Head Tale - Yet Another Library Student's Blog About Me
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View Article  We Get Questions, Lots and Lots of Questions

Just finished trying to help someone update their profile on VampireFreaks.com (half successfully, half not - I figured out how to add a background image rather than a solid colour and to add an embedded music player as well.  But I couldn't figure out how to place the music player where the person wanted it on the page.)

I sort of regret that I didn't keep a list of all the computer & Internet reference questions I've been asked over the past month as it's been pretty amazing in terms of the range of what people come up with to ask me (as the VampireFreaks.com shows!) - from the most basic beginner questions to quite involved advanced stuff.  With a glance at my list of communities visited so far to prompt my memory, here's a list of some I remember...

- how do I do better Google searches?
- how do I print a selection of a web page instead of the whole thing?
- what are the advantages and disadvantages of high-speed satellite Internet?
- why does my high speed cut off sometimes? 
- how do I erase errors when typing in Word? 
- how do I change the font in Word?  In my e-mail program?
- how do I hook my DS to my wireless system at home?
- does your library have wireless access for my laptop?  (Librarians often mention that patrons ask this as well but unfortunately, we don't at this time.)
- what are the "F" keys for?
- how do I change a document I've saved on a CD-RW?
- is AVG Free Edition good?  Should I update it when it pops up saying I should?
- how do I erase a contact from my e-mail?
- why did someone not receive a message I sent even though it's in my "Sent" folder?
- can you help me install my Bridge game from 1999 on my new Vista machine? 
- what do each of these icons mean?  (The patron had pencil-sketched every single icon on her task bar!)
- why does my monitor flicker?
- why are there pop-ups as soon as I start my computer?
- how do I play an MP4 movie on my portable video player?
- how do I recover the e-mail address book from the CD-ROM that was created after my hard drive crashed?
- how do I get pictures off my digital camera?  (I've been asked this one a few times.)
- how do I create a Facebook account/should I create a Facebook account/what is Facebook?  (This one has come up a few times as well.)
- how do I listen to Internet radio?  Is there a way to pick a song or artist and have it play automatically? 
- how do I download music/movies from the Internet?  (I've gotten this one a few times, usually asked rather sheepishly as if I'm an undercover cop instead of a librarian dedicated to sharing information with the world! )
- how to log-in to the SaskTel webmail service
- why this is an advantage if you're on dial-up and want to preview message sizes before starting downloading huge attached photos, powerpoint files or movies. 
- how to attach a photo to a Hotmail message
- how to save photos that are attached to an e-mail to a hard drive
- what a hard drive is
- the office metaphor that Windows uses - folders, files, desktops, etc. 
- how to upload photos to Picasa.  What Picasa is.  Stepping back, what "upload" means.
- how to find census information online
- the difference between Hotmail and "regular" (ie. SaskTel) mail
- why does my mouse move so fast?  How can I slow it down?
- how do you log in to TutorWorld.com?
- does having a bunch of shortcuts on my desktop slow down my computer?
- how can I speed up my computer? 
- how to view Powerpoint files that someone sends as an attachment
- where people find "those funny forwards" that everybody sends.  (This is maybe the only time I've actually tried to disuade a patron - "are you really sure you want to do that?"  But I did show her some sites where these types of things can be found.)

That doesn't capture everything I've been asked but hopefully provides a good overview of what types of things I'm being asked. 

View Article  Silent Banker Trojan?!?
So I was giving my standard "these days, buying online or doing your online banking is as safe, if not safer, than doing it via a real world transaction" line during a public Internet session the other day when some old guy puts up his hand and goes "What about that Silent Banker virus they were talking about on the news the other night?" 

I've been on the road for most evenings lately and hadn't seen that particular report so I admited I hadn't heard about it, bluffed some answer about making sure you have your anti-virus program up-to-date and quickly changed the subject. 

But after doing some research with the librarian's best friend it sounds like this is a very nasty little program. 

Anybody have any more details?  How does it get on your computer?  Are most anti-virus programs able to catch it with their latest updates?  Is there a program out there yet to specifically check for it?  The people of rural Saskatchewan (including me!) need answers!

Oh, and speaking of the librarian's best friend, in my training sessions, I always point out that Google isn't the be-all-and-end-all and that there are other search engines that often have vastly different results - Ask.com, MSN Live and Yahoo! being the other main ones right now. 

I also get my branch librarians to do a "vanity search" for their own name, first without quotes then within quotes then with a relevant keyword related to themselves ("Saskatchewan" or their community name or "librarian") to illustrate how to use different techniques to improve and refine a Google search. 

Even though this is part of the training, I hadn't done a vanity search on my own name for a long time and guess what I realised when I did - "Jason Hammond", even without quotes, brings up my blog as the first result in all of the search engines I listed above EXCEPT Google. 

I can't figure it out - before starting my blog, my regular web page used to be the first result for Jason Hamond as well.  Now, even though I've submitted my new site to Google via their own URL submitter, it's just not showing up at all - even in the first few pages of results. Using quotes doesn't help and even a search for "head tale" only brings up my site via a third-party listing service called MyBlogLog.com. Very weird.
My web site dedicated to four great Canadian singer-songwriters (but currently only featuring guitar tab for two of them - Fred Eaglesmith and Hawksley Workman.)

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