Andrew Tech Help

Facebook Places, the new location tracking service which is a copy of FourSquare was launched in Australia yesterday and already it is concerning me. The service works by tracking where a Facebook user on a mobile device is using the GPS in that mobile device and then when the arrive to a location that has GPS co-ordinates registered with Facebook, prompts the user to Check-In that they are currently at that place. That information is then shared to their friends in the news feed. A few people I know have commenced using it and already I know where someone's house is (with a map) and that someone was at my local McDonalds at 2am last night. Anyone who is friends on their profile could  see this information and with the number of friends that some people have on their profiles these days, that's a lot of people to be telling where you are currently. The service I personally believe is dangerous and will encourage stalkers and so here is a guide on how to disable it if you do not wish to use it at all (like myself).

With the Windows Live Essentials 2011 reaching the RTM stage today and being made available publicly to Windows Vista and 7 users + Facebook Chat integration being rolled out to Australian users, it's time to prep your Windows Live IDs so that you can take advantage of these new features (especially in Messenger). Microsoft realised a few years ago that creating another social network would be a complete waste of time, money and resources because the public had already chosen the services they want and would stick with them (Facebook, Wordpress, Youtube, Digg etc). Accordingly, Microsoft decided to turn it's Windows Live service into a place that simply aggregated all the content from those other services into one place so that it is easier to keep a track of and then link that into it's extremely popular instant messaging and email services (Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail) to create a central social dashboard. For all this to work though, the user needs to link up these different social networks to their Windows Live ID in a process called "Connecting Services To Your Profile". Windows Live Messenger 2011 also uses more of the information from your Windows Live Profile & Contacts so therefore these need to be updated accordingly. Finally the the entire Windows Live ecosystem now has much improved privacy settings that are also probably worth checking out, to make sure that all of this information is going only to the people who you wish to see it.

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Ever since Windows 98, Microsoft has provided a My Documents folder for you to store all your files in. Most programs written for Windows automatically open the Save As and Open dialog boxes to the My Documents folder so that if you don't know anything about how folder structures work, then you will save it in My Documents where you will mostly be able to find it again. In Windows 2000/Me, Microsoft added a My Pictures folder, in Windows XP along came the My Music and My Videos folders and in Windows Vista it expanded so that there was a Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, Favourites, Links, Saved Games and Searches folder (many of these were already there, but hidden to the user before Windows Vista) in addition to the Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folder. Windows 7 Added a Podcasts (If You Install Zune 4.0) and Virtual Machines (If You Install Windows Virtual PC).

I've been using Adobe Reader for many many years now, stretching as far back as when it was called Acrobat Reader. Adobe has continued to update it's reader and is currently up to version 9. To most people though, the functions of the reader they use have changed very little. For few more advanced users, who use all of the extra features of Adobe Acrobat to make PDFs then you probably have enjoyed the additions Adobe has made over the years, but regardless of whether you use them or not, they're making the PDF reader more insecure (and bloaty at the same time, Adobe have it auto load in the background when you turn on the computer because otherwise it would be too slow to load when you opened a document).