COMPUTER INFO
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Email Protocol : If your Email Address is changed notify the persons in your Address Book. If you receive beneficial email it is good manners to reply with "Thanks" rather than no reply. Basic Word documents are generally better pasted into the mail message being quicker than sent as an Attachment. Do not send .pdf documents when the recipient needs to copy & paste the information. Do not hesitate to DELETE ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS . Regularly updated Anti-Virus software is really necessary, AVG is free. 10 Commandments for Email : ( found on the Internet ) If you follow them, your friends will remain your friends and will not put your email address in their spam filters.
Ensure your important data files are backed up regularly to floppy, CD or memory stick. See notes below re saving your Address Book. Saving all your created files to My Documents / Folders instead of "Default" save folders makes finding & backing up easy. Use the last time modified dates and save from your last backup date to now. Consider buying an external hard drive for backup, particularly if you process video. Delete down-loaded web-pages : Start / Settings / Control Panel / Internet Options / General / Delete Files / Confirm. Defragment your hard drive each 2 months or earlier to ensure optimum performance. Favourites Folder. If you add a down-loaded web-page to your "Favourites" you can view it any time when off-line until you delete the files which saves hard drive space. If you down-loaded multiple pages the mouse cursor (as a hand) accesses them. The easiest way to keep a down-loaded page is to : File / Save As / & save it where you can find it such as in My Documents. SPAM BLOCK ? Email addresses on web-sites can be found by 'spiders' and then used for generating unwanted SPAM. Spam from the same source is best deleted by using : Message / Blocked Sender / If many Blocked Senders are recorded they can be added to : Tools / Message Rules / Blocked Senders / These emails then appear in your Deleted Folder and remember NOT to open anything at all suspicious. Replacing "@" with "AT" in the address is a method of prevention as it does not show as a link but must be removed for use. Click on To: Address, right click and go to Add to Address Book, click Name, click Edit, remove AT & insert @, leave no spaces, click OK. If you get lots of SPAM or LARGE ATTACHMENTS you DO NOT WANT : Use Internet Explorer, go to your ISP home page, go to Web Mail, access your Email Inbox, delete all the spam, dubious email and email with large attachments, open that Inbox again, then open Outlook Express and just the remaining emails will download. If you like this method make the Web Mail your home page via Settings / Control Panel / Internet Options / Use Current. Then, when you go on-line you use Internet Explorer, your Web Mail comes up straight away, you enter your User Name & Password and open your Inbox. Each email has its source, message header & file size listed. Click in the left box to mark for deletion. Click the bottom delete box when files are tagged and reopen Inbox to confirm. Wastebox now lists the number of deleted files. A good idea is to go to Preferences and set your download emails limit to 100. Spam sources are usually obvious, have obvious headers and are bigger than 5kb in size. IF AT ALL IN DOUBT, DELETE !! I tried the freebie download, MailWasher, but preferred to continue using WebMail. Before trying Webmail open your browser ( Internet Explorer or Firefox ) and save the page to your "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" so you can use your original search page any time. * Detailed WEBMAIL access setup : Open your browser, go to your ISP ( Internet Provider ) website. The home page opens and usually there is a link labelled Webmail. Click on this and the welcome to Webmail page opens. Fill in your email address and password. What should then appear is your email inbox, etc. which is remote at the ISP. You should be able to view a list of everything still in your Inbox but not downloaded since your last visit. Detailed should be who sent it, the email subject, the date and importantly the size of the file. Spam is not always obvious. You should be able to click on emails you want to delete to mark them and when you operate the on screen delete they disappear. Now if you open your email ( usually Outlook Express ) only those not deleted will download. However, before you close the browser, click on Tools, then Internet Options, General Tab, and under Home Page click on "Use current" and then OK. Then each time you want to use email OPEN THE BROWSER FIRST and it should go straight to your Webmail or you can set it to go straight to your ISP home page which also has a Search bar at the top. Alternatively you can save your ISP homepage to your Favorites. The extra step of opening your browser to access your email via Webmail is well worth it. You may be able to read and answer emails via Webmail but it may be easier to download them and do this off-line so as not to tie up the phone line, if not on ADSL and generally emails should not be urgent. * Latest NEWS on SPAM at Feb 2009, from an independent source : The level of malicious code distribution by all players, innocently or deliberately, on the 'net is very high and the traditional methods to combat it are failing, so we really need to be much more vigilant ourselves. It is no good relying on virus checkers and the like any more. The organizations that traditionally were allegedly combatting malicious use of the 'net seem to have lost the will to do it and there is not much incentive for them to do it anymore anyway - there is hardly any money in it and they are losing the battle. Their efforts have been largely