Hiatus

We apologize for the unplanned hiatus from this blog. We will return
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How To Keep In Touch With Geeks

You've got an elusive geek friend or family member that just isn't the best at returning your calls, or sending you emails even though you sent them(and ten of your friends) that really cute story about the puppy, or the student who challenged his professor and won. You know that they keep in touch with others regularly, but if the phone or email don't work for you, what other options are there in the electronic world?

Instant Messengers: These have been around for a while now and are a pretty tried and true method of keeping in touch online. There are a lot of different services out there, so if there's one geek in particular you're trying to keep in touch with, you'll need to be on the same services as them, and you'll need their username as well. Chances are pretty good that they use multiple services(to help them keep in touch with all their friends on different services), but there are a number of instant messengers out their that will handle multiple services at the same time with a little legwork. Different services include Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, GoogleTalk, and others. Each will have their own messenger to access their own service, but if you are feeling daring you can try one of the applications that works with multiple services such as Pidgin or Trillian.

Social Networks: There are plenty out there to choose from, but the trick is being on the same one as the person you care about. There is a bit of a caveat here for parents: if your kids aren't out of college yet, it's probably best for both you and them if you do not have access to their Facebook or MySpace page. Either you will find something that will cause you a great amount of concern for no real reason, or they will make sure that you don't see everything. It really depends on what site they are on, and how they use it. There's also a fair chance that your kids with either reject your friend request(doesn't mean they don't like you, they just don't want you reading anything on their page), or they will all but abandon that account and not tell you about it. If that happens, don't try and fight it on electronic battlegrounds, your kids will win. Talk it out, especially if they are still under your own roof. Now, for all those people to whom the caveat does not apply: each of the different social networks have their own quirks and charm. Twitter is a popular one, and basically just a list of blurbs(or tweets) about what's going on. You won't find a whole lot of depth there, but it can be nice to know what's new. Facebook is another popular choice, but for someone starting off, it can be rather intimidating. There is a lot that Facebook can do, and with their layout changing frequently, it's easy to get lost if you don't know what you're looking for. The good news is that it does do a lot for you. Any updates that your friends and family on Facebook make are brought right to you. If you don't want to read their results on the latest internet quiz, you can easily tell Facebook to stop showing you those kinds of updates. Their are plenty others out there but for the sake of brevity(ha!) we'll move on at this point.

Blogs: In comparison to the social networks, these are very simple to navigate. These are basically public journals. Services vary greatly in how they can restrict viewing, but they all serve the purpose of logging thoughts quite well. These can be considered to be social networks as well, but the focus here is heavily on writing. Parents, listen up: depending on the service your child uses, they might be more willing to share their blog with you than their Facebook page. Many allow you to keep some thoughts private or limited to certain people, and leave the rest available for the public. Even if you don't plan on writing your own blog, their are advantages to signing up for an account. For example, if someone has made their blog viewable to only their friends, you will have to have an account so that they can identify you as a friend, otherwise the site will just assume that you are a part of the "public" and not show you anything. Popular blog sites include Livejournal, Blogger, and Vox.

Something else to be aware about when exploring these different avenues of communication is the difference between public and private messages. The social networks allow both, so be careful on how you reach out the someone. Sending a private message that's meant to be public will be a slightly embarrassing mistake, but a public message that's meant to be private can be much more embarrassing. If it says "send a message to:" odds are good that it's a private message, but if it says "comment" or "post to" there's a good chance it's public.

Tech Glossary: Video Games

The Consoles:
First off, what is a console? Originally, the definition for this was a lot easier: a device designed to play video games. As the technology has improved over the last few years, video game consoles can do a lot more, and to further complicate matters, other devices can play video games as well. The question now is what the device's primary purpose is. A cell phone is a cell phone is a cell phone, but even if it can play games, it's still a cell phone and not a console. The three main consoles people will discuss nowadays are the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3 and the Wii. These are all primarily designed to play video games. There are other portable gaming systems, such as the Playstation Portable or the Nintendo DS, which are intended for handheld use, but these are not consistently called consoles. There's no rhyme or reason to when they are considered consoles or not. It may depend on your zodiac sign, or Jupiter's moon cycles. The point is, if you call one a console, you may get a raised eyebrow, or you may not, and that will be the extent of it. Don't worry about it.

