Anyone who has a computer than uses Windows should have at least a passing acquaintance with The Windows Club, either via the organization's website or through its presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, or YouTube.
The site is owned and operated by Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Anand C Khanse in India.
Microsoft depends on MVPs to provide a significant amount of first-line support even though these people are not employed by Microsoft or compensated in any way for their work on Microsoft's behalf. One becomes an MVP by being an "exceptional, independent community leader who shares their passion, technical expertise, and real-world knowledge of Microsoft products with others." Or, as Napoleon Bonaparte explained some years ago, "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."
The MVP program grew out of the software developer community, as the initial MVPs were some of the most active on the on-line peer support communities such as Usenet and CompuServe. It has since grown to include other types of products and other avenues of contribution.
According to Wikipedia, the MVP program was canceled and then revived: "On October 22, 1999, a Microsoft executive sent out a message announcing the cancellation of the MVP program. This may have been in response to a recent suit against AOL by its newsgroup leaders, who felt that they deserved to be paid for the time they put in on-line. After an outpouring of on-line support, including many emails sent directly to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft announced three days later that the cancellation had been rescinded."
The current Windows Club site is the successor to an earlier site created by Khanse: The first site was about Windows Vista (WinVistaClub.com) and was launched in 2007. TheWindowsClub.com was launched in 2009 and focuses on tutorials and articles about Windows 7, 8, and 10.
A help forum provides user-supplied answers to questions from other members and there's also a TWC Freeware section that's well worth your time. Be sure to read the descriptions of applications before you download them because some are intended only for a specific version of Windows. For example, there's the Ultimate Windows Tweaker: Version 4 is for Windows 10, version 3 works with Windows 8 and 8.1, and version 2.2 is for Windows 7 and Vista.
Near the top of the downloads page, you'll see this text: "BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD: Click here to scan Windows for issues causing speed loss." The link goes to tweakbit.com, which claims to be a Registry Cleaner.
If you follow the link, you'll be directed to a page that looks very much like something that would be on Microsoft's website. That's warning sign number one.
If, instead of following the link, you open the tweakbit.com website, you'll find that you're eligible for a marvelous offer "today only". Instead of paying $240 for something that looks a lot like snake oil, you can purchase TweakBit's PC Suite today for just $100.
I know nothing about TweakBit, but the marketing techniques cause me to suspect that the operation isn't entirely trustworthy.
So although the applications downloaded directly from The Windows Club's site are legitimate, some of the offers are a bit shady. The download page for TheUltimate Windows Tweaker for Windows 10, for example explicitly states "You are now downloading Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4 for Windows 10. This download is being provided to you free of charge and does not include any third-party offers."
I downloaded TUWT and a read-me file explained that Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a freeware Tweak UI Utility for tweaking and optimizing Windows 10, 32-bit & 64-bit. It does not require an install. All I need to do is run the EXE file. To uninstall it, I can just delete the directory that was created by unzipping the download file.
The first thing the application does is create a restore point. This is a good safety measure.
The application lists general areas of interest on the left and, after you select one of those, you'll see one or more tabs at the top.
The Windows Club downloads section lists more than 70 applications. Some of these are intended to for specific versions of Windows and the site frequently reminds users to create a restore point before installing new applications.
Specific sections exist on the site for News, Downloads, Security, Edge & IE, Office, Windows Phones, Deals (read the fine print carefully), and the Forum.
Have you ever hired a company or visited a restaurant based on stellar reviews and had such a horrible experience that you wondered how the company managed to accumulate even one good review, much less hundreds of them? The answer: Perhaps they cheated.
Brian Krebs (Krebs on Security) has written about the problem several times. There are people who are willing to write and sell 5-star reviews and some of the larger organizations such as Amazon don't like it. The site Fiverr.com offers excellent reviews for products and Amazon is working to eliminate the fake reviews. The US Federal Trade Commission has also investigated the issue.
Krebs writes, "Before you hire someone to do work for you, don't just pick the company that comes up high in the search results on Google; unfortunately, that generally guarantees nothing other than the company is good at marketing. Take the time to really research the companies you wish to hire before booking them for jobs."
