Another big issue is from those companies which outsourced their tech support to some other company (or country in many cases). The problem with this is not having enough control over the product (in this case, end-user support) being delivered to their customers. Sure, it may be cheaper on the books, but at what cost to your reputation? This article shows a prime example of how this can go bad.

The makers of Avast antivirus outsourced their tech support to a company which was then telling customers they had other issues and needed to subscribe to additional services to keep their computers clean. I’ve seen a similar tactic used with many scareware titles to tell you how screwed up your computer is (or how infected). This blog post goes into much greater detail on the issue.

In Avast’s defense, it appears they’ve dropped the irresponsible support company. This should go a great deal toward fixing their reputation as a result.

I generally preferred SyncToy over the free version of SyncBack as it wouldn’t spontaneously add new folders which were under a folder tree not being backed up. SyncBack would usually be my alternate in the event SyncToy wouldn’t install for some reason (usually this would be on computers which I was going to be reformatting and needed to extract the existing data). However, SyncBackSE (currently $34.95 as of this writing) is extremely configurable with a great amount of flexibility in the backup set. It’s probably the only backup software I’d buy for most entry-level uses.

Cobian is an awesome backup for people who have a desktop computer with a permanently attached backup drive. It’s nearly commercial in its capabilities and interface.

So, I went on a search for a replacement for SyncToy and came across FreeFileSync by way of AlternativeTo.net. It’s a little quirky (but what software isn’t?), but so far seems to be a much more workable replacement for SyncToy than SyncBack was. Some things to consider, if you’re trying to configure a consistent backup routine, make sure to right-click on an object (either a file or directory) and select “Exclude via filter” so that object is not backed up in the future.

So, it looks like my repertoire will consist of FreeFileSync, SyncBack, and Cobian Backup, depending upon the situation at hand.

The number of things wrong with this whole situation are too numerous to mention, but I’ll start with the big ones. For starters, what I do on a social media site is my business only. If I only share things with a select group and not publicly, again, that’s my business. The next, and likely bigger issue, is that most people still use the same credentials to log in to EVERY site they visit. I’ve rambled on this issue before, but it really hits home here.

I just can’t see the justification a company might reasonably use to ask for these kinds of credentials. Mind you, I know what they want. They want to see if you’ve been posting anything which would be potentially damaging or embarrassing which might create a distraction on the job.

A less invasive option is by the employers who want you to “friend” a human resources “person” so they can have a look at what you publish for friends, but not open publicly. I’m not certain I’d consider this option, but my response to give up important login credentials would likely give them cause to never hire me in the first place.

What would happen if you created a profile just to give the prospective employer who might ask for this? How would they know if you didn’t tell them?

I’m getting a little disjointed here as I’m really irritated by the idea of this being considered “okay” by any company.

That being said, if you post something publicly which could prove to be an embarrassment later, you should have considered your original actions a little better. Now, we all make mistakes, and I believe our stories as related to realizing our actions were mistakes and adjusting ourselves accordingly could show show people how we’ve improved and are likely to fix our errors as time goes on.

I found details at this article which goes into more detail. It also lists the states which are included in the class-action. Sadly, my state is not one of them (nor did I live in one of them when I did purchase a potentially qualifying product), so I cannot see what’s coming to me.

I long since stopped being surprised at what large corporations would do. If price fixing did occur, it would be another in a long line of bad things corporations are hated for doing.

If you believe you are part of this class, you can go to lcdclass.com to register.

The first step is to follow the instructions on the iPod recall site to see if your iPod qualifies. Assuming yours does, fill out the necessary information so Apple can send you a return box. Then wait. In my case, I had to wait about three weeks before the box showed up. Unfortunately, there was no status update for me during this time to let me know the box was on its way. I just showed up one day.

After you’ve sent it back to Apple, the status will eventually change to let you know they’re determining a course of action. Again, in my case, it took about three weeks before they sent my replacement.

I’d read a couple of articles around the time I sent mine in to suggest that I’d get an identical unit as a replacement. This would have been fine. I’d basically get a battery refresh if that was the case. However, I got a current (sixth generation) model instead. This increased the capacity from its original 4GB (then, the top of the line) to 8GB (the current entry level). I was disappointed to find the address book and calendar functions were not present on the new model. I relied on these quite heavily and I would need to find some other way (or buy a different iPod).

On the plus side, there are a number of companies which make watch-bands so you can use your iPod Nano as a high-tech watch. I’ll probably be getting one of those in the not too distant future.

I’ve come across a couple of sites which catalog various streaming services to let you know which has what you want to watch. These sites are CanIStreamIt and Watchily. For streaming, they both appear to catalog Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. Watchily will also catalog various others such as RedBox and Comcast’s on demand services.

