Free Business Number Connection Service

 From the Desktop of 
J. Warren Richardson

 

 

I recently received this free phone number look-up service tip from my fav Cuz.

Thanks and a hug Cuzette!

 

I tested it and it actually works. Just leave it up to Google to come up
with something like this!!!
Put these numbers in your cell phone or your home phone speed dial:
1-800-goog411 ... 1-800-466-4411
This is an awesome free voice recogniton business number service from
Google, and it's free -- great when you pull over on the side of the road
with no pen, pencil or paper handy.

The only glitch is if the number has been changed - then you'll need a
photographic memory or a pen and paper, etc. after all.

The voice at the other end says, "Business Name; City & State."
I said, "Guaranty Bank Irving Texas"
He says, "Connecting"........ and the bank answers.

How great is that? This appears to be nationwide and it is free.
Don't waste your money on information calls and don't waste your time
manually dialing the number.
Click on the link below and watch the short clip for a quick video demo. http://www.google.com/goog411

Pluggers fan eletter from deep in the heart of Tayhaus

11/6/2009

 

Dear Gary,

My mid-sixty year old wife is not PC literate but wanted me, her PC literate spouse to send you a fan email. Your one balloon cartoons are our top of the list favorite, edging out Pickles the other senior target audience just a bit. She's got arthritic fingers so she depends on her ole smelly hubby (if you get my drift) to keep up the communications with the outside world, which is why you got a (she thinks) leading edge email from us instead of a snail mail fan letter from her techno nerd husband. ;-)

Thanks for all the chuckles and keep em commin' okay?

J. Warren Richardson for Doris in Grand Prairie, Texas

P.S., both your addresses are in Outlook, now. Dori has had and forgotten several nifty ideas for your Pluggers Cartoon, but now I have an organized a way to forward them to you pard, while they are still fresh. wr

This Email was from Warren Richardson of Grand Prairie, Texas

Blue tooth is NOT necessarily a good choice, sir

 

Dear Jim,

 

Your article in the Dallas Morning News business section extolling the use of a Blue tooth device to solve the tech help inquiry of your article, failed to mention the security issues that revolve around that particular device.

Last year after watching a guy who helped found DARPA's Internet connectivity; and who now has an all hard line (no wireless allowed) connected security service operating out of an old Minuteman Silo in Wales use a Donagle on a laptop - hack into a Blue tooth enabled mobile phone, and have it call him back so he could share the unknowing conversation between the mobile owner and a bank executive: I got one of those antenna and a couple books including Blackjack by Daniel Hoffman and just for the hell of it I hacked a fellow coffee shop patron (the only time I tried this prank) and listened to part of a conversation between her and her secrete lover, as it turns out, whupps! I pulled the Donegle and crushed and threw it away once I found out how easy it is for a technically challenged PC user to hack a Blackberry enabled phone with just a few pages of text from a how-to recipe book in mind.

I do not recommend that anyone EVER enable Blue tooth on their phones or comm devices EVER. And have gone retro to the point that none of our Internet routers that come stock with an antenna - have them from the moment they are unboxed - opting instead for Etheternet hard wired connections ONLY. One only needs to read their device number code off the bottom of them to connect up to ones devices - so the no brains- automatic connection protocol is not needed by those who use wireless; a little known factoid that I suspect has spread the use of wireless blue tooth automatic hook up on computers, too.
Blue tooth wireless connectivity is fully compromised - don't use it - don't recommend anyone uses it, please. In addition, from the stupidity anyone can see on the roads and highways - enabling anyone to talk on the phone while driving is probably aiding and abetting second degree manslaughter and which is why so many municipalities have outlawed Mobile phone usage around schools.

What you are promoting is why I once tried becoming an ex pat. I was and still am sick to death of amoral Americans who do things because they CAN without ever asking the moral question as to whether they SHOULD. The studies have long ago lost further funding because it is now such a well know fact - Driving while talking on a phone is about equivalent to being impaired by six drinks. Don't drink and drive and don't stupidly talk on the phone and drive with the attention span of a drunk, ever. Yeah, sure I've heard it before, you're at your best with a few belts, anyway. Tell that to the parents of run over kids.

