Eating HEALTHLY – a key to better choices – What can you do!

I read an article from the New York Times today and was surprised that just making simple changes to the layout of the food with little to no expense could make such a dramatic change in choices kids make when buying their lunch.

Take a look at the ARTICLE  / Picture

Microsoft Rolls Up Cloud Services Into Office 365, Takes Aim At Google Apps (via TechCrunch)

Might be interesting – we will have to wait and see!  More and more applications are moving to the cloud with 24×7 access – anywhere – anytime.

Today at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft’s Office division is unveiling a new product: a suite of the company’s productivity services called Office 365. Before now, Microsoft’s business-facing cloud services have been broken up in a few places: SharePoint, Lync Online, Exchange, and Office web apps. Office 365 looks to unify these. Microsoft SVP Chris Capossela says “This is everything we know about productivity brought to the cloud”. The me … Read More

via TechCrunch

Dead Sea Scrolls – Soon to be available on the WEB – thx to Google, Nasa & Israeli Antiquities Authority!

The Dead See Scrolls which contains original biblical text is coming to the internet.  This is great news for anyone interested in history and wants to see some first hand.  I can see this being used in many history classes, it being  better than viewing them in a text.  It will be sometime before you see them as this was just announced and the details of the project will be fully disclosed and online within months.

At a press briefing in Israel, the IAA’s Pnina Shor talked about how the Google deal will help preserve the scrolls. “From the minute all of this will go online there will be no need to expose the scrolls anymore, and anyone in his office or (on) his couch will be able to see it,” she said—though we do have to wonder how many couch potatoes are really itching to read The War Scroll off its actual parchment.

The 900 biblical and other manuscripts, comprising some 30,000 fragments, were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea and photographed in their entirety with infra-red technology in the 1950s.

READ ENTIRE Press Release

I for one can’t wait to see this online.

Security – Passwords – Can yours be CRACKED

Many years ago you would have a few passwords and be able to remember them, today your Password list can be huge and how do you remember them. 

Most people make it really simple and use the same password for everything, not the best method for sure.  Someone figures it out and they have access to everything!  Others use simple easy to remember passwords – like birthday dates, anniversaries – again not the best method – one of the first things people try to information that can usually be easy to find!

So what do you do – make it easy to remember or create a strong password that is almost impossible to break!  The most secure method is to make a very strong password each time.  I guess you could use a mix, making sure you use strong passwords for online Banking and other important informational locations and your passwords for online contact, news and others simple to remember.  There are methods to creating a strong password and to remember them – Microsoft has an article you should review.

There are many tools available on the WEB and Smart phones that allow you to keep records of your passwords – some say these work well and secure.  I use the Blackberry password manager for many of my passwords.  This is something you will have to determine for yourself!  They are a number of  these that are free, I have tried some and they work well.

Things you want to make sure you don’t do are:

Common password pitfalls to avoid

Cyber criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly decipher passwords.

Avoid creating passwords using:

• Dictionary words in any language.
  Words in all languages are vulnerable.
• Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.
  Words in all languages are vulnerable.
• Sequences or repeated characters.
  Examples: 12345678, 222222, abcdefg, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (qwerty).
• Personal information.
  Your name, birthday, driver’s license, passport number, or similar information.

REVIEW ENTIRE Microsoft DOCUMENT – Create strong passwords

Don’t let your password get cracked!

Malicious Software – What are you doing about it? Security!

One of those things we say we should do and don’t…  My computer at home is only used by me, so I am confident that I will not do something silly and get infected.  My other systems in the house is another story – my wife and two daughters use this and you never know what might happen.  You need to keep yourself safe when on the WEB, if you don’t do a few basic things you just might end up getting infected and that is not fun.  Sometime you can get it removed and go on, other times you have to start from scratch which could mean losing information or just a lot of time or money to get it done.

First off everyone should have Antivirus software running and keeping it up to date.

You should also be running a Malicious Software Removal Tool regularly to ensure no one has done something they shouldn’t have….This advice was too late for my father-in-law whose system got infected bad!  All antivirus software is shut down, no internet access at all in order to download the MSRT either.  I am hoping the USB ports are not shut down as well as I am hoping to load up the MSRT from a USB key – we will have to see!

