Privacy is a huge issue on the web. Today, we’ll talk about options you have to opt out of being tracked by advertisers and how to enable this feature on Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

First, you should know that even if you follow these steps to disable tracking, websites still have the option to track you – or not. It depends on the integrity of the company. Not surprisingly, Facebook doesn’t let anyone opt out of tracking. In fact, they can still track you when you’re logged out of Facebook. Twitter announced today (5-17-12), that they will honor Mozilla Firefox’s opt out. So if you use Twitter on Firefox and have the box checked, your wanderings on the web will not be tracked and you’ll not get the third-party cookies on your computer. Most likely, Twitter will also honor opt outs from Chrome and IE in the next few months.

How To Opt Out of Tracking

Chrome

There’s not a setting in the browser, instead go to the Chrome App Store and type in the search box, ‘Keep My Opt-Outs’ and install it by following the prompts. There’s another app called ‘Keep MORE Opt Outs’. I read a little about this app. I believe this one actually lets you know (via pop-up), who is trying to track you. I read how some really like it, some thinks it slows them down and some had problems with it working properly, so do some research.

Firefox

This was the easiest of the three. Simply go to Tools>Options>Privacy and check the box.

Internet Explorer 9

It seems that Microsoft makes things difficult compared to everyone else, and it’s no different here. It’s different in that there’s not just a click in the box or an app install. The steps are below. Don’t go to your browser ‘Tools’ drop down like I did, go way over to the right to the Tools icon and then…

When you get the tracking protection box pop-up (below), the right side will be blank because Microsoft makes you go through a list a choose different lists to be a part of. So you’ll want to click the ‘Get a Tracking Protection List online’.

Then you’re taken to a website where you can start scrolling through all the lists. I just clicked some randomly and was glad to see there’s a stop Google list. I think with this extra work we do to add these lists, maybe they are more effective – at least I hope so.

So, take a few minutes and update your favorite browser to the do not track settings. If you have any tips to add, please leave a comment.

Steps to Close Down Microsoft Small Business Live

1. Before your account closes, take the time to export your email, contacts and calendar. If you’re going to move your account to Office 365, then the instructions are here. I transitioned one of my email accounts to O365 and for $6/month, it’s wonderful to have Exchange email for one person. If you don’t want to move to O365, how will you save your email from your Small Business Live Account? It depends on what mail client you prefer. We’ll look at transitioning to a free Hotmail/Live account or a Gmail account.

Transfer to a free Live/Hotmail account using Outlook

This is how we accomplished this for my daughter who opened a new, free Live mail account with Microsoft. She has Outlook 2010 and already had her Office Live Mail coming into Outlook 2010 via the great Outlook Connector.She added her new Live account into Outlook and then made sure she had the same folders in that account and simply copied them from the old folder to the new one. For me, I moved my personal domain to hover and set up my email account with them. I then added my Hover email account to Outlook and did the same copying over of the emails, making sure I made the same folder over in my Hover account. To make a new folder in Outlook, simply right-click on your email name and scroll down to ‘add new folder’ and do so. Contacts – go back to your Office Live account and click on ‘Contacts’, then click on ‘Manage’, there you will see the export option, click on that and you’ll most likely want to export to a .csv file. Then in Outlook, import them by clicking on ‘File’, ‘Open’, then a box will come up and select ‘import from another program or file’, click ‘Next’ and select ‘Comma Separated Values’, locate your exported file and import it. I just used the defaults and didn’t try to do anything fancy.

Calendar –here are instructions from Microsoft:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980534

Exporting Calendar from Windows Live Mail to Microsoft Outlook 2010:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Select the Calendar folder and make sure that you are logged in by using your Windows Live ID.
3. Click Send/Receive to sync your calendar.
4. Close Windows Live Mail.
5. Visit the Windows Live Calendar webpage http://calendar.live.com and logon by using your Windows Live ID.
6. Click the “Share” button and select the calendar that you want to export.
7. Select the option “Share this calendar”.
8. Put a check mark in the item topic “Send people a view-only link to your calendar”.
9. You will see some links to share your calendar. If the links are not displayed, click “Get your calendar links (this will also save your settings)” and then click OK to confirm.
10. Under the category “Links that show event details”, click “ICS: Import into another calendar application”.
11. Select and copy the URL displayed without the webcal:// prefix.
12. Open a new Internet Explorer window, paste the URL without the webcal:// prefix in the address bar and press Enter.
13. Save the calendar .ICS file on your Desktop.
14. Repeat the steps 5 to 13 for each calendar that you want to export.
    Note: After complete these steps your Windows Live Calendar settings from the webpage are saved as Shared. You can make the calendar private again following the steps 5 to 7 above. Select the option “Don’t share this calendar (keep it private)” and then click Save.
15. Close the Internet Explorer window after you save all the .ICS files that you want.
16. Open Microsoft Outlook.
17. Click File, select Open and then the Import option.
18. Select the option “Import an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs)” and then click the Next button.
19. Select the .ICS calendar file in your Desktop folder and then click Ok button.
20. Click the “Import” button in the dialog box and wait for the import process to be completed.
21. Repeat steps 17 to 20 for each calendar that you want to import.

