Sanders Media

Today, I’m here with a reminder to maintain your computer. There’s no reason you can’t get 3 to 4 very productive years out of your computer. Here are some things that will help.

1. Use compressed (canned) air to blow out your computer if you have a desktop. I would suggest you do this at least twice a year. Dust in your computer case has a nasty habit of causing computers to overheat and underperform.
2. If you leave your computer on all of the time, shut it down at least once a month.
3. Run virus and spyware cleanup software at least once a week.
4. Backup everything. I can never emphasize this enough. Yet again, I have a client who may lose her files because she didn’t back them up. External hard drive are inexpensive, and online services, like Mozy, provide unlimited space.
5. If you do all of these things, and you still have a problem, call me.

Well, the unimaginable happened. The graphics card in my computer died, and I was without my computer from Tuesday to Thursday night. I tried to take this time to get other things done. For instance, I cleaned the digital gunk off my wife’s computer. I watched a documentary I’ve been meaning to get to. I even did some household chores.

This certainly wasn’t my idea of fun. I realized how digitally centered my life has become. From syncing my appointments to browsing in my favorite browser, I was dependent upon my laptop. The one area I didn’t miss a beat was with my Google applications, as they are platform agnostic. I guess this taught me to move more things into the cloud.

The one bright side is I wasn’t out any of my own money. I guess it pays to have an extended warranty after all.

I posted a list of common computer terms and acronyms awhile back. Since you could name hundreds more, I thought I should list a few more.

• WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get
• Backlink - A backlink is a link coming from another website to your own. The number and quality of backlinks that your site has can affect your search engine optimization efforts, as some search engines provide significant weight to the backlinks of a site.
• Below The Fold - The fold in Web design is the position on a Web page where the majority of browsers viewing the page will begin to scroll. Elements that are positioned “below the fold” are not seen when the page first loads. And some people believe that it’s important to design Web pages that don’t scroll, or that keep only less important information below the fold.
• CMS - Content Management System. A tool for managing content, usually on a Web site, that separates the design, interactivity, and content from one another to make it easier for content authors to provide content.
• DNS - DNS stands for Domain Name Service. DNS is the TCP/IP stack that converts IP addresses into domain names. If you purchase a domain name, DNS servers are given the IP address of your Web server and the corresponding domain name. Then, when someone comes to your domain, the DNS server translates that to an IP so it knows where to send the request.
• Link Farm - A link farm is a website set up with the sole purpose of increasing the link popularity of other sites by increasing the number of incomming links to those sites. They are typically made up of long lists of unrelated links. Some link farms are created as networks of sites that contain numerous links to one another.Nearly all search engines remove link farms from their directories when they find them. And many also penalize other sites that link to them. It is not a good idea to link to a link farm if you rely at all on organic search for pageviews.
• Podcast - A podcast is a digital recording that is sent to subscribers over the Internet through an RSS feed. A podcast can be sent as audio or video files.The term was developed by combining the words “iPod” and “broadcast”. There are many ways to promote your podcast, including direct from the Apple iTunes store.

You can find these definitions and more, here.

This is an oft asked question. In years past, you could easily make a case for buying a new computer every 2 years. This was especially true if you used it for audio, video or graphic design. Now, upgrading the individual components of your computer is a viable way to go. Even though technology improves so fast, computer components are better able to handle future upgrades. For instance, even though there are newer CPU chips with 4 or more cores, few applications are able to utilize more than 2 cores.

So, before you start looking at buying a new computer, check to see if a simple memory upgrade would speed up your machine. If you need a larger hard drive, it would be much cheaper  to add an extra internal hard drive. These types of upgrades will extend the life of your computer, and save you some money.

I thought I would clue the uninitiated in on a few of the copious amounts of acronyms in the computer world. I’m sure many of you have wondered what jpg, ssl or http mean. Well, wonder no more. Here is a sampling.

• AVI – Advanced Video Interleave
• SSL – Secure Sockets Layer
• TIFF – Tagged Information File Format
• PHP – Personal Home Page
• JPEG or JPG – Joint Photographic Experts Group
• CD-ROM – Compact Disk-Read Only Memory
• HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language
• HTTP – HyperText Transfer Protocol
• POP3 – Post Office Protocol version 3
• IMAP – Internet Message Access Protocol
• DLL – Dynamic Link Library

No subculture (i.e. computer geeks) is without it’s insider humor. These are some examples you may have seen in email from your IT department.

• DOS – Defunct Operating System
• BAD -  Broken As Designed (inferior products that will require constant upgrades)
• PEBKAC –  Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
• ID10T (pronounced eye dee ten tee) – Most common type of problem. 

Now you no longer have to feel uninformed when you receive email from your IT department. You can throw it right back at them.

Happy New Year!