ineffective for some time because a lot of malicious code is launched, delivered world-wide, and then retired all in the space of a hour or so. No virus software organization can possibly detect, analyze, find a fix and deliver it to you in that time. In contrast, there is far more incentive, mainly financial, in SPAM and 'net crime. And when you have well-established music, film and computer games' companies releasing DRM code to prevent you copying their software in addition to "free email" and "social network" companies that use their sites to harvest any information that you include in any transactions of any kind that you make via their sites and use or sell it, then there is little hope. The purpose of DRM, or Digital Rights Management software, is to detect any attempt you might make to copy a company's copyright CD or DVD and take some action such as report you or permanently disable your PC, but it often goes wrong even if you don't attempt any copying. DRM is in the "root kit" class of malicious code. Once DRM is installed by playing a DRM protected CD or DVD then your PC is often hijacked by criminals for their use. DRM prevents virus checkers from "seeing" it so it goes undetected for long periods, if ever. In late 2008 the "Conficker" worm of the root kit class was embedded in 10s of millions of PCs worldwide. It lies "sleeping" waiting to be activated some time in the future. Information you include such as your, or your friends', email addresses in any transactions you make via "free" email or social sites can be, and are, sold to SPAMmers who often onsell them to crime syndicates. So if your email address is ever referred to in any email that passes through their servers then you and your friends are highly likely to be targetted by SPAMmers followed a bit later by malicious code such as keystroke recorders that record all the details of any Internet banking you do that can then be used by criminals to milk your bank account. Be aware that jokes, animated Xmas cards, Birthday Cards, Valentine Cards, "emotons", and many references to attractive sounding sites are usually really the vectors for DRM and other "root kit" class of malicious code. As far as other email content is concerned, jpg photo attachments seem fairly safe, at least so far, but doc, Excel, etc. file attachments can be used as vectors for malicious software and should be used only between trusted correspondents. If you are ever a victim of bank fraud on the 'net then banks usually make a "financial decision" to only pursue the crime where they have some reasonable chance of recovering more than it costs to carry out any investigation or legal procedures. Banks budget for losses of tens of millions per year in Australia and billions wordwide to 'net fraud so obviously the crime cyndicates are doing very well and are seldom pursued. The rest of us pay for the losses. All you can do to avoid being a victim is implement as many safeguards and evasive procedures that you can yourself such as only sending or encouraging the use of paid-for email services where you have some legal rights and then just use plain text for all emails. Your own WEB SITE ? No costs involved, no special software, just your time but remember KISS ( Keep It Simple Stupid ) as kept simple it down-loads quicker. The main culprit in slow down-loading is artwork and images which may look nice but will deter visitors from waiting for your website to download unless on broadband. Here's a way to create your own one page, or more pages, web-site. When off line, create a new folder direct on your C: drive, name it Fred Web or something short you will remember and save this web page to it. Picknowl ask for this page to be named ( default.htm ), Adam require it to be named ( index.html ) your ISP may specify otherwise ( note that the l in html can be important, not just htm ). Now open the page as lots of time may be spent learning and it's fun ! Then click on the top menu, View / Source and you will see the notepad where all the formatting for web html is laid out. Use this as your base document and insert all your info replacing mine but leave the "tags" <___> as they are commands. When happy with this and still in the notepad go, File / Save. Then return to the saved ( default.htm ) page and click Refresh. Bingo !! You now have your own web-page. Experiment to get it how you want it and also save an image (.jpg) if required to the same Folder. All your web-site .htm and .jpg files go in this Folder for uploading when ready. When you initially save your .htm file it usually inserts your local details which you must delete for it to work when uploaded. For example "< A href="default.htm" >" may save as < A href="c:\\new folder\default.htm" > so you delete the "c:\\new folder\" bit. Your ISP or their web-site should supply how to upload your web-page information which is easy after the first time. A free easy to use web upload program ( FTP Client ) is FileZilla which you can find on the net and download ( about 3Mb so will take about 10 minutes on dialup to download ) Your web link will normally be your ISP followed by your User Name such as http://www.bigpond.com/portadrotary. If you have a different option try various searches to see if your proposed name is already being used and keep it short. You need to add the http:// bit so others can click on it and it will work. A domain name is not necessary (ie: www.nike.com) as you can easily insert your URL at the bottom of all your emails. If you look at the top of your home page via View / Source there is Header info that should also be included as it allows Search Engines to find your web-site once submitted and this usually takes a few weeks. Put in likely search terms and combinations that people could use to find you but remember you are part of the World Wide Web and