One of the reasons I left Firefox was because of it’s slow speed, albeit was faster than IE or the dreaded Safari. Google Chrome is still my preferred browser, although I have to admit that Firefox has done an amazing job with their latest release. The Firefox 10 release looks even more promising, it will include new webmaster tools. (see video below)

Chrome, along with the Web Developer extension, leaves me perfectly content for now despite Firefox’s excellent redemption.

By: Jonathan Gibbons
Web Ventures Plus
Owner & Chief Webmaster

Related External Sources: An Overview of Firefox’s Coming Developer Tools

If you are bored with your Windows Taskbar clock then you’ll find this blog helpful. The traditional Windows clock only allows you to display the current time. You may display the time in the AM/PM style or the Military style. But what if you want to display the date and the day of the week? Fortunately, Windows finally got around to displaying the date in Windows 7, but it’s only visible when your Taskbar is set to large icons. Since I’m using small icons in the Taskbar, this new function is useless to me. I’d like to display the date horizontally and directly to the left of the time. Thanks to Stoic Jocker’s T-Clock 2010 you may accomplish this very easily.

Below is an image of my current Taskbar clock. I’ve set it to display the Day, Date and then the time in 24hr format.

Stoic Jocker’s T-Clock 2010

This amazing yet simple program enabled me to customize my Windows Taskbar clock the way I wanted. No more hovering over the clock to view today’s day or date; now I can simply glance at my Taskbar to view it.

The T-Clock program is very simple to use. Simply visit the download page for the T-Clock and follow the instructions on that page to install the program. Once it’s installed you can set it to start up automatically when Windows loads.

I hope you’ve found this blog helpful, if you need assistance with any PC issues and/or PC customization, please visit our contact page.

By: Jonathan Gibbons
Web Ventures Plus
Owner & Chief Webmaster

A screenshot of the T-Clock program.
(click the image to enlarge)

stoicjoker.com/TClock/

Discover RSS feeds and how using them will make your daily news reading more efficient. In the age of information overload, RSS feeds are a godsend. If you get your news from as many news outlets as possible, then you’ll find this article to be of great use. I’ve often found myself bookmarking multiple websites onto my bookmark bar in Google Chrome and attempting to visit them each day. I realized that even with all these great bookmarks I tend to only visit around five of the sites a day. It quickly becomes tedious and often overwhelming to attempt visiting every single news website each day. RSS feeds come to the rescue.

RSS Feeds

If you haven’t heard of RSS feeds before, then you are missing out on one of this past decades most important web browsing and development tools. RSS feeds are .XML files which store website content, e.g., blogs, articles and posts, into a universally readable format. You may view our RSS Feed as an example. Feeds make it easy for webmasters and web surfers alike to embed, syndicate and view website content without having to actually visit/embed actual websites.

An RSS Icon

Subscribing to a feed is quite easy. Simply look for the RSS icon or link to the feed on your favorite website. When you open the feed, it’ll give you the option to subscribe to the feed. Once subscribed you may use your favorite browser, email client (e.g., Outlook or Thunderbird), Google Reader or a locally downloaded application to read them.

Google Reader – we recommend using Google Reader to subscribe to all of your feeds. Google reader is free and will be important later in this article when we discuss reader synchronization. You may sign up for Google Reader here. There are many apps for android and the iPhone which make it easy to use Google Reader. Since Google Reader stores your feeds in their cloud, then you’ll be able to access them from anywhere by simply logging into your Google account.

Work News and Personal News

If you are like me, you’ll have a list of news sources you read related to your specific profession and then other news whether it be politics, entertainment, science, etc. Google Reader will allow you to categorize these into different folders. So each day you can quickly skim through your folders depending on what news you want to read that day.

FeedDemon

While Google Reader is great and it comes with powerful reading tools, there is just something about having a local application on your computer that is unmatched by the storm of cloud based applications coming our way. FeedDemon offers a free version of it’s program which allows you to synchronize your feeds to Google Reader, so you may install FeedDemon on your work desktop and personal laptop, while keeping them synchronized through Google Reader.

FeedDemon makes it very easy to view your feeds, subscribe to new feeds, find new feeds and keep track of your unread and starred (i.e., items you bookmark for future access) articles. It’s like having your very own Future Digital Newsstand right on your PC. The reason I find it so useful is because it’s more user friendly than Google Reader and it is more formal than visiting a website/web-based application. Additionally, it offers an excellent tool for those of us subscribed to many feeds: the Panic button! The panic button is a shortcut to mark all of your articles older than a specified time frame as read. This removes them from your newsstand, helping to keep you from becoming overwhelmed by thousands of potential unread articles. The Panic button is just one of their many great features. Visit feeddemon.com to download the program and learn more about it’s benefits over traditional RSS readers.

At Web Ventures Plus™ we setup RSS feeds and blogs for clients all the time. If you need help setting up your own feed and/or help with any of the above, please use our contact form to request assistance.

