Don't Look Now, Here Comes Office 2013

As soon as we become comfortable with technology, we are probably behind. For example, many of you at Passaic and Bergen have just received training in the state of the art Office 2010. The biggest feature that will take some retraining is the touch-screen support. Windows 8 and Office 2013 will support touch-screen input, so if you have a touch-screen, you can use that instead of a mouse.

I am interested in seeing the changes they have made, so I will be downloading the free consumer preview and seeing how I like the changes.

Anyone can download and try out the consumer preview for free:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

If you already have Office, I would not recommend removing your old version, as preview versions expire eventually. However, if you don't have Office at all and would like to play with it, or if you are a little more tech-savvy, here is your chance to be the first kid on the block to try it out.

That is my plan for Tuesday!

Credit Card Reporting

I have heard this story a few times. A married person brings their child for a car, goes to take out a car loan, and finds their credit is ruined. The reasons can be anything from identity theft to marriage problems. Either way, however, it is a bad situation to be in.

Maybe you have heard the "free credit report" Web sites advertising. The main one of these, freecreditreport.com, is free but requires users to sign up for services in order to get their "free" report. However, why do that when the companies that keep track of your history are legally required to provide you this information for free once a year?

In 2001, I graduated from college, and a friend mentioned that New Jersey residents could get copies of their credit reports by sending a letter to each agency. When I got the report, I was surprised to find I had a few active credit card accounts. They were open because I applied. Since I wasn't living at home, I didn't get my mail often, so I had accounts open. I recall applying for one in college in exchange for a t-shirt, and I filled one out at a Devils game for a hat. I spent a while calling credit card companies and closing accounts I did not use.

At that point in time, each state had different laws regarding this, but today, residents of the United States have the right to view this information online once a year for free from each of the three credit reporting bureaus. In order to get a copy of your report, you can log on to the Web site the three agencies have set up:

www.annualcreditreport.com

They may offer to sell you extra services, but if you decline, you will not be charged anything. The general rule of thumb is if they offer premium services, you don't want those.

In my experience, it was good to do a credit report for the first time to see what information they had there. Today, I check it for identity theft or fraud, and fix any errors they might have on there (they may have mistakes, and if it costs you a loan, that is bad).

For most users, an annual credit report for free is enough, but there are services for people who want something more (like real-time monitoring, or access to your credit score). For most users, I think spending an hour a year on this is a great idea. I put it on my calendar to do each year, so if something does happen, I should become aware of it.

Microsoft SyncToy

Moving between machines is always difficult. If you keep files on your hard drive, problems arise with forgetting files. So, if you copy them to a USB drive, you can end up with two copies to a file, which can be even worse.

One way to combat this is to use an online storage solution, such as Microsoft's SkyDrive. SkyDrive is basically an online USB drive, with access to Microsoft's Office Web Apps. Google has a similar functionality through Google Docs.

However, if you are looking for something that doesn't require an online account, you can also download a tool such as Microsoft SyncToy. This application is free for Windows users, but for whatever reason not installed with Windows when you first install it. If you are someone who has some issues with keeping track of files, this is a highly customizable tool. As opposed to a program like backup, a synchronization program can be set up to work both ways. In other words, if I change a file on my hard drive, it can be synchronized to my USB drive, and if I change a file on my USB drive, it can be synchronized to my hard drive.

For free, it's a great little tool, and a good alternative to accidentally overwriting a file with an older version.

Download SyncToy here

Facebook Freebies

I am a fan of getting things for free. There are a few companies I follow on Facebook that give me free stuff.

Two companies that make free stuff available are Quick Chek and McDonalds.

For example, if you Like Quick Chek on Facebook (link here), they give you access to a weekly freebie. Right now, the freebie is a Dr. Pepper 10, a new flavor of soft drink.

McDonald's Local (link here) has been giving out free stuff as well, though they haven't done so recently.

I know people have this tendency to assume if something is free, there is something wrong with it. For example, I mentioned the Quick Chek site and showed it to my students, and I asked why they would give it away. A few students came back with the answer "because no one is buying it". Companies sometimes create promotions like this for new products to encourage stores to buy a new product. In the case of a restaurant like McDonald's, giving out a product (like the new smoothie) can encourage people to visit the store and try something they may not otherwise try.

The other advantage to either of these scenarios is that, if you are in the store or restaurant, you want to get people to come to your location, and this is certainly a way to do that!

