This is an important dangerous bill  in Congress that will curtail internet freedom. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s because television media (who will benefit from it) are blacking it out.

Stop SOPA/PIPA! — Democracy for America.

This web page mentions that GoDaddy is a big advocate for SOPA. Many groups are moving their domain and web hosting away from GoDaddy in protest.

We are currently offering managed services plans to our business customers. We also offer scheduled quarterly checkups to our residential clients. In the near future we will be offering a managed service plan customized for residential users and sole proprietors.

Essentially, a managed service plan allows us to remotely “watch over” your computer, make sure updates get taken care of, and generally reduce the possibility that things will get to the point where you have an emergency and you have to make that panicked call to us. We can manage our clients’ computers through a central dashboard that lets us perform maintenance and updates, and even sends us email alerts if there are troubles on the horizon. Whether you are a business or a residential client, if you are interested in our affordable managed service options for your critical computer(s), please email or call us.

Thanks to our loyal clients we’ve won four years in a row!

The morale of the story? Have someone you TRUST  wipe your data before it leaves your possession.

Man’s Personal Information Left on Returned Tablet for Months – WGHP.

A few months ago I posted a list of PC software I use to keep my music life/business organized. In this post, I’ll discuss some of the software and online tools I use to keep the office here at New York Geek Girls Computer Services running smoothly.

I’ve omitted the obvious ones that everyone knows about such as MS Office or QuickBooks. These are a bit more esoteric, but extremely useful. Most of these tools are free or cheap.

Roboform. So many of my clients complain that they can’t remember all their passwords. I am constantly spreading the gospel about this browser toolbar which automatically stores passwords as well as identity and credit card info so you don’t have to type it in every time you make an online purchase.

Visio. Microsoft’s program to create flow charts and diagrams is extremely easy to use. We use it to document our biz clients’ complex network topography. Recently we’ve also been creating flow charts to establish processes for administrative tasks in the office.

Gliffy. Essentially this is a free online version of Visio. It works extremely well and you can’t beat the price.

Desk PDF – easily create PDFs from any document or web page. If you can print it, you can turn it into a PDF. You could use Adobe Acrobat to do this, but Desk PDF is much cheaper.

http://www.pdfescape.com/account/ – Free online PDF editor works very well. Again, it beats the price of Adobe Acrobat.

FaxZero. Free faxing of your documents at their web site, if you don’t mind an ad on the cover page. With no ad it’s just $1.99. For the rare times when we need to send a fax, it doesn’t make sense to tie up a phone line or replace my excellent stand-alone printer with an all-in-one.

Comments welcome!

Recently, Jay Lee, a tech columnist for the Houston Chronicle, was kind enough to link to an article on our blog about how to find a good computer tech. Since then we’ve gotten a few inquiries from potential clients outside of our traditional service area. So this seemed like a great time to discuss our remote services option.

We provide remote computer services using special software. Installing the software onto your computer is easy to do via a link that we email to you. Once you install the software on your computer, we can view and control your computer as if we are sitting in front of it. As long as your computer can connect to the internet and you can start the computer and boot into the Windows or Mac operating system, we can most likely assist you remotely.

Because remote access doesn’t require us to travel, we are able to offer remote IT services without the one-hour minimum fee we bill for on-site visits. Instead, for remote access, we bill in ten-minute increments. If you only need ten minutes, you only pay for ten minutes.

You don’t have to wait until you have a problem to use our remote service. Remote service makes is very economical to maintain your systems as well. We can log in to check your back-ups, verify anti-virus software, check your hard drive health, and install updates to ensure maximum security and stability, all without an on-site visit.

Our remote software is completely secure, and we cannot access your computer unless you specifically enable access on your end. When our work session is done, you can disable it or, if you prefer, uninstall it completely, although most of our clients prefer to keep it installed and disabled case they need additional support in the future.

For more info about our remote services, please contact us.