By: Jonathan Gibbons
Web Ventures Plus
Owner & Chief Webmaster

The latest version of Google Chrome is now available and it supports multiple users/profiles. Back in October we released a blog explaining how to setup multiple instances of Google Chrome on your PC. I still use this technique today and have found it very helpful to keep my Google business chrome separate from my personal Chrome. Through using Google Chrome’s synchronization feature, one may keep their chromes synchronized across multiple computers, but before this latest Chrome release you’d have to invoke a few operating system hacks to run multiple versions of chrome on a single PC.

Now with the latest release of Chrome, multiple users/profiles are enabled. If you share a computer with someone else, then you’ll find this feature helpful.

How to Add Users

1. Current Chrome Version: firstly, make sure your Chrome is up to date. Chrome automatically updates itself, but sometimes you have to do it manually. In Chrome click the wrench and then click “About Google Chrome.” This will run a check for any available updates and will automatically install them. Please wait until it is complete. Then restart your browser.
2. Accessing New User Tools: in Google Chrome >> click the wrench >> click the options link. Under the optinos window click on the personal stuff tab. You should now see a new section in your personal options which says Users. Click on Add New User.
3. Synchronizing New User: once your new user is setup, you’ll want to synchronize this user to a Google account so you can login to this user from any Google chrome on any computer. You’ll be able to setup this Google account under this same section.
4. That’s it! now when you open Chrome, if you have more than one user enabled, you’ll see a small avatar on the upper left of the browser. Simply click on this icon to change users.

Limitations

While this new feature is certainly great, I have decided to continue using multiple profiles the way that I did previously. There are three reasons for this decision:

1. Privacy: using the new user feature doesn’t actually create a new instance of Chrome. Therefore, locally stored cookies, variables, etc., will be storied in the same place as other users; only separated by a few folders.
2. Customization: using the old method to achieve multiple chrome profiles, you are able to create unique program shortcuts on your desktop and application launchers.
   

   This image above shows how you can completely separate your different chromes in Windows 7, be creating different application shortcuts and icons.

3. Usability: it’s easier to click a single shortcut icon rather than having to open up a new user window by first clicking your regular Chrome shortcut.

We are thrilled that Chrome has enabled this new feature and it should prove very useful to diverse web surfers.

By: Jonathan Gibbons
Web Ventures Plus
Owner & Chief Webmaster

Our client, The Skunk Whisperer, has published the following press release. We post press releases for all of our clients on this exclusive news feed for extra exposure.

DISCLAIMER: Any views and/or political statements expressed in no way represent the opinion(s) of Web Ventures Plus™ or other Web Ventures Plus™ clients, affiliates and/or representatives.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ned Bruha, “The Skunk Whisperer®” publicly posts undercover video of felony animal cruelty & insists that authorities make over 2 dozen felony convictions

Fake image of a dog with it’s mouth sewn shut. Photo and Image Manipulation by Sherry Stinson | Tyler Creative

Tulsa, Oklahoma – November 28, 2011 – Rattlesnake roundups in Oklahoma are attended by thousands of people each year. At some of these events, rattlesnakes have their mouths sewn shut for photos with the attendees holding them. In a simple YouTube video, Ned Bruha, V.P. of The Skunk Whisperer®, Inc., an Oklahoma franchise company that does humane wildlife removal, compares this to a haunting and graphic photo of a puppy with its mouth sewn shut. In the “pit of death”, the snakes are deprived of food, water & shelter. Bruha takes a stand with undercover video & quotes Oklahoma laws already found on the books, & insists that Oklahoma authorities use the video evidence to make over two dozen felony animal cruelty convictions – from a simple YouTube video located here.

The dry, simple eight minute video encourages any “Average Joe” to stand up and make a change. Bruha says “Anybody with a camera and a computer can stand up and insist that folks do the right thing. The rattlesnake roundups can and will be educational, family events without felony acts of animal cruelty. Sewing a puppy’s mouth shut is not acceptable, so why is it okay to do it to a snake?”

Forty year-old Bruha, who has a TV series titled “Ned Bruha: Skunk Whisperer” on a major television network, first learned about rattlesnake roundups in the fall of 2010. “I ran into a photo on the internet of a rattlesnake having stitches removed from its mouth after being rescued or stolen from a rattlesnake roundup. I had never heard of such a thing. I got mad, and decided to stand up and do something about it instead of just whining”, said Bruha. Bruha and another gentleman collected undercover video from the events, asked a local photographer and artist to make a puppy’s mouth look like it is sewn shut in a photograph, and then had a simple YouTube video of it launched to the internet.

Contact:

Contact Person: Ned Bruha
Company Name: The Skunk Whisperer®, Inc.
Telephone Number: 918-261-4444
Email Address: skunkwhisperer@cox.net
Web site address: http://totalwildlifecontrol.com
Mailing address: 9521 B Riverside Parkway #343 Tulsa, OK 74137
Video address: http://www.youtube.com/user/theskunkwhisperer For additional information or higher resolution photo for television, email skunkwhisperer@cox.net

# # #

Watch the Video Bruha Released

Source: http://totalwildlifecontrol.com/news/tulsa-animal-cruelty-exposed/

This is an example of malicious comments posted by a criminal. They are being posted by this Facebook user’s actual friends. They had their information compromised through phishing. The links go to phishing websites and malicious advertising. (click this image to enlarge)

I’m often asked how to stay safe on Facebook. There have also been a colossal number of security breaches of Facebook in recent weeks. What often happens when having your Facebook compromised is that an overseas “hacker” will steal your account information, login to your account, and then run scripts which make advertising posts and perform other malicious activities. It’s important to note that these “hackers” are often not actual persons. There are automated programs that perform these tasks. Below is an example of malicious activities they perform, followed by ways to keep yourself, family and friends safe.

