Tech Funnies

How to Recycle Your Technology

Editors note: Since today is Earth Day I thought I would publish  this article   

ARTICLE DATE:  04.20.11

By  Eric Griffith    PC magazine

We love our computers and electronics. That is, until they stop working. Then these computers and their peripherals, from printers to monitors, not to mention your handhelds, batteries, and accessories, often become digital garbage.

These things aren’t made to last after all. (No computer or phone maker is going to mind if you buy an upgrade every year or two.) Consequently, all of this junk ends up in the back of your closet or stored in your garage, collecting dust, because you aren’t sure what to do with the stuff. The best thing to do with this growing accumulation of old electronic equipment is to either donate or recycle it.

Donate your old computers and phones whenever you can to groups that will fix and clean them up and then put them back to good use. Even the oldest computer, something you consider the most obsolete of digital dinosaurs, can probably be used by someone.

There are times, though, when a device is too far gone and there’s nothing else that can be done to bring it back to life again. Even a charity doesn’t want your unusable junk. That junk—called e-waste—is potentially dangerous. Electronics are filled with “heavy metals” (read: toxic metals) and carcinogenic chemicals that are fine when you’re using them, but not so much when sitting in a landfill or, worse, when people try to recycle them incorrectly. Thousands of tons of e-waste is shipped overseas yearly to countries like China and India where it gets dumped and maybe burned, which puts mercury and lead into the air.

So on this 41st Earth Day, we want to point out the places you can take your old or even dead electronics, so they can end up either being used by someone in need or safely recycled.

The Best Places to Recycle Tech

e-Stewards
This program is run by the Basel Action Network (BAN), a non-profit dedicated to confronting environmental injustice caused by toxic chemicals worldwide. BAN helped expose the atrocious things happening in Asia and Africa caused by the so-called “recycling” of e-waste exported there. With help from some corporations and citizens, it created e-Stewards to address what it says the government doesn’t: “prevent the toxic materials in electronics from continuing to cause long term harm to human health and the environment.” BAN and its group of e-Stewards Recyclers even recently called on the United States to halt all export of e-waste generated by the federal government alone; BAN says the feds buy around 500,000 new computers a year, making it “the largest source of electronic waste in the world.” Washington should lead by example. By checking out the list of e-Stewards Recyclers on the site, you can be reassured that you are taking your digital detritus to someone you can absolutely trust to recycle it in the safest way possible.

Best Buy
The nationwide electronics retailer has, arguably, the best recycling program going. Its Web site details what exactly it’ll take (small tube TVs, Bluetooth headsets, software, UPS battery backups, to name a few) and what it won’t (projection TVs, rooftop dish antennas, hard drives, old cassettes and 8-tracks, go figure.) Small items such as ink/toner, old cables, and batteries can go in recycling kiosks right by the door.

The list of items it’ll take is tremendously long, and even if it won’t take it in store, it might pick it up. That goes for several large kitchen appliances, plus old CRT televisions over 32-inches in size. Check the listing for your state, however, as what Best Buy accepts could differ depending on local laws.

What’s the catch? Not much. You can take in up to 3 items per day. It doesn’t matter if you bought it there or not. It’s mostly free: if you bring in a small tube TV or CRT monitor, they charge you $10 to take it… then turn right around and give you a $10 Best Buy gift card. Again, state rules can apply.

Even smarter: check Best Buy’s Trade-In calculator to see if what you think is junk could be used to offset buying some new toys.

Staples
Bring in as many as 10 ink/toner cartridges per month and you get $2 for each in Staple Rewards to spend. Staples will also take any other old office electronics, like computers, monitors, and printers, for $10 per large piece of equipment. If the electronics are smaller, such as input devices, phones or cameras, the recycling is free. For items with the Dell brand, all recycling is free. Staples does not take TVs or big copiers.

Staples also offers a service called EasyTech to move data from an old computer you want to get rid off to a new PC. Plus, it sells a line of Sustainable Earth products, such as remanufactured toner cartridges.

Office Depot
At Office Depot, you can buy what it calls a Tech Recycling Box. You can put as much electronic junk in one of these boxes as you want, as long as it will close. Then bring the box back to the store unsealed and drop it off for inspection. Office Depot will ship it off to waste management partners to do the rest. It promises to break the devices down to components of glass, plastic, copper and aluminum to reuse. The boxes come in different sizes and costs: small (8x15x18 inches) is $5, medium (20x16x16 inches) is $10, and large (24x18x18 inches) is $15. Check out its FAQ PDF of items it accepts and items doesn’t (which includes such obvious items as devices covered in or leaking liquid and anything radioactive).

