Tech-Seeker

It’s taken quite a long time to get to this point, but it’s almost finally upon us. Just two meagre months left until the end of the world as the Mayan prophesy predicts. How? Are we supposed to “somehow” pop out of existence? And how can a civilization predict what will happen far in the future when they could not foresee their own demise?

So, is 2013 the end of the world? And no! I don’t mean the movie!

Anyways, since it is looming; I thought I’d give it a mention so you can walk on into next year with a great big smile on your face as the world doesn’t end.

http://www.space.com/18153-doomsday-mayan-apocalpyse.html

Mail merge is a function used in office software to create multiple letters/documents using a template (such as a word document) and a mailing list/database. It is typically used to send out large numbers of the same document to multiple recipients with individual tailor made modifications. Place-holder variables in the document are used to represent the individual data. For example: The <First name> variable will be substituted with a person’s name when the merge is complete. If there are 20 people in the spreadsheet then there will be 20 documents created each with their name in respectively.

The letter is typically a word processing document, and the list is typically a spreadsheet or database. The resultant letters are usually then printed or e-mailed to the recipients respectively.

Below is an example of a word processing template:

Dear <first name>

An event is being held on 24^th July. Further instructions are to follow.

Below is an example of two letters dynamically created from the template:

Dear Sarah

An event is being held on 24^th July. Further instructions are to follow.

Second example:

Dear Bob

An event is being held on 24^th July. Further instructions are to follow.

An example of a contacts spreadsheet might look something like:

First name E-mail

Sarah sarah@someaddress.com

Bob bobsemail@hmail.com

How To:

To perform a mail merge in Microsoft Office 2007 using Word, Excel, and Outlook you need to write your letter in Word, then go to the Mailings tab and Click Start Mail Merge, and select Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard…

A pane to the right of the Word document should now appear titled Mail Merge. Assuming you are sending out E-mails en masse you would select E-mail messages, and then click Next: Starting document.

Then select Use the current document and click Next: Select Recipients. Select Use an existing list and then click Browse…

You are then prompted to select a data source, where we would in this example select an Excel spreadsheet, which contains a list of contacts. Open the spreadsheet and select Sheet1$ if your contacts are on the first sheet. Edit the Mail merge recipients if need be (to remove any contacts) or just select OK. Then click Next: Write your e-mail Messages.

Now you can add variables to your letter that will be substituted for each recipient’s details once the merge is complete. You can add an Address block… a Greeting line… an Electronic postage… or More items…

In accordance with the example above we are going to select More items… and select First name and click Insert, then Close. You should now see the variable <First name> appear on the letter. That is where each person’s name will appear.

Now select Next: Preview your e-mail messages. You can now use the two double arrowed forwards and backwards buttons to view all your letters.

The final step is to click Next: Complete the merge. This will send all your e-mails to the correct recipients. The names inserted correspond to their e-mail addresses as structured in the spreadsheet.

Until Live Messenger 2009, the messaging program did not support running multiple instances of itself. This meant you could only launch one MSN/Live Messenger app and had to logout of an account to access another one. Before this you had to rely on external third party programs such as MultiLive or MultiMSN. Since 2009 Microsoft added support for running multiple instances of Windows Live Messenger, you just had to activate it.

The support for multi-Windows-Live-Messenger is not enabled by default, but can be easily be activated safely with a simple registry edit:

1. Run Registry Editor: In the Start Menu do a Start Search for regedit, and under programs click regedit.exe.

2. Navigate through the folder structure to the following registry key:

KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live\Messenger

2b. Note: For 64-bit Windows OS users, go to following registry key instead:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Live\Messenger

3. In the right window pane, right click on any blank space, select New on context menu, and then click on DWORD (32-bit) Value.

4. Enter the name of the new registry value entry as MultipleInstances.

5. Double click MultipleInstances and modify its value data as: 1.

You can now start as many instances of Live Messenger as you want from Start Menu, and login to all your messenger accounts simultaneously.

Anti-Virus Software Performance

Anti-virus performance chart comprised of many sources and not official in anyway, and is just for reference when comparing anti-virus software

We all know there are a lot of Anti-virus scanners and tools out there, but which one is the right one to use? You might decide to pay a yearly subscription as an Anti-virus that costs ‘x’ amount of dollar a year has got to be the best? perhaps, but perhaps not.

There are also more factors to consider than just which AV scanner was ranked number one in any given year. Factors such as: performance and how much system resources the AV software consumes even in a passive state. many Anti-virus software will protect real-time, but whilst doing so can randomly cause CPU spikes or hog a good chunk of memory.

Some anti-viruses have high CPU usage and a low detection rate so if your anti-virus is not doing its job and your system has become somewhat bogged down soon after installing it, then this could explain it.

Other virus scanners such as Avast will periodically update themselves when a new update becomes available. Automatically downloading the latest virus definitions database and updating the core software when available.

An anti-virus isn’t an anti-spyware program as such,but it may detect, prevent and remove adware, spyware, and other forms of malware. So ideally, you want an anti-virus and an anti-malware, or the two combined.

Then there’s the most important factor of all detection and removal rate. Which anti-virus software detects and removes the most viruses. The two best anti-virus software’s that I’ve come across so far with the best definitions, detection and removal are Avast and Malware Bytes. And the best part is they both happen to be free (standard versions), have massive definitions databases, and are not resource demanding.

How Does An Anti-Virus Work?

An anti-virus program detects, prevents, and removes variants of malware such as viruses, trojan horses, worms and sometimes spyware/malware.

Signature-based anti-virus detection pertains to searching for known malicious patterns in executable code. There are a few anti-virus programs that also predict what a file will do if opened/executed by emulating it in a sandbox and analyzing it running to see if it performs any malicious actions. If it does, this may mean the file is malicious. This goes back to what was said earlier about keeping your anti-virus up-to date so that it has the latest definitions to detect viruses.

Avoiding Viruses

Despite the plentiful amount of tools available to prevent you downloading/running program that contains a virus, not all viruses are detected. Just because you have installed a decent anti-virus doesn’t mean you should download anything you want carelessly without facing the consequences. The most important thing is to know what you’re downloading. If there’s any doubt in your mind whenever, either google the name of the file you’re going to run or use an online virus-scanner where you upload the file or preferably both.

It seems like only yesterday WordPress released WP 3.2, in fact it was yesterday – just kidding! but as far as time goes in the Internet world it may as well have been.

The WP development team has released the first point update making the latest version WordPress 3.2.1. According to the developers, the maintenance update fixes a JSON related server incompatibility problem that affected some users. There are also some fixes for the new dashboard design and the Twenty Eleven theme, an update to the Twenty Ten theme, are also included.

More details about the maintenance update can be found in the news post, on the WordPress Version 3.2.1 features page. WordPress 3.2.1 is available to download from the project’s web site. Alternatively, existing users can update automatically via the Dashboard > Updates menu in the site admin area as per usual.