This Email was from Warren Richardson of Grand Prairie, Texas

AOL's Free Email Addresses

Because Yahoo! has decided that because I send
emails to single recipients in the To: address line;

and several more to Bcc (Blind carbon copy) such

that I'm not spreading everyone's address over the

entirety of the Internet - that I am a spammer. So

I have started phasing Yahoo! personas for ecology,

politics, Property Owners' Association, PC basics,

etc out from under their anti-spam suppression policy
guidelines by finding other venues from which to

operate my bully pulpit.

   If you are looking for a high quality email service

you can't go too far astray if you look up

www.mail.com and look through their themes for

a domain address that you might find of use. This

one seems to work just fine; especially the spell

checker which no email composition service should

be without (hee sez wid tung n teef).

   It's powered by AOL and AOL's AIM dude icon
shows up all around their open page, but it works
pretty good, so far. Take a mo' and hover your

cursor over the assorted icons and links around

a mail.com page to see pop up messages and use

of resources under them. All the most used tools

are there for you.

   I admit that I know I'll miss Yahoo! which I have used

loyally from since I made a pile o'bucks during the
tech stock bubble of a decade ago. But they've grown

crotchety in their advanced years and it's time to

divorce my time and attention from them and find

more supportive venues to communicate via. I
definetly will NOT miss all the dumb animated ads
one has to learn to be blind to to get anything

useful done when using Yahoo! Especially the

helium breathing models with plastic boobs shaking
their hair; albeit I havn't used this new service for

very long and who knows, they may be spread all

over all the "Free" email services paid for by

venders of helium breathing babe style ads.

   If you opt to use mail.com's services, be aware

that they are aggressively redirecting you to third

party offers like the part-time jobs ads at the top

of their pages. If you  pay 2 bucks to see DVD offers
for free part-time pc work or whatever, ignore their

attempts to get you to up sell to $19 buck a month

credit card account services at least until after you
receive their loss leader DVD part-time work offer

and review THAT first.

10/24/2009 End

Thumbs down on Bingo.com

Warren's Ymail
      Desktop

Hello Computer Mavens and those that want to be,

Whilst trying to find/remember the link on my Information Not Spam Blog a glitch hit my computer named "Bingo.com" I never authorized Microsoft to make it's beta or mainstream search engine, Bingo,  my default search engine (which it appears to have done the last time Vista did a 3 A.M. automatic update) and I certainly prefer Google above all others because it has no need to completely reinvent itself every couple years, like Microsoft is bent to do. Bing.com did not have my website spydered and proceeded to error message my screen like mad and opened every sort of alternative link imaginable. So I blocked it - Period!

If Bingo is likewise a pain in your deriere - O - here's how to get it out of your web browser's system.

On the right side of your browser's tool bar is a tool named "Tools" Click it and then open "Internet Options;" Select "Security;" Once it is open select "Restricted Sites." It should open with http://www.bingo.com in its input box; Hit Okay. If it has nothing in the input box, click on the box and then type *.bingo.com and enter that; then go back to pain free surfing.

To: http://www.pc-basics.blogspot.com/

CC's: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Information-NotSpam/

Bcc's: et al

-

I took a ride with Crome Web Browser

 From the Desktop of 

J. Warren Richardson

 

This weeks, "A PC Basics Blog" upload.  <basictips.4you@blogger.com>

-

This weekend I took time to really wring out my copy of Google's Chrome Web Browser ( http://www.google.com/chrome ) as well as Google Earth ( http://earth.google.com/ ). 

-

I like Chrome's stealthy feature the most; which they call "Incognito" - lots less spam after using it for going on three days, now, albeit I always erase everything under their Wrench toolbar icon's drop down menu list which is similar in function to MS IE's "Safety" drop down menu list in their functions. Chrome is also somewhat faster in its loading new web content function than is Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, in my opinion. 

