4 Ways To Tell If Malware Is On Your PC

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Contrary to popular opinion, malware is usually created in such a manner that you will never notice that it is on your PC. The reason for this is the people who write them do not want you to get rid of them from your computer.

Yet despite this ability to stay hidden, there are certain symptoms that will give you clues as to whether you have malware on your system or not.

And while in some cases, ransomware will announce its presence on your system while the presence of others will not be so obvious.

That said, here are 4 ways by which you can tell if malware exists on your system:

#1: Poor PC Performance

If you PC is running slower than ever or several unwanted, unrecognizable programs in the background, then you can attribute this to malware.

#2: Toolbars that don’t seem to go away

A number of programs usually install toolbars on your system and which can be uninstalled in one go. However, if this isn’t possible, then there’s probably malware on your system and which will require you to do more.

#3: Home and Search Pages change

Similar to the issue with toolbars, if your Home and Search Pages cannot be reset back to the URLs that you prefer, then it’s probably because of malware too.

#4: Maintenance programs do not work

Malware protects itself by disabling programs that have been designed to recognize and remove it in the process. Some of these programs include Task Manager, Windows Update, System Restore, Msconfig, Regedit or even your antivirus program.

What You Need to Know About Partitioning Your Hard Drive

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Most PCs, with Windows installed, already have two or three partitions. Usually, your drive has one main partition (C:) which amounts to most of the physical space available on the hard drive. The others are used for recovery and maintenance purposes.

Simply put, while the physical disk is a single entity, creating one or more partitions can slice it into a number of drive with different letters (D, E,F) and which can make daily computing all that more easier. If you must know, the operating system treats each of these partitions as separate drives.

But why would you want to create partitions? Anyone who has will know how much of a hassle it can be.

As mentioned earlier, one good reason to have partitions is if you want to run two operating systems namely Linux and Windows. Another would be to separate system and data if only for backup purposes.

In other words, you can leave Windows among other programs on C: while all your music, documents, videos and pictures can go on D: drive. It goes without saying that the latter will have more space allocated to it.

Of course, you can backup your Windows environment by creating an image of your C: drive but this file will be large if you don’t partition the physical drive. And this is why separating your libraries and programs is a good idea since using a backup program will not be tedious.

Yet before you think about partitioning, make sure you get expert help or you can risk losing data as a result.

Best Practices for Engagement on Mobile Platforms

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Mobile usage is on the rise, and there is evidence to suggest that both genders are using it to make purchases. While there is some difference in the kinds of purchases each gender generally makes, what is clear is that marketers stand to capitalize on engaging with customers in the moment.

Mobile customers are by nature on-the-go, making mobile marketing something of a predictive game. Here are some best practices that are sure to help you get started.

Predict Your Customer’s Intent

You will be able to buy mobile traffic specifically, so you should have some idea of what those users might be viewing before you try to market to them. You can make some educated guesses based on interests. Try to imagine whether the messaging in your ad will sync up with what a user might be viewing while she is out and about. Is the user comparison shopping? Is the user searching for something new?

Test your theories with different ad groups and try to expand on your ideas. Never be satisfied with a campaign that performs “ok.”

Use Ad Sizes that Work

Are you using the IAB recommended ad sizes for mobile? Do you know which ad sizes are the top performers from 2014? Have you asked your traffic network which ad sizes perform best in your target market? You can answer some of these questions by doing some competitive research. You will also find that your usage of text and color will impact which ad sizes work best for you as well.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is the co-founder of engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik got his start at MySpace.com, helping to launch that brand in the social media space. Ted Dhanik currently lives in Los Angeles, where he helps brands of all sizes to build their following through targeted advertising.

3 Ways to Take Notes Using your iOS or Android Phone

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Almost all of us have found ourselves in a situation where we’ve come up with brilliant thoughts but have never been able to jot them down anywhere.

It happens to the best of us.

However, just so that this never happens again, here are 3 ways by which you can record these thoughts:

#1: Ask Siri to take notes

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPad, you can easily use Siri to capture your thoughts. All you have to do is press and hold the Home key, tap Settings and  Passcode Lock . After this, activate Siri while it is locked and say ‘Note to self’.