I did a sample search for “Toy Story 3.” Both showed that only Netflix had them available for streaming. It was a little difficult to tell from CanIStreamIt’s interface, but the services which didn’t carry the movie were grayer than the Netflix icon.

I prefer the cleanliness of CanIStreamIt, but having the additional services available on Watchily makes it a very handy option.

With so many Blu-Ray players coming out with support for various streaming services, it’s nice to have a central search so you don’t have to look at each one (assuming you subscribe to more than one). It may also help you to decide to subscribe to a second (or third) service so as to be able to play the content you want.

I’ve only mentioned two I found for legitimate streaming services. I found several for, shall we say, “less than legitimate” sites, but I wasn’t interested in them. If you find any other search sites for the legitimate services, feel free to let me know in the comments below.

I’ve witnessed many of my friends posting on Facebook “links” to videos of humorous or salacious content but which only end up being a survey scam or some other information grabber you need to fill before you’ll be granted access to the video (assuming there’s actually a video to watch). I’ve clicked on a few myself when I wasn’t paying attention and then had to go remove the reference from my Facebook wall before the link spread any further (if a professional geek posts it, it must be safe, right?).

In the past, it was banner ads purporting to give you a free “popular gadget of the week” by clicking a link, filling out a form, signing up for some “offers,” and then convincing a quantity of friends to do the same. I’m not even sure there were any “gadgets” to go around when all was said and done.

In the end, I’ve not seen a single one of these which were legitimate. They’ve all been scams unless the visible URL was something like YouTube. I’ve been able to view a few by using sites like BypassFanPages and simple Google searches. It turns out, the result is rarely as exciting as the title suggested. So, it’s best not to click on any of them.

But how do you know if your password is really secure? I’ve recently learned of a web site which will let you know just how difficult it is to crack your password; How Secure Is My Password?

To test, I ran a few passwords into it to see how secure they are. For example, kangaroo comes up with the result of “Common Password: In The Top 2,490 Most Used Passwords Your password is very commonly used. It would be cracked almost instantly.” Adjust that with some numbers (replacing the o with zeros) to kangar00 and we get a result of 3 hours to crack the password. Make more adjustments (replacing the a with @) to k@ng@r00 gives us a result of 2 days to crack the password. Much better. It looks less like a dictionary word; has numbers, letters, and symbols; and is easy to remember. Throw in a capital letter, k@ng@R00, increases the cracking time to 57 days.

Increasing the length of your password will also make it harder to crack (this is why some sites have minimum password lengths). I put in a random string of six characters, Mn0#85, which could be cracked in about 13 minutes. Adding a 1 to the end of that increased the cracking time to 17 hours. Add a $ to that to achieve 57 days. Add j to make 12 years the new length to crack. New random 12-character password, KGkDqd#12$7O, will take 5 million years.

Now, the times are approximate, but as you can see, each additional character adds a greatly increasing amount of time to crack the password. Using just lower-case letters, a 12-character password, xlgcezhdkpnm, will only take 12 years. From 12 years to 5 million years by just adding mixed case, numbers, and symbols.

There is a companion site, Make Me a Password, which will generate a password for you. It will start with words and put in some common substitutions to make the password easier to remember (use the check-boxes to see how that works).

Why are you still reading this? You should be going to all your important sites (especially banking and investing, followed by on-line stores). Don’t delay. Make this one of your New Year’s resolutions.

I shelved the idea for a while and today I decided to search for a solution again. I found one which doesn’t require too much manual effort. This post on The Sociable details the steps required to follow someone’s tweets. Just in case something happens to the site, I’ll summarize it below.

The general form of the URL to follow is: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/XXX.rss where XXX is the numeric ID of the Twitter user. To get the ID, plug in the user name into idfromuser.com. Then manually subscribe to the feed using your RSS newsreader. For example, the URL for my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/29262569.rss.

So, until Twitter decided to change things again, this is how you can manage it. I know that I find it easier to follow people this way rather than on Twitter or using a program on my computer. However, I still follow people on Twitter so it counts for them.

Something to keep in mind is that it’s now less convenient to post your own stuff or retweet other posts. You still need to use Twitter for that.

Using the PIN method is potentially risky if all you have to do is enter the PIN on your computer or other device. It seems the authentication method for the pin results in a mere 11,000 options remaining which can be brute-forced in less than two days.

When I setup a new router, I’ve always gone for the manual approach and determine a wireless network name (SSID) and key which the clients can remember or have easily available. I don’t even install the software which came with the router but instead go to its web-based administration. I’ll turn off WPS so that it’s not accidentally used (the first and only time I tried using WPS, it scrambled what I’d previously set to something random for both SSID and key).

This falls in line with how security decreases as convenience increases. I advise to disable WPS and do it by hand.