Mobile phones, PDAs, batteries, and ink/toner cartridges can be dropped off for free with any sales associate, however. Or if you go to OfficeDepot.com, you can buy boxes—for the price of $0.00, including delivery to your home—to directly recycle laser toner and inkjet cartridges by mail.

E-Cycle
It’s no surprise that the company that was on site at MacWorld to take old iPhones when Verizon Wireless announced it would sell the current iPhone 4 is in the market to get your old iProducts. E-Cycle will buy iPhones and iPads from individuals or organization. Just go to its site, tell it what kind of device you have, and it’ll generate a quote. It’ll even take broken devices. You simply mail it in a pre-paid box E-Cycle provides, and then payment shows up in the mail. I got a quote of $145 for a working condition first generation iPad with Wi-Fi and 16GB memory; $315 for an iPhone 4 with 16GB, which is more than most people pay for them brand new (with a contract). E-Cycle will take other phones if you ask, but won’t pay you for them.

Call2Recycle is a non-profit program specifically for collecting and safely disposing of rechargeable batteries. Visit the site and enter your zip code and it will display any number of retailers that have a Call2Recycle drop off location. Partners include Lowes, Home Depot, RadioShack, Sears, and Best Buy, to name a few. This goes for not just your electronics, but all those rechargeable batteries on your tools and flashlights as well—none of them are doing us any favors in the landfill. Plus, it’s free. Precious metals are recovered from the dead batteries and turned into useful stuff. For example, the kitchen flatware you eat with may once have been powering your drill or phone.

Recycle with Computer Manufacturers and Mobile Carriers

Computer Manufacturers Most will take their own stuff, but how you go about it depends on the maker. You can find a quick chart on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Plug-In to eCycling site.

Mobile Carriers
Every one of the four major mobile phone service providers will take cell phones back for recycling, either to dispose of safely or, better yet, to refurbish for special use as 911 emergency phones for those in need, such as abuse victims or active duty military soldiers. Just remember to erase the data from your phone before you drop it off. If it’s from AT&T or T-Mobile, take out the phone’s SIM card, too. All of the carriers’ efforts are also part of the EPA Plug-In to eCycling campaign.

The 10 Cleverest Ways to Use Linux to Fix Your Windows PC

Click link below to read the entire article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/31804/the-10-cleverest-ways-to-use-linux-to-fix-your-windows-pc

Google Turns Office Into Google Apps Client

With software to subvert Office and a test drive program to tempt businesses into the cloud, Google is aiming right at Microsoft’s heart.

By Thomas Claburn,  InformationWeek
Feb. 24, 2011
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229219360

Continuing its campaign to turn Microsoft customers to Google Apps customers, Google on Thursday released Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office and announced a new partner program that allows businesses to test drive its online applications.

Initially released as a limited preview in November 2010, Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available worldwide. It allows users to create documents in Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, or 2010, and then to share and sync them through Google Apps.

From the user’s point of view, it’s a way to add Google’s real-time editing and collaboration capabilities to Office. From Google’s point of view, it’s a way to spread the cloud religion.

“What Google Cloud Connect really does is gives companies a set of training wheels to learn how to embrace the cloud with the tools they’re using today,” said Google group product manager Shan Sinha in a phone interview.

Sinha founded DocVerse, which created the technology now called Google Cloud Connect and was acquired by Google early last year.

A few years ago, Google was reluctant to position Google Apps as an Office competitor, in part because it wasn’t really a viable alternative for most users. But following a major revision last year, the company has become less shy about stating the obvious: that Google’s aim is to win business from Microsoft.

“The message we really want to convey to the market and customers is that our collaboration offering gives companies an opportunity to wind down their deployment of Microsoft Office,” said Sinha.

This is not something a lot of businesses have been seriously contemplating. An InformationWeek Analytics survey last year found that 87% of respondents expected their companies would continue to be Office shops in two years.

But attitudes towards Google Apps and other cloud-based apps are shifting. And to help accelerate that process, Google has launched its 90-Day Appsperience program, which allows entire organizations to conduct a three-month test drive of Google Apps. The program costs $7,000 for organizations from 50 to 500 people and $15,000 for organizations with more than 500 people.

