The Computer Tutor

I use Google Maps all the time. By far, the feature I use most is the GPS aspect. When I make an appointment on my Google Calendar, I put the address in the “Location” bar. Then, when it’s time to go to that address, I open up my Waze app on my phone, and the address is listed there so I just tap it and follow the verbal street-by-street directions. It’s really an amazing process that we just take for granted now.

BUT – there are some other things that you can do with Google Maps that are really interesting. It seems like Google is always trying to come up with something new and exciting, so I wanted to share a few of these things with you today.

First we have Street View with History – http://tinyurl.com/ml3lvc8

Most people already know how Street View works. You plug in an address in Google Maps, and find that address. Then you click on Street View, and instead of looking at a map, you now have the view as if you’re standing in the street looking at that address. It’s helpful if you’re traveling to someone’s house for the first time, because now you know what their house actually looks like.

In fact, back when Street View, wasn’t quite so widely known, I would kind of enjoy freaking people out a bit. They would be giving me directions to their house by phone for an upcoming appointment, and at the same time I would be looking up their address and seeing the street view. So before they had even finished with their directions, I might say something like, “Oh, okay – so your house is the brown one with the 3 bushes in front of the screened porch?” Not such an amazing trick today, but a few years ago it was pretty awesome.

Now that Google has been sending their little Street View cars all over the place for several years, they have an archive of older street views which is pretty interesting. I believe it goes back to as early as 2008, but it really depends on the actual address being viewed.

Here’s an example that’s in my little city of Safety Harbor, Florida. This first picture is the most recent one taken by Google, and it was about a year ago. There were some condos being built at that time (they are now fully built and occupied):

But if you want to see what that lot looked like before the construction started, you just have to go to Street View for that address, then look up in the top left corner of the screen for the little clock and click it:

That gives you the option to choose a date and see what the Street View picture was for that date, at that location. In my example, I can go back to 2011 for this address, and back then it looked like this:

Next, Google Maps offers us the ability to Explore a Sunken Ship – http://tinyurl.com/lvz5ulo

The USS Mohawk was originally launched in 1934. She was used extensively during World War II, and then became a pilot boat on the Delaware River for over 30 years. You can get more details about this ship at this Wikipedia entry.

Currently, the Mohawk enjoys the status of being the first military ship reef dedicated to veterans. She was sunk in 2012 off the coast of Captiva Island. This memorial sign is on the side:

And if you click this link, that sign is one of the first things you’ll see. Google has created a “Street View” of the sunken ship so you can navigate all around just like you can use Street View in your local neighborhood. Pretty cool.

And finally, you can explore the moon. Yes, Google Maps has mapped the moon.

To do that, just go to maps.google.com and start zooming out (so your view is getting farther and farther away from the earth). When you’ve gone out as far as you can go, look in the lower left corner and click on the little window that says “Earth”:

After it changes to Earth view, keep scrolling out until you see the 3 options in the lower left corner: Earth, Moon and Mars. Click on Moon:

Now you can go exploring on the Moon just like you went to astronaut school. But without the bulky suit and breathing apparatus. Or if you choose Mars, you can visit there too.

If you’re really into this idea of exploring the world and space using your computer, you should consider getting Google Earth. Google Earth itself is not new, but they are updating it all the time. In the current one (version 5.0) here are some of the moon-related features:

And for bonus points – in the comments below, enter the phrase that this man is saying to this woman:

Last week we talked about the fact that even though it might appear that your email got hacked, it probably didn’t. In most cases it’s just a spammer using your email as the “From” address. But what about when your email actually DOES get hacked into – meaning some malicious person has gotten into your account and has control of it? What should you do?

The easiest solution to this problem is also probably the most obvious – take precautions so that it doesn’t happen in the first place. This means having a strong, unique password for your email account. These are some of the most commonly used passwords today, and they are really weak:

A good password is just a series of random numbers, upper and lower case letters, and maybe a character like a dollar sign or pound sign thrown in somewhere. I try to usually make mine 10 or 12 characters in length. The longer the better!

Good passwords:

And of course you won’t be able to remember that password, so you will need to have a good password manager program to generate good passwords and keep track of all of them for you. I use LastPass and it works great.

But for today, we’re assuming it’s past the “prevention” point – your email has been compromised. Some scammer or spammer, somewhere in the world, has been able to log in to your personal or business email account. And you need to take action – quickly.