#2: Google Now (Android)

Google Now is an excellent Android app that follows voice commands. However, what makes this even better is that you can use this app even though your phone is locked. Just be careful to not leave your phone vulnerable to smartphone thieves as they can look through your messages and contacts quite easily. Of course, once it transcribes your your thoughts, it will save on the note-take app that you prefer.

#3: A video selfie should do the trick

An unorthodox way of recording your thoughts would involve taking a video selfie using your iPhone. Best part: You won’t have to unlock your iOS device either. All you have to do is swipe the camera shortcut in the corner of the screen and after which you tap the Record button. Now say what you have to and tap the button again.

3 Browser Extensions for the Chrome New Tab Page

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Browser extensions have been designed with the express purpose of making your browser more useful than it already is.

Of course, there’s not much to improve when it comes to the UI with the exception of Chrome’s New Tab page.

That said, here are 3 browser extensions that can help brighten up your web browser:

#1: Pinterest Tab

First up, you don’t need to have a Pinterest account to use this extension but you still get a beautiful picture for your tab from this social network that focuses on images. When starting the extension, you will be asked to choose image topics such as food, travel to name a few. However, it also gives us access to Google Calendar as well as a direct link to Pinterest itself.

#2: Earth View from Google Maps

This extension does not need any set-up whatsoever. Once you’ve installed it, every time you open a new tab, you can a beautiful satellite photo from Google Maps. It’s hard to tell whether this is from an extension as indicated by a Google Maps logo at the lower left hand corner as well as an indicator informing you of where this satellite photo has been taken from.

#3: Momentum

This extension helps you add a bit of prettiness along with productivity in your new tab. As soon as you start this extension up, it will ask you for your name as well as what the main focus of your day is. So, everytime you open up a new tab, you will be greeted personally, the time of day as well as the reminder that you wish to focus on. Apart from this, a beautiful photo as a backdrop, a to-do list and the current weather is also displayed.

Essential Tips for Display Advertisers

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Display advertising has the potential to outperform text ads if you know how to harness that potential. It’s a form of direct marketing, so your messaging and your work need to be spot on. Testing and execution are keys in this equation, so you need to be able to produce ads that will perform quickly. Learning these essential tips is sure to help your performance metrics improve.

Copy is Key

When you are working with banners, copy is more than just the words. You have to consider the colors and images on your banner, as well as the space your banner will occupy. Make sure what you and your ad exchange’s preferred sizes are, and that you work within those constraints. It helps to write from a place of knowledge, so perform some quick competitive research on Google to determine which tag lines are working. The closer you get to find that pain point, the better your conversion rate will become.

Outsource Work

Don’t be afraid to outsource the technical aspects of your work to someone more knowledgeable than you. You can easily find a developer to design a landing page for your campaign within a budget of a few hundred dollars. If you can host your own banner advertising, you can capture more data about your target market.

Hiring designers and developers takes time, and you should be prepared to check a few sources to find the work you need. Keep your project simple, and limit yourself to only a few assets. The less you have to work with, the better for your long term efforts.

Bio: For over ten years, Ted Dhanik has used display advertising to boost sales for businesses of all sizes. Ted Dhanik is the co-founder of engage:BDR, and a mentor at the startup accelerator Start Engine. Ted Dhanik also publishes advice to Ad Age and Venture Beat.

How to Ensure the Long Life of Your Laptop Battery

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It’s common knowledge that batteries don’t last forever. However, in maintaining your laptop battery carefully, you can still carry a sufficient charge until you are absolutely ready to move on to purchasing a new laptop for your daily computing needs.

Of course, this may take some effort which means that will turn out to be more of a hassle than it should be worth.

So let’s begin with a practical but less effective method. Now, let’s say that you are at home and are running the battery on AC power. Of course, you wouldn’t need the battery then. So, if you think your laptop is going to stay plugged in for a week or so, turn off the PC and remove the battery.

Of course, when you’re on the road, then you might need the battery. In this situation, you can plug it back in but also remembering to charge it before going on your trip.

