Alpha Technical Solutions

Those of us who have ever traveled with laptops will be familiar with this problem: The cost of Wi-Fi or wired Internet access at hotels is typically exorbitant, and gives you only a single user login that doesn’t facilitate any sharing. This is often frustrating, should your room mate also own a laptop, or if traveling in a group.

On top of this, most smartphones these days have Wi-Fi capabilities, which can be used to either access e-mails or download files; Wi-Fi access for these devices can yield tremendous savings in long distance data rates. And we haven’t even mentioned the many gadgets with Wi-Fi only access, such as the iPod Touch, the initial models of the Apple iPad, or dedicated Internet tablets such as the JooJoo.

Carrying a small wireless router will help resolve the issue, of course. However, that is one more device to carry, and who wants to be stuck with lugging around yet another piece of hardware and its associated power adapter? In addition, this solution won’t help share (non-free) Internet connectivity at a cafe.

How does Connectify work?

Enter Connectify to help alleviate the above situations. The free software application “virtualizes” the wireless adapter so that it can be used concurrently to connect to an access point (AP), while also simultaneously serving as an AP. It depends on internal code residing within later versions of Windows however, and hence will only work on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (or later). Windows 7 Starter Edition is also not supported, as it lacks some of the features Connectify utilizes.

Being able to operate in standard AP mode will require that the wireless device is supported; otherwise, only Ad-hoc mode will be available, though its ability to connect to an AP simultaneously is not affected. Pretty much all the newer devices are supported though, so that shouldn’t be an issue. You can check out the full list ofsupported devices here.

Read the full article here at Tech Republic

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/networking/?p=2591&tag=nl.e102

This will be the last post in this blog. It will not be the end of this blog.

The Alpha Technical Solutions Blog is moving to:

http://www.alphatechsolutions.co.uk/news-blog/

This is part of series of planned updates for the Alpha Technical Solutions website, the outcome of which will be a more tightly integrated website. We hope you like the new site. Its been designed to be easier to use with everything in one

This time a few very simple tips aimed at making the life for those of you researching a topic. The concept is simple – use basic web browser functions to make handling your research easy. I’ve made these tips browser agnostic – but you may find features on your particular web browser that will enable you to really optimise your searching and ideas

1. Use one tab for search results and place the sites you want to see in other tabs. This way you can track and refer to your search results as you work your way through them.
2. Save your searches as bookmarks or favourites. This lets you come back to a search easily if you have to stop your work.
3. Use bookmark folders to save search results and interesting pages. A good idea to allocated one folder to the project and subfolders to titles such as saved searches, hot results, interesting results etc. This turns your browser into an idea organiser.
4. On your bookmarks precede the descriptive text with numbers. This lets you order the result and again order your thoughts.

Image by originalrobart via Flickr

Back in January we reported on the existence of a phony tech support scam. You can read that blog entry here.

According to Security Tips Talk on MSDN Blogs this problem is still continuing. You can read their entry on the subject here.

They have some useful tips on avoiding these scams and also a list of known scams that use Microsoft’s names – so it might be a good a idea if you take a look these to help keep yourself informed on this subject.

We also have some advice on beating scams here.

In the early days of WiFi there were a great many open (unencrypted and unprotected) WiFi points. There was some geek kudos to finding and using these. These days open WiFi spots are getting fewer and rarer as most router manufacturers implement out of the box security and more and more companies make sure that their wireless networks are protected. However it is still possible to find a open WiFi.

My suggestion to you is to be very careful when doing so. Open WiFi and free Internet access is nice and tempting but can be quite dangerous. I’ve found a short news video that briefly explains the dangers. Take two minutes to watch it and consider the dangers next time you are tempted to grab some WiFi.

Its a commonly held view that everything you need to know is somewhere on the Internet. This is a good thing. The problem is that the Internet is a very big place.  This means that to find what you want any given time may be difficult. The best way to solve this problem is develop a strategy for dealing with search engines. Search engines such as Google are more powerful than most people realise. However like all powerful tools getting the most from them may not be obvious. The best way to maximise your chance of finding what you want is to create a strategy – a set of things that you do when approaching the problem of searching for something that tends to work for you. I say tends to work for you as we all types of web searches that reflect our personal and professional lives. That means that some techniques will be more useful to you than others.

To develop your personal strategy you need to try different ways of running a search, and remember the techniques that work. Over a not very long time at all you will have build a repertoire of useful methods that will cut down the time you spend looking for things.

At this point you may well be saying “what techniques!”

Fair point so in order to get you started here are my 7 favourite tips for searching the web.