I sometimes see people with this problem, wondering what they should do next. It’s very common to see this question asked on Facebook: “My email has been hacked into. What do I do?” And the one answer offered by all of their friends (none of whom are computer security experts of course) is: “Change your password!”

Yes, you do need to change your password. But that is only part of the solution. Just changing your password does not solve the problem. A lot of people will change their password (and even the new password will be one that is easily guessed and one that they have used on dozens of other accounts). Then they’re surprised to find out that their email gets hacked into again after a short time.

In order to keep your email account safe, you also need to change your security questions.

You know what I’m talking about – the questions that your email provider asks to confirm your identity, that only YOU should know the answer to. Or at least the answers would be ones that some spammer in Russia wouldn’t know about you.

When you log into your email account online, you should see a link to your profile. That’s usually where you go to change your verification questions. In Gmail it looks like this:

The reason you MUST change your security questions is to prevent the same hacker from getting in again. One of the ways to hack into an email account is to click the “Forgot password” link, and answer the security questions. If the questions you chose originally have already been easily answered by a hacker, then they can be easily answered again by the same hacker or even a different one. In a lot of cases, the answers to those security questions can be found just by going through your Facebook page! Hackers just have it too easy these days – we need to make things at least a little difficult for them.

Bonus security: answer the security questions incorrectly

This is a trick some people use as an extra layer of security. You can answer the security questions with answers that are wrong, or even answers that don’t make sense.

Here are some examples of this:

Question: What is your mother’s maiden name?

Question: In what city were you born?

Question: What is your favorite sports team?

Do you see the power in this? A hacker could guess every sports team name in the world but he would never get it right. Same for the other answers.

Obviously, just like a strong password, you won’t instinctively remember these nonsense answers. So you will need to keep a record of them. This is another great feature of LastPass – there is a whole section for each account where you can store information like this and always have access to it.

In addition to the security questions, you should also have on file:

With these, your email provider can send you a text message to confirm your identity, or they can email you a link to change your password if it gets compromised. HOWEVER – just like it’s too late to buy fire insurance when the house is burning down, you need to set up these things in your email account while you still have access to it. Once some lowlife gets in and controls your email account, it could be too late. Because a smart hacker, once in control, will go in and change the security questions to things that YOU won’t know how to answer.

And one final word: if you are desperate and cannot get anything done to restore your account, don’t make the mistake of searching Google for a “tech support” phone number for your free web-based email account. Most of the results that come up in a Google search like that are going to be FAKE tech support – they will want to charge you lots of money to “fix” all of the problems your computer supposedly has, and they still won’t be able to get you into your email account.

A few times each month, I’ll get a phone call or an email from someone who thinks their email account has gotten hacked into. And why do they think that? Because their inbox is filling up with emails that are bouncing back, that say “This email message could not be delivered”. They might get a few of these bounced emails, or a dozen, or even a hundred. At first glance, it looks like all of these emails were sent from this person’s email account. But in most cases, no one has hacked into their email account.

Let’s say I wanted to send someone an email, and I wanted to make them think it came from someone else. For example, maybe my friend Maria is a big fan of Oprah Winfrey and I want to play a little prank on Maria by sending her an email “from” Oprah Winfrey. Do you know how easy this is to do? Pretty easy.

You do need an email program though, such as Outlook. If you don’t have Outlook, you can use Windows Live Mail (which is free). My email program is Outlook so I will use that for the example screenshots.

If you already use Outlook for your email, it’s already set up with all of your genuine account information – that’s how it’s able to send and receive your email. But for this little trick, you need to go into the email settings and change a few things. The settings window looks like this:

You can see there are 3 main sections. In order for your email to send and receive properly in your account, the “Server Information” and “Logon Information” sections cannot be changed. However, with few exceptions, you can put whatever you want in the first section, “User Information”.

So if we want to pretend we’re someone else that sent the email, we just change the information in that top section. It might look like this (I don’t actually know Oprah’s email address):

With those settings in place, I can send out an email to impersonate Oprah. When my friend Maria receives it, she would see something like this:

If she clicks “Reply”, her Reply email will be addressed to [email protected] (not to me, even though I actually am the one that sent the email). If the email that I sent bounces, it will bounce back to the “From:” address (not to me, even though I sent it). That’s the important thing to note here – anytime an email bounces, it bounces back to whatever address is listed in the “From:” field.

So with that example in mind, let’s look at how this is used in the real world – by spammers.

