Is It Legal To Use Music2PC?

Music2PC is a free music downloader for the Windows operating system. All that users need to do is type in an artist, band, song name or album to see results populated instantly in the interface. A single click on the download button is all it takes to download the music to the local PC.

The question that many users will have when using the program is if it is legal to use. The developer website claims it is 100% legal as it only provides downloads from free legal music sources on the Internet. These sources, or at least examples, are not provided though, and the program interface reveals no information about the Internet locations the songs are downloaded from.

All you get are the artist’s name, the song title and the duration of the song. Listing the source could provide users of the program with the reassurance they need to download the music without fearing legal consequences.

A quick check for the top 5 US single charts of this week listed dozens of hits for each song, indicating that the database lists commercial songs and free songs.

A network software reveals that the program taps right into Vkontakte, a popular Russian social networking site. These songs are uploaded by users of the service and not the site operators.

If you take this into account you must come to the conclusion that it is likely not legal in all countries. While I cannot say that it is not legal in Russia for instance, it is fair to assume that it is not legal in the majority of countries.

I personally would advise users not to download music through the program. While it is unlikely that doing so will have legal consequences, it is still possible that it will depending on the local jurisdiction.

Looking for legal alternatives? Try the free music repository Jamendo, the Internet radio recorder Streamripper or our free music download guide.

How to Write a Windows 8 Book, Research and Marketing

Last week I threw down the gauntlet to any readers who might want to write your own Windows 8 book with a couple of posts here and here offering a quick guide to getting started.  One of the biggest problems though is your competition and I thought I’d follow these up with a little information on how you can research your biggest competitors and how and where you can actually publish your book.

You might have a specific book that you want to either emulate in some way or beat at its own game.  This is quite normal as it gives you a baseline.  When you submit a formal book proposal to a publisher then they will expect you to properly research your competition and know what it is they do and how your book will do everything in a more effective way.

You might think it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to find out how well your competitors books are selling, but it’s surprisingly easy.  The website Titlez will allow you to search for specific book types on Amazon, and it will show you their ranking among other information.  You can use this information to see which are the best-selling books so you can measure what you’re doing against them (as obviously these titles will be doing something right!)

Looking at the best-selling comparative titles, which will be Windows 7 books, you will be able to see the types of topics they are covering and how they are doing it.  Visiting the Amazon page for a book will probably allow you to view some pages, and usually the table of contents, so you can evaluate their content.  Don’t ape another book however, you’ll get into copyright issues there, but you may want to go in a completely different direction if you think they’re doing something wrong.

Another tip is to read reviews of these books to see how people are either praising or criticising them.  Some books are highly praised but others, including some best-selling titles also receive a great deal of criticism from the public.  You can learn from these comments how the books are failing and how you can improve on them.

If you want to sell your book, rather than give it away there are many services that you can publish it through.  You can do it through the new iBooks author portal, though currently Apple’s terms create a lock-in that mean you can’t also sell your book anywhere else.  You can also use an independent site like Lulu which is has a great reputation and is the service I self-published my Windows 7 Power Users Guide through, or you can publish directly with Amazon which you may think is your best option given that when people think of books they think of Amazon.

Wherever you publish, try and make sure that you choose an option that gives you an ISBN number.  This may incur a small cost but it does mean that you will be allowed to sell your book on many online stores.  Amazon for example now insist on your book having its own ISBN number in order to qualify for sale.

Research is everything if you want to make your book successful.  Never assume though that self-publishing a Windows book will you rich, it won’t.  If you give away a free eBook though the prospect of getting tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of downloads is quite realistic.  Since making my Windows 7 Power Users Guide free the downloads are well into the high six figures.  It is this success that you can shout about to publishers and that will help add weight and credibility to any approaches you make for a full book deal.

A Better Way to Use Ninite

Ninite is a great way to easily install many essential programs. It takes the work out of loading a new computer with the software you need. While there is one thing that may cause some problems for users, there is a way to work around it.

Ninite is a website that will let you choose which tools you want to load. It then provides you with a single installer to download. From there, it automatically installs everything you need. There is no need to visit individual websites, sift through them to find the installer, and go through them step-by-step. Ninite does all that for you; the problem is that you cannot control the order in which it loads what could be dozens of applications.

