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The Computer Tutor — Software How-To
The Computer Tutor

Computer repair, personal computer instruction in Safety Harbor, Clearwater, Tampa, St Pete

Latest Episodes:

malicious website — Quick way to see if a website is malicious Nov 09, 2015
Show notes

Every day, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of new malicious websites coming into existence on the internet. It’s very common now, when you do a Google search, for many of the search results to be websites that you should definitely not click on. You’d think Google would have that figured out by now, so that those sites don’t show up so well in the rankings. But they are still there, so you have to be very careful.

The question is: How can you know if a site is safe or not, unless you click on it?

The answer is: Let Google check it for you

Not many people know about it, but Google offers a “safe browsing” check so that you can get their evaluation of whether or not a site is malicious – and you never have to visit the website itself to do that.

Here’s an example of how you would check on the safety of visiting a particular website:

Let’s say your computer starts crashing sometimes, and it’s starting to happen often enough to become annoying. And, you don’t really know what is causing it to crash. But every time it freezes up, it comes up with this error message that seems to be giving you some kind of report of what happened, but it looks like a bunch of computer code that doesn’t mean anything unless you’re a computer geek that knows that language.

So you do a Google search for “Windows crash report” to see if you can find any helpful information. And what do you know – there’s a website that comes up in that Google search that seems to be just what you’re looking for. The website is Windows-Crash-Report.info. Wow, it sounds like exactly what you need, right? It must have all the answers! WRONG.

When a scammer is creating a website, he wants you to think it’s a legitimate website. He wants you to think this site has the answers you are searching for. He wants you to think it’s safe to click and view the website. Don’t fall into that trap – because in some cases, as soon as you click, you’re in trouble.

Instead, check the site using this website address format:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=SuspiciousWebsite.com

But instead of “suspiciouswebsite.com” at the end, you would just put in the website you want to check on. Note that you don’t include “http” or “www” or anything like that, and nothing after the “.com”. Just the domain name by itself.

So if we wanted to check on the site I mentioned above, we would type this address into the address bar:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=windows-crash-report.info

When you hit enter, Google comes up immediately with a brief report that tells you what their evaluation is for that site and whether it’s probably safe to go there.

In this case, Google has this to say about that website:

As you can see, Google is not coming out and clearly stating “this site is dangerous”, but they do state that the site had some suspicious activity detected over 90 days ago, and for me that’s enough to keep me from clicking through to it.

Does this seem like a lot of hassle to go through, just to see if a website is malicious before you visit it? Yeah, maybe. But from my standpoint, I can tell you that I have people bring me computers all the time that have gotten infected just because someone decided to click an unknown link “just this once” out of curiosity, and almost immediately they regretted it. You can avoid that. Be safe!

The post Quick way to see if a website is malicious first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

malicious website report — Quick way to see if a website is malicious Nov 09, 2015
Show notes

Every day, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of new malicious websites coming into existence on the internet. It’s very common now, when you do a Google search, for many of the search results to be websites that you should definitely not click on. You’d think Google would have that figured out by now, so that those sites don’t show up so well in the rankings. But they are still there, so you have to be very careful.

The question is: How can you know if a site is safe or not, unless you click on it?

The answer is: Let Google check it for you

Not many people know about it, but Google offers a “safe browsing” check so that you can get their evaluation of whether or not a site is malicious – and you never have to visit the website itself to do that.

Here’s an example of how you would check on the safety of visiting a particular website:

Let’s say your computer starts crashing sometimes, and it’s starting to happen often enough to become annoying. And, you don’t really know what is causing it to crash. But every time it freezes up, it comes up with this error message that seems to be giving you some kind of report of what happened, but it looks like a bunch of computer code that doesn’t mean anything unless you’re a computer geek that knows that language.

So you do a Google search for “Windows crash report” to see if you can find any helpful information. And what do you know – there’s a website that comes up in that Google search that seems to be just what you’re looking for. The website is Windows-Crash-Report.info. Wow, it sounds like exactly what you need, right? It must have all the answers! WRONG.

When a scammer is creating a website, he wants you to think it’s a legitimate website. He wants you to think this site has the answers you are searching for. He wants you to think it’s safe to click and view the website. Don’t fall into that trap – because in some cases, as soon as you click, you’re in trouble.

Instead, check the site using this website address format:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=SuspiciousWebsite.com

But instead of “suspiciouswebsite.com” at the end, you would just put in the website you want to check on. Note that you don’t include “http” or “www” or anything like that, and nothing after the “.com”. Just the domain name by itself.

So if we wanted to check on the site I mentioned above, we would type this address into the address bar:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=windows-crash-report.info

When you hit enter, Google comes up immediately with a brief report that tells you what their evaluation is for that site and whether it’s probably safe to go there.

In this case, Google has this to say about that website:

As you can see, Google is not coming out and clearly stating “this site is dangerous”, but they do state that the site had some suspicious activity detected over 90 days ago, and for me that’s enough to keep me from clicking through to it.

Does this seem like a lot of hassle to go through, just to see if a website is malicious before you visit it? Yeah, maybe. But from my standpoint, I can tell you that I have people bring me computers all the time that have gotten infected just because someone decided to click an unknown link “just this once” out of curiosity, and almost immediately they regretted it. You can avoid that. Be safe!

The post Quick way to see if a website is malicious first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

GIF video — Transform a YouTube video into a GIF Nov 02, 2015
Show notes

Everyone knows what a YouTube video is. But not everyone knows what a GIF video is (even though just about everyone has seen one on Facebook or somewhere on the internet). Did you know that you can easily take a YouTube video, and create a GIF video out of that? Today I’ll show you how.

A GIF video is pretty much just a short video that usually plays on an endless loop. Here’s an example of one. In this, you first see the dog get up and run out of the camera range, for no apparent reason. Then you see what he sensed before any of the humans did (an earthquake):

Sometimes short little videos like this can be pretty handy. Since this one appears to be a video that was taken by an office security camera system, the original video was probably hours long and full of just boring footage that showed nothing of any interest to anyone. But that little animated section of it is interesting. It’s true that animals sense something like this before a human ever would, and that dog clearly jumps up and runs before anything starts happening visually.

The good news is – you can make your own GIF videos, and it’s really easy! Here’s how.

Let’s say you find this great video on YouTube. For our example, we’ll use this “military homecoming surprise” video. This father was deployed for 9 months and his young daughter was not expecting him to come home already, and he surprised her by showing up at her baseball game. Here’s the full video:

That video is almost 2 minutes long. A lot of that is the silent intro, then the narrator sets up the story, then the actual reunion of father and daughter, and then the long wrap-up. But you might only want to make a quick GIF video of just the actual reunion.

