Travel Sites Venture Beyond the Bottom Line

Most Web-Savvy travelers now how to find cheap airfares, hotel rooms, and rental cars on comparison sites such as kayak.com and farecast.com or the big booking sit Expedia ,Orbitz, Travelocity, and the like.  But last year, dozens of Web travel sites jumped in to fill newly emerging niches in travel planning. Here's a selection of sites (many still in beta testing) that might help with your plans.

WHERE TO GO

These six sites can help an undecided trip planner discover a perfect travel match. Based on your answers to a simple questionnaire, Best Trip Choices(besttripchoices.com) identifies which of six "travel Personalities" you most closely match and suggests  destinations and activities suited to your preferences. (You handle the booking.) Similarly, Travel Muse (travelmuse.com), Trip base (tripbase.com), and Triporati (triporati.com_ offer destinations based on interests you identify on supplied lists or tags.  Travel Muse and Trip base factor in your budjet, and Travel Muse asks you how much time you're willing to spend en route.  All three provide reviews, maps, links to booking sites, and more.

If  you're considering a cruise or an organized tour, stop by Travelbeen.com, which debuted in seven countries, with it's goal of incorporating every travel Web site on the planet into its "social search engine." One of the service's more unusual features is its ability to search for travel suppliers by specialized criteria, including accreditationswww.google.com .  The accrediting groups, however, aren't explained.  For example, you can call up a list of cruise lines that belong to the International Association of Antartica Tour Operators, but not an explanation of how those lines differ fro lines that aren't members.

If you're looking for a hotel deal, try DealBase, (dealbase.com), which presents key criteria for each offer-price, savings off full room rates, and terms of booking (including) the dates of your stay and the deadline for booking)-in just three lines of type.  You can filter deals by category or interest )golf, beach, four-star, and so on, bookmark your favorites, and view them as a list.

Once you have settled on a destination, these two sites can help you plan your visit.  Visually compelling Planet Eye (planeteye.com) creates color-coded, geo tagged Microsoft Virtual Earth maps that you can use to identify, say, restaurants and attractions within walking distance of a particular hotel.  In addition, you can create virtual folders (called "travel Packs") to file photo-illustrated restaurant reviews and travel tips aggregated from many sources.      

At Trazzler (trazzler.com), identify the destination or interests you want to research ( if you provide the latter, Trazzler will help you choose a destination); then flip through a  "trip stack" (think baseball cards)--photo illustrated hotel, dining, and activity suggestions with links to Web sites that provide more detail. Compile a wish list, and the site aggregates data, from your searches into a preference pie chart.  This content comes from both professional writers and user reviews. Compiled by Janet Fullwood.

Sleazy Scammers

Just a quick note today regarding safeguarding yourself for the experienced and the beginner computer person. 

Oh by the way, I love you guys.

Safety begins with being educated about scamming.  You can check out questionable offers at sites like scambuster.org and the community message boards at scam.com. Remember these and use them for you will get scammed at some point in your computing career. 

If you are intrigued by a pitch that pops up, use your search engine to investigate. And do not simply accept the first link that pops up in Google: get several points of view.  If something is not quite right you will know soon enough.

The rest is common sense. As you have been told and read time and time again, keep your antivirus up-to-date, don't just click on links in email, and unless you look like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie, do not respond when you see that "someone" on Facebook has a crush on you message. Come to think of it, you should ignore those links even if you are George Clooney.

And in case you were wondering, it is still a bad idea to take candy from strangers. But you knew that already!

Have a great day and I will be back with some things you may or may not know. Until then, happy computing and safely surfing.

http://youtu.be/HpOl_BRv2ck

                                             about safe eyes for you and your family rated top ten

http://www.facebook.com/

Computer Efficiency Expert

Become an Efficiency Expert

Computer World had some great services they found and it is worth sharing. These will help you work more effectively at home or office, sharing with family or friends.

Openoffice.org is a great program if you do not want to pay out hundreds of dollars for MS Office. You can download this program for free.

Want to create web-based multimedia presentations with a great  service and share with clients or family? Try flowgram.com

This next service is going to help you keep track of to-dos, projects, phone calls, and more.  You can use it for your personal life as well with gubb.net.

As you well know, many people like to create pdfs without software.  It can work with documents of more than 300 types or web sites.  This great effective service is called PrimoOnline.

This service with registration,  you can remember to do anything..even buy bread and milk and is suitable for many  platforms, including Blackberry, iPhone, Gmail and Windows Mobile. Become more effective with rememberthemilk.com. 

Try one of these great programs today.

Streamline Your Social Sites

Social networking is great for keeping up with your friends and relatives, but what about all the time you sink into it?  The effort you devote to social networks can consume your day faster than you can pick up pals on Facebook.  Here are seven ways to make your experience less complex.  Digsby is great for combining your entire online social life, Wrapping social networking, IM, and email into one tight little package.  this i a great little multitasking download that integrates AIM, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and tons more all form the comfort of one unified system tray application. www.digsby.com 


It seems this one is used by everyone but me, however, I would if I needed it. Google Latitude acts like a Lo Jack for their loved ones.  Accessible from your cell phone or browser, Latitude displays where all your friends are located on a Google Map.


