Possibly due to my posts about the importance of backing up files http://computerconciergeny.com/3/post/2011/05/so-why-do-you-not-back-up-your-files.html as well as being the owner of Computer Concierge NY LLC, I have been asked how do I back up my files. Let me first say that for any of the products I mention, I have not received any compensation or assurances, hints, discounts, etc of compensation as of June 30, 2011 for mentioning the products in question by anyone.

I use an external Western Digital Hardrive Model #WDBAAA6400ABK-NESN that I purchased from Amazon. It provides for automatic and continuous backups. If any file of mine is changed it is backed up when I close the file. When I have had to rebuild my system, it has worked fine and I was able to restore all my files. Further if I need to go back to a previous version of a file I am able to do that as well. My personal setting is where I can go back up to 5 file versions prior to the current one. I also have backups on several DVDs I keep offsite that I update about monthly. One of these is constantly updated while for the other DVDs it is a 1 time deal once the DVD is filled. Should there ever be some sort of catastrophe at home or if the external hard drive fails, I have a way of going offsite and getting back the contents of my files. It is recommended that you have another backup away from your computer should this instance occur.

I also am a Dropbox user.  I have blogged about Dropbox in the past.  http://computerconciergeny.com/3/post/2010/06/dropbox-a-real-good-program-for-file-sharing-and-accessing-files-away-from-your-computer.html I recommend it for all. You can sync up to 2 gb for free to your Dropbox account. However there are ways to get even more storage free. The most common is suggesting it to someone and when they become a Dropbox user from your suggestion both of you get an extra 250mg of storage. 

This is the backup system that works for me. What type of backup system you need depends on various factors. For those living in Queens and Nassau County, NY call me at 917.572.3468. I can determine the backup plan that is best for you. Many people think a hard drive failure cannot happen to them. Nothing is farther from the truth. You need to have a backup plan and follow it before it is too late.

Twitter is a very prominent social networking and microblogging service. Those using Twitter have people they follow and people who follow them. 

There are those people who I will follow when I see that they are following me. There are those I will tend not to follow. The reasons I do not follow someone are entirely not personal.  The person could be a very good person. These reasons are not absolute as I have made exceptions. Some reasons for not following someone are:

1. They have less then 10 tweets. I like to get a feel for what the person is like before following. With few or none tweets of their own, I am unable to grasp what they are about. Do their tweets align with their profile? 
2. Someone not having a profile or the profile does not tell me about them. Who are you? What are you about? I would like to know about you if I am to follow you.
3. A person seems to be tweeting on an almost ongoing basis. There are those who it seems are constantly on Twitter tweeting what appears 200 times daily or so. Twitter is about conversation and in a conversation there is an exchange of ideas.
4. Tweets consistently showing the same link. The person is spamming on Twitter. 
5. Their interests do not match what I am interested in. Let's say a person constantly tweets about Newton's 3 Laws of Motion. This is a subject that would make me not inclined to follow. That said, I did once make an exception for a follower who I had no intent of following. They did however list me and mentioned me on a Tweet.  I must admit they charmed me into following them and I am glad to follow as whoever tweets for this Twitter handle is a really nice person.
6. Their tweets are all about them and trying to plug their product and/or themselves. Similar to #4.  
7. "Tips on making money" is in their bio. Again it is about them. We all want to make moneybut at least be subtle about it. 
8. Someone who follows many people and hardly anyone follows them. A lot of times this ties in to having few or no tweets.  
9. They do not have a link to their website or blog in their profile or just as bad the website link in their profile does not work.  
10. They seem to argue rather than discuss. Twitter is about an exchange of ideas and not I am right and you are wrong. Further 2 people can have different approaches to an issue and both be right.  

While there are other reasons, these are the main ones.  For those not having many tweets and/or no profile, I want to know more about you before I follow.  

One of the biggest products from Google is Google Mail (Gmail).  As of December 2009, Gmail had 176 million users on a monthly basis and with good reason. Once you are used to the interface which is a conversation type of view, Gmail has some very good features beginning with 7.5 GB and increasing storage. You also can attach up to 25GB of files. Where does one start?  Let's start with the contacts list.  You can sort by first or last name as you can do with most contacts.  What I noticed is for business contacts, not all webmail sorts correctly by business name.  Gmail's contact list sorts businesses properly regardless of the sort. 

