5 Tips for Smart Shopping

Posted on November 15, 2016May 6, 2024 by Gail Eddy in Tips

More people will be shopping in the next few weeks with the holiday season coming up. While I always recommend shopping at your local small businesses, not everything is always available there. There are certain ways to shop online which help save your wallet.

One thing I’ve recently become aware of is selecting some things you want, place them in your “basket”, and leave. This only works if you’ve logged in and the retailer knows your email address. Over the next few days you may receive emails with coupons for a percent off, or special offers related to the items you’ve already selected. My most recent experience netting me a coupon for 20% off!
Check to see the best price for items you’re considering. One alert site for Amazon is Camelcamel. Other sites for more retailers include SlickDeals, Gottadeal, and Dealnews. For electronics try Pricewatch.
Add a shopping app on your smartphone to help you find the best prices when you’re away from your computer. Tom’s Guide has recommended several apps.
Find coupons that give you dollars or a percentage off of your purchase. Some good sites for online coupons include CouponCabin, Coupons, and Retailmenot. And, there is also Groupon. One thing I don’t like about Groupon is that you purchase the product or service ahead of time and may forget about the expiration date. Several of my friends have made a Groupon purchase and never got to use it!
Just use Google if you know exactly what you want. Enter the brand and model number and Google will tell you which companies are selling that item.

Do you have online shopping tips that you use? Let us know!

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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I’m Addicted To My Phone!

Posted on November 8, 2016May 2, 2024 by Gail Eddy in Entertainment Apps, SmartPhones, Social Media, Tips

Does anyone else wonder if they spend too much time on their phone? Too much time using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites? I know for me there have been times when I have picked up my phone to (gasp!) make a phone call. After I enter my passcode, it opens to the last screen I had active. If it is Facebook, I’ll check my notifications, completely forgetting about that call. Does that ever happen to you?

It turns out it is designed that way. From this month’s Atlantic Magazine article “Tristan Harris believes Silicon Valley is Addicting Us To Our Phones”:

“Messages, photos, and “likes” appear on no set schedule, so we check for them compulsively, never sure when we’ll receive that dopamine-activating prize. (Delivering rewards at random has been proved to quickly and strongly reinforce behavior.)”

Even I remember that from my Freshman Year Psych class!

And who even knew there is an “Information Overload Day”, let alone an Information Overload Research Group? They state that:

“Information Overload causes people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas, contemplate, and even reason and think. It has resulted in work days that never seem to end, completely destroying work/life balance.”

Tips:

What can you do to help yourself be more present and not focus so much on your phone and social media?

Set up a schedule for using your phone to check email and social media. Set a timer to limit your time to ten or twenty minutes. Keep your phone turned off otherwise, except when you are expecting a call.
Change your notifications so that you don’t receive an alert whenever you receive a new email, or Facebook message, or when someone has liked your Tweet. (With my iPhone I receive an alert whenever I get a new email to my business account. I’ve set it up so that I do not receive alerts for new personal emails.)
Remove some (or all) Social Media apps from your phone and only access them from your computer.
Ask everyone to put their phones in the center of the table during meals.
Charge your phone at night in a different room, not right next to your bed.

I hope these tips are helpful!

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3 Tips to Creating a Secure & Strong Password

Posted on November 1, 2016April 29, 2024 by Gail Eddy in Entertainment Apps, Hackers, Tips

Last week, I wrote about the DDoS attack which occurred on October 21st. That attack shut down many websites and apps, especially for users on the East Coast. I recommended that you use a very secure and strong password. Please don’t use one of these most common passwords!

Use a Strong Password! Not these Common Passwords Source: http://i.imgur.com/FImcPiG.png — The Most Common Passwords
Source: http://i.imgur.com/FImcPiG.png

How to create a Strong Password:

It occurred to me that you may need some guidance to create a really secure and strong password. Here are some tips:

