I’m back!  OK, things aren’t normal yet, and they may very well not quite return to my definition of normal for a while, BUT I have Internet and here’s my first blog post from Hamilton, Ohio!

Actually, I’m going to point you to a pretty dire concern that Becky Worley on Yahoo! News writes about, and that is “Why (and How) to Turn Off Socialcam on Facebook”.  Her opening sentence sums it up quite nicely: “Friends — I beg of you — TURN OFF SHARING for the Socialcam app on Facebook.”

The concern isn’t just the content of the videos themselves but the fact that you are watching them is being shared to everyone on Facebook, sometimes without you even knowing it!  Even with public sharing turned off, Worley found that just using it sometimes turned the settings back on!

The type of marketing being used in Socialcam, IMO, should be of enough of a concern to tell people to just plain avoid it.  If you want to watch videos of a man supposedly being eaten by a snake, then there are other less embarrassing ways to do it (especially when it turns out to be all hype).

Got a call from some BS company claiming to do Craig’s List postings. Of course, it is an obvious scam since you can do that yourself for free. Be sure to block their number (305) 396-8889
FL, USA too. It’s also noted as spam on Mr Number.

John D’s Computer Services is proud to announce that we will now be servicing the southwestern portion of Ohio. In particular, we are now located in Hamilton, Ohio, which is about 9 miles north of I-275.

We will gladly refer existing customers in the Cleveland area to a company we’ve partnered with for a limited time. Our old phone number still works, so phone or fill out a service request, and we will gladly assist you during this transition period.

Of course, a lot of things can be done remotely, so we are willing to still offer low rates for software configuration, PC tune-ups, and other items that can be done remotely.

John D assures you that he will miss northeast Ohio, as he has called it home for 17 years. He is grateful for all of the great people he’s met in those years.

However, he is looking forward to being able to provide value & convenience to an entirely new set of customers!

I had written earlier (in “Mobile Invoicing Disappointments & Solution, Part 2”) about a Perl script, PP2QIFInvoices, I created that will convert a PayPal invoice data file delimited with commas, known as a comma separated values (CSV) file, into Quicken format, QIF.  This allows you the freedom to invoice customers at their location, and thus gaining geek points in your invoicing solution, and yet still be able to use the other accounting functions of Quicken.  This provides a low cost alternative to using one of Intuit’s money sucking online schemes.

I’ve updated the script because I was manually parsing through the fields to separate out the values.  “How hard can it be?” I had asked myself.  Well, it actually worked pretty well except for the fact that any unexpected comma contained within quotes would throw the entire record off.  That’s when it dawned on me that I really need to download and use existing libraries for parsing the values, else I’ll just end up patching it over and over again.

So, I downloaded Text::CSV_XS from CPAN and re-wrote the beginning parsing routine to use it instead.  This new version I labeled “0.8” because I believe it to be a lot further along as “ready to go” except perhaps for a couple of items.  I’m now making available PP2QIFInvoices.0.8.zip as a free download.  Keep in mind that my liability in you using or abusing the script is limited to the amount you paid for it.

Seth Godin recently asked in a blog article "Seth’s Blog: Do you have a people strategy?".  Sometimes, when it comes to information technology (IT), we want to come up with all sorts of strategies, but in the end we forget that it is all about people.

Well, this review is long overdue, but I’ve been putting Microsoft’s latest addition to the OneNote family through its paces.  Overall, I’m fairly pleased with how well I was able to reorganize my notebooks, including some older ones from when I had a Windows smartphone but never had the incentive to do anything with until the iPhone app came out.

However, I should make sure to stress the word "fairly".

First off, it really was easy enough to install. It’s like installing any other app.  However, there aren’t an abundance of instructions, so I fumbled about for a short time figuring out how to sync notes.  You can choose which groups to sync, which is pretty handy since I don’t want or need all my notes on the road.

There is no direct sync, such as what you’d expect in iTunes, but all sync’ing goes through SkyDrive.  SkyDrive is free for up to 2GB, and you can store up to 500 notes for free.  Very little effort is required to sync, but just a little patience the first time you sync a notebook.  It isn’t that obvious at first whether or not it is working, so give it some time the first go-around.

You can find some basic instructions for setup at the Microsoft Blog that includes linking to SkyDrive.

