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Secunia PSI scans the applications installed on your PC and warns you if any are outdated and contain known security flaws.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

Critical Windows Patch Released – MS08-067 (patch 958644)

Most Windows users are familiar with “Patch Tuesday”, the Microsoft monthly release of security updates for Windows and other Microsoft products. In a rare move, Microsoft has released an emergency security patch outside its normal Patch Tuesday cycle.

Security bulletin MS08-067 (patch 958644) addresses a new threat that is obviously pretty severe for Microsoft to release a patch deemed an “emergency” fix. When your Windows machine prompts you to update, assuming you’re like me and don’t let it do them automagically, the recommendation is to apply this patch immediately. This patch affects all versions of Windows.

I’m normally not in any rush to apply security patches as there have been enough cases of them causing more problems than they solve when first released. I usually wait a while until my newletter and industry sources indicate they’re safe. In this case, the word is to apply this patch now, so I made sure all my machines are patched.

John The Geek

Windows Home Server Project

About a year ago I saw an announcement that Microsoft was soon to launch an operating system called Windows Home Server. I was immediately intrigued because I’d been wanting a way to centralize my file storage so that I could keep all my data in one place and access it from any of my computers without having to have copies of everything on all the machines.

I discovered that WHS provided that and much more. Here’s a short list of its capabilities:

• Central shared file storage
• Automatic backup of all computers attached to it
• Remote access via the Internet
• Media streaming to compatible devices on the network
• Sharing of photos and videos with family and friends right from the server

I decided this was an ideal solution to my problem. My original plan was to purchase the software and convert my old desktop machine into a Home Server. This turned out to be a problem, however, when Windows Home Server was suddenly backordered and not available for quite a long time.

I eventually gave up and purchased an HP MediaSmart Server which comes with Windows Home Server. This was actually a better solution as the MediaSmart Server has four drive bays while my desktop machine only has two.

The HP box came with a 500GB hard drive already installed. Since my desktop machine has a total of 415GB of disk in it, I knew I’d need more disk capacity in the server. I purchased a 1TB internal hard drive to install in it. I already have three external USB 500GB drives which I can add to the server via its USB ports, if I choose to.

I set the server up last weekend and got it running. I installed the Windows Home Server client software on my desktop machine first in order to get the server configured and the software updated. This was very easy to do and went quite smoothly.

Next, I installed the Windows Home Server connector on my laptop. Now I can administer the server from either machine and transfer files to the server and access the files from both machines.

The only glitch I’ve encountered so far is that the desktop machine refuses to backup to the server. The C: drive in the desktop machine apparently has some errors on it and Windows Home Server won’t back up the disk with errors. I’m still working on getting the errors cleared up so the server can back up the desktop automatically. Stay tuned for further developments on that situation.

I still need to enable remote access, get the extra hard drives installed, and get the rest of my data files transferred to the server. Once all that’s done, I will get the desktop and laptop set up to backup automatically to the server every night. I’ll post more on those activities as they happen.

I’ve also found a blog dedicated to Windows Home Server users: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk

So far, I’m happy with my server setup. If you have a lot of data and several computers that all need to access it, you’ll want to seriously consider a solution like this.

John The Geek

Ask John The Geek – Header Graphics

Here’s an interesting question about headers that I’m sure a lot of people have:

I have downloaded many headers to use in my graphic designs for websites. Many of them already have text on them telling me where to put “my slogan” and “my website name”…[how do I] eliminate the instruction text on the headers?

The headers are probably in PDS (Photoshop) format. As such, they are layered. The text in question is contained in one or more layers. You simply need software that understands layers.

There is a freeware package called The GIMP (Graphic Image Manipulation Package) that does anything and everything you’d ever want to do with graphics, including Photoshop graphics. There are
tutorials out there, also free, and it will be a rather steep learning curve, but well worth it if you plan to do much graphics editing.

Another possibility is Serif’s PhotoPlus, which is what I use. You can download a free version at:

http://freeserifsoftware.com

I don’t know if the free version can work with Photoshop layers, but the paid version definitely does. I have the paid versions of most of Serif’s applications and I’ve been very happy with them.

No matter which software you use, the procedure is the same:

• Remove the layer that contains the sample text
• Create a new layer that contains the text you want
• Position the layer over the graphic so the text appears where you want it
• Export the entire image as a .jpg or .png or whatever you want to use
  for your site header.

The details of how to do the above steps will vary according to which software you end up using, but it should be fairly straightforward in any case.

John The Geek

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Tracking Ad Results – Preliminary Case Study

I’m in the process of promoting a new membership site I’ve created. For the curious, it’s called Marketing Tech Secrets and you can get all the details about it here.

The purpose of this post is not to promote MTS (I did that already in an earlier post), but to demonstrate some of the things you can learn by tracking the results of your promotional efforts.

