The Best Way to Choose a Computer Monitor Part 1

Choose a Computer Monitor to Fit Your Needs - Part 1

Your computer’s monitor can make or break your ability to work comfortably, enjoy high quality media and efficiently manage multiple processes simultaneously.   Yet many users choose their monitor based on what’s included in a package deal, or opt for the largest screen available within their budget.  While size does matter, there are several other factors to consider before choosing the screen you’ll be staring at for hours on end.


Before you get seduced by a 32” widescreen behemoth, keep in mind that the screen will likely be a few feet away from your face.  Make sure your desk big enough to handle that much viewing area without overwhelming your available space.

Remember when mom and dad warned you not to sit too close to the TV because it would hurt your eyes and give you a headache?   Sitting too close to a screen that’s a smidge too large may lead to eye strain.  If you’re going to be using the system for work and surfing the net, most find that 21-29” is ideal, depending on the distance between the screen and chair afforded by your desk.

There are additional factors that become more important when you increase the size of your screen.  Resolution (how many pixels there are on the screen) and pixel pitch (the distance between pixels) are the primary determinants of image clarity.  Think of pixels as tiny boxes that change color in order to formulate an image.  The more pixels per square inch on the screen, the sharper the image.  A low resolution on a large screen will equate to blurry image.  Smaller pixel pitch offers higher clarity.

The graphics card in your computer determines the quality of information that is sent to your monitor and the speed at which it’s delivered.  An older or low-end graphics card paired with a new, top-of-the-line monitor will decrease the monitor’s performance and compromise the clarity of image produced on the screen.  This means that most basic PC owners won’t get the full value of a super high resolution, large screen monitor without upgrading their computer’s graphics processing capabilities.

If you’re upgrading your monitor but not your PC, check the connection ports on your graphics card.  Digital Visual Interface (DVI) used to be very commonplace, but more monitors are dropping them in favor of High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connections.  Both support the data transfer required to watch high definition video, but DVI cables have pins that can get bent, require a separate audio connection for sound (HDMI transmits graphics and sound together) and lack default support for HDCP encryption (which may limit your ability to watch all HD content or blu-ray disks).  You can purchase a DVI to HDMI adapter, but it’s best to go with a monitor that offers multiple connection options.

DisplayPort connections are considered to be "up and coming."  They have a higher bandwidth (meaning they can transfer a larger “packet” of data at once) than DVI and HDMI.  These may be significant in the future, but haven’t taken off yet so don't worry if your monitor-of-choice doesn't support DisplayPort.

It’s very important to consider warranty when purchasing a monitor.  Most issues will be present right away, or appear within the first few months of use.  Make sure the monitor you choose has at least a 90-day, money back guarantee and a return policy free of restocking fees.  Parts-and-labor coverage should continue for another two to three years.  Read the fine print to confirm that there is coverage for the backlight and defective pixels.

Not all LCDs are created equal.  Stay tuned next week for all you need to know about different LCD options and new monitor technology like touchscreen and 3D capabilities.

Smartphone Driving Apps

Smartphone Driving Apps - The Best Out There

You certainly shouldn't ever use your phone to text while you're driving, and making calls is possible with Bluetooth but risky. However, there's no reason to turn off your Smartphone all the way while you're driving. USA Today reports on a few apps that make using a Smartphone in the car practical. Our computer repair Nerds checked them out so they could give you the scoop on Smartphone driving apps.


All Inclusive:  The first and one of the most full-featured is Waze. Waze has been making big ripples on the grid for a while now, even being featured in the recent Facebook Home launch. The app allows you to connect with other drivers sharing the same stretch of roads as you, while simultaneously being an excellent navigation tool, complete with maps. But the coolest feature is the ability to get exclusive traffic reports created by other Waze users. If another Waze user (or Wazer) sees a road hazard, police officer, or other relevant information, they can report it to the service and others in the area can take heed. The app also allows chatting between users, although you'd better let the person in the passenger seat take care of that responsibility! It's available for free for iPhone and Android

City Minded:  The next app is a bit more city-driving-focused. It's called ParkMe, and it does what its name promises. It will find you the closest and cheapest parking in the area, and shows you what's available right now. The prices will appear on a map and you can choose to navigate to the best one for you. It's free for both Android and iPhone

And if you have an iPhone and park in metered areas more often, Honk will allow you to check time remaining on your meter and provide directions back to your car when the time is up.

Performance in Mind:  All of these apps are great and can enhance your driving experience. But there's one more that blows the rest of the apps out of the water. We didn't include it at the top since there's a bit of a price attached: $69.95. It's called Automatic, and the price is actually for a hardware dongle that connects to your car's computer. It will work with just about any car sold in the US since 1996, but it upgrades it to a luxury car. Not only does it have a GPS app built in, but the link hardware lets you know how to drive better. It tells you when you brake roughly, speed, or accelerate too rapidly. Tweaking your driving can take hundreds off your gas bill. On top of that, it will call 911 if you're in a crash, saving precious time or possibly saving your life. And when that "check engine" light comes on, it will report what the status code means and tell you exactly how to fix it. If you can't fix it yourself, it will also locate nearby mechanics. If the problem is just the check engine light, you can turn off the light within the app. On top of all this, it automatically detects where you parked and can guide you back. If you share a car with someone, both of you can put the app on your phone and can coordinate car sharing from within it.

 

Make Money Online… No, Really

If I tell you that you can make money using the Internet without leaving your PJs, you’d probably expect me to continue with a sob story about a Nigerian prince or sell you a training course to be a stay-at-home medical transcriptionist. While “get-rich-quick” schemes abound, there do exist some legitimate portals to make a small but potentially steady income online.


Unfortunately, there are far more scams than there are legitimate avenues of income. Beware of any offer that requires you to supply a credit card, pay for “training,” or fork over a membership fee. Avoid doing a Google search for “make money online,” unless you want to test your ability to sniff out a shyster.

If you’re crafty: Do you have a talent for crafting something beautiful, delicious or unique? Etsy (www.etsy.com) is one of the most well known sites for talented and creative folks to sell their handcrafted gems. While the pool of fellow crafty sellers is large and joining the fray may be intimidating, Etsy attracts a huge following of potential buyers who are in the market for handmade goodies. From clothing (sewn, knitted, etc) to stationary to art and much more, anything you lovingly create can find a buyer at Etsy. There’s no membership fee. It’s $.20 to list an item for four months or until it sells and a 3.5% fee charged on the sale price, but it’s hard to argue with the exposure you can gain from their community of 15 million users. It’s got a classier feel than eBay and users trust that the products will be as advertised so you don’t have to mess with bidding or micromanaging your reviews to create credibility – just produce a high quality product and get it to buyers in a timely manner.

If you’re a know-it-all: Whether it’s professional expertise or just that you just know a lot about a lot of things, you can get paid for answering questions submitted through Just Answer (www.justanswer.com). Simply complete an online application and online profile, take a test to qualify your skill set and verify your credentials. Categories range from those you’d expect (legal, medical, technology, relationships, etc) to more diverse (dream interpretation, clock repair, etc). You can even request that a new category be created to accommodate your special branch of knowledge. Users submit questions and offer a value for the answer. If you successfully answer the question, the money offered by the submitter is credited to your “Expert earnings account.” Once your account has more than $20 in it you can cash out via PayPal.

If you have a quirky talent: Can you draw quick cartoons from any joke? Make up catchy jingles on a whim? Speak fluent pig latin? Offer up your services on fiverr (www.fiverr.com) for – you guessed it - $5 a pop.

If you have more time than money: You can do a bunch of odd jobs paying a few cents to a few dollars per task through Amazon Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com). They call it “Artificial Artificial Intelligence.” Some examples of available jobs are classifying or tagging images, translations, categorizing statements, reviewing and reporting how you feel about a web site or product, and basic data entry. The list of HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) is long though the rewards are small. The idea is that if you do enough small tasks it can add up to a more lucrative reward to offset your Amazon shopping habit. Do a good job and you can earn qualifications that will allow you to accept more advanced (and theoretically higher paying) jobs. Just browse their extensive library tasks that you think you can handle, submit your work and if the requestor approves your submission money is automatically deposited into your Amazon Payments account.

If you’re sure that your opinion matters: While taking online surveys certainly won’t make you rich, you can at least avoid the “secret shopper” scams via MindField Online (http://mindfieldonline.com). Their site doesn’t specify how much you should expect to earn per survey, only that once you’ve collected $5 you can request a payout via check, paypal or via Amazon Cashout. Members are invited to participate in surveys via email based on their qualifications so you have to wait for them to contact you with an offer. Survey participants are also automatically entered into drawings for cash and prizes.

Finally, if you have a skill, marketable service (pet sitting? Office organization?), or are available for rent (setting up for a party? Running errands?), consider listing yourself through a local online network such as Craigslist.

Facts about Google Fiber

Facts About Google Fiber - the internet service to rule them all

There's nothing Nerds love more than fast internet access everywhere, so that's why we've been excited to follow Google Fiber. They've just announced they'll be expanding to a new city, so we thought we'd take the time to share a little bit about the service with you.

Google Fiber is a project by Google to implement a fiber-optic network throughout an entire city, providing high-speed internet access anywhere. Google offers three options for people fortunate enough to be in one of the few cities where the network is implemented.


The first option is free, following Google's usual approach to their products. There's a one-time $300 construction fee to hook up the network to your house, but after that it's free. The speed of this plan is five megabits a second, which is just below the average internet speed in America. You can't beat free!

The second option is $70 a month, with no construction fee. The speed of this option clocks in at one gigabit a second, more than ten times faster than the average internet speed. It also comes with a one terabyte Google Drive, which will allow you to store and access your files from any of your devices using the Google Drive service.

The most expensive option includes television service as well, and comes with two terabytes of DVR storage, as well as a Nexus 7 Tablet. It costs $120 a month.

As enticing as these options are however, the service is only available in a few cities at the time of writing. The first, Kansas City, was installed in July of 2012. Since then Google has announced that they will expand the service to Olathe, Kansas; Austin, Texas; and Provo, Utah.

The choice of these cities was decided by an online selection process, but some cities took their plea to the next level. Greenville, South Carolina used people holding glowsticks to spell out "Google," visible from the sky. Topeka, Kansas temporarily renamed itself "Google," and an island in Sarasota, Florida was renamed "Google Island."

Nerds are excited to see this hyper-fast internet, as well as free internet spread over the world. And we like to see  using their computers more. After all, more people with computers means more people will need computer repair!

Teen Facebook Usage Declining

Facebook Usage Declining Among Teens

If you use Facebook to keep tabs on what your kids are doing, you may need to resort to more traditional methods…like talking. A report released by Piper Jaffray shows that while Facebook is still the most popular social network for teens, its usage has declined steeply in the last year –by nine percent.


This comes as no surprise in the web world – after all Myspace, once the king of social networking, turned into a wasteland after the hype had worn off. In addition, the site’s popularity has driven everyone to it – including those people that teens may have joined the site to escape from. Whereas the site used to be a haven for young people to congregate, the site has become ubiquitous and it’s hard to find any semblance of privacy. And with many more of the older population boarding the site, teens may be opting not to just ignore the friend requests from their friend’s mom, but to abandon the site altogether.

According to the Jaffray study, teens are moving to a greater number of more highly specialized social sites like Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. These services focus less on promoting personal details and more on chronicling life events. Twitter for example allows teens to briefly express their emotions or thoughts, and Instagram allows them to capture their life in photos, without all the “other stuff” Facebook comes with. Reddit is a popular site for sharing memes, interacting with celebrities, and discussing news relevant to the users’ interests.

Also according to the study were some interesting facts about teen internet usage: almost 80% of all teenagers shop online – spending almost a fifth of their money on the internet. Three quarters of them prefer online shopping over store-based shopping, a trend which will bring significant economic effects as the generation gains more buying power.

And in order to access this vast web, nearly 91% of teens will buy smartphones for their next wireless device – 60% will buy an iPhone and 21% an Android.

With all this activity happening with the younger generation, it can be hard for parents to keep up. It can be overwhelming to keep up with all the different websites. So perhaps instead of trying to stalk our kids on every website they have a login for, we parents should just spend more time getting to know them – that’s a method that’s sure to work regardless of the social networks they frequent!

Facebook Account Hacked? Don't Panic.

Facebook Account Hacked? Fix it now!

Anyone who's received a message from a friend's Facebook account urging them to click a link or “like” a page to "Win a Free iPad" or "Get a Free Starbucks Gift Card" knows that social media sites are prime targets for spam and data mining.  What do you do if it's YOUR account that's doing the spamming?

As soon as you discover that your account has been compromised, report it to Facebook at www.facebook.com/hacked.  Enter your password and follow the instructions to reinstate the account in your name.  You'll need to identify yourself, either through your e-mail address, phone number, Facebook user name or your name and the name of one or more of your friends.


Once you're back in control, reset your Facebook password.  Click on the little button at the top right-hand corner that looks like a gear and then choose Account Settings.  Facebook recommends that you change your password regularly (aim for every few months) to stay secure.

Choose a robust password: 7-10 digits in length, with a mix of numbers, symbols, upper-case and lower-case letters.  Be sure to change passwords on any other accounts that may have been compromised (like your email, Twitter, etc).  It’s particularly risky to use the same password across multiple accounts.  If your Facebook password is compromised, the hacker would be able to take control of your linked email account if you use the same password for both accounts.  This would allow him or her to find other logins that you have tied to that email, submit “forgot my password” reset requests and gain access to other your accounts like banking, shopping, etc.

Consider using a password management service like LastPass (www.lastpass.com, free for basic) that will create unique passwords for all your accounts and control your logins so you never have to type your username or password into a site again.

Now you need to determine how your account was compromised and plug any security holes.  The most likely culprit is a rogue app that you installed, possibly without realizing you were doing so.  For example, if you click a link to “Win a free iPad” posted (probably unwittingly) to your friend’s wall, you’ll be prompted to install an app or provide personal information in order to “register for the contest.”  Every time you approve a Facebook app you give it permissions.  This can range from access to your friends list, the ability to post to your wall, even personal information tied to your account (like your email account, linked cell phone number, etc).

To review your installed apps, click the little gear icon again and choose Privacy Settings.  Do a quick scan here to make sure your privacy settings haven’t been changed to public.  Then click on Apps in the menu bar on the left side of your screen.

Remove apps that you don’t recognize or no longer use by clicking on the X to the right of the app’s name.  For those you choose to keep, click on the name of the app to review what information the app can access and choose who sees its posts and/or notifications.  Change any visibility settings that are set to “Public” to “Friends” or “Only Me.”

Next, notify your friends that your account was compromised.  Let them know that they shouldn’t trust anything posted by your account or messages sent to them “from you” within the period that your account was out of your control.  Particularly avoid clicking links posted by your account.  If you found an app that you suspect was the culprit, let them know to check their installed apps and remove the offender.

Finally, review the information and resources provided by Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/safety/tools/ for tips to keep your account secure.

Andrea Eldridge is CEO of Nerds On Call, which offers onsite computer and laptop repair to homeowners and small businesses. Based in Redding, Calif., it has locations in five states. Contact Eldridge at www.callnerds.com/andrea.

