When Information Isn't Enough

Hackers and cybercriminals are not just interested in stealing your personal information; they want control of your computers as well. Attackers may use "zombies", which are viruses that gain remote access and control of personal computers, to make a large number of PCs work together to form a "botnet". If attackers had to pay for the networking resources required to generate the amount of spam and phishing attacks they create, it would be costly. By gaining control over a large number of individual PCs, without the users' knowledge, cybercriminals save money and mask their identities. Cybercriminals then use the botnets to distribute spyware, spread viruses, attack networks, and scam computer users with spam and phishing attacks that are designed to get victims to give up their credit card, banking and other personal information.

Common Sense Internet Safety for Your Family

As a parent, you have the opportunity to limit and even control the type of exposure your family encounters through the Internet.

First, decide what types of site you would like your children to visit and those you would like to avoid. Bookmark for your children those sites that you find are appropriate for their age and interests. Talk to your children about why you feel some sites are inappropriate. For example, some sites may ask for personal information that similar sites do not. Explain to your children why it’s important to be cautious about giving out personal information. Also, if you feel it’s ok for your children to engage in social networking sites, monitor their pages and offer suggestions that will help them steer clear of schemers and other criminals.

Like so many Internet risks these days, zombie PCs represent a complex threat.

Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are utilizing a variety of nefarious tools and tricks to do their dirty work. As mentioned earlier, one common vector of infection is via an infected email attachment, which, if not detected and removed by your anti-virus protection, can lead to a zombie infection. Here's how it might happen - opening an infected email attachment can install the malicious software, which can then open a port on your PC (if not protected by a firewall) to allow a hacker to utilize it to send or infect your PC with spyware (if not protected by anti-spyware software).

See the Print

When you go to print something, you probably go to File, Print, choose all of the settings you want and then click on the Print button to get the process going, am I right? Well, what if your print job is going to take a long time? You don't want to have to sit there and wait on it, do you? But then again, when you come back, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check the status of it? If that sounds good to you, there is a way to do it. Here's how!

Once you click on the final Print button that gets everything going, an icon will appear in the bottom right hand corner of your taskbar (the same place where the clock icon sits). You can then double click on that icon to see the progress of your print job. The icon looks like this (only much smaller), depending on the kind of printer you happen to have:

how to change a file extension

file extensions are a big part of our computing lives and every file we work with has its own special extension and format. So, if you've ever needed to change an extension and you're not sure how to do it, keep reading to find out!

First, let's go over some examples. You may have even experienced these before. Maybe you have a document that is in an .htm (HTML) format, but you'd like to view it under a .txt (text) extension. Or, maybe one of your friends e-mailed you a picture, but instead of it being a JPEG format like you're used to, it was sent as a GIF or maybe even as a PDF. So, how can you change those to be the formats you want? It's pretty easy, so let's get to it!

First, you need to make sure your system is set up to allow file extension changes. To check on that, go to your Start menu, choose Run, type in "explorer" (without the quotes) and click OK. Once the new window opens, go to the Tools menu and click on Folder Options. Next, choose the View tab and find the option that says "Hide extensions for known file types." Make sure that is unchecked and then click OK. Now, you're all set!

Next, go to the file you want to change, right click on it and choose Rename. You can then rename the file with the new extension you prefer. Once you're done, just hit the Enter key on your keyboard and it will be saved. Then you can go and open the file again, but this time, it will be the way you want it!

Why Am I Back There Again?

Have you ever scrolled a long way through an MS Excel worksheet and, while you were looking around, hit an arrow key to move? If so, you found yourself right back where you started, didn't you?

What happened?

I mean, you were a hundred lines down and now you're right back at the top.

Don't panic! You're not hallucinating, the program isn't malfunctioning and you didn't do anything wrong.

Here's the deal: Scrolling (with either the scroll bars or the mouse wheel) is simply changing the view on the screen, but not actually selecting new cells.

In fact, if you pay attention to the selected cell outline, you'll find that it scrolls out of sight, staying right where it was.

So, when you hit an arrow key (or the Enter key), you take the selection of the original cell and move it only one cell away. The program then zips the view back to the cell you just selected, giving you the sense that something went wrong.

If you want to select a cell in the current view, you'll need to use your mouse to select it. That will keep the view right where you put it.

On the other hand, you could use this to your advantage to "take a look around" while scrolling. You can then hit an arrow key to zoom right back to the location you left, completely skipping having to scroll back!

