we 24 Aug
2016
Alexa |  Alexa.com (an Amazon company) is a web site that ranks other web sites opining how important they are in the cyber world, it's particularly useful getting an opinion where money is involved. To give you some markers today the BBC is ranked 98, East Anglian 155,183 and the East African Daily Times 10,108,649.
There is a rewarding addon for your browser that indicates the Alexa ranking of every site visited though very occasionally we've found it slowing the browser down. |
tu 12 Jul
2016 |  When you turn off auto-renew on a domain registration at 123 Reg (123 call it Domain Cancellation) you're told you won't be contacted again about the domain ... not quite true, ICANN require you are given three warnings that a domain is about to lapse.
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fr 13 May
2016
 | A techy one this time, if you have a server side script running on a Linux server and it's reporting errors which include ^M then a carriage return has crept in from the Windows world. To fix it use the vi editor on the server to remove the ^M. The trick is start the editor with the argument -b, this puts vi into binary mode and you can see the carriage return ^M. |
we 2 Dec
2015 | Perhaps it's cynical and habitual journalistic hysteria interpreting Ofcom's warning as Christmas lights mess up your wifi but a surprisingly informed Guardian article. |
th 9 Jul
2015 | To help declag a pc on the south coast we tried remote assistance ... multiple times. So we then tried the free (for personal use) and doesn't need an install at the client end TeamViewer. It connected so quickly it does make you wonder how secure it is. |
fr 16 Jan
2015 |  WARNING TeamViewer is a genuine (and free) remote access/control application software but we've encountered it being used in scams where a gentleman (usually with an Indian accent) phones, says he's from Microsoft and there's a problem with your pc ...
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fr19 Dec
2014 | Here's one we've only just discovered (no doubt you've known it since before computers used valves and helped win the war). When doing a Google image search if you click on the Search tools button to the right of the Web Maps etc toolbar a second toolbar appears. If you click the Type pull down there's a Face option. |
th 30 Jan
2014 | If like us you're a little bemused by the Google page graphic today it's Chinese new year (year of the horse) tomorrow. |
su 12 Jan
2014 | For years Grisoft's free AVG has been our default anti-virus/malware software but as is the way it's become bloated and greedy of resources. Surprisingly for Microsoft their Security Essentials is a tight little beastie that does the job and has become our default, we have it on a Win7 desktop and a laptop and netbook running XP, the only problem has been the netbook's Security Center(sic) initially didn't recognise it. |
mo 2 Dec
2013 | On the basis you can't be too rich, too thin or have too many backups and finding the free 5Gig of Google Cloud useful we tried out the 2Gig BT Cloud that comes with a BT broadband account. Unless we're missing something (and we very well could be) it doesn't retain the filing structure of the source, it just makes one big flat mess of files ... so a bit useless then. |
th 14 Nov
2013 | When looking on ebay try searching spelling mistakes, for example if looking for a necklace try necklis or neklace. The mistake may be ignorance or a typo but the expectation is a misspelled item will go for less as it shows in fewer searches. |
fr 7 Jun
2013 | A danger of digital is the data is so vulnerable, if you're not backed up and you have a hard disc crash then there goes the family photos. CDs are fiddly and not that reliable, memory sticks are slow and not really big enough yet and both need to be stored off site for real security. For all these reasons we've been meaning to try online backup because it must have got better since we last tasted. Google supply a FREE 5 Gigs online with app Google Drive to sync with your selections on the hard disc. As you might expect Google Drive downloads and installs very nippily and you put in the folder My Documents/Google Drive what you want backed up and that's it ... except in can take four hours to upload 500 Meg and when we added the live version of this web site to the Google Drive folder things could get very slow indeed. We took this web site out of Google Drive and though now sometimes things can get slow, particularly at start up, it's acceptable as long as the Google Drive contents are not constantly changing ... gonna try BT Cloud next. |
fr 8 Feb
2013
daytime power cut | If the power goes off during daylight (like it did the other weekend in Framlingham) looking out the window to see if other people's lights have gone off too won't work. Here's a cunning ruse if you have a wireless connected smart phone, do a wireless scan and if your neighbours' routers have gone off too then it's a power cut not just you. |
su 18 Sep
2011 | Google Earth has gained a timeline control so now like us you can see you old car in 2000 and that the park you played in as a child was still allotments in 1945. |
su 13 Jun
2010 | If you have a web site and you get one of these ignore it, essentially it's a fiddle. It will almost certainly be cheaper to renew the domain with your present registrar at typically half the price, and they will certainly be contacting you about renewal. |
we 24 Feb
2010 | Picked up a bit of nastiness twice this week .jpg) that pretended it had found a virus on our main machine and wouldn't let us do anything except watch it ... so we restarted the pc whilst holding down user key f8, user key f8 opens a DOS type screen and we chose to start Windows in Safe Mode. Then we used System Restore to roll the system back to before the nastiness appeared; surprisingly straight forward. |
