Author Archives: admin
Apple cutting ties with Google Maps?
Yesterdays launch of The New iPad showed off the new iPhoto app. The mapping service used was Apples own, and not Google maps as used in the iPhone and other Apple products.
Apple’s contract with Google maps expires at the end of 2012.
Apple has already brought 3 mapping services Placebase, C3 and Poly9. If you havent seen C3′s capabilites before check out the video below.
Google re-brand Andriod market ‘Google Play’
Entertainment is supposed to be fun. But in reality, getting everything to work can be the exact opposite—moving files between your computers, endless syncing across your devices, and wires…lots of wires. Today we’re eliminating all that hassle with Google Play, a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the web and on your Android phone or tablet. Google Play is entirely cloud-based so all your music, movies, books and apps are stored online, always available to you, and you never have to worry about losing them or moving them again.
In a move to try and steal back some business from Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, Google have re branded the Android market to sell you its apps, ebooks, music and movies.
With Google Play you can:
- Store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
- Download more than 450,000 Android apps and games
- Browse the world’s largest selection of eBooks
- Rent thousands of your favorite movies, including new releases and HD titles
Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play. On your Android phone or tablet, we’ll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps. The music, movies, books and apps you’ve purchased will continue to be available to you through Google Play—simply log in with your Google account like always.
iOS 5.1 Features
As announced yesterday by Apple, when we awoke this morning we had an OTA software update waiting for us.
- Japanese Lanugaue support for SIRI
- Photos can now be deleted from Photo Stream (About time)!!
- Camera shortcut now always on Lock Screen
- Camera face detection now highlights all detected faces
- Redesigned Camera app for iPad
- Addresses bugs affecting battery life (we hope so!)
- Fixes an issue that occasionally caused audio to drop for outgoing calls.
Apple Confirm UK iPad Pricing:
Apple Confirm UK iPad Pricing:
Wi-Fi
16GB – £399
32GB – £479
64GB – £559
Wi-Fi +4G
16GB – £499
32GB – £579
64GB – £659
iPad 2 Reduced Prices
16GB Wi-Fi £329
16GB Wi-Fi £429
Apple iPad 3 Launch Day 7/3/2012
Today Apple will launch the iPad 3, months of rumours and speculation will come to an end as we finally get to see the latest product.
Our live blog will appear below.
12.24 “2012: There’s a lot to look forward to.” “We are just getting started. ” 12.23 The iPad 2 Price dropped by 0 – 9 16GB 11.42 The New iPad – 4G LTE - Next Generation Wireless. Probably not available in the UK until 2013 + - Posible speeds of 73Mbps!!!!! - The iPad will support personal hotspot - Battery Life 10 Hours 9 on 4G - 9,44mm thin 1.4 lbs 3G 9 -16GB 9 32GB 9 64GB 4G 9 -16GB 9 32GB 9 64GB Launch 16th March in Us, Canada, Uk, France, Germany, Japan 11.30 The New iPad – iSight - 5 Megapixel Backside illuminated camera on the back - Advanced optics - Autofocus 11.28 The New iPad – Processor - A5x processor -Quad Core 11.27 The New iPad – new screen - High Resolution screen 2048 x 1536 3.1 million pixels - 264 ppi , Retina Display -40% better colour saturation 11.22 The new iPad “Today we’re announcing the new iPad, and it is amazing.” 11.19 15.4 million sold in the last quater. 200,000 custom apps just for the iPad. 11.16 iPad next ….. 11.16 Apple TV – available next week. Pre order today 11.11 You’ll be able to re-download movies you’ve purchased on any device, and movies and TV shows now support 1080p. 1080p, ……… NEW APPLE TV with 1080p 11.10 iCloud: iCloud keeps all of your content synced across all of your devices. 100 million users iTunes in the cloud now supports movies!! 11.09 585000 Apps in the app store. 25 billion apps downloaded 11.08 Siri with an Australian accent, French and German speaking, And now Japan . Now how about businesses for the uk ? 11.07 Siri Now. “Siri is your best friend… who gets things done just by asking.” 11.06 iPhone, iPad, iPod touch are all based on iOS and we have now sold an astonishing 315 million devices through last year, 62 million in Q4 2011. 11.03 Apple is up to 362 retail stores, 110 million visitors in Q4 2011. 10.59 Tim Cook takes the stage … 10.54 7 Minutes to go, 10.34 Last weeks media invite teased: ” We have something you want you to see. And touch” See: The new high resolution screen Touch: A new touch sensitive screen with hard, soft and textured spots. ??? 10.27 Will the new iPad be the ‘iPad 3′ or the iPad HD – a reference to the higher resolution screen ? This would depart from the traditional numbering system of the iPhones and iPads released so far. 10.20 The Daily Mail is also reporting there will be an Apple TV announcement today as well 10.16 Is a cheaper iPad on the way ? The daily mail are reporting a slimmed down iPad 2 along side the iPad 3 08.31 A few things we know will happen at the launch . 1) Cook will take the stage. 2) Numbers, Numbers and more numbers. 3) iPad History 4)iOS 6? 5)iPad 3 Launched
Backup
Data loss can happen at any time, usually without warning ! Hard drives can fail, virus’s can delete important information.