First, the more characters in your password, the more secure it will be. According to mSecure, a four-character password can be cracked in under a minute, while an eight-character password can be cracked in five months. A nine-character password can take up to 10 years to crack. Notice I said “up to”. Just using lots of characters doesn’t work if the password is easy to guess. That’s why you also need:
Next, think Complexity. Using a eight-character password like “password”, “Password”, or even “PasswØrd”, is too easy to guess. Even a nine-character password like “password1” is relatively easy to crack. The same goes for “Admin”, “administrator”, and “12345678”. These are common passwords that a lot of people use. In order to make a password more complex, add symbols, capital letters, and numbers. Using symbols or numbers in exchange for letters makes the password easier to remember. For example swap out your “o” for an “Ø”, your “a” for “@”, or your “e” for a “3”. You can even use a password generator like passwordsgenerator.net to generate a truly unique password. I like this one because I can set the number of characters and whether or not I can use special characters like @#%& for a particular website. Above all, when you go to enter your log in credentials:
Finally, you must remember that very strong password! Some ideas include a favorite book, your best friend’s name from second grade, or your grandparent’s street address. Just remember to add some additional complexity to make it even more secure. For example, “Newport” can become “517Newport”, “NewpØrt”, or “Newport100”. If you must write down your passwords, keep it in a secure place. I use a password protected spreadsheet.

Please make it a point to use a secure and strong password on all of your internet connected devices. Change it today!

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DDoS? And Why YOU May be to Blame

Posted on October 24, 2016January 13, 2025 by Gail Eddy in Hackers, Internet Service, Malware, Printer, Tips

Last week, many websites and apps were severely compromised, especially on the East Coast. Apps like Twitter, Reddit, Spotify, AirBnB, and Netflix slowed to a crawl or were shut down altogether. A DDoS attack was launched against Dyn, a New Hampshire company that provides DNS routing.

Level3 Outage map on 24Oct16 Screen Shot by Geek For Hire, Inc. — Level3 Outage map on 24Oct16
Screen Shot by Geek For Hire, Inc.

What did you just say?

DDoS = A “Distributed Denial of Service” occurs when hundreds of thousands of messages are sent to specific internet addresses with the intent to overload that service and shut it down. (In this case, the intent was to take down Dyn in order to affect many websites and not just one.)
DNS = The Internet’s Domain Name System translates the URL’s we enter, like www.google.com, into “the numerical IP addresses needed for the purpose of locating and identifying computer services and devices.” (From wikipedia)

In the past, most DDoS attacks were focused on a particular website. Last Friday, the attack was focused on a company which the NY Times calls “one of the Internet’s giant switchboards”, which had a devastating impact.

So, how is this MY fault?

Do you have a surveillance camera on your front door? A wireless printer? A “smart” refrigerator”? All of these are connected to the internet with their own numerical IP address. The “bad guys” can run through a list of IP address to see which addresses can easily be compromised. Once they’ve identified these devices, they can use them to add to their arsenal to send the messages that create the attack.

I still don’t get it. How is this MY fault?

Do you use a password on all of your internet connected devices? Is it secure? A password of “admin”, “123456”, or “password” is NOT secure! Have you ever been out looking for free WiFi, and something like “HP-M475-5E3F78” was presented as an available WiFi that you could connect to? That is what happens when someone does not put a password on their printer. There are literally millions of WiFi connected devices in the US. How many of those are vulnerable to participating in these types of attacks?

Please make it a point to use a secure password on all of your internet connected devices. Change it today!

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Speech to Text Punctuation

Posted on October 18, 2016October 17, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Tips

I’ve been using my phone’s speech to text feature more and more. I use the feature to compose emails, send text messages, and search on my phone’s internet browser. I have experienced some frustration that the phone doesn’t always do what I tell it to do. I’ve modified my instructions somewhat so that more and more often, the text result ends up looking more like what I intend for it to look!

For example, when I want to begin a new paragraph, “Return” and “next line” don’t work, but “New Line” does, and so does “Next Paragraph”. Note that “Next Line” will give you one standard return, but “Next Paragraph” will give you two lines in between the paragraphs.

Other symbols include:

? – “Question mark”
. – “Period”
( – “Open Parentheses”
) – “Close Parentheses”
@ – “At symbol” doesn’t work but “at sign” does.
* – The asterisk is really tricky. Even with perfect diction, it gets confused. I’ve found it’s easier to edit that after I’m done speaking.
+ – “Plus Sign”
– – “Minus Sign”
& – “Ampersand”
% – “Percent sign”
# – “Pound Sign”
! – “Exclamation point”

I’ve also had issues with the word “to”, “two”, and “too”. It usually translates it as “to”. I’ve learned to say “Too Many”, or I just edit when I’m done speaking. I’ve not been able to reliably get it to correctly type “two”.