But that's not the only challenge. In a recent blog post, Krebs describes organizations that create phantom companies, sometimes hundreds of them, with various names, addresses, and phone numbers. Anyone who attempts to contact these bogus businesses will be routed to companies that pay for the leads. So you might think that you're dealing with a company that supposedly has great ratings but find that your information has actually been sold to a fly-by-night organization.
The report says that this practice is common among services that are delivered at the buyer's home, such as locksmiths, cleaning services, companies that replace windshields, and garage door repair operations.
Check out Krebs full report and, as he says, be careful!
The antique adage "if it seems to good to be true, it probably is" applies double to the Internet and triple to Facebook. You see an ad offering a free case of wine, a free airline flight, a free television .... Do you click it? Not if you're smart.
Some organizations offer legitimate prizes. Coleman's, a fish store in Wheeling, makes what are probably the best fish sandwiches in the Northern Hemisphere, possibly in the world. The company has offered shrimp trays and other reasonable prizes to users picked at random from those who like the company's page.
Key points: Relatively small prizes (a shrimp tray instead of dinner for 100 of your closest friends) and offered to a small number of people (one winner of a drawing). If you see an offer that says a company is offering free cases of wine to everyone who likes their page (and only 240 cases remain to be given away, so you'd better hurry), you can be sure it's a phony.
Legitimate companies can be hurt by these practices when the "winners" get nothing and complain, but the companies are victims, too. They have no connection with the fraudsters who try to benefit from using a well known name.
Click the link and you'll probably be prompted to provide a lot of personal information such as your name, address, e-mail address, and phone number. Consider yourself lucky if that's all you're asked to give up. With that information, the scammers can sell your information to other crooks who will contact you with other offers that are too good to be true.
It doesn't hurt to be both skeptical and a bit paranoid whenever you encounter an offer.
See more information on the Malwarebytes blog.
Western Digital and SanDisk announced this week that Western Digital will acquire all of the outstanding shares of SanDisk for a combination of cash and stock. The $19 billion deal values SanDisk common stock at $86.50 per share, which is about $7 above the current price of the stock. Both companies' boards of directors have approved the acquisition.
Western Digital says that this is the next step in converting the company into a storage solutions company, not just a disk manufacturer. Western Digital will double its market and expand its participation the quickly growing non-volatile RAM storage market. Disk drives are still the least expensive way to store data, but solid-state disk storage is growing and disk manufacturing is expected to continue shrinking.
The companies say that the combination creates significant value for both SanDisk and Western Digital shareholders. Western Digital has a successful record of merger and acquisition activity. SanDisk is one of the leading manufacturers of flash storage devices.
Western Digital's and SanDisk's combined product lines include hard disk drives, solid-state drives, cloud data center storage solutions, and flash storage solutions. Both companies have robust research and development operations with more than 15,000 combined patents issued or pending worldwide.
Toshiba has been a long-term strategic partner to SanDisk for 15 years and the joint venture will continue.
The transaction will be financed by a mix of cash, new debt financing, and Western Digital stock. The transaction is subject to approval by SanDisk shareholders. It is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2016.
On-line bullying is unpleasant but persistent and the results can be disastrous. Some children who have been bullied were so distressed that they killed themselves. The Goodby Silverstein & Partners advertising agency, the Ad Council, Adobe, and several others are working together to fight bullying.
It may seem trivial, but one of the key components is an emoji that was released with the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system. It's just an image of a speech bubble with an eye in the center. It signifies "I am a witness."
The Unicode-standard emoji is unusual in that it has been created for a social cause. It's included with 150 new emoji for Apple devices, but not yet available for Android. Android users, though, can download a keyboard app designed without cost by Snaps, a company that specializes in these apps.
Here's how widespread the problem is: Nearly a quarter of all teens say they've been bullied during the past year. Research was conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics. About 15% of teens say they've been bullied on-line, but the good news is that nearly 60% say the bullying stopped when a peer intervened.
That's the point of the "I am a witness" program.
The Ad Council and the companies involved are donating time and resources to promote the campaign. Adobe's chief marketing officer, Ann Lewnes, saw a video by Lee Hirsch on the subject and approached Adobe's management about finding ways to expand the message to a larger audience.