may need identifiers like Adelaide or S.A. or Australia. Check similar web-sites to see what words they use. If you have multiple pages the layouts should be similar so users know they are still in your site and check the navigation and all other links work. The same photo on each page helps achieve this and only downloads once. A photo scan at 75dpi produces a 7Kb .jpg which downloads very quickly. This page of text is currently 21Kb. Major Search Engines usually have a submit to Search Engines link to which you submit your URL for no charge. Include contact information and content, content, content in your web-site and update it regularly. Create a link to your desktop for easy access. Have fun !!! Your FREE WEB PAGE. For amateur entertainers without a web-site I can create a free page for you in the same format as the sample, click on FREE. This means you have web presence without any work or cost and it is updated after you advise me by email. How easy is that ! Your Events are listed in the Coming Events page for everyone to see and also are sent to the print & radio Media. Once your group has a separate web-site your FREE page is replaced by your new URL. Check View / Source to see how and where the colour above is inserted. Handy Shortcuts : To Copy and Paste quickly : ( Handy all the time and particularly when building a web-page ) Select image or drag mouse over required area to copy and go, Ctl / Insert. Open new document or Alt / Tab to it, select paste location and go, Shift / Insert. Can repeat unless Esc or Enter is used. Quicker way to select text : Left click at start point ( may need short drag ), hold down Shift key, click end point. Quick zooming using an Intellipoint ( scroll wheel ) mouse : If using Word, just type, if Excel, click on a cell, hold CTRL key, scroll varies the zoom. Notepad : Storing info you use a lot, such as your name, address, email address, phone, etc. can be inserted into Notepad and then "Save As" / "Save In" / "Desktop" as, say, Steve's Notepad.txt Go to "Desktop" and drag the shortcut to the bottom task bar. One click accesses it, copy required item, paste it as required ! To export your Address Book to Excel for saving in your backup and it is handy to also have a print. Open Address Book, go, File / Export / Other Address Book / Text File (Comma Separated Values) / Save as ? / Next / Select all the Fields / Finish / Close. Then open Excel, go, Exported File / Delimited / Next / Tab to Comma / Next / Finish / reset column widths / .txt to .xls / Save. If you have a huge Address Book an easy way to categorise it is to use the 3rd column after Name / E-Mail Address / 3rd column. Whatever the name of this column you can access it via Properties and enter a category. I use words like Media, Choir, Orch. etc. A click at the top on the name of any column resorts it alphabetically A - Z and another click resorts it Z - A. Very handy as one click puts all your say, Media, entries together, then just click them into your Bcc: box ( 2nd Commandment ). HTML. Bare Bones Guide to HTML or W3 Schools list tags and other info for building web pages. A few unordered list samples :
The Author : Steve Garie has enjoyed Community Entertaining for 40 years playing brass in Campbelltown, K & N and Adelaide Village Bands and horn in ARPA and Mitcham Orchestras. He is usually active in administration in these groups. He has been convenor of the Adelaide Eisteddfod Brass Division since their 50th year in 2005. His independent and unfunded web-site helps promote Community Entertainment by listing all S.A. amateur groups and their contacts so they can be easily found by potential hirers and potential new members. The groups "Coming Events" are listed and then regularly sent to the media. This should enhance but not replace groups own publicity endeavours. Early listing also helps groups scheduling so that Events or personnel do not clash and many publications require details months ahead. The current Events list also helps co-ordination and finding "gigs" !! The service is all FREE and email is used to minimise costs. Groups can even have their own web-page thus having a web presence with no site to maintain. Steve enjoyed 40 years with Telstra and continued into retirement with a bigger focus on music making & promotion. Other hats are Volunteer "Behind The Scenes" Tour Guide for the Adelaide Festival Centre, former secretary of the Wine Guild of S.A. Inc., which organises educational and social events for members, an ABC radio segment on a Thursday evening monthly with Peter Goers chatting about listed entertainment in the coming week and he was on the new Orchestras Australia S.A. committee which promoted orchestras. A 100 member orchestra composed of school and community orchestra musicians performed under Nicholas Braithwaite and Joanna Drimatis with renowned pianist Alexey Yemtsov, a wonderful and inspiring performance for all concerned. He organised the well received "OOTS" Out Of The Square matinee concerts featuring Eisteddfod talents presented in October 2007, ARPA 25th Anniversary at the Capri Theatre featuring performing groups from ARPA, ARPA Orchestra OOTS matinees in 2005 and the very successful 2008 OOTS "We Love an Orchestra" series again featuring the ARPA Orchestra. In August 2009 he presented the Adelaide Village Band with special guests soprano Grace Bawden, Finalist 2008 Australia's Got Talent, and guitarist Jim Garie for OOTS. This web site endeavours to present correct information and balanced opinion and relies on information being submitted in good faith. Please Email "Steve Garie Home Page" URL to everyone you know who is interested in Community Entertainment. The URL ( address ) is http://www.sacomment.com The "http://" bit is usually necessary to use the URL from a document, a browser normally needs "www." etc. |