Cyber-blackmail and the Royal baby: online scams to watch out for this year - Yahoo! News UK

Cyber-blackmail and the Royal baby: online scams to watch out for this year - Yahoo! News UK:

'via Blog this'

First of all, don't click on any links sent by email promising anything about the Royal baby. Instead, do a net search and you are more likely to find legitimate links to Royal baby news.

If you haven't already, read the three tutorials on this site on backing up and restoring your computer, then back up your system and create your Rescue Disk, just in case your computer gets locked up by "ransomware", as mentioned in the article above.

You can read the first tutorial at:
http://www.deeplysimple.net/2009/03/backup-and-restore-your-system-drive.html

Links to the other tutes are in the first tute.

Have a safe 2013!

Check back on a web image using Google Images

Often, we come across images on the web that we'd like to share with like-minded people. However, it makes sense to check if the image is real before sharing so one doesn't end up with egg on the face. If you aren't very good at spotting edited images (also called photoshopped images), Google Images is a good way to find similar images and see if the image you are about to share has been doctored.

For example, I today came across this photograph, shared on a social network (I added the "FAKE" watermark so it isn't inappropriately shared from this blog):

I suspected this picture was fake so I decided to do a little investigating.

First, I right-clicked the picture and grabbed its URL:

Then I headed over to Google Images (click the link and you'll go there).

I clicked the camera icon in the search window:

I got a new screen that asked me to upload an image or paste a URL. I pasted the URL:

I hit the "Search" button and got a page that showed images similar to the one I had asked Google Images to find:

Looking at the "Visually similar images", I clicked the first one on the left and I found that the image had been lifted from Facebook's thank-you to its users upon crossing the 500 million user mark. The pic on the social network was therefore fake, since Facebook's thank-you was posted in 2010. A little bit of searching saved me a lot of embarrassment.

Cannot delete file - Access denied

I was over at a friend's place and he told me of a problem he was facing under Windows XP; he had a few files he wanted to delete, .avi and .mp4 video files, and every time he tried, he got an error message saying that access was denied. The error message also said the disk may be write-protected or the file may be in use by a program.

Of course, I searched the internet for solutions. I found several (maybe a few thousand) people who had encountered the problem but couldn't find the solution. I also found several blogs that offered solutions in terms of starting in safe mode, changing owners of the files, etc., but in this particular case the solutions either didn't work or couldn't be implemented because the options mentioned in the context menus mentioned in the solutions simply didn't show up.

After a bit of experimentation I found a technique that worked:

1. Rename each file and change the extension to .bak: To do this, open the folder containing the files you want to delete, right-click each file and select Rename, then change the .avi or .mp4 to .bak and hit Enter. If you don't see .avi or .mp4 in the file name, it's likely that your folder options are set to "hide known file extensions". You'll need to first change this option. To do this, follow the procedure given here. Then come back here and change the extensions as stated in this step.
2. When you hit Enter you'll get a warning saying that you might not be able to open this file if you change the extension. Click OK. You don't intend to use the file anyway, you're trying to DELETE it!
3. Once all files you want to delete are renamed with a .bak extension (you don't HAVE to rename the extensions to .bak, you can rename them to .old or anything you want, as long as you use only letters of the alphabet; .isofedupofthis works as well as .bak), reboot your computer.
4. When your computer restarts and you get back to your Desktop, navigate to the folder that contains the files you want to delete, select them and delete. Easy-peasy!

Do let me know if this technique doesn't work for you. 

Export Bookmarks in Firefox

It's a good idea to export your bookmarks (Favorites) from time to time so that you can import them later in case you change your browser or reinstall Windows.

Exporting your bookmarks is actually quite easy and this tutorial will have you exporting and saving your bookmarks for later retrieval in less than five minutes.

First, open Firefox, of course. Next, click the Bookmarks button in the Menu Bar at the top, then select Organise Bookmarks (It may be spelt "Organize" if you've installed Firefox with the default US English):

The Library window will open. Select "Import and Backup":

Select "Export HTML":

This is important because it saves your bookmarks in a format that can be used by another browser in case you decide to switch browsers.

When you click on "Export HTML", the familiar Save window will open:

Navigate to a drive other than C: if you have one and click Save. You can change the name of the file if you wish but leave the file type as HTML.

There, you're done!

Your bookmarks have been saved as an HTML file that can be imported into Firefox in case you reinstall Windows or if you switch to a different browser. The next tutorial will tackle importing an HTML bookmarks file into Firefox.

Convert VCD to MPG

This is so easy, I can't believe it's true. If you have any trouble converting with the method I suggest below, PLEASE comment and let me know that it doesn't work.

So someone gives you a VCD and you want to save the movie to your hard disk. Here's how you do it:

1. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the MPEGAV folder on the VCD
2. In that folder, you will find from one to several files that are named AVSEQ01 to 0 whatever, with the extension ".dat"
3. Copy and paste all those files into a folder on your hard disk
4. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to that folder, select the first file and hit F2, the function key
5. Change the .dat extension to .mpeg
6. Repeat for every .dat file you copied from the MPEGAV folder.

The files work perfectly in Windows Media Player and most film editors.

Reset your Yamaha keyboard

If you bought a Yamaha (musical) keyboard and messed with it so it doesn't do what it's been doing from the start (mine stopped playing the one-key chords), here's how to reset it to the factory default:

• Switch it off
• Keep the rightmost white key (the highest C) depressed
• Switch it on again, holding the C depressed for about ten seconds.

Your keyboard will revert to factory settings. Works for most Yamaha keyboards.

Don't do this if you've saved songs, settings, etc. This technique is purely to return your Yamaha keyboard to the state it was in when you bought it.

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