I currently use a total of 9 advertising sites each of which offers one or more of the following ad methods: text ads, banner ads, exit ads, or solo email ads. I have upgraded memberships in all but one of them.

I’ve been using these sites for months now to send out promotional emails and advertise affiliate products. I’ve been meaning to implement some kind of tracking mechanism and never got around to it. Now that I have my own product, it got pushed to the top of the priority list.

The system I’m using is very simple right now. Each link I use has a code appended to it which gets read by the landing page. The system simply counts the number of times a given code is seen and stores the counts in a database table.

Eventually, I’ll make it more sophisticated, but for now, it’s already giving me some interesting information. Primarily, it’s showing me how effective these ad sites are (or not) in terms of driving traffic to my site. Pretty important thing to know, right?

Here are the results from the past 12 days:

Text and Banner Ads

Solo Email Ads

* List Joe is a special case. The number looks really good compared to the other sites until you recall that List Joe is a credit-based safelist. That means that people click a link in the email they receive which displays my site for 20 seconds while the credit counter counts down to zero and the user gets credit for viewing my site. A very high percentage of those people probably never even look at the site, but the fact is that they’re at least opening it and it’s up to me to have something on there that grabs their attention.

Conclusions

Leads Leap is far and away the best deal for the money it costs me. I’m a Pro member of Leads Leap for which I pay them $27 per month. My text ads are seen in their newsletters and on their blog and they’re obviously effective as there were about two and a half times the number of hits on my page as the next most effective site.

Target Ads Depot was a distant second to Leads Leap, but still much better than most of the rest of the sites. I’m a lifetime Pro member of Target Ads Depot meaning that I paid once and I have a text ad, a banner ad, and an exit ad for life. The above results only reflect the text ad. So far, there haven’t been any hits on the banner or the exit ads.

Croc Ads did reasonably well in the text ads category. I’m a lifetime Pro member of Croc Ads which means I paid them once and I have two text ads free for life on their system. The results weren’t as impressive as Leads Leap, but only one of my two ads was for MTS.

Aside from List Joe, in the email category only ViralURL scored impressive results. I think that speaks volumes to the responsiveness of ViralURL members. Whereas List Joe‘s members are surfing for points, ViralURL members are actually opening up the emails and clicking on the links to visit the advertised site with no artificial incentive to do so.

I think this was the most interesting statistic of all of them. Where most of the email sites were pretty lame in terms of response, and List Joe‘s curve is skewed, it could be argued that my headlines or emails weren’t compelling enough to get people to open them. I think the ViralURL results refute that. The identical emails were sent to ViralURL as to the rest of the sites and obviously were interesting enough to get them to open them many times more often than the other sites. The only variable was the site and its members.

I hope the importance of doing at least minimal tracking of your promotional efforts is obvious. From these results I can see that only a few of the sites I use are giving me any kind of decent return on the effort I’m expending to use them. In most cases, I’m a paid up lifetime member so it’s not costing me additional money to use them. I’ll continue to use them, but the best performing sites will be the priority when I need to decide which sites I have time for in any given day.

John The Geek

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Firefox 3 – XP vs. Vista and CYA

My laptop at work runs Windows XP. My laptop at home runs Windows Vista Home Premium edition. I didn’t have a choice with the latter machine so I’ve been trying to reach some sort of truce with Vista since I bought the machine back in February.

My wife’s laptop also runs Vista, so if nothing else when she has a problem I have some clue how to deal with it. Usually, I’ve already been there on mine.

The reason I bring up that dreary subject is that I installed Firefox 3 on my work laptop first. As related in my previous post there was some consternation with add-ons that were no longer functional under Firefox 3. Other than that, Firefox 3 installed just fine and runs great now that the add-ons situation is straightened out.

Because things were going swimmingly on the work laptop, I decided to upgrade Firefox on my home laptop, as well. I expected the same heartburn with add-ons and felt like I had a pretty good handle on how to deal with it.

Silly me.

I ran the Firefox 3 installer and did not get the expected dialog listing the add-ons that no longer worked and the helpful “May I look for updates?” button. Instead, Firefox simply started up as usual and I was looking at the blank Firefox 3 interface.

I went to the Tools menu and click Add-ons to bring up the Add-ons dialog. I was greeted with a list of add-ons, most of which displayed the message “Incompatible with Firefox 3.” Some of them had the Uninstall button active, others didn’t. All had the Disable button greyed out along with the Options button.

I clicked the Uninstall button on one of the now-defunct add-ons. Firefox did its thing then displayed the familiar message “Add-on XYZ will be uninstalled when Firefox is restarted.”

I restarted Firefox. The browser came back up. I went to the Tools menu and clicked Add-ons. There at the top of the dialog was the add-on I’d previously uninstalled, its Uninstall button now greyed out, happily displaying the message “Add-on XYZ will be uninstalled when Firefox is restarted.”