If it sounds a bit kludgy, it actually works quite well.  It is the initial setup that is a bear.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the only gotcha.  What sort of information would you need right away on a mobile device?  Credit card numbers?  Bank account numbers?  How about your spouse’s Social Security number?  Well, here’s the rub: OneNote provides you with a way to password protect such sections of information on your Windows laptop/desktop, but you cannot open them on the iPhone!  Therefore, the information that I would need right away while away from my main computer is the very information I cannot securely carry with me.  It either needs to be in an insecure section of a notebook, or it cannot be opened!

While this is the only real gotcha I have found, it is big one!  For me, and a few others it seems, this is a pretty severe limitation.

I like Linux.  However, due to various reasons, I spend the majority of my time in Windows 7.  It can be a pain to reboot in order to switch because there are some processes I just plain need running the majority of the time (Skype, for example).

I was reading about Windows 8, and some were advising running it in a virtual machine (VM).  That sounded like a great idea to me, but for running Ubuntu rather than Windows 8.  I pondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

Actually, I know why.  It is bound to suck down the memory, and, sure enough, in the end it did.  But, it is possible to do!

My initial attempt wasn’t so great, however.  Windows 7 Pro comes with the ability to run Virtual PC.  You can even download the appropriate files to install a Windows XP VM that can be used for Windows 7 XP Mode.  However, for installing Ubuntu?  It died before it even started.  It took several minutes to even get to the install screen, and then 3 hours later I killed it.

I was familiar with VMWare, but that’s mostly for enterprise stuff these days.  I had heard of Oracle VM VirtualBox (note: link will be down for the entire weekend starting at 5:00 pm EDT, so sorry for the bad timing), but frankly I didn’t know that much about it.  However, Dr Bill the Computer Curmudgeon of DrBill.tv, who also hosts VirtZine and is a VM expert, recommends it.  Oh, and you cannot beat the price: Free!

So, I downloaded VirtualBox and installed it.  I basically took the defaults, as I wasn’t really familiar with it enough to change much anyhow (I did consider using the MS type of virtual disk instead of the default, but I changed my mind and left it alone).

So, my first obstacle was to figure out how to “insert” an ISO as a CD.  I created a machine, but then later went into the settings and was able to add the drive under Storage | IDE Controller.  Just click on the disk with the green plus sign.

So, then, will it boot from it?  There was only one way to tell, and that was to start up the machine!  Ta-da!  It booted off the virtual CD!

OK, but it did give me some grief and didn’t register the [Esc] key for some reason when I pressed it.  It also was annoying in popping up useful but intrusive informational boxes (so, I don’t really know if the [Esc] key didn’t register or if it was interrupted by a popup).  Seems there should be a better way to inform you of mouse and keyboard controls.  OK, OK, it is free, so I cannot complain … too much.

Well, I gritted my teeth, and the install started up!  Already progress over MS’s Virtual PC.

Well, to make a long story short, it installed quite well, but it did complain about Unity not being able to run.

There already was an update.  I ignored it initially, as I wanted to poke around.  That actually turned out to be a good thing.  I could not figure out how to share a folder, get Unity working or even properly control the mouse and keyboard.  I worked on the shared folder first, but that turned out to be the wrong thing.  I could not get it to work.

Turns out, you have to install the “VBoxGuestAdditions”, similar to how you install some extensions onto a VMWare image to get the keyboard, mouse and screen to work correctly.  Apparently, it inserts drivers that lets you mount shared folders without having to share them out onto the network.  Figuring out how to install them was an exercise in itself, though.  Somehow, I ended up farther down on the help file than I should have been and missed the part where all I had to do was choose Devices | Install guest additions.

After installing the guest additions, I was able to connect to a local folder.  This is what I really wanted to do anyhow, as the Unix environment more favorably manipulates files from the commandline.

OK, so what else?  I ran the Ubuntu upgrade, and I had to reinstall the guest additions.  However, this time Unity was working after installing the additions.

I played with Firefox, installed LastPass and XMarks, and I was surfing the Internet in no time.

I opened up the commandline, and I got a loop running in a few minutes to copy over some files with similar names (pretty simple in Unix, but not in Windows).

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

OK, but it does bog down the machine.  Try running this and uploading pictures via WordPress at the same time – ain’t gonna happen!  They both were sucking down memory.   As it turns out, though, using the WordPress image uploader isn’t the best way to do it anyhow, as it seems to not be able to handle files of a certain size and/or resolution.

At the same time, this is still better than having to reboot to get into Ubuntu when all I want is something quick and dirty.

