Windows UAC: Bye! Bye!
Posted February 2, 2010 – 3:24 pmUgh! I give up.
Windows Vista UAC Takes a Dive!
Yesterday, I disabled User Account Control (UAC) in Vista for good. Could there be a more invasive, yet ultimately useless program?
After 13 frustrating months using UAC, I still have no idea what it is supposed to be protecting me from — whatever it is, it has never, ever happened.
As part of my recent efforts to increase productivity and streamline workflows, I realized it was time for a change yesterday when, for the nth time, I tried to figure out what UAC is supposed to do — and I couldn’t.
In my search for answers, I found only techie jibberish or vague explanations, such as this from Microsoft’s website:
User Account Control (UAC) is a feature in Windows that can help prevent unauthorized changes to your computer. UAC does this by asking you for permission or an administrator password before performing actions that could potentially affect your computer’s operation or that change settings that affect other users. When you see a UAC message, read it carefully, and then make sure the name of the action or program that’s about to start is one that you intended to start.
Uh, huh. I suppose it sounds vaguely useful – until I realized that not once in the 13 months has it ever activated when I haven’t been explicitly trying to do something. Unlike my Norton Anti-virus program which is constantly (and more or less silently) picking off various threats that are invisible to me. UAC is constantly stopping me from doing things that I purposefully want to be doing. How is that helpful?
Even after trying to understand, I still don’t really quite know what the point is — or what some relevant ‘use cases’ might be. Is it to stop my cubemate from tinkering with my computer? Except I don’t have a cubemate. Is it supposed to prevent viruses that somehow get past Norton from doing more damage? Except that has never happened.
Looking back, I’m not sure why I soldiered onward with UAC for so long given how much time I’m on my computer — or how bogus UAC alerts I’ve clicked thru. I think I’d have ditched it much earlier if I hadn’t been using Norton Labs’ UAC tool. That program has probably cut my warnings by 90%, but even the remaining 10% is too many.
So when I paused and realized that it had never, ever stopped anything I hadn’t wanted done, I realized it was time to say…
Bye, bye!!
Click here if you want to turn off UAC, too.
No Comments | Tags: using computersGoogle Chrome browser gets even better with extensions
Posted January 25, 2010 – 1:40 pmI’ve been using the Google Chrome browser since Day One – in my book, it is the best everyday browser out there. Largely because it is lightweight and superfast loading pages.
Google Chrome launches extensions
I’ve been using the Chrome Developer version for many months – it was the only version that worked well with my dual monitor setup.
In December, Google launched an apps store for Chrome – except that they call apps ‘extensions’. I’ve been using these extensions for several weeks and LOVE them! but they haven’t been available in the general release versions of Chrome.
Today, Google unveiled a new general release version of Chrome – now extensions are available to everyone. You should definitely try them out. Quite fantastic stuff!
My favorites are:
- xmarks - manage bookmarks across browsers and/or computers located anywhere
- lastpass - manage passwords and login info across browsers and/or computers
- evernote - the official extension for the evernote note taking / web clipping service that is all the rage (and deservedly so)
- delicious - beautifully designed widget for adding bookmarks to your Delicious account. cleaner and better than the Firefox version.
- netvibes - auto-detects RSS feeds in Chrome and provides one-click button to add it to your Netvibes RSS reader (still only available for developer version, i think).
These are essential in my book.
1 Comment | Tags: cool web toolsBacktype: tracking my comments on the web
Posted January 20, 2010 – 11:48 pmFrom time to time, I write comments on the tech blogs and elsewhere. Obviously, they are deeply insightful and saturated with wisdom, so it only makes sense to want to keep track of them all.
Comment tracking & aggregation
But how? The answer: Backtype, a free comments tracking service. Backtype describes itself as a “real-time, conversational search engine” because as a result of tracking people’s comments across the web, it also includes features that allow you to search web comments in a way that you can’t with Google. I don’t have too much interest in the searching function, so the value-added function for me is having Backtype track and catalog my comments on the web.
Backtype works by scouring the web, indexing all the comments people make on blog posts. It doesn’t spider every single blog, but covers all the major ones and lots of not so major ones, too. It also seems to index blogs of any size that reside on the major hosted blogging platforms – e.g., Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Posterous, etc. That’s why the comments on my tiny, tiny personal blog, John’s Bytes, are getting indexed.
