TECH TIPS

Welcome to "Tech Tips", a collection of helpful suggestions to improve your use of computers and the Internet.

 The current month's "tech tip" is below, with a link to the full webpage.  Older tech tips will be archived so you can browse through them, beginning December, 2009.

If you're using Safari (a browser that can be used with Windows or the Mac OS), there's an easy way to download YouTube videos:

1. Open the page with the movie and press Command-Option-A, which shows the Activity window. If you're also loading other sites, you'll see a list of them: scroll until you find the YouTube page and click on the arrow to show details about what is being loaded.

2. You will certainly notice an element whose size is over 0.5MB (most of the time, over 5MB). Double-click on it (even if it is still loading), and Safari will download it. When the download is over, navigate to the file in the Finder (which will probably be called get_video) and add the extension .flv to its name. Now you can play it with VLC or with QuickTime (only if you have Perian installed).

3. If you want to convert the downloaded file so you can play it on your iPod, there are many free video file converters available.  The two I recommend are the FLV to  MP4 converter for Mac users or Vixy.net (for both Windows and Mac users).

To see this demonstrated on YouTube, click HERE (the video is only 2 minutes and 41 seconds long for those of you with short attention spans!).

TECH TIP FOR DECEMBER, 2009:  How to Create an Unhackable Password in 5 Minutes or Less!

This tip comes from Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo.  The full article is linked, but here's the summary:

Hackers have password-guessing programs that can crack your password to Facebook, Twitter, or your bank account in 5 minutes or less!

How can you beat these programs?  

1. Choose a password that doesn't contain a readable word. Mix upper and lower case. Use a number or symbol in the middle of the word, not on the end. Don't just use 1 or !, and don't use symbols as replacements for letters, such as @ for a lowercase A—password-guessing software can see through that trick. And of course, create unique passwords for your different sites.
2. Start with an original but memorable phrase. For this exercise, let's use these two sentences: I like to eat bagels at the airport and My first Cadillac was a real lemon so I bought a Toyota. The phrase can have something to do with your life or it can be a random collection of words—just make sure it's something you can remember. That's the key: Because a mnemonic is easy to remember, you don't have to write it down anywhere. (If you can't remember it without writing it down, it's not a good mnemonic.) This reduces the chance that someone will guess it if he gets into your computer or your e-mail. What's more, a relatively simple mnemonic can be turned into a fanatically difficult password.

3. Turn your phrase into an acronym. Be sure to use some numbers and symbols and capital letters, too. I like to eat bagels at the airport becomesIlteb@ta, and My first Cadillac was a real lemon so I bought a Toyota is M1stCwarlsIbaT.

   That's it—you're done. These mnemonic passwords are hard to forget, but they contain no guessable English words. You can even create pass phrases for specific sites that are coded with a hint about their purpose. A sentence like It's 20 degrees in February, so I use Gmail lets you set a new Gmail password every month and still never forget it: i90diSsIuGfor September, i30diMsIuG for March, etc. (These aren't realistic temperatures; they're the month-number multiplied by 10.)

Tech Tips from Previous Months (from newest to oldest)

Have a tech tip you want to share?