A spammer might have a list of a million email addresses that he wants to send to. He wants to send his spam email out to those millions of people, but of course he doesn’t want them to know that HE is the one that sent it. So he puts a different email address in the “From:” field. He might even put YOUR email address as the “From:” address.

See where we’re going with this?

He sends out those million emails, and most of them get delivered to the proper recipient (even if they go to the Spam folder, they at least made it to the right email address). But with that many emails, some of them are going to be outdated or incorrect. So they bounce. And guess where they bounce? You guessed it – they bounce back to the “From:” address, and if that’s your email, they start showing up in your inbox.

That’s how you end up with all those bounced emails in your inbox, that appear to have been sent from you, but they really weren’t. And the spammer didn’t have to hack into your email account in order to make that happen. All he needed was an email address, and he happened to use yours. Bad luck for you, but at least your email account hasn’t been compromised.

It’s like if you mailed out 100 letters by snail mail, and instead of your own address in the top left corner of each envelope, you put your neighbor’s address. If the Post Office returned any of those, they would be returned to your neighbor, not you.

How to verify that your email account is safe: just look in the “Sent” folder and see if any of those bounced emails show up there as actually having been sent from your account. If they aren’t there, your account didn’t send them.

Disclaimer: there are exceptions (although very unlikely) to this explanation. And the scammers and spammers are constantly dreaming up new ways to game the system. But for the most part the scenario I talked about is the most common procedure.

And as always, if your email password consists of one or more pronounceable words, or is easy to remember, it’s going to be easy for the bad guys to guess – so change it to a strong one today!

Many millions of people have Google accounts. I have several myself. And whenever I want to look something up on the internet, I use Google because it seems to come up with the most accurate search results, which means I don’t have to waste a lot of time weeding out stuff that is not relevant to what I was looking for. But did you know that Google stores your history of searches – for quite some time?

There are two points I want to make you aware of today:

To show how this works, I’ll use my own Google account. The first step is to open your web browser and go to:

http://google.com/settings/accounthistory

That will bring you to a page that shows the 6 different things that Google can keep track of for this account. Those are:

That’s quite a bit of web activity that is possibly being tracked. Those 6 areas are displayed in sections on the page, like this:

As far as the way the “history storage” works, each of these categories works pretty much the same way so I’ll just explore the first one, “Searches and browsing history”. First step is to click on “Manage History”.

When you do that, you’ll see a list of your most recent Google searches (assuming you did those searches while you were signed in to your Google/Gmail account). And it’s a very detailed and accurate list. In fact, it shows the search term you used, and then under that is the actual site(s) you clicked on in the search results. For example, someone this afternoon was asking me about a site called Ixquick, so I did a quick Google search on it, then clicked on the Ixquick site. These two actions were recorded and stored in my Google account history, like this:

Above the list of searches, there are a couple of graphs. These show your search activity by the hour, and by the day. As you can see, I do more Google searches on weekdays rather than weekends, and I don’t do many searches between midnight and 4 am:

Now let’s get to the more interesting part. To the right of those graphs is an Activity calendar.

You can click on any day on that calendar, and it the page will show you your complete list of Google searches and clicks for that day. As you can see, it’s also color coded. Light blue means fewer searches, darker blue means more searches:

Obviously I use Google quite a bit. So I started clicking to go back to previous months, to see how far back this history goes. I was surprised to see that it goes back to May of 2013.

Almost 2 years  of my Google search history – 8,044 searches to be exact.

Why does Google need to have that much detail about what I search on? Because most of their billions of dollars of revenue each year comes from advertising. And the more they know about what I’m interested in (based on what I search for), the more targeted they can make the ads, which means they can charge advertisers higher prices.

One thing you’ll see to the left of each listed search in your history is a little checkbox. If you want, you can check the searches you don’t want stored in your history, and click on “Remove items” at the top of the list. You could remove all of them if you wanted to.

In fact, if you go back to the initial screen where you clicked on “Manage history” you see another button there: Pause. This means you can actually turn off the storage of your Google searches if you want to. But if you click that, Google will really try to persuade you to leave it on. This is the explanation they give before having you confirm your decision to pause:

You can pick and choose which areas you want to have paused or enabled, or you can just pause all of them if you prefer.

So there you have it. The purpose of this is not to rekindle the continuous debate about how much privacy we do or don’t have. I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of what is happening, so that you can make an intelligent decision about how you want to handle it. More information is always a good thing.