Genres:
RPG: This stands for Role Playing Game. These are games where the player creates a character and tries to develop them in various ways of their choosing. Players can often become invested in their characters and for this reason RPG's are notorious for being some of the most addicting games out there. There are a number of acronyms out there describing basically that they can be played online with other players. MMO, MMPORG, etc. Don't worry about remembering what they all mean, just recognize them as being online games with lots of other people. Stories are frequently Fantasy or Science Fiction in nature.

FPS: First Person Shooter. There's a gun on the screen, and a hand holding it. That's your character. You've got a first-person view of the action, and a lot of targets. Storyline is often seen as optional, especially if the game itself is really fun, but sometimes it can really help you to get into your character's head. These are typically very action-oriented and predominantly based on actual wars, or futuristic settings.

Platform. These games involve a lot of jumping. Some are more precise than others, but the one thing that's fairly consistent is that you don't want to miss your jump by falling short.

Side-scroller. You won't see as many of these games on non-portable systems anymore. Side scrolling basically means the the levels are predominantly laid out in a long, left-to-right manner where you are always looking at your character from the side. As the player advances, the screen scrolls with them, moving the "camera" to view more of the level, while the character stays pretty much in the center of the screen.

Sandbox/Open-ended. These games are growing in popularity. Whereas most games have a guided progression of gameplay, sandbox games let you decided what you want to do, and where you want to go. "The story can wait, I really want to explore this one area..." The most famous(infamous?) games in this genre include the Grand Theft Auto series.

That should be enough to get you started, be sure to check back later for more Tech Glossary terms.

A friendly reminder

You can always ask for help on any technical issue by emailing
help.d.myst@gmail.com Responses will be sent back to you via email and
posted to the site as well, with your personal information omitted.

Howto...

Today we start something new for us, in what will be an ongoing series for this blog. How to Better Understand Geeks. For this initial post, I'm going to break down the basic parts of you PC and explain them in easy to digest analogies. Without further ado: How to Understand What Makes up Your Computer - Part 1.

Kilo-, Mega-, Giga-, Tera-, Peta-
If you see these prefixes before a word, it's basically just telling you how many there are. Kilo is 1,000, and in the order that the rest appear, they are 1,000 times more. So Mega is 1,000 Kilo, and Giga is 1,000 Mega and so on. We are just starting to see items with Terabyte hard drives(more on that later) hitting the market, so you may come across this term, but for the near future, you might not need to remember what the Peta- prefix means.

Megahertz VS. Megabytes(and Gigahertz VS. Gigabytes):
These two terms are often confused among the technologically uninitiated, and if you can't keep them straight, you will stick out like a sore thumb to a geek. Basically, hertz is a measurement of how many "cycles", or thought processes, a device can perform in 1 minute. More is definitely faster. A byte is a unit of data, or information, that the computer remembers. You'll see bytes(Megabytes or gigabytes, usually) describing 2 different aspects of a computer most frequently; RAM and hard drives.

RAM(Random Access Memory) and Hard Drives:
Simply put, this is your computer's short term, and long term memory. Another way of thinking about ram is comparing it to your desk at work. If you have a very small desk, it can be hard to keep organized and get anything done quickly, but with a larger desk, it's easier to keep your tasks organized and separated and you can get work done much quicker, regardless of how sharp you are. Hard drives are your storage for everything that you want, and your computer needs, to keep on hand. These are your filing cabinets, your bookshelves, your desk drawers, and anything else that you use to store your stuff, all combined. Both of these are measured in bytes, but just remember that RAM is like the random stuff you have to remember over the course of the day to get things done, and a hard drive is everything you need to remember for long periods of time.
What more RAM means to you: The more RAM you have, the more programs your computer can run at once. Not all programs are created equal, and some take more RAM than others to run smoothly. More RAM also means these needy applications will run smoother.
What a larger hard drive means to you: The more stuff you can save on your computer. If all you do is check email and browse the web, you don't need much. If you've got a family computer, your kids will use a lot more than you do. Having more storage space means the difference between having a few songs saved on your computer and having all of your music, pictures and videos saved onto your computer. If you're not that ambitious, or plan on keeping the computer all to yourself, you can probably get by just fine with a smaller drive.