Given that Google Apps for Business costs $50 per user per year, the math may not make a lot of sense for companies of a few hundred employees or less. The program, however, is administered by a Google Apps reseller and brings with it user training, change management assistance, and 35 hours of support to help with user account creation, domain setup, and the like. Companies new to the cloud may find these services useful.

In conjunction with its program, Google is introducing a new collaboration dashboard to help administrators figure out who’s using Google Apps and for what. The dashboard is an analytics tool that allow organizations to make cost assessments by showing, for example, how collaboration is saving bandwidth by eliminating the need to send files as attachments.

The Appsperience program is a good deal for Google Apps resellers: Google’s partners get to keep a 20% cut of Google Apps subscription fees on ongoing annuity basis. Such incentives are likely to sustain a strong force of Google Apps evangelists and to keep Microsoft scrambling to improve its answer to Google Apps, Office 365.

Sinha doesn’t appear to be worried.

“If you really dig in to what’s offered, you realize that even with Office 365, it’s really based around the Office and SharePoint suites of software, and those products don’t offer anything near what we offer,” he said.

 

Researchers Show How a Car’s Electronics Can Be Taken Over Remotely

First our computers now our cars, this is scary stuff!

Click link below to read the entire article:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/10hack.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

 

 

 

New Intel port claims 10gbs speed!!

Intel’s new port called the Thunderbolt, which claims speeds of 10gbs has appeared on the new Macbook’s that Apple just released. It will arrive this summer on most PC’s. To read the complete story click on the link below:

 

http://www.techtree.com/India/Features/All_About_Thunderbolt/551-114622-899.html

 

 

Pick Pocketing Gone High-Tech

Editors note: We talked about this little bit at one of the club meetings recently, but this is an in depth article talking about the whole process. Make sure to watch the video as well.

Posted: 11:43 am EST February 3, 2011Updated: 7:25 pm EST February 3, 2011

PITTSBURGH — Target 11 investigator Rick Earle has uncovered a new way thieves are stealing people’s information, using high-tech devices on unsuspecting consumers.

Click here to read the entire article:

http://www.wpxi.com/news/26729501/detail.html

EXCEL: Create a PullDown Menu [Quick Tip]

In this mini-tutorial I am using Excel 2010, but the steps are pretty much the same no matter which Office Version you use. The main difference is where you find the different tools, and where possible I will try to mention where things differ.

Creating a usable Pull-down Menu

If you use Excel on a day-to-day basis filling out forms and information, you might find yourself typing in the same information over and over. Either by typing it in or using copy and paste. When filling in forms you will normally use the same cells over and over (this is where we can use Pull-down Menus). Pull-down Menus can also control your Excel document in different ways like retrieve information or navigate between Sheets and Documents.

Activate the Developer Toolbar (Office 2010 Users Only)

To access the Form tools we have to activate the Developer Toolbar.

1. Click on the Green File Tab
2. Choose Options
3. In the Options Dialogue, click “Customize Ribbon”
4. In the List Window to the right, there is a list of all the available Ribbons.
   Locate the one Called: “Developer” and Check the box next to it
5. Click OK to Save

Creating a Settings Sheet.

First thing I do (when starting a new Excel Project) is to create a Sheet called Settings. This is to keep everything as clean and neat as possible. For this tutorial we will benefit from having a “Settings Sheet” as we get a place to keep the options for our Pull-Down Menu. You should always Index the Options when creating Pull-Down Menu Content. I will explain a bit later.

Create a new Sheet (or Choose an existing one) and Right Click it.
Choose Rename from the context menu,  Name the Sheet “Settings”

1. In the first column type the index numbers from 1 to X (where X is the number of lines needed).
2. In the Second Column, type in the Options (Weekdays for this example)

Now, head over to our form-sheet to add our menu.

1. Click the Developer Toolbar (Earlier Office, look for the FORM Controls)
2. In the Developer Toolbar there’s a menu-item called Insert, click the little arrow underneath to show the Form Controls menu.
3. Click on the ComboBox Control (#2 from left)
4. Draw the ComboBox in place (or simply click where you want it)
   
   Resize the control by dragging the handles in each corner.
5. Right-Click the ComboBox and Choose “Format Control”.
   In the dialogue box, we need to assign which cells from which we will collect the data,
   which cell to store the user choice, and what appearance we like.
6. Place the cursor within the Input Range Fieldbox (click it)
7. Click the Settings-Sheet and highlight the options area (Weekdays)
   
8. Activate the Cell-Link Field (this should automatically open the Form-Sheet) and Type in the CellReference to save the user choice in. In this example we use "B5" (which is hidden by the ComboBox).
   