Monetizing a Site

As some of you know, I teach courses that involve Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, social networking, and other such material. For me, it is critical to be involved with some of these because it keeps me up to date on the stuff I am teaching. After all, if I am not staying involved with these things, how can I speak to their effectiveness, ease of implementation, and details?

I'll definitely talk about this in my Internet course this semester, but I felt like it might be a good idea to put some information out about how people make money off of Web sites, even if they are not selling products or services online. Here are three ways a Web site can make money with no risk, and links to sites I have personal experience with.

Advertising: Google has a program called AdSense, which allows a Web site owner to sign up and set up an account to display ads. Through a pretty straightforward step-by-step process, they are given the option to choose how invasive they want the ads to be. For example, you will notice I have a few small ads on this site. Through Google's Blogger service (which hosts my blog for free), it is even simpler. For other sites, Google will give you some HTML code that you embed in your Web site. If you don't know what that means, your Web developer will.
From my own experience, I've been running this blog since 2006. Google will send you a check after you make $100, and I haven't received a check yet. If I were being paid by the blog post, I'd probably be making about 20 cents a post. If my goal was to try to make money, I could choose to display more ads, or make the ads more prominent. I am also displaying blog entries in my Facebook account, so I assume many of my students are viewing this through Facebook and don't even see the ads, which also cuts down on possible ad revenue. In terms of keeping myself fresh with the technology, I will usually hop on and change the format a little bit before I talk about it in class. This way, I can speak about the latest version of Google AdSense from my own personal experience.
Is Google the only site that allows you to advertise? No. However, Google is pretty trustworthy. There are other, less ethical sites that allow users to display ads and may pay more. However, some of them use some shady business principles.
In general, if you are a small Web site, Google AdSense allows you to easily connect with advertisers without having to worry about doing much work.

Affiliate Marketing: Sites such as Amazon and Walmart offer affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing basically allows me as a Web site owner to provide links to Walmart or Amazon. If anyone clicks on those links and buys something, I get a small percentage of that sale. Amazon Associates is among the most popular. Users can log in and get a personalized link.
Users can link directly to a product, or just to the main site. Amazon requires a minimum payment of $100 before they will pay you. Again, I may reference it once in a while, but I've never received a check from them because I really don't push for clicks. I have a small link on the right hand side of my blog, and will once in a while go and build a link to stay on top of things.
Sites that really want to monetize may even ask their users to click on the Amazon link they have provided if they are going to buy something anyway, as it will help support them. The more a user sells, the larger a percentage of fees they get.
As a member I see (sometimes on a weekly basis) how they are changing the program. Amazon and some states are in court because of Amazon Associates. The short form is that states are suing them because states feel this program should compel Amazon to charge sales tax. Looooong story there.

On-Demand Publishing: Sites like CafePress allow users to upload a logo. Once the logo has been uploaded, you can decide what you want it to be on. Do you want it to be on t-shirts? mugs? underwear? You then choose how much markup you want to ad and provide your users with a link to the site. This is a great option for a company that does not want to risk buying t-shirts and then having them not sell. As a matter of fact, one of my students last semester mentioned he set up a site like this for one of his high school organizations. I've got a small site on there I haven't played with in a few years, but it's kind of a neat way for Web site owners to create shirts with no overhead, or for artists to make logo shirts, mugs, and other items.

If you have a Web site or are an artist of sorts, these are some options available to you.

RIP Google Toolbar?

I hate filling out forms on the Internet. For a while, I was using a tool called Roboform to assist me with it. The problem with Roboform was that there was a trial version, but to use the full version, you had to pay.

Google eventually introduced a form assistant in their Google Toolbar program, and I downloaded and installed it. I've been using the Google Toolbar for a while; it did what I needed, and though not as full-featured as the Roboform tool, it is free.

Firefox 5 recently came out, and when I upgraded, I got the warning that some of my add-ons were not compatible. Among them was the Google Toolbar. I figured Google would figure it out and send out updates eventually.

It turns out Google, surprisingly, has decided to no longer support the Toolbar in Firefox according to Google Toolbar's blog. This is disappointing for me, if for no other reason than I don't like change when I am used to something.

I've downloaded AutoFill Forms for the moment, and it seems to be working out. It is free, relatively unannoying, and functional. If you are looking for a replacement, or do not have a tool to fill out forms automatically, I would recommend trying this tool. There are of course other options available, but this works nicely for me.

