I don’t really get what the big deal is with social web sites like Facebook and Myspace but if it is where the people are, the rest will come. There is an epidemic of social network hacking that I want everyone to be aware of. This is pretty rampant because I have received this hack from many friends and have heard of many others. The simple way to not get hacked is pay attention.

There are two ways you will get hacked: an email is sent to you that is not connected to your account or a message from a friend is sent to you.

Here is how it works, a friend who has had their account hacked sends you a message about a comment they sent you. In the message it says, "click here to read the message" or something of that nature but what happens is Myspace says "you must be logged in to do that." Now if you think about it, you had to be logged in to read the email so you are really already logged in, the link to the message is actually a link to another web site that looks exactly like Myspace. This web site is called a phishing site and it is there to collect your username and password. Now the person who hacked your friends account has now hacked yours and then the same email is sent to all your friends and the cycle goes on.

You can also get hacked by a random spam email in your regular email inbox that says the same thing only it brings you to the same phishing web site.

So how do you stop this from happening! First, if you get an email and you think there is something in Myspace that needs your attention, actually type the web address for Myspace in your web browser. Never click links in email. If you are checking messages after you know you logged in and one of the links requires you to log in again, don’t do it! If this happens, forget about it and don’t try to find out what the message is. Just send a message from that friend asking if they sent a message and if not, they might have been hacked.

I think scams like this are fairly common with Youth because they don’t take the time to think about what they are doing. Just click, click, click, and get to wherever they need to be as quick as possible. It is becoming increasingly important to not trust email from our financial institutions. If you receive notice from your bank that there is a problem, don’t click any links in email, go directly to their web site via your web browser. If there is a problem with your account, they will tell you when you log in.

With identity theft on the rise and more parts of our lives moving to the computer, it is becoming increasingly important to protect our data. Most people are familiar with encryption and the idea of an encrypted file means that someone without the password cant tell what the encrypted file is, but few know that there are still ways to tell what is in those encrypted files.

If you have a hidden encrypted file but then un-encrypt it to view or change it, Windows will load the file in Ram memory, but if you are out of Ram, the file will be written to the hard drive. Swap file and paging files are some of the few ways Windows saves files and although you may think the file is not there, it is until it is overwritten. This is one way how forensic computer science works, it can be tedious but with proper tools, recovering secret files on computers is pretty easy for someone who knows what they are doing.

Telling people this is a double edged sword, I want the people who have a legit reason to hide their personal info to know this but I don’t want predators and thieves to know this. Windows Vista Ultimate and Vista Enterprise as well as the newest version of TrueCrypt offer what is known as full drive encryption. Full drive encryption means your whole C system drive is encrypted when you turn your computer on and off and everything within the drive is encrypted on the fly. Assuming you have a good password, someone looking anywhere on your C drive will see a blog of data with no apparent pattern. Windows Vista calls this BitLocker Drive Encryption which requires a new type of motherboard with TPM which saves a file on it or requires a USB key to boot your computer. TrueCrypt makes you create a CD. This makes any attempt of data recovery on your hard drive useless unless you create too simple of a password.

In order to keep your encrypted drive from being unlocked, you must come up with a strong password that cant be guess and when looked at appears to be random characters. The best way to do this is create your own algorithm that you will remember. Something like remember a long word or phrase but swap every other letter with a number and add 5 on one, multiply by 5 on the next, divide by 5, subtract 5 and so forth. You could do this for the letters too, when you want to spell "a" in a phrase, add 5 letters which is "f." When doing it for the number part, when you need the letter "a" and if it is at the beginning of the phrase, start at 0 and add 5, so you would put the number 5. Try not to do things like add 5 every other password because 5,a,10,b,15 is a pretty easy repetition. You could do something like add 3 and multiply by 2 every time which will give you different numbers every time with less of a pattern. Can you tell I am passionate about the subject? Sorry for rambling on…

If you have Windows Vista Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, you have a cool feature called "Complete PC Backup and Restore" which allows you to create a full image of your system drive for backup or if you have a hardware failure. Unfortunately, if you have Vista Home Basic or Premium, this feature is not available to you. This is a really cool feature because it allows you to put your full Windows OS, installed programs, and data on another drive without having to do the usual restore and installation of all that software you have added since your first install. The time it will take to do this will be considerable faster than a full reinstall of Windows. You can use this to backup your hard drive or even use it to upgrade your hard disk to a bigger one.

Here is what you need to have if you have a defective disk or want to upgrade: 3 hard drives and your OS disc or 2 hard drives and a heck of a lot of DVD’s and time and your OS disc. (Don’t waste your time trying to backup your computer on 20 DVD’s, it is not worth your time.)

1. The first drive, the drive Vista is installed on has no use other than being the system disk.

2. The second drive will be the backup which you will need to have backed up prior to your OS drive failing. Don’t risk it, make a backup before you have an issue. This is the easy part, go into the Backup and Restore Center via the Control Panel and hit Back up Computer. The rest should be self explanatory.