-

Web pages that have the underline to a link turned off (for aesthetic reasons) however, are made visible by Chrome. That is just a little niggler complaint about it, though. The other gripe is that it is prone to being invisible to Yahoo's font size controls. You get what ithey were the last time you penned an email... Which is why this email is in 8 point font size, period. Somehow I doubt if that will be a problem in version 6, not yet released. One cool feature is the ease that one can import ones Explorer Favorite's into their Chrome browser; bypassing the need to reinvent ones most liked links (it can be edited during the download to weed out old links one has no use for anymore, too.).

-

On balance, so far I think Chrome is well worth taking a look at as ones default web browser or as the browser of choice if one is a gamer or video feed or social networking or cute, animated ecards maven; which are the current four most favorite places for viri implants. (Both Chrome and MS Internet Explorer work side by side on my pretty-fast Quad PC with FiOS Internet access.). Can't beat Chrome's price - it is free via download. It has a secondary advantage of being more secure from hackers than Microsoft's Explorer due to it's relatively recent, growing popularity as a free platform as opposed to the knee jerk hatred that many hackers have against Bill Gates and Microsoft in general. Their #1 position and well deserved reputation as ruthless, trust busted market share raiders is why, for those who don't understand this love/hate relationship between the general public, or hackers and MS.

-

While I sympathize with those who've been victimized by Microsoft; it remains the most 3rd party friendly software platform on the market. However - Chrome is too young on the scene to have had any serious hacks done to its Open Source Code or its security features and especially if in Stealth Mode - it's is the best bet for heavy surfers and those who like a lot of video feeds or on-line gaming; the favorite hide out for malicious mal-ware, worms and Trojan viri. I recommend that one at least try Chrome for a few days to find out for themselves simply because of or for its speedier page and image loading merits. wr

CC: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback

Google's Crome Browser makes going stealthy a No-Brainer.

 Warren's Ymail

      Desktop

Hello!

-

Boy! Do I like Google's Crome Web Browser!

Even though I use Verizon Yahoo! for my gateway service - it works without a hiccup... anyway.

Their Incognito feature is Sooo Cool, too!

-

I just - just now learned how to use this and several other features of this platform aimed at Netbooks in the near future by doing nothing more than clicking on the list of tutorial video titles. Check 'er out friends. 

A serious streaming or download video vulnerability in Windows XP

 Warren's Ymail
      Desktop

Today's Computing Topic is about a serious streaming or download video vulnerability in Windows XP. XP Student, Home, Office and Premium are a popular operating system that many computer users have kept or used to overwrite Vista when it came on stream from Microsoft over the past two years in order to do away with that heftier, sometimes bug ridden upgrade. XP has the well earned reputation of being a solid, bug fixed and bug free Op System. In the interim it seems that hackers have found a vulnerability in the otherwise solid XP computer operating system...

-

In yesterday's Dallas Morning News was a short column broadcasting an announcement from Microsoft that admits to this security hole in the remote video viewing stub in its XP version of Internet Explorer. Hackers can and have infected several video websites and when one links their XP or MS Server 2003 controlled browser to these infected sites, one opens a breach past their Internet Defender or Third Party Firewall into ones computer system. Once the video feed opens on your computer, a worm is inserted into your computer system and eats into the resources targeted by hackers; information managers; address books; financial data, Internet addresses; key stroke counting (the primary way that passwords are copied); they can even use your computer as part of a larger on-line network super-computer for interruption of service attacks, without you knowing it, etc.

-

Please go to Microsoft's Update website and read their notice in full and download and install any remedy that may be offered at this time. http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/ Be sure that once your browser redirects to the correct Op System for downloading, for your PC, that the security lock becomes visible at the bottom of your browser. The only alternative is to install Vista on your computer. Microsoft is offering a free upgrade to Operating System 7 when it becomes available in the unspecified future if you buy and install Vista at this time.

