Information Management Associates
Getting I.T. Right
admin For the average computer user, one of the banes of your existence is dealing with the plethora of “updates” your machine bugs you about. Here’s a bit of background, and some guiding principles. Before broadband internet became widespread, updates to programs generally only came once a year or so, since … [continued…]
Going through the more ancient regions of the records, I came across credentials from computer expos long ago. Friends and I still reminisce about the early years of personal computing. It was definitely chaotic. There were countless companies making hardware, software, and accessories—but that was part of the fun, and … [continued…]
Pandemics bring out the best and worst in mankind, and this one’s no different. It may have been quiet for a little while, but hucksters and charlatans will be back with a vengence. In your digital life, this means phone scams, bank/credit card fraud, and online foolishness will be rampant. … [continued…]
As offices empty out from pandemic concerns, a whole new group of people are trying to work from home–and discovering the wonders of “remote access.” As veterans of the “tele-computing” wars since the earliest modems, we thought we’d give you a quick overview of some options. For those who vaguely … [continued…]
So you have recently received at least one email claiming to know a lot about you, including your password and what you’ve been doing on the internet. How do we know? Because virtually everyone has, multiple times. Recent versions of this junk are especially nasty, trying to blackmail you for … [continued…]
Much has been made in the media lately about a Russian router hack. Here’s the low-down with this router hack story, and what normal folks can do. What’s a router hack? As Emily Litella might have said, “What’s all this I hear about RotoRooter Sax? No one’s playing saxophone in … [continued…]
Our Google history is extensive; why not use Google itself to show us just how extensive our Google history is? By now most of us have heard the big internet players record nearly everything we do. The business case for this is to match advertisers to us, and we’re assured … [continued…]
An encounter with yet another old computer throwing a multitude of errors reminds us of a pet peeve–the Windows “registry.” This bane of our existence has been around since the beginning of Windows. (Don’t feel so smug, Mac people–you have your own idiosyncrasies.) And what good’s a blog without an … [continued…]
We’re often reminded how many computer users are still a little “iffy” on some basic computing concepts—particularly those who were already out of school when PCs first hit. We make no judgments…it’s all a matter of where one spent one’s misspent youth. Software is perhaps one of the squishier terms … [continued…]
When the ‘net was young, and accounts were few, we started jotting down our ID/password combos. First one Post-It, then a dozen; we may have started a neat, spreadsheet print-out, but soon it was quickly covered with dozens of hastily-added handwritten additions. As the number of websites requiring logins proliferated, … [continued…]