The Processor(CPU):
This is easily the brain of your computer. Its speed is measured in Hertz(nowadays from 1.2 to 3.0 gigahertz is common), and number of cores. Not too much to be concerned about here, just that more of either >means faster, and less power usage on the electric bill.
What a faster processor means to you: less waiting. There are still other things than can slow you down on your computer, but a faster processor means that your computer will respond to your commands much quicker. And having multiple cores is just like adding another processor to your computer, it'll respond that much faster. Still with me? You're doing great. Don't forget, you can always bookmark this or print this off to read later.

Wireless(WiFi):
Don't let the name fool you, you will still have at least one wire running to your computer. This just means one less wire adding to the mess. This always comes with a letter describing what kind of WiFi it has(if any), and the later in the alphabet, the faster it can access information from elsewhere, and the further it can be from the access point(the source of the signal). It's basically a walkie-talkie just for computers to talk to each other in their own language. By the way, their alphabet skips several letters, so don't worry about the gaps, just remember later means farther and faster.
What the letters mean to you: "A" means the two computers(or a computer and a router) need to be right next to each other, and don't share very well. "B" is fine for across the same room if all you want to do is browse the web or check email. "G" is enough to cover a small house with good transfer speeds, and "N" means you can stream videos from your back porch to your laptop without many hiccups(see earlier posts if you aren't sure what that means).

Up to this point, you've been armed with enough knowledge to compare the hardware in prebuilt computers that you would find in any retail location, but that still isn't quite enough to help you make a decision if you aren't sure what you need when you are looking to buy.

What are your needs?
Let's start with what you *want* to do with the computer: If you want to go online, do your taxes, pay bills, check email and the news, and maybe watch some videos on YouTubeTM, chances are really good that you'd be happy with what's commonly called a netbook or a nettop. These tasks are not very demanding at all on a computer, and these computers are built with scaled-back components with that in mind. Don't confuse "scaled-back" with "lower-end"; these are new parts designed for low demand usage. They are state of the art, and best of all, inexpensive.

If you'd like to branch out a little bit and do a bit more demanding tasks such as editing pictures you've taken with your digital camera to get rid of red-eye or maybe just brighten it up a bit, record backups of your DVD's(legally, mind you), or record your music collection to your computer, you fall into the range of most computers out there for sale today. A faster processor, and more RAM will really help speed up these tasks, but if you plan on doing a lot of them, you'll need a spacious hard drive as well. How spacious really depends on a lot of things, but100 to 300 gigabytes will please most casual users.

What about games? The answer to this really depends on what you mean. If you play the game by going to a website, or simple puzzle or card games, your needs are met simply by having an internet connection and a computer. If the games involve 3D graphics and look like a real-breathing world inside your computer monitor, you will need a decent video card, and a computer fitting of one of the slightly more demanding users. Video Cards have specifications very similar to the computer itself. It has its own processor and memory, and the good news is, upgrading or installing a video card to your desktop computer is a fairly simple process these days, and can be done long after you've bought your computer. If you are thinking about buying a video card to play games, start by looking at the boxes for the games themselves. They always have a "minimum" and a "recommended" configuration for your computer and video card. Find the games you want to play, read the recommended specs, and find a card with at least those specs.

Now I'm going to make the very safe assumption that you don't need a top-of-the-line, bleeding-edge computer. There are a few people who could really put those to use: people who work with graphics at a professional level, and video game fanatics. Both of these groups have a pretty good idea what their needs are in a computer already.