We find that most users don’t appreciate the magnitude of the problem if they lose their data.
The two scenarios are real life examples of data loss our customers have hit with
Example 1: Home User
5500 Personal Family photos. (6 years worth of digital photos, with no printed copies all lost)
Hundreds of Microsoft word files (Children’s School Work / College Essays , CV’S, legal correspondence all lost)
Hundreds of emails ( personal family correspondence all lost)
Hundred of email addresses (all lost)
Family accounts (6 years worth of personal accounts all lost)
Summary
In the case a large part of the family photos were lost, these included several years worth of photos of the families new born baby. The older children were forced to write college work in a short time scale to the the data loss happening under a week before assignments were due. All of this could have been prevented with a simple and cheap backup system.
31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control.
Every week 140,000 hard drives crash in the United States. (Mozy Online Backup)
Simple drive recovery can cost upwards of £1,000 and success is not guaranteed.
Viruses – 10% of PCs are infected with viruses each month. Of these, 37% of computer virus infections result in data loss. (Source – ICSA Labs/TruSecure, 2002)
Example 2: Business User
Thousands of client records (customer billing information, current status of projects all lost)
Thousands of design drawings (current and past customer project information all lost)
Hundreds of Microsoft word files (all lost)
Thousands of emails ( Past and current project correspondence all lost)
Thousands of email addresses (all lost)
Years worth of business accounts ( all lost)
Summary
This company spent months trying to rebuild their business having lost all of their customers information, accounts, project work and most of all emails and addresses. This could have been prevented with a backup system!
93% of businesses that suffer data loss for more than 10 days file for bankruptcy within 1 year, 50% immediately Source – British Chamber of Commerce ICT Report
Up to 20% of PCs suffer hardware failure in the first three years of use. Source – Garter Analyst M. Margevicius, Aug 2001
Laptop Loss – Of the 2.3 million insurance claims for computer loss in 2001, 25% were theft related; notebook theft has increased by 53% since 2000. Source – Safeware, The Insurance Agency Inc. 2001
How can you backup ?
There are several ways to back up below we will have a look at some of the options to suit any situation.
Email to Self.
One of the most basic ways to backup information is to use email. By using a free email system with a large amount of space (googlemail.com) you can email documents to yourself, and have the document stored on the Google server.
This method is particularly good for students who usually transfer coursework from college / uni to home and back using memory sticks. Memory sticks can be very unpredictable and can often lose information. By emailing a copy of your work to your own email makes sure you never have to redo a piece of coursework due to data loss again.
Drop Box
Drop box is online storage. Signup for an account, Get 2GB of free space select which files you want to back up, and forget about it . Drop box automatically syncs your files as you change them or add new ones.
Idea for backing up School work, College essays or Uni Coursework. Drop box is also perfect for backing up family documents and emails.
Backup Drive
For large backup systems, drop us an email and we can advise on the best solution for you, we can make sure your not paying over the odds and can periodically make sure your backup is still working.
New computer for Christmas? Protect yourself now !
Most new computers come with a trial version of an Anti Virus Software. Usually Norton or Mc Afee – both are resource hungry and expensive once your trial comes to an end.
Here is our advice on the software to install to keep your system safe and secure,
Antivirus :- Free AVG http://free.avg.com/gb-en/226187 The best Free antivirus we have come across. We use it on all our ‘Test Bed’ machines (Machines we use to solve / repair / recover client machines) and it hasnt yet let us get infected.
Anti Malware :- Malwarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ (the free version) Run once a week to protect against malware infections
One additional piece of software we would recommend is K9 http://www1.k9webprotection.com If you have under 16′s using a computer K9 will help protect your youngsters from visiting sites which they shouldn’t be. Various different levels of sites can be blocked out, with lots of parental controls and logging are available.
