Nasty Adware

My wife got panicked by a phony virus warning and clicked on it and installed a nasty piece of adware that keeps popping up with bogus warnings of horrible Trojans and viruses. Its purpose was to con us into buying their product, Personal AV.

If you have an anti-virus program on your computer (and if you don’t, you’re asking for trouble) then the only warnings that should be popping up are from that program, not from “Windows.” If you get such a message, just close your browser fast, and stop going to sites that have these tricky programs.

What made the program particularly nasty was that although the windows had buttons that said “Close” and the program folder in the Start menu had an “Uninstall” command, they  were bogus. In fact, the program installs itself in such a way that you cannot remove it manually. And these stupid “warnings” were popping up every few seconds!

More frustrating, it slipped right past Norton Internet Security. Boo!

A Google search revealed what I was dealing with, and also the program that helped root it out:
MalwareBytes (Get a free version here). Once downloaded, click on it to install and follow the directions. Be aware that the Quick Scan took over an hour.

The difference between the free version and the commercial version is that the commercial version has real-time updates and works in the background, while the free version only works when you click on it and is not monitoring your system constantly.

Finding Freeware / Shareware

Where do I find much of the stuff I post here?

The Freeware Genius Blog

And Lifehacker.

Check them both out. Frequently.

Find Free Software Alernatives

The site AlternativeTo gives you freeware alternatives to commercial software packages.

Need a word-processor but don’t want to shell out for Microsoft Word? Need a free version of  Photoshop? Search by applications, types, etc.

Another Firefox Add-on, (Needed for Podcasting)

Vodpod. Google it and install it in your Firefox browser.

It lets you download video and embed it in your blog.

More importantly, it’s the only way I’ve been able to embed my podcasts into WordPress.

Although I promised a video, it seems my screen capture software is not compatible with Vodpod, so next post, I’ll describe the process in excruciating detail.

Addendum: Once you get VodPod, you need to sign up and give it your WordPress log-in information so it can post stuff to your blog.

Podcasting Made Easy

Would you like to record a class for an absent student, or a review session before a big test, or instructons for students when you are out?

Go to GCast and set up an account. Then, if you have a blue-tooth earpiece for your cellphone, you can dial a number and record your class over the phone! Then you can go to GCast’s website and link to it on your blog or upload it, as I did here on my blog as an experiment. (Just click on the arrow to play.)

(BTW, you don’t need an earpiece; I just figured it would be difficult to teach with a cellphone pressed to your ear for 45 minutes. If you have a speakerphone option, that might work too, although most of them sound like you’re talking from the bottom of a large tin barrel.)

Inserting them into your blog is a big tricky and requires a work-around, which I will document in a later post with a little video.

Burning ISO CDs and The Open Education Disc Project

What, pray tell, is an ISO CD? To be honest, I had never even heard of this before this summer, and have had need of it several times in the last 2 months. (Note: If you have a slow internet connection (DSL or (gasp!) dial-up) this is not for you. ISO files are usually 600 – 700 MB.)

ISO files are actually images of complete CDs burned as one whole image, instead of separate files. If you’re on a Windows PC, you need a special program to handle it. I assume that your computer can burn regular CDs.

If you already have a program you like for burning CDs (Roxio, Nero, etc.) then you just need a utility that can handle this. ISO Recorder is just the ticket. After it is installed, right-click a downloaded ISO file and click Copy Image to CD and it does its thing.

If you are lacking a CD burning program, check out IMGBurn. It can handle burning CDs, DVDs (if you have a DVD recorder) and ISOs.

As to why you might want to burn an ISO disc, head over to The Open Education Disc Project and download (again, only if you have a fast connection!) the Open Education Disc. It’s a one-stop collection of every piece of open-source software you could possibly want as a teacher/student.

Any Stern teachers wanting a copy can just ask me, and I will be happy to burn you a copy, especially if your internet connection is less than blazing.

