Taking care of your laptop battery to serve you for Years

I have heard lots of people complain about their laptop batteries. You also must have heard people complain how their laptop batteries can not last for over 30 minutes. Just found it right and useful to talk about them today. Well there are facts you are supposed to know about batteries and most specifically lithium Ion batteries. These batteries are made to be used up. But a majority of laptop users plug in to the mains all time they are using their machines. Well in this manner the batteries are forever charging, they wont be used up as they are supposed to be. This reduces their cells' lifespan and deteriorate over time.You should know that lithium batteries are made to be used up. 1. Dont keep your laptop on the mains line after the battery is full 2. Use the battery till almost empty around 20%. Use it once in a while till completely drained then recharge it. 3. Never store Empty batteries for long 4. Never store fully charged batteries for long. 5. Extreme temperatures are never good for your battery and whole of your laptop too. I mean both high and low temperatures. Use your laptop on hard surfaces although they are called laptops, don't use them on surfaces that insulate heat. do not charge your laptop while using. charging generates heat, as well as hard disk, processor, vga card ETC…. Do not put your Laptop in the bag while in standby mode, hibernate it (sometimes computers come out of standby without your intervention) Finally quit leaving your laptop in the car or under sun. If your laptop is a desktop replacement, you better have two battery packs. change every 2 weeks and remember, do not store fully charged, completely drained or under extreme temperatures. With this You will bet some years service. Mine has has a 6 cell and hasn't changed performance for 2 years now

Email Security 101

We use our emails in a manner that may compromise our own security and we blame our flaws on others.  These few points will help you secure your mail box (and others too) as you use email in your day to day activities 1. Don't use one email account. Most newbie's think of an email account just like you think of your postal box number. It is a good idea to have at least 3 accounts (1 for personal use, another for online newsletter subscriptions and everything you want to do, and the last for business or job related work)   2. Don't hold onto spammed-out accounts too long. Over time, your email account will accumulate a lot of spam and junk mail. You will find that most of your time you have to wade around junk mail to get the email you really need. If this is the case, you will find that is better to discard the email account for a new account.   3. Please close the browser after logging out.   When you check your mail from a shared computer e.g in a cyber café, library or school, you not only need to log out but also make sure you close the browser. Some mail clients display your username (email address) even after logging out. You can also click the browser's back button and some mail services still do a cache of your pages (bad) If you are using Mozilla Firefox browser, before you start browsing, click tools>start private browsing or pres Shft+Ctrl+P   4. Remember to delete browser cache, history and passwords.   How many times have you heard someone claim their facebook account has been hacked to and some weird stuff updated? In fact the users are to blame but I always pity them when they complain because they never admit they are to blame. Once you are done at shared computer, be it in a cyber café or library or a friend's computer, make sure you clear some history. If using firefox just hit Shft+ctrl+Del    5. Please use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) option when sending a message to multiple people. Most mail users I have seen reply or forward lots of mail to lots of people in the To: field. That is a bad habit considering all other receivers will see all addresses, the receivers get the message, forward the message and earlier addresses are appended in the current message. Stop and think. That is why most of us receive close to 50 spam mails every day.   6. Do not forward Chain Letters. The message is right there. And this includes that mail that says ".. If you don't forward you will not be blessed…" or you will die. These chain letters get into my nerves. An sorry to say I never read them. Especially long mails to me contain no sense (I just hit Del)   7. Don't think an erased email is gone forever. Take care of what you write and send via email. Even after deleting a mail from your sent>inbox>trash folders, the mails still reside in remote servers and can be retrieved very easily by professionals. These mails may come to haunt you years later.   