Have you ever sent an email and right away realized that you forgot to include an attachment?  Enable "Undo Send" for Gmail labs and you have the ability to undo a sent email for up to 30 seconds after hitting "Send".  Recently, Google implemented Google Voice which enables free calling to the US and Canada using Gmails Google Chat interface. 

When composing an email, has there ever been an issue where your browser crashes?  The autosave feature of Gmail automatically saves a copy of the email you are working on.  It starts saving once  minute and then varies according to the size of the message.  No more having your browser crash and losing an email that you have been working on for the past 15 minutes. 

Gmail also works with your Google Calendar.  You can accept an invite received on a Gmail and post it directly to your calendar in Google. 

If you receive email from someone you do not wish to receive it from, you can easily set up a filter so that it does not go to your inbox (usually Trash). 

Searching within Gmail is very easy.  There is a search bar in the upper left of the Gmail page and put your search term in.  Searching for a person or an email address is done the same way and again very easy.

In all once you learn to use the interface, you will appreciate how powerful and good an email toolGmail is. 

A note that future blogs will look at the webmail for AOL, Windows Live Hotmail, and Yahoo.

This is not going to be a political post. I do not get political on this blog. However there are times where politics and tech related issues intertwine and this is one of these times. This blog is from a tech perspective and I will not issue an opinion of Congressman Weiner one way or another politically. 

Congressman Weiner admitted yesterday that he had tweeted lewd pictures of himself. He supposedly is one of the more tech savvy members of Congress. I have made mention both on this blog and on Twitter the need to be careful of what you put out on the internet especially social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. A lot of what you put out there in cyberspace is out in the open for all to see. Congressman Weiner who again is tech savvy should have known this. Unless your tweets are protected or you are sending a direct message to someone, any tweet you make is there and cannot be considered a secret in any way, shape or form. When I tweet, I realize this. If I make a grammatical error or another error guess what? It can be seen by anyone and does not put me in the best light. Anyone with internet access can see them by simply doing a search on Twitter. A lot of my tweets can also be found by doing a search on Google or another search engine. Since he admitted that he sent it, I cannot understand how Anthony Weiner as a user of Twitter could not think that somehow the Tweet of him in his underwear would be hush hush. If he intended to send a direct message, he should have been extra careful knowing the implications of the tweet in question. Also keep in mind that anyone using Twitter has the ability to retweet a tweet to their followers and of course that is there for all to see. So for argument's sake, if Charlie Sheen who has over 4 million followers was to retweet Weiner's infamous tweet all 4 million plus of his followers will see it. Sheen's followers can then retweet it to their followers and you can see this all spiraling.

Let me respond about hacked passwords here as Weiner initially said his account was hacked. You need to have a safe password. I have blogged about the need for a safe password in previous posts. Please see the link which also has links to related posts. http://computerconciergeny.com/3/post/2010/09/password-protection-revisited.html. You also need to be careful of phishing schemes. 

In this day of social media, Google, Facebook, etc., we need to be careful of what we put online. Anything you do online in a public forum can be obtained by others. A few years ago I signed an online petition that photography in New York City subways not be banned. One time when doing an online search of myself, it came up. Anything I put on my website www.computerconciergeny.com is not between friends but for the whole world to see. This means that not only what you put on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter do you need to be careful about. You need to be careful about EVERYTHING you put online that is not an email or text message. Yes the recipient of an email or text can share that with others. But that also holds true for what you tell someone verbally or in writing.

