Many people realize nowadays that being on the internet is a very public place. Most people however do not know just how public it is. The fact is that if you like many others on the Internet do not take steps to make yourself less exposed on the Internet, it is very easy for someone with a little bit of knowledge to see what you’re doing online, where you’re at, and in some cases who you are. While your everyday Joe does not possess this knowledge there are many people out there that either know how to find this information out, or know someone that does. At any rate it is a good practice to make this information as difficult to come by as possible.

The first major step in the right direction is, if you use Internet Explorer, make sure to set your browser to delete all after each browsing session. Yes, delete your history, cookies, passwords, page form data, etc….I know it is really convenient to have all this available at the click of your mouse but with that convenience comes risk.

The next step, use the “In-Private” browsing function. This function is designed to make your browsing more private…

The third step, if you really need to be private, use a proxy to browse the web. While you need to be careful and know that the server you are using to browse through is legitimate, with the proper configuration it becomes more difficult to track back your browsing to you specifically.

The last step you can take is to use a program like Tor. Tor allows you to use encrypted connections to make your browsing more secure. Tor also offers the proxy service talked about above.

All in all it is very important that you protect your online activities. Not only to protect you from the onslaught of advertisements you can get from browsers using your cookies, but, also to keep you protected from privacy invasion and the possibility of identity theft.

To read more click here.

Many people probably do not realize what is going on right now in the world of the internet, or its inner workings anyhow…SOPA the Stop Online Piracy Act, which is being heavily pushed by many Hollywood studios and other media production companies to allow government to basically make websites accused of housing illegal materials such as copyrighted media illegal and allow them to force the websites to be blocked.

Essentially this bill will allow the government to control what is allow and not allowed on the internet, long story short. Many people and organizations are opposing these bills as they fear they will cause severe damage to the internet’s inner mechanics as well as the fact that it doesn’t actually solve the problem at hand.

With SOPA the initial bill allowed government to force ISPs and other DN providers to remove DNS entries to websites accused of hosting pirated material. While this may sound okay it is cause for concern on many levels. One of which is the fact the simply removing the DNS entry is not going to correct the problem because the website can still be browsed to via its actual IP.

While I am not going to go into much detail on the bills for lack of time…it should be said that people need to be pushing their congressman to vote this down just the same as the many organizations are pushing against it. Many organizations are planning protests against the bills. Some of those companies are Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc. There is currently a list of some 500+ websites that will be shutting their websites off tomorrow in an effort to protest these bills.

To read more about Googles stance and others on SOPA and PIPA click here.

To read more about Wikipedias stance on SOPA click here.

To view the ever growing list of companies also joining in on the blackout tomorrow click here.

There is a new bill that has been introduced in the House of Representatives last month that could damage the Internet as we know it.

SOPA, or the “Stop Online Piracy Act”, was designed with good intentions in mind. The goal of the bill is to force ISP’s and DNS providers to remove entries of websites or block access to websites identified as allowing piracy to take place via court orders from the Justice Department.

Many companies that provide DNS services (the services that translate a website url such as www.mytechexperts.com to its servers IP address) do not want this to pass as it forces them to police their DNS entries. DNS providers state that the way this bill is currently written will cause a lot of damage to the DNS system that everyone uses which could potentially make it unreliable.

While DNS providers agree something needs to be done about piracy on the internet as it is clearly hurting artists, production companies, software providers, etc. they feel that this bill is going about it in the wrong manner.

There are many other opinions on the implications of this bill as well ranging from the stability of the DNS system as stated above, to the security of the United States Internet services, to possible job loss created by US DNS companies moving overseas to avoid such laws. It appears at this point that this bill has too many problems with it to become a law..

If you’re interested in reading more about this topic click here.

Everybody knows the little pictures with numbers and letters on websites that need you to read what they say then type in the letters and numbers seen in them, and boy can they be annoying…that aside, are they really doing what they were intended to do successfully?

A new study finds “Captchas” (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), are at least on most websites, not well designed or even functional at all.  Captchas are suppsed to be put in place to prevent bots from accessing certain parts of websites by making it physically read the text within the picture and input it to allow further access. Unforunately only two websites tested were not able to be decoded with the proper setup. Both Google and Recaptcha’s captchas were found to be not decodeable by a bot. What were other some of the other contenders rankings? Well, some of the major ones that were easily decoded were, Blizzard which was decoded 75% of the time, eBay which was decoded 95% of the time, and Baidu which was decoded 98% of the time.