Typically, the first applications to be loaded are web browsers or other productive software. The last programs to load are those that protect your system. In fact, when testing Ninite, the last thing to load was the anti-virus.

The reason for this is fairly obvious. People do not really work with an anti-virus. A user may manually scan a file or make an unscheduled scan, but it largely runs unobtrusively in the background. A web browser is a different story, especially since they can perform so many functions these days. Ironically, web browsers are a part of the problem since they introduce vulnerabilities.

Flash, pdf files, javascripts, and web-mail attachments are all things commonly used on the web that can introduce viruses, trojans, worms, and other forms of malware. If an anti-virus is running, chances are that it will catch infected files and websites before they harm the computer. Some anti-virus programs can even warn a user if a web page has been reported as dangerous. Each time you see your anti-virus tell you it found an infected file ,it has saved you trouble and prevented damage.

Without an anti-virus running, there is nothing to stop malicious programs from doing whatever they want to a system. The potential exists for the computer to be destroyed or personal information stolen. At the least, they cause a system to become unstable. Time will be needed to restore the system to normal operation. Oftentimes these problems could have been avoided if basic precautions were taken. A user would be safer if the anti-virus and other protective software loaded first.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to make this happen even though Ninite does not let you customize the order in which installation occurs. What you can do is create two installers, the first one with critical software and the second with everything else. The critical software should include one anti-virus and at least one anti-malware title. It typically is recommended to use just one anti-virus title at a time. The reason is because one anti-virus program may mistake the database of the other anti-virus for an actual virus. From there, other programs, such as Truecrypt and Keepass, may be considered critical too since they relate to security.

Now, once the first installer is finished, the computer is reasonably protected. It is much safer to browse the web and download files. A user or administrator can even scan systems easily to check for problems and fix them. Make sure you check the anti-virus to make sure it is up to date or let it update itself before using the second Ninite installer. Doing this will ensure that you are using Ninite in the safest way you possible.

“An ounce of prevent is worth a pound of cure.” — Benjamin Franklin

Will You Clean out your Social Networks for New Year?

So it’s almost time to dust off the old new year’s resolutions, work out how many you kept (I kept all of mine for the first time), and then set some more to take you into 2012.  But if I may I’d like to offer up a suggestion, and that is that you go into 2012 with a clean social networking profile.

So what do I mean by this and why?  Well times are still hard and for all those people struggling in their jobs, or struggling even to find work after being made redundant employers are increasingly searching Facebook and Twitter for clues as to the types of people that they are hiring or that are already working for them.  Couple this with the fact that Twitter is and has always been completely public, and that Facebook seems to find ever increasing ways to make everything you say and post publicly available, and you could find yourself going into the new year with a problem.

I’ve recently gone through my Facebook account and deleted all the photo libraries I put online this year from holidays and days out.  Let’s face it, each of these were only supposed to have been there for a few days, a couple of weeks at the most, so that my other friends could catch up with what had been going on but nobody would have looked at them since.  I’m extremely careful about what I put on Facebook, for instance I tend to avoid photos where I’ve had too much to drink (though the obligatory Saint Patrick’s day hat photo will always remain a notable exception!) but even so it’s wise to be cautious.

Facebook are currently rolling out their new Timeline feature that they dub “a new kind of profile”.

Timeline is wider than your old profile, and it’s a lot more visual.  The first thing you’ll notice is the giant photo right at the top. This is your cover, and it’s completely up to you which of your photos you put here.  As you scroll down past your cover, you’ll see your posts, photos and life events as they happened in time. You choose what’s featured on your timeline. You can star your favorites to double their size or hide things altogether.

In short Facebook want everybody’s profile to be a complete history of their lives and do you really want all of this information available to everybody, and trust Facebook to keep it secret?  This is why I highly recommend not just removing old photos but modifying your status history as well.  Not that long ago Facebook offered a new feature that can be found in your Privacy settings called Limit the Audience for Past Posts.  Here you can control your privacy better for all the things you have said in the past, some of which you may not be completely proud of.  All of this is in the name of being constantly careful and vigilant about the company’s proclivity to make everything public as often as they can.

With Twitter it’s different because everything is already public.  Deleting old Tweets is a laborious process of removing them one at a time (I have almost 7,000 tweets in my account and don’t want to face that!) but some tools such as TwitWipe are available to plug the gap.  This and similar services will completely wipe your Twitter history, enabling you to start from scratch with a clean bill of health.  That means the next time someone does a search online for your Twitter handle and the word “drunk” nothing will appear in the results.