First, while you’re at YouTube on this video, look up at the address bar at the top of your web browser. It should show a website address that looks like this:

Now, click your mouse so that the cursor is flashing just in front of the “y” in “youtube”. Then, type the 3 letters “gif” (without the quotes). So now the website address looks like this:

Now hit the Enter key on the keyboard, and you’ll be taken to a video editing page and you can decide how long the GIF video will be, and exactly where it will start and end. You can also put a title at the top of the video, and you can even create a caption to last for a certain period of time (I just put the caption “Wow” for a short time in the middle of the GIF). Then you click the big button at the bottom that says “Create GIF”.

Shouldn’t take long for the GIF video to be created. Then you are presented with a menu that gives you the link to the actual GIF file, and a website link where you can send people to view it, and a few other things. The first time you play it, it might play in sort of slow motion, because it is also loading at the same time. After the first play, it should be at normal speed.

You can see what my final creation looked like here: https://gifs.com/gif/mLrV27

They also give you the option to share your new video on all the social media sites. The nice thing about this whole process is that there is no software to download or install on your computer, so you probably don’t have to worry about malware or viruses sneaking in. I would guess they are making some money from ads, but I didn’t see any because they were blocked by my ad-blocker software.

The post Transform a YouTube video into a GIF first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

GIF video example — Transform a YouTube video into a GIF Nov 02, 2015
Show notes

Everyone knows what a YouTube video is. But not everyone knows what a GIF video is (even though just about everyone has seen one on Facebook or somewhere on the internet). Did you know that you can easily take a YouTube video, and create a GIF video out of that? Today I’ll show you how.

A GIF video is pretty much just a short video that usually plays on an endless loop. Here’s an example of one. In this, you first see the dog get up and run out of the camera range, for no apparent reason. Then you see what he sensed before any of the humans did (an earthquake):

Sometimes short little videos like this can be pretty handy. Since this one appears to be a video that was taken by an office security camera system, the original video was probably hours long and full of just boring footage that showed nothing of any interest to anyone. But that little animated section of it is interesting. It’s true that animals sense something like this before a human ever would, and that dog clearly jumps up and runs before anything starts happening visually.

The good news is – you can make your own GIF videos, and it’s really easy! Here’s how.

Let’s say you find this great video on YouTube. For our example, we’ll use this “military homecoming surprise” video. This father was deployed for 9 months and his young daughter was not expecting him to come home already, and he surprised her by showing up at her baseball game. Here’s the full video:

That video is almost 2 minutes long. A lot of that is the silent intro, then the narrator sets up the story, then the actual reunion of father and daughter, and then the long wrap-up. But you might only want to make a quick GIF video of just the actual reunion.

First, while you’re at YouTube on this video, look up at the address bar at the top of your web browser. It should show a website address that looks like this:

Now, click your mouse so that the cursor is flashing just in front of the “y” in “youtube”. Then, type the 3 letters “gif” (without the quotes). So now the website address looks like this:

Now hit the Enter key on the keyboard, and you’ll be taken to a video editing page and you can decide how long the GIF video will be, and exactly where it will start and end. You can also put a title at the top of the video, and you can even create a caption to last for a certain period of time (I just put the caption “Wow” for a short time in the middle of the GIF). Then you click the big button at the bottom that says “Create GIF”.

Shouldn’t take long for the GIF video to be created. Then you are presented with a menu that gives you the link to the actual GIF file, and a website link where you can send people to view it, and a few other things. The first time you play it, it might play in sort of slow motion, because it is also loading at the same time. After the first play, it should be at normal speed.

You can see what my final creation looked like here: https://gifs.com/gif/mLrV27

They also give you the option to share your new video on all the social media sites. The nice thing about this whole process is that there is no software to download or install on your computer, so you probably don’t have to worry about malware or viruses sneaking in. I would guess they are making some money from ads, but I didn’t see any because they were blocked by my ad-blocker software.

The post Transform a YouTube video into a GIF first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

cool websites — More cool websites you might like Oct 26, 2015
Show notes

Every so often I do a post where I feature several websites that are interesting, informative, funny or just somehow intriguing in some way.

Documentary Addict
http://documentaryaddict.com/
Whenever I go on Netflix, and I don’t have anything specific in mind to watch, I tend to browse through the documentaries. And Netflix does have a lot of documentaries in their library of things to view. I don’t know the exact number they have, but I would bet that Documentary Addict has a lot more. The current total they show is 5,257 but that is changing pretty regularly as they add new ones. There are documentary films here on just about any subject you can imagine.

If you’re not looking for anything in particular, it can be a little overwhelming. But if that’s the case, you can also check out their subsections such as “Just Added”, or “The Week’s MOST RIVETING” or the “Top 100” and you’re sure to find some really good content. Or, you can just pick one of 26 categories to narrow it down to a particular field of interest.

And one other advantage of Documentary Addict – it’s completely free.

FaxZero
http://faxzero.com/
The technology of faxing was pretty amazing when the first standard office fax machines were introduced back in the late 1980s. But let’s face it – faxing is now an outdated form of transmitting/receiving documents. Fax machines that originally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars can hardly be given away now, because there are just other ways to accomplish this more efficiently and with higher resolution.

BUT – there are still some businesses and some individuals that use faxes. If you are dealing with one of them, it’s rather unhandy if you don’t have a way to send a fax from your location.

FaxZero allows you to have this ability, and it’s free for most situations. You can create a document in Word, then go to the FaxZero website and upload that document with the fax number you want to send it to. It’s free to send up to 3 pages + the cover page, and you are allowed to send up to 5 free faxes per DAY. This is probably perfect for that one time in 5 years that you need to do this (it certainly wouldn’t make sense to own a fax machine for those rare occasions, not to mention you would need a regular telephone line and many people don’t even have those at home anymore).

If you need to send a longer fax, it’s just $1.99 per fax for up to 25 pages – still a bargain.

SuperCook Recipes
http://www.supercook.com/#/recipes
If you like to cook and you like trying new things, and you don’t always feel very creative, this website could be a great tool for you. All you have to do is tell the website what ingredients you have on hand, and it will come up with a bunch of recipes for dishes that only use those ingredients.

For example, I went on the site and told it that I only have American cheese, eggs, a potato, and some sausage – and it came up with 70 different ideas for a meal. These included:

Swedish sausage potato cakes

Sausage and potato frittata

Salt-baked potatoes

And a bunch more. Of course, the more ingredients you have, the more options it will come back with. But for nights when it’s suppertime and your brain is too tired to come up with something on its own, this website could help.

Amazon Filler Items
http://www.filleritem.com/
If you shop at Amazon, and of course you do because everyone does, you know that if your purchase is over $35 you probably qualify for free shipping (Amazon Prime members ignore this because you usually get free shipping anyway). So what if you want to buy something that’s $33.99? Just a little bit more in your shopping cart and you’d get free shipping, but how do you find an item that costs just $1.01?