1) It does not matter if you use capital letters or not. London is the same as london.

2) Keep searches simple. Use as few words as possible this usually yields the most results.

3) Try to use the most obvious words first then add additional words to the search in order to home in on your search. For example if you are looking for a holiday in Cornwall you might try the following

1. a. Search using ‘Cornwall’
2. b. Then try ‘Cornwall Holiday’
3. c. Then try the type of holiday ‘Cornwall Holiday Hotels’

4) If you know the name of what you are looking for then use the name. Names help search Engines home in what you are looking for. In the Cornwall Holiday example try ‘Cornwall Holiday Newquay’ to find holidays in Newquay.

5) If you looking for something to do with a technical item. For example – parts for a Washing Machine. Mobile Phone, Computer etc then use the model name, model number or part number if you can find it.

6) DO NOT common words such as ‘and’, ‘it’ ‘where’ ‘how’ etc. These will slow down the search and are unlikely to improve the result.

7) Numbers generally do not work well in a Search. There are two exceptions to this rule

1. a. If the number is part of a name then the number will help
2. b. Adding a ‘+’ sign in front of the number will generally help improve the search.

Within Microsoft Word it is possible to set a series descriptive properties. Using Word 2007 these can be access from the prepare option of the Office button on the top left of a Word Window.

The standard document properties are:

Author, Title, Subject, Keywords, Category, Status, and Comments

However if you take a look at the advanced properties then you will find a large number of additional options are available for you.

So what can you use document properties for?

The properties are information about the document. For example the comments field can be used in a review process to make notes about possible changes. Fields like keywords, subject and category can be used for making search and indexing more effective. You might wonder how this is going to help you. Well Windows Explorer can display document properties for you. In Windows Explorer select the details view  and right click on the column headings. You will see a short list of common properties and there is a ‘more option ‘ from which any property can be selected. You can now customise your view of the documents to contain properties like status, subject, and category. These can all be put into order. Suddenly your documents can be cross-referenced in a manner that means something to you.

Document properties lets you improve your knowledge of a document inside and outside of Word and this can make your life much easier.

It also works for any MS Office application, and most other files too.

Image by Allen Garvin via Flickr

From time to time everyone needs a bit of fun so lets take a look at a game that has been a hit on the Internet. It is Plants Vs Zombies. A simple puzzle game that is dangerously addictive and extremely playable. It is currently available for Windows, Mac, iPhone or can be directly played off the Internet. The full game is only available on a computer or iphone but the Internet version really lets you know what the game is all about (we like try before you buy).

If you’d like defend yourself from zombies with plants take a look at Plants Vs Zombies

Just so that you are aware – the Internet version is free but limited, and there is a fee to download the full game.

We’re currently in the middle of a redesign of the Alpha Technical Solutions website, the purpose of which is to improve our web sites ability to work for you. The redesign when finished will make the information you need easier to read and easier to find. We’re also adding new services as well.

We apologise for any inconvenience you may suffer during this period.

You may well ask why we did not just roll out a brand new web site? That is our normal practice and also what we advise our clients. Normally when we work on a new site or an update we roll the site out complete. This is conventional wisdom. It is safe, secure and reliable. However when you take your eyes off the Internet and look at what happens when a business refurbishes its premises you so often see that improvement being performed in public view. So I got to thinking what happens when you apply that to the Internet and defy its conventional wisdom. What happens when you allow people to see change in operation?

You see Alpha Technical Solutions is a business based very much on openness and clarity, so thinking in this way comes very naturally to us.

So the idea came to run the update in the open. Its an experiment. To find out what happens. Its our job to do this s. To ensure that the advice we give is of the highest quality possible and based on learning, experience, and wisdom. We don’t like to just copy the thoughts of others, we try and find things out for ourselves.

So far the redesign is going well and we hope you like it.

People new to Windows and other Microsoft products very often don’t realise just how customisable they are. We’d like to address that by introducing to our top tips not just good IT procedures and scam news but actual useful customisations that you can perform on Windows, Office or any other product we think you might be interested in.

To start with we’ve got a great tip on the creation of shutdown shortcuts in Windows 7. Although Windows 7 has a brief shutdown procedure, accessing features like restart, lock workstation, hibernate and sleep can be difficult for some people. This is particularly true for the elderly or disabled. Making shortcut to do this in a place that is most convenient for the person in question can really help with this most basic of tasks.

If you are interested in learning how to do this click here and you will be taken to an excellent article in TechRepublic that goes through the procedure step by step with some very clear illustrations.