I am just surprised because Google generally seems to be on the same page as Firefox. RIP Google Toolbar, at least on my computer.

Microsoft Digital Literacy

Microsoft has a new program available called Digital Literacy. This is part of their efforts to help educate America.

As part of it, they have a set of free trainings available on their Web site. One is a basic computer literacy training, and the other is a slightly more advanced Microsoft Office and Windows training.

For free, why not right?

Link to Site

Amazon Free Shipping For College Students

Let's say you wanted to purchase one of Kevin Mitnick's books on Amazon. At the moment, "The Art of Intrusion" costs $11.53. If you were to purchase this, you would need to get to $25 worth of purchase to get free Super Saver shipping (5-9 days), or you could pay $3.99 for shipping for this item and get it in 3-5 days.

Amazon also has available a program called Amazon Prime. This will let you get free shipping on most orders, but most of the time to sign up for Amazon Prime costs money ($79 a year).

At the moment, it is free to students. Sadly, for PCCC students, it requires a .edu email address, which our College does not provide. However, for readers who are at other colleges, you may be able to take advantage of this. Amazon does reserve the right to ask you to provide "proof" that you are a college student.

www.amazon.com/student

Watching TV on your PC

I like watching TV shows, and I finally broke down and got a digital video recorder (DVR) at some point, because it was a pain to program my VCR to record all the shows I wanted to see (and yes, I said VCR).

I know many people like the idea of watching television on the PC, because you can do it from locations (like work), and you aren't on the network schedules.  Hulu is a great site for this.  It's free (advertising supported), legal, and lets you view episodes of many shows that have aired recently, even if you don't pay for a television package.  Unlike sites like megavideo, you also don't have to worry about legal issues, time restrictions, and spyware.

www.hulu.com

If you are like me, you can also hook up an old PC to your television and use Hulu to watch shows on your TV.  I took an old machine, wiped it out, put a basic operating system and security suite on it, and it's now my TV computer.

Free Stuff Contest - $100 Google AdSense Credit

People always seem to wonder how Web sites make money.  Much like television, much of the money comes from advertising.  Large companies have enough staff to set up and maintain advertising relationships, but most small companies and one-person Web sites do not have the staff to do all that work.  This is an excellent way for people to make money on the Internet, without needing a huge infrastructure.

One of the companies that does this type of advertising is Google.  People who want to advertise with Google sign up through Google AdWords, and those advertisers pay for the services they want.

The other half of the equation is Google AdSense.  Google AdSense is the site where people who have content (bloggers, small Web sites, etc.) can sign up.  Google gives them the HTML code, and all the person needs to do is add that code to their site and ads show up.

Google, by being the "middle man", makes money connecting the two.

I participate in the Google AdSense system, in large part because when I teach these concepts, I can say that I know how to do them from experience.  I don't have the traffic to make any real money off of it.

Anyway, Google recently sent me a letter that included a free $100 worth of Google AdWords advertising credit.  I could advertise my blog, but I don't really see the sense in it, so I figured it might be nicer to give this advertising credit to someone who might actually have a use for it.  This credit starts losing value after 3/5/10 and expires completely on 3/31/10, so you have to sign  up and apply it to your account before that point.

This is open to students and non-students alike.  To enter, just email me and tell me why you want it.  Anyone with a Web site to advertise is eligible.

Since this is a limited time offer from Google, email me as soon as possible.    Again, all I want is to see it go to good use.

Magical Jelly Bean Product Key Finder

I am preparing to upgrade to Windows 7 at home, and I am a little leery of it, because if the upgrade doesn't go well, I may end up reinstalling certain software, such as Office 2007.  There is a free program called Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder which will find the product keys for many of the Microsoft tools.  For example, if I needed to reinstall Vista or Office, I wouldn't have to go find my original product keys.  I could just use this program to get that information now.  It will also allow me to save or print them automatically.  It's a random little tool, but definitely something that I am going to use before I do my upgrade, and it's a free piece of software, which is nice.

Link to download

Free RAM Analysis Tool

I always seem to walk out of other people's classrooms learning something.

I observed one of our part-time faculty a few weeks ago (this is part of my responsibility as a faculty member), and she gave an example that I plan on using in the future.

One thing I always have trouble explaining to students is what type of RAM they need.  The best answer I've been able to give is to consult the manufacturer's Web site, which is admittedly a pain in the rear end.

