So here I am, 13 weeks in and writing my last post now. It has been a joyous but honestly tedious journey to write blogs every week. I am not so much of a person who share things on the Internet but this process has taught me to be consistent. Also, because of the need to share interesting information on this blog, I have learnt a lot myself, and read things I would not have paid attention to in the past. But with this blog, I am always concern about news regarding technological stuff and the Internet. To end off my blog journey, I came across this blog post which talks about the computer and internet stuff and I would like to share with all...
It was only recently that computer systems became smart enough to identify unknown objects in photographs. Even then, it has generally been limited to individual objects. Now, two separate teams of researchers at Google and Stanford University have created software able to describe entire scenes. This could lead to much better and more intelligent algorithms in the future.
While each team used a slightly different approach, they both combined deep convolutional neural networks with recurrent neural networks that excel at text analysis and natural language processing. The programs were able to "learn" from each new interaction, with algorithms enabling the system to improve its accuracy by scanning scene after scene, looking for patterns, and then using the accumulation of previously described scenes to extrapolate what is being depicted in the next unknown image.
As we all know, the future is unfathomable. Something no one can be absolutely sure of. However, there is a trend that is predictable and which is in our control - the advancement of technology and the Internet. The Internet is definitely something that will be further explored and extended to different uses, for example, Internet of Things (IoT). I am especially interested in the IoT because two decades ago, nobody would have expected the future to turn out as such. To ancient people (who were all dead by now), what we have now is magic. But fast-forward several centuries later, anything seems possible with the Internet and technology.
The IoT provides so many possibilities in our lives. We are able to connect with not just people, but objects as well. We are making objects come to life and be able to communicate and interact with them. So for those who are interested, here are 10 things you need to know about the IoT:
So the IoT is possibly becoming a reality soon as Google purchased Nest Lab for $3.2 billion. Nest Labs, based in Palo Alto, Calif., makes smart thermostats that aim to manage temperatures more efficiently while collecting consumer data. Hyde Park Venture Partners Managing Director Guy Turner cautioned that while the Nest purchase energized investors, it didn’t touch off a rash of massive exits. Samsung acquired SmartThings in August for a reported $200 million. That's a good price, Turner said, but hardly at the level of Nest. He said said investors looking to cash in on the Internet of Things quickly don’t need to go hunting to buy obscure startups but instead can invest in established companies. And that GE and Cisco are the closest things to pure Internet of Things plays right now. Zapp is more bullish on startups, partly because of the open-source culture that he said imbues the growing maker movement. He said developers at startups collaborate, share and build on each others’ work, meaning they can innovate quickly.
So companies are obviously venturing into the business of IoT, but how soon will it become a reality for us? And are you ready for it?
Today I will be talking about Citizen Journalism (CJ), the impacts of it and how we can all practise it in the right way.
First, many may ask, what is CJ?
It is the idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube. All these are acts of journalism, and what is similar behind all these acts is that everyone, you and I, we can all participate and be involved in different forms of CJ.
However, there have been much controversy regarding CJ, as some professional journalists believe that only a trained journalist can understand the rigors and ethics involved in reporting the news. And conversely, there are many trained journalists who practice what might be considered citizen journalism by writing their own blogs or commentary online outside of the traditional journalism hierarchy. However, one of the main and new concepts behind citizen journalism is that mainstream media reporters and producers are not the exclusive center of knowledge on a subject — the audience knows more collectively than the reporter alone. Therefore with such distinct, digital users are able to obtain more truth, or maybe even more pseudo facts out of CJ.
With great freedom comes great responsibility. We need to practise CJ with responsibility in order to contribute to the betterment of society. I will be sharing about this article which shows how our freedom of acts can ruin the lives of many others who are the unsung heroes. These people are the ones who try their best to keep our Internet safe for laymen users like us. And here is the article.
Sometimes we do not think much about what we post on the Internet, especially graphic images and videos which provide visuals that speak a thousand words. These are images that will be stuck to our minds and eventually cause a psychological toll on us. After reading this article, I sincerely hope everyone of us can practise acts of CJ in a moral way and we should be responsible on how we do it.
