Maura van der Linden – Blog

Something is going on between the popular Yahoo Groups and Gmail.

I began noticing problems on 3/14 where my volume of email went way down very suddenly. Since I’m pretty much an email addict, I went to my Yahoo Groups page and checked my Email Preferences only to find that my gmail account that is used for most of my groups had been bouncing and automatically disabled by Yahoo. It noted over 300 emails were bounced.

I put it down to some odd circumstance, reactivated the account and went about my merry way. So far I’ve been forced to reactivate it at least once per day. This is really no fun.

But apparently I’m not the only one. This has been happening to quite a few people who use GMail to receive individual emails from their Yahoo Groups. The only information I’ve seen from Yahoo is that the issues is on GMail’s side but no details. I’ve not seen anything from Google at all.

So if you use GMail to receive mail from Yahoo Groups, you may want to check your account status.

I heard an interesting piece on the radio a few days ago that had to do with the risks of identity theft associated with using photocopiers. Basically, the report stated that if you use a fairly current photocopier to make copies of documents that contain personal information, you can be at risk of that information being used to steal your identity.

Is this a valid concern: Yes

The crux of the risk lies in the fact that many modern photocopiers (and multi-purpose machines) contain storage media like a hard drive on which document images are stored after the machine scans the document for reproduction. Because of this technology, if the documents are still on the copier’s storage media when the media is removed from the machine (for machines being scrapped, retired, even stolen), thieves may be able to print these stored documents and obtain that information.

Most copiers made in the last five years or so may contain their own storage media. According to the blurbs, the greatest risk may lie in business or retail copier locations where anyone who decides to go to the effort will have the largest probability of obtaining data that would be useful to them.

Some copier manufacturers are coming out with security fixes to write over data on the drive periodically but not all have done so and many people are not aware they exist.

My personal take on this is that there is, indeed, a risk but that it’s not something to fly off into a frenzy over. Consumers can reduce the risk by verifying that their copies are made where security fixes have been installed on the copiers or using a home scanner, copier or all-in-one machine that doesn’t retain data outside the user’s own control.

It’s another thing to be aware of in the all too trusting world.

Another interesting question from a friend – If you have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and you realize your data should have it’s axes reversed (the data currently arranged vertically should be arranged horizontally), are you stuck retyping it or doing ugly cut & paste work for a long time?

Nope

The easiest way I’ve found to accomplish this switch is to make use of Excel’s own paste functionality.

You’ll note that your data is now on the opposite axis from its original position.

Today’s question is an interesting one. I was asked what in the world is going on when the shift key is hold down too long and the computer suddenly starts typing in all caps and the only way to get it to stop is to turn off the computer.

Well, although it’s not obvious and can make your computer appear as if it has developed a desire to make you insane, it’s actually because of the Accessibility Features that are built into Windows. These features are designed to make it easier for people with disabilities or problems to use the computer and have keyboard shortcuts (specific key sequences that will allow the user to turn them on or off without opening the Control Panel) assigned by default.

In this case, the feature being turned on is called “FilterKeys” and is intended to allow the operating system to ignore multiple uses of the same key in a very short period of time. The keyboard shortcut for FilterKeys is holding down the left shift key for eight seconds (or longer). Thus, if you are distracted and accidentally hold down the left shift key and activate FilterKeys, you may have no real idea what happened.

To turn FilterKeys back off, you can repeat the step of holding down the left shift key for eight seconds. However, if you do not actually need the feature, it’s often easier to turn off the keyboard shortcut so you do not automatically trigger it.

The steps to do this are:

This will stop you from accidentally activating this accessibility option in the future!

Now that the website is almost completely final (any changes will likely be minor), I’ve started to add content to the messageboard and have Issue #0 (the one before real content begins) up on the Newsletter page. In this issue I talk a bit about who I am and why I am doing this.

The messageboard is open for feedback as well – so feel free to comment!