Huh? I’d have sworn I just did that. Okay, restart Firefox again. Check the Add-ons dialog again. Same result. This is beginning to look suspiciously like an infinite loop.

After trying a few things and getting nowhere, I decided the better part of valor was to simply uninstall Firefox 3 and go back to Firefox 2 which had been working just fine previously. The result of that exercise was Firefox 2 coming up looking as expected.

Since I knew Google Browser Sync was dead, and I’d been impressed with Foxmarks, I figured I’d go ahead and install Foxmarks and make the switch now. I visited the Foxmarks site, clicked the Install button and got an “unexpected error -203″.

Mind you, this is the first time I’ve ever had an add-on install fail for any reason. Obviously, something was amiss. After some research, the consensus seemed to be that my profile was trashed.

Thinking that perhaps this was one of those Vista-isms where something should have been run in Administrator mode, I re-ran the Firefox 3 install as Administrator. Firefox 3 came up okay. The install of Foxmarks failed again with the same error message.

By now, it’s apparent that the only way to get Firefox 3 and its add-ons sorted out is to create a new profile. Now, mind you, had I thought to BACK UP my existing profile before starting this odyssey, I probably could have simply restored it and been good to go.

Ya gotta love 20-20 hindsight.

Creating a new profile solved the problem, but of course, I had to reinstall all the add-ons I wanted, not to mention redoing all my preferences since I couldn’t find a way to copy them from the old profile to the new one. I wasn’t real confident that it would have worked anyway since I don’t know what part of the old profile is still good and which is corrupted.

The moral of the story is, of course, to back up important things like your Firefox profile before upgrading things that might affect it. I get lazy just like everybody else, even though I know better, and in this case it bit me in the keister.

Was it Vista that caused the corruption? Who knows? It really doesn’t matter, it’s my bad for not properly covering my aforementioned keister and making sure I had a backup to fall back on in case things went awry. That seems to happen a lot more often in Vista than in XP, at least in my experience, so if you’re thinking of upgrading Firefox or any other software, for that matter, do yourself a huge favor and make sure you’re backed up before you start!

John The Geek

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FrontPage Tip – Nested Layers

Here’s another answer to a newsletter reader’s question. Curt asks:

I am creating a header for a web sales page using Front Page. I put the blank pre-made header on front page and add 3 layers of text on to that header with proper placement.

How do I keep the 3 layers fixed on the header so that when I move the header they remain attached and intact?

This is actually straightforward and can be easily accomplished with what are called “nested” layers in FrontPage. You create a layer for the background graphic first. Then, with that layer selected, use the Insert Layer function to create a child layer within the background, or parent, layer. Insert the other two layers into the background layer the same way. Put the text or graphics you want into the respective child layers and position them as you want.

When you want to move the header, which now consists of the parent (background) layer and the three nested child layers, all you need to do is move the parent layer and the child layers will move right along with it.

This is a handy feature of FrontPage as it allows you to create complex headers without a separate graphics program. You can modify the header anytime right in FrontPage. Just remember to nest the layers so they are treated as a unit.

John The Geek

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Writing Widgets

One of my newsletter readers asked about getting a widget created for a particular purpose he has in mind. He wants to know what resources he would need to get a widget written.

The short answer is that widgets are written in PHP or some other web-friendly programming language. I’ve seen Javascript widgets, too, although the typical WordPress widget is written in PHP. There are tutorials available on the web (see below), but if you want the widget to do much more than display “Hello, world”, you either need to learn to program or hire a programmer to write your widget for you. There are numerous resources for finding contract programmers online. Some of those are listed below, as well.

By the way, I located these tutorials using a fantastic search tool called “How-To Seeker”. I find this tool saves me a ton of time when I’m looking for how-to info on the web. I never realized how much stuff is out there on virtually any subject you can think of and How-To Seeker makes it a snap to find what you’re looking for quickly. Highly recommended.

Here are several tutorials on writing widgets:

How to Create WordPress Widgets – This tutorial covers creating a Widget, creating a plugin widget, adding sidebars to a theme, and upgrading a non-widget plugin. Plugins are pieces of addon code that extend the functionality of WordPress, either behind-the-scenes or …

Create A WordPress 2.5 Widget – Create a plugin widget in WordPress 2.5. Covers settings up and using sidebars in your template, activating your widget, and displaying your widget. This tutorial is best suited for people familiar with both PHP and WordPress themes and …

simple wordpress sidebar widget step-by-step development – Sidebar – is an area that take place on the left or on the right from main area. Usually on sidebar placed blog common or quick access elements. This elements called widgets. Common examples: authors, tags, categories, etc. In the world of WordPress widget is a plugin subtype. That is activation/deactivation of widgets realized thru the control panel of plug-ins…

Here is a comprehensive list of sites on which to find contract programmers:

Freelance Job Sites Directory – Contract and part-time projects listed daily. ScriptLance Outsource your projects to freelance programmers and designers at cheap prices. Freelancers will compete for your business. Get programming done for your site in php, mysql, xml, …

John The Geek

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Windows XP SP3 Conflicts With Norton Software

Windows XP Service Pack 3 continues to have difficulties playing nice with other software, or vice-versa. Now it’s been found that Norton software behaves strangely after SP3 is installed. Just what SP3 needs…more good news.