Are youths really apathetic towards the politics? Do we really stay out of this arena most of the time? Well, some may argue that youths these days still remain unconcern, especially when we do not talk about it half the time like what the elderly do. While others have noticed a change in young people these days, as they show greater concern towards the effects and changes from what the government has done. This is particularly interesting, as I would agree that the digital era has definitely given us the easy way out to learn and acquire any and every knowledge that we want to learn. At least to me, Facebook seems like the most straight and fast forward way to learn about politics. I admit I was someone who rejected conversing about politics and the government in the past. But because of what people share on Facebook, it piques my interest in this topic. Generally, my friends share about everything on Facebook, and because of what they share, I can get first-hand knowledge on what's happening around us. I guess this serves the same for people around my age or those even younger. We do not go to information, instead these information come to us. And that is why I think that digital media and the Internet can transform the way in how we view politics.
There is a shift in dynamics associated with participatory politics in a specifically digital age, the opportunities and challenges that those dynamics present for youth civic engagement, and the broader questions they open up about high quality sociopolitical relationships. Consider a few examples:
Watching a televised presidential debate in one’s living room by oneself is not an instance of participatory politics. Watching that same debate and then writing a letter to the editor or Tweeting about it is. Similarly, reading a newspaper story, whether online or in print, is not an act of participatory politics. However, when a reader forwards a link to the article to her friends or posts a comment online reacting to the story, expressing her own opinion or perhaps critiquing the journalism itself, she is engaging in participatory politics. That is, while seeking out political information is important, we do not regard consumption of information as a form of participation. It is when one circulates political information or shares one’s perspectives on it that the activity becomes participatory. In each of these examples, participants demonstrate the highly social, interactive nature of participatory politics and exhibit a desire and ability to add their voices to or even to influence the flow of information rather than simply following an agenda set out by elites.
With the resources of “participatory politics” increasingly available, we see growing opportunities for
youth--and for civic actors broadly-- to exert agency in the public sphere, both as individuals and within communities of practice. By circulating content, they can influence what others are exposed to. When people are especially interested, outraged, or committed, they can comment on broadcast content, write and distribute statements, or remix content to make a point. Individuals and groups can also enter into dialogues with each other and with leaders in an effort to “talk back” and play a role in shaping agendas. Drawing on social and often digital networks, youth, as individuals or as collaborative communities, can also expand their access to audiences and opportunities for mobilization with less dependence on elite-driven institutions such as political parties or major interest groups and organizations. Indeed, we see examples of new media enabling the mobilization of cultural groups for political purposes and the mobilization of diffuse friendship networks for targeted political action. That said, participatory politics can, of course, introduce new hierarchies and leverage other types of elite-driven institutions (for example, venture capital-backed companies), and so dynamics of exclusion as well as expansion are key to understanding emerging modes of citizen engagement.
Risks of the New Media
First, there is a risk relating to the practice of investigation. As noted above, the affordances of digital
media can greatly expand access to perspectives and information, as well as options for investigation, but reduced reliance on elite and institutional gate-keepers introduces challenges associated with bias and credibility, including the insufficient vetting of misinformation and the creation of “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles,” in which people choose to attend to only like-minded perspectives.
Second, there are risks relating to dialogue and feedback, circulation, and production. For example, the need for short powerful, spreadable messages may encourage simplification of complex and nuanced issues. It is also important to consider how participatory politics may or may not adequately facilitate negotiation and deliberation. One area of concern is that loosely organized groups that avoid the negativity of electoral politics may not provide sufficient incentive for youth to negotiate differences of opinion that inevitably emerge when taking action that has impact on others. The ways in which new media enable access to participatory politics—the possibility of acting with anonymity, ease of entry and exit with loosely formed groups— may also make the consequences of offending others feel less important or may make withdrawal from the conversations when small differences emerge seem like the best option.
Third, there is a risk related to mobilization itself, namely that, in the context of an increased reliance on expressive politics, political actors will cease to develop full understandings of the differences between voice and influence, perhaps contenting themselves with expression itself when they might also have achieved influence if they had focused on more traditional modes of political involvement. We do not want to undervalue the significance of voice itself—a point Shelby makes in this volume— especially for youth who are in the process of developing their political identities. But it is important to cultivate conceptualizations of participatory politics that make the trajectory from voice to influence explicit, accessible, and operationalizable.
