WordPress 2.9 Available!
WP 2.9 is out for your upgrading pleasure. Finally, the ability to upgrade multiple (up to 10) plug-ins simultaneously is built-in. Video embedding is also much easier. Also, you can now do some basic image manipulation, such as cropping and rotating images.
Untangle for Windows: Step-by-step Setup
The skinny: Untangle for Windows is a Unified Threat Manager (UTM), which acts as a gateway to filter all web traffic on your small (up to 10 computers) network. It’s available as a free download from Untangle’s site. Untangle for Windows doesn’t need a dedicated computer (it runs in the background). Based on which options you choose, you can block advertisements, stop viruses, allow or block websites (based on category), and have access to these and other commercial-grade technologies that not too long ago were too expensive for the home office/small office.
The configuration we set up is a for a simple home network (see diagram below). The computer where Untangle for Windows is installed must have a wired connection. In our case, all other computers access the network through the wireless router. This way, anyone using your wireless network (for example, a visitor who wants to access your wireless network with their computer) will also benefit from whatever options (virus blocking, advertisement blocking, etc) that you have set up.
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Sorry!
We recently incorporated Twitter into the PreparedPC website. TwitterTools was doing its job, passing along the Tweets we created from the Wordpress dashboard to Twitter. Then we hooked up Twitterfeed, which tweeted every time we published a new blog post. So far, so good.
Then, we told TwitterTools to create a blog post from every Tweet we created. D-oh!
TwitterTools and Twitterfeed dutifully created an endless loop, with each one creating a duplicate blog post and Tweet every hour for several days.
Our apologies to subscribers and Twitter followers. We’ve fixed the issue and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.
5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook
5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook http://bit.ly/gDrPH
The 2nd Most Important Thing a Home Computer User Should Do: Create a Standard User Account
As a home computer user, your most crucial task is to make sure your data is backed up, and that you’re backing it up regularly.
The 2nd most important thing? Create and use a standard user account. By default, Windows (XP, Vista and now 7) create administrative accounts as part of the initial setup. These accounts are necessary if you need to install software, change security settings, etc, but for everyday use they are a liability.
Why Not Always Be Logged in as an Administrative Account?
In a word, protection. When logged on with a non-administrative account, viruses and spyware can’t infect your computer as easily as when you’re logged in with an administrative account.
How to Create a Standard User Account
Each flavor of Windows has its specific way for creating a standard user account, but the process is similar:
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7 (Ironically, this nicely-written how-to guide is from UnixWiz.net)
Whether you’re using Windows XP, Vista, or 7, it’s very easy to create and use a standard user account for your everyday tasks. Doing so makes your computer much less vulnerable to virus and spyware infections. It’s much more time-consuming to clean up an infected computer than to prevent an infection in the first place, so make sure you are using a standard user account for your day-to-day tasks.
Weekly Round-up 2009-09-12
A quick run-down of posts and tweets from the past week:
Untangle for Windows-Free Unified Threat Management for the Rest of Us – We posted about Untangle for Windows, a free download of an open-source based Unified Threat Management suite. The Linux-based version of Untangle is very stable and mature, and Untangle for Windows, though it is beta software, shows great promise. We will be detailing our experiences with Untangle for Windows in an upcoming post.
Windows 7: How to Reset the Recycle Bin – In Windows 7, a corrupted recycle bin can prevent you from deleting files or emptying the recycle bin. Tech-recipes.com shows us how to fix this issue.
Wordpress 2.8.4 – Lorelle warns us that a security vulnerability in all pre-2.8.4 version of Wordpress (used for self-hosted blogs, as opposed to Wordpress.com blogs) is being actively exploited. Upgrade now to close that security hole.
GeoChirp – GeoChirp is a Twitter/Google Maps mash-up that shows what your neighbors (as identified by your and their IP addresses) are tweeting.
Keeps those comments and questions coming. We appreciate them!
Untangle for Windows – Free Unified Threat Management For the Rest of Us!
The skinny: Untangle for Windows is a free way to protect your home/small office network (up to 10 computers). It leverages open source software to give you advanced control of your network that until recently was only affordable to larger corporations. Its features are impressive, especially for a free download.
Unified Threat Management (UTM) software is a fancy name for a collection of dedicated software (or a hardware appliance) that work together to protect a network by providing for example, virus protection and web filtering.
Years ago, UTMs were only available as hardware appliances which were installed in a server rack in a data center. More recently, software UTMs were released by companies like Endian and Astaro and Untangle that can run on PCs. These software UTMs require a dedicated computer.
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Bogus Firefox Add-on Poses As Flash Player
“Adobe Flash Player 0.2″ is not what it seems. It has been posted on various forum sites. Unsuspecting Firefox users who have installed this (assuming that it’s gotten past your anti-virus/anti-spyware software) find themselves infected. (To check, in the Firefox menu, choose Tools > Add-ons and look for “Adobe Flash Player 0.2″).
This bogus add-on injects its own advertisements along with Google’s ads. In addition, it can also monitor the results from a user’s Google queries, which it sends to a special website. This is another reason to consider using Startpage.com for your web searches.
As always, keep your anti-virus/anti-malware software updated, and only obtain add-ons from legitimate sites. Read more at Trendmicro’s blog.
Welcome to PreparedPC.com!
OK, we’ve actually been around for a little while, but wanted to highlight our site’s shiny new theme (WP Premium).
Keeping with our philosophy of using open-source or free software wherever feasible, we chose the free version of the theme.
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Control Flash Cookies with BetterPrivacy Firefox Add-on
Adobe Flash animations are used in many of the most popular web sites. The Adobe Flash plug-in can be used to store information in Local Shared Objects, or “Flash cookies,” which are very different from traditional browser cookies. Traditional cookie behavior can be controlled through settings in your browser, or deleted after the fact using a utility such as CCleaner. Flash cookies are browser-independent, meaning multiple browsers on the same computer can use the same Flash cookies. Flash cookies can also store a great deal more information (100 KB compared to the 4 KB browser cookie limit).
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