But Macs don't get viruses ... or do they?

Today 1 in 5 consumer PCs is a Mac so they are a tasty target for hackers, spammers and criminals.

See these two brief videos for more info: Do Macs get viruses?


and this: What does a Mac threat look like?

Free Anti virus protection for Macs

Introducing Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition

Sophos has released their latest free tool - Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition. This is their first consumer anti-malware product designed to provide Mac home users with up–to-the-hour protection that is simple to use and FREE!

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition features:
• Full protection from viruses, Trojans and worms— both Mac and Windows threats
• Anti-virus technology that stops all threats in their tracks, even if it’s something new
• Quarantine and cleanup of threats it finds
• Business-quality anti-virus, backed by SophosLabs
• Protection that is light on resources and easy to use - it installs quickly and doesn’t get in your way
• And yes, it’s 100%, totally, absolutely, completely free

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is available for Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and supports all Apple Mac hardware including the new MacBook Air.

To downlad it free, go to www.sophos.com/products/free-tools/free-mac-anti-virus/

B Technologies is a Gold partner of Sophos so far any security needs, write to us at info@btechnologies.com and we will get back to you promptly.

Do you need to know your internet IP address?

There are a number of reasons why you might need to find your internet IP address and it only takes a few seconds to do.

Go to:
http://www.whatsmyip.org/

and when you arrive on the site your IP address will be prominently displayed on the top of the page.

Simple as that.

Make long URL addresses usable!

Have you ever sent someone a huge url (address) to a website and wished it didn't look quiet as complicated?

Here is a fantastic tool called Tiny URL which is available free of charge to anybody and is very easy to use, that turns big urls into short ones. Here is an example of how it works:

You can turn this URL:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?t
ype=3&campid=5336224516&toolid=10001&customid=tiny-
hp&ext=unicycle&satitle=unicycle

into this tinyURL:

http://tinyurl.com/unicycles

Which one would you rather cut and paste into your browser? That's the power of TinyURL!

SCAMS - Learn All About Them

Too many businesses become victims of online and offline scams. There is a handy booklet published by the government that you are able to download for free and learn more about the scams, how they work and how you can defend against them.

The link is as follows:
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/tag/TheLittleBlackBookOfScams08

This is what the website says about the booklet:
The little black book of scams highlights a variety of popular scams that regularly target Australian consumers and small business in areas such as fake lotteries, internet shopping, mobile phones, online banking, employment and investment opportunities. It also offers consumers tips on how to protect themselves from scams, what they can do to minimise damage if they do get scammed and how they can report a scam.

Open any image format with ease

In our last post we told you about 2 great programs to use to open any video formats but we had a number of enquiries about viewing (and editing) some obscure image files images.

Go to http://www.download.com/ and download a free product called "Irfan View".

This small program will open / edit images in any file format that you throw at it.

This product has been downloaded a staggering 47 million times so you know it works!

It has other impressive editing function that you can explore yourself.

Play any video file with ease

Have you ever struggled to play a video file?

You now have two perfect options to solve this problem.

Go to http://www.download.com/ and download either one of these free products. Once you have installed them they will play 98% of any video formats you may have.

They are:
- GOM Media Player
- VLC Media Player

GOM for example plays formats including DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF, AVI, and MOV, and common codecs like FLV1, AC3, OGG, MP4, and H263.

If you need confirmation that these products are trustworthy, you will see that both of them have been downloaded a staggering 20 million times!

They have some other impressive functions but you can explore them yourself.

As always, if you need any help or advice, just contact us on 1300 885 200 or at support@btechnologies.com

Who owns a particular domain address?

Have you ever wondered who owns a particulra domain address? go to www.who.is and you can find out in less then a minute.

For example if you like the domain name www.bigbusiness.com and want to find out who owns it so you can make an offer to purchase it, this is the site to tell you what you need to know.

Also recently a couple of clients of ours stopped receiving their emails. We checked on who.is to see that their domain name registration has expired and we were able to pay for the renewal by checking the registration details which tell us which company the name is registered with.

This is a tool you will not need often but you will love it when you need it.

Where has all the space gone on your computer?

You want to find out how much space your music collection is taking up?
You want to find out why you can no longer fit downloaded movies onto your harddrive?
Here is the answer...

You laptop or PC has a certain amount of hard disk space which you can store files on. In a standard computer you can find out how much that is by clicking on 'my computer' and right clicking' on the 'C' drive. Select 'properties', and you should now see the size of your hard disk and also how much free space you have available.

But if you want to find out where the space has actually gone on the computer, which files and folders are what site... then you need "TreeSize Free 2.3" This is a small program that's free to download and easy to use.