Firefox Add-ons

As mentioned previously, Firefox has many useful add-ons that increase its usefulness.

Let’s talk about three of them.

If, like me, you are always bookmarking useful sites as you surf the web, it can get frustrating if you aren’t always doing it from the same computer. I had bookmarks on all the computers in the Teachers’ Room, as well as my laptop and family computer.

No more. Foxmarks is a utility (created by Mitch Kapor, if you’re old enough to remember Lotus Notes) that allows you to synchronize all of your bookmarks. If you’re using Firefox at work, bookmark a site and when you go home, your Firefox there will sync with the Foxmarks server and update your Bookmarks file. Very cool. Always find what you’ve found before.

This one is in response to Ayelet: If you have the need to e-mail an URL (a web address) or a portion of an interesting article, E-Mail This! is a simple add-on. It works with either a Yahoo! or GMail account. Once installed, set it up with your email address. Right-click the desired web page and you will see an “E-mail This!” option. Click on your e-mail program and it will open another tab with your e-mail and automatically insert the URL into the body of the message. If you highlight a section you want to save first, and it will paste the URL and the selected section into an e-mail.

Video Download Helper lets you download Flash video from sites such as Youtube. Find an interesting video, click the rotating icon next to the address bar, and Firefox will download it to your computer. (I will post later on viewing, converting and burning this file to disc.)

Protection

Do you have up-to-date anti-virus software on your home computer? If not, you’re really asking for it.

The following two products have been highly-rated, and they are free for home use.

Antivir Antivirus Software

Avast Antivirus Software

Living Out of a Digital Suitcase, Part 1

We’ll be discussing special Freeware packages that allow you to run programs off of your flash drive instead of installing them on your computer. That way, you always have your programs with you, so you don’t have to worry that the school/home/Internet café computer doesn’t have OpenOffice Writer, etc.

First off, you can do this with the drive the school gave you, unless your drive is full of pictures or music, which take up a lot of room. Text files are tiny. But you really ought to go out and buy a bigger one.

If you have an InkStop nearby they have Kingston Flash Drives for pretty cheap. A 1G (Gigabyte) drive costs about $7.00. A 2G can be had for $15.00. Any good electronics or office supply store probably has a good selection. Or shop online on www.ecost.com. (Go to Memory & Storage, then to USB Flash. ) All brands are pretty reliable.

First off, when you set up your drive, give it a name. That avoids the “I can’t tell which one is my drive!” issue that many of you have experienced. How about giving it your name? That way, if you accidentally leave it in the Teachers’ Room, it can be identified. How do you rename the drive? It’s as simple as store-bought pie. Open ‘My Computer,’ find and right-click the drive, click rename, and call it whatever you want. Watch the video and then do try this at home.

Now go to Portable Apps and download the basic program. Choose Suite Standard if you have at least 350 MB free on your drive, and you want all of Open Office on your drive. Choose Suite Light if you can only spare 100 MB and can live with AbiWord as your word processor, and without the other programs of the Open Office Suite.

Once it downloads, double-click it and let it install on your stick. Once it is set up, you can stick it in any USB drive and the program will start automatically. (Click here for a home demo.)

Join and Split .pdfs, Part II

I think I touted PDFMerge too early. After working with it for a while, I find it is not that useful of a program. It is devoid of instructions, and I still can’t figure out how to split pdfs with it.

I would like to make amends and recommend a different program, PDFTK Builder. It is super-simple to work with, it’s free, and it does exactly what it is supposed to do.

Why would you want to split a pdf? Until this morning, I had no answer to that question, but I just found one. I wanted to scan some hand-written notes, written on both sides of the page. Our copier will scan documents and convert them into pdfs and e-mail them to you, but it doesn’t scan two-sided documents the way it does for copying. So I had to make a file of odd-numbered pages and then one of even-numbered pages. With PDFTK Builder, I was able to split them up into individual pages, re-order them, and then reintegrate them as one pdf file.

Get PDFTK Builder here.