Article written by My system journal

There is less and less of an emphasis on local storage when purchasing computers or phones. This is mostly due to a lot of services moving online. Streaming video services like Netflix negate the need to store video or our hard drives. In the same vein, services like Spotify and Apple Music mean we don’t need to keep our massive music collections on any of our devices, even our phones. For all our other storage needs, there are several cloud storage providers to choose from:

Dropbox

This service was the most popular. Due to being written into almost every major iOS app, it grew from startup to a billion dollar company. Although its star has faded recently due in large part to growing competition, its integration with iOS apps means that it still is the way to go for iPhone and iPad users.

iCloud

One of the biggest complaints with iCloud was its lack of stability and space. While you still need to purchase additional space, Apple has fixed all other issues with the service. Its popularity is growing within apps and is probably the best choice if you are all-in on the Apple ecosystem.

Google Drive

After a late launch and a mixed start, Google Drive has finally evolved into a mature cloud storage product. For mixed environments Google Drive is the best storage provider available. Excellent integration into Android, iOS support along with Windows and Mac clients give it a multi platform edge.

Most cyber attacks are targeted at smaller websites that do not have the skills or time to protect themselves.

One clear example of this was a number of WordPress sites that were hacked just last year itself. If you don’t want to be one of these sites, then you have to conduct regular maintenance.

This is because cybercriminals are looking for a loophole. It could be anything from easy passwords, failure to add the latest patch or even sire misconfiguration.

Yet the problem does not lie with the content management systems but with the users themselves.

Here are 3 tips that can help users defend themselves from hackers:

 

1: Update Quickly

If you are managing a site, make sure that the core content management system updates are taken care of by the hosting service. Keeping up with information about these vulnerabilities is necessary but very tough to handle. In fact, it is considered almost impossible to do this. So, it’s a good idea to use web-security services such as Incapsula, Cloudflare and Sucuri to ward off attacks until you stay updated.

2: Remember Plugins and Themes

It’s not easy to keep the main content management system up-to-date. This is because patching every plugin can be cumbersome. Yet attackers are exploiting the vulnerabilities in plugins and themes.

Use plugins built for security purposes. Some of them are iThemes Security, Wordfence and BulletProof Security.

3: Regular site maintenance

If you have a hosted website, then it requires regular responsibility without fail. Administrators should remember to backup the site. Also, they should make sure that it is copied off the web server too.

If you don’t have time to do this, then go with a fully managed site as offered by WordPress. For Joomla and Drupal, a hosted service provider can do what needs to be done.

When you have a number of tabs open and a number of them are playing audio or video, it would be hard to tell which one is playing what.

Which brings us to the volume indicator which was old news in 2014. However, in 2015, Google gives users the ability to mute noisy tabs with only one click.

With this feature, you don’t have to scroll from page to page, or find the audio or video to stop it. Now, all you have to do is click the speaker icon located in the tab so as to silence the any noisy tab that you cannot find.

Now, since the feature is still a work-in-progress, the only way to get it started is by enabling a Chrome flag to get it started.

The first thing that you need to do is enter chrome://flags in the Chrome address bar. Now hit Ctrl+F so as to open the Search function and then type “Enable tab audio muting UI control” in the text entry box that appears in the upper-right corner.

This search will then bring you to the hidden feature where you can click the Enable link and then close the tab. Once this is done, reboot Chrome so as to get the feature working.

Now, click the upward-facing arrow in the system tray and which is located on the far-right hand side of the taskbar. After this, right-click the Chrome icon and then select Exit.

Once Chrome disappear from the system tray, open the browser again and test the feature by opening YouTube on one tab and a news site on another. Once the video starts playing, you can click the “Volume” icon if you want to mute it. To re-enable sound, click the icon again.

A number of browsers has had this feature for several years now. However, Chrome has finally caught up by adding a “Reader mode” that will break down an article into its text and images so as to make it much easier to read.

The new feature known as Distill which might be a work-in-progress is still worth trying out for those who use Chrome a lot.

However, in order to use Distill, there are a few steps that you will need to carry out. Firstly, you have to pin Distill to your taskbar. Of course, a desktop shortcut should also work.

If you haven’t done this yet, right-click on Chrome’s icon and click “Pin this program to the taskbar”. Now close Chrome via the taskbar where you right-click the Chrome icon and then click Exit.

Once this is done, right-click the Chrome icon in the taskbar while highlighting Google Chrome as a result. Now, right-click Google Chrome again and then select Properties.

With this, a Properties window now opens. Under the Shortcut tab, you’ll see a label titled ‘Target’ along with a text-entry box. Now place the cursor after the last quotation mark and type: –enable-dom-distiller.

Click Apply and then OK after that.

After this, open Chrome and select the ‘hamburger’ icon on the upper right side where a new option that says “Distill page” should be displayed.

All you have to do is select “Distill” when you are viewing an article and this will make your reading a whole lot easier.

One thing you must know is that this feature is a simple one and does not have anything fancy.

Alternatively, there are extensions from the Chrome Web Store such as Clearly that offers the same feature as Distill.

Using the Internet can work out to be a great book but there are times when it isn’t – when you connection is down, of course. While there are easy fixes that one can opt for, there are other times when it isn’t and where access to your favorite sites is completely shut off.

There are only two scenarios that can result from such a situation: either the problem is with the site or your internet connection.

So, in order to figure out whether the problem is with you or the site, here’s what you can do:

#1: Use isup.me

One of the simplest things that you can do is visit a site: http//isup.me to check whether a site is truly down or is it because of your internet connection. Enter the address of the site you want to check and hit the Enter key. In a few seconds, you’ll find out whether the site is down and the problem is happening only with ‘just you’ or it’s ‘not just you’.

#2: Use the command line program Ping

Another way to check this is by using the command line program Ping. All you have to do is open the command line and type “ping www.facebook.com” if you are checking for whether Facebook is up or not. Enter any other site’s address in place of Facebook here to do the same. Enter the “www” and hit the Enter key. If you see four lines with “Reply from…”, then the site is working. If you see the message“Request timed out”, then the site is down. Also, remember that some sites refuse pings with a couple of examples being Amazon and PCWorld.