Geek Housecalls blog has moved to GEEKABLOG.COM, the official blog of Geek Housecalls. To see the latest posts from Geek Housecalls, click here to go to Geekablog.com.
All posts from this blog have been reposted at geekablog.com.
The Geek Housecalls Blog Has Moved to GEEKABLOG.COM
Filed under Uncategorized
Make your kids tech-savvy with the PeeWee Pivot 2.0 – Uberphones
New tablet PC has all the goodies but especially notable (to this geek) is the waterproof keyboard. Should do wonders for longevity with kids at the helm.
Full story here: Make your kids tech-savvy with the PeeWee Pivot 2.0 – Uberphones.
Filed under random stuff
Facebook and MySpace to Make Joint Announcement Today
Technology-based blog, covering breaking technology news, interviews, reviews, and everyday topics.
Filed under random stuff
Thinking About Hiring A Geek Company For Your Home? Read The Fine Print!
If you’re thinking about hiring a geek company to provide tech services in your home, do yourself a favor and take a moment to review the contract terms posted on their website before you welcome them into your home. I found this “gem” on a competitor’s website:
“Client agrees that the service technician is an independent contractor whose services were arranged for by <competitor’s name here> and that <competitor> does not have control over the manner in which the technician performs his or her services.”
So let’s get this straight. The service provider contracts an independent technician to go into your home and do whatever, and the service provider has no responsibility for what that technician does?! Wow!
Just to be clear:
- All Geek Housecalls technicians are employees of Geek Housecalls.
- Geek Housecalls is responsible for the techs,
- Geek Housecalls is responsible for the quality of work,
- and Geek Housecalls is responsible for the satisfaction of our clients!
Want to know more? Visit our website or read our Customer Terms and Agreement.
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WAS THIS ARTICLE HELPFUL? PLEASE SCROLL DOWN AND LEAVE A COMMENT!
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This article was written by Andy Trask, Head Geek at Geek Housecalls, the New England area’s original traveling computer geeks, on the web at www.geekhousecalls.com. Geek Housecalls specializes in “anything computer” and, since 2001, has become the trusted in-home computer and technology support provider for over 15,000 families and small business computer users in eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and southern New Hampshire. For help with your computers, gadgets, or network at home or at the office, click here to contact Geek Housecalls via the web, or call toll free:
1-877-4PC-GEEK (1-877-472-4335)
Filed under Consumer Alerts, Good Advice
An Experiment with Google Instant
So have you used google lately? (Dumb question… who hasn’t?)
Just not sure I like Google Instant. Seeing all that extra stuff come up as I type is a bit disconcerting. On the other hand, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I always do (eg “you will be assimilated”). Frankly, I think it’s the combination of suggested search completions (the stuff that drops down under the search box) and instant search results together, that just feels awfully sloppy.
