Catherine Conner
Posts tagged how-to
Don’t Use These Passwords — Make a Better One!
Jun 14th
Lots of people have asked me recently about how to choose secure passwords. Not only does this article show you some of the most common passwords in use (don’t EVER use any of those! 
) but includes a short video with some easy tips on how to create a secure, yet memorable, password.
The Thirteen Virtues of Benjamin Franklin
Jun 17th
Centuries before the self-help movements began, people already understood the basic need to better themselves. Benjamin Franklin created what we would call a “to-do” list of 13 areas of his life he wanted to improve; he even charted his progress weekly. I think everyone will find at least a few of these familiar. It’s heartening to learn that even the best of us are human — we all struggle against some of the same tendencies as those of our ancestors.
Ben Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues (quoted from Franklin’s autobiography)
Facebook’s Newest Privacy Attack: Fight Back!
Apr 23rd
OK, so the new “Social Web” features of Facebook really scare me. I do NOT want FB silently collecting more information about me than I already share with it…and I do NOT want FB to “personalize” my experience on the web based on my and my friends’ preferences. As a start you can disable the new “OpenGraph” feature which collects all this data (of course FB has enabled this “feature” for everyone by default!).
“How to Reclaim Your Privacy by Disabling Facebook’s ‘OpenGraph’” (via How-to Geek)
Copy and Paste from the Web — With or Without Markup
Feb 1st
How I wish I’d found this extension earlier! Often I need to copy text directly from my browser into another document or other web page. But most of the time the automatic copy picks up all the HTML formatting code along with the text. That’s fine if I really want the formatting along for the ride, but more often I need to purge the markup code before I paste the text content into my next application. The only certain way I knew of to do this was by pasting my content into a plain text editor, recopying, and pasting to the final location. But if you use Firefox or Internet Explorer to do your browsing, there’s a really cool extension called Extended Copy Menu 1.6 that adds copying options to your right-click menu. More >
Easy Ways to Avoid Online Scams
Dec 14th
Many basic safety rules we learned as children: look both ways, don’t talk to strangers, do unto others. But for those of us who didn’t get online safety rules with our mother’s milk, here’s a great basic guide to avoiding online and email scamming from lifehacker.com (a great how-to site). A quick, easy, and non-tech-heavy read, I recommend it highly.
The Complete Guide to Avoiding Online Scams (for Your Less Savvy Friends and Relatives)
Flash is a Multimedia Tool, NOT a Website Platform
Dec 8th
I don’t want my blog to become one long vicious negative rant, so in general I try not to write pieces about things that irk me. However, once in a while I encounter something about which I feel passionately hacked off, for which I can offer some constructive alternatives, and that I want to warn my friends about. Plus, it is *my* blog, and if I can’t stand on my soapbox here, where else can I? So here it is:
Businesspeople: PLEASE stop building web sites based solely on Adobe Flash technology. Use it for streaming video and audio, by all means. Offer it as an extended “experience” on your site. But for the love of God, PLEASE learn to understand the basic functionality of web tools before you blindly blunder forward with technology marketing. More >
Using Google Search Feature “Shortcuts”
Nov 23rd
I remember life without Google. Back then I wasn’t aware that I was missing anything, but now I can’t imagine my life without it: instantly available data on almost any topic. But did you know there are additional features and shortcuts that can be entered directly into the Google search window that make it even more of an essential desktop tool? Unit conversions, currency converters, definitions, and more: here are a few that I use almost every day.
How To Download Podcasts in Windows
Oct 6th
This TechTip post discusses specifically how to download podcasts using podcatching software on an Windows computer. You may wish to first read my more general post “How to Find and Download Podcasts” for an overview of podcasts and podcasting.
Podcatching with Windows can be a little tricky. Windows XP and Vista operating systems usually come with their own audio/video players already installed (Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center, respectively). As of this writing, neither of these softwares includes podcatching functionality by default. So what are your options? More >
How To Download Podcasts on a Mac
Oct 6th
This TechTip post discusses specifically how to download podcasts using podcatching software on an Apple Macintosh computer. You may wish to first read the more general post “How to Download Podcasts” for an overview of podcasts and podcasting.
If you own a Macintosh computer, you’ve got it easy. A podcatcher is already included, and is one of the most widely used podcatchers around. It’s called iTunes. You thought iTunes was only a music and video player? Well it also has built-in podcast management. More >
How Do I Find and Download Podcasts?
Oct 6th
I wrote about podcasts recently in an article I did for a local club magazine here in Hamburg. Since then many friends have asked for more information on the technical aspects of using podcasts and podcatcher software. I decided to post those answers here. (If you don’t know what a podcast is, you might first want to have a look at this.)
You may already be familiar with searching for and downloading music and/or video from the Internet to your computer. This is essentially what happens when you identify a podcast you want to listen to — you download it and then either listen to it directly on your computer, or copy it onto an iPod or other MP3 player to listen to on the go. But what makes podcasts special is that you can subscribe to them, just like you would a print magazine or email newsletter, and have your computer automatically download new episodes of your podcasts as soon as they become available. The tricky bit is, how do you do that? That’s what this article is all about.