No Comments | Tags: blogging, social mediaGiving up on Internet Explorer
Posted January 7, 2010 – 9:06 pmI am dumping Internet Explorer today! I just can’t take it anymore. Too frustrating.
I do this reluctantly, however, because IE is still the dominant web browser on the planet – and since I build websites, I want my sites to work properly in it.
So long IE!
Until now, I have always tried to do some major tasks each day in IE as well as in Firefox and Chrome. I thought that it was important to use all the major browsers regularly to stay up to the minute with how they worked.
But over time, I’ve used IE less and less because, for whatever reasons, it just seems to break an awful lot – plus it is slow and lacks the add-ons / plug-ins that have become so valuable in the other browsers.
Instead, I’ve used Chrome and Firefox more and more because they hardly ever have problems, they are both a lot, lot faster than IE, and their plug-in libraries add lots of great functionality. When, from time to time, those programs do have problems, they normally fix themselves with a quick shutdown and restart of the program.
With IE, stuff happens and I just can’t figure out what the problem is. Yesterday the deal was that something was wrong with how a web page was trying to use one of my plug-ins. I don’t actually know which one since the error message didn’t say and there was no obvious way to trace it. Usually the problem seems to relate to Flash, but who knows in this case.
Last week the problem was with my Yahoo mail account. For some reason (and for a long time), I get error messages when I manage my contacts. Since I just switched to using Yahoo as my primary contacts manager, this became a serious issue. I’ve contacted Yahoo and they say the problem is with IE – which it probably is, but I haven’t a clue what.
And for a long time – I think since I installed IE8 – I’ve experienced terribly long delays in opening up a new tab in IE. It can takes 20-30 seconds to open a new tab – during which time everything else in IE is frozen and inaccessible. No clue what causes this.
Anyway, time to reduce frustration and that means no more IE — well, that’s not really true. I will still need to use it from time to time to test that my sites still work in it.
UPDATE (1/31/10): Okay, I may have resurrected IE! While I still don’t plan to use it on a day-to-day basis, this will make it a lot less painful to test out my sites in IE from time to time.
This Microsoft forum page on IE8 slowness proved a good starting point and here’s what I did:
- Modified my ‘hosts’ file to remove website URLs for restricted sites. There was a huge list there – about 6,000 lines – generated by a program called Spybot. This page indicates that scanning this list can cause delays. I don’t even use this program anymore, so these are a relic from my previous computers. Note: I did not do the deletion via the method described, so I can’t attest to whether it works or not (it seems to for other people). I edited the file directly.
- Per this thread, I also removed a program that I was still using – SpywareBlaster. I was thinking to remove it anyway since Norton Internet Security 2009 seems to work so extremely well and maybe I’m doing overkill on the anti-spam stuff.
- Disabled all but a few ‘accelerators’. I had many running, almost none of which I had enabled myself. Removing them all was painless.
- I reset all all security settings to the original defaults per these directions from Microsoft (step #2).
- I disabled all but the most essential IE add-ons. As with accelerators, there were many that had accumulated and were probably unnecessary. I left in place ones. I left enabled Flash and Java and other ‘technical’ sounding add-ons, but disabled anything that sounded optional (like ‘research’ and ’sharepoint spreadsheet launcher’)
- Removed all search providers but Google (though I doubt this did much of anything, I figured it couldn’t hurt).
- I also chopped back the disk space for ‘temporary internet files’ as these can sometimes contribute to slowness. I went with 50Mb which is quite small, but you can increase later if need be. Get there via: internet options > general > browsing history > settings > disk space.
I closed down and restarted IE after each of these steps to make sure nothing broke in the process. I also cleared cache completely a few times.
Not sure how much each individual step helped, but all together they produce a pretty dramatic improvement. New tabs, which used to take literally 20-30 seconds to open, now open within a 5-8 seconds. Still not nearly as fast as Firefox or Chrome, but at least it doesn’t make me want to scream!
No Comments | Tags: using computersiYogi complaint: too hard to get my refund!