For those wanting to learn a new subject or brush up on a new one, GCFLearnFree.org is a good site to start.  With courses on subjects like computer software (particularly Microsoft Office), everyday life, money, and career this is a good place to go to for free courses. You can study at your own pace and there are accompanying videos that aid in your grasping the subject and greatly support the content taught. You also can register for courses given online that are graded by instructors. These instructors also will also provide help and feedback as well. You can finish these courses in a few days or up to 4 weeks. Upon completion for these you are awarded a certificate of completion.  You are not awarded a certificate for completing the self paced courses. There are also some good GCF videos on YouTube as well.  See link:  http://www.youtube.com/user/gcflearnfree

Some of these courses are very basic like "Cash Back".  Others like the ones for the various editions of Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access are more involved.  By creating an account you are able to see what courses you have taken or are in the process of taking.  Courses that are more involved have various sections and a challenge at the end of each section. What I like about the Microsoft Office courses are that they are not only offered for the current version but for several previous versions. It is not necessary to be using the current version to get instruction that is meaningful for you. For those who are beginners with regards to computers, their Computer Basics course is useful and informative.  Most of their courses are computer related. Their Facebook page notes that  they provide "innovative online learning opportunities to anyone who wants to improve their technology, literacy, and math skills."

You may wonder how are they able to do this for free. GCFLearnFree.org is supported by the Goodwill Community Foundation. GCFLearnFree.org serves to support the educational mission of the Goodwill Community Foundation which is "to create and provide education, employment, and life enrichment opportunities for people who desire to improve the quality of their lives" as per the GCFLearnFree.org site. It certainly is a good site to go to for your lifelong education.

Some may remember the days of going to the neighborhood gas station and getting a free map to plan your trip or if it was a trip farther away, writing and getting directions from the oil companies such as Sinclair, Esso, etc.  Well those days are long gone.  They have been replaced by online maps, GPSes and even smartphones. 

For online mapping there are 4 primary websites: Bing Maps, Google Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Maps.  Bing Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Maps will be covered in this blog.  Google Maps will be covered in a future blog. 

Bing Maps is the new map on the block comparatively speaking.  The map allows you to get directions for driving, walking or public transportation.  It also is easy to send the directions to your email or cell phone.  You can get directions based upon current real time traffic conditions though this is generally limited to the major thoroughfares. Directions do note at the end of the route if you have reached a certain location that you have gone too far which is a nice touch.  The "What's Nearby" feature is also useful.  I found it easy to zoom in and out using the road view and arial view.  Where it has already been photographed, the Streetside view has clear pictures an certainly clearer than the heralded Google Maps. However when moving along the street in Streetside view there is not an indication of about where you are.  I do like the 3D views with which you can rotate/pan and zoom functions. That said, it is relatively slow to open and also to go from view to view as well as going to the location you choose.  There is certainly room for improvement here.  Also if you wish to reverse your route after you have gotten directions, you need to go back to the search page. This is not a good thing. 

MapQuest has a lot of the features that the others have with 1 notable exception. You cannot use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out on the map. You can only get directions by car.  No walking, public transit, etc. directions can be obtained using MapQuest.  It has a street view known as 360 view but the areas available are relatively few and slower than expected.  I did not find 360 view to be user friendly. Like the others, there is a way to search for businesses in the area.  MapQuesthas a drop down menu of choices or you type your own in the search bar under "Find a Business".  A real good feature of MapQuest when searching for directions is you can get turn by turndirections if you wish.  This and Google Maps are the only ones of the 4 maps where you can do this.  Bing Maps allow you to go to the text indicating the turns and click to go to the location on the map but MapQuest's turn by turn directions is preferred. 

Yahoo Maps offers live traffic and a points of interest finder.  It also computes a route rather quickly.  Yahoo Maps is better used to computing a route by car. There is not a way to determine a route by other means.  Yahoo Maps is also the only map that I am reviewing that does not have any drop down menu for locating businesses. Google Maps does have a very limited one which is stretching it a bit and will be covered in a future blog as noted earlier. You also can use it to find a business along the map that is showing on the screen.  This is done by typing the category in the search bar under "Find a Business on a Map".  It is more of a no frills map to mainly be used for directions by auto and finding a business.  There is no street view like in Bing Maps or Google Maps.  Further you cannot get a map for turn by turn directions or click on the text directions to go to that part on the map.

One final note here.  All 4 maps allow you to click to change a route by dragging any part of the route.

