Take a Picture of Your Screen

'This is a photo of my desktop, known as a screen shot.  Knowing how to do this can be key for those pesky error messages and other anomolies in tech life that cause alarm and make you want to ask for a friends advice. You know those boxes that pop up with messages like “imminent failure” and “contact your network administrator.”  Today's tip is about the fast method in Windows OS to share those error messages with others who might not believe what you’re saying.  Just take a "screen shot" and email it to them.  Here’s how it’s done: 

Simply press the Print Scrn/SysRq  in the upper right hand corner of your keyboard:

Next press the Start menu button on the keyboard:

Now without clicking on anything else simply type the word "PAINT" then press the enter key.  - What should occur is the MS paint program should open right up for you.  If this doesn't occur you did something wrong - add no extra steps to these instructions, they are - very simple.  At this point you've pressed 2 keys and written the word paint, then hit the enter key - 

Hold down CTRL and tap the V key - this is Paste and the screen shot will appear.  That's it that simple!  

Googles New Logo - Makes me feel weird!

Googles New Logo - Makes me feel weird!

OK, is it just me or do a lot of us feel strange looking at that new logo? 

 I mean all these years it's been out old faithful logo now it's different!  What does that mean for us?  Will Google become "different"?  A quick search of Google and you'll see I am not along in my feelings about the change:

Lucy Biggers (@LLBiggers) | Twitter

https://twitter.com/llbiggers?lang=en

New Google logo makes me feel weird. Like rearranging furniture in your house. Takes a while to get used to the new setup. #newgooglelogo. 0 retweets 1 

Google has changed its logo and we don't really like it

www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/.../news/.../google-changes-logo-...

Cosmopolitan

2 days ago - The search engine giant has revamped its logo with a brand new font, but users of the internet around the world have taken to Twitter to ...

How does the logo make you feel?  Did you even notice that it had changed?  Do you no even know what all the hub bub is about?  

You see some of us have been using the Internet since before there was a Google.  Once again to pull from Sara's article "When Google first appeared, in the late nineties, it distinguished itself with a combination of intelligence and friendliness. Other search-engine sites were as cluttered and garbagey visually as they were inefficient functionally, simultaneously trying to sell and inform and bamboozle. AOL, with its goofy mailbox, bulky structure, and overpriced hand-holding service for the terrified, was obviously up to no good. Others—Yahoo!, HotBot, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, and so on—seemed well intentioned but were harder to parse. 

Google’s design, in comparison, was a revelation. It had true confidence. It didn’t need to pretend to be the post office or a butler. The white glow of a clean, bare screen, the brightly colored, old-fashioned letters, the name that came from math and whimsy—it was all very promising, and its brilliance spoke for itself. The logo was a key part of this. The letters’ literary old serifs were subtly authoritative. The design, like the site, didn’t patronize or manipulate—it said, Relax, we’re reasonable geniuses"  (OK, the Logo change was one thing, please don't change the site design!) The entire article can be found here:  Why We Hate Google's New Logo

"You will very soon notice that Google has a new logo that’s sleeker, brighter, and for the first time, animated. And then, you probably won’t notice it at all." Starts the article written by Mark Wilson of fastCo Design.    Mark has a really in depth article showing the changes on the logo and talking more about the font type.  You should read the whole thing here: Google's new Logo - Biggest Change in 16 Years

Google went from being the way we find trivia to becoming the digital infrastructure of our lives.  And in turn, they’ve created a new logo and brand identity, out today. The bold new logo preserves the old logo’s most recognizable element—the famous blue-red-yellow-blue-green-red color sequence—but presents the company’s name in a bespoke typeface called Product Sans inspired by schoolbook letter-printing. The new word mark will replace the one that’s appeared above the search box since 1999.  I personally think it looks just like the G from the Golf Channel so I had to pull both pages up on my PC at the same time only to find out Golf Channel has changed to the NBC logo!

If you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com
 Some web sites even went as far as to say "Google's new logo was "ALL Wrong".


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Sara Larson's article on "Why We Hate Google's New Logo" helped explained to me why it was I hate the log each time I look at it.  She says of Google's new logo " it sheds the grownup curlicues: it now evokes children’s refrigerator magnets, McDonald’s French fries, Comic Sans. Google took something we trusted and filed off its dignity. Now, in its place, we have an insipid “G,” an owl-eyed “oo,” a schoolroom “g,” a ho-hum “l,” and a demented, showboating “e.” I don’t want to think about that “e” ever again. But what choice do I have? Google—beneficent overlord, Big Brother, whatever you want to call it—is at the center of our lives. Now it has symbolically diluted our trust, which it originally had for all the right reasons."

 Remember, if you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com

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The Computer and Your Car: The End of an Era

The Computer and Your Car: The End of an Era 

The Computer and Your Car: The End of an Era

Many people modify their cars, and many people repair their own car as it breaks.  There has never before been a question if this was legal.  A long list of car manufactures are trying to make working on your own car illegal.  Some of these companies include Ford, GM, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Volkswagen.  Even some luxury lines have joined the party such as BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, and Land Rover.  The obvious question is “why?”  The real answer is money.  What these companies say involves the DMCA.  What is the DMCA?  These letters stand for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and working on your car stands for copyright infringement.

Car makers claim that modifying the car’s engine control unit, or ECU, makes the car less safe, less secure, and although they don’t say it outright, less profitable.  At a glance, this may seem okay.  Just leave the ECU alone when you work on your car.  The problem with this is the ECU doesn’t just control a car’s timing pattern anymore.  A car’s computer monitors the wheels, the brakes, the steering rack, the engine temperature, the amount of air coming into the engine, the temperature of the exhaust, the catalytic converter, air bags, headlights, traction control, anti-lock brakes, and service periods.  The new laws will ban working on anything that can interfere with the ECU.  A new exhaust would change the ECU data.  A turbo would bypass factory Mass Air Flow sensors.  Big brake kits wouldn’t allow the ECU to monitor wheel speed.  The list goes on.

Cars and their computers have become inseparable.  Taking away the right to work on your car’s computer is the same as taking away the right to work on your car.  A person owns their car.  They do not license it like they would Microsoft Office.  A person should be able to change what they own and make it how they want it.  It is scary that unfortunate greed on behalf of car makers may one day change that.