I’m not sure why Virtual PC did not work for this, as Windows XP worked fine in a VM.  Not everyone can run Virtual PC, though, and VirtualBox does not depend upon any hardware feature to work.  Like VMWare, it is all done in software.  That may or may not have something to do with it.

Ubuntu has released 12.0.4, which is, according to Lifehacker article "First Look at Ubuntu Linux 12.04 ‘Precise Pangolin’", more of a polishing up of the old more than anything else.

What in the world is a “pangolin”?  According to Wikipedia, it is a scaly anteater.  Aren’t you glad you asked?

Ubuntu is perhaps one of the most popular flavors of Linux, a version of Unix originally written for the Intel-based PCs.  It doesn’t take a geek to set it up and run it.  While I’m not convinced the average user would be able to install it any easier than Windows 7, I think most could with minimal coaching.

One neat feature of Ubuntu, although not exactly new, is that you can boot off of a “live CD” and try it out without installing it.  Of course, you cannot save any of your work without installing something to the hard drive, but it is handy for taking a test drive.  It is also, IMO, an essential part of any PC repairman’s toolbox.

Another neat feature of Ubuntu is that you can install it inside of Windows.  It is worthy of note that this means you can install it within Windows not use it within Windows.  I played a little bit with this feature, and it worked pretty well.  It even uninstalled easily enough, something that far too many other less intrusive programs do not.  Rather than using the somewhat cumbersome grub utility to choose your operating system at boot up, this method will use the somewhat more familiar Windows loader to show the user’s choices.

Of course, that still means having to reboot if you have to switch operating systems.

However, what if you actually wanted to do something geeky like running Linux within Windows?  The safest bet would be to run the famous Cygwin tools on Windows.  Cygwin are some handy-to-use commandline utilities that mimic Linux.  It is sometimes incorporated into other GNU applications to mimic their Linux counterparts.

Of course, that isn’t actually running Linux within Windows, but there is a way to actually run Ubuntu within a Windows shell without the need to reboot.  That will be tomorrow’s Geek Friday article.

Well, the word is that Google Drive is now out in the wild.  So, how does it fare?  Well, if Lifehacker’s article “File Syncing Faceoff: Dropbox vs. Google Drive” is any indication, I’ll keep on using Dropbox.

Apparently, Google went to great lengths to make it even look similar to Dropbox and not just make it functionally equivalent.  However, not everything really is functionally equivalent, it seems:

Once it downloads all your files, you’ll see them in your Google Drive folder, just like Dropbox. Each has a green checkmark if it’s synced, or a blue refresh icon if it’s currently syncing. Items created in Google Docs have their own special icons, and can only be opened in Google Docs….

Say what?  I went to a lot of trouble installing Docs To Go on my iPhone (review pending) in order to be able to open items on my iPhone and not in Google Docs!  This is a deal breaker already, if you ask me.  While Google Docs does a decent job at many of its apps, they really do look and behave differently than in MS Office.

There are some other more minor (IMO) items that Lifehacker points out as well, so don’t consider this a rehash and skip their article, please.  Not all of them are downers, either, as Google Drive will come with 5GB already free, and disk space is always an attraction for those who need it.

The DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG) has been ordered to extend activities in providing clean DNS servers to replace malicious servers that were used to further infect machines with malware and fake software products.

The Internet runs on dotted decimal addresses, but human beings remember words easier than huge numbers.  So, the Domain Name Services tree was established to publish a translation from domain names to the dotted decimal addresses that computers understand.  For example, while you might type “www.johndscomputers.com” into the address bar of a browser, it is sent to a nameserver which will translate it into 216.239.131.9.

When TDSS or Alureon has infected a system, it will change the computer’s DNS settings to ask a rogue server for addresses instead of the user’s ISP and the legitimate system of servers.  This is why this malware also has the name “Google redirects” or “Google redirect virus”.  This can result in downloading yet even more malware, be forced to view spam advertisements, etc.

Back in November, the FBI in cooperation with other agencies (domestic and foreign) arrested sever cybercriminals responsible for these servers and the malware working for Rove Digital.  The servers have been taken over and will now reply with proper addresses, at least until 9 July 2012.  This will give people time to clean up their systems.

Meanwhile, the DCWG offers links so that you can check specifically for this type of malware.  It will only check for this type of malware, and it is not a replacement for a reputable antivirus solution.

If infected, it is important to get this cleaned up prior to authorities pulling the plug on the clean servers, as Internet connectivity may cease on infected machines who might be left out in the cold because of a lack of DNS server replies.

You can also read the removal instructions at BleepingComputer.com.