Keep in mind that you should never insert a battery when the laptop is turned on. Always make sure it is turned off before you do this.

For the best results, never charge it above 80 percent but ensure that the power doesn’t fall below 20 percent. To ensure this, always keep an eye on the battery when it’s charging as you work on AC power.

As soon as it hits 80 percent, ensure that you turn off your system and remove the battery. Not very differently, when using the battery on the road, remove it if it goes below 20 percent. As a result, do not start up your system until you have access to AC power.

Cooling essentials for your hardware

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Industrial air conditioning is a must have especially when you are working with quite a lot of computers and hardware. As a matter of fact, some mainframes and servers that require a great deal of cooling would sometimes even require a portable air conditioner as well so it would not overheat. It is a given fact that businesses thrive and survive on computers. And it is the responsibility of every employer or management team to make sure that these machines function correctly and properly as well. These machines produce a great deal of heat, and if you do not provide them with enough cooling, you are definitely going to have a great deal of trouble as they overheat quickly. You see, mainframes and servers may have their own cooling systems, but these simply will not suffice especially when you have them working twenty four hours a day and seven days a week as well. You need to have these machines stored in a cool place so they can function as efficiently and properly as well for extended periods of time. After all, a higher electric bill would be a reasonable trade off rather than having to suffer a machine breakdown in your servers. This can cause huge problems especially when you are heavily dependent on your mainframes and computers for your business. Also, you need to make sure that you follow what your IT personnel recommends as far as cooling needs are concerned. So if the say that your machines need to be kept at a constant temperature, you need to make sure that this is followed.

Portable ac units are quite affordable nowadays. If you need extra cooling requirements, this is definitely what you need.

3 Benchmarking Tools You Can Use to Test Your Android Phone

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How much do you know about your Android phone? Apart from its name, price tag and the applications it can run?

In order to know more, you can use this to run benchmarks that will not only tell you how how fast your phone but will also show you it fares against older phones or those in the marketplace.

That said, here are 3 benchmarking tools that you can use:

#1: Basemark OS II and Basemark OS X

Basemark is one of the most sophisticated benchmarking suites available that cover both gaming as well as OS separately. That said, Basemark OS II, in particular, works to check for OS performance while Basemark OS X tests for gaming performance.

#2: Antutu 5

Antutu’s fifth version will test for gaps in GPU and CPU performance. With this new version, single-core CPU performance is also included now that software can be written for the rising core counts. Even the GPU benchmark also gets a facelift where complexity has been added along with the addition of the Havok Vision Engine. With support for ART and Lollipop as well as new 64-bit hardware such as Nvidia and Qualcomm, Antutu is ready enough for the latest hardware.

#3: Ookla

Ookla is an internet speed meter that runs latency and bandwidth tests to particular servers that you can specify. This could be across a region or even a particular city as well. One good reason why it is a good idea to use this benchmarking your Android phone is because carrier performance and phone location works just as well.

Things to know before choosing a data center

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Written by: Rack Alley

If you’re choosing a new data center, Los Angeles might have popped up in your list a few times. That’s no coincidence though. A lot of companies will choose an LA data center over others.

Los Angeles colocation

The prime reason for that is the colocation. Colocation is a simple concept; it means sharing your data center with other companies. Now you might think about security issues, but that’s all been taken good care of. The companies are properly isolated from each other. In fact, colocation is a very common practice.

Colocation also addresses the time issue. Usually, setting up a new data center takes a lot of time. This means that if a company wants a data center fast, they’re more likely to find a colocation one.

Los Angeles web hosting

But why choose Los Angeles in the first place. What if price was not an issue?

Los Angeles has grown over the years to become the city to go to for high quality data centers. It has direct access to a lot of high quality network service providers. This makes sure that your data travels in a fast and reliable way.

Los Angeles is also home to a wide network of content delivery networks. Content delivery networks, called CDN, ensures that users worldwide have fast access your website. This is achieved by having servers on strategic parts of the world. These servers will contain a copy of your data, so users closer to the CDN server will use that one.