8. SCAM!   How on earth do you win in a lottery you never participated? I don't have to talk about this. You get an email from an anonymous girl who claims to be the daughter of a certain late president claiming to be in need to transfer funds and you reply to that….   9. Phishing   Phishing is a type of online fraud where the attacker tries to imitate a certain website to make you believe it is a legit website. They usually steal logo's, and entire website designs, trick you to supply your personal details e.g passwords, credit card number e.tc   Before you click a link  in your mail, look at the status bar to confirm it is the link you really want to visit.   Signs of phishing include:       * A logo that looks distorted or stretched.     * Email that refers to you as "Dear Customer" or "Dear User" rather than including your actual name.     * Email that warns you that an account of yours will be shut down unless you reconfirm your billing information immediately.     * An email threatening legal action.     * Email which comes from an account similar, but different from, the one the company usually uses.     * An email that claims 'Security Compromises' or 'Security Threats' and requires immediate action.   10. Never Send personal and financial information via email. Any descent financial institution or online store will never ask for your financial information (e.g credit card number) via Email. They usually have a secured web address where you submit your data. The connection is usually SSL secured (Secure Sockets Layer) and ensure the we address starts with HTTPS:// for a secure connection. Emails are more hacked than any other online form of communication   11. Do Not Unsubscribe from newsletters you never subscribed to. Yeah. Spammers like this particular technique. They send out thousands of spam  with an unsubscribe link at the bottom. And because you are bad  enough to unsubscribe, you end up supplying your mail address. You now end up signing up for more spam.   12. Don't Trust your friends email.   I know you are very careful when you get a mail from an unknown party. But when it is from your friend, you think everything in it must be true. Most a time I get email from friends that are as a result of their accounts being hacked. Screen your friend's mail first before taking any action   13. Blacklist spam after deleting it.   Deleting spam does not stop the nuisance. Black list the address   14. Enable Spam Filter Most mail services and mail client apps have spam filters built in. Make use of the spam filter.   15. Scan all email attachments.   Nine out of every ten viruses that infect a computer reach it through an email attachment. Make sure you scan email attachments before you can open them   16. Do not share your account information with others.   I know its your spouse but s/he might not apply the security policies that you apply. Once you share your password with someone else, it is never secure anymore.   17. Don't use simple and easy-to-guess passwords. How on earth would you use a guessable password e.g. 123456, abcd, mypassword etc. Hacker try out guessable passwords which are usually English names and if they cant get in to your account; as a result of a strong password, they will simply give up. Use passwords with a combination of letters, numbers, caps, and symbols.   18. Encrypt your wireless connection.   You have a wireless router but you never care or know that it is open. Encrypt your wireless connection. It is more secure encrypting it using WPA2 standard. WEP is no longer secure.

