Anwyay, I had a need to take a screenshot of an app I use and had no idea how to do this. As ever in these situations, Google was my friend.

I discovered that for HTC Android based phones you need to:

“hold the power button & then click on your home button”.

A short camera noise will alert you to the success of this and the image itself is on your film roll.

That’s it.

HTC Screen Grab is a post from: Church Techy

I freely admit I don’t know everything, buy then Google is only a web connection away and most of what they require is relatively easy stuff. Things like my mouse is not working – or my screen is an odd size – or I have no power and so on.

But today’s phonecall was not one I was expecting – or rather it started as and eMail. The main contact there sent me an email with a subject matter of “XP Arrrrrrrrrrr” – which I took to be the start of an ‘I hate XP eMail’. But no, read out the second word of that subject and you get a word commonly associated to pirates.

As in the swashbuckling adventure types.

And not as in the hacker types.

Knowing that all the PCs in the Church have a valid license and even to the point where they have spare capacity I was very surprised to hear that one of the recently rebuilt PCs was coming up saying it was “Windows XP Pirate Edition”.

And I was even more surprised when I turned up to check to find this is indeed the case.

Well apart from the moral implications there are all sorts of issues such as security of the network, etc that now come into play so I have immediately quarantined the box until such a time as I can investigate it and rebuild it.

However, I do know how it happened. I’d asked one of the newer church members (who’s into IT) to rebuild it as I was too busy to do it myself. I’d even said not to worry about the license key as my church contact had that and could supply it when required.

Lesson learnt:

1. find the time
2. sometimes trusting others doesn’t work

One can pray for help. One can even trust that help.

But it doesn’t always work out.

OS Pirates is a post from: Church Techy

So let’s start off with their own words:

Passing exams required towards getting your CCNA certification is easy, using uCertify’s top rated test Prepkits. Here’s how:

 - Full coverage of exam objectives (updated 2011) including Hardware, Security, Networking, and Operating Systems
- Practice questions that follow the exam pattern
- Comprehensive practice questions modeled on real world scenarios
- Detailed answer explanations for both correct and incorrect answer options
- Chapter by chapter study guide and study notes for exam 640-802, 640-816, and 640-822 not only helps you pass the exam, you actually learn the stuff you are supposed to know!
- Interactive Quizzes

They also state you get a years worth of updates for the price and one other ‘unique’ feature is the ability to ask / interact with other students and / or UCertify staff.

Whilst all this is laudable the reality is that the price is cheap and there is a probably a good reason for this.

Let me clarify by saying that the package could well help you become CCNA certified, but you’re going to need to put in some effort outside of this tool to do so. It is at best a dis-jointed affair that doesn’t guide one through from the basics to the end result. You have to navigate an interface that is not intuitive and doesn’t lead you – as I believe it should.

On top of this, the ‘extras’ I mentioned maybe of some value or not.

I couldn’t find anywhere that stated how often you get updates, just that you are entitled to a year of them. Secondly, in my usage I could see some questions from other users of the prep kit but nowhere did I see any answers from uCertify staff. If that’s to be the case, then they should just remove this feature.

One feature that does appear to work well is their exams and the method of tracking the results and what you need to brush up on. However, even this has a shortcoming in that it doesn’t have any simulation type questions which (it seems to me) are one of the biggest stumbling blocks mosy examinees face.

Ultimately I can’t recommend this product to anybody who is coming at the CCNA cold – and by that I mean with no knowledge or prior experience of the subject. If however, like me, you want to brush up on or take some tests because you need to re-sit the exam (as it’s changed out of all recognition in 3yrs) then this may be worth the $150.

That’s got to be your call.

CCNA Studies is a post from: Church Techy

But yes, there is a catch. There’s always a catch.

The catch is that you need to have a device running iOS – if you happen to be one of these then simply download and install Box.net’s mobile app before

If you’re looking for some free cloud storage (and who wouldn’t like a little extra space to sync and backup their files?) Box.net is running a promotion wherein iOS users can download and install their mobile app for a 50GB bonus. In their words, here’s the low down:

This promotion only runs for 50 days, so get your free space in the cloud by following these steps:

1. Visit the app store and download the Box app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch
2. Log in to your account or register for a new one directly from the app
3. Start sharing and collaborating in the cloud

It’s that simple. The 50 days end December 1st 2011.

Oh, and the free account you’ll need as a minimum gives you 5Gb.

50Gb Cloud Storage for Free is a post from: Church Techy

In fact long before it got commercialised.

However one of the things it was never easy to do with PGP was encrypt what I’ll call ad-hoc communications and web based email. So trying to encrypt IM conversations or facebook messages or … well you take your pick of what … was just a nightmare that required complicated hoop jumping measures or specific client software.

Now encipher.it have come out with a simple, effective and strong method for doing all of the above and more.

