Secunia Personal Security Inspector (PSI) Released

Secunia’s Personal Security Inspector (PSI) is now out of beta. I’ve been using this handy application for quite a while and have found it to be extremely valuable for keeping my applications updated.

Secunia PSI scans the applications installed on your PC and warns you if any are outdated and contain known security flaws. It also flags applications that are no longer being supported by their vendors.

Windows users typically keep their machines updated with Windows Update or Microsoft Update, however, Microsoft Update only scans Windows and Microsoft applications. Secunia PSI scans not only Windows and Microsoft applications, but a long list of other applications from other software vendors such as Apple, Adobe, Sun and many others.

This latest version of Secunia PSI adds a “Simple” mode for non-technical users. The Advanced mode gives the user extensive control over the patching process while Simple mode makes the process, well, simple for the average PC user.

Secunia PSI runs in the background and constantly monitors your PC, scanning periodically to determine if the status of any known applications has changed and warning you if it does. The program is unobtrusive and doesn’t seem to consume noticeable quantities of resources.

This is not an anti-virus scanner. You still need AVG or another good anti-virus application. Secunia PSI compares the versions of known applications on your machine with its list of the latest secure versions. If there’s a mismatch, i.e. you have an older version of an application installed, PSI will warn you and tell you how severe the threat is.

The user interface is clean and straightforward, showing you graphically which programs are insecure or at end-of-life (no longer supported), how severe the threat is, whether there’s a direct download for the update, and very importantly, where the application is located on your machine. The latter information is very helpful when PSI shows that you have two instances of the Java runtime, for example.

I highly recommend installing Secunia PSI on your PC and keeping your applications updated with the latest security fixes. You can download the latest version here:

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

John The Geek

Amazon Kindle – First Impressions

The Amazon Kindle is basically an electronic book. Amazon calls it a “Wireless Reading Device.” The Kindle has been on the market about a year now. I recall looking at it when it was introduced and thinking it was a very cool idea.

Well, now it’s a year later and I own a Kindle. And it’s very cool.

The first thing you notice about a Kindle is the “electronic paper” screen. It’s essentially black-on-white and the detail is very sharp. Text is crisp and very readable even in bright daylight outside. There are a number of screen saver pictures that come with the Kindle and these are very detailed, looking very much like fine etchings.

Operation of the Kindle is straightforward. On the left side are Previous Page and Next Page buttons. On the right, a Next Page button and a small Back button. A small scroll wheel below the bottom right corner of the screen controls the cursor and menu system. Push the wheel to click, roll it to scroll the cursor.

The Kindle has a headphone jack for listening to music or audiobooks, a USB port for transferring content from your PC to the Kindle and vice-versa, and an AC jack to recharge the battery. At the bottom of the screen are indicators for remaining battery charge and wireless connectivity.

Battery life is impressive. I’ve gotten 3-4 days from full charge to half discharged with it on 24/7. I’ve not run the battery all the way down. Amazon warns not to do that, but to keep it topped off. I’m still a Ni-Cad guy so I can’t bring myself to plug it in every night, but when it gets to the halfway mark, I’ll charge it back up.

The Kindle is on the Whispernet wireless network, aka Sprint. I get 4-5 bars of signal strength everywhere I’ve been with it so far. The wireless is fast. A 1.5-2MB Kindle book downloads in a few seconds.

The Kindle has about 180MB of available internal memory, good for a hundred or so books in Kindle format. There is an SD card slot to add more storage. I have a 4GB card in mine which will hold literally thousands of books and documents. The Content Manager allows you to move items from internal memory to the SD card and vice-versa, or delete items altogether.

If you purchase a book from the Kindle Store, it is delivered to your Kindle via the wireless and also stored in your online Media Library at Amazon. This means if you run out of space on your Kindle and have to remove something to make more room, you can redownload it from the Media Library at any time when you have more available space.

In addition to the content you purchase from the Kindle Store, you can convert various files to Kindle format. At the moment, Microsoft Word documents are supported along with MP3s, JPGs and a few others. PDF documents are in the experimental stage. I’ve converted several PDFs and the results have been varied, but this looks very promising. One thing I intend to try soon is to convert a PDF to Word using Adobe Acrobat and then having the Kindle convert the Word doc.

Conversion is simple. Just email the file(s) you wish converted as attachments to the email address given you when you register your Kindle. There are actually two addresses, one of which is free. The difference is that the paid address delivers the converted document directly to the Kindle via the wireless. The free version stores the documents on Amazon’s servers and sends you an email with links to download them to your computer. You then transfer the downloaded files to your Kindle via USB cable.