That’s where the Amazon Filler Items website comes in. You go to the site, and enter the dollar amount that you need in order to get your total purchase up to $35. The site comes back with a list of dozens or even hundreds of “filler” items that fit the bill. It’s almost a certainty that one of them will be one that you would have to buy at some point in the future, so you’re not really just wasting money.

Flight Radar
http://www.flightradar24.com
This website can be handy if you want to track a particular flight to know where it is or when it’s taking off or landing. What you’re looking at on the screen is a basic map of your location. Flying all over that screen are little images of airplanes. But these aren’t just random plane icons – each one represents an actual flight that is happening right now. When you see one near your location, click on it and it will tell you what flight it is and where it’s headed, along with some other details. Pretty handy.

Stuff in Space
http://stuffin.space/
I’m pretty sure you have no idea how much junk is floating around in space around Planet Earth. I certainly didn’t. This website tracks that space junk in real time.

When you go to the site, you’ll see a black screen with Earth in the middle. You can click and drag to rotate the earth left and right, or up and down. What you’ll also see are little dots – many thousands of them. Each one of those dots is a piece of junk floating around. You can click on it and get the details. There are leftover rocket bodies, payloads, or some things just labeled “debris”. Space exploration sure leaves a trail of garbage behind.

Khan Academy
https://www.khanacademy.org/
Taking classes can help you learn a lot of things. But it can be expensive. If you want to learn about all the various subjects you would take in high school or college, you can do it for free – online – at Khan Academy.

The site offers multiple classes in categories such as Math, Science, Economics and Finance, Arts and Humanities, Computing and more.

Then if you just take one category, such as Math, you can zero in on specifics such as what grade level or what areas of math you want to learn, or just take the fundamentals:

And that’s just the one category of Math. Each category has multiple sub-areas like that. And it’s all free.

Don’t throw my package
http://dontthrowmypackage.com/
We are about to roll into the holiday season, which means many people will be ordering packages and having them delivered via Fedex, UPS, the US Mail, and other couriers. Nothing is more frustrating than having a valuable item show up and then find that it’s been damaged in the delivery process. How does this happen? Well, one way is through the carelessness of the delivery drivers.

The “Don’t Throw My Package” website is a collection of videos in which delivery people have been caught mishandling the packages they’re supposed to be taking care of. With home security cameras becoming more common, you’d think they would be aware that they could be “on stage” at any time during their daily deliveries.

This is what I think of whenever I’m shipping a laptop to a client. Fortunately, in the hundreds of laptops I’ve shipped over the years, I’ve only had two instances where packages were damaged in delivery. I always send them insured, and in both cases UPS paid the full claim amount.

For an example of the videos you’ll see on this website, check this one out.

For the websites featured here on my blog today, some of them are ones that I found and some were suggested to me by readers and listeners to my podcast. If you know of a website that is interesting, funny, educational or unusual in some way, let me know about it so I can tell everyone else!

The post More cool websites you might like first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

cool websites — More cool websites you might like Oct 26, 2015
Show notes

Every so often I do a post where I feature several websites that are interesting, informative, funny or just somehow intriguing in some way.

Documentary Addict
http://documentaryaddict.com/
Whenever I go on Netflix, and I don’t have anything specific in mind to watch, I tend to browse through the documentaries. And Netflix does have a lot of documentaries in their library of things to view. I don’t know the exact number they have, but I would bet that Documentary Addict has a lot more. The current total they show is 5,257 but that is changing pretty regularly as they add new ones. There are documentary films here on just about any subject you can imagine.

If you’re not looking for anything in particular, it can be a little overwhelming. But if that’s the case, you can also check out their subsections such as “Just Added”, or “The Week’s MOST RIVETING” or the “Top 100” and you’re sure to find some really good content. Or, you can just pick one of 26 categories to narrow it down to a particular field of interest.

And one other advantage of Documentary Addict – it’s completely free.

FaxZero
http://faxzero.com/
The technology of faxing was pretty amazing when the first standard office fax machines were introduced back in the late 1980s. But let’s face it – faxing is now an outdated form of transmitting/receiving documents. Fax machines that originally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars can hardly be given away now, because there are just other ways to accomplish this more efficiently and with higher resolution.

BUT – there are still some businesses and some individuals that use faxes. If you are dealing with one of them, it’s rather unhandy if you don’t have a way to send a fax from your location.

FaxZero allows you to have this ability, and it’s free for most situations. You can create a document in Word, then go to the FaxZero website and upload that document with the fax number you want to send it to. It’s free to send up to 3 pages + the cover page, and you are allowed to send up to 5 free faxes per DAY. This is probably perfect for that one time in 5 years that you need to do this (it certainly wouldn’t make sense to own a fax machine for those rare occasions, not to mention you would need a regular telephone line and many people don’t even have those at home anymore).

If you need to send a longer fax, it’s just $1.99 per fax for up to 25 pages – still a bargain.

SuperCook Recipes
http://www.supercook.com/#/recipes
If you like to cook and you like trying new things, and you don’t always feel very creative, this website could be a great tool for you. All you have to do is tell the website what ingredients you have on hand, and it will come up with a bunch of recipes for dishes that only use those ingredients.

For example, I went on the site and told it that I only have American cheese, eggs, a potato, and some sausage – and it came up with 70 different ideas for a meal. These included:

Swedish sausage potato cakes

Sausage and potato frittata

Salt-baked potatoes

And a bunch more. Of course, the more ingredients you have, the more options it will come back with. But for nights when it’s suppertime and your brain is too tired to come up with something on its own, this website could help.

Amazon Filler Items
http://www.filleritem.com/
If you shop at Amazon, and of course you do because everyone does, you know that if your purchase is over $35 you probably qualify for free shipping (Amazon Prime members ignore this because you usually get free shipping anyway). So what if you want to buy something that’s $33.99? Just a little bit more in your shopping cart and you’d get free shipping, but how do you find an item that costs just $1.01?

That’s where the Amazon Filler Items website comes in. You go to the site, and enter the dollar amount that you need in order to get your total purchase up to $35. The site comes back with a list of dozens or even hundreds of “filler” items that fit the bill. It’s almost a certainty that one of them will be one that you would have to buy at some point in the future, so you’re not really just wasting money.

Flight Radar
http://www.flightradar24.com
This website can be handy if you want to track a particular flight to know where it is or when it’s taking off or landing. What you’re looking at on the screen is a basic map of your location. Flying all over that screen are little images of airplanes. But these aren’t just random plane icons – each one represents an actual flight that is happening right now. When you see one near your location, click on it and it will tell you what flight it is and where it’s headed, along with some other details. Pretty handy.

Stuff in Space
http://stuffin.space/
I’m pretty sure you have no idea how much junk is floating around in space around Planet Earth. I certainly didn’t. This website tracks that space junk in real time.