Also for those subscribing by email to my blogs, please check your spam settings if you are not receiving them.  Some have noted that the email of this blog has gone to their spam folder.  It should be marked as "not Spam".

CCleaner is a product developed by Piroform. It is used to clean unwanted files and invalid Windows registry entries from a computer. It is an application for Windows and not for Macs. However the Piroform webite which is responsible for CCleaner notes on its website that it soon will be making CCleaner for Macs as well.  It is free and a valuable program to have. One of its applications is the removal of cookies. For those who may be unfamiliar with cookies per Wikipedia they are "a piece of text stored on a user's computer by their web browser". What this piece of text does is that it stores various information on it. This information can be site preferences, shopping cart contents and an identifier.

Yes you can use the Disk Cleanup program in the System Tools of your PC. However CCleanerdoes a better job. As mentioned it can be used to delete invalid registry entries from your computer. It is not a sophisticated program for doing this but for those unfamiliar with registry files, it will do the job without harming your computer. It also is very good for cleaner your internet browser's cookies, history, temporary files and form history and download history. 

Having said all this I will add that you can customize the settings. For example should you not wish to delete anything related to MS Office you can. This is important because if you select MS Office your history of recently opened documents will be deleted. 

CCleaner also removes from your PC temporary files, listing of recent documents opened and clears your recycle bin. In addition it also removes unnecessary information from various third party programs. These include MS Office and Adobe Acrobat. If you like your computer to save your passwords (not recommended) or browsing history you have that option. Should you wish not to delete selected cookies, there is an option for that as well.

You also can uninstall programs using CCleaner instead of going into your computer's Control Panel.  The ability to wipe your hard drive also exists by going into the Tools option and selecting "Drive Wiper" then selecting "Entire Drive"  in the drop down menu to the right of "Wipe" so you do need to exercise some caution.

In all this is a desirable program to have on your hard drive. It is free and is a good way to get rid of unneeded files as well as being user friendly. I have found the settings to be easy to use.

UPDATE:  CCleaner is now available to Mac users as a free beta download.  http://lifehacker.com/5808168/ccleaner-for-mac-clears-personal-data-in-one-click-for-safari-and-firefox

I would like to add here that if anyone has a suggestion for a subject, please let me know. Also please feel free to comment.  All comments are welcomed.

Google is the #1 search engine going. Almost 75% of internet volume of searches as noted in http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html for the 4 weeks ended May 29 are made through Google. That said, this blog are ways to make your internet searching easier using Google. The underline phases are the verbatim ways to enter the search terms in Google:

• Crossing delancey – the words crossing and delancey

• “Crossing delancey” – the exact phrase Crossing delancey

• Crossing –delancey - the word crossing but NOT the word delancey

• define:crossing/definition:crossing – definitions of the word crossing. Both define: and definition: are acceptable when searching in Google for definitions.

• phonebook: Joseph Torre NY – phone listings of all those named Joseph Torre in New York.

• stocks:pfe – find Pfizer’s current stock price.

• movie: the blind side 11360 – show show times in or near zip code 11360 for the blind side

• weather:11360 – weather and forecast for zip code 11360

• Site:cnn.com obama – search cnn.com for all information on obama. This can be done for all websites. “Site: “ only searches on the website or domain indicated in the search parameter.

• Crossing#or#delancey – the words crossing or delancey

• Crossing#and#delancey – the words crossing and delancey – this is another way to search for the words crossing and delancey. Using “#and#” in your search is great for searching where you are more than one phrase, term, etc. For example “Tom Seaver”#and#”world series”. Google will search for where the terms “Tom Seaver” and “world series” occur. It is not case sensitive.

Did you know you can do arithmetic calculations using the Google search bar?

Using + - / * keys, you can do basic adding, subtraction, division or multiplication functions. In the search bar put in “2*3+5” and your search will return the correct value of 11.

You can also use Google to convert units in measurements. For example typing “3 tbsp to cup” and hitting the enter key gives a result of 0.1875 cups.


Google is a very good search engine and by following some of the suggestions noted can speed up what you truly are searching for.