5 Good Things to Know about Pokemon Go

Posted on July 26, 2016September 8, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Entertainment, Entertainment Apps, Facebook, Games, Smartphone Apps, Social Media

Have you downloaded the new Pokemon Go App yet? Are you playing it? It seems to be taking the nation by storm! You can find out all about it at the Pokemon website: http://www.pokemongo.com and you can download it from the iTunes store or, for the Android from Google Play.

If you are playing, make sure you appropriately manage your security settings. (In fact you should always be careful with how much you share from your phone with game developers.)

Pokemon sure has been getting some bad press though. Consider some of these stories:

Veteran Memorial overrun by Pokemon players
Pokemon Go players go mad.
Falling, tripping, and other mishaps.

The Good News:

But it’s not all bad news. There have been several good things to come out of this new craze. For example, people with anxiety, autism and Asperger’s are finding the Pokemon Go helps them get out and be more social. According to this article in Inverse:

“… the game is reportedly helping people overcome anxiety and other mental health issues, bringing an array of players together under one common passion. Such has been the case for a few parents of autistic children, who have been sharing stories about the game easing their children into incredible social interactions.”

Pokemon has helped people find things:

According to one story, two women found a toddler: “Looking for new Pokemon Friday night, as they’d done before, the two stumbled upon a little girl who looked to be no older than 2, crossing a busy street by herself.”

Another teen found a missing man who had recently died.

Businesses have realized they can use Pokemon to their advantage. In fact, this Forbes article is full of ideas that businesses can use to lure in more Pokemon players – and potential buyers!

“Instead, take a cue from this local indie clothing store, which got into the spirit of the game by saying, “come get your PokéBalls and previously rocked threads. Gotta catch ‘em all in style!” That’s bound to leave a positive impression, get people talking and, with the overwhelming media attention this game is getting, potentially get your local business some exposure in the press.”

And players are accidentally getting more exercise! One friend posted this on her Facebook a few days ago:

“I’ve walked 26 miles this week playing Pokemon GO. This is the weight loss plan I’ve been waiting for my entire life.”

In fact there’s even a guide for people who want to do interval training!

“Interval training … is a workout where you push yourself as hard as you can in short bursts, rest, then repeat. … This kind of stop and go activity is perfectly suited for the walk-and-stop play of Pokémon Go, and knowing that you get to play while you exercise can be a huge motivator. You’ll collect items at PokéStops (like eggs that only hatch if you walk or run), hatch said eggs with the massive number of steps you rack up, wear down rival gyms so you can take over, find wild pokémon to catch, and get fit all at the same time.”

Is it all just a mad scheme? How long do you thing this craze will last?

Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has been providing computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PC’s for the past fourteen years. His company is highly rated by both the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and by Angie’s List. You can find more on our website. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range area and remote service throughout North America.

We’ve been using Amazon Prime for the past few years. We like the free 2-3 day shipping and the online streaming. I haven’t tried the Kindle lending library yet, but I’m tempted! Prime is normally $99/year, but you can try it for 30 day for free by clicking on this link: Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial (Yes, we’ll get a small commission when you sign up.)

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Facebook and Politics

Posted on July 19, 2016September 8, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Entertainment, Facebook, Social Media, Tips

Social Media:

I don’t know about you, but my Facebook is getting full of posts about politics. Sometimes I agree with my Facebook friend, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes the posts are downright offensive! I have a trick I use to minimize the number of times I see those offensive posts. It also helps minimize the times that those people can see my posts and start trolling.

Other People’s Posts:

I am assuming that you still want to be Facebook friends, you just want to see less of some of the posts that makes your blood boil! If you don’t want to keep in touch with that person, by all means, press the “unfriend” button. Otherwise, follow these steps:

Bring up the person’s Facebook page and click on the down arrow next to the “Friends” button.

Then click on “Acquaintances” and make sure the “Get Notifications” option is unchecked.

Remember that Facebook uses algorithms to figure out what to show you. If you check out that person’s page, it is more likely that their posts will show up on your feed. Facebook needs to be trained!

If something does show up on your feed that you don’t want to see, click the down arrow on the right side of the post and select “Hide Post”.

You’ll get another pop-up after clicking on “Hide post” that looks like this. Here you have another choice. Do you want to see less from that particular person? Or do you want to see less from their source. Click on your option and continue on your way through your news feed.

Your Own Posts:

Sometimes it’s good to minimize who sees your posts as well. Now, that will be easy for you to do. When you post a news story or your own opinion that may be controversial to some, you can select who gets to see it. Click on the down arrow to the left of the “Post” button and select who can see this post. If you select “Friends except Acquaintances”, then all the people you’ve categorized as Acquaintances will not see that post.

I hope these tips help you keep your sanity through this election season!

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Ransomware

Posted on July 12, 2016March 23, 2018 by Gail Eddy in backup, Cloud, Data Backup, Malware, Ransomware

Chris has seen several Ransom Ware infections in the past 18 months or so. Ransomware is just about the worst of the malwares the “bad guys” have thought up. Essentially, once you get infected, the ransomware installs a nifty little program which encrypts all of your data. Then, they’ll give you a pop-up letting you know that you have so much time to pay a ransom to receive the encryption key.