Today I will be talking about Multimedia and how businesses are using this tool to strategize their marketing skills.
But first, let me just explain a little on what is Multimedia...
Multimedia basically means that computer information can be represented through video, audio, and animation in addition to traditional media, such as texts, graphic drawings, etc. Therefore every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally.
As technology proliferates and becomes ubiquitous, it seems almost everyone around the world holds a simple gadget which they can easily tap into any information they wish to acquire. Businesses are increasingly targeting this trend and step up their games with multimedia advertising campaigns. Multimedia such as mobile marketing, live casting and file sharing is the fastest and easiest way to spread the word about a company and help build brand awareness in a unique and powerful way. Below are several ways to use multimedia for business marketing.
Photos 1. Offer real-time incentives. Twitter's TweetPhoto will automatically enable you to publish photos to your Twitter and Facebook accounts for free via mobile and Web platforms. Picture speaks a thousand words. Who needs 140 characters to describe your business when a picture explains everything? Tweet pictures of discounted and new items or offer exclusive incentives. 2. Join like-minded communities. At no cost, Yahoo!-operated Flickr provides a useful platform for photo management and sharing. According to Matt McGee, independent online marketing consultant of the Tri-Cities, Washington-based, Small Business Search Marketing, Flickr not only acts as a photo storage space, it is also a very active community centered around Flickr groups. For example, a pet-lovers group may get a kick out of the clothing and toys created by a boutique pet store.
3. Drive traffic to your website. Pink Cake Box, a gourmet cake shop located in Denville, New Jersey, began using Flickr in 2006 to build brand identity. Co-owner Jesse Heap says that Pink Cake Box's website receives about 300,000 unique users each month, and roughly 10 percent of those visitors are from Flickr, where the company posts photos of interesting or extreme cakes.
Hosting Videos and Webcasting
Sharing videos over the Web is another great resource for small businesses in establishing asocial mediapresence. According to a November 2009 survey released by comScore, a digital marketing research firm headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Google's many video sites accounted for 12.2 billion videos viewed that month, including YouTube, which accounted for nearly 99 percent of the total.
Webcasting is essentially broadcasting a video or media file over the Internet using streaming media technology, which can be distributed to many simultaneous viewers at once. Shooting a video for YouTube or starting a more elaborate webcast essentially takes four basic ingredients: equipment, a theme, an online home and marketing.
1. The equipment. Very small businesses can buy a webcam or camcorder, wireless microphone and simple video editing equipment such as Sony's Vegas Movie Studioor Final Cut Pro 7. Instead, invest in a camcorder, preferably a "three-chip" camera that uses three computer chips to separate colors, which results in a higher quality picture.
2. Hire someone. If you have a bigger budget, hire a professional. Prices run from $1,000 to $15,000, according to podcast industry sources. Employment attorney Helene Wasserman created a video podcast called Employer Helpcast two years ago to market her work as a partner with Ford & Harrison LLP, a Los Angeles law firm. Wasserman uses Brusso's company to produce video podcasts and pays $2,500 for segments that run anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. It's worth the money, she says. "If you're trying to market yourself as having a very professional business, you want to put your best foot forward," she says.
3. The show. For webcasts, stick to a regular broadcast schedule, whether that's once a day, week or month. Keep shows short and be personable. Podcasters need to stick to the old news adage to show, not tell.
4. Hosting and marketing. Once you've got a video, upload it for free on YouTube where it can be viewed by anyone. Webcasts can also be uploaded to free or paid hosting sites such as blip.tv, iTunes or Libsyn. Where a podcast is hosted isn't as important as spreading the word that it's there. Wasserman's podcasts appear on blip.tv and iTunes and cover workplace issues such as job sharing, corporate culture and managing a multi-generational workforce. Wasserman points prospective viewers to the podcast from her website and blog and by including a tagline promoting the show in her email signature. Wasserman also uses a free service that puts word-for-word transcripts of her video podcasts on the Web, where they can be searched by Google and other search engines. More people find her podcast through search engines than by visiting blip.tv or her website, and the traffic had led to speaking engagements and new work.