HP has issued a recall on a series of battery parks, adding to the recalled products previously expanded on May 19, 2010. These battery parks are now said to have the potential to overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to customers.

HP says that if you have not replaced your original battery, you must validate your battery, even if previously validated. Validating your battery will determine whether your battery pack is affected.

Please follow this link to validate your battery: http://www.hp.com/support/BatteryReplacement

HP will provide a free replacement battery park if validation indicates that your battery is affected.

Please be aware that the validation process may indicate that your battery pack is not affected, as approximately 5% of PC products sold between July 2007 and July 2008 were not affected.

First identify your notebook’s product number and serial number, located on the service tag at the bottom of your notebook.

Below is a list of possibly affected battery packs according to laptop model/series:

HP Pavilion dv2000

HP Pavilion dv2500

HP Pavilion dv2700

HP Pavilion dv6000

HP Pavilion dv6500

HP Pavilion dv6700

HP Pavilion dv9000

HP Pavilion dv9500

HP Pavilion dv 9700

HP Pavilion dx 6000

HP Pavilion dx 6500

HP Pavilion dx 6700

Compaq Presario A900

Compaq Presario C700

Compaq Presario F500

Compaq Presario F700

Compaq Presario V3000

Compaq Presario V3500

Compaq Presario V3700

Compaq Presario V6000

Compaq Presario V6500

Compaq Presario V6700

HP G6000

HP G7000

HP Compaq 6510b

HP Compaq 6515b

HP Compaq 6520s

HP Compaq 6710b

HP Compaq 6710s

HP Compaq 6715b

HP Compaq 6715s

HP Compaq 6720s

Contact HP and they will assist you in the shipping process.

Visit: http://www.hp.com/support/BatteryReplacement.

Or call HP customer support at 1-888-202-4320

An interesting story from Tom’s Hardware on a recent malware epidemic effecting Macs. Required reading for Mac owners.

http://m.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-malware-virus-infection,12781.html

Here’s an article from the NY Times about why it’s important to have a properly encrypted wifi network.

If you are paying your cable company an extra monthly fee for wireless Internet, you probably have WEP encryption, which is less secure than WPA encryption. You’d be better off with your own router, which can be secured correctly.

NY Times Article

Most of our new business now comes from referrals from current clients. It works out great for everyone. Our clients feel that they are helping their friends and colleagues (and supporting a small business they believe in) by recommending a reliable and trustworthy service company, and we benefit from getting a new client that already feels good about working with us before we even meet.

When we first started out about six years ago, we didn’t have enough clients to generate a substantial number of referrals, and we didn’t have an advertising budget. So we relied on free Craig’s List ads to get started. At that time, we generated a lot of business through Craig’s List. Many of those initial clients who came to us through CL are still with us today, and they in turn have referred us to many other clients. So the roots of our business are really in those early Craig’s List ads.

Not everyone has had as much success on Craig’s List. I think we did a few thing right with those early ads. First, we didn’t try to compete on price. On CL you can always find someone offering to do the job cheaper. Rather, we presented ourselves as a professional, reliable company with honest, knowledgeable techs. Craig’s List at that time provided an amazing opportunity for an individual with skills and integrity to bootstrap herself into a business with literally no start-up capital.

Unfortunately something awful has been happening on CL. I only discovered this because our office assistant asked me if she should start posting our ads to Craig’s List again. I had stopped about a year ago, because I didn’t have time to post the ad every three days. I also felt that we had outgrown Craig’s List. While we got some great customers there, there were also a lot of time-consuming calls from price-shoppers.

(There’s nothing wrong with being a price shopper. I’m always looking for a good deal. But if price is all you are looking for when it comes to computer repair and services, you end up paying more in the long run.)

Anyway, I decided, what the heck, let’s run the ad again. That’s when I discovered that Craig’s List has been taken over by a handful of self-appointed police who flag ads arbitrarily. Anyone can get an ad deleted on Craig’s List by flagging it a couple of times from different ip addresses (say, work and home). There is no recourse, no higher authority to appeal to. Your ad is gone and, aside from a curt email notification, that’s the end of it. Try re-posting, and you’re likely to get deleted again, except now that you’ve been flagged once, you’re penalized: one flag is enough to immediately delete your ad.

