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.

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.

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. 

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.

 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!

Saving passwords helps save tons of time but also helps you forget your passwords. This little tool helps you pull any passwords that are saved on the computer. The tool even tells you the website that the password has been saved from.

A great tool to speed up email or password related issues for clients who can't remember or never knew their password. All you have to do is open the tool point to the password box and it will reveal the password.

So as I was doing my normal online browsing this past weekend, I noticed something new, and after some investigation, discovered that Google is now indexing public tweets from the super popular micro blogging site Twitter (www.twitter.com) There have been some rises in user concerns that they're private information was being indexed, but after a little further investigation I found that Google is only indexing public tweets.  You can actually modify if you want your information and blogs to be public, typically located in privacy or account settings.

When will it stop.

It seems that the rouge antivirus programs have been finding their way everywhere. I have seen infections before, but this one keeps on making itself known, over and over again. I can not stress the importance of watching every window that pops up and be careful. The malware that can infect you happens so quick, you have to pay attention, and realize what they are trying to do. They are trying to infect your system. It is like a bad practical joke. I just wonder... when will it stop. 

As the New Year approachs, most folks have to make the tough choice, what to keep and what to throw away.

Perhaps now is the time for the new resolution, dump your old system and head forward into the new year. The new Windows 7 operating system, by far and away, surpasses the old windows operating systems. So head into the new year with a new operating system on a new computer, and fly into the future 

Ok, I know change is hard to accept. But the latest edition to the Window's tree is Window 7, which has been buzzing all over the Internet ever since its release. Windows7 has three releases Ultimate, Professional and Home Edition. Microsoft really wants to get as much consumer's attention they can possibly get and for this very reason they are now targeting the netbook users, by giving them option to download and install Windows 7 via USB drive. That is right ...download to a USB drive.

For netbook users whom probably don't have a CD or DVD drive, this is actually a nice option to get a hold of the new Windows 7.

The Microsoft tool would download the Window 7 files into the USB and convert your USB drive into a bootable installer. The program may also be called Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT). Remember you need to have a USB drive which has sufficient enough space to hold on all the files.

So as we all know that the Internet is big... Really, really big!

The vast amounts of information and data available to users can become absolutely overwhelming.  If you are utilizing search engines the right way, your results can become highly valuable instead of just a bunch of un-useful information.  The key to using search engines lies in the search criteria, and how you are searching for your wanted data.  Boolean operators are a key feature when doing a search.  Boolean operators are typically used to construct searches in a database, and the three most commonly used operators are AND, OR and NOT.  Try using one of these in your next search, for example: If you are wanting to search for salamanders, and not newts, enter the following into your search - "salamanders and NOT newts."

This will eliminate your search results from having content on newts, and focus more on your intended search which was salamanders.  This technique is definatly a best practice. With the right search queries, you will become an expert searcher and find more valuable data and information as you use Boolean operators more and more.  Note, this can be used with any searches, so give it a shot on your next search adventure on the vast Internet!