Posted January 6, 2010 – 5:12 pmI’m having a helluva hard time getting a refund out of iYogi. Today, they secured $15M in follow-on funding, so maybe they’ll be able to pay up.
iYogi refund complaint
iYogi provides remote technical support to solve computer problems and whatnot. After comparing their services and prices to several other firms, I decided to give them a try. They seemed to have something that could be pretty useful.
I signed up in mid-January 2009 — but then closed the account within 2 hrs because they didn’t service 64-bit Vista machines (which they could have made clearer on their website).
I asked for a refund and received immediate confirmation email that they’d processed it. The email appeared official and definitive.
“Based on your request we have processed the refund for your subscription. This will reflect in your bank records/credit card statement within 7 business days, depending on your billing cycle.”
Silly me, I never checked my bank account. Only last week while doing year end financial tallies did I realize that no refund ever hit my account.
Spoke to them at great length on Dec 29 – routed thru about 3 people with each needing to hear the story in detail asking the same questions again and again and again. Was finally assured by a woman that they would call back within 24 hrs to confirm refund. Never heard from them.
On Jan 5, I spent about 2 hours on phone or on live chat in a series of calls trying to sort out. They seemed to have no record of the call from the prior week or much of anything else about my account.
No Comments | Tags: using computersWhich version of Java for a 64-bit Vista machine?
Posted December 16, 2009 – 10:01 pmI was recently trying to clean up things on my computer and noticed for the several’th time that I had 2 versions of Java installed and running on my laptop (a 64-bit Windows Vista machine).
Java is a programming language used in browsers – like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Java plugs into these browsers and helps them to do things like display graphics, play games, run widgets, etc.
I wasn’t sure if I needed both versions of the program or not, so decided to investigate.
It turns out that one version of Java on my machine is an x64 version (64 bit) and the other is an x86 version (32 bit).
Did I need both? Answer is ‘yes’ – at least in my case.
Reason is that I need the 32-bit version to run in tandem with 32-bit browsers that I use – and I need the 64-bit version to run with the lone 64-bit browser that I use (Internet Explorer x64).
Further information can be found here: Java on 64-bit Windows.
Need Java? Java downloads
No Comments | Tags: using computersBest keywords for a small business: Focus on the ‘long tail’
Posted April 5, 2009 – 7:06 pmChoosing the best website keywords is a crucial starting point for an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Small businesses face special challenges when choosing keywords because they can never expect to achieve the kind of SEO traction that big companies can.
As a result, small businesses must be more calculating and deliberate in choosing keywords – they need to choose terms which can get them to the top of Google SERPs (search engine results pages) without a big investment of time or money.
The first step is to do some analysis to figure out what keywords are the most likely to help you gain search engine visibility on Google, Yahoo, Ask, and other search engines. By ‘keywords’, I mean both individual words as well as short 2-5 word phrases that are relevant to describing your business.
Your goal is to achieve search engine ‘visibility’. Seach engine visibility happens only when you are able to break into the top 10 results of a search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engine. If your website is not in the Top 10 results – meaning on page 1 of the SERPs (search engine results pages), then your chances of someone finding you drop significantly.
In fact, even on page 1, your chances of being clicked on drops sharply from postion #1 to position #10. Ideally, you want to be in the top 3, perhaps the top 5, for the best possible search engine traffic generation.
read more >>>>
Small business SEO: Top 5 things to increase your website’s search engine visibility
Posted March 24, 2009 – 2:22 pmSmall businesses are usually pretty terrible when it comes gaining visibility on search engines. That’s because they don’t implement the search engine optimization (SEO) basics for their websites to gain traction with search engines like Google.
This post outlines the Top 5 do-it-yourself SEO steps you can take to improve your small business website and dramatically increase your visibility on Google and other search engines.
- Use keyword-rich page titles unique to each page
- Craft informative keyword-rich page descriptions
- Use distinctive set of meta keywords for each page
- Create SEO-friendly page url’s
- Choose an SEO-friendly domain name
These 5 steps constitute SEO 101 – the basic blocking and tackling of SEO for any website large or small. Of themselves, these 5 steps will not only improve your website’s SEO visibility, they will also create the foundation for other things you may want to do later. Without the right ‘foundation’, everything else you try with your website – even pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google AdWords – are going to be harder and more expensive.
No Comments | Tags: DIY SEO, small business