Wikipedia (Wikipedia.com) is one of the most often visited websites on the internet. Virtually any topic you want to research, any well-known person, almost any city – it’s hard to imagine anyone or anything of importance not having a Wikipedia page. However, Wikipedia was launched back in 2001 – and the layout and design of the website seems to have not changed since that date.

It’s usually pretty easy to spot a website that has not been updated in a long time. In some cases, a business might have paid someone to create their website a long time ago, and now they lost contact with that person and they have no idea how to change the site or update it. Or, the website owner might just be unaware that the site looks very dated. But to most people it’s obvious.

One of the very popular sites that is extremely outdated is Craigslist. The owner of that site, Craig Newmark, doesn’t care about how it looks, and he has said so. Craigslist was started back in 1995 – can you believe it’s been 20 years? – and the site design is still virtually the same as it was then.

That’s the situation with Wikipedia. Even though Wikipedia gets millions of website visitors, the owner, Jimmy Wales, has never seen the need to update the site design to make it look nicer and more modern. It’s still the same boring layout that it’s had for the last 14 years.

But it doesn’t have to be that way on YOUR computer.

Thanks to a wonderful browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, Wikipedia can have a great new design that’s much more pleasing to the eye. The extension is called Wikiwand, and you can get it at www.Wikiwand.com. It’s free of course.

To show you how it makes a difference with the way Wikipedia pages are displayed, I took some before-Wikiwand and after-Wikiwand screenshots.

Here’s what the Wikipedia page for the Milky Way looks like usually:

Pretty bland, right? Here’s what it looks like after the Wikiwand is applied:

Having the large image across the top of the article really makes a big difference in presentation. But also, the content itself is just easier to read. It’s actually the same words on the page, but the font size is larger and clearer in the Wikiwand version.

How about this one – the Mt Everest page, before Wikiwand:

And after Wikiwand:

To get Wikiwand working in your browser, just go to Wikiwand.com and click the button to install it:

You will not see that installation button if you’re using Internet Explorer, though – it doesn’t work with that web browser. Reason #842 to quit using Internet Explorer.

And you should also know this – even after you have Wikiwand installed, if for some reason you want to go back and just see the old boring version of Wikipedia, you can. At the bottom right corner of every Wikipedia page there’s a big W, and when you mouse over it, you’ll see a slide switch to enable or disable Wikiwand:

Most households and small businesses use a router to distribute the internet signal. You might have purchased the router, or your internet provider may place it with your for you to use, but they still own it. Also, your modem may also be a router (all in one box) or your router might be a separate unit. There’s really no “normal” configuration for all these factors.

What happens when your internet service provider’s router becomes old, outdated, or just worn out? That’s when they’ll call you up and say, “Hey there Mr. or Mrs. Customer – we need to get you a new router, so your internet connection is the best it can be!”, right?

Uh, no. It doesn’t usually work that way.

More often, you start to notice your internet connection speed get slower and slower, and sometimes you might get the familiar “This page cannot be found” error because the internet connection has dropped altogether. A lot of times restarting the computer or the router (or both) takes care of the problem. But if the router is just too old, that’s just a temporary fix. When a router is no longer working like it should, it needs to be replaced.

But when an ISP has many thousands of customers and a big chunk of them have old routers that need to be replaced, doing that all at once would represent a huge expense. Why would they want to spend all that money on new equipment when a lot of those people haven’t even complained about it?

Instead, they will handle each customer complaint on a case by case basis and replace the routers as needed. So you need to be proactive about it.

BUT – you can’t just call them up and say, “My internet is too slow”. That’s just an opinion. You need to have measurable proof that the internet speed is sub-par before you ever make the call.

Here’s how you check your internet connection speed:

1. Go to the website SpeedTest.net. If you don’t use an ad blocker, you’ll see some ads that will try to get you to click on them to check your speed or download something. Ignore all those ads. The only thing you want to do is run the actual internet connection speed test right in the middle of the page. After the page has fully loaded, you’ll see a big button in the middle that says “Begin Test”:

2. As you can see, the site figures out where you are located and puts a green triangle there (I’m in the Tampa Bay area of Florida). When you click “Begin Test” the analysis can get started. It only takes about 30 seconds.

3. What you want to pay attention to (you should write them down) are the download speed and upload speed. When the test is finished, it will look like this:

That’s the information you want to have on hand when you call your internet provider. But there’s a RIGHT way to ask them about this, and there’s a WRONG way.

