Media Centre Software

I use my computer to watch films, listen to music, look at photos and I have played around with any number of different Media Centre Software to make this a pleasant experience.

Although they all seem to work OK there are always problems - the interface is not nice, you can't easily get access to online data and link it to your films, music etc. In essence I could not find the right one and now I have accidently stumbled on one that I have to say is brilliant and it's free - www.xbmc.org.

It is easy to install and set up and if you do need to read the online help it is very well put together.

Philip Waite
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

Passwords

Firstly many apologies for not posting recently, but work has been very busy. I have made a promise to myself that I will be posting regularly, even when busy. Today's post is slightly longer than normal, but then it is ten times more important: PASSWORDS.

The strength of your password WILL determine how easy it is guess and therefore for someone access to access your online accounts. The grid below demonstrates how important it is to have long passwords (minimum 7 characters) and to mix up upper and lower case letters with numbers (if you include other characters such as symbols as well your password just gets stronger).

When Using 5 Characters
Using numbers only: 100,000
Using lower case letters only: 11.8 million
Using upper and lower case letters: 380 million
Using upper & lower case letters and numbers: 916 million

When Using 7 Characters
Using numbers only: 10 million
Using lower case letters only: 8 billion
Using upper and lower case letters: 1 trillion
Using upper & lower case letters and numbers: 3.5 trillion

The trick is to have a scheme that enables you to easily create a random password and remember it. For example take a phrase you know well like “mad dogs and Englishman go out in the midday sun.” Then take the second letter of each word — or the only letter in the case of single-character words — to yield aonnounhiu. Then use upper case for every second consonant and substitute numbers for certain vowels (i becomes 1 or o becomes 0). Your password now becomes aonNounh1u (minimum 7 characters) with a mixture of upper and lower case letters with numbers (if you include other characters such as symbols as well your password just gets stronger).

Be creative with your rules as this way it will become even harder to guess. The aim is to produce a random combination of letters, number and special characters you can remember.

Then add a few characters to tell you the site or account the password is for. For example you could add the first three letters of the site URL to the beginning or end of your base password, but three letters further on in the alphabet, so "hot" for Hotmail.com becomes krv.

So your password for Hotmail could be: krvaonNounh1u - a good length password with a mixture of letters (upper and lower case) and numbers, but most importantly it is memorable to you. If you decide to change your password , keep the same rules, just change your memorable phrase.

Dos and Dont's of Passwords

• DO use a password manager such as Secure Data Organiser
• DO keep all passwords secret
• DO change your password regularly
• DO use a master password on your browser (available in Firefox)
• DO change your password after access sites/accounts on public computers as there may be key logging software on the computer

• DON'T use the same password for different sites and accounts
• DON'T use normal words, wedding anniversary dates or childrens' names
• DON'T use links in emails to "access your account". Type the actual website yourself. This is to protect you from phishing emails.
  

Geneaology Software

The popularity of researching family histories on the internet continues to grow.

I have recently revisited Geni a free web based software program that allows you to VERY easily build your family tree. It has come a long way since it came out.

It also enables you to invite family members to share information and to add their trees to yours.

Philip
Customer Support Director, zuuMedia

Contents of 300 DVDs on a single disc

I remember years ago listening to the head of Toshiba saying that they had created a new hard drive that could store the same amount of data as if they had filled a tennis court with desktop computers - approximate 100GB . He admitted then that he could not see the need for this much storage on a single disc.

Well not only can you now buy 1.5TB (1,500GB) external hard drive for under £140 but it has just been reported that scientist reckon they could create a disc the size of a DVD that could hold 1.6TB or the equivilent of 300 current DVDs.

Philip
Customer Services Director, zuuMedia

2 Critical Security Patches

2 Critical Security Updates

Almost every computer has Adobe Reader installed on it and a vast number also have Microsoft PowerPoint as well. Both Adobe and Microsoft have this week published critcal updates to their software, which if not installed will substantially increase the risk to your computer.

Many computers are set to install Microsoft updates automatically (but have they been installed?). Adobe updates are not installed automatically.

Because this is so critical zuuMedia are very happy to check the security updates on your computers - EVEN FOR NON MEMBERS.

If you would like to read more about this please click here.


Worried

If you are worried that your computers are not secure

zuuMedia Members:
Please click through to zuuMedia immediately by clicking the zuuMedia support icon on your computer desktop.

Non Members:
If you would like zuuMedia to check your computer security patches, click here.

Philip
Customer Services Director, zuuMedia.com

I knew school was a waste of time!

I have often wondered if it really was worth going to school and now it seems I was right to question it with the launch next month of Wolfram Alpha.

It seems that this free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

The tool computes many of the answers "on the fly" by grabbing raw data from public and licensed databases along with live feeds.

People can use the system to look up simple facts - such as the capital of Australia - or crunch several data sets together to produce new results, such as a country's GDP.

Read more about this on Stephen Wolfram's blog.

The question is will the above search bar on www.wolframalpha.com replace Google Search?

Philip

Customer Support Director, zuuMedia

The First Mac OS X Botnet

Well the title of this post sounds scarry - sorry it is not meant to. Let me quickly explain.

First what is a Botnet:
Botnet is a term for a collection of software robots, or "bots", that run autonomously and automatically. The people that create these often get them installed on computers so they can then do many things including sending spam, attacking the servers of a company to distrupt their services (denial-of-service attacks).

Second:
For PC users the Mac OS X is like Windows XP or Vista, it is the operating system on the latest Mac Computers

The reason this is so significant is that owners of Mac computers think they are secure from these types of security risks - this demonstrates that this is not the case.

At zuuMedia we think it is critical that all computers, both PCs and Macs, have security software installed and running; which is why we provide a suite of security software for every customer - it is included in the price.

Philip
Customer Support Director, zuuMedia