As of this writing, the paid conversion address has not been charging the 10 cents they say they will charge for the service, but eventually I expect they will. The conversion fee isn’t unreasonable and IMO is easily justified in the time savings avoiding the download/upload cycle.

Not all books are available in Kindle format yet, but they’re certainly working on it. If you find a book on Amazon that isn’t in Kindle format, there’s a link next to it to tell the publisher you’d like them to publish it for the Kindle. I’ve been doing that with computer books as some of my favorite publishers aren’t putting out Kindle editions yet.

Purchasing content from the Kindle store is straightforward. You activate 1-Click ordering on your Amazon account and all your Kindle purchases are processed via 1-Click. There is a Search capability where you can search the Kindle Store from your Kindle by keying in search terms from the keyboard. The Kindle keyboard is a typical QWERTY layout, but the keys are very small buttons. Not all the punctuation marks are present, but when you need one, you press the Sym key which brings up a menu of them.

Thankfully, the period, forward slash and @ symbols are on the keyboard. Web surfing is available albeit in experimental mode and pretty much limited in usefulness to mostly-text web sites.

I leave my Kindle on 24/7 by putting it in sleep mode. If it’s idle with no activity for 10 minutes it will go into sleep mode by itself. There is a two-key combination to put it to sleep or wake it up depending on its current state. I also leave the wireless turned on although this probably consumes a bit more battery power than with it off.

In addition to books, you can purchase newspaper and blog subscriptions for your Kindle. All the major newspapers are available and well over 1,000 blogs as of this writing. I signed up for two sports blogs for 99 cents per month each. Whenever anything new is posted to the blogs, it shows up as a new item on my Kindle home page immediately.

I definitely love my Kindle! It’s allowing me to take reading material with me where it’s too cumbersome to carry a book or two and I can grab 10 or 15 minutes of reading as I get time during the day. If all my computer books were somehow transferable to the Kindle, I’d save a good percentage of the space in my home office! Hey, it’s nice to dream.

John The Geek

Living On Purpose Is the Key to Success

You may have heard the term “living on purpose.” We all know from when we were kids that if you did something “on purpose” it means you intended to do it, as opposed to something that happened “by accident” or “I didn’t mean to.”

I’ve been in Internet marketing for almost two years and I’ve recently realized that I haven’t been marketing “on purpose.” That isn’t to say that I became a marketer accidentally. Obviously, I intended to become a marketer! What’s been accidental has been the result I’ve achieved.

Let me explain. When you set out to do something, it doesn’t really matter what it is, you’ll get a result. The question is: is it the result you wanted when you started out?

The statistics are pretty depressing: something well over 90% of all startup businesses fail within the first few years. The length of time it takes for the business to fail is often a function of how long the owner can continue to pour money into it without making a profit!

So, why does such a large percentage fail? Because they have no clear vision of what they want and how the business will help them achieve their goal. In other words, there’s no overarching purpose to the business.

Ask any Internet marketer, or any business owner for that matter, why they’re in business and virtually all of them will say “To make money.” There’s usually a pretty important reason why they want to make money, but no clear plan for how that’s going to happen.

Your life has a purpose and your business needs to fit with that purpose. If you don’t know what your life’s purpose is, obviously, that can’t happen except by accident.

So, how do you discover your life’s purpose? By examining your life and identifying what turns you on and makes your heart sing. You were put here on this Earth to be joyful so by definition anything that brings you joy is part of your purpose.

It doesn’t matter what brings you joy. The important thing is to recognize and acknowledge it. Once you’ve done that, you can focus on finding ways to do those things as often as possible. Ideally, you can do it for a living. Imagine that, having fun “working!”

Look around you and notice that the happiest people you know are the ones doing what they love to do. You may think that you can’t make a living doing what you love to do, but the fact is that you very likely can. Once you know and embrace your purpose, anything is possible!

Knowing your purpose gives you focus, and focus is critical to success. Talk to anyone who is successful at anything and you’ll find that they are totally focused on what they do. That’s why they succeed while others all around them are failing.

If you’re struggling and/or not getting the results you want, I highly recommend taking some time to identify your life’s purpose. I’ve recently completed a 12-week course called “What’s My Purpose?”. It has helped me to discover my life’s true purpose and given me the focus around which to build my life and my business. If you’re ready for the life you want and deserve, you can get all the details here:

http://whatsmypurpose.com/johnsawyer

John The Geek