Spring and summer are on the way so it’s time to get ready for some picniking (that is not a typo).  Oh, you may also want to get ready for the Daylight Saving Time change in a week or so on March 9th but that’s another story.  Just don’t forget.

I am going to recommend a site that I found out about a couple of weeks ago that could save you lots of money.  If you are like me you may want to “touch up” some of your photos after you have taken them with your digital camera.

There are lots of software packages out there that will let you do this like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and many others.  However, if you are also like me you don’t have the several hundred dollars to spend on those packages.  You may have even gotten some type of photo-editing software included with your camera.  That may be all you need.  However, if you don’t have those things you should visit www.picnik.com and test out Picnik.

Picnik is free graphics editor that can do many of the basics in photo editing plus some of the not so basics.  I did say, “free”, and that is true but if you want more advanced editing features you can pay $24.95 per year.  That is a steal if you are really into editing your pictures and the site says this includes, “Advanced editing tools, more effects, more fonts, and more shapes!”

Basic editing includes such features as; red eye reduction, resizing, rotating, cropping, adjusting exposures, color saturation, etc.  In other words there are many things available, some you may use often and some that you may never use. No matter which there should be enough to keep you busy.  Once again, this would be for the average photo taker.  If you consider yourself a professional amature or higher then you will want to get something more heavy duty with more abilities.

I know that there are other online editors out there but this one seems easy to use (for me) and doesn’t have a lot of features that I don’t need.  I am mainly using it now for editing photos for the new Double Click site.  The site will include some photographs that I have taken over the years.  No I don’t consider myself any sort of photographer but even a blind pig can find an acorn every once in a while.

More on my site redesign in the next few weeks but until it is ready, go have a Picnik.

In case you already use them Picnik mixes well with Flickr.com, Facebook.com, Photobucket.com, Picasa.com (my favorite) and Webshots.com.  All of these are existing online photo sites where you can save some of your photos and/or view others.

Those of you that read last week’s column about the 90# cell phone scam and the ATM SafetyPin “gimmick” are in for a treat today.

I received many emails from people about both of them.  Some people wrote to say that they had gotten the Urban Legends recently and wondered about their reality.  Others wrote to say that they had heard about the ATM PIN trick before and thought it was totally true.

Well one email that I got really surprised me.  It started out, “Hi Ron, I’m the guy who invented the ATM SafetyPIN.”  Imagine my surprise?  I wasn’t even greeted by, “I going to sue you if you don’t take back what you said about my product.”   I have seen that phrase several times over the years.

Joe Zingher went on to say that he has a web site that would answer all of my readers and my questions.  It is located at http://atmsafetypin.com.  Take a look, and if you would like to you can contact Joe from there.

He went on to tell me that the system would cost about $10 million nationwide, or about $20-$25 per ATM.  That doesn’t sound like to bad of a deal for what you get to me.

Joe told me that he was previously a patrolman and that the major benefit of this is that it can prevent crimes from even beginning.  He has had the experience of being at the scene within 30 seconds of getting the call.  Joe goes on to say that even if it were 30 minutes that would be much better than 30 days after the victim has disappeared.  He told me that is sometimes part of the perpetrators plan.  If the person is missing for a while the account will stay active for the criminals’ continued use.

He even has a fix to the palindromics issue I mentioned.  A PIN of “2442″ becomes “4224″, which is called “Inside-OutPIN”.  For the repeats like “8888″ you could use the “Plus 1-PIN” you add “1″ to each digit and the emergency number becomes “9999″.

Joe went on to say, “The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police lobbied for two years and testified in favor of making the system mandatory.”  He doesn’t think the banks appreciate it as they don’t want danger associated with the ATM industry.  There are currently no official statistics on how often a forced ATM withdrawal occurs.

If you are interested in finding out more about ATM SafetyPINs feel free to contact Joe Zingher, Gurnee, Illinois, through his company, Zi Cubed Inc., at the site.

“A well known telephone scam is now being used on cellular telephones.”

“If you receive a phone call on your mobile from any person saying that he or she is a company engineer, or telling that they’re checking your mobile line, and you have to press 90#.”

