LANcom Technology Blog

Here’s a list of online shopping safety tips we posted last year for anyone that missed them.

1. Only shop with online merchants you know and trust
2. Order from secure websites. When you reach the stage where you have to enter any personal information look for a locked padlock or unbroken key icon next to the address bar (unsecured sites may show an unlocked padlock or a broken key). Here is what the locked padlock looks like in Internet Explorer 7.
   
3. Keep printouts e.g. copies of your order; web pages describing what you ordered; web pages that tell the seller’s name, address and telephone number; and any email confirmations you get. If the date does not appear on these printouts write this on them as well.
4. Use just one credit card for online purchases. This can make it easier to detect wrongful charges.
5. Don’t give out unnecessary information.
6. Don’t send your credit card information by email
7. Don’t give out your password to e-commerce sites to anyone
8. Don’t give out your bank information, no one needs it for an online order
9. Double check every website address. For more information on what to look for to identify a Phishing scam click here.
10. Don’t click on links within emails. Type the website address yourself, very carefully.
11. Remember that if the deal seems too good to be true it probably is.

On Thursday Google released a new feature to Google search, the ability to customise your own search results. With SearchWiki you can re-rank results, add comments to pages, and add or delete results too. Once you make changes to a page of search results those changes will appear to you every time you do the same search in the future. These changes will only affect your results, not the results of others.

To use this feature you must be signed in with a free Google account, if you don’t already have a Google account you can click here to set one up.

Another great thing about this new feature is that clicking ‘See all notes for this SearchWiki’ at the bottom of a page will allow you to see how other user have ranked the results found for your search and read their comments about them.

To learn more about Google’s SearchWiki click here.

Google Custom Search Engine allows you to really easily create a custom search engine that will just search the specific sites you want. You can also edit the look and feel of your search engine and can choose whether to make it public or unlisted. You can even host the search box on your website (its a great way to add a search feature to your site).

So how does it work?

1. All you have to do is go to Google Custom Search and click Create a Custom search engine
2. Fill out the form giving your search engine a name and description, and selecting sites that you would like to be searched (click on Tips on formatting URLs for tips).
   The standard edition of Google Custom Search Engine is completely free, but ads will be displayed next to your search results, just like in Google. If you would like a search engine without ads you can purchase the business edition.
3. Once you have created your search engine you can test it and then click Finish
4. Now you can click on homepage to go to the homepage of your search engine. If you want others to see this search engine you can give them this link.
5. If you want to edit your search engine you can click Edit this search engine and change the look and feel or get the code so you can have the search box of displayed on your website

To learn more about Google Custom Search Engine click here.

Think you’ve got a good password? Here are two sites that could help you find out if your passwords are strong enough.

1. Microsoft’s password checker- This site is a really easy way to a check the strength of your passwords. All you have to do is enter in your password and the site will tell you if it is Weak, Medium, Strong or Best. The password checker will not save, store, or transmit any passwords you enter into it. To try out Microsoft’s password checker click here.
2. Hackosis Brute Force calculator– With this site you enter in the number of letters, numbers, and special character in your password and it calculates how long it would take to crack your password using a brute force attach. I’m not sure how accurate the results are but this a good guide to help you pick the best possible password.

For more advice on how to create a strong password click here.

At the end of last month LANcom’s Warwick Eade and Phil Claxton attended the N-able partner summit in Dallas, and we are happy to announce that with over 500 attendees we were named Best New Partner.

As well as attending Warwick and Phil also participated in several discussion panels at the event and came up with some great ideas on how we can better support LANcom customers using N-able technologies.

N-able produces the monitoring and management software LANcom uses to monitor our customers systems click here to read more.

If you’re worried about having to give up XP, you probably don’t need to be. According to Computer World, Microsoft has only just now stopped issuing licences for Windows 3.x. Microsoft Windows version 3.0, which was released in 1990 and was supported by Microsoft till 2001, was the first version to achieve broad commercial success.

Windows XP will continue to receive mainstream support till April 2009 and extended support till April 2014 (both levels of support cover security updates).

For those purchasing new computers, original equipment manufacturers will be able to offer downgrades from Windows Vista Ultimate to XP Professional till July 31st 2009.

To see the original Computer World article click here.

Live Mesh Beta is a free service created by Microsoft that combines a number of great services. It kind of connects all the computers you use together to make life easier and also makes collaboration with others easier too. With Live Mesh you can:

1. Sync your files across different computers

   Say you have a desktop at work, a desktop at home, and a laptop as well. There may be some files you need to work on from all three. With Live Mesh you can select folders to sync with your other computers. This means that if you make a change to a file within that folder on one computer, that file will be automatically updated on your other computers as well. You can even Sync folders between Macs and PCs.

2. Access your synced files from wherever you may be
   All of your synced files can also be accessed from your Live Desktop. To see your Live Desktop all you need to do is go to the website and log in, so you have access to your synced files even if you are not at one of your computers.
3. Gain remote access to any of your other computers
   The Live Mesh Remote Desktop feature allows you to take remote control of another computer that is part of your ‘mesh’. So if you are working on one of your computers and realise you need to use something that is on another, you can access that other computer and work on it  as though you were sitting in front of it.
   Note: the remote computer must be turned on and connected to the internet.
   
4. Share and sync folders with others
   If you have a folder within your mesh that you would like to share with other Live Mesh users, then you can. Once a folder is shared, when one person makes a change to a file in that folder that file will be automatically updated on everyone else’s computer as well. This makes Live Mesh a great way to collaborate on files, because everyone always has the most up to date version. You can also keep track of what changes have been made and by whom from your News feed.

To use Live Mesh you have to sign up online and download and install the Live Mesh software. You must have Windows Vista or XP SP2 or higher, or Mac OS X version 10.5 or later.

This service is still in Beta so it could still have a few problems to be worked out before the final version will be released. To learn more about Live Mesh Beta click here.