On the other hand, it’s a good case for dumping Norton. Back in the day I was a big fan of the original Norton Utilities. Unfortunately, those days are long gone and if I buy a computer now with Norton on it, one of the first things I do is uninstall Norton and put AVG on the machine. I happen to prefer AVG, but there are many viable alternatives these days to the bloated, bog-slow, intrusive Norton software.

McAfee Antivirus is almost as bad, so I won’t have that on any of my machines, either. I haven’t heard of any conflicts between McAfee Antivirus and SP3 yet, but it won’t surprise me if I do. We use the enterprise version of McAfee Antivirus at work and we’ve had a number of conflicts with our enterprise software applications that were traced back to McAfee Antivirus and required patches or workarounds for one or both applications.

It’s becoming even more obvious that unless you desperately need SP3 for some reason, you should avoid upgrading until Microsoft and the hardware and software folks get these issues worked out. They will get resolved, it’s just a question of when.

John The Geek

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Windows XP Service Pack 3 – No Rush

Those of us still using Windows XP are hearing a lot about Service Pack 3 lately.  Windows XP SP3 has been released for a while now and the usual reports of problems are being received from the early adopters who have already installed it.  It’s good that there are those brave (or foolish) enough to install a new service pack as soon as it’s available.  The rest of us can sit back and watch the fireworks from a safe distance!

My advice is to wait a while before installing SP3.  Hewlett-Packard (HP) has warned owners of their PCs with AMD processors not to install SP3.  There is a known problem where the machines continually reboot after SP3 is installed.  That’s just one example of problems found in the field in the short time SP3 has been available to the public.

Any software upgrade of this magnitude is bound to have some glitches.  Windows XP is a very complex piece of software, actually multiple pieces of software, and catching all the potential bugs in the testing process is simply impossible.  There are too many variables with PC configurations and applications for any testing program to cover every possible combination.

If you’re concerned about the end of life of Windows XP SP2, don’t be.  Microsoft will continue to support SP2 until August of 2009, so you have over a year before you have to worry about that.  By that time SP3 will be stable and you’ll probably have installed it long since.

As with most newly released software, unless there’s a feature or bug fix you absolutely have to have, it’s safer to wait until it’s been released long enough for most of the more serious bugs to be found and fixed.  SP3 adds some features, but the vast majority of those features aren’t things that the average user will even notice.  In short, if you’re not sure you need SP3, you don’t, yet.

Here are some related posts from the blogosphere:

Windows XP Service Pack 3 woes – Windows XP holdouts were blinded by a ray of hope with the release of Service Pack 3, a major update consisting of existing patches with a few enhancements thrown in that has been widely reported to significantly boost significant …

Does your AMD-based computer boot after installing XP SP3? – Last night WSUS deployed XP Service Pack 3 to the sole remaining computer running XP that I have. This morning, I came down and was greeted with incessant reboots. The computer booted, apologized for not being able to boot properly, …

HP recommends against installing Windows XP SP3 – Both HP and Microsoft are working to fix problems causing AMD-based PCs to reboot repeatedly after XP Service Pack 3 is loaded. In the meantime, security expert Dr. Jesper Johansson has beaten the companies to the punch by devising a …

XP Change Corrupts Data, Halts SP3 Rollout – XP Change Corrupts Data, Halts SP3 Rollout Microsoft also suspends autodelivery of Windows Vista SP1. Computerworld — Microsoft Corp. confirmed on Wednesday that it delayed the rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) because changes …

Fix for Restart Bug after installing Windows XP SP3 – You can only use the following information if you use a non-Intel processor and encounter the previously mentioned restart bug after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. I’m going to list two possible solutions, one from Microsoft and …

Microsoft blocks Windows XP SP3 update to HP PCs Running AMD CPU’s – The recent Windows XP Service Pack 3 update has left certain AMD-based PCs manufactured by Hewlett-Packard caught in an endless reboot (here) cycle caused by an Intel-specific disk image mistakenly being used with AMD hardware. …

[bit-tech] XP SP3 breaks WHS RDP – According to a post on the Windows Home Server Forums provided by Microsoft, users with Service Pack 3 installed on their Windows XP desktop may well find themselves unable to connect to their Windows Home Server box via the Remote …

John The Geek

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