Transfer Your Live Mail to Gmail

Perhaps you don’t want to use Microsoft mail anymore and you have a Gmail account. You may know that you can import mail from IMAP and POP mail into Gmail and have it integrate with your main inbox, or make a filter and have your Live Mail go into a folder. The best instructions I’ve ever found is from the How-To Geek website. So I’ll just provide the link and you can follow those instructions. Once you have your mail, contacts and calendar transferred to Gmail, that will serve as the backup for your live mail. Then when you cancel your account, you know you have a copy of all your email, contacts & calendar over at Gmail.

What Happens To My Old Email Account and Website in Small Business Live?

From what I’ve been able to find, your website, contacts, email and calendar will all cease to function as of end of 4-30-12. I’m assuming it’s not accessible, but they don’t say. I’ve also read that your free fourth-level domain will still exist and in fact, they’ve said it can’t be canceled (don’t know why). A sample of a fourth-level domain would be – skipchilcott.Web.officelive.com. So don’t cancel your account before you take action to keep your email, etc. that was mentioned above. If you have a website, you can export it, but it really won’t do you much good because from what I’m reading, it can’t be imported into Dreamweaver or really any other program that I’ve found. It can not be exported as an .html or any other kind of website file either. I exported mine, but it’s most likely worthless.

Now On to Canceling Your Small Business Live Account

You’ll sign into your Office Live account and click on ‘Account Management’, then you’ll see the choice to ‘Cancel Account’ over on the left. When you click it, it’ll bring up details and ask you to make sure of the account you’ll want to cancel.

If you click the ‘Keep the account…’, it’ll just take you to the O365 offer. I did have a custom domain on my account and they didn’t send me any information, but I had already taken my custom domain off the site and transferred it to Hover, so perhaps that’s why.

You’ll get a warning of what will happen when you close your account. When you click the ‘cancel’ button, I think they even sent me an email to make me confirm I wanted to cancel, so you will have several opportunities to change your mind.

 Here’s one of the final warnings!

Success!

Conclusion

I hope my experience helps you navigate through what you’ll need to do to close down your account. There is a pretty good community over at Office Live, where you can read and search for answers. If you register, you can post questions. They’ve been good at getting back to me. Good luck with your transition and if I can answer any questions, leave a comment or email me directly at lynn (at)extremevirtualsupport.com. If you find yourself in need of a new website, I’d certainly like to visit with you about that too.

Last week, I wanted to do a Jing video for my blog article and it’s easy enough to use the free Jing to record and share my video. The sticking point is that it’s NOT easy to put on YouTube and then embed the video on my website. I know there are programs to convert the Jing .swf file into something YouTube likes (MPG4 is best), but once I run the conversions, the resulting video still didn’t work right. I tried both iWisoft and one other converter and couldn’t get either of them to do the conversion correctly.

Then I remembered the Jing Pro for just $15/year. So I signed up for it! Now, I had to re-record my video since it won’t convert what’s already been recorded, but no big deal.

What You Get With Jing Pro

• Jing condenses your video so it’s not as large – better for sharing.
• Upload directly to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, FTP or Flickr (note that you will need to setup/link these services before you do your video. It’s nice to have the 1-click and ability to send right where you want it.
• Ability to go from your webcam (for a shot of your face), and then back to your screen. This is kind of cool.
• No more ads at the end of your video
• Still restricted to 5” of recording. Wish it was 10” for Pro users

Here’s my current configuration. The instructions to upload to multiple social places are easy to follow.

Regarding the 5” Time Limit

Jing explains in their blog they did not increase the time limit because they want the product to be for more for the on-on-fly type videos that you want to quickly do and share with people. File sizes with longer time lengths was also mentioned as a deterrent.

Most social media people say that videos are a big attraction, but they need to be short – under 3” to keep surfer’s attention. It seems we get on-line, our patience and attention levels go way down. I know when I’m searching for information, I like to get right to what I’m looking for.

So if you’re into video for posting on a website or sharing socially, what are you using and why? Please leave a comment or contact me via lynn (at)extremevirtualsupport.com.