Either way, now you know what's going on and you'll hopefully find Excel's movements a little less mystifying

Creating E-mail Folders

Do you receive countless e-mails on a daily basis? Are some of those e-mails interesting, important or just something you would like to come back to later? If so, wouldn't you like to categorize them, without having to mark them as Old, Keep As New, Unmark, Unread, etc.? Or, what if you accidentally deleted some of them? Or, even worse, lose them. I mean, who has time to deal with all of that?!

Well, now you can make new folders to manage and organize all of your e-mails. That way, you won’t have to flood your Inbox and all your other folders with uncategorized e-mail. Cool, huh?!

For instance, I made a folder called "WorldStart" for all of their articles and updates. I put all of the articles and newsletters I receive from WorldStart in that folder. That way, I don’t have to go searching for them in all of my other e-mail folders. I can go right to that folder and find everything I need. It’s all in one place! So, if that sounds like something you'd like to do as well, keep reading. Below you will find instructions on how to do that in AOL, Yahoo! and Gmail. Okay, let's get started!

Movie Organizer

I have some great news for everyone who regularly checks out these weekly download articles! This week's just so happens to be a program that helps you organize all of the movies you may have on disk (for example, CD/DVD-R/RW). To be honest, I never really thought about using a program like this until I took a phone call here at the office from someone looking for a piece of software that could organize their movie collection.

My first thought was to just use MS Excel or even a text document program, but my thoughts were really basic in ways of organizing those records. I didn't realize there was software out there that does an outstanding job at this very thing. And better yet, it's all free!

The program is called Movie Organizer and it's from a company called OXD. Basically, it's a database with tons of categories to help you organize your media. Movie Organizer gives you, the user, a mind blowing number of categories and fields in which to input information about your media. You can even go out to MOOD (Movie Organizer Online Database) and download information about your movies to include with it.

You don't need to save the input data to the same database either. You can create a new database for any specific needs you have. All of the editable fields and databases also make the Movie Organizer very searchable. In fact, you can add search criteria to help you narrow down your search.

Here's an example of how this tailored search works. Say you want to find all the movies with John Candy in them. You would start by opening the Search menu, go to Search, select "actor" from the pull down menu in the searchable field and type in Mr. Candy's name. The search will look through that category to find all the John Candy movies and put them in a list.

Seasoning Mixes

You should know by now that I’m always looking for new recipes! Well, I happened to run across this Web site that is full of seasoning mix recipes and I just couldn’t wait to share it with all of you. I am a huge fan of seasoning mixes. From the pre-made pot roast mixes to my favorite poultry seasoning, nothing can make me happier than having a new seasoning mix to test out in my kitchen!

Navigation on this site is super simple! The entire page is basically an index. All you have to do is click on the name of the seasoning mix you want the recipe for and you will be taken to its page. There you will find the recipe and a link that directs you back to the main index of seasoning mixes.

I was surprised to see Colonel Sanders secret herbs and spices, KFC's chicken seasoning mix, Taco Bell's meat seasoning, several Emeril spice mixes and Mrs. Dash’s table seasoning here. I’m really itching to try them and see how they compare!

I was also very excited to see that there were two recipes a piece for Herbs de Provence and poultry seasoning. I know Poultry Seasoning 2 is very close to the one I love. Also, I just got a brand new spice rack for Christmas and I’ve been dying to test it out!

I also urge you to check out the vanilla sugar recipe! They provide two ways of making it: with vanilla extract and vanilla beans. Plus, you can use the extract version to make lemon sugar, almond sugar or even mint sugar, all of which are great in teas, baked goods and even icing.

I think you're sure to find a seasoning mix here that you will like. Whether you want to try new things or need to make a filler mix, because you ran out of your favorite seasoning, it's all here.

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides

The Infrastructure Planning & Design guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. This series aims to clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, each addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario. These guides compliment product documentation by exposing and focusing on infrastructure design options
Released guides in series include:
Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization delivers applications that are never installed, yet securely follow users anywhere, on demand. It dramatically improves IT efficiencies, enables much greater business agility, and provides a superior end-user desktop experience. This guide enables you to plan the infrastructure required for meeting your application virtualization service goals.
Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology  guide helps you learn which Microsoft virtualization technology or technologies you should use for specific customer scenarios and then leverage the appropriate IPD guides.
Windows Server Virtualization (for Windows Server 2008 virtualization and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1) guide discusses how to plan your customers' server virtualization environment by determining requirements for the guest operating systems, applications, and services; capacity and performance requirements; and overall planning and design issues.

Harnessing the Power of Virtualization for Dynamic IT

The potential for information technology to drive business success has never been greater. Advances in software, devices, and networks are transforming the way companies streamline communications, automate processes, and enable employees to access the information and capabilities they need to respond to new opportunities.

