by Rouzell on April 8, 2017

Another Day, Another Bug

Image source: https://stixproject.github.io/documentation/idioms/maec-malware/

An article I posted on Facebook a few years back led me to Ars Technica, where I found this report. Where they are simultaneously lauding Microsoft’s Windows 10 and detailing how this bug works, they cite reports by McAfee and FireEye.

Quoting the article on McAfee:

We strongly suggest Office users take the following actions to protect or mitigate against this zero-day attack before Microsoft issues an official patch. We notified the Microsoft Security Response Center as soon as we found the suspicious samples, and we will continue to work with them to protect Office users.

Do not open any Office files obtained from untrusted locations.

According to our tests, this active attack cannot bypass the Office Protected View, so we suggest everyone ensure that Office Protected View is enabled.

Here is a link to the full article. Question for you techies, Will McAfee ever live down its reputation? Now that Intel owns this security software, is it legit?

And from the post on FireEye:

FireEye email and network products detect the malicious documents as: Malware.Binary.Rtf.

Attack Scenario

The attack involves a threat actor emailing a Microsoft Word document to a targeted user with an embedded OLE2link object. When the user opens the document, winword.exe issues a HTTP request to a remote server to retrieve a malicious .hta file, which appears as a fake RTF file. The Microsoft HTA application loads and executes the malicious script. In both observed documents the malicious script terminated the winword.exe process, downloaded additional payload(s), and loaded a decoy document for the user to see. The original winword.exe process is terminated in order to hide a user prompt generated by the OLE2link.

The vulnerability is bypassing most mitigations; however, as noted above, FireEye email and network products detect the malicious documents. Microsoft Office users are recommended to apply the patch as soon as it is available.

Filed Under: Advice, Community Service, Microsoft Office, Virus and Malware, Windows 10

by Rouzell on February 28, 2017

How Mousehelp at Rouzell Does SEO

Image source: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1364409

Where does one begin with applying SEO techniques? Is SEO a noun, a verb, a person? I’ve heard the term used in so many ways!

What it is is an acronym, which stands for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Even that expansion does little to enhance one’s understanding. We are NOT optimizing search engines. We optimize the content on your site so the search engines can understand the value of your web pages and provide links to same for people searching for the topic of your pages. Does that help? You tell me.

OK, enough on that. Let’s move on. How I do SEO is quite simple. I look for key words and phrases (and images) on your pages, then build links to other pages based on those words and phrases. For example, if your site is all about, let’s say, pet care, you might have pages on training, grooming, feeding, or perhaps even pet-sitting or boarding pets. There are five potential targets for new links, and if you have a page that discusses each of those topics, links to those pages would be created for those words and phrases on the home page.

OK, new example: See the phrase above that says, “SEO is quite simple?” I’ve highlighted that phrase and I’ve linked it to another post on this site. When search engines send their spiders to crawl the web, they will find that link and add it to their list of pages that discuss that topic. If I do this same thing in enough places, eventually, my content should rise in the ranking on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Yes, I just did the same thing for SERPs. By the way, that “spiders” link above takes you to my original experiment on ranking mousehelp at the top of the SERPs.

Maybe you are wondering about how we factor Social Media into all of this? Well, this post is just one example. Now, I’ll go share a link to this post on Facebook (in two places), then it goes to Twitter and then…. This is a subject for another post, another day, perhaps.

Filed Under: Advice, Beginners, Blogging, Branding, Communications, Content, SEO, Social Media

by Rouzell on November 27, 2016

Five Favorite Google Chrome Extensions

Update: 2018/01/19 – It seems I’ll have to work on alignment of images to text on this page. I’m sure there’s a plugin that will help me to do that! In the meantime, sorry for the strange view…

Let’s just look at them, left to right, shall we? My Chrome browser has over 40 of these added to it, so I’m just going to discuss those I use most often. You can get extensions that do all kinds of cool things – a couple I haven’t covered here include the ability to record a webinar and another that allows you to capture all images from a website. Handy stuff to have available at the push of a button, would you agree?

That first one is Print Friendly & PDF. I use that to remove the noise from articles where I just want the text. It allows you to download a PDF file that satisfies a minimalist approach. As the name implies, it can also save you some ink or toner and page count on your printer.

Print Friendly & PDF

ColorZilla

Next is ColorZilla and that little eyedropper allows you to take a sample of a color from any webpage. It copies the hex code to your clipboard, so you can use it to color whatever it is you are working on, like backgrounds, fonts, etc. It’s extremely useful when you are trying to match color schemes to colors in images.

MightyText – click the image to see the web page. If you are like me, you may struggle a bit to get exactly the text you want into your little smartphone SMS window. With MightText, I’m using my PC to send text, images, website links, whatever…. It is, as the name suggests, one mighty little plugin!