Microsoft – Malicious Software Removal Tool

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool is a free malware scanner and remover which is updated every first Tuesday of each month. The tool (mrt.exe) is located in the system32 directory of Windows and it silently scans the computer after being updated via Windows Update. MRT or MSRT does not run to scan the system all the time but any PC user can manually scan the PC to check the system from Trojans, worms and other malware that MRT can identify. Note that MRT does not detect all type of threats but was developed by Microsoft to detect and remove malware that is in the wild, especially from worms that targets vulnerable components in Windows.

Related Articles

• Microsoft Tool Now Roots out Zeus Malware (pcworld.com)

Remote Access Options

Your Superintendent is home working on a report due the next day and something goes wrong with the system, he calls you – What are you going to do. 

Well I came across an article that gave a bunch of options for remote access that are Free but simple to use.

5 Ways To Remotely Connect a Computer Over The Internet

If you try any of these, let me know what you think?

To have only ONE CABLE for Everything…. INTEL LIGHT PEAK

Everyone has a nightmare of cables, tangled and hanging down.  My wife hates seeing all the cables – so you try to organize and tie them up, but have fun if you have to change or remove or add a cable.  It’s just a MESS!  Well this might all come to an END next year when PC manufacture start to use Light Peak.   Certainly USB has help in cutting down the number of different types and connectors, but you still need one cable per product.  The main issue with USB is the capacity and speed – so it will never be the single connection, but Light Peak looks like it might be able to handle everything in a daisy chain method – this is great.

Light Peak Wiki definition

This was first shown back in 2009 and INTEL was saying this year, but at a show this past week they indicated it wouldn’t be till next year when we will see this great solution.

Related Articles

• Intel’s Light Peak optical interconnect shrinks slightly, LaCie, WD, Compal and Avid begin prototyping (engadget.com)

Can Spell Check Make Things Worse? The Most Misspelled Words (via Dr. Diane Hamilton’s Blog )

I will be honest with you, my spelling & grammar are terrible and I use spell checkers and the thesaurus all the time. You also have to be very careful as the spell checker checks spelling, but not if the word is the right one – You can have the wrong word, but the right spelling.

A great article was on another blog with a bunch of suggestions that really make sense and I think everyone one can use. I will be taking this to my kids as I believe it will help them as well.

Today's Ask Dr. Diane:  What are some of the mostly commonly misspelled words? I post a lot of information about spelling and grammar for my students.  There are certain words that many people tend to misspell.  For a list of the top 100 misspelled words, click here.  I often ask students to quiz their family and friends to see how they do with some of the more commonly misspelled words . . . For fun, ask people to spell the following words that … Read More

via Dr. Diane Hamilton's Blog

Violent Games & Kids

Something that has been discussed for many years is how do we control access to violent games and when will the GAME makers start doing the right thing and regulate themselves.  I believe the makers need to do more than they are, but ultimately the control of what my child plays and sees and doesn’t is my responsibility.  We as parents should be very aware of what our kids are doing online at all times.  I am a strong believer in that the home computer is in a public place and not behind closed doors. 

Standards have to be set, better ranking has to be put in place and retailers – brick and cloud have to get involved.  But again ultimately it is the parents who have to police what our kids do online.  My two cents….

 72% of Americans think there should be a law against children playing violent games

More sleep and good eat’s MAKE for better Students….

Something I think no parent needs to be told, but it’s easier said then done.  An article was in District Admin about a study done that showed kids that slept an extra half hour and had breakfast where not as tired and paid better attention in class.  Eight hours of sleep and eating a healthy breakfast makes all the difference.

Changing the start time to school is not easily done for many reasons.  Being a parent of two girls – one in HS and the other in grade 8 we have a mandatory bed time that can be flexible on occasion, but not the norm.  Being that my girls start school at or just before 9AM, makes it easier for me then others that might start between 7-8AM or for those needing to take a bus and travel.  My oldest goes to bed by 10 or a little after and ends up with 9hrs of sleep most nights throughout the school week.  Breakfast has never been an issue, we have always stressed it as being very important. 

What can be done, I am not sure other than doing our best and making sure they get as much sleep as possible.

DistrictAdmin Article – “Research shows HS students benefit from later start time”