-

Warren Richardson's PC-Basics Blog can be found at:

http://pc-basics.blogspot.com/

Or email to: basictips.4you@blogger.com

How to Copy and Paste Online Images to Folders.

 From the Desktop of 
J. Warren Richardson

 

 Greetings Copy and Paste Mavens and Want to be Copy and Paste Mavens,
-

I received no less than three responses so far to an email posted yesterday about difficulties with copy and paste of a number of family heritage pictures from online to their computer's folders. Below are five screen shots as to how to do this fundamental cycle of action. It essentially are the same basic cycle of action for ANY object on one's computer or network computer or Internetwork computer; be it document or file or open web page object.

-

That is to say: "The function of copy and paste are the same for all objects on all computers either yours or one you are observing through a network or the Internet on your desktop or laptop screen; whether using an IBM Clone or a Mac or Linux machine..." This fact applies to email editors and open "Windows" editors, too. One can copy an object by highlighting it or clicking on it and then copy it to computer dynamic memory and then paste it to another open document or directory using the same basic cycle of action for all of these functions. Below is an example:

-
Yesterday I followed the URL (the Internet Address) that was supplied in an email. By clicking the Internet Address my web browser was able to open the below folder in a domain website. It followed the address and "drilled down" to the directory address that was supplied and opened it.. Note that all of the several image names in it were listed. I selected the last one, on the bottom of the folder list:

-
I hovered my cursor over the last image name and clicked my mouse to open it. The term for doing this is called "Selecting"... an object opens when it is singled out and the right mouse button (for PC Clones) or single button is clicked by Mac Users. I will henforth limit this description to use of the term "Select.":
2)

-

Now that the image is open and I decide to keep it for my own files I outside mouse click my mouse in order to open a pop-up menu. Note there are several options. In this case I selected "Save Picture As:"
3)

-

Ah! Now my computer's file and folder manager opens to the last place it was opened the last time I copied a picture from the Internet into it. To save the picture into a folder of my preferences I follow the folder names and shortcuts to the home for this particular series of images. In this case it's a shortcut to....:
4)

-
In this case I have a sub-folder in a family round robin project. The sub-folder's name is Submersibles:
5)

by hovering and clicking my cursor over the Submersibles folder icon - the "Save" Radio Button becomes 'Active'. Click that and the image is saved in that folder. You can do this folks. It's that simple and very organized for those hundreds of images that all of us save over time.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Clearing out Temporary Internet Junk once and for all.

 From the Desktop of 
J. Warren Richardson

 

 .

I received a help message from a friend who had upgraded to MS Internet Explorer version 8. It has changed in subtle ways such that my friend could not easily delete the cookies and forms that he had learned to remove per my instructions a number of years ago, as before. Below are two illustrations that point the way for easier deletion of ones pesky cookies, forms, and other intrusive items saved to ones own computer. Some objects are dinosaur items, from when computing on the Net was done only on dial-up snail slow modems; they would use graphics over and over again, stored on your PC, as one drilled down into a web provider's pages and saved the time it took to refresh these pages, a lot.

.

Some of the stuff saved in your PCs Temporary Internet Folder (and other folders created by the websites you visit) are modern inventions that all but count your key strokes to keep track of what you do on the Internet. The worst of these are Forms, Passwords and some cookies, closely followed by "InPrivate Filtering Data." If your Internet service is fast (ours is faster than our network card can keep up with making the page refresh rate almost instant) you don't need to save any of this rubbish, in my humble opinion, once your Internet Session is DONE. In addition, since every session means you'll be picking up additional objects, after a while your PC will be slower and slower due to Explorer having to sort through all the junk to find the latest items it needs each time you change web pages.

.

The Temporary Internet Folder used to be under the "Tools" legend in MS Internet Explorer 7 and earlier. Now to get rid of these items, once your session is about to close you'll find the feature you want under "Safety" on the Tool Bar. For example, after closing out of my Yahoo! email account I do and recommend that you do the following. Click the "Safety" legend and a drop down menu will open. Click "Delete Browsing History."

