Backing up Files and your system, Windows 8 and 8.1

After you have all your apps loaded and running on Windows 8 or 8.1, you can make an "image" of all that on an external drive, so you can recover the entire thing.

According to Microsoft, this is what an image is:

A system image is an exact copy of a drive. By default, a system image includes the drives required for Windows to run. It also includes Windows and your system settings, programs, and files. You can use a system image to restore the contents of your computer if your hard disk or computer ever stops working. When you restore your computer from a system image, it's a complete restoration—you can't choose individual items to restore, and all of your current programs, system settings, and files are replaced with the contents of the system image.

Although this type of backup includes your personal files, we recommend that you back up your files regularly using WindowsBackup so that you can restore individual files and folders as needed. When you set up Windows Backup, you can let Windows choose what to back up, which will include a system image, or you can select the items that you want to back up and whether you want to include a system image. For more information about setting up Windows Backup, see Back up your files.

If your computer contains several drives or partitions, you can create a system image that includes all of them by following the steps in Back up your programs, system settings, and files.

So you should also start a process running that backs up your personal files.  The best way to do that is to do an incremental backup, where you first get a complete backup, and then, whenever a file changes, that change is backed up.  You might set the backup so only so many revisions of a file are saved.  The oldest gets change gets deleted.

References:

• General reference on how to create a backup image, file incremental backup or full backup, etc.  Pretty much all you need to know.
• Specific reference on creating an image for Windows 8

More on Improving Communication Services

One of my readers sent me a link to this article.  It discusses why the US internet service is so expensive.  It does provide insight.  On the other hand, I don't believe government involvement, through regulation or otherwise, at least at the national level, will do any good.  My belief is it will make any situation worse because one size does not fit all and when the government gets involved, there are always unintended consequences that dwarf the benefits.

We, as informed consumers, should drive the solution, which is what I am starting to do.  I'm working to contact a person in AT&T who has the knowledge and role to seriously consider network configurations.  I would like to do the same with Verizon.  Anyone who knows of an individual that fits the need, please let me know.  Our neighborhood associations have been involved with this and should eventually become the primary contacts regarding any solution.  Because I do have the knowledge and incentive, my objective is to find the right person(s) in a AT&T and Verizon to act as an interface.  This blog is an open letter that will be an incentive for these companies to take us seriously.  I have many readers around the world (thank you all) and this issue will get visibility.

Communication Technologies That Are Financially Viable in Low Density Mountain Communities

Let's face it: with a few exceptions, the internet service we receive in our communities stinks.  This past week we have had intermittent service for both internet and phone service.  Our service is probably as bad as rural India.  We should expect more.  (Read about my personal experience here.)

From a technical/business point of view, we are too few residences to excite the communication companies that might serve us.  Instead, they provide really poor service at really steep prices.  The technical problem is that their concept of how communication should work is mired in the 1980s:  if we are lucky, a fiber optic backbone, otherwise a trunk DSL line.  Then copper service to the residences.  This copper service is going to be poor by construction- it won't ever provide reasonable speeds for internet, let alone other services such as TV and phone.

AT&T has this idea that they can provide UVERSE service to us, again at a steep price.  They have tried it in one community with limited success.  Development has stopped in other communities.  But, again, UVERSE is technologically limited in speed and bandwidth due to the copper wiring.

There is a better technology, one we should be pushing AT&T, or inviting Verizon, to implement.  It would  replace your entire house communication ecosystem- TV, wireless, DSL, and traditional phone.  The architecture I propose is to use the existing fiber optic cable backbones in our communities, but to communicate to the individual houses through a distributed system of what amounts to 4G transmitter antennas.  There won’t need to be many, because 4G (WiMax, LTE Extended) has transmission characteristics that are ideal for our environment:

• Up to 30 mile range
• Can “go through” leafy and electronic interference
• Can “go around corners,” partly eliminating “line of site” issues associated with current wireless and satellite technologies.
• Low cost implementation

Individual houses would have to be equipped with receiver antennas and routers; I understand these are relatively inexpensive when rolled out by a communication company as a package plan. There are two extant technologies implemented for wireless:  LTE and WiMax.  Either would work and whichever vendor our community selects would dictate the technology we would use.

References:

• LTE Encyclopedia
• 4G Analysis and Drive Studies
• 4G a Game Changer for Internet, Video, Voice
• Broadcast Antennas
• Receivers: LTE Antennas, Verizon $50 (2 yr contract) router with VOIP

Is Microsoft Security Essentials Going Away?

I subscribe to the Ask Leo tech blog, written by Leo Notenboom.  As some of you know, I'm a bit of an old timer who appreciates well constructed sentences and organized paragraphs. (Dangling modifers drive me crazy.)  For some reason, which has to go back to our school system, this is a rare skill.  At the risk of losing readers, I recommend following his blog.

In one of his most recent blogs, Time to Stop Using Microsoft Security Essentials ? Leo addresses what turns out to be false information; ie  Microsoft is not going to support MSE.  The article is informative in a number of ways, including how false tech information becomes urban legend, as well an appropriate security configuration for home use.  (MSE + Malwarebytes for Microsoft operating systems through Windows 7)

PS.  MSE technology is embedded in Windows 8.  For more information, read this article.  Some of the responses in that article remind you to NOT install MSE on Windows 8.  

Windows 8.1 is available- you can achieve a Windows 7 "feel"

The new features of Windows 8 are reviewed here.   Instructions for downloading and installing are here.  The main warning is to make sure you've got a good backup of the system and data before you start.  That is a big thing.  With Windows 8 you don't need a separate program to do the system and data backup.  Instructions are here.   This is a short blog entry, but because the instructions for moving to Windows 8.1 are well documented, I don't need to repeat them.  Good luck!  Call if you want me to do it for you.