Personal privacy is something we’re giving up more and more as we get involved with social networks and companies that trade online, but it’s such an important thing to guard.  Making sure that my privacy is maintained online will certainly be one of my resolutions for 2012, will you make it one of yours?

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© Mike Halsey for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Buying a New PC? Don’t Get Ripped off by Unscrupulous Salesmen!

I get a fair amount of email in my inbox at mike@MVPs.org from readers asking questions about how to do or fix A, B or C on their PCs.  One email I received this morning got me so riled that I felt it needed to be written up here, though it’s not the first time I have heard this story.

Dan from Canada wrote…

Hi Mike,

I just found your excellent tutorial for setting up a new PC and will be following it to the letter. I have one question though, if you have a moment.  I’m buying a new Acer PC tomorrow morning at a local [removed]. It will be my first new PC in a number of years.

I’ve recently setup a new HP for a friend and it was very easy. It started Windows7 setup right away and I only had to put in the language and time zone and some other simple things.  I wondered if you think this PC will be the same simple setup. The salesman is telling me I should pay almost $100 for it to be setup and that if I do it myself, I need to use Silverlight to download Windows 7 and can have all kinds of problems.

Do you think the Windows 7 operating system and all drivers will be there when I take it out of the box ?  I can’t seem to find the answer anywhere on the net and I couldn’t reach Acer support

It’s not uncommon for sales people in computer stores to try to up sell the fastest processor (because you must have this to edit photos) or their choice of anti-virus software (because all the free ones don’t protect you) and these scenarios get me angry enough.

This particular salesman at a big name store who’s name I have removed as the company don’t have an opportunity currently to respond to this, though I will contact them and feed back to you, is a complete charlatan.

Dan was perfectly correct to expect Windows 7 and all hardware drivers to come pre-installed on a new PC from one of the major manufacturers, and indeed this would always be the case.  Indeed if you want a new PC without a copy of Windows pre-installed it’s actually very difficult to do and can require some arguing with customer service staff at the manufacturer concerned (a problem commonly faced by users of GNU/Linux who don’t want to spend $80 on a Windows licence).

My reply to Dan was swift and pointed out that he should speak with the manager of the store and ask why there would be a charge to install an operating system that should already be pre-installed, and why Silverlight would be required to “download” Windows 7 when Silverlight will only run within Windows?

If you are buying a new computer in the sales please be very wary of these sales tactics.  Have an idea of what you need and preferably seek advice from a technically-minded friend if you can before buying.  Don’t fall for the more expensive machine just because you want to edit your digital photographs, don’t be convinced into buying expensive anti-virus or other software such as Office that you don’t want (the version of Office Starter that ships with almost all new PCs is more than enough for a lot of people) and don’t ever pay for a set-up charge, especially never such a large fee.

If you ever in any doubt ask to speak with the manager or telephone the company’s customer support line (retail outlet or PC manufacturer) to check with them first.  On this occasion I’m very pleased that Dan chose to email me in advance, he’s just avoided wasting $100 on something that’s quick, simple and most importantly fun to do himself.

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© Mike Halsey for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Top Tips for Securing Your Smartphone

The more we use our smartphones and the more personal and sensitive data we keep on them you’d think the greater target they are for thieves and hackers, right?  Well, the fact is that mobile phones are already the number one target for thieves at the very least.  Your new phone could be valuable and while it could be blocked by networks in your own country, that’s not to stop the handset being sent abroad and used in a country where such blocking doesn’t exist.

But surely you don’t keep any sensitive information on your phone unless people really are interested in text messages from a loved one or emails from Groupon?  Here you’d be wrong again.  In this article I want to have a look through the different types of important information you keep on your smartphone, and look at ways you can keep it safe and secure.

So what information do you keep on your handset?

Contacts

You might not keep really sensitive details about yourself on your phones such as your Social Security number or bank details, but you do keep ever growing details about all your contacts.  These include their full names, address, email address and multiple phone numbers and, crucially information such their full date of birth (which is used in faking IDs and gaining access to accounts) and possibly family connections that are possibly giving up details such as their mother’s maiden name.  In short you are being entrusted with a huge amount of information on a huge number of people, all of which can be used for identity theft.

