I have long been a proponent of defragging your hard drive. “What is this?” you ask. Well, defragmentation is a process that physically reorganizes the information on your hard drive so that it can be accessed in a more efficient manner. I liken this procedure to alphabetizing your address book. It just saves time.
Now defragging is a relatively simple task. There are software tools built into Windows & Mac OS X, however there are also lots of freeware and paid alternatives. Dennis O’Reilly of CNET posted an article describing the virtues of defragmentation as well as providing detailed information about the process. He recommends a free tool called Auslogics Disk Defrag which is especially beneficial for Windows Vista/7 users but works on other versions of Windows as well.
Windows XP built-in defragmentation utility
Whenever I work on a computer, especially after I’ve installed software or downloaded updates, I defrag. Doing this regularly (which means at least once a week on an often-used computer) will almost certainly contribute positively to long-term performance and reliability of your computer. No one is ever warned to defrag their computer as they are to change the oil in their car. Nonetheless, it is becoming more widely accepted and is evangelized as a great way to help maintain your computer.
Over the past 15 years I’ve watched the the Web develop beyond my wildest expectations. My first experiences online with Internet Explorer 2.0 were of static websites, some with unusual colors, and many with blinking text. Of course in the halcyon days of 1995 I wasn’t spending a great deal of my time online. If my browser was not crashing, then my dial-up connection through Prodigy would drop unexpectedly. Given that I could barely get my computer to work, I was not one of those people spending a lot of time contemplating how software should change and evolve. I was just happy to be along for the ride.
More than a decade has gone by since the Web/Internet has become a household word in America. In some ways very little has changed in that most of us access the Web the same way we did in the beginning, with our computer and a browser (though all this is changing with smartphones). Nevertheless, the Web is becoming more ubiquitous yearly and the paradigm of what it means to be “plugged in” is changing.
I’ll spare you a long and in depth editorial about how this technology has changed our lives. No doubt you’ve probably already pondered this societal transformation at some point. Instead, today I would simply like to make a few suggestions for safer downloads. Specifically, I’m talking about the software you download and install on your computer. There has been a wealth of games and utilities available for PCs long before the Internet became widely popular. Even then there was the possibility that an application could contain a virus. Today the threat is enormous and the cost to the computer owners (and the general public) is much greater. Instead of a virus displaying an annoying message or deleting files, the newest strains are created to take control of your computer and to steal your assets, like your identity.
The only foolproof way to eliminate your exposure to threats on the Web is to avoid going online completely. However this is hardly an option for most of us. The next best way is to follow some simple guidelines. Leo Laporte, the well-known talk show host and tech enthusiast, offers several tips to listeners of his syndicated program.
“…3. Don’t download files from places you aren’t absolutely sure are safe. Stick with the well known sites. Teenagers who use file sharing software like Bit Torrent, Azureus, Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, and Limewire, often unwittingly download spyware and trojans. If you must, quarantine all downloads then scan them a few days later with an updated anti-virus…”
Source: The Tech Guy Labs
If you have the time, it can’t hurt to read all of Leo’s recommendations. All the same, I want to emphasize downloads because this is how most viruses/spyware/trojans/etc. are able to infect a system. It is directly through our own actions that our vulnerabilities are exposed. Which brings me to the point of this post: ONLY DOWNLOAD FILES AND APPLICATIONS FROM TRUSTED SOURCES! What are some examples of trusted sources?
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Download.com – (site owned and operated by CNET, a CBS subsidiary)
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ZDNet Downloads (site owned and operated by ZDNet, also a CBS subsidiary)
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PC World Downloads (site owned and operated by PC World Communications)
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Tucows (one of the oldest software sites on the Internet, owned by Tucows Inc. a web services company)
These are very large repositories which probably satisfy 90% of any computer user’s software needs. If you’re curious about an application or just eager to try some new software, use these sites as your first supplier. They vet the software publishers and their downloads to make sure they are safe and free from viruses/spyware/trojans.
Do you remember when email was fun? There was a time when it was a great thrill to dial-up to the Internet, log into your email account, and sift through the handful of messages from friends and family. Then about the same time the world was supposed to collapse because of a programming anomaly which would be unable to account for the millennial switch to 2000, email started to fall apart. I trace the downfall of email to this time because I specifically remember the ILOVEYOU email worm infecting the computers at the software company where I was working in May 2000. As quickly as this worm spread through the 300+ computers at our office, it was also affecting millions of computers worldwide. Suddenly email no longer seemed so innocent or so easy.
Email is a tool that predates the Web (not the Internet), but it wasn’t until the 1990s that it made its way into the mainstream. Individuals quickly gravitated towards the novel medium as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family over long distances. Businesses too were impressed with the technology as a way of managing work flow and avoiding superfluous phone calls.
Over time businesses, especially marketing firms, have usurped the utility of email. These days we are all very accustomed to email as a tool for work, yet it seems that the amount of personal messages sent has diminished. Perhaps I am wrong but certainly personal email has given way to ever shorter communiqués through instant messaging, texting, and of course social media. Where email was once thought of as a replacement for the personal letter, it has become a device mainly for sales purposes.
So why this (d)evolution? Well, I think the reasons are fairly clear. In the beginning email was novel and exciting. We didn’t have nearly the same volume of email flooding our inboxes so it was more pleasurable for us to exchange messages with friends and family. As businesses began to comprehend the utility of email and computers grew as part of everyone’s daily life, it became more associated with work. And along with the work email came a flood of SPAM. It is hard to over emphasize the negative impact this has had on email.
It is now 2010 and email has forever changed. Even though there are tools to help prevent SPAM and ways to make email more secure, these problems persist. For the majority of people email is a means to an end, nothing more. Letters and cards are still exchanged via the postal service, but when something needs to get done quickly we send an email.
Author’s Footnote: It is very difficult to find current free and accurate information about worldwide email usage. I have tried searching via a variety of methods and terms for analysis and forecasts. Using the queries like “worldwide email volume,” “worldwide email statistics,” “worldwide email usage,” and their variants return similar results. It would appear that there is not a lot of funding for public studies in recent years. There are several companies such as IDC that sell reports for upwards of $3000. The best guess I can make from the many websites that I visited is that roughly 60 billion emails are sent every day. And I have heard estimates that up to 80% of email is SPAM. Please feel free to comment or to send me any further information you’ve seen published.
Source for More Information: