WOW News – 23 Oct
October 23rd, 2009 | 
Author: Welcome to this week’s news from The Web on Wheels!
I hope you’re having a fabulous week.
Here in Victoria we’ve finally had some great rain. It has been so welcome! And it’s amazing to see people no longer grumble about the rain. Our average levels in our dams is now up to 36.8% of capacity.
Here’s a link to the Melbourne Water website, if you’d like to visit the site: http://tinyurl.com/r2e8gy We looked at this site a few months ago, and the levels were up to 28% from 22%!
And still in Australia, up in Queensland they’re now in day 25 of ongoing bushfires. The firefighters and emergency services people must be so exhausted.
I hope the expected rains on Friday manage to extinguish this lot of fires.
Focus group – Bayside. We had our Bayside focus group last week. It was a really nasty day, weather wise, but six of us still managed to have a lovely morning. The venue was in Mordialloc, overlooking a wild sea – and we were toasty warm beside the fire. It was rather nice! I received a lot of great feedback which I’ll consider along with the feedback from the Mt Martha group and all the responses from the survey. I already have plans for the changes to our website to make it much easier to use, and make membership in our community really valuable.
Here’s one of the pics that June sent from our Mt Martha focus group:
Internet Security telecall. I am so excited to let you know that we’ll be having the first of our teleseminar series starting next week.
These teleseminars are recordings of conversations with various experts or people who have in-depth knowledge about computer related topics.
Our first topic will be internet security. We’ll be chatting about just what internet security is, what some of the terms actually mean, and what you can do to minimise your risk.
If you have any questions or concerns about internet security please email me. I’d love to be able to discuss your question or issue on the call.
All these calls in our teleseminar series, will be recorded, and available on our website, for our members to listen to whenever it suits.
I will make this first call available to everyone, but after the first call, they will be available just to our members. I’ll send details after the call about how to listen to the recording.
But in the meantime, please let me know of your questions or issues around internet security. Please email me: info@thewebonwheels.com.au and we’ll try to address those specific issues during the call.
|
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY These steps are to ensure that it’s actually you filling out the form. If it’s all too hard, or you’re not sure of which level you should join, please feel free to email me, or call me and I can arrange to actually do it for you (info@thewebonwheels.com.au or (03) 9787 7500 – Australia). |
I’ve received mixed feedback from our survey regarding the content of our newsletters.
Some people prefer our newsletters focussed more on computer issues, rather than personal interest stories, and other people have commented that they really like the mix of computer and wellness issues. So, starting from this newsletter, I will now make the personal interest stories occasional articles, rather than in every issue.
When I do include the ‘health/wellness/personal interest articles’, they will always come after the ‘computer article’, so if you’re not interested in these type of articles, just stop after the computer article, or read on if they appeal to you.
In this issue we’ll look at:
- Backup your computer files;
- a light-hearted look at living in the year 2009.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Just a quick word about the content of this message.
Throughout this newsletter I have included various links to websites, and included some pictures. Sometimes those links don’t work.
It’s NOT you!
Sometimes your computer, or the system you’re using (eg. Hotmail, Outlook) decide to look after your security and block your ability to go straight to an outside website or to download pictures. Sometimes it’s simply that your computer is set to get only plain text messages. So no matter what you do, you won’t get the nice looking, easy-clicking tricks, your message will be just as it says – plain text without any of the fancy stuff.
If a link doesn’t work, try looking on your screen, usually toward the top of the email message and see if there’s some sort of message saying something about the link not being allowed. It might say, “Click here to download pictures” or “to protect your privacy downloads have been prevented” or “links have been disabled” – or something similar. Most of the time, it also gives you the option to click in that message area and give your computer permission to go ahead and allow the picture to come onto your computer, or allow you to get to the website.
(Let me know if things don’t work as you expect and I’ll get it sorted for you.)
Until next time, please take good care of yourself.
All the best,
Viv
“The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail
instead of his tongue.” Unknown
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Computer Issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Backup. 
Following on from one of our group messages last week, today’s topic is a quick look at backups.
In this article, we’ll look at
- what a backup is,
- why we should backup,
- a snippet from the Wikipedia definition for backup,
- what you can backup on to,
- the steps to use the Microsoft Backup Wizard,
- and we have a link to a video, which gives a pretty good explanation and the instructions for doing a backup in Windows Vista. The steps are quite similar in both Vista and Windows XP, you just need to look in different places to find it (don’t ask me – ask Microsoft!).
What is a backup? Well, of course as with all things technological, this can be complicated if we want to make it so. And different people and different systems add to the complication mix. For our purposes, we’re looking at backup of your computer files.
Most simply a backup is
• A copy of certain information in your computer.
• That copied information is placed somewhere else.
• Then when you do another backup it is any new or changed information that is ‘backed up’ and added to the original files. (this is called incremental backup)
Why do a backup? For many of our members, you might be wondering if it’s even worthwhile doing a backup. The answer is
Yes. (just look at the photo below!)
(picture courtesy hhh.gavilan.edu)
The reason for doing a backup is when something catastrophic happens to your computer (oh, I mean IF, not when 
) then your backup files can be used. A ‘Restore’ can be performed, and your files can be … restored, to your computer, whether it be a new replacement computer or a repaired one. And the other reason for doing a backup – have you ever been concerned that you have deleted a file? Or has something happened to a file and it appears to be damaged? Well, if you have done a backup, your file should be sitting nice and safe in your backup files.
I hope you never need to use the backup files – if things go along smoothly, you will never them. But, just like your insurance policy that you pay good money for every year, that you hope you never need to claim on, keeping a regular backup of your files is your insurance against losing your precious information.
How do we backup? Most home users tend to do an actual copy of their computer files, then the next time they back up, they take another full copy of their computer files. Which is just fine if you don’t have a lot of files, and you’ve got the equipment to put the copies on.
But if you’ve got a lot of information, or you are diligent and doing your backups regularly, you probably should do an actual backup, rather than a full copy. So that means just the new and changed information is copied, which is much quicker. And the program to do the backup is right inside your computer, so let’s use that program to simplify this task.
What can you backup onto? Your choices for what you copy your backup files onto include: CD, DVD, Memory Stick, Memory Card, External Hard disk. Some other equipment which isn’t used often nowadays, but still can be appropriate are zip drives and floppy discs. Backups can also be copied onto a separate file inside your computer, but of course you can’t remove that for safe keeping.
And there is even an option to backup to remote computers. That is, a computer somewhere else in the world. Personally I don’t like either of these last two options, as I prefer to copy onto something in my own office, and something I can physically hold. But that comes down to personal preference.
As I’ve started writing this article, it has grown and grown, and I don’t want this to be a long and complicated process.
Backup really is a simple process if you let the inbuilt program do its work. You schedule the computer to do the backup on a certain day at a certain time, and remember to put your CD or memory stick or other equipment in, then it’s really a ‘set and forget’ process and your information is copied, and then hopefully safe.
So I think this will need to turn into a little Member’s e-course, that way I’ll be able to take you carefully through each of the steps, you’ll be set up and then you won’t need to worry.
And of course, any Silver and Gold members can have me set this up for you so that the schedule is set, you will just need to physically place your equipment or disc in the computer – and I can do all the rest from my office!
For those who do want to get started though, an outline of the steps to use the Backup Wizard are at the end of this article.
Wikipedia has in-depth information about the term, ‘Backup’. They go on (and on) about this subject, and for those who like details (hi David), click on the following link, (the blue, underlined link) and you’ll go to the Wikipedia site for the whole entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup
I’ve just selected a little piece of the entry here:
In information technology, a backup or the process of backing up refer to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. These additional copies are typically called “backups.”
…. In the modern era of computing there are many different types of data storage devices that are useful for making backups.Before data is sent to its storage location, it is selected, extracted, and manipulated. Many different techniques have been developed to optimize the backup procedure. These include optimizations for dealing with open files and live data sources as well as compression, encryption, and de-duplication, among others. Many organizations and individuals try to have confidence that the process is working as expected and work to define measurements and validation techniques. It is also important to recognize the limitations and human factors involved in any backup scheme.