The wrong way: “I just checked my internet speed, and I’m getting ___ download and ___ upload. Is that normal?”

This is wrong because then it’s really easy for the internet provider to say, “Oh yes, that’s right in the range of what your speed should be based on the package you have purchased.” In addition, they now have the perfect opportunity to try to UPsell you on buying a faster package. You have already indicated that you want faster speed, so you are obviously the perfect candidate for that sales pitch.

The right way: “Can you tell me, based on my monthly internet package, what kind of internet speeds should I be expecting?”

When you phrase it that way, they have to give you a number first. If it matches what Speedtest said you are getting, then you’re getting what you’re paying for. But if the ISP says you should be getting 50-60 download, and the test says you’re getting 30-40, then you have something to complain about. At that point, your internet provider has already said that you should be getting a certain level of speed and your test proves that you’re not getting it.

If that happens, usually the ISP will either have a technician come out to check your installation, or they’ll do some diagnostics on the router and/or modem (whichever is provided by them) and probably give you a new one if yours is too old or outdated.

What if YOU own the router?

If they run their tests and it comes back that the modem is working fine, the problem could be the router that you purchased and installed. It may need to be replaced. Fortunately, they are not that expensive so it might be time to get a new one. For home use, a router in the $50 – $75 range is almost always sufficient. Personally, I like Linksys routers because they’re really easy to set up, but other brands such as Netgear or Belkin will usually work fine. If you have any trouble with the installation, they’ll have a phone number for you to call their Tech Support and they can walk you through it (you’ll most likely be speaking to someone whose first language is not English though).

If you’ve had your router for a while, getting a brand new one could mean a world of difference for your internet connection.

Want to find out your roommate’s Facebook password? Need to have a few “below average” grades removed from your college transcript? Would you like to have some embarrassing pictures removed from Google search results? If you find yourself in need of these or similar services, what you really need is… a hacker!

One thing you need to realize is that the term “hacker” has evolved over the years, and now it doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. In the past, if someone mentioned a hacker, it would conjure up images of someone trying to use their own computer to break into another computer somewhere, like the Pentagon or something. Of course, there are still people that try to do that, and they are still pretty much referred to as hackers.

But “hacking” has now taken on a whole new range of meanings. These days, it often means that someone has figured out a way to do something that makes it easier, or a process that just seems to make more sense.

For example – if your microwave has old particles of dried food on the inside because of splatter that has accumulated, and you want to easily clean it, here’s a kitchen “hack” – fill a bowl with water and microwave it for a couple of minutes. The steam will loosen the dried-on food, making it easier to clean off.

Here’s another one – if you notice little pieces of debris or dirt down between the keys of your computer keyboard, just take a single Post-It note and drag it in between the rows to pick up some of that junk. That’s a “hack” that I’ve been doing for a long time.

There’s actually a very popular website devoted to hacks in all areas of life – it’s Lifehacker.com. There are some great ideas on there.

BUT… what if you need one of the old-style hackers? You know, the kind of sneaky person that knows how to get into some other computer and change things around or manipulate some information in your favor? That’s when you need Hackerslist!

You can find this at Hackerslist.com, and what it’s supposed to be is just what the name indicates – a list of hackers advertising their services for whatever type of computer hacking job you need to have done.

You can post your hacking job request, and what you’re willing to pay, and then the “hackers” on the site can bid on your job. In browsing the site, here are some of the hacking jobs being requested:

Fiance Gmail Password:

Need to hack a dating website:

Clean driving record:

Project Justice:

Credit Report:

Frankly, I don’t know of some of these things are even possible. I’m sure a lot of people would like to just pay some money and have their driving record cleaned up, but my guess is that the Department of Motor Vehicles has their computer system pretty well locked down so that stuff like that just doesn’t happen. Of course, the big exception would be if the “hacker” is really just someone that works at the DMV and has access to make those changes. But would they really risk their job (and possibly jail time) just for $1000? I guess some people would.

And what about the one about removing erroneous information from a credit report? That’s something that the owner of that credit report can do for free, but I suppose some people don’t know that.

And what if someone SAYS they can hack into Gmail and get someone’s password, but then you pay the money and it turns out they are unable to do the job? The website has anticipated that problem and taken a few steps to protect its users:

1. If a hacker doesn’t maintain at least a 3-star rating or if he has too many disputes, he is removed from the site.

2. The website administrators have to approve a hacker before he is even allowed to bid on any projects.

3. Hackers with low ratings are charged a higher percentage, so they have a financial incentive to have more positive reviews.