Other numbers under 10 will almost always translate as the number word and not the symbol itself. Numbers over 10 translate as the number symbol.

On a teeny tiny phone screen, sometimes using the speech to text feature makes life a whole lot easier. I hope these tricks help you too!

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18 Keyboard Shortcuts for the Mac

Posted on October 4, 2016October 11, 2021 by Gail Eddy in Keyboard Shortcuts, Tips

Two weeks ago our blog was about some of the Windows shortcuts available. This week, it’s all about the Mac. The Command Key is the “key” to most of these shortcuts. This is what it looks like:

This by Tinrocket 1.0.2 (101)
Command Key | Geek For Hire, Inc. |

Shortcuts

Command + A = Select All

Command + B = Bold

Command + C = Copy

Command + E = Eject the disk

Command + F = Find

Command + G = Find again

Command + H = Hide

Command + I = Italics

Command + M = Minimize

Command + N = New

Command + P = Print

Command + Q = Quit

Command + S = Save

Command + T = Show/Hide the fonts window

Command + U = Underline

Command + V = Paste

Command + X = Cut

Command + Z = Undo

Are these helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

Information About Geek For Hire, Inc.

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Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has provided computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PCs for the past eighteen years. Angie’s List and the BBB rate Geek For Hire very highly. You can find more on our website, or give us a call at 303-618-0154. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3 support) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range area and remote service throughout North America.

Here’s a link to our Covid19 Policy.

We’ve been using Amazon Prime for the past few years. We like the free and fast shipping. With Prime, we have access to online streaming too. Prime is usually $119/year, but you can get a free 30-day trial by clicking on this link: Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

More Tips Here:

Are VPNs worth it? More here.
Are you interested in learning more about Extreme Privacy?
We have seen a lot of Facebook hacking lately. Here’s what you should do ahead of time to keep your account safe.
And here are the 10 Password Mistakes you don’t want to make!

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20 Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows (plus 1 bonus!)

Posted on September 20, 2016September 19, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Keyboard Shortcuts, Tips

Two weeks ago our blog was about some of the shortcuts you can use with your Windows Logo key. This week, I’ve got some more basic keyboard shortcuts.

The Control (aka Ctrl) is the “key” to most of these shortcuts. This is what it looks like:

The Control (aka "CTRL") key — The Control (aka “CTRL”) key

Shortcuts

CTRL + A = Select All

CTRL + B = Bold

CTRL + C = Copy

CTRL + I = Italics

CTRL + N = New

CTRL + P = Print

CTRL + R = Refresh the active window

CTRL + S = Save

CTRL + U = Underline

CTRL + V = Paste

CTRL + X = Cut

CTRL + Y = Redo or Repeat

CTRL + Z = Undo

CTRL +F4 = Close the active document

CTRL +F5 = Refresh the active window

CTRL + Left arrow = Move cursor to beginning of previous word

CTRL + Right Arrow = Move cursor to beginning of next word

CTRL + Up Arrow = Move cursor to beginning of previous paragraph

CTRL + Down Arrow = Move Cursor to beginning of next paragraph

CTRL + ESC = Open the Start Menu

Are these helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

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10 Shortcuts with the Windows Key

Posted on September 6, 2016September 8, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Tips, Windows

I know a couple of the shortcuts that you can use with the “Windows” key. I was wondering the other day if there are more that might make my life easier. Turns out, there are!

I like knowing the shortcuts because I’m a keyboard user. Taking my hands off the keyboard to negotiate with my mouse is “time consuming” in a world where every second counts. If you’re a keyboard user like me, you’re welcome!

In case you don’t know, the Windows key looks like this:

So, here goes:

The Windows Logo Key all by itself will bring up the “Start” menu. You know, the icon you tap when you want to cleanly shut your machine down.
Windows Logo Key + L will lock your screen. You’ll need to log in again, but all your open Windows will still be there.
Windows Logo Key + M will minimize all of your open Windows. This is also known as the “Boss” key!
Windows Logo Key + E will bring up your Windows Explorer page so you can see how much space you have left on your machine and where all of your files are.
Windows Logo Key + D will show you the Desktop.
Windows Logo Key + Space Bar will show your Desktop for as long as you press down the Windows key.
Windows Logo Key + T will cycle through your running programs on the taskbar.
Windows Logo Key + a number will bring up the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.
Windows Logo Key + Tab will cycle through your open programs using 3D. (Try that one. It’s pretty cool!)
Windows Logo Key + Home will minimize all your open windows except the one you’re currently working on.