It is always exciting for me to see that someone has written a comment on my Facebook wall, but if you are doing actual work at some point in time during the day, the deluge of e-mail notifications from social networks can be a huge time hole.  Nutshellmail consolidates messages from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and secondary email accounts into one Scheduled digest, so you can get a quick look of your popularity. nutshell.com


Want something that is all about managing your status? ping.fm(registration required) is what you are looking for.  Set up this with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, for example and a single update automatically posts a new status update on Facebook as well as a new tweet to Twitter. Multiply that function by more than 30 supported social networking sites, and you could save some serious time. 


If you are crazy addicted to the popular social networking and micro blogging service Twitter,  you have probably outgrown using Twitter's Web interface to write and track tweets.  TweetDeck.com  is a no cost download that puts Twitter on steroids, letting you easily track particular search terms, group your friends, shrink URLs and more, all from one centralized window. 


Below is a video regarding using NutshellMail.

I you have IPad this is a product you may want to try. I have read about it and I suggest it for any stage of learning.   http://41c60n0gxf6yjnfeq-iilasa-n.hop.clickbank.net/

Also IPad for Dummies http://e80f0lxiw73y5rf819l1ufbr2l.hop.clickbank.net/

Security Alert for your Desktop or Laptop

I was skeptical when I saw the pop-up from "Antivirus 2012" on my screen.  I knew that the dire warning of a system infection was fake, but when I cliked the X to close the window it expanded the fill my screen. (Has this happened to you?) Sure, any of us using our computers have seen this before. So, I am sure this sounds familiar.

To get rid of it I had to shut down my PC.  Dirty tricks like these, designed to get you to install and buy fake antivirus products, are more common than ever.  But while you might recognize such warnings as bogus, you might not know that the fake warning could be a red alert about an underlying bot malware infection.  Knowing the difference is key.  My computer crashed and burned due to this, and I do not want it to happen again.  We don't even blink at these pop-ups anymore, but we must be careful. The increased incidence of such pop-ups is due to more crooks going after easy money from shady programs claiming to make you rich using your internet.

Often, the inducement comes from a malicious Web site that employs JavaScript tricks to unleash a horde of pop-ups or even resize your browser window, to create something that looks like a real antivirus scan.  (This happened to me yesterday.) You might reach such a site by using a bad search link, like clicking online for a free movie or something that sounds reasonable. Then, you get redirected to a site that takes over your browser to display a fake antivirus scan, which is ( bogus); the site states critical infections are started, to push you to purchase the rogue antivirus app.to correct the problem.  If a site merely hijacks your browser, you don't have to worry too much: The pop-ups or fake scanner windows don't cause lasting damage.  However, you may be prevented from closing the window as you usually would.  But, you can bring up the Windows Task Manager with <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> and close your browser that way.  sometimes just pressing <Alt>-<F4> will shut it down. Don't panic, as long as you don't install the program, no real harm occurs.

Unfortunately, the other way you might encounter a fake antivirus program could be found much worse. Criminals use bot-infected PCs, sometimes gathered into huge networks (called botnets) of a hundred thousand or more systems, to send spam world wide. (botnets are a glossary of malware and spam technology).  But, they also use bots to download rogue antivirus apps and other malware onto your PC. Anyone with an already-deployed botnet is potentially looking at this as way to make extra money." This is done by getting someone to download a supposed trial version of the rogue antivirus tool using a legitimate software sales technique or by installing the software behind-the-scenes with a bot.  Once installed, the rogue typically uses highly aggravating techniques, such as changing the windows desktop background to warn of a supposed infection and displaying content other warning, to push you to buy the full version of the software.  You might know not to download a rogue antivirus utility in response to a pop-up But when ordered to download it by a malicious controller, a hidden bot will never give you the chance to apply your good sense.

 However, if you follow your basic security precautions, such as keeping your antivirus software up-to-date and being careful with e-mail attachments and downloads, you can reduce the odds of getting infected with a bot or other malware.  If you do see pop-ups or other fake warnings from a rogue antivirus app on your machine, try to determine whether it is from a Web site or from actual software installed by a bot (or by someone else who uses the PC).  Where possibilities are endless  the fake software scam comes in many variations, and crooks' tactics differ, so there is no sure indicator that one is present. Watch for warnings that persist after you reboot your PC, especially if they appear before you open your browser or if you see an unfamiliar icon in your system tray.  If you right click on it, and it will not go away and your desktop background has changed, your are infected with a rogue antivirus program.

To sum it up, keep your antivirus software up-to-date, do not be fooled by pop-ups that will not let you close them out. There are many people all over the world that are sending these botnets, and it is only going to get worse. This my sound like a science fiction movie, and it is one that can be very costly.

Surf safely and I will be looking for the best free apps and services that you do not have to pay for!