Once you have downloaded and installed it, you run the program and it will start to give you the size of each folder. Each folder can be expanded in Explorer-like style to see the size of its subfolders.

Something to note: You will not be able to open files from this program, and the program doesn't remember the data it collected so you have to run it from scratch every time you want to see the size of your folders but this is no big deal as I don't expect that this is something that you would need to do often, the process doesn’t take long and it can run in the background whilst you do other things.

How to get this program:
1. Go to http://download.cnet.com/
2. Enter "TreeSize Free 2.3" and scroll down to find it amongst the results
3. Press 'download'
4. Save it somewhere and run it to install it

Keeping Microsoft Windows updated is easy, free and important

For Windows users, you should regularly install Microsoft suggested critical updates!

If you have a Windows operating system installed on your computer you should ensure that it is set to receive automatic updates as they are released. These updates are released as security and performance issues are identified on a regular basis, so receiving the updates is a very important process.

To ensure you have the latest updates RIGHT NOW, you can go to http://update.microsoft.com/. You will first be asked if you want to do an express or custome installation of any critical updates. I usually select 'custom' so I can review all of the available updates. By reading their descriptions I can decide whether I need them or not.

Once you have selected one of the buttons a scan of you system will start automatically which will identify all available updates to your system. You should install any critical updates and sort through the optional updates to see whether you really need them or not.

The same concept applies to any other programs THAT YOU TRUST. If you know that the program is safe, it is advisable to now and again check for any updates as these are usually released by the developers to fix any issues that have been identified or to add new features.

Remember this is all free.

Find out the speed of your internet in seconds

Have you ever wondered what speed your internet connection was at any time?

There is a free online tool that can help you find out the speed of your internet in seconds.

You simply go to http://speedtest.net

DO NOT click on the top bar which mentions 'free scans' and 'turbo-charge your internet performance'. This wants to provide you with something that you do not need.

In the middle of your screen there is a map, and on the top of the map there is a small rectangle with the words 'Start Test To Recommended Server ...' Click this box and the speed test will happen automatically in about 30 seconds.

The test will provide you with an upload and a download speed.

How to send large files over the internet Part 2

A colleague has sent us another link to send large files over the internet, where using the free feature, you can upload 500mb files with ease to share with others. (Read Part 1 of this post to get the details of how useful this tool really is.)

The site is www.megaupload.com and we have already tested it and it works great.

So a great big thanks to Sam Kritsotakis from Eskae Jewellery for sending us his link. You can find out more about his fantastic jewellery range and related services by visiting his website www.EskaeJeweller.com

We invite you to visit our website at www.BTechnologies.com

Free Anti-Virus and Spyware protection for Home use

In this day and age with all the threats posed by connecting your PC or laptop to the Internet, you can not afford not to have up to date Anti-Virus and Spyware protection.

There are many products available on the market but a great free tool that offers the basic level of protection that you are looking for for a home setting is AVG's free product which you can download from their own site.

In their own words this product has more than 2 million active users in Australia and over 80 million users worldwide, making AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition the best and most popular FREE protection currently available.

If you decide to download and use this product for your home use, make sure you regularly download the updates that are available or set the program to download them automatically for you, and also you should run a full system scan with the AVG program at least once a month, but if you are doing a lot of internet searches, you will probably want to perform the scan more frequently.

We invite you to visit our website at www.BTechnologies.com

How to send large files over the internet

As a very active IT company we come across many great links to fantastic online services that you probably want to store somewhere for when you need it in the future.

Today's website is http://www.yousendit.com/ and the service they provide is free and very handy. Let’s say you want to send a video to a colleague or friend but it’s 100 MB (BIG!) you can’t send it in an email but you can easily get it to them via this service. You can also send up to 2 GBs worth of data with the paid service.

All you have to do is sign up for a free account (with a 100 MB upload limit) which take a few minutes and then you can upload the video to their server. Once this is done you set up log in details for your colleague or friend so they will be able to access the file, and simply email these to them. Once they have received these details they can log in and download the file straight from the web.

This is a great service that we recommend to our clients all the time, if you have any questions about it, feel free to ask. For bigger files another solution is explained below.

Also if you know of any great services like this on the internet, let us know and when I post it on here, I will happily mention you and your website as the contributor.

For a completely free solution up to 1GB:

1. Create a free gmail account (google mail account)

2. You can't send big files but you can store up to 1GB worth of stuff

3. Compose a message and attach the big file (up to 1GB), but DON'T SEND IT

4. Send the Gmail log in details to whoever you want to be able to access the file. They can log in to Gmail with the account details you send them, and they can access the email with the attachment that you prepared so they are able to download the file for themselves

We invite you to visit our website at http://www.BTechnologies.com/