Mmm, I think we’ll leave the article there.
As you can see, they start to get into the nitty-gritty of it, and that can be a good thing if you need to know. But for most of us, well we don’t need to know the details, just how it works.
There are many different ways to do a back up, there are many programs made specifically to do backups, there are many different devices (pieces of equipment) to back up onto, but for most of us, we might as well take advantage of the program that’s built right into the Microsoft system.
The primary reason for having a backup copy of information on your computer (data) is if you were unlucky enough to have your computer break down – or stolen, you would have your backed up copy of your data easily available. It might be a few days or weeks old, depending on the last time you backed up, but nonetheless, you would have the information.
I’m going to use a fictitious member ‘Daisy’ as the example here. Daisy uses her laptop computer to send and receive emails, to find out things on the internet, to occasionally buy products on the internet, and she has quite a few photos that she’s taken with her mobile phone, and also a digital camera. And Daisy has a big long list of Favorites in Internet Explorer, because she is tracing her family tree and wants to go back to particular sites. All this information is stored on her computer.
One day she arrives home to find her home has been burgled – and you guessed it, her laptop has been stolen! Nothing was vandalised in her home, but she did have possessions stolen. Daisy has insurance, and they issue a cheque for her claim very quickly. Daisy is able to buy the latest laptop. She decides to have a technician come and setup her laptop again, as she really doesn’t want to be bothered with the technical side of things.
Michael arrives to install things on her new laptop – and Daisy hands him her flash drive, which she had given to her daughter for safe keeping. On the flash drive was a copy of her weekly backup. It contained her computer programs, her photos, her emails – all her precious data kept safe and sound. Michael was able to re-install all that data on her new laptop, in no time at all and with no hassles.
So, for the folks who are ready – shall we back up?
We’ll use the Microsoft Back up Wizard.
As usual, in Microsoft’s ‘wisdom’ the Back Up Wizard is in different places, depending on which system you have.
** In Windows XP Click on Start, Click on Accessories, Click on System Tools, Click on Backup.
** In Windows Vista Click on Start, Click on Control Panel, Click on System and Maintenance, Click on Backup your Computer.
• Make sure you have the equipment you want to back up onto ready, and make sure they have sufficient capacity to copy all your files.
• Plug in your equipment, or put your disc into the CD/DVD drive.
• Use the Wizard to set your schedule.
• Follow the Wizard’s prompts to tell your computer
a) when to backup;
b) which type of files to backup;
c) which drive to copy the backup files onto.
• There is a button Back up Now, if you don’t want to wait for your scheduled time.
If you chose to use a memory stick, or a piece of equipment that’s plugged into your computer in a USB port, please don’t forget, when you take out that equipment, to go through the Safely Remove Hardware procedure. 
Image courtesy of Microsoft:
If you’re new and haven’t got to Quick Tip #08 yet, or perhaps you’ve forgotten what to do, a summary is below, and here is a link to the article: http://members.thewebonwheels.com.au/members/thewebonwheels/blog/VIEW/00000007/00000010/Safely-Remove-Hardware.html#00000010
Double click, or right-click on the icon in the bottom right hand side of your screen – in the System Tray.
It looks similar to this in XP: 
And this in Vista: 
A screen will appear, with your device listed.
Click on the one you want to stop using, click on Stop.
A message will appear saying: ‘This device can now be safely removed from the computer’, or: ‘Safe to Remove Hardware’.
And finally, here is a video on YouTube that’s really quite informative and helpful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETaK5uxTvvY
Happy back-upping!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Humour me!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subject: Living in the Year 2009
YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2009 when…
1.. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.
8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.
11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )
12. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.
13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list
AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself.
…… I am Getting a Life
Bye for this week,
Smiles and best wishes
Viv
Posted in Newsletters
 |
 |
 |
 |
