The week in review

Every now and then I like to sit back and take stock. I find that doing so helps me keep life in perspective.. so that I don’t lose sight of the forest for all the trees, or let too many pressures scream for my attention at all once. Sometimes, it feels like.. in spite of all my activity, I haven’t accomplished what I set out to (or, done anything at all, for that matter) until I make a list of what I actually did get done.

I covered a lot of ground this week here at Tech–for Everyone.  But, due to more than the usual number of distractions, I did have to re-post a prior article twice. I started the week discussing how the “From” (aka “Sender”) in e-mails is easily ‘spoofed’— and that just because it says it came from your good friend Mary (or PayPal) doesn’t mean that it really did. This topic is often used by cyber-criminals in conjunction with yesterday’s article on phishing phraud; which is an official-looking e-mail containing a link to either a poisoned website full of malware, or an official-looking fake “log into your account” page (called “pharming”). So hopefully I have raised your caution level regarding links received in e-mails.

Also, this week I talked about the latest thing in processors, and how we consumers can now buy affordable quad-core-equipped desktop PCs.. and are they worth spending more to have. I omitted one point in that post that I’d like to remind my readers of now: the prices on these CPUs will gradually come down with time.

I wrote an article on a basic principle to keep in mind when troubleshooting bugz and glitches that strike your computer; but more specifically, the steps you should take before you decide your dead computer is really dead.

To switch to something much more fun (and sort of “cool”), I showed you how to change the icons on your machine to ones that you like, or that will help you keep organized. I am a security-conscious guy, but I do have a fun side.

The second re-posting was a very popular article on how putting an inexpensive home router between your modem and your computers will vastly improve the safety of accessing the Internet, and give you control over what can, and cannot, (you can also set the “when”) “dial out”. I would like to say again that doing this is a very good way to hide your machines from hackers. [note: that article was the concluding piece of a four-part series I wrote titled “Steps you can take to protect your kids from the Web“.]

There. See? I really did do a lot this week… despite my “where did the time go?!” feeling.
Have a great weekend… and let’s be safe out there.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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