MightText

HubSpot Sales email tracking

The best feature of this plugin from HubSpot is the instant notification you get when someone opens your email message. Now you know they are probably available and you can follow up with a phone call. Of course, some email platforms allow you to turn on notification, but there’s no guarantee you’ll receive that message. So far, this little tool has been very helpful by allowing me to track email messages sent to clients.

That little green circle with the arrow in it is Grammarly and I’m using the free version. It pops up a message as soon as you misspell anything. This is very handy for me, as I like to think I’m as clear as possible with every word of every sentence. It also checks your punctuation and syntax, so if I add a comma or don’t finish a question with a question mark, it questions the intent of my content!

Grammarly

Back to the home page.

Filed Under: Beginners, Communications, Community Service, Content, Free Stuff, Google, Social Media, Support, Teaching, Technology Updates

by Rouzell on October 7, 2016

Adding Your Yahoo! Email Account To Outlook 2016

Hint: It’s not automatic. Too bad Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo! Way back when, in 2008….

For now, here’s what you’ll need to know to get it set up the right way in Outlook 2016.

Don’t even try to choose Auto setup…. Check that box at the bottom left and click, Next >

On the POP and IMAP screen, add your name and server details, as shown below. Copy and paste your email address, as it is also your User Name in line 6. Then, click “More Settings…” at the bottom.

On the Outgoing Server tab, check the box next to, My outgoing server….

On the Advanced tab, choose SSL from both drop-down menus and double-check the port numbers are as shown here.

Filed Under: Advice, Beginners, Community Service, email, Free Stuff, Outlook, Yahoo!

by Rouzell on September 25, 2016

8 Tips for Do-It-Yourself SEO

Image source: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Searching for Do-It-Yourself SEO Tips?

Here are 8 Tips for Do-It-Yourself SEO – written by someone who will do it for you….

If you have the time and motivation, you may be able to
avoid the cost of hiring an SEO consultant or agency.
Post good content, with appropriate links!

How to do SEO yourself:

Before you jump into Keyword Research, think about your target audience.
- Consider what phrases someone might put into their search tool when they need your product or service. Example: “Palm Springs Vacation Rentals” should be a good keyword target, if indeed, you offer rental properties in Palm Springs.
- If you are selling pet supplies in Palm Desert, then it seems logical you should target “Palm Desert pet supplies” as a keyword in your strategy.
- Remember, people searching for your product or service don’t know your business name, so use what you are selling to create your keyword lists.
How do you think people will search for your product or service?
- Obviously, we are going to focus our attention on what Google can do for you.
- There are other search tools out there that can help with your SEO efforts, e.g., Bing and Yahoo.
Consider the layout and navigation of your website. Sensible links get “SEO juice.”
- A clean, easy to navigate website, with links to pages that are named with Keywords will also help Google to understand what your site is all about.
- Sensible links means making sure that the link you create lands on a page about that topic. Your website visitors and Google will appreciate this consideration.
Post new articles – on a blog, or update pages on your site, regularly.
- It cannot be said too often. You have to create content with links back to your site.
- Updates to your site’s pages are also seen by Google as fresh material, to be sure to re-index your site and keep your pages current. Change is good for SEO.
Use Social Media to build an audience and amplify your message distribution (channels.)
- “Sharing is caring.” It also puts your links in the hands of many more people.
- The value of Social Media to your SEO efforts is immeasurable. One good post shared by hundreds or thousands of people can really help with getting attention.
Explore other online sites for opportunities to share e.g. Alignable, Medium, Quora.
- You can do a search on “guest posting opportunities” too.
- There are probably dozens of places that make sense for your brand to be seen on websites with like-minded readers. Just one post shared by many will boost your SEO juice.
- Consider posting well-crafted replies on some of the larger sites, like Huffington Post, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur, or any other publication in a genre similar to your business.
Explore Google’s resources for SEO best practices.
- This should go without saying, but Google offers a ton of good advice on how to boost your SEO.
- Google also owns YouTube, so using Video advertising for your business will truly amplify your reach across a wider audience.
- Again, search for “how to use video to promote my business” and you’ll find a wealth of information from myriad sources.
Learn as much as you can from online SEO resources, like Moz, Search Engine Land, etc.
- Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list of SEO resources, so, you are on your own to continue this education process.
- There are nearly nine million results (at this moment) for a search on: “how can I learn to do SEO” So, there should be no limit to what you can learn, with enough time and motivation.
- If you like my writing, come on over to moushelp.org, where I’ve documented my journey through learning SEO and applied it directly to this website.

