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

Organising your Bookmarks

Bookmarking websites you have visited and want to come back to is a great tool built into every web browser; however, unless you are organised they can very quickly become completely disorganised and you don't remember what was on the site.

A very handy bit of new software called Only2Clicks allows you to create an easy to create, setup and navigate webpage that puts a visual snapshot of each webpage you have bookmarked. This means you do not just have a couple of words to remind you of what is on the website, but you also have the website home page in front of you.

If you need any assistance to setup and install please contact our Smart Technology Support team at zuuMedia.

Philip
Custoemr Support Director, zuuMedia

Using Your Camera Phone

Cameras in mobile phones are great for taking impromptu photos of people and events, but have you ever thought about using them for more practical things as well, for example:

1. In a large shopping centre or airport car par - take a photo of where the car is parked
2. You are driving in a city you have never been to before, take a photo of the road name where you have parked.
3. When travelling take a photo of the contents of your suitcase, in case your suitcase becomes one of the 1 million lost bags each year.
4. Out drinking one night and you have a great bottle of wine - take a photo of the label so the next day you remember what it was.
   

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

Before You Throw Your Old Computer Out

74% of discarded PC hard drives contain private data that can easily be read and recovered...even if the hard drive has been reformatted*

When you decide to get rid of your old computer it is not good enough to delete all of your information off the hard drive and empty the trash. Unfortunately, simply deleting things doesn't really erase them. (This data can sometimes still be accessed).

It is so critical that you scrub your hard drive before throwing it away that zuuMedia are happy to do this for free, even for non-customers. Complete the form on zuuMedia's free hard drive scrubbing service and then connect through to our technicians and we will do it for you.

Philip
Customer Support Direct, zuuMedia

*MIT Study "A Remembrance of Data Passed: A Study of Disk Sanitization Practices"(2003)

Share Your Screen For Free

Many times I have been having a conversation with a colleague, customer or lead and I want to show or demonstrate something on my screen. I used to use the expensive Webex service but recently I have started to use a completely free service called Mikogo. Mikogo works on both PCs and Macs and I suggest adding it to your bookmarks.

Philip
Customer Support Director, zuuMedia

Free Text Appointment Reminder

There are many advantages of using Google calendars, in particuler the ability to share them easily with colleagues and family, but one aspect that is little used is the ability to have a free text sent to your phone to remind you of an appointment.

It saved me last week. I had completely forgotten about a meeting that had been moved and suddenly I got a text (which of course we are all more responsive to). I rushed out the door and actually agreed to work with a new partner - thanks Google.

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

Insecure and Out of Date Software

Software is continually being updated, improved and security breaches closed. Some companies including Micorsoft and Google have facilities to automatically update their security on your computer, but be careful relying on this is often switched off or updates do not install properly.

Other software manufacturers rely on you to go back to their website and download the latest version of their software. For example at zuuMedia when people have their computers serviced for the first time we are still seeing a lot still have old versions of Adobe Reader (most computers have this installed so you can open .pdf files), even versions 6 and 7 even though the latest version is version 9. The older versions are a lot less secure and have less functionality. It is free to download the latest version and this is one of the main reasons to regularly service your computer to fully secure and optimize it.

Philip Waite
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

Free music legally

There are two recent web services (using cloud computing) that enable you to listen to music completely free and legally:

• Spotify
• Last.fm
  

They both work on the principle that you listen to the music streaming, so it is not saved onto your computer. You just create any number of playlists and listen to whatever music you want. On both services there are times you won't find the music you want because they are still negotiating with the copyright owners, but both services have millions of tracks to listen to.

So how is it legal? well because you do not download and "own" the music the licensing fees are much smaller, just how a radio station works.

It is a great way to build a free playlist of all the music you love and listen to it either on your computer or your 3G mobile phone.

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

Please, please, please backup

Once you have been using your computer for even a few weeks the data on it becomes the most valuable part of your computer. If your computer fails, is stolen or you spill a cup of coffee on your laptop the actual hardware is easily replaced; however, unless you have a copy of the data this is lost for ever so please, please, please back it up.

All the time people are telling me of distressing times when they have lost data including emails, photos, presentations, home videos. Nowadays there are very afffordable ways of taking a copies of your data and actually you do not even need to remember to do it any more.

There are a number of different ways of doing this and for the home owner or small business this normally comes down to one of two ways:

1. Manually remembering to backing up a copy to an external hard drive or to backup tapes
2. Automatically backup your data up offsite each day

The 2 key downsides to the first method is that it is manual and you have to remember to take the copy of the data each day, week, month and then most times people leave the hard drive or tapes in the same building as their computers. This is not much good if there is a flood, burglary etc, your copy is lost as well. Therefore if you are going to manually backup to say an external hard drive, please do a second one and put a copy in a friends house and update it every month. The other downside is that most people do not encrypt their data, so if the hard drive/tapes are lost or stolen then anyone can access the data.

Nowadays it is easy to have your data backed up offsite, automatically and securely, i.e. encrypted. The main advantage of backing up offsite is that you do not have to remember to do it, it occurs automatically everyday. The other added advantage that you can actually access it at anytime if you have to, for example on a business trip and you wanted to see a document on your desktop computer.

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

When you need flyers printed

A few months ago I came across a fantastic value and good quality printer of flyers: Advantage Digital Media. I have just ordered: 5,000 A5 full colour 2 sides flyer (130GSM) for just £155 and delivered 3 days later.

I think this is a great find for any small business.

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

4 Networking

I recently joined 4 Networking, a UK based breakfast networking group. It is much more casual than other breakfast groups and what I like about it a every meeting you can have 3 10 minute meetings with other people in the room. In addition you are not restricted to your group, with a Passport you can go to up to 4 meetings a week.

It is a great way to get to meet a lot of people that are all in the same frame of mind - to make contacts, make friends and look for business. Obviously there are some businesses where networking of this type is really beneficial and luckily zuuMedia is one of those. Since we provide Instant Computer Support for homes and small businesses everyone in the room (who tend to be from small businesses) is an opportunity for us - this may not be the case for other businesses.

If you have a product or service that that has wide appeal to small businesses I would recommend going along to a local 4Networking meeting and see if you enjoy it.

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia

To Do List

How many people have bits of paper with lists of things to do written on them. Go digital and keep these lists in one place: Remember the Milk is some excellent, easy to use software that you can access from any computer/phone connected to the internet (web based).

You can create different lists for home, work, study etc. and it is easy to add notes and deadlines for each entry.

Philip
Customer Service, zuuMedia

Where We Go From Here Launched

Being one of the founders of zuuMedia and being responsible for customer support I am often being asked for thoughts and feedback on how technology can be integrated into homes and small businesses more effectively. I have finally decided to publish answers to these questions on this blog so hopefully everyone can benefit.

This will range from simple things like how to create shared calendars with your family or colleagues through to which is the best software to enable you to store your passwords securely on your computer - but always with the aim of making life simpler.

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to post a comment.

Philip
Customer Service Director, zuuMedia