Hello Marlowe & Associates Subscribers and GulfCoast Networking Customers! With this issue, we are continuing to expand our focus from strictly Internet information to include even more information on new developments in computer hardware. We are also adding a special focus on one or more local businesses that you should think about when you are in the market for goods or services. The spotlight is on connections with family and friends in this December issue. You'll learn how to make the most of your tweets to them on Twitter, and get instructions on uploading videos to YouTube. In Great Sites, we feature resources to help you manage family finances, bake sweets with North Pole recipes, navigate the rules of etiquette, build a family medical record, and reminisce about the Sesame Street gang. Of course, there are foes online as well as family and friends. So we begin with a warning about phony IRS e- mails that attempt to steal personal information from recipients. Stay alert this season, and have a wonderful time with those you care about. We think you'll find the information contained in this newsletter to be a valuable tool for enhancing your Internet experience. If, however, you'd prefer not to receive these bulletins on a monthly basis, just click "reply" and type "remove" into the subject line. Here's what's inside our December 2009 Newsletter: A. WARNING! - PHONY IRS E-MAIL LANDS IN MANY INBOXES B. NEWS FROM THE SHOP C. ASK THE HELP DESK - MUST TWEETS ONLY TALK ABOUT WHAT I'M DOING? D. SITES OF THE MONTH - GREAT SITES TO CHECK OUT IN DECEMBER E. SHORT TUTORIAL - UPLOADING A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE F. FEATURED LOCAL BUSINESSES G. ON A PERSONAL NOTE The Marlowe.net Team ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A. WARNING! - PHONY IRS E-MAIL LANDS IN MANY INBOXES According to IRS.gov, a phony e-mail claiming to come from the IRS has recently been circulating in large numbers. The subject line is typically “Notice of Underreported Income,” and the e-mail may contain an attachment or link to a bogus webpage directing taxpayers to their "tax statement." In either case, when the recipient opens the attachment or clicks on the link, they download malware including the hard-to-detect Zeus Trojan. This malicious code can take over the hard drive, giving someone remote access to the computer, or it could look for passwords and other information and send them to the scammer to gain access to bank accounts. Researchers estimate that the Zeus criminals are emptying more than a million dollars per day out of victims' bank accounts with the software, and it's the most prominent spam-delivered virus in the world right now. Please remember that the IRS does not send unsolicited e-mails to taxpayers about their tax accounts. If you receive an unsolicited e- mail claiming to come from the IRS, do not open any attachments or click on any links. Those who believe they may already be victims of identity theft should find out what to do by going to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's website, http://OnGuardOnLine.gov. B. NEWS FROM THE SHOP There is almost enough news this month to require an entire newsletter all by itself, but I'll try to keep things brief. I spent two days in Orlando last week at an Intel Channel Conference. There are some great new products and services either available now or coming within the next few months. A few examples include: Setup Service: If you find some "deal of a lifetime" on a computer while shopping the big box stores this season, feel free to give us a call to come out and set it up and get all the critical updates installed. We'll get you something more than a trial antivirus program installed and make sure everything is working correctly. (When you buy a custom built system from us, in addition to the longer warranty you get, we take the system through all the required updates before you even take it home.) Servers: The Intel Modular Server, which we sell, currently holds up to twelve quad core Xeon processors. That's right, one server with up to forty-eight processor cores to handle the most demanding business needs. What's even cooler is that the six core Xeon processors are coming next year and that means that we will be able to build our business customers a server with seventy-two processor cores in a single box. Even better news is that processors these days take a lot less electricity than just a few years ago, so turning on one of these monster servers won't dim lights across the city. Green Computing: Speaking of power draw, new servers and desktop computers pull a lot less power than just three or four years ago. There is an economic argument for replacing four year old and older servers in particular simply for the savings on the electric bill. If you have a home computer that stays on all the time and you have an older machine, you may want to come in and check out some of the new machines we carry. We have desktop systems that only pull about 25 watts at idle...compared to 150 or more watts on a lot of older systems. Notebooks: There are a whole raft of new notebooks on the market, fitting every need from the ultra-thin wide screen type to the little ones that have been ruggedized for school kids. If you are in the market for a notebook, I'm pretty sure I can spec one out that fits your needs. Remote Support: Quite a few of our customers have taken advantage of our remote support system, saving the time they would have had to spend unhooking everything to bring the computer to the shop or the expense of having us make a service call. It often takes us longer to get the support session running than to fix whatever problem exists. Right now, setting up the connection requires your computer to actually be