4 Good Reasons to Go Through the Trouble of Creating a Video
1. Show how to use your product. With a slogan as simple as "Broadcast Yourself," many YouTube users are doing just that, especially when it comes to showing how their products or services can be used. "There are countless small business owners posting how-to videos on YouTube," says McGee. "[For instance,] here's how to use the product; here's how to interact with people in our service industry."
2. Extend your client base. In December 2007, John Tuggle, a slide and blues guitar instructor based in Decatur, Georgia, began posting videos on YouTube teaching people how to play guitar because he wasn't generating enough interest in his hometown. By February 2008, interest in his lessens grew so much that he created LearningGuitarNow.com where visitors contacted him regularly for private lessons via Skype at the rate of $25 for 30 minutes. "I just kept [talking to people] and kept putting more out, and figuring out what people wanted. Last year I pulled in almost $100,000 from the website," said Tuggle.
3. Entertain your customers. It is quite easy to post a video simply for visitors' enjoyment. For instance, Vimeo, a video hosting site that aims to be a "community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make," features a 'Videos we like' tab. For a small business owner, posting a video for entertainment purposes stands to generate many views, which in turn may spark interest in the company and possibly lead to the purchase of products or services.
4. Provide a unique service.LiveCast, with headquarters in Vancouver, Canada, enables live video streaming directly from a cell phone, mobile Internet device, or Mac or PC, to anyone connected to the Web. For Gordon Cooper, photographer and founder of Perfect Wedding magazine, live broadcasting gives his business a unique capability. "I can have all the guests at the wedding even if they're not at the wedding," says Cooper. "Guest can still experience the live ceremony [from wherever they are]." Cooper is able to charge an additional $250 for this service.
Podcasting
Podcasts have become such a popular marketing tool for sole proprietors and small businesses that a small army of professional producers is out there waiting to help. Here are 9 essential steps a company needs to get started:
1. Do some homework. The best way to learn about podcasting is to listen to podcasts, says Peter Brusso, an Anaheim, California, podcasting producer and technology marketing consultant. Visit directories such as RSS Player or Libsyn and look for podcasts with a similar style or subject to you want to create, Brusso says.
2. Decide on a topic. Podcasts could focus on a company's products or services, an industry or on management or professional issues. Whatever the topic, make sure it's related to a company's business in some way, says Sallie Goetsch, proprietor of The Podcast Asylum, a northern California podcast producer and consultant.
3. Gather your tools. Producing a podcast requires: • A microphone, digital audio recorder or USB headset to record podcast episodes • Computer with sound card and high-speed Internet connection • Audio recording and editing software, either licensed software or free open-source programs such as Audacity.
4. Be natural. When it's time to record a podcast, organize talking points, but don't use a script. "People don't like being sold. The more from the heart the better," Brusso says.
5. Build a backlog. Before going live, build up a catalog of a dozen or more episodes. Coming up with ideas is easy, Brusso says. They can spring from talking to customers, going to conventions, reading trade magazines, or following current events.
6. Be consistent. Length, professional quality, and subject matter of a company's podcast are important but not as much as on-air consistency. Whether it's once a day, once a week or once a month, pick a schedule and stick to it. Podcasts are like radio or TV shows: audiences expect a schedule. Disappoint them and they might not come around again, Brusso says.
7. Not a D-I-Y type? Hire a pro. Professional producers can handle the technical aspects of starting or creating a podcast. Goetsch and partners Priscilla Rice and Michele Molitor, for example, offer a small-business podcast starter package for $1,100 that covers scripting and recording three to four podcasts plus lots of extras, including finding a hosting service, setting up a podcast blog and submitting broadcasts to podcast directories. Brusso, who works with lawyers and other sole proprietors, charges $1,000 for an hour-long podcast with similar extras. But it doesn't have to be expensive. According to Goetsch, a small businessperson could do everything themselves with an existing computer, $20 headset, free software for audio editing and creating a podcast, and host it on their existing website.
8. Find your podcast a home. Companies can physically host a podcast anywhere, including with the service they use for their website. What really matters is getting the word out that it's there. For maximum exposure, list podcasts on directories such asPodcastAlley.com, Podcast411, Podanza or TalkShoe.