When you go to the site, you’ll see a black screen with Earth in the middle. You can click and drag to rotate the earth left and right, or up and down. What you’ll also see are little dots – many thousands of them. Each one of those dots is a piece of junk floating around. You can click on it and get the details. There are leftover rocket bodies, payloads, or some things just labeled “debris”. Space exploration sure leaves a trail of garbage behind.

Khan Academy
https://www.khanacademy.org/
Taking classes can help you learn a lot of things. But it can be expensive. If you want to learn about all the various subjects you would take in high school or college, you can do it for free – online – at Khan Academy.

The site offers multiple classes in categories such as Math, Science, Economics and Finance, Arts and Humanities, Computing and more.

Then if you just take one category, such as Math, you can zero in on specifics such as what grade level or what areas of math you want to learn, or just take the fundamentals:

And that’s just the one category of Math. Each category has multiple sub-areas like that. And it’s all free.

Don’t throw my package
http://dontthrowmypackage.com/
We are about to roll into the holiday season, which means many people will be ordering packages and having them delivered via Fedex, UPS, the US Mail, and other couriers. Nothing is more frustrating than having a valuable item show up and then find that it’s been damaged in the delivery process. How does this happen? Well, one way is through the carelessness of the delivery drivers.

The “Don’t Throw My Package” website is a collection of videos in which delivery people have been caught mishandling the packages they’re supposed to be taking care of. With home security cameras becoming more common, you’d think they would be aware that they could be “on stage” at any time during their daily deliveries.

This is what I think of whenever I’m shipping a laptop to a client. Fortunately, in the hundreds of laptops I’ve shipped over the years, I’ve only had two instances where packages were damaged in delivery. I always send them insured, and in both cases UPS paid the full claim amount.

For an example of the videos you’ll see on this website, check this one out.

For the websites featured here on my blog today, some of them are ones that I found and some were suggested to me by readers and listeners to my podcast. If you know of a website that is interesting, funny, educational or unusual in some way, let me know about it so I can tell everyone else!

The post More cool websites you might like first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

YouTube secrets — Hidden features of YouTube Oct 19, 2015
Show notes

Everyone visits YouTube at one time or another. Some people visit it and watch videos every day. There are even people that spend HOURS each day watching those videos. But I’ll bet there are a lot of people, even those that use YouTube every day, that don’t know some of these shortcuts that work in YouTube.

For most media players, such as Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player, the standard keyboard key for pausing the video and starting it again is the space bar. That doesn’t work with YouTube. YouTube is a website. When you’re viewing a website, and you hit the space bar on your keyboard, it just makes the website you’re looking at scroll down by one page length.

For YouTube, the key to Pause/Play a video is:

I don’t know about you, but when I first discovered this, my reaction was, “Why K?” It seems like “P” might make more sense since it could stand for “play” or “pause”. Maybe because K is right there in the center of the keyboard. I mean, if you look at your overall keyboard from left to right, K is just about right in the middle. But whatever the reason is, K is what you tap if you want to pause a YouTube video or start it up playing again. Go watch a YouTube video now and try it out.

And that’s not all. If you’re watching a video and you want to go back 10 seconds and replay, hit the letter J (that one does make sense, since it is immediately to the left of K). And if the video has a boring part you want to skip over, tap L to fast forward 10 seconds (again, just to the right of K so it’s the obvious choice).

Want to rewind just 5 seconds back? Hit the left arrow key. And as you might guess, the right arrow key fast forwards 5 seconds.

And the up and down arrows are useful too – they increase or decrease the audio volume.

Most YouTube videos are much easier to watch, and more entertaining, when they take up the full screen. If you’re watching a video and it’s just the regular YouTube window, you can tap the letter F (for Full screen) and have the video fill up your screen. Tap it again to go back to the original view.

This:

is not nearly as impressive or as fun to watch as this:

Want to quickly shut off just the audio portion of a YouTube video? Hit M for Mute.

You can also turn on Closed Captions for almost any YouTube video just by hitting the letter C. Tapping it again turns captioning off.

Here’s a fun one – you can speed up or slow down a video by using the “less than” or “greater than” keys:

Of course, with those keys, you need to hold down the Shift key at the same time since the symbols are at the top of the key. Otherwise you would just be hitting the comma or the period.

And finally – quickly navigating through a video. You can do this with the number keys 1 through 9. YouTube divides every video into 10 equal parts, no matter how long the video is overall. So if you want to go immediately to the halfway point on a video, you just hit the number 5. If you want to be at the point where the video is 80% done, you hit 8. This can be really handy if you have a long video and you want to just sort of skim it for certain content but you’re not sure exactly where it is.

So here’s a summary of these shortcuts, in case you want to print it:

K = Play/Pause
J = Back 10 seconds
L = Forward 10 seconds
Left arrow = back 5 seconds
Right arrow = forward 5 seconds
Up arrow = increase volume
Down arrow = decrease volume
F = full screen
M = Mute
C = toggle Closed Captions on and off
< = slow down a video
> = speed up a video
1-9 = navigate through the video

Once you practice these shortcuts for a little while, you’ll probably end up using some of them all the time since it’s a lot easier and quicker than using a mouse. And now you know some cool things that your friends don’t know!

The post Hidden features of YouTube first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

YouTube secrets — Hidden features of YouTube Oct 19, 2015
Show notes

Everyone visits YouTube at one time or another. Some people visit it and watch videos every day. There are even people that spend HOURS each day watching those videos. But I’ll bet there are a lot of people, even those that use YouTube every day, that don’t know some of these shortcuts that work in YouTube.

For most media players, such as Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player, the standard keyboard key for pausing the video and starting it again is the space bar. That doesn’t work with YouTube. YouTube is a website. When you’re viewing a website, and you hit the space bar on your keyboard, it just makes the website you’re looking at scroll down by one page length.

For YouTube, the key to Pause/Play a video is:

I don’t know about you, but when I first discovered this, my reaction was, “Why K?” It seems like “P” might make more sense since it could stand for “play” or “pause”. Maybe because K is right there in the center of the keyboard. I mean, if you look at your overall keyboard from left to right, K is just about right in the middle. But whatever the reason is, K is what you tap if you want to pause a YouTube video or start it up playing again. Go watch a YouTube video now and try it out.

And that’s not all. If you’re watching a video and you want to go back 10 seconds and replay, hit the letter J (that one does make sense, since it is immediately to the left of K). And if the video has a boring part you want to skip over, tap L to fast forward 10 seconds (again, just to the right of K so it’s the obvious choice).

Want to rewind just 5 seconds back? Hit the left arrow key. And as you might guess, the right arrow key fast forwards 5 seconds.

And the up and down arrows are useful too – they increase or decrease the audio volume.

Most YouTube videos are much easier to watch, and more entertaining, when they take up the full screen. If you’re watching a video and it’s just the regular YouTube window, you can tap the letter F (for Full screen) and have the video fill up your screen. Tap it again to go back to the original view.