Change to Google Policy Regarding Use of Your Personal Information

The following is cut from a desciption by Google of their new policy regarding personal information.  I've highlighted the important sentences.

How your Profile name and photo may appear (including in reviews and advertising)

We want to give you – and your friends and connections – the most useful information. Recommendations from people you know can really help. So your friends, family and others may see your Profile name and photo, and content like the reviews you share or the ads you +1’d. This only happens when you take an action (things like +1’ing, commenting or following) – and the only people who see it are the people you’ve chosen to share that content with. On Google, you’re in control of what you share. This update to our Terms of Service doesn’t change in any way who you’ve shared things with in the past or your ability to control who you want to share things with in the future.
Feedback from people you know can save you time and improve results for you and your friends across all Google services, including Search, Maps, Play and in advertising. For example, your friends might see that you rated an album 4 stars on the band’s Google Play page. And the +1 you gave your favorite local bakery could be included in an ad that the bakery runs through Google. We call these recommendations shared endorsements and you can learn more about them here.
When it comes to shared endorsements in ads, you can control the use of your Profile name and photo via the Shared Endorsements setting. If you turn the setting to “off,” your Profile name and photo will not show up on that ad for your favorite bakery or any other ads. This setting only applies to use in ads, and doesn’t change whether your Profile name or photo may be used in other places such as Google Play.
If you previously told Google that you did not want your +1’s to appear in ads, then of course we’ll continue to respect that choice as a part of this updated setting. For users under 18, their actions won’t appear in shared endorsements in ads and certain other contexts.
For greater control over your experience with ads on Google, you can also use Google’s Ads Settings tool to manage ads you see. Learn more.

Cost of Cyberattacks Has Increased 78% in Last Four Years

The following is from a news item on the web site http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com.  If you are interested in security, either for your home or business, this is a good site to bookmark or even apply for a email alerts.  I might also mention that, if you are an investor who takes a serious look at each investment opportunity, how a company manages security can be part of your investment decision process.  

The fourth-annual Cost of Cybercrime Study, produced by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Hewlett-Packard's enterprise security unit, showed the cost enterprises pay to clean up after a cyberattack has increased 26% from 2012, and has gone up a staggering 78% since the first report was released four years ago....

Instead of focusing on the total cost incurred by enterprises, the Ponemon report narrowed its scope to only include what enterprises spent while responding to cybercrime incidents, including detection, investigation, recovery and incident management.

Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Ponemon Institute, noted that the report doesn't take into account, as an example, what costs a company would incur if its "crown jewel" of data was stolen -- either because a dollar value would be impossible to calculate, or because an organization typically overestimates the value of its own data. Even without these costs included, the report showed the cost range spanning all the way from the low of $1.3 million to the high of $58 million, a number Ponemon said even the largest organizations would notice....

Perhaps more important than having the right technologies, organizations that consistently experienced lower cybercrime costs did so by implementing the right people and processes. In particular, Ponemon pointed to enterprises that had a chief information security officer (CISO) or other equivalent in place, with the caveat that they were real senior-level executives. Such organizations, he noted, tended to have better security governance, mostly because hiring a CISO signals that the company takes information security seriously and is willing to make an investment in credentialed professionals.

"It's not that that person is the reason for the value that we find," Ponemon said. "But the organizations that have that person with the right role and the right title and authority tend to be smarter around the whole governance of security."

Changes to Google's search algorithms and what it means to the typical user

What should you  type into your search bar to improve the search results?  Or, to say it another way, what can you type in the search bar that will result in the most relevant results appearing at the top of the list of results?

A typical way to search is to use some key words, not any any particular order.  Until recently the search engine would process those results and generate a list where sites with the most hits and that have one of the words in their list of relevant topics would appear at the top of the list.  (Web designers have a field that is hidden from you but that search engines read.  That field contains a list of relevant terms.  There is an entire specialty career that focuses on "Search Engine Optimization," or SEO.  Furthermore, search engine companies often have a bidding process where advertisers will bid on certain words.  They will pay the bid price per click and the search engine company will move their web pages to the top of the list or put their results in a special box at the top of the list.)

The Google search algorithm has changed.  Google hasn't really advertised the change, but it is substantial.  The idea behind the change is to use "semantic search."  This means that it takes all the words you type and searches on all of them in their context.  So typing in single words is not the best way to get good search results.  Now you should type a question in the search bar and that question should contain your key words.  For example, type in "how to improve my search results?" or "how to improve your search results?"  The returned list will consider all of these words and also figure out a priority order.  Of course, they will also use the "paid word" business process, but, still, the results are pretty amazing.

For more information, type in "What is the Google Hummingbird search process?"

Here is another example that may interest you:  "Are Stink Bugs Being Used to Control Kudzu?"  You could also ask "Why are there so many stink bugs?"

Speed and Quality Tests for Your DSL (update)

AT&T now recommends using http://www.megapath.com/speedtestplus/ to test your DSL signal.  Choose Atlanta for your test site and click on the Home Service button.

The site provides an explanation of what the results mean.  If you are signed up for the maximum speed DSL service for our communities, you should have readings of:

• Download speed:  about 6 Mb/s
• Upload speed:  above 4 Mb/s
• Jitter:  ideally 0, but perhaps up to 2
• Ping:  around 40 ms.

I have called Technical Support and complained about the erratic performance:  sometimes the results will go down to 1 Mb/s and comparable deterioration in the other measures.  To date they've been unable to isolate the cause.  When they do diagnostics, they will ask you to plug your computer directly into the modem to run the test without the router in the network.  So you will have to call when you can do that test, or do it before you call to verify that the problem is not with your router.