Sanders Media

Google’s dominance in the search engine market is well documented. However, there are quality alternatives. Here are a few.

1. Bing: This is Microsoft’s long anticipated Google rival. After their previous search engine attempt, Live, did nothing to dent Google’s market dominance, they tried again with Bing. The early results are promising. Bing has some great features that will surely steer some users it’s way. Take a tour of Bing here.
2. WolframAlpha: This is mainly a computational search engine. In fact, WolframAlpha calls itself a computational knowledge engine. For instance, enter the name of your city, and  you’ll find several bits of data. You can do the same with your birth date. It is a very useful source of raw data. It can even do calculus.
3. Yahoo: This has been around the longest among Google competitors. In fact, Yahoo once dominated the search market. Fantasy Sports, Shopping and Weather are among the useful services you can find here. Yahoo continues to try new things to make up ground on Google, so new features are surely coming.
4. Ask.com: This site was originally known as AskJeeves.com. They have added functionality that includes standard search functions. Ask.com is a good source for How-To’s and research information.

Of course, I’m leaving out a few others. Feel free to email me with your suggestions. Google is still the leader, and doesn’t appear to be letting up. However, there may come a time that you want to try something new. These are a good start.

I’ve just finished a website for Jason Moore, a musician in Oklahoma. Among other things, he composes music for film and commercials. Naturally he wanted to showcase his work. I just needed to come up with a way for people to hear his compositions without being able to download the music. I needed a player.

Flash is usually a great option for players. After a short Google search, I found PremiumBeat.com. They provide Flash music players that are free with their logo embedded. This turned out to be exactly what I needed. The installation was very easy.

If you’d like to showcase your compositions, surf over to PremiumBeat.com. It’s an elegant and efficient solution. Also, if you need high quality music for a project, consider contacting Jason. His email address is jasonmooremusic@gmail.com. You’ll be glad you did.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Twitter lately. Here are some basics about the popular social network.

• Tweet: This is the act of posting to Twitter. A post is a Tweet.
• Retweet: This involves posting or quoting another tweet in your own post.
• Follow: This is where you follow other users feeds or “tweets”.
• @user: This is your address on Twitter. For instance, to contact me on Twitter, simply send a message to @sandersmedia.
• Twitter Client: While you can follow your Twitter feed on Twitter.com, many people use a Twitter client. It’s like Outlook for your Twitter account.
• Short URL: You are able to post links in your tweets. However, since you are only allowed 140 characters for each “tweet”, you’ll want to shorten the URL. Tinyurl.com is an example of a service that will do this for you.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. You can also Google “twitter basics”.

I helped a client dispose of another Trojan for Windows. This piece of malware digs deep into your computer, and makes Google or Yahoo searches impossible. Essentially, anytime you use Google or Yahoo to search for any subject, the resulting links will not go to their correct destination. This Trojan causes the links to go to predetermined spam sites. I found this article at techspot.com which helped me solve the problem. For your convenience, I’ve also posted the instructions below. Take special care to follow the 8-step Viruses/Spyware/Malware Preliminary Removal Instructions as well. Lastly, download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware program. I’ve found it to be one of the best around.

Procedural Steps
1.

• Start->Run-> Devmgmt.msc ->ok
• On the toolbar, Click on View -> ”Show hidden devices”

2.

• Scroll down and locate Non-plug and Play Drivers
• Click the + sign to expand

3.

• Search for “TDSSserv.sys”
  • More exploits: clbdriver.sys, oUltraf, seneka.sys,
• Right click on it, and select “Disable”

4. Restart your computer

5. Confirm ‘TDSSserv.sys’ is disabled. Repeat Step 1-3. Cancel to exit.

6. Begin or resume UPDATED 8-step Viruses/Spyware/Malware Preliminary Removal Instructions.

The title comes from this website that encourages people to ditch Internet Explorer as their web browser of choice. This is not a Mac vs. PC issue. Rather, this discussion aims to show users safer, more productive browsers. While Microsoft has upgraded IE over time, they are often several months to years behind their competition in the innovation department. Hackers have found numerous ways to pull personal information from IE users. So here is a list of browsers that you should try. I know there are sites that only support IE. This is lazy design in my opinion, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

1. Mozilla Firefox: This has to be the most popular browser after IE. The Firefox developers are usually at the forefront of innovation. You will find that it is built for speed and security. Firefox is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
2. Opera: This browser out of Norway has a devoted user base. Like most current browsers, it has features such as tabbed browsing and built in web search. Opera is compatible with a slew of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
3. Chrome: This is Google’s very own web browser. Since they’ve become such a powerhouse in the Web 2.0 world, it is only a matter of time before Google developed a browser. It has some truly innovative features such as improved tabbed browsing, greater support for web applications and incognito browsing. Read this article to see a deeper breakdown of Chrome’s features. Currently, Chrome is only Windows compatible.
4. Safari: This is Apple’s browser. It has many of the same features as the other 3, but it’s sleek, minimalist design will appeal to users who hate clutter. While Safari used to be Mac only, they’ve now added a Windows version.

These browsers are free, and will greatly improve your internet experience. Ditch Internet Explorer and browse happy!

I would encourage you to start taking advantage of Google Docs. It includes document and spreadsheet functions, and can be used as a primary document suite or as a backup source. Even if you don’t replace Microsoft Office with Google Docs, I would certainly use it as a backup. The only downside is Google Docs cannot currently recognize Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac’s new .docx  and .xlsx formats. The easy fix is to save them in the legacy .doc and .xls format (Office 97-2004).

Too many people who hire me to fix their computer have not backed up their documents. Often they don’t have much media, but they do have some very valuable Word and Excel documents. This presents me with a dilemma, because sometimes the best course of action is to wipe the hard drive clean and start over. 

Backing up frequently will save you the anxiety of losing your valuable documents. Google Docs is a free and easy way to achieve peace of mind.