This:

is not nearly as impressive or as fun to watch as this:

Want to quickly shut off just the audio portion of a YouTube video? Hit M for Mute.

You can also turn on Closed Captions for almost any YouTube video just by hitting the letter C. Tapping it again turns captioning off.

Here’s a fun one – you can speed up or slow down a video by using the “less than” or “greater than” keys:

Of course, with those keys, you need to hold down the Shift key at the same time since the symbols are at the top of the key. Otherwise you would just be hitting the comma or the period.

And finally – quickly navigating through a video. You can do this with the number keys 1 through 9. YouTube divides every video into 10 equal parts, no matter how long the video is overall. So if you want to go immediately to the halfway point on a video, you just hit the number 5. If you want to be at the point where the video is 80% done, you hit 8. This can be really handy if you have a long video and you want to just sort of skim it for certain content but you’re not sure exactly where it is.

So here’s a summary of these shortcuts, in case you want to print it:

K = Play/Pause
J = Back 10 seconds
L = Forward 10 seconds
Left arrow = back 5 seconds
Right arrow = forward 5 seconds
Up arrow = increase volume
Down arrow = decrease volume
F = full screen
M = Mute
C = toggle Closed Captions on and off
< = slow down a video
> = speed up a video
1-9 = navigate through the video

Once you practice these shortcuts for a little while, you’ll probably end up using some of them all the time since it’s a lot easier and quicker than using a mouse. And now you know some cool things that your friends don’t know!

The post Hidden features of YouTube first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

function keys — What do the Function keys do? Oct 12, 2015
Show notes

Every Windows keyboard has the same row of keys across the top – the Function keys. Those are the keys at the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3 and so on up to F12. One of the questions I get asked sometimes is, “What do the function keys actually do?” As with a lot of questions about computers, the answer is: it depends.

What it depends on primarily is what you’re doing on the computer at the time. Each one of them could have a specific task in one program, but a completely different task in a different program.

For example, if you’re using Microsoft Word, here’s what the F1 key can do:

If you just hit F1 by itself, it opens the Help window so you can search for help on a particular aspect of Word:

But – if you hold down Shift, then tap F1, Word will open the “Reveal Formatting” window off to the right side, so you can see all of the formatting information for the document that’s open:

And – if you hold down CTRL and tap F1, it will alternatively close and re-open the ribbon at the top of the window. Makes it easy to toggle that on and off if you want to do that.

There are other things you can do with F1, but you get the idea. And that’s just ONE of the function keys, and that’s JUST for Microsoft Word. All of the other Function keys do different things in Word, and ALL of the Function keys do completely different things in other programs. It would be impossible to literally list all of the things that you can do with the Function keys on all the different software.

However, several of the Function keys are kind of “known for” certain types of functions. Here are some of the more common tasks that are assigned to some of the Function keys:

F1 – in most programs (and in any version of Windows) the F1 key will usually open a “Help” window. So if you’re stuck and not sure what to do, try F1.

F2 – used to rename a file or folder – if you’re in your Documents folder or Pictures folder, highlight a folder or an individual file, and just type the name you want to use.

F3 – opens a search field in many programs. If you’re looking at a website page with lots of text and you need to find a particular word, hit F3 and type the word so search for it on that web page.

F4 – not so much this key by itself, but if you hold down ALT and tap F4, it will close the window that is “in focus” – the one that is in front of any other open windows.

F5 – this key refreshes your web browser window – like if you’re watching an eBay item that’s about to close and you want to see if the high bid amount changes, you can just keep tapping F5 to update the screen.

F6 – highlights the address bar in your web browser – so if you need to type in a new web address, you don’t need to move your cursor up to the address bar and click on it – just tap F6.

F7 – the spellchecker – F7 activates spellchecker function in most Office and email programs.

F8 – in Windows 7 and earlier, this is the key you tap when you want to boot up the computer in Safe Mode. Windows 8 and later made it a little more complicated (one more reason to stick with Windows 7).

F9 – if you use Outlook, you can use F9 to tell it to Send/Receive email, instead of using the cursor on the Send/Receive icon in the toolbar.

F10 – F10 does a few things, but not really too much that the average person would use.

F11 – one of my favorites – it puts your web browser in full screen mode. Go visit a website, and tap F11 to see what happens. You can tap it again to bring it back to normal.

F12 – this one has some functions in MS Word for opening and saving documents, but not much else that you would probably use. Don’t tap it while you’re using a web browser – unless you’re a web developer and you really want to work with computer code. Yeah, me neither.

The post What do the Function keys do? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

function keys — What do the Function keys do? Oct 12, 2015
Show notes

Every Windows keyboard has the same row of keys across the top – the Function keys. Those are the keys at the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3 and so on up to F12. One of the questions I get asked sometimes is, “What do the function keys actually do?” As with a lot of questions about computers, the answer is: it depends.

What it depends on primarily is what you’re doing on the computer at the time. Each one of them could have a specific task in one program, but a completely different task in a different program.

For example, if you’re using Microsoft Word, here’s what the F1 key can do:

If you just hit F1 by itself, it opens the Help window so you can search for help on a particular aspect of Word:

But – if you hold down Shift, then tap F1, Word will open the “Reveal Formatting” window off to the right side, so you can see all of the formatting information for the document that’s open:

And – if you hold down CTRL and tap F1, it will alternatively close and re-open the ribbon at the top of the window. Makes it easy to toggle that on and off if you want to do that.

There are other things you can do with F1, but you get the idea. And that’s just ONE of the function keys, and that’s JUST for Microsoft Word. All of the other Function keys do different things in Word, and ALL of the Function keys do completely different things in other programs. It would be impossible to literally list all of the things that you can do with the Function keys on all the different software.

However, several of the Function keys are kind of “known for” certain types of functions. Here are some of the more common tasks that are assigned to some of the Function keys:

F1 – in most programs (and in any version of Windows) the F1 key will usually open a “Help” window. So if you’re stuck and not sure what to do, try F1.

F2 – used to rename a file or folder – if you’re in your Documents folder or Pictures folder, highlight a folder or an individual file, and just type the name you want to use.

F3 – opens a search field in many programs. If you’re looking at a website page with lots of text and you need to find a particular word, hit F3 and type the word so search for it on that web page.

F4 – not so much this key by itself, but if you hold down ALT and tap F4, it will close the window that is “in focus” – the one that is in front of any other open windows.

F5 – this key refreshes your web browser window – like if you’re watching an eBay item that’s about to close and you want to see if the high bid amount changes, you can just keep tapping F5 to update the screen.

F6 – highlights the address bar in your web browser – so if you need to type in a new web address, you don’t need to move your cursor up to the address bar and click on it – just tap F6.

F7 – the spellchecker – F7 activates spellchecker function in most Office and email programs.