Though it’s amazing how easily many of these companies captchas were decoded, one thing is for certain, more rigorous testing needs to take place by organizations implementing them to ensure they are doing what they need them to do.

If you would like to read more about the study click here.

One of the best new ways to share YouTube videos with friends is with Google+ Hangout feature.  Hangout’s let you do video and voice chatting with your friends and now you are able to embed a YouTube video in your conversations.

How to watch YouTube Videos on Google Plus hangout with friends?

1. Start a Hangout session and invite friends.
2. Visit YouTube’s live stream page and select a feed.
3. Copy the YouTube video I.D. of the stream.
4. Search for the I.D. in the Hangouts video tab.
5. Once the stream is found, click play.

This is cumbersome, and is not how Google intends for the feature to be used in the future. Instead, live streams will be added to Hangout’s existing YouTube tab.  This feature is planned to be updated in the future.

If your already a member of Google+ why not give it a try? 

This is going to be short and sweet this week folks. Ever been typing on your laptop and once you looked up realized you just type half of what you wanted to say in a completely different spot on the page than you thought you were typing? I know I have… The BEST solution I’ve found for this is a very small program called “Touchfreeze” What Touchfreeze actually does is disables your touchpad while you are typing. When you begin typing you are no longer able to move the mouse and as soon as you stop (within a few milliseconds anyhow) the touch pad begins to function again. I have personally tested this program on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 and it seems to work on all of those platforms without any problems. Installation is very easy, pretty much just download it, and follow the prompts selecting all default values.

The reason I wrote about this is that most people have experienced this issue at one point or another and wished there was a way to solve this issue...and…there is! If you’re not sure how to install this yourself or are just not comfortable doing it and would like us to setup for you, we can definitely do it for you just give us a call.

To download click the Touchfreeze Logo below.

Spotify will change the way people will listen and share music.  Currently you must be invited to join but you can sign up here if you are interested.

Netflix Subscribers could be looking for an alternative source for their movie streaming and DVD rentals.  Netflix has sent out an E-mail to all Subscribers telling of their plan to raise prices of their Streaming and DVD services.  Currently subscribers are paying $9.99 to watch an unlimited number of movies online and rent 1 DVD at-a-time (Other subscription plans include receiving multiple DVDs at-a-time).  Subscribers who want this combination will now have to pay a total of $15.98 a month.  That is $7.99 for Netflix Instant streaming and $7.99 to receive DVDs in the mail (1 at-a-time).  Reactions to Netflix's biggest-ever price increases were swift and overwhelmingly negative.  More than 10,000 people had responded to the news on Netflix's Facebook page by late Tuesday, nearly all of them critical.  Will Netflix keep this price change?  Or will they lower their prices to satisfy consumers?

This past week you may have seen or heard talk of a mysterious black bar appearing on top of Google.com.  Well it wasn’t by accident.  In fact it was a sign of something new to come from Google.  What is it you ask?  “Google+”.  What is Google+?  Google+ is a top-secret social project that Google has been working on for the past year.  The reason for this new project is to create a new way we interact with our friends and family in an all-in-one online experience.   Some key features of Google+ include Circles, Sparks, and Huddle.  With Circles, you are able to organize your contacts into categories or ‘Groups’ and share and interact with people in those categories the way you do in the ‘real world’.  Sparks is another main feature with Google+.  Sparks is more than just a “search engine”.  With Sparks, you enter an interest you have and Google goes out and finds elements on the web that they think you’ll care about. These can be links to blog posts, videos, books — anything that Google searches for.  Finally the last feature I will talk about is called “Huddle”.  Huddle is essentially a group messaging app that works across Android, iPhone, and SMS to allow you to communicate with the people in certain Circles.
 

There are many more great features to come with Google+ and I’ve only mentioned a few.  The project is still in beta but they are expecting to release it to the public soon.  Right now is only phase one.  You can sign up to beta test here.