Simply visit the site, bookmark the link they point you at (a bit of javascript) and when you need to encrypt your webmail simply create your email as normal but prior to sending click the javascript link, enter your chosen encryption key which can be as simple or as complicated as you like and your text become garbage to all intents and purposes.

So an email that says:

This is a test

becomes:

 This message is encrypted. Visit https://encipher.it to learn how to deal with it.

EnCt2a24aebb4948433aa3bdae40c2dbccc2ad02f3c7fa24aebb4948433aa3bdae40cbE6vPop02QB
S7uL3kk5hgkVFeK0UnVYQronPlg6z10g=IwEmS

The only other thing you need to organise is getting the encryption key to the person at the other end.

And as for security, well all the processing is done locally in your browser.

Sorted.

Encrypted Webmail is a post from: Church Techy

Safe in our use and safe from intruders accessing our data or utilising our bandwidth to do untold things. Restricting physical access is now old hat, we need to be aware that anyone sat in a car outside our house, our church or our business could be leeching off of our wifi.

So what to do?

First off, you need to ensure that your equipment is reasonably new. At least new enough to be running the latest standards even if not the fastest speeds.

Secondly you must, let me say that again, must use encryption and here you need to go as new as you can. Whatever you do (unless it is the only option) don’t choose WEP – as this has long since been shown to be weak and vulnerable to any semi-determined leecher. If you do have to use WEP then my suggestion is twofold – either replace the hardware or change the password weekly.

Third; don’t bother disabling SSID broadcasting. It makes no difference. Those who promote this as a part of wifi security either don’t understand wifi or are being wilfully ignorant or are promoting security by obscurity. I’ve discussed not disabling SSID before and in response to other blog posts and the usual pat answer I get goes something like: “well every step helps”.

Well shutting your front door helps, but it won’t stop a burglar checking to see if it’s open. In short, for your wifi card to be able to talk to your wifi router, then the router HAS (let me repeat that … has) to send the SSID. In fact the router will broadcast your SSID in 1 of 5 ways and your “disabling its broadcast” merely turns off one way. Even my maths tells me that’s still 4 ways to discover your SSID. Sure, when I turn on wifi search on my smartphone it won’t show your SSID but give me a few seconds more (and I’m the good guy here) and I will know what it is.

That’s it, simple steps really.

1. Newest or reasonably new hardware with up to date firmware.
2. Use the strongest encryption possible.

Now, go do it and protect that network of yours.

Protect That WiFi is a post from: Church Techy

And I have good reason to do so.

But what about your website? Do you ever consider backing up that? What if it your web hoster had major issues or even went into receivership? How would you rebuild your site elsewhere?

More specifically, how would you do it quickly?

Well if your site happens to run from a cpanel account then let me introduce SiteAutoBackup to you. You simply provide your cpanel details, set a schedule and it does the rest. Should the worst happen and you need to restore then you simply download the most recent backup file and provide it to your hoster (or new one) and they restore and suddenly your site is back up and running.

Unfortunately they no longer do a free 1Gb account but they do a 1Gb account for $20 a year or a 5Gb one for $50. And occasionally they even put sales on where you can get a 5Gb account at a permanent reduced price.

Backup Your cPanel Site is a post from: Church Techy

Well I for one have long sung the merits of needing strong passwords and tear my hair out when family and friends wonder why their PC security [ha] has been breached. Translate this attitude into the Corporate world and it isn’t hard to imagine that your data isn’t guaranteed to be safe.

That said, these things will make geeks in charge get very twitchy about protecting their systems – and rightly so.

So when I or acknowledged security experts tell you to choose a long, complicated & secure password then you will sit up and listen. Won’t you?

And that password will contain numbers and punctuation (if the website or application allows them) as well as letters in BOTH cases. Furthermore that password will consist of 10 or more digits. Finally that password won’t include a recognisable word, will it? Why? Well it’s a simple matter of mathmatics really. A password which consists of only letters drawn from a 26-character pool (a-z) is so much easier to crack than if the range of characters is 52 (a-z and A-Z) or 62 (including digits too). Then add punctuation and the combinations go astronomical.

So have you ever wondered how secure your favourite password is then wander over here: howsecureismypassword.net and as you type, the indicator is updated after every character to tell you, approximately, how long a desktop PC would typically take to crack it.

Worried yet?

But before you go all mental trying to follow my rules take some heart. I have one standard password I use on websites where I don’t care if my ID gets taken over or lost. Places such as forums or blogs that require a login before I can leave a comment – this does make life easier but that standard password is crackable in 87yrs according to the above website. But one of my typical 14 character passwords will take 32 Billion years to crack.

Take away one punctuation mark and that same password becomes breakabl ein 87 days – so it’s simple. Add some punctuation.

Now, how secure is your password?

How Secure Is Your Password is a post from: Church Techy