“End this call immediately without pressing any numbers. There is a fraud company using a device that once you press 90# they can access your “SIM” card and make calls at your expense.”

“Forward this message to as many friends as you can to stop it.”

AND

“If you are ever forced to withdraw monies from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse order. The machine will still give you the monies you requested, but unknown to the robber, etc, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.”

OK, I’ve had enough from some of my well meaning readers and one or two relatives in particular.  Please STOP sending me warnings like these.  They are hardly ever true and I have written about ones similar to the above two before, but many people just don’t get it.

The two above are resurfacing from a couple of years ago.  And they, like all other crazy warnings are false. At least these two are based on pieces of truth.

The 90# was related to something that could have possibly happened in the past, but no longer.  In the past some commercial phone systems only required you to dial “9″ for an outside line, there is a very slight possibility that this could have led to something but no longer.  Also home phones and cells phones can not be affected by this so don’t forward this message to anyone. 

The Reverse PIN trick was explored by Joseph Zingher in 1994 or 1998 (I’m not sure this is true since I have found multiple references to him that disagree on his employment and dates).  He thought up the idea although no ATMs have ever used it.  I have read that it would cost too much money and the police may not be able to get to the scenes quickly enough.  In addition, under pressure, you may not be capable of remembering your PIN backward.  Consider also those pesky palindromic numbers like 2992 or 1221 or even 5555?

Just Google a few words from these warnings and find out BEFORE you send them to others that they are fakes.  For one of the above I just pasted “you have to press 90#” into Google.com and in a second found that it was an obvious Urban Legend.  Don’t waste your friends’ and relatives’ time.

Oh, by-the-way, have you heard that there is someone online who wishes to meet you and is lonely tonight…give it up please!

Tags: computer, computer help, doyle, internet, newspaper column, Ron Doyle, Urban Legend

I got several emails about transferring files from old computers to new Christmas computers recently.   They wanted to know the best/easiest/least expensive way to move old, but still important files onto the new computer.

First — don’t move your program files.  For instance you don’t want to transfer a game to your new computer, primarily because it won’t work.  Programs must be installed on your new computer because when a program installs, it writes information in many places on your computer that you don’t know about.  Without just one small bit of that information it won’t work.  So gather all those CDs you threw in a drawer somewhere and start installing them on your new computer; when you have plenty of time.

The data files or files that you have created using those programs, can be transferred to your new computer a number of ways.  These are files like photos, the book you are writing, drawings, scans, poetry, etc.

An easy way is to copy them to CDs or DVDs with your burners (hopefully both computers have one).  Next, copy the files from the CD or DVD to the new computer.  One CD can hold a lot of info (about 700 MB) and a DVD can hold about 7 times that (4.7 GB).  This is an easy, fairly inexpensive way but it will take a while. 

If you don’t have a burner you can use a flash drive in the same way as a CD or DVD transfer.  Depending on size one of these could hold more files than a DVD.

Another way is to purchase an USB file transfer cable (under $25) if both computers have USB ports.  You then link the two computers together using the cable and XP’s transfer program.  If one computer has XP on it, it will allow you to copy the program to the other computer on a floppy disk.  Go to ALL PROGRAMS / ACCESSORIES / SYSTEM TOOLS / FILE AND SETTINGS TRANSFER WIZARD and follow the wizard’s instructions.

Also, with the price of external hard drives down well below $200 they could also be an option for your data files.  Copy them to the external drive and copy them back to the new computer’s drive.  Then use the external drive for backups or with MojoPac (mentioned last week).

Advanced users could install the old hard drive into the new computer and drag files to the new drive.  Wipe the old one clean and leave it for more storage.  BEWARE!  This will most likely void your warranty!  If you have the computer built locally, ask the tech to do it for you…it will be worth the additional cost. 

No matter which way you go you will need to be organized in locating the files you want transferred and do not select files you do not really need.  This could be a good time to perform some file spring cleaning.

Tags: computer help, doyle, new computer, newspaper column, old computer, Ron Doyle, Transferring Files