Computer Courage is up for the “Best of BayList” contest at SFGate.com.  We’re going for “Best Computer Services”.

It’s super easy to vote for us (just a quick 1 page registration), just go to our voting page here and click “VOTE”.  That’s it!

Thanks for your support – please vote for us today!

-Adam and the Computer Courage team

As many of our clients know, we are firm beleivers in Google Applications.  Gmail is fast and universally accessible, Google Calendar can be synced to any device, and Google Documents is allowing for some unbeleivable new functionality in the world of document editing and sharing.  But the main problem with these solutions has always been that you need to be online.  This cuts out access to calendar, email, and documents when you are on a plane, or not near a WiFi connection.  Now that’s all changed.

Google now allows offline access to mail and calendar through the use of a browser plugin called Google Gears.  Google Gears can be installed into Firefox or Internet Explorer, and is built in to Chrome (Google’s new browser).  Sorry Safari users, no Gears for you yet (Mac users can install Firefox.)  Gears installs into your web browser and allows you to sync certain websites to your computer for offline browsing.

Google Gears with Gmail allows you to view your emails when you are offline, and even compose emails (they will be sent next time you are connected to the internet in Gmail, though for some reason you can’t use attachments yet.)  You can also view appointments in Gcal, and even create new ones, which will be synced the next time you log in online.   Another innovative feature – Google has a “Flaky Connection” mode for bad connections – it will switch into Google gears when the connection drops, and sync up when it comes back.

Here’s how you can set up Offline Mode for Gmail and Google Calendar.  Note that this access is still in Beta (experimental.)  Google warns that aspects of the service, and sometimes the whole service, may come and go as they test it, so don’t rely on this 100%.

To enable Offline Mode:

1) First you’ll need to either download Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome) or get Google Gears for your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser (http://gears.google.com.)

2) Next you’ll need to sign up a Gmail account if you don’t have one.  If you do, log in to Gmail.

3) In the top of the Gmail page, look for the menu item “Settings” and click on it.  From the settings page, click on the “Labs” tab.  If you don’t have a Labs tab, check back periodically as Google sometimes takes a while to add it to your account.

4) In the “Labs” page, the first lab should be “Offline”.  Just click on “Enable” next to offline.  If you don’t see it, you don’t have it right now.  Nothing you can do but wait for it to appear, check back next week.  Once you’ve clicked “Enable” then click “Save Changes”

5) You’re ready to go.  Just click “Offline” in the upper-right hand menu of your Mail or Calendar and Google will start to download your messages and appointments.  It will give you a status indicator as well, and you can work away while it downloads.  Just be sure not to close your browser or you won’t have everything synced up.  Google will let you know when it’s done.

A few notes about Google Offline:

1) Don’t forget it’s still in early testing.  Features may come and go.

2) If you have a lot of messages, you might not get all of them Offline.  Google downloads up to abotu 10,000 emails.  We don’t know how it picks and chooses, but it has some intelligent method of selecting them so your most needed emails are more likely to be there.

3) Google Gears is per-browser.  So if you sync up with Firefox, you won’t see your ofline mail in Chrome, etc.  This also means that if you sync up in multiple browsers, you’ll have mutliple copies of your messages on your computer (which takes more storage.)

4) Finally, this syncing represents something of a security concern.  In the past, all of your content was stored on Google’s servers and security was their concern.   Now, your browsers will have copies of all of your mail, sensitive or otherwise.  In many ways, this is nothign new, as any Outlook or Mail.app user has the same issue, but it’s a new issue for Gmail users.

We hope you find this guide usefel.  Check out Google Offline access and let us know what you think in the comments.

We’ve posted about making your PC go green before, but recently I came across an impressively sophisticated piece of software that can be of great help.  Called Edison, from Verdeim Software (http://www.verdiem.com/) this program will allow you to track your PC’s energy consumption, carbon footprint, and even energy savings, while supplying you with very sophisticated (and effective, we believe) options to keep your PC greener.

For PCs, the name of the environmental game is energy consumption – how little energy can you burn while still getting things done?  Companies like Apple are going a little further these days, creating laptops and computers in a more environmentally friendly process, using more recyclable materials.  But if you can’t shell out the big $$$ for a new MacBook Pro, Edison can help your today.

For Windows only (see our previous “green” post for some tips on keeping your Mac greener,) Edison has some fantastic options.  We all know telling your system to hibernate after 10 minutes is good for the enviornment, but it can be a pain for some.  With Edison, you can have different power schemes during day and night (let the system hibernate after 5 of inactivity at night, and after 30 minutes of activity during the day.)

Edison’s reporting features are fascinating as well.  You can watch how much money, carbon, and electricity you are saving, and brag to your friends.  Best of all, Edison is free (though you do have to sign up with them to use it.)   Happy savings to everyone.

Rule #1, you pretty much have to have a Mac with an Intel processor.  That’s any Mac bought in the last 3 or 4 years, so you’re probably good on that one.

First – Apple’s Boot Camp.  This is a free program, but it’s only included in OS X 10.5 (Leopard.)  If you have an older version of Leopard, you’ll have to upgrade.  Contact us to find out about our upgrade services.  Boot Camp allows you to turn your Mac into a PC, and even switch back and forth.  This is a great solution for those of us that run Windows more than OS X, or who need to harness the full power of their computer when using Windows (gamers, artists, 3D modelers, etc.)

Next is virtualization.  With virtualization, we run a little “virtual Windows” installation inside of OS X.  There’s no rebooting, and you can run Windows and Mac simultaneously – even keeping applications from Windows and OS X open together on the same screen.  This is a very convenient solution, though not quite as fast as Boot Camp (it’s faster to open your copy of Windows, but Windows will run slower.)  The kings of virtualization on the Mac are VMware Fusion and Parallels.  Parallels is the easiest in our opinion, including features to migrate your old PC into your new Mac.  This week, Parallels released version 4, which increases performance by 50% – a huge boost.  If you want help purchasing and installing Parallels, give us a call.