4. Escrow – you can choose to have your payment held in escrow, so that the hacker doesn’t get paid until you say you are satisfied that he completed the job.

One of the interesting things on the site is their disclaimer – “Hackerslist is intended for legal and ethical use. If you feel a project violates our terms of service please report the listing immediately. We do our best to moderate projects however we rely on the community to aid in this process.” Of course they have to put something on there so that they can claim innocence when they are inevitably sued. But it seems to be just a formality, since I’m sure a large percentage of the jobs up for bid on the site are actually illegal, and many of them were posted several weeks or months ago.

It’s a fun thing to check out anyway, even if you would never actually hire a hacker. I’m no marriage counselor, but I would think hacking into your fiance’s email is probably not a good start for a lifelong relationship.

My wife Jeanne recently embarked on a new career – she is a nanny for a young couple with a newborn baby girl. She loves babies anyway, so spending her days taking care of one is pretty much her dream job. And of course the baby’s parents love  Jeanne because she has tons of experience with kids (successfully raising our own two, plus she taught First Grade for 17 years).

When my wife was searching for a family in need of a nanny, one of the services she used was Care.com. That’s an online service that matches up families and nannies. Unfortunately, it’s also a site that is used by scammers to take advantage and steal from kind-hearted people. One of the ways they do that is through the Nanny Scam.

How the Nanny Scam works

There are a few variations on this scam, but the basics are usually similar. When a nanny is looking for a family, she’ll usually post a profile on Care.com that lists previous experience and availability, and perhaps a photo. The scammer finds that profile as a potential target and contacts her to offer the “job” (which doesn’t exist of course). At some point in the beginning, the scammer sends a message that is something like this one:

Of course, the made-up story really pulls on the heartstrings of anyone that reads it and believes it. A single mother who lost her husband and baby in a tragic auto accident, and now she’s trying to make it with her small son who barely survived but needs a wheelchair. And conveniently, the “mother” can only communicate through text or email so actually speaking with her is not an option.

This is the photo that is often sent along with the heartbreaking message:

As you can see, every aspect of this back story is designed to create emotion and sympathy. And it works. Now that the bait is taken, it’s time for the scammer to set the hook. The next message explains that the son – “Joe” – needs some type of new medical equipment such as a leg brace or a wheelchair. So the mother asks if she can send the prospective nanny a check to cover the purchase of the wheelchair PLUS a few hundred dollars to compensate for the nanny’s time. The nanny just needs to deposit the check and then send the money for the wheelchair on to the medical device supplier via Western Union (or some other “same as cash” service).

So the poor gullible nanny deposits the check. She might even wait for the bank to confirm that the funds are clear, just to be safe. Then she gets cash from the bank, goes to Western Union and sends the money to the “medical device supplier” for the wheelchair.

Once that money has been sent, the nanny never hears from the mother again. She DOES however hear from the bank – telling her that the check was no good and that she needs to pay back that money. Usually the check turns out to be stolen from a company or even from an individual (often taken from the back of the checkbook so it doesn’t get noticed right away). Even though the bank has said the funds are “clear” it often can take a few weeks for them to be notified that the check was no good, which is when they tell the victim that the money needs to be returned. And if she can’t pay back the money? She could very well be headed to jail for grand theft.

It’s bad enough when a scam victim gets stung because they thought they stumbled across a once-in-a-lifetime chance to snag a bunch of money. But in this case, the person is victimized because of having a good heart and wanting to help someone. It’s often devastating to finally realize that the very person she was trying to help is the one that stole thousands of dollars from her.

Here’s a news story about a young lady who was victimized by the Nanny Scam. Hopefully raising awareness will prevent some kind-hearted people from losing their their money to these scumbags.

This week, some fun stuff. It’s good to have computer tips and security alerts and warnings to back up your important data, but sometimes we need to take a break and check out some things that can amuse and entertain us. And really, some of these things can be considered computer-related or technical in some way.

Inspector Gadget

What we have here are some cool little items. All of them are:

Have fun!

This little light just sticks up anywhere you have too much darkness, like in a closet or a pantry. It measures 3 inches square and is run by 3 AA batteries. Wherever it is, as soon as it sense motion (such as you getting into your closet to find something), the light comes on. When you leave the light goes off. Could be pretty handy.

