Software and Tools - Social

A large part of people being online is the various 'social' applications.  For myself the major ones I use is Twitter and Facebook.  There are others, but, the basics I will cover here should be applicable to the other sites/applications.  I use Twitter mainly to quickly comment and notify about various events and information that I find of use.  I have the account linked to my Facebook so that my friends and family can get the information at the same time.  I like Twitter as it is small enough for my low end smart phone to run without a problem.  Facebook to be blunt, is a pig on resources and when I did have it running on my phone it would take 5-10 seconds at times to do a simple action like posting an update.  Facebook runs well on my tablet and my laptop and that is the main way I socialize electronically with friends and family.  I use both to supplement my contacting friends and family and it does not replace face-2-face.  I like them both as I can quickly set up photo albums of events and quickly share them for those who could not make it to the event.

One of the first things you should do when joining is to read the terms and service.  I know they are extremely long, boring and full of legalese, but, you should be aware of the basics just-in-case there is a problem in the future.

Settings

Next up is to check the settings, especially the privacy settings to make sure you share only what you are comfortable with and turn off the rest.

Facebook Android Client Settings

Facebook Android Client Privacy Settings

Twitter Android Client Settings

Twitter Windows 10 Client Settings

Facebook Windows 10 Client Settings

As you can see above the applications have a similar look-and-feel and the web browser rendering looks very similar.  Take 15-30 minutes and navigate through the various settings and read up on what they do and then set your account to what you want people to know about you and the marketing firms gets to see.

Once you are set up then you can think about what to post.  What ever you post always assume that your employer can see all your postings so exercise some prudence on what you post!  You may have your account locked down so that only friends and family can see what you put up, but, if they re-post or share and they don't exercise good judgement on their privacy settings they can expose what you put up.  I have seen people put up photos of events that to put it kindly was less than a positive image they wanted to project socially and professionally.  When in doubt ask yourself - what would mom think if she sees it?

Security

On the security side of things be careful on what links you click, especially in Facebook.  I have noticed a large increase in what is claimed to be news (or at least what people want to you think is news), but, is at best clickbait or trolling and at worst a link to sites that may contain scripts that can infect your machine.  Best thing I can say is to exercise caution with links to news.  If the articles come from friends and family still exercise caution, but, if it is a promoted article then be very suspicious.  Most of the clickbait sites are there to make money by showing you a lot of ads and the content at best is misleading.  For the fake news sites they tend to show to people articles written in a way to inflame them (or troll them).  Personally when I get unsolicited 'ads' I click the drop down and pick the option telling Twitter/Facebook that they are not interesting.  Before I re-post a tweet or a Facebook news story I check out the article and review it.  If it is clickbait, inflammatory or misleading I just ignore it and not give them additional views by re-posting.

When I am done with my session in Twitter and/or Facebook I log out of the account.  It is a bit of a pain, but, if for some reason some gets access to my phone, tablet of PC they don't get easy access to my accounts.  When I leave the machine I also lock it!  It takes only a few seconds to unlock the machine and then log back in, but, if someone gets access to that device they can destroy my account and credibility in a few seconds.

Another thing I strongly recommend is a good anti-virus package.  It may not stop 100% of the nasty virus/Trojans out there, but, it is another layer of defense to make it harder to get access to your device.  You can read my short blog on this topic to give you an idea of what is out there.

Adding friends/family/businesses

One of the other things I am very careful of is adding people to Twitter or Facebook when I get a request.  It does not matter who it is doing the request!  All friends/family get vetted as to who they are before I add them.  I have received requests from people claiming to be a friend or family, but, when I check with the person directly I find out they didn't make the request.  When that happens I have the friend or family member report it to Twitter or Facebook and I do the same.  On Twitter I regularly get requests to add people and I  review them very carefully before I add them.  For a while the requests were from very questionable accounts and the content and images were not the type I wanted associated with my account.  In the past several months I think Twitter has gotten better nuking the accounts quickly as it is a very rare event when I get such a questionable request.  Every couple of weeks I review who I have linked to and those who link to me and verify that the accounts are still legit and the content is what I want associated with me.  I have found that some Twitter accounts looks legit for a month or two and then the true nature shows itself.

Images

On uploading images I try to be careful of what is uploaded, especially when someone tells me they don't want a particular photo posted.  I also resize the image to around 1024x768 or 2048x1536.  Not everyone has high speed internet and at those resolutions the image is still good enough and is small enough for them to download quickly.  I keep the originals on my machine so if they want the original image I can send them that when requested.

Backups:

Twitter does have the ability to backup your posts.  The link on how to do that is here.  Facebook has a similar facility and the link on how to do that is here.  I strongly recommend that you do this now and then.  If for any reason you lose access to your account you have a backup.  When you backup your accounts you may also want to think about how to backup your phone/tablet/PC at the same time.  Machines do fail and I remember a person calling me to see if I restore their hard drive.  They had thousands of images and a lot of the pictures of their children when they were small was on the failed drive and they had NO backups.  I couldn't restore a lot of images, but, I could restore several thousand images.  They now have an external USB drive they backup their files to on a semi-regular basis now.  External USB hard drives are fairly inexpensive and capacities are in the multi-terabyte range now. 