The Board of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that regulates how domain names work, has approved the creation of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that will allow for a near-infinite variety of new website addresses.  This means anyone can submit to be approved their own “.Com, .Org, .Net, etc…”  New gTLDs will also change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence. Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways.

Organizations who seek an ‘.anything’ domain may send in applications as soon as January 2012, through April 2012. ICANN anticipates that the first new domains will be approved by the end of 2012

Yesterday Google release a browser extension for their popular Chrome internet browser that is designed to make the internet a safer place for its users. Google release an extension they call “DOM Snitch”. DOM Snitch is designed to check websites software for possible exploits and/or common security issues within webpages. This extension is still in its experimental phases but when completed will allow users to browse the web and have this “program” check the websites they browse to for various security issues. The goal is to catch websites that are trying to deploy malware or other security risks to your computer without your knowledge.

If you’re interested in reading more or downloading the extension in its early form click here.

With the way Google is moving everything to the “Cloud”, comes a new feature called “Google Cloud Print”.  Google’s new Could Printing service allows anyone to print to any printer via the web by connecting your printer with the Google Cloud service.   With this service enabled you are able to print from any computer or smart phone, regardless of where you are as long as you have network capabilities.  In order to use the new Google Cloud Print service you must download and install Google Chrome and the Google Cloud Print connector.  After those two are installed your printers attached to your Computer will become available automatically through the web.

Google Cloud Print is currently in beta right now but you can go ahead and try it out. Click Here to continue. 

Not too far around the corner we could be seeing a couple new wireless standards coming out. In the past we have had Wireless A, B, G, and more recently N. Each of these standards has improved the amount of data that was able to be transferred over the WiFi connection. These standards really took off beginning with Wireless B which had a data transfer speed of up to 11 Mbps, then was Wireless G at 54Mbps, and Finally today’s current standard Wireless N which has a Data Transfer rate of up to 450Mbps. Wireless N having a speed of 450Mbps is already faster than most users internet connections so even though the new wireless is going to be much faster, users will likely see not difference in their internet usage. The new standards in development are Wireless AC and Wireless AD. These two new standards will have top speeds of 1Gbps and 7Gbps respectively.

So why even make the new standards if they will not improve your internet access speed you ask? One of the main reasons one of the main ideas the companies developing the technology say this would be useful for is video streaming. With many home users and businesses alike streaming video to PC’s and Larger displays this standard would allow the already downloaded videos to be streamed from a user’s PC or Media Center in the highest quality without the need of buffering every few seconds like happens now.

If you’re interested in reading more about the new upcoming standards, click here!

For the past 7 Months Yahoo! has been busy working hard on improving the way their E-Mailing services are setup claiming to be 2x faster than before.  Email messages and attachments come and go at high speed so no more waiting 10+ minutes to send/receive Email.   With the latest new and improved spam protection Yahoo! Mail on average blocks more than 15 billion spam messages daily.  For anyone who receives a lot of spam, this is good news!  Yahoo! Mail also now enables its users the ability to send and view videos and slideshow pictures right in your inbox via Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube.  So no more will you have to click a link with the worry of mistakenly clicking on an infected website link.  A huge improvement I feel is the ability to now check your email from any mobile device with web capabilities.  Before users could not check their email without third party software, but now it is made possible and easy!  Also you can quickly reply to your facebook notifications and email as well which I believe is really cool.

Yahoo! is rolling out the update to its users in the next few weeks but if you want to give it a go now visit Here and enroll in the beta program.

The Playstation Network (or PSN for short) was hacked and possibly 77million of Sony’s Playstation, and Qriocirty customers’ data have been obtained by the hackers.  Included in the list of data that may have been obtained includes the username, password, email address, house addresses, and any other data you may have linked with your account.  That being said, there is a chance your credit card information has been stolen as well.  There are no reports of fraudulent charges (yet) but that doesn’t mean the hackers could be holding the information to be used in the future.   It is best to keep an eye out for any unknown charges on your credit card statements and if you see something strange, report it right away.

Internet Explorer 9 has officially launched as the latest and greatest browser from Microsoft. IE9 introduces a new streamlined interface, improved performance, Windows 7 integration, and more!

Special features

New Interface:  The first thing you will notice with IE9 is the complete redesign on the web browser.  Microsoft has gotten rid of the standard menu bar and bookmarks, as well as moved the tabs to the side of the address bar rather than underneath.