Building and maintaining a website can be a challenging and taxing experience, and is something that not everybody knows how to go about starting. There are, of course, various outlets for people who only want to set up amateur web pages with minimal content, but these are often unprofessional, and rarely generate significant traffic. Then there are blog sites and social networking opportunities for people who only want to get their thoughts and comments to friends, or to limited  interested parties. However, if you are seeking to really build a real, professional looking website with a standard domain name (such as anything that uses .com, .net, .org, etc.), you may need help from a company like Network Solutions or someone similar.

Network Solutions’ “nsHosting” is its own system for domain hosting from which you can build your own, real website. The first and perhaps most crucial start-up service offered by a company like Network Solutions is a simple and easy to use step-by-step guide to choosing a domain name. You will be able to search the name you’re hoping to use and see if it is available or for sale, and eventually you will be able to spend whatever money you are willing to invest to purchase the domain name you wish to use for your site. Once that happens, the name is yours and you can begin to build your site around it.

Web hosts also offer various levels of web hosting that can be purchased for your site. For example, if you are only starting a small, start-up web site that won’t need to grow, your fee (for data storage, email accounts, etc. associated with your site) will generally be relatively small. The larger you need your website to be, in terms of storage and data transfer ability, the more you will need to pay – sometimes the highest available package offers practically unlimited space on your website, which can be useful if you’re starting a major business or expect a huge amount of traffic. Finally, some sites also offer a deal in which you pay an annual fee or something similar in exchange for unlimited web hosting, meaning you could set up as much as you want under just that one fee.

You have a great deal of freedom when starting a new website, because you’re putting something into existence that has never been out on the Internet before. But often, it is difficult to know where to start the process. Companies like Network Solutions offer simple services to make the process go more smoothly, and to help you make the best website possible.

(Disclaimer – this article was written by Charles Cooper and I have been compensated for placing it in my blog. I was domain customer of Network Solutions before they approached me, because I’d heard positive comments about their services.)

With JotForms, it’s not necessary to even establish an account to make and use a form. Everything is web-based, so no software to download. Some possible form ideas are below. JotForm also supplies templates for most commonly used forms to help you get an even quicker start.

• Contact Form
• Survey Form
• Job Application Form
• RSVP for Events
• Reservation Form
• Time Sheet
• Event Calendar

JotForm is compatible with over a dozen web formats, including WordPress, Joomla, Blogger, Tumblr and Facebook. Instructions are given as to how to embed your form code into the format you want to use – easy!

Formats JotForm Supports

I use WordPress and tried out the below simple Contact Form on my site and filled it out and quickly received my email notification. Very nice. The drag and drop interface reminds me of Gravity Forms (which I already have and use on my sites).

my jot form

I looked through their website and read the FAQ and a few blog postings. Here are some of the highlights:

• no ads will ever be placed on your forms (they promise)
• no account signup required, but if you are going to be a regular user, get an account
• tracking reports that are downloadable
• secure forms (SSL)  available
• sell digital or other products and collect payment using PayPal, Google Checkout and others
• user guide on the site
• templates
• choices of font, colors or backgrounds

I took a look at the Facebook forms, and it is for the FBML app. If you already have FBML on your Facebook Business Page, you’re good to go, but if you’re building a new Facebook page, FBML is no longer available, they’ve gone to iFrames. Hopefully, JotForm is working on this.

Cost

JotForm is free to use – up to a certain point. Here are pricing points. As long as you have fewer than 100 submissions/month, 10 or fewer SSL submissions and 10 or fewer payments sent to you per month, your account is free. If you feel you’ll have a big month coming up, you can upgrade to their next level, which is about $10/month. Then you can go back to the free account with no penalty or losing of your data – very accommodating of them.

There are three ways that I found – I’m using the third way because I couldn’t get the other two to work. There may be other possibilities out there, but I’m going to stop with the third try is the charm. I used free software called Connectify by Alex Gizis. You can watch Alex in the short video below where he explains how to set up your own hotspot in just a few minutes.

Connectify

I really liked the part at the end where he said the software could be downloaded from the safe site, download.com. That’s where I went to download and install. While installing, be wary for the additional software they want you to install and uncheck the box (unless you want it). There was an install wizard, so I told it to start up, but I really didn’t need it as it was so simple. The steps were…

1. Choose a name for my wifi network
2. Choose a password
3. Click on the drop-down next to ‘Internet’ and select ‘wireless network connection’
4. At the bottom of the pop-up, click ‘turn on sharing’
5. Start enjoying!