9. Forget about making money, at least not directly. Some podcasts collect revenue from advertising that podcast directories put on their sites. But that shouldn't be why a company does it. Podcasts should be part of a company's overall marketing strategy, Brusso says. "To get yourself known, you have to blog, optimize your Website for search engines and podcast," he says. "If you do all three the results are phenomenal."
Mobile Marketing There are 4.1 billion cellular connections worldwide, and with the prevalence of smart phones, the concept of browsing the Web from a mobile phone has gone mainstream. Consider this: Mobile phone carriers are sitting atop a trove of data – not just your name, address, and, of course, phone number but also credit card information, who your friends are, and where you're located at this very moment. Even with privacy regulations, more of this information will become available to marketers as phones are used more like little PCs, creating opportunities for highly targeted ads and other marketing breakthroughs.
Here's what you need to know to get started.
• How exactly do I advertise on a mobile phone? The most common type of mobile ad is a display ad served on a Web page called up on a cell phone's screen. The ads are created for the site's mobile format and may not be the same as the ads you would see if you were browsing the site on a PC. Ads are priced on a Cost Per Mille, or CPM, basis – the price you pay for the ad to be seen 1,000 times.
• How do I buy mobile ads? Most advertisers work with mobile-ad networks, which bring together advertisers and websites that are frequently viewed by phone. Some of the larger players, which are owned by the likes of Google (AdMob), AOL (Third Screen Media) and Apple (Quattro Wireless), will act as full-service marketing shops. They handle the entire process, including technology, the creative content of mobile ads, and the ads' placement.
• What do mobile ads cost? The cost of mobile ads varies due to the different types of ads, and different cell phone platforms. For instance, AdMob, one of the main mobile-ad networks, currently charges CPMs of $12 to $14 for iPhone banner ads.
• What about text messaging? One option is to buy or rent a short code, a five- or six-digit phone number from which you can send and receive text messages. One common way to use a short code is to publish it on a billboard or in a print ad ("Text 51234 for more information") that encourages customers to enter a contest or participate in a poll.
• What does a short code cost?Cellit Mobile Marketing, in Chicago, and Movo, in Florida, sell short codes for $500 to $1,000 per month, plus a one-time setup fee of a few thousand dollars and a charge of 4 cents to 7 cents for each text message. You can also rent a code for as little as $225 per month. Keep in mind that technological standards vary. Nearly every phone on the market is equipped to send and receive texts, but some systems won't let you embed complex graphics or photographs.
• How do I go after my best customers on a mobile phone? Google has expanded into the mobile world in several ways. Now, it allows companies to buy display ads – ads related to content – on the mobile Web. AdMob claims click-through rates on this type of ad of up to 3 percent, which is quite high. The company charges a cost-per-click (CPC) fee of 25 cents to 30 cents.
3 Tips for Making Your Mobile Campaign Successful 1. Determine your goals. Who is your target audience? How will they benefit from your message? Do you hope to generate revenue, generate interest, generate traffic to your website, or all three? Define your goals and set benchmarks for what a successful campaign would look like.
2. Choose your message. Your message should have a clear call to action. According to mobile marketing firm Punchkick Interactive, "over 90 percent of texts from SMS messaging campaigns are read by recipients, generating average response rates of 15 to 30 percent or more." With the potential for that kind of penetration, it would help to make sure your campaign is simple, memorable, and factual. One thing every local business should be doing, says James Citron, CEO of mobile video marketing firmMogreet, is attach keywords to their mobile campaigns that will resonate with customers in order to create brand awareness.
3. Pair your mobile marketing campaign with other social media. When Casa Del Mar, a luxury beach hotel located in Santa Monica, California, wanted to get the word out about drink specials, they doubled up on social media marketing. The hotel posted messages on Twitter and Facebook saying, "Text CASA to 21534 and enjoy unlimited champagne or Bloodys. FREE." Customers who texted received videos of the weekend brunch spread on their phone and received the beverage of their choice at the hotel. The end result was highly viral, with 250 redemptions.