31 things you should know about the Google's +1 Button

1. The +1 button will influence search rankings. Here is the exact quote from Google's David Byttow, from when the feature was first announced: "We'll also start to look at +1's as one of the many signals we use to determine a page's relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality over time." 2. When a user searches, while signed in, their search result snippets may be annotated with the names of their connections who have "+1'd" the page. When none of the user's connections have +1'd a page, the snippet may display the aggregate number of +1's the page has received. 3. Google says publishers could see "more, and better qualified traffic coming from Google" as potential visitors see recommendations from friends and contacts beneath their search results 4. Google calls the +1 button "shorthand for 'this is pretty cool' or 'you should check this out'. 5. One a user clicks the button, a link to the content appears under the +1's tab on the user's Google Profile. 6. Google suggests clicking the button when you "like, agree with, or want to recommend" something to others. 7. The +1 Button is not the same as Google Buzz, though there are similarities. They both appear on your Google Profile under different tabs, but +1's don't allow for comments (at least yet. I would not be surprised to see Buzz's functionality get rolled into +1 eventually). 8. +1's are public by default. Google may show them to any signed-in user who has a social connection to one. Users can choose not to have them displayed publicly on their Google Profile, however. 9. There are different sizes and styles of the button that you can use on your site. 10. The button is even more customizable if you want to get more technical. The API documentation can be found here: http://code.google.com/apis/+1button/ 11. When a user clicks on the +1 button it applies to the URL of the page they're on. 12. Still, multiple buttons can be placed on a single page that all +1 different URLs (refer to the above documentation). 13. While Google suggests you use the button where you think they'll be most effective in terms of placement around your content, the company recommends above the fold, near the title of the page, and close to sharing links. Google also says it can be effective if you put it at the end of an article as well as the beginning. 14. By placing the <script> tag at the bottom of the document, just before the body close tag, Google says you may improve loading speed of the page (which is another factor Google takes into account in terms of ranking). 15. If you try to +1 a private URL, it won't work, according to Google. 16. You have to be logged into a Google account for the button to work. 17. While everyone can see aggregate annotations, signed in users can also see personalized annotations from people in their Gmail/Google Talk Chat list, My Contacts group in Google Contacts, and people they're following in Google Reader and Google Buzz. 18. Google points to these canonicalization strategies to ensure the +1s "apply as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results." http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066 19. The button is supported in 44 languages (though the annotations only appear in the English language Google.com search results for the time being). 20. The button will be seen in the Android Market, Blogger blogs, Product Search, and YouTube, in addition to any other sites that add them. 21. A lot of sites have already replaced the Google Buzz button on content pages with the +1 button 22. If you have a Blogger blog, you can add the button by going to Design > Page Elements on the dashboard, finding the "Blog posts" area, clicking edit, and selecting the "Show Share Buttons" options, where you should find the +1 button as an option. 23. The +1 Button will be available on YouTube watch pages under the "share" feature. Consider how valuable YouTube can already be to SEO, and take then take into consideration the search implications of the +1 button. 24. If you're signed into your Google account, Google will show you +1 annotations from your Google contacts on YouTube search results. 25. Google says adding +1 buttons to your pages can help your ads stand out on Google. "By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search ads and organic results might appear with +1 annotations more often. This could lead to more--and better qualified--traffic to your site," the company says. 26. The +1 button will appear next to the headline on search ads. Personalized annotations will appear beneath the Display URL. 27. Publishers can get updates about the button by joining this group. 28. Google may crawl or re-crawl pages with the button, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click. 29. Google has strict policies for publishers that it says it will use (along with the Google ToS) to govern use of the +1 button. Here are these policies in their entirety: Publishers may not sell or transmit to others any data about a user related to the user's use of the +1 Button. For the avoidance of doubt, this prohibition includes, but is not limited to, any use of pixels, cookies, or other methods to recognize users' clicks on the +1 Button, the data of which is then disclosed, sold, or otherwise shared with other parties. Publishers may not attempt to discover the identity of a +1 Button user unless the user consents to share his or her identity with the Publisher via a Google-approved authorization procedure. This prohibition includes identifying users by correlating +1 Button reporting data from Google with Publisher data. Publishers may not alter or obfuscate the +1 Button, and Publishers may not associate the +1 Button with advertising content, such as putting the +1 Button on or adjacent to an ad, unless authorized to do so by Google. Publishers may not direct users to click the +1 Button for purposes of misleading users. Publishers should not promote prizes, monies, or monetary equivalents in exchange for +1 Button clicks. For the avoidance of doubt, Publishers can direct users to the +1 Button to enable content and functionality for users and their social connections. When Publishers direct users to the +1 Button, the +1 action must be related to the Publishers' content and the content or functionality must be available for both the visitor and their social connections. Google may analyze Publishers' use of the +1 Button, including to ensure Publishers' compliance with these policies and to facilitate Google's development of the +1 Button. By using the +1 Button, Publishers give Google permission to utilize an automated software program (often called a "web crawler") to retrieve and analyze websites associated with the +1 Button.  30. The button is not available on mobile search results yet, though users may still be able to see the buttons on your pages. 31. According to Search Engine Land, while they may still be a while away, Google will launch analytics for the button, to show webmasters info on geography, demographics, content, and search impact. Apparently Google is working with launch partners to make sure reporting is accurate before they offer it on a wider scale. If you want the code for the button to add to your site, you can get it here. There are more discussions (including issues people are having with the +1 button in Google's Webmaster Central Help Forum. Source: WebProNews