If you’d like to learn more shortcuts, check out this page from Microsoft, or this one from Shortcut Mania.

There are so many keyboard shortcuts. Look for more tips in the coming weeks!

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Facebook and Ad Blocking

Posted on August 16, 2016September 8, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Facebook, Tips

Facebook Advertisements:

Did you see the Press Release from Facebook last week? They say they have figured out how to show ads even to people who use Ad Blocking software. Why? (Sarcasm alert!) Because Facebook knows better than you do, what is relevant to you and can show you ads that are appealing to you. Here’s an excerpt from the Press Release:

“When they’re relevant and well-made, ads can be useful, helping us find new products and services and introducing us to new experiences — like an ad that shows you your favorite band is coming to town or an amazing airline deal to a tropical vacation. But because ads don’t always work this way, many people have started avoiding certain websites or apps, or using ad blocking software, to stop seeing bad ads. These have been the best options to date.

“We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software. When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads. As we offer people more powerful controls, we’ll also begin showing ads on Facebook desktop for people who currently use ad blocking software.”

I’m not sure how they’ll accomplish this, or how long it will take before Ad Blocking software is upgraded, but for now it looks like we’ll be seeing ads on Facebook whether we want to or not.

Change Facebook Settings:

In the meantime, you can make a few changes to your Facebook Settings. (Click on “Settings”, then “Ads”.)

The first thing you’ll want to do is change your preference for “Ads with my Social Actions” to “No One”. Otherwise, your friends will see your actions associated with an ad like this:

Then, you’ll need to decide what to do about ads that are presented to you. Do you want to see ads that are relevant to you, or do you just want to see all ads? Essentially, those are your two choices as shown in the screen captures below:

I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping Ad Blocking software will get an upgrade very soon!

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Where To Turn, When You Don’t Know Where To Turn

Posted on August 9, 2016October 25, 2017 by Gail Eddy in Smartphone Apps, Tips

I received some bad news yesterday about a friend who lost his battle with depression. Whenever this happens, and it has happened too frequently in my lifetime, I wonder if there was something I could have done differently. In most case I know though, that people tend to hide their demons behind a happy face. They don’t want to burden their friends and family with their struggles.

That got me wondering: Are there apps or other online resources that a person could go to anonymously for support and guidance?

I did a little bit of research, and the answer is Yes, and No. Sure there are apps, but research is finding that those apps aren’t as helpful as actually talking to a trained counselor.

One app that is sponsored by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is MY3. MY3 lets you name three people you can contact in a crisis. You set this up ahead of time, and contact them when needed. These three people could be your therapist, your religious leader, a family member, a close friend, or even a neighbor.

If you know you have suicidal tendencies, by all means, get into counseling now. Many times the cost will be free, or on a sliding scale, so don’t let finances be a factor to not seeking help. You can find a competent therapist by contacting your County or State Department of Human Services or by calling the Suicide Prevention Hotline – 800-273-8255.

If you are wondering what some of the warning signs are so that you might be able to help a friend or family member, check out the list here. Some of the warning signs include:

Talking about wanting to die or to kill oneself.
Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live.
Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain.
Talking about being a burden to others.
Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs.
Acting anxious or agitated; behaving recklessly.

Our society has two demographics that are particularly susceptible to depression and suicide: Teens/Young Adults and Veterans.

Teens, especially, have many resources. One message board that I found allows teens to “chat” with other teens about a variety of subjects from Gender Issues to Child Abuse to Eating Disorders, Suicide, and other topics. Remember that if you do join a Message Board to head over to gmail first and create a new anonymous email address.

I’ve recently become aware that an average of 22 Veterans are killed by suicide every day. Head to either one of these two websites for more info and assistance: Veteran Crisis Line or 22Kill.

Many of the websites I looked at this morning cite suicide as one of the leading causes of death in the US. Keep your eyes and ears open. If you see a friend showing any of the above signs, gently talk to them, and provide them with some of these resources.

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