You can see my wi-fi setup below and that I have one device connected to it – my Windows Phone 7. It was as simple as going to my phone settings and selecting my new wi-fi network and it connected right away. I do notice that when my phone screen goes dark, the connection breaks and when I turn on the display, it’s connected back to my home wi-fi again – don’t know why that happens.

This box sits in your system tray

Uses for A Computer HotSpot

The Connectify website has a great section on this. I like it for my wi-fi devices. Just think if you have an iPod Touch or iPad, you could use it to make free or low-cost Skype calls when traveling. You could access web sites and shop on-line. If your smart phone has a small data plan, just connect your phone to your hotspot and surf or message without incurring data usage costs.

Perhaps you’re at a hotel or airport where they charge you for each device you connect – there’s a big savings. Perhaps you just want to do some file sharing with colleagues – Connectify will do the job. Below is a graphic from the site showing the possibilities. There is Connectify for Android too.

Two Other Ways to Make Your Windows Computer a HotSpot

Virtual Router

I first found Virtual Router by Codeplex. This looked like a super simple way to connect, very similar to Connectify. I downloaded the software and installed it, following the directions, but I got the dreaded error message that so many have complained about – Virtual Router Could Not Be Started. I tried uninstalling, rebooting and reinstalling and still nothing. I checked and my wireless driver was one on the compatible list, but it wouldn’t work. I read some of the help and the remedies were too complex for me, but I did find out about another way…

Windows 7 Virtual WiFi

This is called a ‘hidden secret’ within Windows 7. I found it while reading about Virtual Router and decided to try that second. When I ‘binged’ Windows 7 Virtual WiFi, the top results weren’t from Microsoft at all – I was a bit surprised at that.

I used directions from Blogsdna. The steps are below from the site:

How to Setup Virtual WiFi on Windows 7

1. Open a command-prompt with administrator privileges.

Click on Start menu, All Programs, Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt, select “Run as administrator”). Type in:

2. Configure the “hosted” interface:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Test key=password

This example creates an access-point with an SSID of “Test”,

3. Configure Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)

Open up the networking control panel. Select the interface that currently has Internet connection (like your Ethernet or normal wifi), enable “Sharing”, and then select the special “hosted” interface.

4. Start it

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

I did fine until I got to #3 and I couldn’t find the ‘special hosted interface’, so gave up on that one. That’s when I found Connectify and it all worked.

Conclusion

I wanted to list the three ways I found in hopes that if you’re wanting to try it out, you’ll have links for all three in case the first way doesn’t work.

Let me know if you tried any of these out and which worked for you.

Although their feature list says it works on all phones, that’s not really the case as some BB models can’t use the app as well as some Verizon phones. It won’t work with my Windows Phone 7 phone either and their FAQ says they have no plans to develop for WP7.

I can see this app attracting a younger crowd – perhaps kids and teens with a limited texting plan because this app won’t count against their text limits. Other features are Group Chat, Push Notification (you get notified when new messages arrive), full media support for voice, text, pictures and videos and the app is always on. This is nice because you don’t have to sign in or wait for your friends to sign in –you’re always on and available. I also read that they have a location based service – for letting all your friends know where you are.

To use PingChat, you’ll have to sign up for an account – since it doesn’t use your phone number, you’ll choose an ID/identity. After you’ve done this, you’ll have to share your user name with anyone you’ll want to interact with. After you get your friends entered in, then you’ll have a cool looking UI like the screenshot  below.

I think kids could pick up on how to use the app quickly. There’s very little documentation – in fact there’s really just the Support link which takes you to a FAQ where you can hope your questions and answers are. If you don’t find your particular problem there, there is an email option.

It may be worthwhile to note that if you change phones, you’ll need to ‘release’ your ID from your old phone before being able to restore it on your new phone. If you forget, support will release it for you. You won’t be able to transfer or download any of your chat history either—something to keep in mind.

I’m not sure how long they’ve been around, but Enflick (developers of PingChat), mentioned in a recent blog article that they have 5.5 million users.

I wasn’t able to try it out since I switched phones, but a friend told me about PingChat and she likes the interface and the fact that it’s free.If you’re interested in trying it out, go to the website and send a link to your phone and invite a  few people to try it out with you. It might be a nice way to have instant communication with a close group of friends.

Dropbox

is a great alternative to Live Mesh for syncing files and folders between computers you own and also for sharing specific folders with business associates or friends.

It’s super easy to use – here are the steps.

1. Download the application and install it (there’s a quick video tour too)
2. After installation, set up your account with an email address
3. Launch Dropbox from your system tray, start menu, or go to the web
4. Start adding files and/or folders to your Dropbox space
5. To share, you’ll need to go to the web interface, click on the sharing tab and follow the simple instructions to share a folder (you can’t share individual documents), with one or multiple people.