Crucial (a company that makes RAM) has made available for free a memory scanner.  This program will tell you how much RAM you have, along with how many slots you have available.  If you were considering a RAM upgrade, this is vital information, and this tool saves you having to open up the PC. 

www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

Stumbling upon new sites

In my CIS 101 class today, we discussed (among other things) add-ons, and I demonstrated one called StumbleUpon.

As a computer person, I love this.

Basically, StumbleUpon allows you to download an add-on for your Web browser. You select some of your interests, and you can "stumble" upon sites that you like. You can select whether you like a site or dislike it, and based on what your interests are and what sites you like, you will be able to stumble to sites that other people with similar interests like. The more sites you rank, the more accurate it becomes.

This is fascinating to me because on some level this makes use of a technique called "data mining" - basically, how we can use a computer and some data to make predictions better than any person can do by hand. This is similar in some ways to "wisdom of the crowd" - where if you ask a hundred people who are going to win a football game, the collective opinion of the crowd would tend to be correct.

As with many things I mention here, this is a free Add-on!

• stumbleupon.com (Click on "Get the Add-On")

Keywords and Internet placement

When designing a Web page, Web developers have the chance to add what are called keywords to the Web page source code to help search engines such as Google to drive users to your Web page. There is always a debate on how many keywords to include, because if you have 5 keywords, search engines typically view them as more important than if you had 100.

Complicating things is that Google and most other search engines also include things like "how many other sites have a link to your Web site" and other such things to rank your Web site.

There are some things you don't have a ton of control over, but you can choose effective keywords that help drive visitors to your site. One of the ways to do that is to use a keyword suggestion tool. For example, the free site listed below will show you related keywords you can use that might get you better placement on search engines.

Again, there are many sites that do this, the one below is an example. However, it can tell you words related to your keywords that you can use to attract more customers.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Keep in mind that this is also a technique less reputable Web sites can use. For example, let's say you have a Web site about the Sopranos TV show. The first thing that shows up on the list above when you look for sopranos is not "Tony Soprano" or "The Sopranos", but "Isabella Soprano" - an American pornographic actress, according to Wikipedia.

If you were really looking to drive people to your Sopranos TV site, you could throw in a reference to the actress and when people Google that actress, they may come across that site. Who knows, in the future, perhaps people looking for this porn star will end up here by accident!

I'd recommend using this for the purpose it was intended - to find popular keywords to help drive traffic to your Web site.

PCCC's CWE and you

PCCC has a requirement that, before you graduate, you successfully pass the College Writing Exam, or CWE (formerly GWE). I am about to mention this in my classes, so I wanted to type up what I am going to say here to share.

First of all, you don't need to wait until your last semester. As a matter of fact, it is advisable that you do not. Why? If you do not pass the CWE, you don't graduate. You will notice it is listed as a requirement on your degree audit.

Secondly, they give you two hours. Many students assume that two hours is there in case they need it, but the expectation is that you are using that time not only to write, but also to plan and revise your work! There is no harm in taking 15 minutes to outline, then writing, and then re-reading it and editing, and since you can take it on the computer, you can cut and paste bits and pieces, delete, etc.

The school has set up some free CWE preparation workshops that are free, and you can find information on them here:
CWE Workshops

Shut down telemarketers!

I recently wrote about the telemarketing laws that have changed. However, I realized I never mentioned the National Do Not Call registry.

A number of years back, a law was passed requiring most telemarketers to not call people if they asked not to be called. The problem is that I as a telemarketer could get your phone number and distribute your phone number to 100 other telemarketing companies. Even if you told my company to remove it, the other people still have your phone number.

The government stepped in and set up a free service - the National Do Not Call registry. You put your phone number in the system, and most telemarketers are required to not call you. If they do, you can report them and they face heavy fines. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date, so if you put it in the system today, you should be safe by the end of next month at worst.

Of course, there are exceptions. First of all, any company that you have a business relationship with is exempt (though you can still ask them to remove you if they call). So, your phone company, cable company, etc. can do so. In addition, if you order from a Web site and give them your phone number, you may also be opening yourself to legal telemarketing calls.

Other exceptions include charities, political organizations (of course, because guess who passed the law - politicians!), and surveys that don't include any sales pitch.

The Federal Communications Commission does seem to pursue complaints. I was able to find a list with a hundred citations of companies that have been complained about and been fined as a result. The biggest so far was a Florida based company named Dynasty Mortgage, which got a warning and apparently kept calling people, leading to two sets of fines totaling around $1.5 million dollars.