New Tab page: Select a new tab in IE9 and you get a page of suggested Website links based on your browsing history.

One box search and address: The search box and the address bar are one in the same. Type a search in the box and your default browser will return your results.

Pinned sites: Drag the address of a Website from the address bar to the Taskbar and you can pin it there so it is available next time.  Also known as an “web-app”

Windows 7 integration: Internet Explorer 9 integrates with Windows 7 operating system with regard to features like snap and jump lists for pinned Websites on the Taskbar.

InPrivate Browsing: By entering into the InPrivate Browsing mode, a user can surf the Web without creating a browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data or retaining cookie information.

HTML5 Support: IE9 adds several compelling features to support HTML5, SVG, CSS3, ECMAScripty5, and DOM that will help enable developers to write one set of markup and know that it will work and look the same in all modern browsers

Software giant Microsoft has released the Beta version of the all new Internet Explorer 9.  IE9 has really set some impressive benchmarks with the new browser working with the language of the future HTML5.   Speed and performance seems to be one of their primary focuses, as now the browser utilizes the power of your computer’s graphic processor, or GPU, to handle graphics-heavy tasks like video streaming or online gaming.  By tapping into this technology, IE9 gives you a more immersive web experience, and delivers faster loading pages, with minimal if any lag what so ever.  If you want to check it out, you can download it here (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/help/ie-9/whats-new-in-internet-explorer-9) 

 In a recent study conducted by PandaLabs (www.pandasecurity.com) they have collected data and the numbers are scary!  More than 57,000 malware infected websites are put out on the Internet each and everyday.  Sites like Ebay, Amazon, and Western Union related sites are making up for most of the numbers, and the sites where credit cards accounts and PayPay accounts have seemed to be the target over the last couple of years.  If you're making online purchases from your personal computer, be sure to go directly to the URL web address, and don't rely on search engines to get you to your pages.  Google, Yahoo, Bing, and several others are making efforts by changing the indexing algorithms, they are still unable to bring down the huge number of users being effected by these malicious sites being made available!  Come see the TechExperts if you think you may be at risk!

               YouTube is now in talks with Hollywood Studios to offer streamed pay per view to their site.  Seems as if YouTube is now taking a shot at Apple and Netflix as Internet streaming video is becoming more and more popular, especially as the next generation of Wi-Fi enabled televisions begin hitting the marketplace.  In what appears to be efforts to combine cable TV, streamed media, and search all into one product, Google and YouTube are heavy hitters when compared to cable or satellite providers, so this could be a huge turn in the way we watch TV and movies in the near future.

Software GIANT Microsoft(R) is reportedly going to be making hundreds of job cuts to its workforce in efforts towards the industry moving towards cloud computing, according to various reports.  A very “insignificant” amount of jobs are going to be diminished when compared to Microsoft’s 88,000+ workforce.  I sense similar trends in the IT industry as more and more solution providers begin to embrace and implement what seems to be the inevitable; cloud computing.

Samson, Tedd. "Microsoft Cuts Jobs as Part of Core Shift to Cloud ". InfoWorld.

http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/news/Microsoft-Cuts-Jobs-as-Part-of-Core-Shift-to-Cloud-98030954.html.

Best Buy is now in the broadband market with its new service called Best Buy Connect.  This service gives its users access to mobile 3G data which come in a variation of data plans ranging from 250MB all the way up to 5GB.  Best Buy Connect will offer both a traditional monthly contact, and a non-contract plan which has become heavily popular with consumers.  No official word has been released by the consumer giant but their website has information on their new service.

Vodburner is an application that can record your Skype video chats and conferences, with the added benefit to edit the recorded video. You can save all of those important business teleconferences or personal conversations for future reference.

Ford Motor Co. and Google have joined forces to make it easier to get where you’re going. Ford announced on Tuesday that it plans to add Google Maps to in-vehicle Ford Sync communications systems installed in select Ford and Lincoln Mercury vehicles. The Google maps update is designed to let people send Google Maps from their computer or smart phone straight to their vehicle.

You can expect to see the new Google Maps update on all models equipped with Sync by July 1^st on all 2010 and 2011 models.