I was wondering why google would choose to pummel their users with both sets of information so decided to try a little experiment and see what google suggests for search completions vs. search results for the 26 letters of the alphabet. Now theoretically these results would vary depending on your location and proximity to different businesses and cities and such, but for my searches here in burlington ma, here’s what I got for top three completions and top three results for each letter. I’ve laid it out in the format of:
letter - completion, completion, completion/result, result, result
(see more notes at the bottom of the listing)
A – amazon, aol, apple/ amazon.com, amazon.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/amazon.com
B – boston, bank of america, best buy/ cityofboston.gov, bostonusa.com, boston-online.com
C – craigslist, cnn, comcast.net/ boston.craigslist.org, craigslist.org, boston.craigslist.org
D – dictionary, droid x, dcu/ google.com/ig, dictionary.reference.com, merriam-webster.com
E – ebay, espn, expedia/ ebay.com, ebay.com, motors.ebay.com
F – facebook, facebook login, fifa/ facebook.com, facebook.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/facebook
G – gmail, google maps, google.com/ mail.google.com, google.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gmail
H – hotmail, hulu, home depot/ signup.live.com, live.com, microsoft.com
I – ikea, imdb, inception/ ikea.com, ikea.com, ikea.com
J – jet blue, jordans furniture, jobs/ jetblue.com, jetblue.com, twitter.com/jetblue
K – kohls, kiss 108, kayak/ kohls.com, kohls.com, kohls.com
L – lowes, lost, linkedin/ lowes.com, lowes.com, lowes.com
M – mapquest, myspace, msn/ mapquest.com, mapquest.com, ezdrivingdirections.com
N – netflix, national grid, nstar/ netflix.com, netflix.com, netflix.com
O – orbitz, old navy, overstock/ orbitz.com, orbitz.com, orbitz.com
P – pandora, petco, powerball/ pandora.com, pandora.coom, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pandora
Q – quotes, qvc, quebec fires/ brainyquote.com, wisdomquotes.com, quotationspage.com
R – red sox, rei, red sox schedule/ redsox.com, boston.redsox.mlb.com, bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/red_sox
S – sears, staples, skype/ sears.com, sears.com, sears.com
T – target, twitter, td bank/ target.com, target.com, sites.target.com
U – ups, usps, utube/ ups.com, ups.com, ups.com
V – verizon, verizon wireless, verizon.net/ verizon.com/fios, verizonwireless.com, verizon.com
W – weather, walmart, white pages/ weather.com, weather.com, intellicast.com
X – xbox, xkcd, xm radio/ xbox.com, xbox.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xbox
Y – yahoo, youtube, yahoo mail/ yahoo.com, mail.yahoo.com, search.yahoo.com
Z – zillow, zappos, zip codes/ zillow.com, zillow.com, twitter.com/zillow
Soooo… aside from the fact that it reads like a who’s who of both online and brick & mortar entities, it seems to me that the suggested completions are more useful as they don’t repeat, whereas the organic instant search results shown are often just a page full of repeat sites for a single company that “owns” the top organic results for that particular search.
What do you think?
Filed under random stuff
Computer Repair Service in Bedford, Weston, Concord, Newton, Wellesley, Lexington, and Providence RI by Geek Housecalls
Geek Housecalls has been providing expert friendly computer repair service in Bedford, Weston, Concord, Newton, Wellesley, Lexington, and Providence RI since 2001.
As part of our commitment to local service, Geek Housecalls is creating new local web pages for each of these towns that capture the local flavor and offer a little insight into the history of computer repair service in each town. For a sample of the upcoming websites, check out our page for Winchester, MA. Additional local computer repair pages are also being created for:
Filed under about us
What is this Conflicken’ Thing??
Conficker?
Conflicker?
DownAndUp?
It’s all so confusing, but whatever the name, the worm is the same. Here’s the scoop (for simplicity of reading, I’m going to just refer to it as Conflicker)
Conflicker has been around for a while, and in fact has three known variants (versions), A, B, and C. The much-hyped event that’s anticipated for this April Fool’s Day is that a new variant, Conflicker_D will likely be deployed.
Backgrounder:
In general, Conflicker is a botnet type worm which means the way it works is to infect as many machines as possible and enable a “network” of sorts by allowing the worm’s author to connect to the infected machines through the Internet. Although no other payload has yet been discovered, it is assumed that any payload could be potentially delivered thanks to the fact that Conflicker allows its author to take control of infected machines remotely.
How does Conflicker get on your PC?
Unlike old-school virus that were transmitted via email or other so-called ‘viral’ methods, there is no social engineering or similar trickery required for your PC to become infected with Conflicker. That is, you don’t infect yourself by clicking or opening anything. In fact, all that’s required to get infected, is to be connected to the Internet and not have the latest patches (Windows updates) from Microsoft! This is because Conflicker gets into your machine through a security flaw in Windows, and if you don’t have the patch from Microsoft that closes up the flaw, your PC is susceptible to infection.
What are the symptoms?
