Cerebral Palsy Alliance

Archive for October, 2008

Help! Why am I getting so much spam?

Spam getting you down? Let Web2Go help.

On 3 May 1978, 393 people received a message that would change the face of computing forever.

It was the fateful day 30 years ago when the first piece of unsolicited commercial advertising was sent over a computer network. It was the beginning of the phenomenon we now lovingly know as spamming.

Spammers choke up the Internet with thousands of copies of the same message, aiming to force the message on users who would not otherwise choose to receive it. The majority of spam is commercial advertising, a lot of it promoting dodgy products like cheap medications or get rich-quick-schemes.

(Check out this New Scientist blog post for a detailed history of spam. )

These days, up to 90% of the estimated 120 billion email messages that are sent daily could be classified as spam. Those 393 pioneering spam victims, who were very cheesed off about receiving one unexpected surprise in their Inboxes, would be truly mind-boggled by the scale of the spam industry today.

Anti-spam website SpamUnit says it’s hard to estimate just how much spammers are earning each year but cites just one spammer who claims to be making USD$700, 000 per annum from his enterprise.

Spammers gather email addresses and send spam messages to those addresses using a number of techniques. (This article from Wikipedia will give you all the gory details.)

So, in the face of this ever-growing mountain of cyber-skullduggery, what can you do about spam?

My first rule of spam is:

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Help! My Internet bookmarks are out of control.

Are your lists of favourites- aka bookmarked web pages – as wildly out of control as mine? This week, I hope you don’t mind, but you’re tagging along on my mission to sort out my bookmarks once and for all.

I have so many favourite web pages bookmarked I’ve lost count. I’d estimate that it would be around 500 but there are probably a lot more than that. (I was never that nerdy kid at my friends’ birthday party that won the jelly bean counting competition. I was more of a Pass-The-Parcel girl. ; ))

Read more: Help! My Internet bookmarks are out of control.

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Help! I can’t view YouTube videos

YouTube is almost like the Web 2.0 version a free virtual Op Shop where you can find all sorts of audiovisual goodies that you thought had been lost to the world forever.

Occasionally, some unlucky shoppers can’t view the merchandise at all. Web2Go gives you a few possible solutions.

One of the most difficult things about computer troubleshooting is that problems can often have any number of causes. It’s really a matter of testing all the eventualities until you can pinpoint the right one. (Trusting your hard-won computing intution can also come in handy at times but this takes years, and a mountain of electronic heartbreak, to develop.)

The same can be said for YouTube videos that won’t play when you want them to.

So, instead of writing a door-stopping post this week to help you in your quest to enjoy watching thousands of hours of air guitar wannabes – or in my case ABBA and Queen video clips ; ) – on YouTube I thought I’d provide you with a shopping list of links to solutions and let you have all the fun!

Try these ideas on for size:

Do you have the right web address to view the video? It only takes one out-of-place character to foil your viewing plans. Make sure you have the right web address first.

You may not have the latest version of Flash Player. (Flash Player is a free piece of software that enables you to view multimedia, especially on the Web. If you don’t have it installed, YouTube videos won’t play. Here are the instructions on how it install it.You may have Flash installed correctly but it is clashing with another program so it won’t allow you to view videos properly. Try uninstalling Flash Player and reinstalling the latest version. Here’s how.Some YouTube afficianados using the Internet Explorer 7 browser have reported that clearing their Internet history has fixed the viewing problem.Make sure the JavaScript option is turned on in your web browser.Temporarily disable your firewall to check if it’s blocking certain types of web content. If you are using the personal firewall that comes built in with Windows, click here.It might not be an issue at your end at all. The person who uploaded the video may have used an incorrect file format or the file they tried to upload to YouTube may have been too large. If you suspect this might be the problem, try playing another YouTube video and see if you can view it correctly.

If you’ve tried all of these ideas and still can’t get your YouTube videos to work, please contact me via the comment box below and we’ll see what else we can come up with!

Alternatively, if you get your YouTube videos working like a dream and you find a hidden gem that you’d like to share with your fellow Web2Go groupies, please let us know! Happy hunting.

Next week … Help! My Internet bookmarks are out of control.

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Help! How do I add a picture to my facebook profile?

Help! How do I add a picture to my Facebook profile?

This time around Web2Go tells you how to get your best side up on Facebook to share it with the world.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking websites on the World Wide Web (2.0). It’s a place to catch up with old friends, share photos and links and play silly games and quizzes.

In January this year Facebook estimated it had 100.7 million unique international visitors.

While traditionally, MySpace has lead the social networking site charge, Facebook seems to be very quickly closing the gap.

Even though my 13-year-old cousin Isabella has now concluded that “Facebook is really for old people” (i.e. people over twenty!) it seems that many webheads of all ages are catching the social networking bug and setting up their own Facebook profile pages.

Two questions I’m often asked by family and friends are: “How do I get onto Facebook?” and “How do I put pictures onto my Facebook profile?”

First thing’s first. If you haven’t got your own Facebook profile page and you want to get one (and you can’t view other people’s FB pages if you don’t) then you’ll need to sign up.

Once you’ve successfully logged in to Facebook you’ll need to set up your profile. This includes all the information that you want people to be able to see when they find you on Facebook. Put as much or as little info on your profile as you want (being careful not to put too much personal stuff up there – like your home address, birth date or financial details).

You don’t have to put a picture on your profile but it makes things a bit more interesting for you and your visitors if you do.

To change your profile picture:

1) Log into Facebook. 2) Hover your mouse over the space where your photo should go (there’s a generic silhouette there if you haven’t put up a photo). A ‘Change Picture’ link will appear in the top right-hand corner of the picture space. 3) You now have a number of choices. You can upload a photo (transfer it from your computer hard drive to your Facebook page) and even take a picture using a webcam. 4) Click on ‘Upload a Picture’ to upload a photo. 5) A dialogue box titled ‘Upload Your Profile Picture’ should appear. Click ‘Browse’ to look for a photo on your computer’s hard drive. 6) Navigate to where the photos are stored on your computer. When you’ve found the photo you want to use, double-click it with your left mouse button to insert it into your Facebook profile.

That’s it!

The only thing you need to be mindful of is that your photo needs to be less than 4 megabytes (MB) to be uploaded to Facebook successfully. Most photos are only around 2.5 megabytes but I always like to resize my photos before I upload them to the Web.

I use a free tool called ‘Image Resizer’ at Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP to do this but you can also check out other freebies like Irfanview and FastStone Image Viewer.

Here’s two tutorials about resizing photos with FastStone and Irfanview if you want to know more.

If you’re already part of the FB community you can find me by entering ‘Jenny Kapp’ into the FB search engine. If you’re not, why not consider signing up? Who knows? You might make some new online buddies or track down that old school friend you’ve been wondering about for years…

Next week… Help! I can’t view YouTube videos.

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