At the same time, the complexity of IT has never been higher. Business success increasingly depends on providing mobile employees with easy access to corporate computing resources. People who use instant messaging, social networking sites, and other relatively new communications technologies at home expect to use similar tools at work.

The result is a growing number of contradictory requirements: ease of access vs. security and compliance; performance vs. cost; innovation and agility vs. reliability and continuity. For IT professionals, the real challenge is resolving the tension inherent in trying to create an infrastructure that provides both the flexibility to enable employees to drive business success and the control to protect corporate resources, maintain compliance, and provide continuity.

Helping companies find the right balance is one of Microsoft's most important priorities. To do that, we are focused on technology innovation that will enable companies to build systems that have the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives. This is a vision we call Dynamic IT. Virtualization technologies that provide powerful new tools for creating more efficient, flexible, and cost effective IT systems will provide a critical foundation for bringing this new vision to life.

In previous executive emails, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer discussed advances that are revolutionizing communications, improving productivity, and transforming the way companies use information. Because you are a subscriber to executive emails from Microsoft, I want to share my thoughts about virtualization with you. As senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, I know that virtualization is helping IT departments reduce costs and improve business continuity and compliance, and I believe that over the long term, it will have a significant impact on the way businesses run IT. It is still early for this important technology--ultimately, virtualization will play an important role in improving business agility by making IT systems more flexible and more responsive to changing business needs.

Understanding Virtualization

Virtualization is an approach to deploying computing resources that isolates different layers--hardware, software, data, networks, storage--from each other. Typically today, an operating system is installed directly onto a computer's hardware. Applications are installed directly onto the operating system. The interface is presented through a display connected directly to the local machine. Altering one layer often affects the others, making changes difficult to implement.

By using software to isolate these layers from each other, virtualization makes it easier to implement changes. The result is simplified management, more efficient use of IT resources, and the flexibility to provide the right computing resources, when and where they are needed.

There are different types of virtualization. Machine virtualization uses software to create a virtual machine that emulates the services and capabilities of the underlying hardware. This makes it possible to run more than one operating system on a single machine. On servers, this approach is called server virtualization; on end-user PCs, it is called desktop virtualization.

Application virtualization separates the application from the operating system, reducing conflicts between applications, which can simplify deployments and upgrades. Presentation virtualization enables an application on a computer in one location to be controlled by a computer in another.

There is also storage virtualization, which lets users access applications and data without having to worry about where they are stored. And network virtualization allows remote users to tap into a company network as if they were physically connected.

Virtualization is not new. IBM first introduced virtual machine technology for mainframe computers in the early 1960s. Microsoft Windows NT included a virtual DOS machine. Virtual PC was introduced by Connectix in 1997 (Microsoft acquired Connectix in 2003). EMC's VMware introduced its first product, VMware Workstation, in 1999. Softricity introduced SoftGrid, the first application virtualization product, in 2001 (Microsoft acquired Softricity in 2006).

Currently, industry analysts estimate that fewer than 10 percent of servers are virtualized, despite the fact that virtualization has been around for many years. But its significance is growing as companies have introduced products that target today's high-volume, low-cost hardware. Now, more and more companies are using server virtualization to save money by consolidating the workload of several servers onto a single machine.

Virtualization: A Foundation for Dynamic IT

As important as server virtualization can be in reducing costs, saving money is just the beginning of the value that virtualization offers. At Microsoft, we believe that virtualization will play a significant role in enabling companies to create IT systems that are not only highly efficient, but that have the self-awareness to adapt automatically as business conditions change.

By separating the layers of the computing stack, a virtualized IT environment makes it possible to quickly deploy new capabilities without having to configure components. In a virtualized environment, testing requirements and application compatibility issues are reduced, processes are easier to automate, and disaster recovery is easier to implement.

In the data center, virtualization not only supports server consolidation, but it enables workloads to be added and moved automatically to precisely match real-time computing needs as demand changes. This provides greater agility, better business continuity, and more efficient use of resources.

On the desktop, application virtualization reduces management costs. And when the operating system, applications, data, and user preferences are all virtualized, it makes it possible for users to access the computing resources they need anywhere, from any machine. The result is tremendous flexibility for employees and greater efficiency and agility for IT departments.

The Importance of Integrated Management

In a virtualized environment, a comprehensive management approach that provides the ability to monitor and track physical and virtual resources becomes critical. To achieve Dynamic IT, management solutions must also provide the foundation for automating the allocation of resources as business conditions change. It is the combination of virtualization technologies running across computing layers and orchestrated by a single set of management tools that provides the foundation for Dynamic IT.