I installed the application on three computers using the same email address and login and wa-la, the folders I put in Dropbox on my first computer showed up across all three computers. I tried putting files in my Dropbox on one computer, and checking the folder on another and everything synced up just like it was supposed to.

But wait, there’s more. Dropbox gives you the handy ‘Events’ tab (see illustration above), to show you everything going on in your Dropbox. So when you add, take away, invite someone to share, or remove someone from sharing a folder, it all shows up under the events tab.

Clicking on the ‘Help’ tab will get you this comprehensive list of topics that will cover just about any kind of question you have about Dropbox.

The Getting Started section is very thorough, giving you information on anything you need to know – from what kinds of files can you put in to how much space you have and how to upgrade your account.

You’ll note that Dropbox can be used with many specific mobile devices as well as any phone with a browser.

If you’re wondering about security, Dropbox uses AES-256 encryption. They say no Dropbox employee can access any customer’s account and this level of encryption is what banks and the military uses. It’s up to you what you decide to put in it, I choose not to put what I consider private, or sensitive data in it – you just never know.

Conclusion-Advantage Dropbox

Dropbox is simpler to use because it’s a stand alone application that only does one thing – stores, syncs and shares files.

You’ll have access to your files from any web browser, so no more emailing files to yourself or finding out you didn’t get one critical file you needed. Put  files and folder on one computer and it will appear on all computers you have set up with the same Dropbox account credentials.

I think it’s easier to use than Live Mesh. Dropbox always seems to be at work in the background with no intervention from me. When I turn Live Mesh on, it seems one of my computers isn’t  awake or running LIve Mesh or something’s going on that prevents syncing. That doesn’t happen with Dropbox. Give it a try.

Graphic of your shared folders-simply click on edit to add more people or remove someone

Artisteer is software that takes the guesswork out of coordinating colors, type styles and layouts. Even if you have zero design skills and no eye for color, Artisteer takes over and simply gives you choice after choice of amazing layouts, colors and art to make your website look pulled together.

Artisteer works with all the above software—it doesn’t replace having to install whichever platform you choose. WordPress, for example, must be installed (the self-hosted version of WordPress). Then begin filling out your content using the WordPress back end. Think of Artisteer as your template. After it’s created, you upload it (instructions are included) and your newly created theme is applied to your site.

Let’s Get Started

Artisteer has a great try it before you buy it program. Download,install and use the program for free – then view your finished template. That’s what it’ll look like on-line. You can choose to upload your theme to your site to see what it’ll look like, but it will have a draft watermark across it. Purchasing the software will make the watermark go away. Cost is $50 for the Home & Academic version or $150 for the Standard Version. There is a yearly support fee.

I could write paragraphs about all the choices you’ll have when using Artisteer – instead take about ten minutes to watch the below video

So Many Choices

Where to start with all the choices. Let’s start with our header. Click the tab for header and you can have Artisteer suggest different colors, styles and layouts complete with eye-catching gradients, supplied photos or use a photo of your own. Once you have your components in the header, then you can experiment with moving things around, cropping the image, etc. See what I mean?? Almost endless choices and combinations.

In fact, the only downside to Artisteer is that there are so many choices that you could spend all day clicking the next button to look at design choice after design choice.I’ve used the demo version on my local machine and I’ve spent waaayy too much time tweaking.

The menus and controls on Artisteer are quite a bit like the Microsoft Office interface, so it’ll probably be easy for most to use.

Thanks to David North for inspiring this week’s blog topic. David is the author of North Ideas (you do need to start blogging again, David). He’s also the organizer of the WordPress Oklahoma City Meetup Group.  He spoke just last month on how he uses Artisteer to make quick websites for friends – usually friends with non-profits or worthwhile projects. We meet the last Monday of each month. Anyone is welcome to attend.

However, I was on a training call last week and our instructor mentioned she uses the auto-fill feature from the Google tool bar for filling out web forms.  Quickly and effortlessly, the form was filled out with no loss of time or having to stop and look up information.

The download and install took under a minute and I immediately filled out two profiles using the AutoFill function – very easy. You can choose which is the default. You can add a credit card and require a password to access that for web forms. I chose not to do that right now.

Need several ‘identities’ for your web forms – perhaps a business and a personal? No problemo, feel free to make as many profiles as you need.

Of course, the Google Toolbar has many more features. Check them out along with detailed explanations for their uses.

Google makes using the Auto-Fill function of their toolbar even easier by making this very short video.

What are your favorite toolbar features?

Microsoft has updated their tool bar, which I find more useful since I use more of their services. We’ll look at that next week, perhaps along with the Yahoo toolbar.