$15.00

I can definitely see where this might be useful. It looks like one end is tubular with sharp edges. The other end is a pump sprayer. You just jam the sharp end into a fat piece of fresh fruit, then use the pump sprayer to spritz the fruit juice on your food. No batteries required, just finger motion. Doesn’t get much fresher than this!

$4.99

Seriously, who would not want one of these things? You can record your own message (and re-record it if you want). Then, when someone pulls on the toilet paper, it plays your pre-recorded message. I can think of a few message possibilities. It’s funny and creepy all in one.

$9.99

If you use a laptop regularly, you need one of these. Even if yours does not seem to get excessively hot, it does get hotter than the average desktop computer. The cooling pad pulls the hot air out and away from the computer, meaning it will run more efficiently, and therefore it should last longer. Whenever I am repairing a laptop, it’s on a cooling pad.

$9.99

I would use this for when I run or walk. I wear a hat anyway, and I often use headphones. This gadget just combines the two. The only thing I see as a disadvantage is that the headphones are wired (the ones I use are bluetooth-enabled so they are wireless). But I still see a lot of people running with wired earphones anyway, so I’m guessing this would be pretty popular for those that like music and warm ears in the winter.

$19.99

One of my favorites in this list. It’s a variation on the original, which was simply the Annoy-a-tron. The original was a tiny little device that you stuck somewhere in your victim’s house or office (in a place that it would not easily be found, like the underside of a table or the interior of a file cabinet). Then at random intervals, it would produce a little “beep” or “chirp”. Nothing loud or obnoxious, just enough to be heard and to make the victim wonder what in the world continues to make that noise. This new model mimics some common phone ring tones, and it’s also less expensive than the original, which currently sells for around $35.

$20.99

I used to own one of these and it was a lot of fun. Small enough to hang on your keychain, so you can carry it with you everywhere. When you’re at someone’s house you could have the TV randomly change channels. It’s even more effective if you’re not actually one of the ones watching TV – maybe you’re sort of off to the side having a conversation with someone. It does confuse people since they can see the actual remote sitting there and no one is touching it. Even more fun – go to a sports bar on Super Bowl Sunday, and just as one team is about to score, switch the channel to a Hallmark movie. Just make sure no one EVER finds out it was you.

$2.72

This is one of those things that has almost no practical value. The only real use for it is that you can see by the color whether the water is hot or cold. I guess that’s sort of handy. I just like it because it looks kind of cool, and it’s cheap. I think that whoever wrote the description on Amazon was probably not a native English speaker, as one of the lines read, “Make water colorful and beautiful to bring you good feeling”.

$4.39

Now these obviously have LOTS of practical value. If you have a sense of humor like mine anyway. I have used these so many times over the years. The ingredient in these little things is ammonium sulfide. Sulfide like sulphur, or that wonderful “rotten egg” smell, and ammonium like ammonia, to make it really strong. That wonderfully funny chemical is inside a container made of very thin glass, so that all you need to do is put it on the floor and step on it to break it. That unmistakable, horrible smell will fill the room very quickly. If you’re at a dinner party and you happen to notice that one of the other guests goes into the bathroom, just go and “activate” one of these near the door and of course that person will catch the blame when they come out.

$6.01 (for a package of 36)

I don’t know when I stopped using bar soap in the shower, but it really does seem kind of old-fashioned now. Shower gel or body wash is my preference. And if you’re going to lather up in liquid soap, why not have it squirt out of a giant wall-mounted nose? The reviews aren’t that great though – apparently the nose leaks in between uses. At least it doesn’t cost very much to try.

$6.08

Looks like a regular flashlight, but it puts out ultraviolet light. When you shine one of these in the dark, it illuminates some things that you couldn’t see with the light on. For example, police use them to investigate a crime scene because it enables various bodily fluids to show up. You can also use it to spot certain types of rocks or minerals. Or if you use a particular type of invisible pen, anything you write can only be seen under a black light. And if you’re considering purchasing an expensive piece of art, you can use this to reveal any cracks or previous repairs.

$6.99

I’m not yet convinced of the science that says the mouse pad you use can make your mouse battery last longer, but apparently that is what the “lab testing” has shown (according to the seller’s description). They say it can extend the life of your wireless mouse by up to 50%. A lot of the reviews had nice things to say about it but they weren’t talking about the battery-saving aspect of it; they just like the way the mouse pad feels, and the fact that it is adhesive so you can stick it to the desk and not have to be bothered with it moving around.