Filed Under: Advice, Beginners, Blogging, Branding, Communications, Content, Google, Search, SEO

by Rouzell on September 21, 2016

TFA (Two-Factor Authentication) a.k.a., 2FA

Something I mentioned in answer to a question about hacked websites and hacked Gmail this morning, while I thought it relatively new, has (now that I think about it….) been around for many years! By that, I mean decades. Way back when, before the Internet was known to so many people, we had really cool two-factor authentication services up and running at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, in Sunnyvale, CA.

So, enough with the history, already….

Today, you can find many purveyors of this security feature. Below, I’ve included links to two articles on Google’s offering and two articles on Apple’s versions. Enjoy!

LifeHacker’s Article on TFA

Another LifeHacker Article on TFA

Two-factor authentication for Apple ID

And, one more, from Apple….

Security How-To: Enable two-factor authentication on iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan

Filed Under: Advice, Apple, Community Service, Free Stuff, Google, Security, Support, Teaching, YouTube

by Rouzell on September 20, 2016

Embedded Content Challenge

While I was in the middle of trying to hammer out an introduction to my speech (to be delivered the morning of 9/21), I wound up finding some cool video on Elizabeth Banks’s Twitter account. Shared here for your amusement:

.@DaxShepard1 doesn’t get to be the only one who loves @IMKristenBell today’s @whohahadotcom #wcw pic.twitter.com/puQsrL7TGY

— Elizabeth Banks (@ElizabethBanks) September 7, 2016

In case you were wondering: Embedded Content Challenge

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, Embedded, Twitter, Video

by Rouzell on July 12, 2016

Basic Computer Skills – Image Transfer

copy to cameradownload Transferring photos from your camera or phone to your computer.

Introduction – mousehelp@rouzell.com

1) Advance planning – make a folder to receive the images
– name it CameraDownload, or whatever you like.

Windows-E – hold down your windows key and type the letter, “e” on your keyboard.
Find your Pictures directory, open it, and make a new folder inside of it. In the video, I show how to do this with a right click on your mouse.

2) Plug in your device – camera or phone – with a USB cable.
Adjust to turn on the device – camera or smartphone – on my phone, I had to change the USB settings from charging to file transfer!

If you still have your pictures directory open, click on “This PC” or “My Computer.”
Where it lists the C drive and other drives on your PC, you should see the name of your camera or smartphone there.

3) Find your device on your computer and open the DCIM folder.

4) Change the view, so you can see the images.
Right click the mouse on the left edge of the window and choose, “large icons.”

5) Select and drag images to the folder you made in step 1, above.
Click on the first image you want to copy and use either shift or CTRL on your keyboard to select a range or multiple images.
Use the left mouse button – click down and drag your images to the target directory. Yes, there are other methods you may use to accomplish this task.

For now, print these instructions and use the link below to watch the video on my YouTube channel….

Mousehelp.com – “Compassionate care for people with computers.”
http://mousehelp.com – links – choose YouTube Channel

Filed Under: Beginners, Teaching

by Rouzell on June 25, 2016

Before You Upgrade to Windows 10

Image source: http://www.komando.com/happening-now/310826/windows-10-worries-7-things-that-wont-work-after-you-upgrade/all

OK, if you’ve been following this trend….

You may know that you should do a bit of cleanup before and after you upgrade. I’m overdue on writing the post for the post Windows 10 upgrade.

But, here’s a new wrinkle. If you are upgrading from Windows 8, you may have more work to do.

There are a few ways to restore the Start menu in Windows 8. It became almost standard practice to install Classic Shell, or some other form of start menu restoration, to solve one of the biggest complaints about Windows 8 – which was, “Hey, where’s my start menu?!?!?” Insert damning commentary about Microsoft’s lack of understanding of real human beings here.

Microsoft’s insolence aside, if you did find a way to create a start menu with some add-on software, you’ll want to remove it prior to upgrading to Windows 10. In some cases, that add-on feature makes the start menu unusable after the upgrade. I know, it’s sickening, right?

Today, I spent hours trying to recover a computer from the malady that is a Windows 10 upgrade, whether you want it or not! I’ve seen several cases where the software installs itself, even though you’ve repeatedly clicked on the, “No, no, never!” response to Microsoft’s insistence.

Oh, and just in case you don’t follow me faithfully, please, please, PUH-LEASE! Back up your data right now. Back it up to the cloud if you can. But back it up on anything you have…. Your spinning hard drive will die. There’s no doubt about this. And, your Window 10 upgrade, if it makes your computer unusable, is pretty close to a hard drive failure. Just do it. Do it now.

Filed Under: Advice, Backup, Windows 10

by Rouzell on June 13, 2016

Click Bait on Skype

Filed Under: Beginners