Here is a screen shot of one of the ransom notes Chris has seen.

I’ve asked Chris to tell you what ransomware looks like, what you can do if you’re infected, and how to protect yourself.

I’ve seen three actual instances of ransomware in the past few years.

The first instance occurred about two years ago at a customer site. I found that their personal and business files were all encrypted. Since they had a fairly recent backup of their data, the thought process was relatively quick: remove the old hard drive, install a new one, rebuild their server, and restore their data. This took several hours to complete, but it was successful and very little data was lost.

The previous instance occurred last summer, to a customer I hadn’t served in many years. I forget the nature of the problem which motivated the service call, but I soon discovered that their personal data was unreadable. I turned off the computer and removed the hard drive, so that I could see what customer data was there without allowing the infection to proceed if it was still active. Turns out the customer already had a secondary infection which had been running for the past six months. This created a huge volume of temporary files and greatly delayed my getting permission to access to their data. Somewhat fortunately, every personal folder which had been encrypted had had a text file and an HTML file added, which contained a document from the ransomware software. The document indicated that the data was encrypted, and if you wanted to get it back you had pay a fee in BitCoin at one of 4 different IP addresses. Note that only one IP address was responsive. The ransom cost started at some amount, and would increase as time went on. To prove that they were indeed the ones which encrypted the data, they offered to decrypt one file immediately and at no charge. In talking with the customer, they identified the one file that was the most critical, and this one file was successfully and promptly decrypyted. Eventually, the customer decided to pay the ransom, which was about $700. It it took a long time for the customer to get the BitCoin payment into a spendable account, and then the payment could not be given because none of those IP addresses were accessible. We were ultimately declined access to provide the ransom payment because their servers were too busy to receive another connection. Apparently their servers were being crushed with activity from their own success.

The most recent occurred a few months ago at a business I frequent. The symptom to them was that the computers which run their business management application displayed an error message saying that the database was corrupt. Since I was there at the time this happened, my recommendation was that they turn off all of their computers. Turns out they received an encrypting infection called “Locky”, because the customer files are encrypted and renamed to have a “.Locky” extension. But there was no opportunity to pay a ransom to get the data back. Another problem was that there was no backup of their data for several years. The solution was to replace the old hard drive with a new drive in the server computer, reinstall and update the operating system, and coordinate with the manufacturer to reinstall the application and look for old data. Fortunately, a copy of the database that was 6 months old was found; so there was a 6 month gap in time, but at least they had not lost 20 years of customer data. Also, a good antivirus was installed on all of their computers, which they did not have before. They did not understand that they needed a good antivirus installed. This was actually a problem that was waiting to happen. It could have been avoided if their usual “IT Guy” had taken the initiative to see what they did and did not have, rather than just doing a technical task they were called in to do. They are hopefully in the process of getting a backup procedure, because hindsight showed that having a 6 month gap in customer data could have been avoided if their usual “IT Guy” had implemented backups of their data.

There are lessons to be learned from these experiences.

Have a good antivirus on all of your technology. Note that there is no antivirus on the planet that can protect you from all things all the time.
Have your computer prepped by a competent IT person.
Make backups of your data. Backups never go out of style. It can be to an external hard drive, or a USB thumb drive, or to a cloud based backup service like Dropbox.
Know the completion status of that backup. I’ve lost count of the number of customers who believe that they have been backing up for long time, but turns out that their data is actually old because the backup has not worked for years.

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Wearables

Posted on July 5, 2016September 8, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Apple, Facebook, iPhone, SmartPhones

I ambled down the rabbit hole and stumbled across this old PC Magazine article from 2008. In the article, they look at futuristic devices introduced in movies and show how those ideas have come to fruition in 2008.

There’s the transformer cell phone. Watch the Youtube here.
There’s the hoverboard and another Youtube.
And there’s this poor substitute for the universal translator/ babel fish and its cringe-worthy video.

The only gadget from the movies that has really taken off is the wrist watch communicator. In just the past few years watches that alert you to phone calls and texts, track your steps and heart rate, and allow you to search the Internet, have evolved into wearables worth the investment.

Here’s my Fitbit telling me that Chris is calling:

Aside from the FitBit and the Apple Watch, other wearable gadgets available today include:

Thync: The first wearable for relaxation and energy The Thync works by signaling nerves on the head and neck to act on the brain’s adrenaline system. These nerves then activate your body’s natural state of Energy or Calm.

Then there are Blacksocks Plus. These are truly wearables with a twist! From their website:

Imagine your phone could communicate with your socks. Your phone would know:

which socks belong together,and could help sort them out,
how often you have washed your socks,
when your socks were produced,
when you ordered your socks and
when your socks were dispatched.

Your iPhone can also tell you if your black socks are no longer properly black and help you buy new socks.

If only they could tell you if it was the washer or dryer that stole one of your socks!

Coming out later this year are Jewelbots. This adorable bracelet is aimed at teaching young girls to code. The gender gap among boys and girls in science and engineering classes continues to widen, and the number of technical jobs continue to increase. Getting our girls interested in the sciences at a young age, and keeping their interest through high school and college is so important! Jewelbots is a just one step on this path. For more info on this issue, check out Girls Who Code.

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