F8 – in Windows 7 and earlier, this is the key you tap when you want to boot up the computer in Safe Mode. Windows 8 and later made it a little more complicated (one more reason to stick with Windows 7).

F9 – if you use Outlook, you can use F9 to tell it to Send/Receive email, instead of using the cursor on the Send/Receive icon in the toolbar.

F10 – F10 does a few things, but not really too much that the average person would use.

F11 – one of my favorites – it puts your web browser in full screen mode. Go visit a website, and tap F11 to see what happens. You can tap it again to bring it back to normal.

F12 – this one has some functions in MS Word for opening and saving documents, but not much else that you would probably use. Don’t tap it while you’re using a web browser – unless you’re a web developer and you really want to work with computer code. Yeah, me neither.

The post What do the Function keys do? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Windows password — How to skip the Windows sign-in password Oct 05, 2015
Show notes

When you get a new computer, especially if you get one of the more recent ones that are running Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, part of the set-up process is setting a Windows password. Most people don’t realize that you don’t NEED to have a Windows password on your computer, but the wording on the screen makes it sound like you are required to create one. I’ve even had some people go through this process without really thinking about it, then the next time they boot up their computer, they get prompted for the Windows password – and they don’t remember what it is.

We have ways of getting around the problem of a forgotten password. Most techs will know how to bypass a Windows password (which should tell you something about how well it secures your computer). Of course, the easiest solution is to never create the password requirement when you are first setting up the computer. When I’m setting up a new PC for a client, I always set it so there is no Windows password. The owner of the computer can always add one later on if it’s necessary.

But what if you’ve already set up your computer, and it requires you to enter a password every time you boot up Windows?

Here’s how you turn off the Windows password requirement:

Click the Start button (Microsoft logo) in the bottom left corner of the screen, and in the search field, type:

netplwiz

then hit the Enter button. This is going to bring up a window called “User Accounts” which looks like this:

At this point, you could probably figure out what to do just by looking at the contents of that window. First, look at the list of users. In my case, there are 3 entries. On your computer, it might only list a single user profile name. Either way, click once to highlight the user name for whom you want to skip the password entry requirement. Then UNcheck the box next to “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” and click OK at the bottom of the window.

Then you will be prompted to enter your current password, and confirm it:

After you click OK on that screen, you’re done. Next time you boot up into that user profile on Windows, you won’t have to put in a password.

A couple of things to remember about this:

The “netplwiz” process works with Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10. If you’re using a version of Windows older than Vista, you have bigger problems than being bothered with a password.

You should only disable the Windows password requirement if you are not concerned about safety/security in relation to someone else having physical access to your computer. If it’s just you and your computer in your home, that’s one thing. If your computer sits in an office or some other place where other people are nearby, you might want to keep the password requirement in place. It’s not foolproof, but it would at least slow someone down if they are trying to access your files without permission.

The post How to skip the Windows sign-in password first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Windows password — How to skip the Windows sign-in password Oct 05, 2015
Show notes

When you get a new computer, especially if you get one of the more recent ones that are running Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, part of the set-up process is setting a Windows password. Most people don’t realize that you don’t NEED to have a Windows password on your computer, but the wording on the screen makes it sound like you are required to create one. I’ve even had some people go through this process without really thinking about it, then the next time they boot up their computer, they get prompted for the Windows password – and they don’t remember what it is.

We have ways of getting around the problem of a forgotten password. Most techs will know how to bypass a Windows password (which should tell you something about how well it secures your computer). Of course, the easiest solution is to never create the password requirement when you are first setting up the computer. When I’m setting up a new PC for a client, I always set it so there is no Windows password. The owner of the computer can always add one later on if it’s necessary.

But what if you’ve already set up your computer, and it requires you to enter a password every time you boot up Windows?

Here’s how you turn off the Windows password requirement:

Click the Start button (Microsoft logo) in the bottom left corner of the screen, and in the search field, type:

netplwiz

then hit the Enter button. This is going to bring up a window called “User Accounts” which looks like this:

At this point, you could probably figure out what to do just by looking at the contents of that window. First, look at the list of users. In my case, there are 3 entries. On your computer, it might only list a single user profile name. Either way, click once to highlight the user name for whom you want to skip the password entry requirement. Then UNcheck the box next to “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” and click OK at the bottom of the window.

Then you will be prompted to enter your current password, and confirm it:

After you click OK on that screen, you’re done. Next time you boot up into that user profile on Windows, you won’t have to put in a password.

A couple of things to remember about this:

The “netplwiz” process works with Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10. If you’re using a version of Windows older than Vista, you have bigger problems than being bothered with a password.

You should only disable the Windows password requirement if you are not concerned about safety/security in relation to someone else having physical access to your computer. If it’s just you and your computer in your home, that’s one thing. If your computer sits in an office or some other place where other people are nearby, you might want to keep the password requirement in place. It’s not foolproof, but it would at least slow someone down if they are trying to access your files without permission.

The post How to skip the Windows sign-in password first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Paypal me — Grab your personalized Paypal.me account name while you can Sep 28, 2015
Show notes

I’ve used Paypal for years, and you probably have too. If you don’t yet have a Paypal account, you can set one up for free at www.Paypal.com. And with a recent change, Paypal has made it easier for people to send you money.

For my computer repair business here in Safety Harbor, Florida, I have an online accounting program that sends out invoices, which makes things really easy. Of course, I have to pay for that service. What we’re talking about here is not so much for business (although it could be used for that) – this is more designed for when individuals want to send or receive money from each other.

In the past, if you wanted to send someone money through Paypal, you had to get the person’s email address, then go to the Paypal website, log in to your account, and click on “Send money” and put in the email address and the dollar amount. Not what you might actually call “difficult” but it did involve a few steps and it required the sender to know the Paypal email address of the recipient.

Just recently, Paypal added a new feature that made it a lot simpler. You can create your own customized Paypal address, so that people can just click a link to send you money. You can even customize that link, so that the proper dollar amount is already configured.

But you need to get your customized Paypal.me address as soon as possible, in order to get the name you want to use.

Here’s how you set it up:

1. Go to the website www.Paypal.me and click on “Get started”

2. On the next screen, you will need to choose your link name. This is the name that will come at the end of your customized Paypal payment link.

When you type in the name you want to use, Paypal will automatically check and see if someone else has already grabbed that link name. Of course, just about all of the common names have been taken (I had virtually no chance of getting “Scott” for example). For me, I choose “PCTutor” so my full link is: Paypal.me/pctutor – you can actually click that link and send me money through Paypal. I encourage you to try that out! 🙂

3. Once you have chosen your link name, and Paypal has confirmed that it’s available, you just click “Grab This Link”. After that, Paypal will prompt you to sign in to your Paypal account so that they can connect your new link name with your account. If you don’t yet have a Paypal account, you can create one at this time.

And you’re done!