Unfortunately for the unprotected and infected, there really aren’t any visible symptoms to speak of. Unlike old-school viruses that generally had a calling card then emailed themselves to all your friends and wiped out your hard drive, Conflicker remains more valuable to it’s author by being quiet, efficient, and undetected. The most common symptom that might alert you to a Conflicker infection is a virus scan reporting that you’re infected.
Why Conflicker?
Why is it valuable to somebody to infect all those (millions) of PCs and not do typical virus-like things such as destroy the machines? Think of it as a person or entity having control of all those machines to do whatever they please, whenever they please! For example, how much would access to those machines be worth on the black market to an unscrupulous organization that may want to harvest credit card or banking information, or use those machines to launch a DOS (Denial of Service) attack against a website. The possibilities for how those millions of machines could be put to use are endless, so what the author of Conflicker has done is created a high-value network of PCs that may include your own if you are infected, and may just be sold of to the highest bidder as a tool that’s not likely to be used for good.
How can you protect yourself?
If you have Windows automatic updates turned on, you’re probably already protected as Microsoft already released the updates that close the flaw back in October of 2008.
If you’re not sure, you can get updates from the microsoft update website by clicking this link: Windows Updates
It’s also a good idea to make sure your Antivirus program is up to date and perform a virus scan as all of the major Antivirus providers currently detect Conflicker variants.
Below is a short list of resources. You can find a more comprehensive list including technical research info at The Internet Storm Center/DSHIELD
Removal Instructions
Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007
Kaspersky:
http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/
BitDefender:
http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-1000462-en–Win32.Worm.Downadup.Gen.html
Trend Micro:
http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp
To be able to access Anti-Virus vendors and SANS, Microsoft and others, from an infected Conficker.C machine, TrendMicro suggests to use “net stop dnscache” from the command line
Sophos:
http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/51416.html
Removal Tools
Microsoft MSRT:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx
F-Secure:
ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/beta/f-downadup.zip
Symantec:
http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-011316-0247-99
McAfee:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
ESET:http://download.eset.com/special/EConfickerRemover.exe
BitDefender:
http://www.bdtools.net/
Kaspersky:
http://data2.kaspersky-labs.com:8080/special/KidoKiller_v3.3.3.zip
TrendMicro:
https://securecloud.com/support/sysclean
Sophos:
https://secure.sophos.com/products/free-tools/conficker-removal-tool-network/download (registration required)
This article was written by Andy Trask, Head Geek at Geek Housecalls, the New England area’s original traveling computer geeks, on the web at www.geekhousecalls.com. Geek Housecalls specializes in “anything computer” and, since 2001, has become the trusted in-home computer and technology support provider for over 15,000 families and small business computer users in eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and southern New Hampshire. For help with your computers, gadgets, or network at home or at the office, click here to contact Geek Housecalls via the web, or call toll free:
1-877-4PC-GEEK (1-877-472-4335)
Filed under Consumer Alerts, Good Advice
Peabody MA – North Shore Computer Society presents “Linux for the non-technical”
The following is a Public Service Announcement:
Maria Collins, Publicity Coordinator
NORTH SHORE COMPUTER SOCIETY PRESENTATION
“LINUX FOR THE NON-TECHNICAL”
Are you ready for Linux? Is this free operating system ready for the masses? On Thursday, March 12, the regular monthly meeting of the NSCS will be held with Joe Riess and Adam Diamond, Geek Housecalls Geeks, giving a presentation on how to buy and use a Linux computer, as well as information on do-it-yourself installations. Since 2001, Geek Housecalls has been providing convenient, high quality tech support to home computer users and families looking for something better than “just okay.” Geek Housecalls does Windows, . . . and Mac’s and Linux.”
The presentation will be held at Peabody Municipal Light Plant Auditorium, 201 Warren St. Ext., Peabody, at 7:00 p.m. All meetings are free and open to the public. Tech Talk Time will also be held – your chance to share your technical questions and answers.