.

Now a new pop up window opens. You'll notice that mine has all of the lower check boxes checked. I don't want ANYTHING being left in my Temporary Internet Folder or forms folders or other intrusive third party folders that are created without my knowledge. That's based on years of experience in getting weird widgets and outright hacks to go away.

Bottom Lines - If you have a fast Internet Connection and if your web browser won't work effortlessly without having all the above boxes checked after your sessions are over and you hit the Delete Radio Button after the last session - change your Internet Service Provider because the term "Temporary" is not understood by their programmers or they have a hidden agenda buried in their "terms of service" which affects their financial bottom line. It is no accident when you find 50 spam emails after shopping for a fishing rod for your kid - offering everything from discount fishing poles to rocket assisted sling boosters for the longest casts on record. They* watch your Internet Usage like hawks my friend. Delete that junk. Period.

*"They" are, Legislators, Domain Providers, Hackers, Entertainment sites, game sites, social networks, email services, list makers, criminals, perverts, traders, sellers, buyers, charities, churches, sex sites, fund raisers, scam artists, match makers, silly eGram sites, newspapers, eMagazines, special interest groups, all Blog sites, all "Free" sites and services, sports sites, and just about any other topic one could think of on the fly. The primary source of revenue being sold on the Internet are lists of special interests by web page use trackers to commercial interests that want to target their markets. Every commercial website has the means to gather your choices on the Net and send them back to their list mining servers. The amount of money per thousand names is pennies but at last count the number of names listed daily is billions. It's all automated. Deleting your sessions is your only legal defence; if you were to actually read and understand the Terms of Service Agreement you checked as having read when you use new Internet Services you'll find that is your ONLY option, except not using the Internet at all.

 

How to turn off unwanted mobile phone charges from third paty services.

Good news mobile phone phanz!

.

Turning off unwanted media services that likewise automatically upgrade their so-called fun features to PAID fun features turned out to be a bit easier than one would think at first teeth grinding recognition that they had appended themselves to ones' monthly mobile phone bill. It's bad enough that they don't enthrall one when they come at inconvenient times - they have to sneak up when you are not looking and CHARGE for them, too?

.

Total time from keying in AT&T's 611 costomer service line till thanks and a hang up - 4.5 minutes.

Link saving techinque

 From the Desktop of 
J. Warren Richardson

  

...Hey there cousin,

.

Got <your> Facebook Relative Confirmations. Love your newborn baby pix. I've <highlighted, copied and pasted> all three link categories into my Outlook info manager, too. For the record, I use a parallel on line technique to save this kind of data <on line with my> Yahoo! <account> as well. I have a folder named "Cousins" that I move emails <with links I want to keep> into. That way I can access them on line with my wife's <wireless equipped> laptop when I visit mom and she can look at the families' current raft of pictures and ancestry trees with me when I visit her on Sundays... It is always a nostalgia trip she enjoys very much.

.

At home, on the desktop I can access these links and capture images for the SD Chip round-robin project and for my own family trees on Facebook and Ancestry.com as well. If I'm in hurry I just screen capture them with a free utility from Downloads.com and later crop them with MS photo and fax viewer utiltiy instead of downloading them or copying to disk. By the bye; I still am not a subscriber to Ancestry.com but our cousin Marlene Fink's having made an Editor of me for her paid subscription membership trees and your mon's upgrade for my status has allowed me to build my own tree into quite a large activity. I guess they consider my tree just another "new" stand alone one of one of those two. The downside is that many of their convenient widgets don't work for me. If you don't want to pay for an expensive membership - you might get your mom to update you to an editor, as well.

.

Thanks,

.