If you know me, you would know I am definitely not a tech-savvy person. I am such a lagger and 'lacker' in the newest and most current technological devices, softwares or programs. I supposed many of you would have known how to use Google Drive and Google docs eon years ago, but sadly I only learnt it last year, and am glad that I acquired it! I mean, better late than never right? There are just so many things to explore on the Internet, and it is impossible to learn it all even throughout my entire life. But let us take baby steps from Abel's class...
So one thing I explored today was the function of Google image. In the past I would always use the default function - the basic search. But after this week's lesson I realised there is an advanced search, which really makes my life so much easier!
For example, when I use the basic search to search for 'India pink textiles' on Google image, it comes out so many different pictures which may not be relevant to what I'm looking for. And sometimes it frustrates the hell out of me. Take a look at the picture below and you would understand.
Look at some of the pictures, do they even look close to what I'm searching for?! -.-
And then comes Google blessing me with the Advanced search tab (HALLELUJIAH~~) It has definitely made my life so much easier.
Hehe see what I mean?
Also, I have recently downloaded Google Earth on my laptop, and it has been so much fun!
Checking out Sydney heh heh
I am still learning how to use Google Earth but it has been pretty user friendly thus far, especially for an IT noob like me. But I'm pretty sure I will get the hang of it soon!
However, the downside of the Internet is that it kills the surprise in you everytime you learn something. I am going Sydney during the holidays and am in a dilemma whether to use Google Earth to check out some places. It leaves no surprise for me! Oh wells, that is the problem with virtual touring.
Worms, both disgusting in reality and in virtual reality. As the Internet becomes a World Wide Web, it is the same as becoming the Earth itself. Let me explain what this means. As we all know, the new deadly disease in this spreading in our world is Ebola. It erupted in the Africa region, amongst countries like Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, and has now spread to first world countries like the United States. With increasing globalization, the spread of diseases is just one of the phenomena it brings about, as the number of people travelling to different countries heightened. Such trend is exactly simulated in the Internet and our computers. Worms, viruses and Trojans are malicious attacks which can easily be replicated and diffused themselves through different forms such as that of emails. Thus it is essentially important to update our computers regularly and to install anti-spyware software.
1: Install quality antivirus
Many computer users believe free antivirus applications, such as those included with an Internet service provider's bundled service offering, are sufficient to protect a computer from virus or spyware infection. However, such free anti-malware programs typically don't provide adequate protection from the ever-growing list of threats.
Instead, all Windows users should install professional, business-grade antivirus software on their PCs. Pro-grade antivirus programs update more frequently throughout the day (thereby providing timely protection against fast-emerging vulnerabilities), protect against a wider range of threats (such as rootkits), and enable additional protective features (such as custom scans).
2: Install real-time anti-spyware protection
Many computer users mistakenly believe that a single antivirus program with integrated spyware protection provides sufficient safeguards from adware and spyware. Others think free anti-spyware applications, combined with an antivirus utility, deliver capable protection from the skyrocketing number of spyware threats.
Unfortunately, that's just not the case. Most free anti-spyware programs do not provide real-time, or active, protection from adware, Trojan, and other spyware infections. While many free programs can detect spyware threats once they've infected a system, typically professional (or fully paid and licensed) anti-spyware programs are required to prevent infections and fully remove those infections already present.
3: Keep anti-malware applications current
Antivirus and anti-spyware programs require regular signature and database updates. Without these critical updates, anti-malware programs are unable to protect PCs from the latest threats.
In early 2009, antivirus provider AVG released statistics revealing that a lot of serious computer threats are secretive and fast-moving. Many of these infections are short-lived, but they're estimated to infect as many as 100,000 to 300,000 new Web sites a day.
Computer users must keep their antivirus and anti-spyware applications up to date. All Windows users must take measures to prevent license expiration, thereby ensuring that their anti-malware programs stay current and continue providing protection against the most recent threats. Those threats now spread with alarming speed, thanks to the popularity of such social media sites as Twitter, Facebook, and My Space.
4: Perform daily scans
Occasionally, virus and spyware threats escape a system's active protective engines and infect a system. The sheer number and volume of potential and new threats make it inevitable that particularly inventive infections will outsmart security software. In other cases, users may inadvertently instruct anti-malware software to allow a virus or spyware program to run.