Tech Glossary: Online Video

We've all heard of YouTube, and may have even watched a video on it. We're hearing more and more about other sites like Hulu and want to know more about watching videos online, but the lingo may sound a bit intimidating. Here are a handful of words you may come across when looking for videos online:

Streaming: basically, this means that your computer is playing the video directly from the website it's on, and not being stored on your computer. It's not a get-now-watch-later situation. The pro is that it doesn't take up any space on your computer, the con is that you generally need a really good connection to watch video this way without interruption.

Buffering: speaking of interruptions, this is the standard way of dealing with slower, or less reliable connections. A buffer is basically a way to give your computer a head-start. If the video is a high quality, your network connection is slow, or some combination of the two is happening, the time it takes to get the video is longer than the actual video itself. A good analogy for watching a video online is like rolling a matchbox car downhill. It won't make it down on the pavement, so you have to lay track down for it. The speed that you can lay down track is like your network speed, and the speed of the matchbox car is the video's playback speed. If you started laying track at the same time as releasing the car, you would have to stop a lot. Buffering gives you enough time to lay down the track before letting the car go, hopefully enough time to let the car make it all the way down without stopping.

Torrents: some of you may come across this term if you are looking for a particular video online. A Torrent is a way of "packaging" a video to download to your computer. You'll need a program that can handle torrent files(BitTorrent, or the browser Opera, are a couple of the more popular options). There's more to these files than I've explained, but this is enough to let you use them.

Codecs: These are like instructions for your computer to assemble the video. If a video was made using a certain codec, your computer will need that same codec to make sense of the video. There are a number of codecs out there, but if you have Flash, DivX, and QuickTime(iTunes) installed, chances are good that you won't have a problem playing videos because of a codec problem.

Another thing to be aware of is the legality of watching videos online. If the videos you watch have commercials in them, chances are fair that it's a legal way to view them. Torrents are frequently used illegally, but not always, so if you have moral objections to watching videos illegally, you're better off avoiding torrents. If you do choose to watch videos illegally, chances are very good that nothing will happen to you, but your computer faces a greater risk of infection from malicious software should you go that route. I'm not going to advise you how to better protect yourself in those situations, as that's a form of encouragement. If you're not very adventurous, but are still curious about viewing videos online, stick with sites such as YouTube and Hulu. YouTube does a pretty good job of making sure the videos on their site have their owner's permission to be there, and Hulu only has videos that are supported by the studios that own them. There are plenty of other sites out there, but these two are pretty low-risk for the uninitiated.

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Digital Cameras

Ok folks, it's time for me to attempt to clear up the mud filled waters in the world of camera shopping. If you've ever even looked at a camera on display or online in the last 4 years, you've heard the buzzword "Megapixel" thrown at you at least a dozen times. Don't be fooled, it's not a measurement of quality, but *quantity. *It's not as simple as how many pictures the camera can store, but actually how much info is stored in each picture. *If you have a nice lens* on the camera, having more megapixels will mean a more detailed picture. So how do you know if it's a nice lens? Easy. Manufacturers call this part Optical Zoom, which on digital cameras is measured by how much it can magnify the image coming in. For example, a 2x optical zoom means that it can magnify the image twice as large as normal. I've come up with a simple little gauge to evaluate cameras, it's pretty easy to remember: Add the Optical Zoom to the Megapixels, save that number. Multiply the same two numbers, and take the average of this answer and your first answer.

Now what does this all mean? If you get a result that's less than 16, this camera is good for those of us who are happy with the pictures you get from those one-time-use cameras you see in the check out lines. If the number you end up with is between 16 and 25, this is a camera that's probably good for those of us who like a sharper picture, and might like to hang up a few around the house. Results greater than 25 are not likely to disappoint anyone looking for great quality from a consumer grade camera. If you're looking for a professional grade camera, chances are you've already got better resources guiding you than this little equation.