7 Top Firewall Programs To Consider For Your Computer’s Security

Windows built-in firewall is, in my opinion, lame compared to the free programs available to us and this article describes them well. If you don’t understand what a firewall is or why you need one or how to use yours, have a short read on this page.

Something to discuss at a coming meeting perhaps? 

For example if you are reading a page and would like to search quickly Control-k will move the cursor focus to the search box in the upper right of Firefox. In addition, while in that focus hitting F4 or Alt-up-arrow or Alt-down-arrow will change the search engine selection.

Check out the link above and see how many of the hotkeys listed are new to you.

Hope to see you at the cafe Monday!

Hotkeys

Perhaps this week we should look at options to this problem and what we can do about it. Adobe has been under attack by Apple refusing to let its iPad use Flash, perhaps this is a reasonable concern.

Hope to see you all at the cafe Monday.

-=Larry=-

TVKim- Watching: Kim on Komand- Set up Facebook to keep your privacy

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
(i.e. Apple iPod and iPad users need not apply… that’s another post.)

Our Mail list received a post from Gary Smith today about privacy settings on Facebook that deserves a post here on our website.

I’m always looking for ways to have meetings, webinars, with everyone in a manner that would let us have folks at the cafe, at home or work, anywhere be able to join us and share. To make that work I require our method to include use of Linux and most of us require Windows, 7, XP, and a few of us need Mac support.

Yuuguu.com may make this work for us and this week, next Monday April 5, 2010, I suggest everyone visit this site,  download and install their software and create an account. Then at  5:30 we all start it, find each other through our Internet Messenger accounts, chat or (if you have free long distance) use the Yuuguu telephone conference call.

If there are support questions that member can show us their screen and we can all commiserate together or maybe find a solution.

If you need more explanation have a look at this video or Google ‘Yuuguu video’ and see more.

How To Use Yuuguu For Simple, Free Screen Sharing

Picasa 3: Free download from Google

I have used it on a number of machines over the years and recently have enjoyed being able to use it in Linux. What I hadn’t realized was the Linux edition is several versions behind what is available for Windows. And since version 3.5, last September, there has been the ability for Picasa to detect faces:

It’s pretty simple. Picasa shows the ‘Unnamed’ faces in all your photos and you identify them and add a name (and email address if you wish) to it. It then picks out all the other faces it has that it thinks is the same person and asks you to check its work. It’s uncanny and in our meeting’s experience, very good.

If you are using Windows and haven’t updated it yet, do so! Its worth it.

The link above is for an article on the Gmail Blog describing how you can now more quickly open a second window so if you want to copy from one message and paste in another it can be done more easily and quickly now. I know a number of us in the EPCUG are online Gmail users and I thought you might like to know about this.

One of the things Windows PCs need is to be defragmented regularly as the fragmented files will begin to slow the computer’s ability to read large files quickly. I keep watch on Gizmo’s Freeware page and noticed this software just moved to the top of their recommendations for defragging. Consider keeping this in your Tools/Utilities of your XP and up Windows boxes.

A suggestion from Larry Cotton. 

The geeks among us might take exception at how freely we use the Internet at our cafe. It is true the Internet we use at most “free” spots is insecure, meaning the text we send or receive could be picked up and read.

So the question becomes, should we worry and what can we do?

I worry about sending usernames and passwords through these connections. For most things it may not matter, and if the site shows an address starting with https:// (note the ‘s’) and a lock icon appears in the lower right of our web browser then the information we send is encrypted and is likely to be safe. (Banks and email sites SHOULD be doing this) But simpler sites like Facebook, Youtube and the like, logging into these in a cafe DOES send the open text we use through the network and that could be comprimised.

I just bought a new router for my home network and suddenly some things I have done on the network quit working. It turned out this new router does not ‘loopback’ basically meaning I cannot type an address for my computers here and see them as I would on the net. So to see if my addresses were working I would have to go to someone elses computer away from my own network to see them.

OR I could use the same services I would use to protect myself in a cafe or to see blocked sites at work like Youtube, I’d use a Proxy, and the one I have linked above is http://www.hidemyass.com

If you visit this site you will notice an address bar in the page. If you put the site address you want to see in this second address bar you will see your desired page, but the address your computer (and network) will see will belong to hidemyass.com thus seeming to come from another server. There are hundreds of these sites, maybe thousands all doing a similar service. Just Google for ‘anonymous proxy servers free’ and you’ll find them. The one I have presented here encrypts the link so that it doesn’t give away what site it has presented to you, not all do that.

So… should we worry? We should be cautious. If you are not on a secure site and you are sending information you would not want stolen, use a Proxy site and go ahead and enjoy yourself.

My two cents. Do you have any comments? Just use the comment form here on our website at http://epcug.net