More information can be found online at
or at our Toll Free Information Hotline at 888-955-NSCS.
The North Shore Computer Society, Inc. of Peabody, Massachusetts is a non-profit, public charity (501(c)(3) focused on Education, Support and Community. Its members come from over 60 communities in Massachusetts as well as a number of other states.
The North Shore Computer Society, Inc. of Peabody, Massachusetts is a non-profit, public charity (501(c)(3) focused on Education, Support and Community. Its members come from over 60 communities in Massachusetts as well as a number of other states.
Filed under Good Advice, Public Service Announcement
Internet Extortion: Who Did You Just Give Your Credit Card To??
Every day, thousands of computer users are being duped into handing over their credit card information in a transaction that looks and feels legit, but is heinously wrong.
There’s a relatively new class of fraudulent programs out there that are brilliantly engineered both technically and socially, and the result is a trail of compromised credit cards. These programs go by safe-enough sounding names like ‘XP Antivirus 2009′ and ‘Antivirus 360′. They typically find their way onto your machine through either misleading website ads, pop-ups, or downloads from so-called free music and game sharing sites.
Once on your machine, they promptly go to work, popping up real-looking virus scan screens, giving you dire warnings that your system is infected, and offering to download the ‘fix’ for a small sum such as $39 or $49. Should you fall for this, you will be brought to a shopping cart where you make the ‘purchase.’
Unfortunately, what you shortly discover is that the ‘fix’ does nothing, and more often than not, your computer becomes further infected with other related viruses and malwares and performance becomes degraded to the point where you may completely lose Internet access, or Windows may become so severely corrupted that it will no longer start up, or will fail shortly after startup either by freezing, or by displaying the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).
At Geek Housecalls, we probably get a dozen calls a day at this point from people whose systems have been corrupted by this vile malware, and with frightening regularity, they tell us that they’ve “‘already tried buying the fix and it didn’t work.’” It has not yet occurred to them that they handed their credit card over to a scam artist! Our advice to anyone that has done this is to run, not walk, to the nearest phone and contact your bank or credit card company - explain to them what has happened and they will advise you on the best course of action to take.
And your computer? well, it’s not going to fix itself. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, you may be able to remove the bug using tools available from help sites like majorgeeks.com, or you could completely wipe your system and reload windows and all your applications (make sure you back up any important data first!). Or if you prefer, you can hire a service company such as Geek Housecalls to clean up the infection for you.
This article was written by Andy Trask, Head Geek at Geek Housecalls, the New England area’s original traveling computer geeks, on the web at www.geekhousecalls.com. Geek Housecalls specializes in “anything computer” and, since 2001, has become the trusted in-home computer and technology support provider for over 15,000 families and small business computer users in eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and southern New Hampshire. For help with your computers, gadgets, or network at home or at the office, click here to contact Geek Housecalls via the web, or call toll free:
1-877-4PC-GEEK (1-877-472-4335)
Filed under By us, Consumer Alerts, Good Advice
Greek Haircuts?
So there I am, reviewing my google analytics for the past month and at least a little bit curious, I decide to go see why I’m getting so many referrals from a site called roy.nerdy.net I investigate and find this rather amusing account of an early morning run-in with one of our Geeksters…
Circuit City Store Closings and Liquidation Bad for Consumers
Yesterday, what some of us have feared for some time, finally came to pass. Technology retail giant Circuit City announced that they’ll begin store closings and liquidation this weekend. This follows too close for comfort on the heels of tech-retail-rival CompUSA’s failure around the same time in 2007. The failure of Circuit City to secure refinancing or a buyer has given them the unenviable distinction of being the largest retailer to succumb to the current crisis in consumer confidence and spending. On friday, Circuit City announced that it will shut down its remaining 567 stores, translating to a layof f of roughly 34,000 employees. Continue reading
Filed under By us, Consumer Alerts