3. The Scenario: Lets say at this point your OS system hard disk has failed or you want to upgrade your current drive to a bigger one. You will want to take out the failed drive or current working drive out of your computer. You will no longer need your OS drive.

4. Connect the new drive, make sure the drive with the backup on it is connected, and finally boot your computer with your system disc (Windows Vista install DVD). I should make a point that you cannot use any controller cards for this, all drives must be connected directly to the motherboard. You may also have to change the boot settings in your bios to boot from the Rom drive.

5. Windows Vista will now boot into the same screen that you see when you are going to install Vista, don’t worry. The first step is to click next when it asks what language you want, then select REPAIR WINDOWS! Do not select install Windows. Click next on the next step and click Restore Entire computer. Vista will then search for the backup you created on the drive, click next and Vista will install the image on your new drive.

You computer should now be the same as it was. A few more things you should know: If you put a bigger drive to replace the old one, you will have to expand it with Vista’s drive utility. If you have an OEM version of Windows, you technically are not supposed to change the system hard disk and it will say your copy of Vista is already in use. If you ask me, this is a crock and I would follow the steps to activate over the phone and talk the Microsoft about activating your OS. Retail version of Vista should be able to work with a new hard drive. If not, I don’t know why Vista would even have this feature. Really, this feature is amazing but it makes no sense to have available if you have a OEM version. If you build your own computer, you know what OEM means, if you buy your computer with Vista on it, you have OEM. Non OEM is when you buy Vista by itself in retail packaging in a retail store. I had an OEM version and was unable to activate my OS just after changing the hard drive. I promptly called Microsoft while following the steps to activate over the phone and answer all the questions they ask you honestly. I did this and they activated my copy.

Want to know if you should upgrade to XP or buy a new computer with Vista? Most people can’t see all the new features in Vista when they buy it in a computer and I think it has helped create a notion of Vista as a useless upgrade. If you have been thinking about buying a new computer, pretty soon you wont have a choice other than Vista but here is the link to a list published by Microsoft. Click Here

All over various blogs and YouTube there is mention about a game called Crayon Physics. Crayon Physics which can be found here, is a game where you draw shapes with crayons to solve puzzles. Currently, the game is free and only the first basic version of the game is available for download. Don’t get me wrong, this game may sound really basic but it is really fun and addicting. The author promises an updated version soon where you can draw any shape other than squares but I would try it out in the mean time. This game is Windows only. It is fun to see what you can do with Crayon Physics.

With Google threatening Microsoft’s Office with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Microsoft is taking a step towards cloud computing. As mentioned before, cloud computing is the idea of using the applications on your computer from the web. In other words, you don’t install software on your computer, you edit your documents online via a web browser. So far, Microsoft is far from it. I am not really a big cloud computing advocator, but I am not sure what Microsoft is trying to do with Office Live.

Office Live online has a few same features as Google Docs & Spreadsheets. For starters, Office Live servers as a place where you can store files online and collaborate with few or as many people as you want. You and others you allow can edit online Office documents. Microsoft, as usual is late to the plate. I am not sure at this point, but I don’t think there is a way to embed a word doc or spreadsheet in a web page like Google Docs and you also need to have Office on your computer to use the service. Requiring Office on your computer is a huge disadvantage when compared to Google Docs because it is completely free where the Office suite is very expensive. I would not expect anything from Office to be free anytime soon since it is a huge money maker from Microsoft. To be honest, I don’t see many people using this service. I see business people using this service because documents are often revised many times before they are made public. At this time, I am not sure what versions of Office, Office Live is compatible with, anyone trying this service with an older version of Office or from Office on the Mac, let me know. Try it out at http://www.officelive.com/default.aspx

In case you have not heard, today Apple released the SDK for the iPhone and iPod Touch and there will be a 2.0 update for iPhones in June. SDK stands for software developer kit and it will allow mobile software developers create everything from games to useful applications for iPhones and iPod Touches without having to use the browser.

Here are some of the highlights you have to look forward to in the iPhone:

-iPhone gets Enterprise support. This is the single most important thing to me. The iPhone will now have Microsoft Exchange and Active Sync support. This means my exchange server can now auto sync my contacts and give me push email through my iPhone. This won’t happen until the next software update but I am so happy for this.

-There will be an App store for the iPhone and and iPod Touch via iTunes for purchasing and installing software. This will be the only way to get software for your iPhone if it is not hacked.

- The game Spore will be available for the iPhone. Cool, and even though I can’t wait to play this game, I think I will want to play it on my computer.

-AIM, which was reported to be the most requested App will be available.

-Testing starts today with the beta release of the SDK but everything goes official in late June. What is odd to me, in the presentation, it said shipping in June. What is shipping? Are we going to see a new iPhone with 3G speeds? That is what the rumor is. I really hope it is true.

-Sim Unlock software will not be allowed in the iPhone App store. This means if you want software that is available for a hacked iPhone that is not available in the App store, you will still have to hack your iPhone. After June, and other than wanting to you use your phone on another carrier, I don’t see the reason to hack your iPhone anymore.

Google Docs is the start of what is known as "Cloud Computing." The idea of cloud computing is to use all of your software on your computer online. Essentially, your computer is online and you create documents online. Not sure if cloud computing will take off but some may find uses for it.

Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets is a place online where you can for free, create documents, edit them, share them with people, and even allow people to edit your docs. Currently, there are not many uses for me for this service right now buy who knows what they might improve in the future that will draw me in.  Once use I find that is really useful with Google docs is the ability for people to edit the docs and other people to view them online. Lets say I create a web site and I need many people to add information to the site but they have no clue about FTP and I don’t want them to mess around with anything else in the site. I am able to actually create a Google Doc online, embed it in a web page, and allow whomever I want the ability to edit the document. They don’t have to know anything about web sites and they can log in and edit the document on their own. This is really convenient in any community based web site.

Well, good luck and happy document creating.

So you want a web site? What do you do next? How do you get it? How do you create it?

Deciding to have a web site is a big step, here are some tips to help.

First you need to decide what is going to be on your site, what you want to offer and who your audience is. You must offer something on a web site in order to get people there and you need to decide who your audience it to make it appropriate.

Once you have decided what you want to offer and who your audience is, you need to get your ideas together. You need to get the info you want on the site, pictures, and anything else you want on your site together. Going over all the content that will be on your site is a good idea because it will allow you to see if you have any conflicting information and serve as the first time you edit the content. You should also type all of your information orderly in a Word doc to help with spelling and grammar and because having it in a digital form will help you much later when you copy and paste it in your site.

Next, you need to decide what type of site you want. This blog posting is not aimed at web professionals so I will not speak of the many content management services. For simplicity, you need to decide if you want a traditional static web site where the pages are changed manually or if you need some sort of content management system. You would want a content management system if you are going to write about stuff often. For example, if you are a food critic, you will be writing about restaurants often. For this instance, you would want a blogging service. There are many out there like blogspot and wordpress. You can get a free account from most of these. I actually suggest WordPress at Wordpress.com or going to Wordpress.org and installing the free blog software with your own hosting which will give you more options and features.

Now you need to find out the name or web address which is really called a domain name and where to host your site, the place you site will be on the web. If you choose to put your site on wordpress.com, you will already have a domain name. There are free and paid ways to host a web site but if you want your own unique domain name, you need to pay. For example, you can get a free site from Yahoo’s geocities but your domain name will be *****.geocities.com. So if you wante bigpcgeek, it would be bigpcgeek.geocities.com. The other downside is that you will have adds on your web site which would be great if you mad the money but you don’t. If you want your own unique domain name like www.bigpcgeek.com, you will have to buy a domain name and web hosting from sites like GoDaddy or Domain.com. I suggest 1and1.com because they always seem to have the most to offer for the best price. When purchaseing hosting from 1and1.com, you can create a web site from scratch or use their own site builder. When you create you own site, there is no limit, when you use their site builder, there is a limit on pages and on content. If you have no idea how to do any of this, you might want to get some help from companies like BigPcGeek.com (yes, a shameless plug) who create web sites from scratch. If you decide to create your web site on your own from scratch, you will need software to create it like DreamWeaver or FrontPage.

After your site is created, you need to get your site on the net. Huh? Ok so your site is on the net when you type www.****.com in your web browser but what about when you search for it on Google. If it is not in Google, you don’t exist online.  Most hosting companies offer SEO (search engine optimization) help or paid SEO to help get you on search engines. First, do not pay for any SEO, it is all free. If your web host gives you a free service like 1and1 does, use it but if not, don’t waste your money on it when it is free. All you have to do is do a Google search for site submission on the search engine of your choice. For example, if you do a Google search for "submit site to Google," the first result will google.com/addurl where you can add your web site to Google. It can take a few months but you will eventually be one Google’s search results. You don’t want to stop there, you will want to talk to your web designer about meta tags to get better relevant results, get other web sites to link to you, and finally keep the most relevant information of your site at the top of the page. All will help to get the people you want to your site.

This is just a start, I hope it helps.

It has been my opinion for quite some time that defraging your hard drive every week it overkill and too intensive on your hard drive. I have no idea if the way Vista defrags your hard drive is with less stress on the drive than XP but Vista by default automatically defrags your drive every week. At this point, until I have more information, I recommend you modify the setting to defrag hard drive to only once a month. To do this, right click on your hard drive, select "properties," then the "tools" tab, "defragment now," and finally "Modify Schedule." In the Modify Schedule box which is called Disk Defragmenter, you can select a different schedule and it should change the schedule for all drives you have in your computer.

If you don’t want your computer to defrag your drives on a schedule, just uncheck the box, "Run on a Schedule (recommended)," when in the Disk Defragmenter dialog box is open. When you want to do a defrag, just go back to the Disk Defragmenter dialog box and select, "Defragment Now."