9. Decide how many lines to display in the ComboBox (I set it to 7) and check the 3D-Shadow option.
10. Click OK
11. Click somewhere outside the ComboBox to activate it

Now when you click the ComboBox the weekdays should be appearing.

Practical use

It looks good right? So how do we put this to good use? If you were to print this form you would see the ComboBox appearing on the print. If you Right-Click the ComboBox and click the Properties Tab. Uncheck “Print Object” to make it invisible on print.

IF you do then the print will look something like this:

The weekday (or user choice) is represented by an index number (in this case #3).

Use ComboBox as LookUp Tool

We can use the index number to look up data corresponding to the user’s choice. If you use the ComboBox to retrieve Customer Names from a list, then we can use formulas to retrieve more data like contact person, address, phone number etc. In this example we will retrieve the Weekday from our Settings-Sheet, making it appear in real text instead of an index number. The procedure for fetching more data is exactly the same.

1. Right-Click the ComboBox and choose “Format Control”
2. Click the Properties Tab and uncheck the “Print Object”.
   
3. Click the Control Tab and Change the Cell-Link to "C5" instead of "B5"
4. Click OK
5. Now format the Text Color in Cell "C5" to white, making it seem invisible
6. With the ComboBox active (Right Click it) move the Combo Box temporarily away
7. Activate ce)ll "B5" and type in the following Formula:
   =VLOOKUP(C5;Settings!B3:C9;2)

   (if unsure how this works you can use the Formula Wizard by clicking the fx-button and choose VLOOKUP)
8. Test the Formula by changing weekdays in the ComboBox
9. When Successful, Move the ComboBox back (step 6) over the Formula field to cover it.

A Handy Guide To Microsoft’s Free Security Tools

Microsoft publishes a range of free security-related software.  One of the best-known is Security Essentials, the excellent antivirus/antimalware product which was recently updated to version 2.0.

Many of the other products in the collection are aimed primarily at large business customers, and are not of general interest to anyone else.  But of the handful of exceptions, MBSA has always stood out for me.  MBSA is the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.  It’s a clever tool which analyzes your computer’s contents and configuration, and provides relevant security advice in areas such as missing critical patches, user accounts that don’t have passwords, and so on.

If you’ve never used MBSA before, it’s worth a try.  Version 2.2 is the latest, which was released back in August.  It’s available for all recent versions of Windows, both 32- and 64-bit flavours, and the initial download is only 1.6 MB.

You’ll find links to MBSA, as well as pointers to all of Microsoft’s security tools, on the excellent web page at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc297183.

 

The Easy Way to Repair Your Internet Connection

Sometimes, Windows loses its connection to the internet.  This happens regardless of whether you’re using an ADSL modem, an ADSL router, a cable router, a dial-up modem, or any other hardware device to connect.  And it happens regardless of whether your connection is cabled or wireless.

Troubleshooting connectivity problems involves running through a number of standard procedures, such as flushing the DNS cache, deleting and reinstalling the TCP/IP protocol, and more.  For even a techie, this can be tedious.  And if you’re trying to talk a non-technical friend or relative through the procedure, it’s virtually impossible.

So here’s a great idea that will make your life easier.  Complete Internet Repair is a free program for Windows XP and above.  You can get it from www.rizone3.com, and it’s only a 0.5 MB download.  As you can see from the screen shot below, it automates all of the common troubleshooting techniques for fixing connectivity issues.  Just tick the relevant boxes and press the Go button.  Then, when it’s finished, reboot your PC and you should hopefully find that everything’s working again.

While such programs can be useful, a couple of caveats before you rush to download it.  Firstly, heed the program’s own warning, as shown below, and don’t choose any option unless your computer is likely suffering from that specific problem.  There’s little to be gained by trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, and you might simply end up making the problem worse.

Secondly, because the program performs some low-level trickery and tweakery with various parts of the operating system, your anti-virus program may object and report that the program is a virus or that it’s exhibiting suspicious behaviour.  Rest assured that the makers of CIR are adamant that it’s free of malware and that it’s not a virus.