Software and Tools - Antivirus

The next thing on the list of things to do is a good antivirus package after you install your favourite browser and before you start serious web surfing.  Again, this is a personal preference and it all depends on what you want, need and are willing to pay for.  There are those who say it is all snake oil and useless.  They are welcome to their opinion and in my not so humble opinion it is needed.  It is another level of defense for you that will stop the known nasty software out there.  Why make it easy for hackers to take over your system and use your bandwidth to take down sites, steal your identity?  Will it be 100% effective, maybe not, but if they want to get into my system they will need to work on it and not have an open door.

There are a number of sites that do reviews and I have a list five sites I know.  There are a lot more, but, I don't know them, their methodology and if they got paid to do the reviews. 

• AV Test org
• Consumer Affairs
• PC Advisor
• PC MAG 
• PC World

For myself I was looking for an package that works in

• Windows (I still have a machine left running Windows 10)
• Android for our tablets via the Google Play store.
• Android phone.  This is a low end model with limited resources.
• Linux.

I found one common package that works very well in Windows and Android, but, right now my distro does not offer the Linux version of that product.  It does not slow down my machines, especially the low end phone and did catch crap that tried to get installed when someone sent me an email.  Avast works well enough, has a free version that does most of what I want and need.  The version does show ads, but, they are small and unobtrusive for me and don't slow my systems down.  For Linux I am looking at ClamAV as that is available in the distro of Linux I am using.  UBUNTU community has a good small page of various packages you can check out.

The Android screens looks like the following:

The Windows screens looks like the following:

Please remember, just because you are running an antivirus program you can surf wherever you want, click on anything, install anything and open questionable emails.  Nothing is 100% and safe surfing and email practices are required.  Antivirus software just gives you another level of defense.  You also should be keeping your software up to date and making regular backups (a future blog).

Web designers need to follow standards

Web designers need to learn web standards and design their pages to respect them.  Too often it appears the pages are designed for Windows and IE using cookie cutter templates.  The world has evolved and people are using Linux, OS/X, Android and other operating systems with different browsers and the pages work poorly if at all.

These are the web sites of major companies like Best Buy, Staples, Walmart and Canadian Tire.  They have the money to invest in a well designed site, but, many choices they made in their web design break expected functionality of various web elements or have serious errors in their JavaScript code.

Examples:

Check boxes

Just about all of the sites refresh the page when you click on a box even if you want to click several they force a refresh after each click.  Wait until the user picks all of the options and then have a refresh button when they are done.  Best Buy is the worst when I am looking for an item there are refreshes every time I select a box.  this is time consuming as something that takes me several minutes to do should take only seconds.  One other thought on this.  Every time you do a page refresh your server gets hammered multiple times along with the database.  That time used to service every little check box could be used servicing another client.  Throwing more hardware, software and communication pipes only serve to enrich the providers of the same.

Product availability

Best Buy I am looking at you here!  When I finally get through check box hell I see a lot of products are 'not available'.  If it isn't available then don't show it, or, have a checkbox for 'Available locally' or 'Can be shipped to your location'.  Also, allow a check box to remove 'ONLINE ONLY'.  When I am looking I want to know if it is in stock and I can go later to pick it up at the store.

 

Forced page refreshes

Canadian Tire I don't know if you are aware, but, when I select a product it refreshes itself about every 30 seconds and there is nothing I can do to stop that behaviour.  It is highly annoying as I am trying to read product information or reviews and after the refresh I am back up at the top of the page again. This was on my Windows box and Linux box using Firefox and Chrome.  I didn't try IE as that is Windows only.

Forced to provide a location

Look, I am just wanting to check out the product, features and reviews.  If I am interested then I will let you know roughly where I am.  There are sites that ask me to provide a location every time I change a page.  Ask once then remember my choice!

Auto-play videos

Come on, enough already.  I don't need loud commercials that I have to turn off (sometimes they can't be turned off).  I am paying for the bandwidth usage not you and sometimes I am on my tablet or cell phone and those ads brings them to their knees for minutes at a time while trying to play those videos.  If I am interested I will click on it.  Can't take the hint?  Well that is why I am running various blocking ad-ones in my browser and I suspect that is the reason why so many others do so too.  Sites that respect me I turn off the blockers.

Massive scripts

Now and then I look at the code for a given web page and over 80% of it is for scripts and images and very little is for text.  That is a massive overhead for stuff that most of the time isn't needed.  This takes time to download and storage on the servers. Have the developers review the code and if they don't understand what is being done then pull the code until they know what it does.

Review your page before releasing to the public 

Staples is at fault here.  To often the page has issues rendering (sometimes it is a blank page).  Sometimes it is IE that has issues others it is either Firefox or Chrome that have issues.  How about testing your pages before they are released in multiple operating systems and browsers.  Check for error messages!  I checked several times and I had page after page of errors in JavaScript.  Really? A client facing page and you have that many pages of errors?  

What I would like?