Regardless of the infection source, enabling complete, daily scans of a system's entire hard drive adds another layer of protection. These daily scans can be invaluable in detecting, isolating, and removing infections that initially escape security software's attention.
5: Disable autorun
Many viruses work by attaching themselves to a drive and automatically installing themselves on any other media connected to the system. As a result, connecting any network drives, external hard disks, or even thumb drives to a system can result in the automatic propagation of such threats.
Computer users can disable the Windows autorun feature by following Microsoft's recommendations, which differ by operating system. Microsoft Knowledge Base articles967715 and 967940 are frequently referenced for this purpose.
6: Disable image previews in Outlook
Simply receiving an infected Outlook e-mail message, one in which graphics code is used to enable the virus' execution, can result in a virus infection. Prevent against automatic infection by disabling image previews in Outlook.
By default, newer versions of Microsoft Outlook do not automatically display images. But if you or another user has changed the default security settings, you can switch them back (using Outlook 2007) by going to Tools | Trust Center, highlighting the Automatic Download option, and selecting Don't Download Pictures Automatically In HTML E-Mail Messages Or RSS.
7: Don't click on email links or attachments
It's a mantra most every Windows user has heard repeatedly: Don't click on email links or attachments. Yet users frequently fail to heed the warning.
Whether distracted, trustful of friends or colleagues they know, or simply fooled by a crafty email message, many users forget to be wary of links and attachments included within email messages, regardless of the source. Simply clicking on an email link or attachment can, within minutes, corrupt Windows, infect other machines, and destroy critical data.
Users should never click on email attachments without at least first scanning them for viruses using a business-class anti-malware application. As for clicking on links, users should access Web sites by opening a browser and manually navigating to the sites in question.
8: Surf smart
Many business-class anti-malware applications include browser plug-ins that help protect against drive-by infections, phishing attacks (in which pages purport to serve one function when in fact they try to steal personal, financial, or other sensitive information), and similar exploits. Still others provide "link protection," in which Web links are checked against databases of known-bad pages.
Whenever possible, these preventive features should be deployed and enabled. Unless the plug-ins interfere with normal Web browsing, users should leave them enabled. The same is true for automatic pop-up blockers, such as are included in Internet Explorer 8, Google's toolbar, and other popular browser toolbars.
Regardless, users should never enter user account, personal, financial, or other sensitive information on any Web page at which they haven't manually arrived. They should instead open a Web browser, enter the address of the page they need to reach, and enter their information that way, instead of clicking on a hyperlink and assuming the link has directed them to the proper URL. Hyperlinks contained within an e-mail message often redirect users to fraudulent, fake, or unauthorized Web sites. By entering Web addresses manually, users can help ensure that they arrive at the actual page they intend.
But even manual entry isn't foolproof. Hence the justification for step 10: Deploy DNS protection. More on that in a moment.
9: Use a hardware-based firewall
Technology professionals and others argue the benefits of software- versus hardware-based firewalls. Often, users encounter trouble trying to share printers, access network resources, and perform other tasks when deploying third-party software-based firewalls. As a result, I've seen many cases where firewalls have simply been disabled altogether.
But a reliable firewall is indispensable, as it protects computers from a wide variety of exploits, malicious network traffic, viruses, worms, and other vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, by itself, the software-based firewall included with Windows isn't sufficient to protect systems from the myriad robotic attacks affecting all Internet-connected systems. For this reason, all PCs connected to the Internet should be secured behind a capable hardware-based firewall.
10: Deploy DNS protection
Internet access introduces a wide variety of security risks. Among the most disconcerting may be drive-by infections, in which users only need to visit a compromised Web page to infect their own PCs (and potentially begin infecting those of customers, colleagues, and other staff).
Another worry is Web sites that distribute infected programs, applications, and Trojan files. Still another threat exists in the form of poisoned DNS attacks, whereby a compromised DNS server directs you to an unauthorized Web server. These compromised DNS servers are typically your ISP's systems, which usually translate friendly URLs such as yahoo.com to numeric IP addresses like 69.147.114.224.
Users can protect themselves from all these threats by changing the way their computers process DNS services. While a computer professional may be required to implement the switch, OpenDNS offers free DNS services to protect users against common phishing, spyware, and other Web-based hazards.
