe! But there are other uses for your smartphone’s camera. One of them is to take pictures of documents for capture, just like your desktop scanner does at work or at home. Well maybe not as good yet, but it definitely does the job and will only get better.

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We scoured the web and found a brilliant article highlighting how this can be done efficiently!

Thanks to J. D. Biersdorfer of NYtimes, you can use your phone in other ways. Click here to read his article.

General Information

Want To Use Google Maps And You Have No Internet Or Data?

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A tip for all you phone navigation dependent people! Imagine you are going somewhere you know you have no data or don’t want to use any of your precious data for navigation.

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A genius (in our books), Rob LeFebvre, has created a step by step guide on how to do this! You will be getting around in no time with no data! Assuming you know where you are going and have WiFi before leaving for the outdoors!

Click here to read!

 

Simple Explanations

Feeling Gloomy About What The Cloud Is?

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Have you ever heard the word Cloud and you were clueless of what it is and how it works? With the amount of services out nowadays,  you must have come across the word Cloud somewhere almost every week. You see it on your mobile devices, your computers and even in Newspapers. All these mediums are used to promise you one thing; that they will keep your data secure, backed up and accessible from anywhere in the world. Brilliant, who wouldn’t want that hey?

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You must have wondered at some point how this works. Well, the computer Potato is here to tell you exactly that and make it look like a pot of noodles.

Think of the cloud as a big computer with such a massive memory that it can store everything and more. This big computer’s memory can also increase or decrease at will by the way. Now imagine this big computer has the exact same type of itself and data stored in it in many locations, for arguments sake lets say 15 locations. Now each of the computers in these locations make sure all data are exactly the same across the locations. This is very helpful because lets say the worst happened and 13 of those locations where destroyed somehow and the computers  with them. Then the data is still accessible from 2 of the 15 and can be easily moved to another 13 in different locations. Are you still reading? Well you don’t need to bother yourself on how this is achieved but if you do signup to one of these services, your data will be, in this case, in 15 locations (you wouldn’t know from your end though). This is what keeps your data secure and accessible from anywhere in the world.

Why use the word cloud? Well I am not a weather expert, but I notice these things are everywhere in the world. Hence why someone clever chose to use this word to represent something they hoped will be everywhere and steadily ready for use.

 

Simple Explanations

The Fear That Binds All Computer Users

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Have you ever had your computer do something you didn’t ask it to do or have it behave in a way you had never seen before? Well, if you are like me or the rest of the world that use computers, the first thing you think is; I have got a virus!

Warning! Now be careful how you use this phrase around your partners, as this can cause loss of partners.

The chances are your computer is just misbehaving, but you still have that inclination to think the worse of it. Well today you must know you are not alone. In fact, I have added a survey at the end of this article to vote how many percentage of our readers actually have that very first thought when their computer coughs. (Please feel free to complete the short survey, it will help the poor data hungry people. Thanks for your charity)

As if this is not enough, the NCA warned users about 3 weeks ago that there were 2 viruses on the way that could seriously cause damage or steal information from your computer. I must say heed these warnings, but before you actually become the Compvirophob (Patent coming soon) the world expects you to be, you need to know some important things about computer viruses.

1) They are not biological, hence the origin is known! It might shock you to know that viruses are actually written by computer programmers like the ones who wrote the antivirus.

2) A virus cannot act on your computer unless it has got a link, a direct access or is actually sitting on your computer. They are not omnipotent. Millions of unsuspecting users are tricked into downloading and installing viruses by some websites.

3) Some viruses actually do nothing on your computer till the end life of the computer, if the programmer that wrote it never activated it. Is your computer a carrier?

4) An antivirus might not detect a virus if it is unknown to it or if it is dormant

Even though what we all call viruses come in different forms and sizes (and I mean this literally), they can be somewhat prevented or removed. Below are some tips on what you can do to safeguard yourself against viruses (no it doesn’t involve a condom).

1) Make sure your antivirus is up to date and you regularly scan your computer. Most antiviruses connect to the internet first thing your put on your computer to update itself

2) Be wary of any emails from people you know or don’t that you weren’t expecting and they contain links to a funny video or an attachment. Please investigate further before clicking. Check the sender to make sure they did send it willingly

3) Always update the operating system (Microsoft, Apple MAC, Linux) you are using to get the fixes for know vulnerabilities.

Conclusion: No, compvirophob is not a word yet, but we all are seemingly close to being diagnosed with it.  All said, viruses can pose a real threat to your information or computer, but there is no real need to fear if you follow the tips here. Don’t forget to vote below. Thanks