 

Read the Facts about Facebook Bullying

Some Facts about Facebook Bullying and Social Network Abuse

Cyberbullying is a topic on the minds of most parents with Internet-using youngsters.  That’s just about all parents, by the way - 95% of all teens age 12-17 are now online.  But online harassment doesn’t just affect kids and teens.  A recent study in the UK found that 8 out of 10 workers surveyed at several UK universities had been harassed online in the last six months (most commonly being humiliated, ignored or gossiped about online).  Many researchers suggest a link between the relative anonymity of comments posted online as well as the lack of social cues inherent in non-visual communication with a rise in cyberbullying on social media networks.


According to research compiled by the non-profit organization Pew Internet (http://pewinternet.org), participation in social media networks like Facebook and Twitter is greater than ever.  A whopping 80% of internet users aged 12-17, 83% of internet-using young adults (age 18-29) and 77% of internet users age 30-49 use social networking sites.  While the majority of social media users report that “people are mostly kind” on social media (85% of social network using adults and 69% of teens aged 12-17), more teens report unfriendly experiences.  When polled by Pew Internet Project researchers, 5% of adults reported people are mostly unkind vs. 20% of teens.

Among social media using teens, 88% have seen someone be mean or cruel to another person on a social media site.  Of those, 90% of teens who witnessed online cruelty say they have ignored it, 35% reporting that they do so frequently.

Many studies have shown that anonymity increases the likelihood that people will behave badly.  A famous 1950s experiment by Yale professor Robert Milgram instructed study participants deliver supposedly increasingly painful electric shocks to “students” (actually actors) when they answered memory questions incorrectly.  The study was meant to show that everyday people can be influenced to bad behavior when instructed to do so by someone in a position of authority.  What it also showed is that those that couldn’t see victims were more likely to give potentially lethal doses of electric shock.

 

This science can be applied to online interactions.  Even people who know each other are more inclined to be rude, hurtful or thoughtless when they aren’t face-to-face.  In an interview with Health magazine, Lenox Hill Hospital’s clinical psychologist Alan Manevitz, M.D. explained, “There’s a freedom of speech without a fear of consequences.” (http://news.health.com/2012/08/02/troll-psychology-mean-internet/).  It doesn’t help that humans usually respond to visual cues like body language, gestures and facial expressions as well as tone of voice when placing comments in context.  This can lead to online comments being read and interpreted as more aggressive or threatening than intended and cause recipients to respond in kind.

One in four teens reports they are “cell-mostly” internet users, using a phone to access the internet more often than a standard computer.  Internet use on mobile handheld devices increases the likelihood your teen may become involved in cyberbullying.  When there was only one portal to the internet – the family computer – it was easier for parents to monitor their kid’s online activities.  Not only could parents more readily observe where their kid was spending his time online, they could watch for signs their child was being harassed and more easily ensure that their teen wasn’t participating in treating others poorly.  Mobile devices allow teens to be more often online unsupervised.

There’s also a certain “pack mentality” to social media interactions.  A surprising 21% of social media-using teens admitted to joining in when they witnessed online cruelty.  All of this can make Facebook and Twitter a potentially dangerous place for those with shaky self-esteem (you know, just about every teenager) or frankly anyone without a very thick skin.

Luckily, the structure of Facebook at least ties comments to a poster’s profile which removes some of the anonymity.  Publicly acknowledging harassment is often all it takes to cause a bully or someone making unkind comments to back off.  The psychological drive behind a bully is often a desire to feel power over a potential victim.  Politely but firmly telling them to back off is an important first step.

However, before you respond with anger to a comment or status update posted online, take a breather.  Try to imagine yourself in a room with the person and what it would feel like to say it to their face.  If that scenario makes you uncomfortable, better wait until you’re calm and reply with grace.

Finally, I know we’ve said it before (ok, a lot), but talk to your kids about their social media experiences.  Set rules about when they can use social media and under what terms, make sure that they limit their interactions to only close friends and family, and monitor their account privacy settings to ensure that they don’t get in over their heads.

If you or someone you know is struggling with online and/or social network harassment, drop me a note for more tips to combat cyberbullying.