No harm in signing up, because once again, it's free!

donotcall.gov

Registry Cleaning

In my CIS 101 class, there is usually some sort of discussion of how programs get installed. Many times, whether in class or after class, I get a question that goes along these lines:

"Can I just copy the folder where Microsoft Office is to another computer?"

Now, back in the Microsoft DOS days, that would typically work, but Windows made it a little more complicated. There are a few things that are done during the installation process that you don't see. For example, some files are put in other folders on the hard drive, typically a subfolder under your Windows folder. In addition, some "services" are installed, and some information is written to a location called "the registry". So, with all that in mind, the operating system was designed to include an installation process, in part to make software piracy more difficult. Not all programs take advantage of this, but many do.

The problem with this is that when stuff is written to the registry, it doesn't always get cleaned out well when programs are uninstalled, etc. This leads to your registry being slower, as it is filled with junk that slows down your machine. A lot of people wonder why they can just reinstall the Windows operating system and see substantial improvements in speed. Part of the reason is the registry.

However, there are ways to fix this, and there is one program that does this for free, Eusing Free Registry Cleaner. This program will go through and clean up the mess left behind by sloppy uninstall programs. Definitely worth a download and a run. This is something I typically run every few months or so, and it always finds a bunch of errors it can fix. This is a program that I would recommend, especially with it being free and all.  The one concern I have is the limited support for Vista and Windows 7.

Link to Download

Physics for Free!

As an undergraduate in Computer Science, I was required to take a two semester lab science sequence. In addition, I was required to take Calculus I, Calculus II, and Linear Algebra from the math area. With proper manipulation of my free electives, I was able to take a few extra courses and end up with both math and physics minors. Where an ex-girlfriend of mine was taking classes like "Rock and Rap as Cultural Phenomena" (no kidding), I was taking four-credit lab sciences like Electricity and Magnetism and higher level math classes like Linear Algebra to complete requirements. I finished my degree with 130 credits - two more than the minimum - with those two minors.

Physics, in particular, always used to fascinate me. It was always complicated, but very interesting to solve problems using the theories provided. It's an incredibly interesting subject, but it does involve a lot of higher level math, and that usually seems to be a deterrent for people. I think people would get more out of that type of science than, say, Meteorology, but that's just me. Not that there is anything wrong with Meteorology, but I think Physics really was a class that taught me how to think and apply math and science to real world problems, and I am glad I ended up going that route.

If you ever did want to learn a little about it, a professor of Physics has actually taken the time to write a free textbook, and has made it available on the Web. You can find it at the address below:
http://www.physicsforfree.com/

Free Web tutorials

One thing I love about the Internet is that is offers free learning in a lot of ways. Back in 1999, I taught myself Perl basically overnight using Web-based tutorials (training). Of course, I already had been programming in school for years, so it was learning the language syntax rather than learning how to program. I already understood loops and if statements and classes and all that, so it just became learning a new set of words. With Perl, however, there was the wonderful word of "regular expressions"that I had never seen, so that took a while to master. Instead of having to do a lot of complicated searching, for example, you can replace one set of characters inside a string with another using commands like this:
s/original/replacementstring/gi;

That would take you a few lines of C++ code, for example. I was always taught that you want to choose the right programming language based on the task you wanted to do, and for string manipulation or interacting with the operating system, Perl is much better than C++.

Anyway, point being, once you have a foundation, you can always update your skills. I've had to do that this summer - I went to a four-day PHP training. If you don't have a job paying for it, you can always find things online that will help you. For example, a friend recommended a site called W3Schools to me a while ago, and they seem to have some nice free content.

Just remember, especially for those of you in the Information Technology field...learning is not a product - you don't just learn and that's it. You will need to keep learning over time, especially in this field.

http://w3schools.com/

Youtube Annotations

Technology changes all the time, even in the short time that I've been involved in it. One of the things I remember is how difficult image editing was in 1995. It's become easy to do, not only using application software, but now even using Web based applications, such as Youtube. Youtube has even added the ability to add annotations - stories, notes, and even links. This is not brand new - it was added last June - but it is a neat little feature, and of course, Youtube will certainly keep adding features. Now, maintaining the site has certainly cost Google money (estimates are as high as $500 million dollars), but they can afford it. Amazing, when you think about it, huh?

http://www.youtube.com/t/annotations_about