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Post Christmas Sales – Best Offers
Post Christmas Sales are here. We are going to trawl the offers for you and find the best ones to save you the hassle.
Normal prices in ()
Currys / PC World
LG 32″ Full HD TV £279 (£549.00) Save £270
LG 42″ Full HD TV £379 (£799.00) Save £420
LG 42″ Full HD LED TV £499 (£649) Save £150
Samsung 50″ Full HD LED TV £899 (£1299) Save £400
ACER TimelineX 4820T £499 (£599.99) Save £150.99
HP g56 Laptop £379 (£599) Save £220
Some of the prices that these offers are ‘reduced’ against are the prices they were at back at the beginning of the year, so i’m guessing that the huge saving wouldn’t be such a huge saving if you compared it with last weeks price !!
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Scam calls claiming “Your computer is infected”
We have heard stories of customers receiving calls Microsoft / Windows / Some random Support agency claiming they have detected you have problems with your computer or your computers are infect with a virus.
I personally have never received one of these calls, that was until last week 
To help people out in understanding how these con-men try and work their way in to your system I took some notes while stringing the friendly Indian ‘Support’ guy along.
In the below transcript my comments are in green marked as [phx] and [C2F] will be the comments of my scam caller. The caller does spout a lot of incorrect information about the system to frighten you in to thinking he needs your help. I will explain with comments in red as we go through what the windows functions he talks about are for and how to really ensure you have no viruses.
[C2F] Good morning Mr Phillips I am calling because we have discovered a lot of virus infections on Computers in the Hereford area.
[phx] Oh really, how can I tell if I’m one of them ?
[C2F]What computer are you using ?
[phx] Windows Xp
[C2F] Ok well there is a chance you are infected. Can click the start button and then right click on ‘My Computer’ and press ‘Manage’. Please Click the Event Viewer link . Do you know what the Windows logs are?
[phx]No i have never seen them before… I lied I use the Windows event logs pretty much every time I repair a computer.
[C2F]OK well the Windows logs record information about all the viruses you have on your computer. Actually the Windows Log store information about the computer when it boots up and when it shuts down. It also stores information about crashes and programs which report errors.
[C2F] Do You see any red exclamation marks ?
[phx] Yes a few
[C2F]More than 10 or Less than 10
[phx]More than 10 I lied again, there were no red exclamation marks.
[C2F]These are errors on your system, do you know what they mean
[phx]No
[C2F]These Red errors mean you have many online infections on your system that have affected your computer. I had to stop myself from laughing here, it is not uncommon to see some errors listed in the Windows Log, Programs when they crash will log the even in the Event log etc So seeing Errors here does not mean you have an infection or Virus.
[phx] Oh No !!!
[C2F]Does it take a long time for your computer to boot up ?
[phx]Yeah I guess it does take a little longer than it should do.
[C2F]That’s all down to these online infections and your computer could crash down in a mater of days. Some Viruses can cause the computer to boot slower but most computers are so full of ‘junk’ and unused programs and start up items this is the reason for the slow boot and can be fixed by a clean out.
[phx]Oh so how do we get rid of them ?
[C2F]Well your pretty badly infected, lets have a look at how badly they have taken over your computer.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete Key. Do you know what this does He’s constantly testing my knowledge to see how far he can push his lies.
[phx]No i’ve never seen this before I seem to be telling a lot of lies here, but its all in the name of research!!
[C2F] The is will tell us how much of your computer the virus is using. Click on the performance tab, what percentage of CPU usage is being used?
[phx]70%
[C2F]{sharp intake of breath} Oh thats bad 70% of your computer is infected This figure actually represents how hard your computer is working. When playing a game this figure maybe close to 100%, when you have just booted your computer this figure would be closer to 0%.
[phx]OH NO !!!
[C2F] Dont worry, we can help you, please open your web browser and go to www.click2fixs.com. At this point this guy wanted me to download some remote tool from his website. I can only assume he was then going to infect my system and try stealing my passwords.
[phx]At this point i have to inform you i am an IT consultant, I know exactly what the Windows Logs do and the Task manager. I think what you are doing here is highly illegal…
[C2F]{silence}
[phx]Do you have anything to say ?
[C2F]{Phone Goes Dead}
So a few tips to remember:
- Microsoft aren’t going to call you, unless you called them first.
- If you haven’t called anyone to help you with your computer, don’t let any one try and convince you you have a problem
- If you think you have a problem call a company you trust to help you out.
Please pass this on to anyone who may find it useful. Older people may find this scam convincing and be so worried they allow these con men to hack into their computers .
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