Email

It might not be possible for someone to discover your email password or to change it from your handset, though a good hacker might still find a way, but depending on what emails you store locally in your inbox they might reveal all manner of additional detail about you perhaps including at least partial credit card details if you’ve been shopping online.

Documents

More and more of us are keeping documents on our phones and with the inclusion of support for services such as Windows Live SkyDrive in Windows Phone, it’s becoming far easier to not know what important and sensitive documents you actually can access from your phone, maybe without even knowing the functionality is already there and switched on.  If you use DropBox on your phone for instance what documents are you storing in the cloud that can be easily and instantly accessed by someone who has physical access to your phone?

GPS Locations

As more and more of us use smartphones as GPS devices, what locations have you got stored in your phone?  Do you, for example have “Home” listed as a location?  If you do a thief could be directed straight to your home at the time when they know, if they’ve just stolen the handset, that you’re out.

How can you secure your handset?

Use a Password Lock

The most basic and simple way to lock your phone is to put a passcode on it, be this a physical numerical code or a swipe pattern.  Make it a good one though, definitely not an obvious pattern or the same code as you use for the PIN number on your bank card.  Having a code or pattern that’s a bit harder to do might be a little more inconvenient for you, but it comes with a great deal more peace of mind.

Write down your IMEI number

The phone’s unique identifier code, it’s 15 digit IMEI number can usually be found close to the SIM card slot and battery compartment in a phone.  Write down this IMEI number and keep it in a safe place at home in case you need to cancel the phone, it will make things quicker, or more important to report the phone as lost or stolen to the police.  Having the IMEI number will help make sure the handset can be quickly returned to you if it is found.  You can check the IMEI number on the phone itself by typing *#06# on the keypad.

Edit Your Lock Wallpaper to add an ICE number

An ICE (In Case of Emergency) number can quite possibly save your life if you are involved in an accident or incapacitated and the emergency services can’t unlock your phone to call a relative or friend.  Unfortunately modern smartphones still don’t include support for ICE numbers but if you manually edit in a graphics package onto the image you use for your lock screen, it can be a great help in having your phone returned to you if it is found.

Use Anti-Malware Software

Malware and viruses on smartphones are becoming ever more common and regardless of how secure the platform might be, or how much vetting all the apps might go through, there’s no guarantee that malware won’t slip through the net.  Check the reviews online to see if the anti-malware software you’re buying is actually any good and preferably go for one of the big name companies such as AVG or Kaspersky for added peace of mind.

Use a Remote Management Service

Some smartphone platforms, including Windows Phone, come with a remote management service you can access online.  These services can allow you to remotely lock the phone, track it (even when locked) or even wipe it altogether and perform a hard reset if you suspect it is gone for good.  These services are accessed through any web browser and if your smartphone comes with such a service it is well worth signing up for it.

So what are your additional tips for keeping your smartphone, and its sensitive data safe and secure?  Write them in the comments here as we’d love to hear them.

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© Mike Halsey (MVP) for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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What are the World’s Worst Passwords?

Passwords are important, very important in fact as they’re usually the only thing preventing criminals from stealing your personal and credit card information, and using your email account for sending spam (and having your account closed shortly afterwards as a result!)  In short it’s critical to have secure and unique passwords for everything these days.

Now SplashData have compiled the list of the top 25 most common passwords.  They have compiled the list by examining the password dumps that have been posted online by hackers.

The list, which unsurprisingly comes with the password “password” as the most common doesn’t come with any great surprises.  The most common threads running through these are that they are all very short and most are common dictionary words or proper names.  These are all things to be avoided when creating a new password.

You will notice though that the password “qazwsx” is in the list and why shouldn’t this be secure.  If you look at your keyboard you will see why, as password cracking software looks at common patterns that can be typed on your keyboard.

The list of the top 25 most common passwords is…

1. password

2. 123456

3. 12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

6. monkey

7. 1234567

8. letmein

9. trustno1

10. dragon

11. baseball

12. 111111

13. iloveyou

14. master

15. sunshine

16. ashley

17. bailey

18. passw0rd

19. shadow

20. 123123

21. 654321

22. superman

23. qazwsx

24. michael

25. football

It’s not actually difficult to create a strong password and I have put a posted I created below (click to view it full size) that you can print out and put on your wall in your home office or workplace.