Finally, for the brave of heart, there are programs such as CrossOver which attempt to run Windows programs without Windows itself, using a system called “Wine.”  I wont get into the technical details, but you should know that these programs are pretty experimental and only good for the simplest of Windows applications.

So there you have it – run Windows apps on your Mac – it doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult.  Don’t forget though that you will need to puchase a copy of Windows XP, which is a cost that people often don’t consider.

If you have questions about using Windows on a Mac, just contact us and we’ll give you some more help.

If you can’t make it, and have a computer questions, just contact us and I’ll probably just answer it for you.

The definition of phishing, according to Wikipedia, is “the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”  This is a long winded way of saying that phishing is an attempt by bad guys to trick you into giving them your secret information.  When a bad guy successfully phishes you, he or she will acquire banking passwords, credit card numbers, email passwords, etc.  This information is very dangerous when put in the wrong hands – it can lead to great expense on your part, inconvenience, invasion of privacy, and identity theft.

What you need to know.  Below are some explanations and guidelines to avoid phishing:

1. Don’t give any information over email when requested.  No bank will ever email you to ask you to verify your information (address, password, credit card info, SSN, etc.)  So you can just plain ignore any such request – it’s bogus.  If you are unsure, you can always contact us.
2. Don’t follow links from suspicious emails.  I’ll go into detail about links in a moment, but for now the safest way to avoid going to the wrong place is to go directly to where you want to go.  Just open up your browser and type in the web address of the institution instead of clicking on the link.
3. Upgrade your browser (Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3 are the current versions) and enable the Phishing filter in IE.
4. Run good antivirus software at all times.
5. Watch for sites that don’t use HTTPS security (look got https:// instead of http:// in the URL.)
6. Know your URLS – this is the most complicated but most important.  This is a bit too complicated to explain in an newsletter, so
7. Here’s a great case study of a phishing technique such as described above.  Notice in this one the visible link looks normal, but the link actually takes the user somewhere else.  The lesson is don’t follow links from email.  See an example here.

Remember, your best technique is common sense.  Keep these main philosophies:

1. Be skeptical and cautious with all banking transactions.
2. Avoid opening links from email when possible.
3. Never give your private information for “verification purposes.”
4. Run antivirus software and update your browser.
5. Know your URL structure.

When in doubt, contact us at Computer Courage and we’ll help you with any suspicious emails, websites, or computer behavior.  Thanks everyone and stay safe.

By the way, we’ve moved to 1700 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley (at Virginia) to a nicer office, sharing a building with Berkeley’s own internet service provider – LMI.net, come visit any time.

Barack Obama says he represents a new set of ideas for America – that’s something we’re all pretty excited about.  Watching the politicians, particularly Senators Obama and McCains, from a technonological perspective has also been interesting.   Issues like net neutrality (learn about it here) are never going to make the TV debates, but they affect all of us and  the presidential hopefulls have very different views.  See this article by tech crunch for an overview.

Views aside, Obama just pushed the envelope with a new iPhone app that lets you take part in his campaign.  This is pretty impressive.  It encourages you to help out directly by donating (it helps you call a hotline, doesn’t let you enter your payment directly) and calling friends to pitch your option.  It even goes so far as to prioritize your address book so you can call friends in battleground states first – very smart.  Additionally, the application will allow you to see pictures and videos, read articles, receive updates, and do research on the issues.  Naturally, the application is free for all iPhone users.

We highly recommend everyone check out this app – if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can head over to www.barackobama.com to get a lot of the same content (and maybe make a donation?)

Come visit (or just send us flowers) and see our new space, our conference

Some of our customers have been complaining about AVG’s update warnings recently.  Sure enough, we’ve also noticed that AVG doesn’t always manage to successfully update its virus definitions every day.  This can be pretty annoying.  The good news is that as AVG always eventually gets the job done, and it’s probably not too dangerous to be a day or two behind on virus definitions.

Still, we’ve come up with a quick guide to make AVG a little less annoying.  Follow these steps to disable the AVG warnings.  This way, you won’t be notified every time AVG can’t do an update.  Caution – use this power tip at your own risk and always pay attention to AVG’s status – you want to take action immediately if AVG does find a virus.

How to disable AVG auto-notifications:

1. Double click on the AVG icon on your desktop or your system tray.
2. Tools -> Advanced Settings

3. Uncheck “Display tray notifications about update.”

Alternatively, you can just disable the main box – “Display system tray notifications.”  But this is a bit dangerous as you could miss important notifications from the Resident Shield.

The biggest environmental impact your PC makes is power.  Every hour your PC is on is more energy burned.  So the number one trick for reducting environmental impact is TURN IT OFF.  If you can turn off your PC at night, you’re already reducing the power consumption by half.

Aside from turning off your PC, it’s a great idea to use Windows and OS X built in power management tools.  For OS X, just go to System Preferences and select Power Management, there you can control how long until the hard drive powers down, the screen goes blank, or the machine goes to sleep.  For Windows, go to the control panel to find similar options.

Some Windows users ask about Standby versus Hibernate.  Techinically Hibernate is a deeper form of sleep, which takes longer to go into and get out of, but saves more power.

A few people have asked about screen savers.  Remember that screen savers do not save energy.  They also are not needed by today’s modern LCD screens.  They’re now officially just for fun.  You can use your power management tools to put your screen to sleep/off, which is best for the environment and your screen.

Finally, don’t forget to buy EnergyStar rated products – this applies to computers, monitors, and most any peripherals.  If you have any thoughts or questions about green computing, feel free to chime in below in the comments.