CuzDude Warren

A plain facts article about email attachments

 

Today, in the Dallas Morning News Business Section there was an excellent article about email attachments targeted at those whom may have a bit of trouble with these pesky, useful things. Here is the link to that article: 

How to handle e-mail attachments
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, April 3, 2009
Jim Rossman is technical manager for Macintosh support for A.H. Belo Corporation

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/jrossman/stories/DN-p2techadviser_03bus.ART.State.Edition1.4ab8612.html

 

P.S., be sure to click the X in your pop-up blocker bar when you first go to Dallas Morning Newsite's. Getting their pop-up ads to stop if you fail to do that right off the get-go can be pretty irritating. They have plenty of side bar ads; I don't understand why their pop-up ads have to stick to you like flypaper. I use their news feed enough that I've permanently blocked their pop-up ad websites from feeding on my screen at all. DMN's articles and content are usually pretty good, otherwise. wr

MS Live Workspace Confessions

Recently I've encouraged my cousins to join up on a family heritage shared workspace project. I initiated an inquiry of my cousins after the picture share site many of us use announced that soon it would start charging dues for that service. (Ad refenues are down in every media including the Net.). This group of cousins have discovered we each have a tremendous picture collection of our family heritage in which the others share an interest. My oldest 1st cousin has lead the way in productivity on-line, so far. We now have each others Workspace on each others' desktops. Other cousins are popping in from time to time. I have no doubt that soon their Live WorkSpaces will soon also be on our mutual desktops. This beginning family project has been just great.

~

However, I've naively allowed Microsoft Office to "update" Live Share Features, to facilitate my production on the project. I have a confession - my PCs MS Word, Outlook and Excel programs went south when I let that gazillion pound gorilla Microsoft update my Live Share tools. I wanted to upload and work on Word Files and Excel files from any location I found myself in and threw in the towel and let them append a widget to Outlook, too. (They could not update the PowerPoint Presentation viewer because it's a free Open Source program from competitor, Sun Microsystems.). Whew.

~

Immediately after that my tried and true everyday programs all started giving me fits. Yesterday and last evening were spent struggling with debugs and support center wastes of time. This morning I resorted to uninstalling any widget that had an installation date later than 2/26/2009; then I rebooted and prayed. My PCs MS Word, Outlook and Excel programs now appear to work normally, again.

~

Today I haven't tried to log into Live WorkSpace yet... Wanted to fess up to everyone that MS Office is promoting Office 2007 for $99.00 bucks as its solution to complaints that its Live Workspace clients and add-ons crashed perfectly functional copies of its older Office Tool version(s) I.E. Word 2000 and Outlook and Excel 2004.. This goes to show even us ole power heads get bugged, too (which is the point of this post). Thought I'd let you all in on this little factoid. Read it and weep. "Freeware" has its issues, too. Microsoft appears to be a leading proponent of using Free Services to twist ones arm to buy Office Upgrade Packages. I can't fault them for wanting to keep cash flowing. Market share battles are live or die in today's realities. While others will benefit by upgrading - I'm not in the mainstream workforce anymore and my tools do the job that I need done very well indeed. Besides our budget is stretched too thin to opt in.

~

Having said that, their Live Workspace is still a great resource for collaboration projects. One has to be careful that one does not give MS Office marketing botts too much slack or they appear to take all the rope. To mix metaphors; The lesson is, take it all with a grain of salt. jwr

Plus or Minus Webpage Views

Today's Windows Vista tip of the moment involves using your keyboards' Control Key and Pressing the + (Plus) key on the right side of the keyboard to enlarge the view of content in an open Window. To exit this view... Press a Control Key and the - (Minus) Key also on the right side of the keyboard. This is a backwards compatible global command for XP, as well. Your view will enlarge depending on your customized pre-settings for your PC. For those with only default view settings the change is substantial. Try it out. Right now.. :-)

~

Here's a link to basic PC use and tips. http://www.pc-basics.blogspot.com/

English Version of Google Search Bug

I some how missed the announcement that the (former) correct web address for Google was no longer www.google.com which Used to default to the English language opening search page. It is now http://www.google..com/intl/en/ if you don't want something in French or who knows what to open. I've had to remove a whole bunch of shorcuts, scattered here and there, including my favorites link to Google, once I found out that it would Not open in English no mater what I did without the above address.