online with Windows running. While at the conference, I had the chance to play in a lab setting where we were able to set up a remote support session on a system without loading Windows! Just a few keystrokes and we set up a support session where we could look at the client computer's BIOS settings or boot it from a disk image on the tech's machine. This new technology is amazing and we expect to have it on our support system within the next few months. Enhanced Email: We expect some of our business customers to be interested in our latest service offering...Hosted Exchange Services. Businesses can get all the advantages of using Microsoft Exchange without the expense involved in buying and managing an Exchange Server. This offering is so new, I don't even have the advertising slicks prepared yet. You heard it here first. Standard Email Hosting: We have just completed a two year testing cycle with our IPAD mail servers. Probably the most noticeable change was this past summer when we were able to start blocking spam by country. There have been dozens of other updates as well and we're actually running production code on our servers at the moment. We make the extra effort to participate in the development of the IPAD mail servers because it gives us the opportunity to get new features online for you quickly and it helps build a better system for our business customers who run their own IPAD mail servers. Businesses find that IPAD servers cost a fraction of what it costs to buy and run a typical Microsoft mail server and they are pretty much bulletproof...something nobody ever accused a Microsoft server of being. We've got IPADs in the field that run months at a time without so much as a reboot. C. ASK THE HELP DESK - MUST TWEETS ONLY TALK ABOUT WHAT I'M DOING? Question: The typing box at Twitter.com is labeled: "What are you doing?" Am I limited to answering that question in my tweets? Answer: No, you are certainly not limited to answering the "What are you doing?" question on Twitter. (Especially if that results in tweets that contain just the mundane details of your everyday life, like the fact that you're now eating a bowl of cereal.) You can use those 140 characters for other things, and doing so often makes tweets more interesting and valuable to others. For example, you can pose questions to your followers such as, "What's got your attention and why?" or "What do you think about _______?" You can also send links to neat stuff you've found online, or spread the word about breaking news events. D. SITES OF THE MONTH - GREAT SITES TO CHECK OUT IN DECEMBER Money Made Easy http://mint.com - Is 2010 the year you'll finally start saving more? Reallocate your investments? Get out of debt? If your New Year's resolutions are financial in nature, a good money management system can help. Mint is free, easy to set up and use, and offers a number of handy tools, including category tracking, budgeting help, e-mail alerts, and updates on progress toward your goals. Christmas Cookbook http://northpole.com/Kitchen/Cookbook - If you're not already in the Christmas spirit, cooking up some delicious holiday treats just might get you there. At this site, you can download recipes from Mrs. Claus herself! Recipes are available for cookies, fudge, candy, cakes, pies, and more. And, don't forget to check out other areas of the site to see Disco Dancing Santa, write Santa a letter, or track his travels on Christmas Eve. Holiday Hiccups http://emilypost.com/everyday/holiday_FAQs_entertaining.htm - A lot of holiday stress can be attributed to wondering about appropriate behavior: "Is it acceptable to bring an extra guest to dinner?" "How elaborate a gift should I give my new boyfriend/girlfriend?" "Should my tipping habits change during the holiday season?" The Emily Post Institute site offers gracious suggestions to address these and other tricky holiday situations. Family (Medical) Tree http://mayoclinic.com/health/medical-history/HQ01707 - This site covers an important topic you may not have given much thought to: your family medical history. Such a history can provide useful information to your doctor in assessing your disease risk, recommending treatments or prevention steps, and ordering tests. The site discusses what information to get, and how to gather it in a way that's comfortable for family members. The holidays are a great time to start collecting this vital data. Sesame Street Turns 40 http://sesamestreet.org/onair/history - On November 10, 1969, television history was made as the first episode of Sesame Street aired. This year, the show's website is celebrating the program's 40th anniversary with history, trivia, and fun videos. Vote for your favorite videos, watch rare clips, download character computer wallpaper, and read behind-the-scenes stories. Those who watched the show from the beginning will be happy to know some of the original characters still live on Sesame Street! E. SHORT TUTORIAL - UPLOADING A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE Want to unleash your creativity and broadcast your talents to a global audience? YouTube makes it pretty simple for anyone to upload a video to the site. They accept video files from most digital cameras, camcorders, web cams, and cell phones in the .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG file formats. Once you've finished editing your video, make sure it's less than 10 minutes and smaller than 100MB. YouTube recommends using the following settings to upload a video of high quality: • MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format • 320x240 resolution • MP3 audio • 30 frames per second Resizing your video to these specifications before uploading will help your videos look better on YouTube. To upload a video on YouTube: 1. Create a YouTube account by clicking on the "Create Account" link in the upper right corner of any YouTube page and then log in to your account. 