Now, if you want to make it easy for someone to send you money to your Paypal account, you just send them that link. And for even MORE customization, you can pre-select the dollar amount you want the person to send. For example, if someone owes me $15, I can send this link:

http://paypal.me/pctutor/15

And it when someone clicks on that link, it takes them directly to the Paypal site to send that amount to me:

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

You should also know that even though all you need in order to send someone money via Paypal is their email address, they do need to create a Paypal account in order to claim that money. But most people have a Paypal account anyway.

The post Grab your personalized Paypal.me account name while you can first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Paypal me — Grab your personalized Paypal.me account name while you can Sep 28, 2015
Show notes

I’ve used Paypal for years, and you probably have too. If you don’t yet have a Paypal account, you can set one up for free at www.Paypal.com. And with a recent change, Paypal has made it easier for people to send you money.

For my computer repair business here in Safety Harbor, Florida, I have an online accounting program that sends out invoices, which makes things really easy. Of course, I have to pay for that service. What we’re talking about here is not so much for business (although it could be used for that) – this is more designed for when individuals want to send or receive money from each other.

In the past, if you wanted to send someone money through Paypal, you had to get the person’s email address, then go to the Paypal website, log in to your account, and click on “Send money” and put in the email address and the dollar amount. Not what you might actually call “difficult” but it did involve a few steps and it required the sender to know the Paypal email address of the recipient.

Just recently, Paypal added a new feature that made it a lot simpler. You can create your own customized Paypal address, so that people can just click a link to send you money. You can even customize that link, so that the proper dollar amount is already configured.

But you need to get your customized Paypal.me address as soon as possible, in order to get the name you want to use.

Here’s how you set it up:

1. Go to the website www.Paypal.me and click on “Get started”

2. On the next screen, you will need to choose your link name. This is the name that will come at the end of your customized Paypal payment link.

When you type in the name you want to use, Paypal will automatically check and see if someone else has already grabbed that link name. Of course, just about all of the common names have been taken (I had virtually no chance of getting “Scott” for example). For me, I choose “PCTutor” so my full link is: Paypal.me/pctutor – you can actually click that link and send me money through Paypal. I encourage you to try that out! 🙂

3. Once you have chosen your link name, and Paypal has confirmed that it’s available, you just click “Grab This Link”. After that, Paypal will prompt you to sign in to your Paypal account so that they can connect your new link name with your account. If you don’t yet have a Paypal account, you can create one at this time.

And you’re done!

Now, if you want to make it easy for someone to send you money to your Paypal account, you just send them that link. And for even MORE customization, you can pre-select the dollar amount you want the person to send. For example, if someone owes me $15, I can send this link:

http://paypal.me/pctutor/15

And it when someone clicks on that link, it takes them directly to the Paypal site to send that amount to me:

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

You should also know that even though all you need in order to send someone money via Paypal is their email address, they do need to create a Paypal account in order to claim that money. But most people have a Paypal account anyway.

The post Grab your personalized Paypal.me account name while you can first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

remove Google birthdays — How to get all those birthdays off your Google calendar Sep 21, 2015
Show notes

I use the Google calendar to keep track of all of my activities, both business and personal. It’s super convenient because it automatically syncs between my computer, my phone and my iPad. And since I also use Gmail (another Google product) I can set the calendar to easily send me email reminders for anything.

But recently I came across a really annoying problem with the Google calendar – it was tagging each day with names of people having a birthday on that day. Some of the people I knew. But some I didn’t know – they weren’t computer repair clients, they weren’t fellow Safety Harbor residents. But there they were, in my calendar that I use each day – even though I didn’t ask for them to be there.

It would be nice if you could just do a right-click on a particular birthday and choose an option like “Remove all birthdays from my Google calendar” but they don’t offer that as a solution. In fact, for a while there actually was no solution – you were just stuck with having them there, cluttering up your calendar.

But now there is a way to do it. Here’s how to get those stupid birthdays off your Google calendar:

While viewing your Google calendar, click on the gear icon in the top right, and in the drop-down menu, choose Settings.

2. On the Settings page, click the Calendars link:

3. Then, find the “Birthdays” calendar and uncheck that box:

And that solves the problem. No more birthday reminders for people you don’t (or barely) know.

The post How to get all those birthdays off your Google calendar first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Google calendar birthdays — How to get all those birthdays off your Google calendar Sep 21, 2015
Show notes

I use the Google calendar to keep track of all of my activities, both business and personal. It’s super convenient because it automatically syncs between my computer, my phone and my iPad. And since I also use Gmail (another Google product) I can set the calendar to easily send me email reminders for anything.

But recently I came across a really annoying problem with the Google calendar – it was tagging each day with names of people having a birthday on that day. Some of the people I knew. But some I didn’t know – they weren’t computer repair clients, they weren’t fellow Safety Harbor residents. But there they were, in my calendar that I use each day – even though I didn’t ask for them to be there.

It would be nice if you could just do a right-click on a particular birthday and choose an option like “Remove all birthdays from my Google calendar” but they don’t offer that as a solution. In fact, for a while there actually was no solution – you were just stuck with having them there, cluttering up your calendar.

But now there is a way to do it. Here’s how to get those stupid birthdays off your Google calendar:

While viewing your Google calendar, click on the gear icon in the top right, and in the drop-down menu, choose Settings.

2. On the Settings page, click the Calendars link:

3. Then, find the “Birthdays” calendar and uncheck that box:

And that solves the problem. No more birthday reminders for people you don’t (or barely) know.

The post How to get all those birthdays off your Google calendar first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

starkist tuna settlement — Use your computer to get $25 cash – if you are a tuna eater Sep 14, 2015
Show notes

Yes, today’s tip is a little different than our typical “computer” tip. But by using the information I’ll give you today, you can go online and get $25 in cash, or $50 in Starkist tuna – if you meet the requirements.

Here’s what happened:

A few years ago, Starkist Tuna faced a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit accused Starkist of “under-filling” each of their cans of tuna, by just a few tenths of an ounce each. Who cares, right? Well, apparently someone cared enough to go all the way with a lawsuit to get their “justice”. And when you think about the millions of cans of tuna fish that Starkist puts out each year, that minor amount of shortage in each can really could add up to a lot.

So even though Starkist has not admitted that they did this, they have agreed to settle the lawsuit by offering their customers some compensation.

What you can receive:

$25 cash, OR

Vouchers for $50 worth of Starkist Tuna

How you qualify:

In order to be eligible for one of the above, you have to have purchased at least one 5-ounce can of Starkist tuna between the dates of February 19, 2009 and October 31, 2014. You don’t need to show a receipt or any proof of purchase, but you will be required to state (under penalty of perjury) that you did indeed make the required purchase within that period of time.