$6.99

If you need to record a conversation or something else on video, and you can’t advertise the fact that you are recording, this would be a good way to do that. It’s a great example of how technology is able to keep making things smaller and smaller (except for smartphones – they’re getting bigger). These actual polarized sunglasses have a tiny hold in the center front and that’s where the camera lens is. It records HD video, and since the memory is expandable up to 32 GB, it can hold a LOT of video.

$19.99

The Amazon description says that these are a vaguely inappropriate fashion statement, and that they will distract enemies and prevent chafing. Good enough for me.

$19.50

What do you do if you want to have hamburgers for dinner but the only buns you have on hand are hot dog buns? You just make the hamburgers into the shape of hot dogs! That’s what the ham dogger does. I’ve never actually seen one of these used before, but I would sure be willing to try it out.

$7.82

This is supposed to be something you put on under a T-shirt to make it look like you have a muscular chest and washboard abs. It sounds great in theory, but several of the reviews said that it’s just very thin rubber and doesn’t work as described. That’s probably why it’s only $18. Apparently you have to spend $60 or more to have the chest of a male model. Hey, even at that price it’s cheaper than a gym membership.

$18.09

I recently got an email from my friend Preston, who had this question:

“I’m wondering why, when you get a new hard drive, you don’t get the full amount of space that it says on the box? When I got my PC a few years ago, it said I had that 500 GB hard drive, but when I look at the drive, it only says I have 465 GB.”

So what do you have to say, hard drive manufacturers? Is this some kind of scam on the computer users of the world?

Not a scam. There’s a legitimate explanation for this. Actually there are a few reasons why this happens.

In case you’re not familiar with this, here’s what Preston is talking about. Your computer has a primary hard drive, and it was built to store a certain amount of data. The data is measure in either gigabytes or terabytes (1000 GB is virtually equal to 1 TB). Common sizes of hard drives these days are 500 GB, 750GB, 1TB, 2TB and sometimes even larger.

For example, the primary drive in my main computer is 2 terabytes. If I pulled the drive physically out of the computer, you would see right on the label that it says it’s a 2 TB drive. But if I check it while it’s in the computer (you can do this by holding down the Windows key, and tapping the letter E), it shows a different capacity:

That’s telling me I still have 1.5 TB of free space, but it says that the total overall space on the drive is only 1.81 TB. Why would it say that, if it’s supposed to be a 2 TB drive? There are a few reasons for this.

First, there could be a hidden partition on the drive. The most common type of hidden partition on a hard drive is a recovery partition. That partition contains the files and folders that would be used if Windows got messed up and needed to be reinstalled.

You know how when you first boot up your computer and for a few seconds you see on the screen that it’s telling you to hit F10 or some other key for “Recovery Options”? That what that hidden partition would be used for. Not all computers have this – it really depends on the manufacturer. And why do they hide that partition? So we computer users don’t mess with it and screw it up! But it still uses some of the space on your hard drive even though you can’t see it normally.

Second, there is a function in Windows that uses some space. That function is called System Restore. You’ve probably heard of it. This is where you can take your computer back to the state it was in on a particular date in the past, in order to fix some kind of problem that has come up more recently. It’s a handy thing to have in certain situations, but it can use up a good bit of space. Even just storing a single “past date” hard drive system state can be substantial – and if you check your System Restore window, you could find that you have 5 or 10 of them stored!

The third reason is the file system of the hard drive itself. The data on your hard drive needs to be stored in an organized manner, and it doesn’t do that on its own. There has to be a system to organize all those bits and bytes. And that system takes up a bit of space on its own.

Think of a physical file cabinet, like the one you might have in your office. That file cabinet might have a certain amount of space inside. But can you really use 100% of that space to store your files and folders? Nope. You will need something to hold your folders in place. Usually you start with a frame like this:

That takes up a small amount of space on its own. But then you also need the things that hang from that wire framework:

Then after you have that all set up, NOW you can start filing away your manila folders with your important papers. Granted, the frame and hanging files don’t take up a LOT of space, but they do take up SOME space – meaning you don’t really get to use 100% of the space inside that file cabinet for storage of your stuff.

So when you see that your 500 GB hard drive only has 465 GB of usable space, don’t worry, because it’s normal.

The real scammers? Cereal manufacturers!