2. Click "Upload Videos" in the upper right corner of any YouTube page. The "Video File Upload" page will appear. 3. Click on the "Upload Video" button. The "Select File" dialog box will appear. 4. Navigate to the file you would like to upload and click on the "Select" button. Your upload will begin. 5. While your video is uploading, enter as much information about your video as possible, including Title, Description, Tags, and Category. The more information you include, the easier it is for users to find your video. Make your tags as descriptive as you can. For example, if you took a video of your friends at the beach, you might want to tag it like this: party beach surfing. Each tag is separated from the others by a space. 6. Determine if you want your video set to Public (so anyone can access it) or Private (so only your friends and family can view it). You also have the options to prevent people from posting comments or to filter comments yourself. 7. Click the "Save Changes" button. 8. To see your video, click on the "Go to My Videos" link towards the bottom of the page. Depending on your Internet connection speed and the size of the video, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to upload a video. If you have a high speed connection, you can generally expect the upload to take somewhere between 1-5 minutes for every 1MB. F. FEATURED LOCAL BUSINESSES Our first featured local business is Pasco Camera, owned by Jim and Annette Smetzer. Pasco Camera has been around for not quite forever and offers the sort of personal touch with photographic products and services that you have come to expect from us with your computer and Internet needs. Just this past week, we had a customer come in because he couldn't get his Kodak camera to play nice with his computer. On our recommendation, he took the Kodak back to the big box store and stopped in at Pasco Camera and purchased a great little camera at a price comparable to what he would have paid for it at one of the big box stores. If a camera is on your shopping list for this Christmas, you need to stop in at Pasco Camera. This 2009 West Pasco Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the year is located on the north side of Main Street a block off US 19 and their website is http://www.pascocamera.com Our second featured local business is Home Value Appraisals. I had the chance to meet Bob Barrett, the owner at a local NPI Chapter meeting, where Bob serves as chapter president. Bob is a long time resident of the area and he has been doing appraisals for a number of years. If you are in need of a home appraisal and want personal service, call Bob at 727-243-9528 and tell him I sent you. Our third featured local business is the Mezzaluna restaurant on Main Street just east of Grand. We've walked over for supper more than once after work. Italian food, large portions, and reasonably priced. What's not to like? G. ON A PERSONAL NOTE Just a few misc. ramblings... I'm writing some of this newsletter while waiting for the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade to start and the turkey to finish cooking. I have a lot to be thankful for, including a 6am phone call from our son. It's okay, it was 8pm Thanksgiving evening where he is. We don't get to talk much, so it's nice to hear his voice even if he is literally half way around the world from here. I continue to hear positive things from any number of other businesses in our area. Even the previously moribund real estate industry is showing signs of life. If we can keep a positive outlook and muddle through the rest of the issues confronting our country, we should all do just fine. Carolyn and I are going to do our part, beginning with some of the Black Friday sales this weekend. As an aside, I have a pretty good idea which banks inspired the cute Ally Bank ads that have been running for months now. Hint: They all took taxpayer dollars and haven't loaned it out like they promised. Instead, a lot of them have cranked credit card rates up to levels that would have been illegal just a few years ago. I guess they are saving our tax dollars for their Christmas bonuses... We expect to continue rapidly growing during the next year and you can expect some exciting new offerings and announcements as we move forward. Oh, almost forgot, the New Port Richey Recreation and Aquatics Center has a membership drive starting on December 1st. You can sign up during the drive and get 25% off the regular price. City residents get an already low rate, so the extra 25% off makes a membership a bargain. Not well known, but also true is that employees of businesses within the city limits can get the resident rate even if they live outside the city limits. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but Black Friday beckons and most of the stores are already open (it's 5:30am)... Have a very Merry Christmas and I'll get our next issue out in about a month. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ We hope you found this newsletter to be informative. It's our way of keeping you posted on the happenings at our shop. Thanks for your business! Best regards,, Rob Marlowe Marlowe & Associates and Gulfcoast Networking Inc 6335 Grand Blvd New Port Richey, FL 34652 Hardware Sales & Service: 727-847-2424 Internet Support: 727-232-1558 (We have used our best efforts in collecting and preparing the information published herein. However, we do not assume, and hereby disclaim, any and all liability for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions resulted from negligence, accident, or other causes.) Portions ©2009 Cornerstone Publishing Group, Inc.