Well, how about learning what web standards are?  Learn some of the basics of HTML, forms and other design elements rather than letting the web page designer do the work.  The software may help, but, you really need to know the basics of good page design.  It is like giving a grade one student a calculator to help them learn math.  They may know enough to punch the buttons, but, they don't really learn how to do it and will never know if there is a mistake and if they don't have a calculator they can't do math.

Have ordinary people test out and review your site (or updates).  Ask them to do specific tasks and watch what they do and then ask them what they liked and disliked and what caused them problems.  To keep it real world make sure the machines are not the fastest up-to-date machines and have a slower network connection.  Use multiple operating systems, browsers and devices to make it more like how your customers access your web site.

Where you have feedback pages make sure that the feedback is reviewed and acted upon.  I don't know if senior management is even aware of what feedback is given, but, I suspect it may be just the positive feedback and most of the critical comments are not sent up the food chain.

Finally, KEEP IT SIMPLE.  You are trying to sell a product not fluff web pages.  All of the pretty images, sound, colours are a distraction most of the time and most consumers are tuning it out or using software to shut it down.  Make it 'How may I help you' and steer the consumer to your products, product information and reviews, pricing and availability.

Double check your email address when registering anything

Looks like someone down in Florida bought a new cellphone.  How do I know?  As part of the registration they supplied an email address so they can get notifications, like their PIN number.  The problem is they used my account name and I got the notification of the cell phone number, plan information, PIN number, name, address.  I called Virgin Mobile USA and explained things and they started the process of trying to contact the customer, change the email address and lock the account from using my email account.  The person at the other end was very nice, professional and friendly and customer service is why I like Virgin Mobile.

This isn't the first time that something like this happened.  A couple of years ago I got a rather nasty, profane email from a woman in Ireland who thought she was venting at her ex.

For the Virgin Mobile phone I logged into the account as I wanted to make sure that I wasn't a victim of identity theft and they were using my credit card for their phone.  Fortunately it appears that I wasn't.

The thing is that when you register anything and they ask you for an email account make sure that you provide the correct one or someone else could be getting email that you don't want anyone else to get.

Main login

Checking to see if my Credit Card was used

Has customer service died, or, are businesses that arrogant?

 Sigh, companies are doing less and less for consumers and charging more for what little they keep in stock.  They must think that with limited (in their eyes) competition we have to take what they offer and be grateful for that.

• Tried to buy a scanner, no scanner, but, we do carry muti-function printers with a scanner.  I told them I didn't want a MFP, I wanted a scanner and they pointed me to a competitor up the road!  Smart move Best Buy!
• Tried to buy a replacement drive for a laptop. No we don't carry those, but, we do have inexpensive laptops if you are interested.  They also mentioned the same computer shop up the street from where I live where I could buy a replacement drive. Way to go The-Source!
• Next up, I tried to buy replacement batteries for my wife's watches. "No we can't open up the back and replace the batteries" according to the sales person.  Another win for The-Source!

The-Source used to be Radio Shack until they got bought out by another company. I loved Radio Shack as they carried a great selection of materials and they knew their stuff and were willing to help.  The-Source is carrying less and less items that would be of use to me and the prices tend to be higher than ALL of the competitors. To rephrase what their web page has at the top "They don't have that" or "You can't have that".

This weekend capped off a perfect several weeks where I wanted to purchase an item.  I wanted to get my wife a simple Android phone from Virgin Mobile.  Pay for the phone up front and go pay-as-you-go.  The first place we went to was Best Buy and for five minutes we were ignored by the sales staff, I guess they had more important personal business to do rather than make a sale.  We went across the street to the mall and The-Source.  I was approached by a sales person quickly (yay) and I told him what I wanted.  He told me "They can't do that".  Excuse me?  Last year we got two Virgin Mobile phones, paid up-front and went pay-as-you-go at that same store.

It looks like I will be stopping in at the Virgin Mobile store in the downtown mall and buy a phone there and go pay-as-you-go and Best Buy and The-Source will get $0.00 for their effort and Virgin Mobile gets all of the money.  I like Virgin Mobile as they give good value for the money, very helpful when I call with a question/issue and know what customer service is!

Update 2016/03/15:

I stopped in at the Virgin Mobile store yesterday at lunch in the Rideau Centre here in Ottawa.  As soon as I walked in I was greeted and asked if there was anything he could do.  I explained I was looking for an Android phone on a pay-as-you-go plan.  No problem, he asked any specific model or price range.  I replied max $250.  He had the model in the range and allowed me to check it out.  I liked what I saw and the specs so I told him it was a sale.  A few minutes at the checkout, buying a bit of time so the wife had a few minutes call time to start with.  From the time I entered, paperwork and leaving it was max 20 minutes.  I liked the service and the attitude "How can we help you" and "We can do that".

I brought the phone home and my wife LOVES the phone.  It fits in her right hand easily and is very easy for her to use.  That is very important as she had a stroke and has problems using her left hand.  She was able to phone home and my cell phone without any problems and launched Google calendar for one of her appointments!  This is all that I wanted to get for her and two businesses lost an easy sale!

Thank you Virgin Mobile for making a simple task simple!