Microsoft System Center delivers management software that enables IT professionals to manage all of their computing resources--both virtual and physical. System Center provides provisioning, monitoring, and back-up tools for virtual and physical environments across desktops and servers, and operating systems and applications. System Center enables companies to capture information about their infrastructure, policies, processes, and best practices so they can automate operations, reduce costs, and improve application availability.

Dynamic IT from the Server to the Desktop

Although virtualization has been around for more than four decades, the software industry is just beginning to understand the full implications of this important technology. Server virtualization to consolidate multiple machines into a single server is the most common form of virtualization in use today but it is still very early in the adoption cycle. At Microsoft, we believe that in the coming years, sever virtualization will become ubiquitous. Adoption of other forms of virtualization is just beginning, too, and their potential value remains largely untapped.

To help make this valuable technology more accessible, Microsoft is delivering innovations that make virtualization more affordable and less complex. We also are actively working with industry partners to develop new products and services that will unlock the power of virtualization for companies of all sizes.

Already, virtualization products from Microsoft and our partners are helping companies match computing capabilities to business needs. Imagine, for example, if your employees could access their personalized desktop, with all of their settings and preferences intact, on any machine, from any location. Or if workloads running on the servers in your data center automatically redeployed to respond to a sudden surge in demand for a specific capability. Or if your entire infrastructure could restore itself instantly following a catastrophic power outage.

Today, using existing Microsoft technologies, these Dynamic IT scenarios are already possible. Tomorrow, they will be the norm as we continue to bring new innovations in virtualization and systems management to market that help companies build truly dynamic infrastructures, from the server to the desktop.

Paid URL Inclusion

There are many ways to promote your website and one of the
most efficient ways is to use search engines. Search
engines are the first stop for most people trying to find
information, services, and products online. Because of
this, it is essential that your website appears quickly in
search results.
The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of
which offer what is known as "paid inclusion." This means
that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for
your web page to be included in their index.
Of course, every search engine already has an automated
program commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the web
pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So
whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be
indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the
spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is,
then, how quickly your page is indexed.
A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an
extra spider that is programmed to index the particular
pages that have been paid for. The difference between the
spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that
indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for
inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index
your page immediately.
The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around the
annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search
engines would eventually get around to indexing your web
page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is
necessary to keep your pages in the search engine's index.
If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware
that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines,
your page will be removed from their index for a certain
amount of time.
It's easy to get confused about whether you would benefit
from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine
will eventually index your page without the additional
cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid
URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and
cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for
the extra cash or not.
The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid
re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be
indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short
time after you have paid the fee. The time difference
between when the regular spider will index your pages and
when the paid spider will is a matter of months. The spider
for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or
two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your
pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.
Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your
pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is
that you can update your pages constantly to improve the
ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the
paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter
of days.
First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten
page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from
$170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to
pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost
factor is will depend on your company.
Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the
limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search
engines, Google, Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URL
inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to
pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the
traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Google usually updates its index every month, and there is
no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait
for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how
many other search engines you have paid to update their
index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates
their index that your pages will show up in Google, Yahoo,
or AOL results.
One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good
deal for your company is to consider some common factors.
First, find out if search engines have already indexed your
pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of
different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to
enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when
you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter
keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This
is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked
by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money
would be better spent by updating your pages to improve
your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this,
you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to
speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to
revisit your pages.
The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid
URL inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. To
figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture:
what kind of product or service are you selling and how
much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?
If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires
a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may
not be the best investment for you; the biggest search
engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will
bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you
have a business that offers an expensive service or product
and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a
paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.
Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated
frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly
basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are
indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by
the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords
are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in
this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed
in a timely manner.
You should also base your decision on whether or not your
pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are
often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index.
Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically
generated website will insure that the paid spider will
index them.
Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search
engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few
months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen,
but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the
possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages
are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the
search engine will be on the lookout to locate them
immediately.

Web-based software

Every day more and more of what we have traditionally relied on downloadable software to do can now be done with Web-based applications. Full applications can now be run in a browser, accessible from any computer. Does that mean software downloads will go the way of the dinosaur? Check out this week's collection of our most popular Webware and decide for yourself.

If you have a favorite site or Web-based application, be sure to nominate it for inclusion in the second Webware 100.

The Top 10 most popular downloads remains largely unchanged this week, with one lone exception of archiving tool WinRAR moving into the 10 spot after jumping three places. In the Top Movers, popular FTP client SmartFTP leads the pack after leaping seven spots to No. 25.

Use your line-drawing skills to defeat monkeys with fancy fezzes and axe blades in this week's game pick "Chalk." In music, we've got gritty new tracks from Detroit vintage rock duo The White