How to file a claim:

Go to the website www.TunaLawsuit.com and click on “File a claim” in the menu on the left side. Then just follow the instructions on the screen. You will need to provide your contact information, and whether you want the cash or the vouchers. Make sure you complete it all the way to the end. After the claim form is submitted online, you will have the opportunity to print the final page as your receipt, which includes your claim number. It looks like this:

See, I told you this week would be a little different than what I usually do. But hey, if you qualify and you can get $25 cash or $50 in tuna, you should know about it, right? So if you’re eligible, go get it!

And if your computer has a problem, you know where to find me for computer repair – right here in Safety Harbor (of course, I can fix most computers remotely so it doesn’t matter where you are).
The post Use your computer to get $25 cash – if you are a tuna eater first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Starkist tuna lawsuit — Use your computer to get $25 cash – if you are a tuna eater Sep 14, 2015
Show notes

Yes, today’s tip is a little different than our typical “computer” tip. But by using the information I’ll give you today, you can go online and get $25 in cash, or $50 in Starkist tuna – if you meet the requirements.

Here’s what happened:

A few years ago, Starkist Tuna faced a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit accused Starkist of “under-filling” each of their cans of tuna, by just a few tenths of an ounce each. Who cares, right? Well, apparently someone cared enough to go all the way with a lawsuit to get their “justice”. And when you think about the millions of cans of tuna fish that Starkist puts out each year, that minor amount of shortage in each can really could add up to a lot.

So even though Starkist has not admitted that they did this, they have agreed to settle the lawsuit by offering their customers some compensation.

What you can receive:

$25 cash, OR

Vouchers for $50 worth of Starkist Tuna

How you qualify:

In order to be eligible for one of the above, you have to have purchased at least one 5-ounce can of Starkist tuna between the dates of February 19, 2009 and October 31, 2014. You don’t need to show a receipt or any proof of purchase, but you will be required to state (under penalty of perjury) that you did indeed make the required purchase within that period of time.

How to file a claim:

Go to the website www.TunaLawsuit.com and click on “File a claim” in the menu on the left side. Then just follow the instructions on the screen. You will need to provide your contact information, and whether you want the cash or the vouchers. Make sure you complete it all the way to the end. After the claim form is submitted online, you will have the opportunity to print the final page as your receipt, which includes your claim number. It looks like this:

See, I told you this week would be a little different than what I usually do. But hey, if you qualify and you can get $25 cash or $50 in tuna, you should know about it, right? So if you’re eligible, go get it!

And if your computer has a problem, you know where to find me for computer repair – right here in Safety Harbor (of course, I can fix most computers remotely so it doesn’t matter where you are).
The post Use your computer to get $25 cash – if you are a tuna eater first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Ambient Light Sensor — Fix for Dell laptop display brightness randomly changing Sep 07, 2015
Show notes

If you have a Dell laptop, it might have a built-in “feature” called Ambient Light Sensor (I put “feature” in quotation marks intentionally). This is not really a widely advertised function so a lot of people don’t know about it. In fact, I personally was not aware of it until my friend Bob did some research and discovered it. Love it when the client comes up with the solution, then tells me about it. Thanks Bob!

What is the Ambient Light Sensor?

The ALS is something that Dell has built in to some of their laptops (I’m not sure all Dells have this). Basically, it’s a way for the laptop’s screen brightness to adjust based on how much light is in the room. So if the laptop is powered on, and you turn the lights up or down in the room, you will probably see the laptop’s screen get darker or brighter.

I guess some people might like it, but for most people, it’s annoying to have the screen brightness always changing even though you are not actually trying to adjust the brightness level. And for those that don’t know about this special “feature” it might even appear that the screen is defective. Nope, it’s just a computer manufacturer thinking they would offer something new and clever, but in reality it’s just something most people would prefer to turn off.

Here’s how you turn off the Ambient Light Sensor:

1. Find the “Function” key on the keyboard. It will be somewhere in the lower left area, usually between Ctrl and the Windows key:

2. Hold down the “Function” key and tap the left arrow key.

Pretty easy, right? Just a matter of knowing what keys to use, then the problem is solved.

Turns out there are a few other things you can do on your Dell laptop with that handy little Function key. In the list below, the Function key is abbreviated “Fn”. And remember, these might not work on all Dell laptops.

Fn + F1 puts your computer to sleep

Fn + F2 toggles the battery charging process on and off

Fn + F3 shows status of the battery

Fn + F8 toggles between screens if you have an external monitor connected

Fn + F11 copies a screenshot to the clipboard

Fn + Up Arrow key increases screen brightness

Fn + Down Arrow key decreases screen brightness

Fn + Right Arrow key adjusts brightness of the backlit keyboard (optional)

Fn + Left Arrow key toggles Ambient Light Sensor on and off (as described above)

The post Fix for Dell laptop display brightness randomly changing first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Function key — Fix for Dell laptop display brightness randomly changing Sep 07, 2015
Show notes

If you have a Dell laptop, it might have a built-in “feature” called Ambient Light Sensor (I put “feature” in quotation marks intentionally). This is not really a widely advertised function so a lot of people don’t know about it. In fact, I personally was not aware of it until my friend Bob did some research and discovered it. Love it when the client comes up with the solution, then tells me about it. Thanks Bob!

What is the Ambient Light Sensor?

The ALS is something that Dell has built in to some of their laptops (I’m not sure all Dells have this). Basically, it’s a way for the laptop’s screen brightness to adjust based on how much light is in the room. So if the laptop is powered on, and you turn the lights up or down in the room, you will probably see the laptop’s screen get darker or brighter.

I guess some people might like it, but for most people, it’s annoying to have the screen brightness always changing even though you are not actually trying to adjust the brightness level. And for those that don’t know about this special “feature” it might even appear that the screen is defective. Nope, it’s just a computer manufacturer thinking they would offer something new and clever, but in reality it’s just something most people would prefer to turn off.

Here’s how you turn off the Ambient Light Sensor:

1. Find the “Function” key on the keyboard. It will be somewhere in the lower left area, usually between Ctrl and the Windows key:

2. Hold down the “Function” key and tap the left arrow key.

Pretty easy, right? Just a matter of knowing what keys to use, then the problem is solved.

Turns out there are a few other things you can do on your Dell laptop with that handy little Function key. In the list below, the Function key is abbreviated “Fn”. And remember, these might not work on all Dell laptops.

Fn + F1 puts your computer to sleep

Fn + F2 toggles the battery charging process on and off

Fn + F3 shows status of the battery

Fn + F8 toggles between screens if you have an external monitor connected

Fn + F11 copies a screenshot to the clipboard

Fn + Up Arrow key increases screen brightness

Fn + Down Arrow key decreases screen brightness

Fn + Right Arrow key adjusts brightness of the backlit keyboard (optional)

Fn + Left Arrow key toggles Ambient Light Sensor on and off (as described above)

The post Fix for Dell laptop display brightness randomly changing first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

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