A strong password should be absolute minimum of 8 characters in length, preferably a minimum of 10 characters and contain a mixture of numbers, symbols and upper and lower case letters.  You can use numbers and symbols to replace letters they are similar to, for example using an “&” instead of the letter “a” and using the number “1″ instead of an “i” or an “l”.

You can also mix things in a way that makes sense when remembering the code you have used to create the password.  For example, you could have a password made up of two words of different lengths, where the third letter of each word is capitalised and the fifth character in each word is replaced by a symbol.

Finally you can also, for added security, append to the end of the password, or preferably mix into it the first three letters (or a three or four letter identifier) for the website or service the password is for.  For example Amazon could mean the letters AMZ are mixed into your password.

By following these rules it’s very easy to create long, super-secure and above all memorable passwords that will help your data and financial information stay safe online.

There are also other things you can do keep your passwords safe.  One way is to use randomly generated passwords and password storage software on your PC (with it’s own secure password) to auto-fill these in on the websites you use.

Having a super-strong password is so important so I really urge you to tweet, blog and share this post and the poster as far and wide as possible so your friends, family and colleagues can see if their own passwords are in the list.

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© Mike Halsey (MVP) for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Firmware… If it Isn’t Broken, Should You Fix it?

It’s an issue that polarises opinion and that splits people, those who even know about it anyway, straight down the middle.  Should you update the OS or firmware on your device or hardware?  Recently there has been considerable criticism levelled against Apple for problems the update to their latest version 5 of their iOS operating system for the iPhone has brought.  But what about the firmware and OS on your computer’s motherboard or the firmware in your NAS drive or router?

With smartphone’s and other similar computing devices there are usually tangible benefits to updating.  These commonly include new features, extra functionality for existing hardware such as cameras and most crucially, bug fixes and security patches.  It can be difficult to argue against these types of software updates then, but given the recent update problems with iOS (and it’s far from the only smartphone platform to experience problems) the question still needs to be asked if it’s really necessary to do?

Commonly, smartphones will nag you to update your device’s operating system.  Windows Phone is awful for this with a daily nag  on the handset and another nag whenever you plug the handset into your computer.  Should the smartphone makers back off and allow us to use the device as it was originally programmed?

So what are advantages?  With smartphones it’s a simple case of just having less hassle and less chance that something will go wrong and either ‘bricking’ the handset or losing all your data.  This happening can at its best cause you to lose text messages, files and photographs, but at worst can result in having to send you phone away for reprogramming.  If you’re not being nagged then, security issues aside and I’ll explain why in a minute, you should ask the question does the phone do everything you currently need it to do?  If this is the case then it’s likely you won’t be a prolific downloader of apps or a heavy user of the phone’s features.  If you are a casual user who will use a phone for a year or two and then get a new one why bother with an upgrade that may not change anything for you.

While it’s difficult to avoid operating system upgrades for your smartphone though, it’s much easier to avoid them for other hardware.  I’m a fan of saying that firmware should only be upgraded if it’s really necessary and as the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out I’ve seen many of the problems that firmware updates bring.

If you have a faulty update to your router’s firmware you could bee offline for a fortnight.  If you have a bad update to your NAS drive’s firmware you could lose all access to your files and data for weeks and if you have a bad firmware experience with your PC you could, at the very worst, have to dismantle the entire innards of the machine to send the motherboard back.

So why do I advise so strongly against upgrading the firmware of devices?  Frankly it’s because unlike the updating of smartphones, the upgrading of firmware is still not a user-friendly and user-serviceable task.  Things are getting better, my new NAS drive can download and install firmware automatically, but I’ve learned over the years not to trust the software updaters supplied with PC motherboards.

As I said at the beginning of this article, this is an issue that tends to polarise opinion.  It can easily be argued that the new features and greater stability that firmware updates often bring makes it well worth updating the firmware on a device on at least a semi-regular basis.  My argument though would be not to do so unless it’s strictly necessary, for instance if you have a stability issue or a hardware feature needs an update to switch it on, such as USB3 on a motherboard or a card slot on a tablet.

It would be very interesting to hear how you feel about firmware and embedded OS updating.  Is it something you do regularly or perhaps something that, like me, you leave and forget about unless it becomes necessary?

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© Mike Halsey (MVP) for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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