Okay, I hear you saying. Maybe a few ads get deleted that shouldn’t. But don’t we need these good souls who volunteer their time to protect us from the psychos and perverts who would otherwise overrun Craig’s List? Isn’t Craig’s List all about the members of the community watching out for each other?

Well, that would be fine if there were a large number of CL readers who, while perusing ads, noticed a bad one on occasion and flagged it. (Here’s an example of one that should have been caught, but wasn’t: http://www.switched.com/2008/03/25/fake-craigslist-ad-costs-man-most-of-what-he-owns/).

Instead, the original community-based ideal of CL has been turned upside down by a tiny minority of self-appointed “volunteers” who routinely flag large numbers of perfectly acceptable ads either because they find them personally offensive, or because that’s how they get their kicks.

Since this was the same ad I had been running for several years without a problem, I decided to follow the advice in the “flag notification” email, and visit the “flagging forum”, where you can supposedly receive guidance about what characteristics might have caused your ad to be deleted.

Here, the anonymous CL police, who hide behind aliases such as “Dudley_Do_Right”, recently offered the following explanations as to why various ads were deleted:

An ad from a small farm selling show animals:

I detest ads that start with questions …You are only mocking me by putting them there. I flag what is mocking me.

A car ad:

Ugly color probably. People hate that!

An ad selling a motor home:

Perhaps a site geard [sic] towards this type of luxury is more appropriate.

Lest you think I’m cherry-picking, these posts were all placed within a day or so of each other. As one distraught flagging victim posted so eloquently:

I’ve learned quite a bit about the “flagging culture” here on CL and got a good sense of the types of people who troll the cl – flag help board… I came in thinking there were a set of rules and guidelines that needed to be adhered to…. I was hoping there could be a civilized discussion regarding the guidelines for posting…but I realize now that’s not going to happen.

A frequent comment from the chronic flaggers is that you, the victim of flagging, have no right to complain because your ad is free. Of course, if it weren’t for free ads, there would be no Craig’s List. Besides, you’re not getting a “free ad” if it’s deleted. You’re just wasting your time.

Nor does the concept that free ad posters have no rights serve the interests of those reading the ads. In service categories (such as computer services), it is easy for an unscrupulous company to delete their competition’s ads through flagging. (In fact I suspect that’s what happened to our ad.) It’s also the unscrupulous posters who use illegitimate techniques to get around the rules. Those methods are available for those who are motivated to make a career out of scamming people on Craig’s List. This means that there are fewer “good guys” left on CL, and more scammers. That’s not good for anyone. But the flagging police don’t care about Craig’s List. They’re getting high on the power trip, and like most drug addicts, they can’t be bothered to think about the consequences.

Even the self-appointed flaggers, when pressed, will frequently admit that the ad in question does not violate the Craig’s List Terms of Service or any other written rules of Craig’s List (including over-posting and miscategorization). This response is typical, but incorrect: “The Terms of Use say that users can flag for any reason”.

Without Craig’s List, I’m not sure I would have gotten New York Geek Girls to the point where we no longer need Craig’s List. It’s regrettable for those who do need CL. Especially in this economy, with rampant unemployment, people who are trying to find a way to earn a living, sell a household item or just meet people need a place to advertise without getting shut down arbitrarily by power-drunk zealots.

I understand the community-based philosophy behind Craig’s List. I also understand that Craig’s List’s owners (who include Ebay), make a lot of money from the paid real estate and jobs ads and don’t want to devote resources to the part of their site that doesn’t directly generate income. But if they don’t do something to reign in these crazies, the good posters will disappear from Craig’s List, and when all those free ads disappear, so do the eyeballs that the income-producing parts of the site need. When that happens, it’s goodbye Craig’s List.