This one is for readers in the US and Canada.
When I’m not teaching IT to older learners, troubleshooting someone’s computer or designing websites, I dabble in internet marketing.
Through a forum I belong to I was challenged by a fellow member. The challenge was for us both to set up websites on the same topic and see if we could make sales. The challenger has a head start – he chose the topic and he’s made websites on that topic before.
The subject is reverse cell phone lookup. I didn’t even know you could do that. Apparently you can if you live in the USA or Canada.
As I understand it, many organisations compile lists of cell phone data from their customers. These lists are opt-in – meaning the customer has ticked (or at least, not unticked) the box allowing their details to be added to a database. These databases are sold to
Continue reading How to find who owns a cell phone number
If you’ve purchased the Atahualpa theme tutorial and designed your own site, post a link to it in a comment below.
I will take some screenshots and start a page on this site so that you can see how other people have used the theme to design their own sites. (Oh yes – and I’ll put a link back to your site on the screenshot.)
I’m a great fan of the Atahualpa Wordpress theme. In recent months I have taught several colleagues and friends how to use it.
When I was running regular IT classes I spent a lot of time writing handouts. Time has moved on and it is now possible to illustrate my tutorials with videos. I decided it was time to write a video illustrated tutorial on how to use the Atahualpa theme.
Writing sales copy isn’t “my thing”. I recently taught a colleague in America how to adapt the Atahualpa theme for her own site. It turns out that she’s a marketer and copy writer – so I asked her to help me write my sales letter.
She wrote from the heart! She’d already had a theme designed for her site by a “theme designer”. She didn’t like it, found some of my sites and asked me to design one for her. Instead
Continue reading Atahualpa Wordpress Theme Tutorial
A few days ago I was called by a client who couldn’t use their broadband. By the time they phoned me they had made several calls to their BB provider. They still couldn’t use the BB – and the only noticeable effect the helpline had achieved was to remove their old dial-up connection. By the time I arrived their neighbours had helpfully provided them with a spare router (the neighbours had 4 routers – sent to them by the same BB provider in an attempt to cure their separate problem. No, I don’t know what that was, I don’t know the neighbours)
Fortunately I took my laptop, so it didn’t take long to see that the broadband was working properly. My first instinct was to download and install Malwarebytes to ensure that internet access wasn’t being blocked by malware. I used my laptop to download it, copied it to their PC
Continue reading Multiple Internet Browsers – why you should have more than one
If you know me you will have realised that I am almost paranoid about backups. After a near disaster a few weeks ago (Yes – I did have all the backups I needed) I decided to try out online backups. I have an external hard drive, but as I use a laptop the external drive doesn’t stay connected and I have to remember to do the backup.
I decided I needed a method of backing up that would be automatic and didn’t require me to remember to set it going and wait for it to finish. I found a service online that sounded good and signed up for their free trial. Meanwhile I posted a thread on a forum that I belong to asking which online backup services people use. You can see the thread here on the Warrior Forum.
The two most recommended services were Mozy and Carbonite. Both cost the
Continue reading Automatic online backups
A client phoned me a few days ago and asked why it was that some of the files listed in her documents folder were displayed in black and some in blue.
I had no idea and had to do some detective work. Finally I found the answer buried under “folder and search options” in the Documents list.
I use Windows Vista and this is where I found the answer:
Click on “Organize”
Select “Folder and Search Options”
A dialog box will appear with a list of options. Scroll down the list until you are almost at the bottom.
You should see an entry that says “Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color.
If you remove the tick beside this entry, all your files will be displayed in black.
A frequent cry of mine. In fact most of my clients think I sound like a broken record!
Just this week I found my own computer infected with malware. I’m like an over-anxious mother when it comes to protecting my computer. It only has to sneeze (metaphorically speaking, of course) and I scan it with my antivirus software, malwarebytes, superantispy and sometimes Housecall online scanner.
The ultimate protection against viruses, stolen computers, hard drive failure and any other catastrophe is to “do your backups”.
Regularly backup all the data on your computer. You can make a complete image of your harddrive if you like – software, operating system and data. Or you can just make sure you have all your data – documents, emails, photos etc. In the case of dramatic failure you can reinstall your operating system and software using original discs or downloads.
What is a backup? There are many ways
Continue reading Do your backups
Maybe. My broadband provider, Nildram, are going to feature me in their next newsletter as case study of the month. They were looking for examples of how their customers use broadband. My business wouldn’t be possible without broadband. If you are one of my clients you will know that most of my websites are designed using Wordpress (including this one). They are edited online. Impossible without a good broadband connection.
Most of my students are mature – 60+ is usual. I have, though, had several students in their 80s and even some in their 90s. It’s true that you learn more slowly as you get older, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn. Believe me. I currently have a lady who is well into her 80s and living in residential care. Her sons bought her a laptop for Christmas and she was reluctant to learn at first.
After the first lesson I left her playing a game on the computer – this is a good way of practicing mouse control. By the time I went again, she had the mouse under control and was keen to get on the internet. She had used email before on her television, but there was no mouse. We set up the broadband and she is keen to learn to how to keep in touch
Continue reading It’s never too late to learn to use a computer
My old it-teacher website has become so old fashioned and out of date that I decided the easiest thing to do was to start a completely new site. So here it is. The Friendly Computer Training website and blog.