Facebook Security Breach Example: Phishing

This is an example of a fake Facebook website which could be utilized to trick you into logging in. This technique is known as phishing and is used to steal Bank account information as well. Always be sure to check the URL in the address bar to ensure you are on the real website. (click image to enlarge it)

Phishing is a tech-security term for a technique malicious webmasters’ use to steal your account login information. Phishing works like this: you are baited with a link to a website, the URL and webpage are structured to resemble another website you use (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), you are asked to login to the website, you login to the fake website, and then the criminals have made their catch. Typically they’ll auto forward you to the real website. At this point they’ve stored your login information in their database which they’ll later use to login to your account and perform malicious activities. This technique is often used to steal Facebook users account information. To avoid being phished make sure you always identify the URL of the website you are using in your address bar. For example, currently you may be (i.e., if viewing this blog at webventuresplus.com) viewing webventuresplus.com/online-security/facebook-security-tips/. If this were a phishing website tailored to mimic the real website, the URL may appear as webventuresplus.com.thisisnotwebventuresplus.com/online-security/facebook-security-tips/. Most browsers today, as well as virus protection programs have built in protections against phishing, but they are not always effective and, hence, it’s important to always check the URL yourself.

Staying Safe on Facebook – 3 Critical Tips

In Facebook >> click on the arrow next to the Home button on the upper right hand side of the website >> click account settings >> then click on the Security link on the left hand side of the page.

1. Security Question: enable a security question for your account. This will add a secondary level of security verification when you login to Facebook. If you visit a phishing website it’s unlikely they’ll ask you this question. They may obtain your email and password, but they won’t be able to login to your account.
2. Secure Browsing: enable secure browsing when on Facebook. This will force Facebook to only display pages on Facebook in an HTTPS format. This format protects your data from being captured and/or spied on by third parties. It will encrypt information you type and view on Facebook.
3. Login Notification and Login Approvals: enabling these features will notify you when someone logs into your account from an unrecognized location/computer. This is great for catching snooping family members and/or malicious webmasters.

We’ll have more information on how to keep your Facebook safe in the coming weeks. If you have any questions please visit our contact page or leave a comment on this post.

By: Jonathan Gibbons
Web Ventures Plus
Owner & Chief Webmaster

Google Chrome Tip (difficulty – intermediate):

How to Create Multiple Profiles (i.e., multiple instances of the Google Chrome application). I’ve long used Chrome for personal use, Firefox for business use and Internet Explorer for education use. This made it easy for me to test multiple browsers and have unique settings for each one as well. For example, I have a different set of bookmark bar links on each of them. These bookmarks are relevant to the task (e.g., personal use, business and education). As many are beginning to find, Chrome is simply the fastest and most efficient browser on the market today. I found myself using Chrome for everything as the other browsers, Opera and Safari included, couldn’t keep up with the pace I work at. But there was a dilemnia, my business shortcuts, passwords and logins are different than my personal, so I needed to run a seperate instance of Chrome.

Google Chrome has a built in multiple profile feature, but it’s currently only in developer status (type “about:flags” into the address bar and then enable multiple profiles) (note: it was taken out of standard release just recently). Eventually this will be easy to achieve, but until then Google has very simple documentation on how to accomplish this outside of Chrome itself here.

Here are the steps (for Windows 7 but will work for Windows XP and Vista as well, note the target link will differ):

1) Create a new Google Chrome shortcut on your Desktop and rename it Business Chrome – create one more Google Chrome shortcut on your Desktop and leave it named as Google Chrome

2) Go to your C:\ drive and create a new folder called BusinessChrome

3) Right click the Google Chrome shortcut on your Desktop and go to properties. You’ll see something like the following listed under target:

C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

4) Add the following to the end of this [with a space] –user-data-dir=C:\BusinessChrome

So it should look something like this

C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe –user-data-dir=C:\BusinessChrome

5) Click Apply and OK

6) Now double click the Business Chrome Shortcut

You should see a blank Google Chrome browser. Don’t worry you haven’t lost any of your Google Chrome bookmarks, they are still on your other Google Chrome Shortcut. Double click your Google Chrome shortcut on your Desktop (not the Business Chrome.) You should see your Chrome as it’s always been.

Customizing your new Chrome Profiles:

Change the Shortcut Icon:By right clicking on the Business Chrome shortcut you can click “change icon.” This will give you an option to pick from other default shortcuts. You may alternatively visit this website and download other neat Chrome icons. Simply download the icon and then put it into your C:\BusinessChrome folder and then browse to it to change the icon.

Change the Chrome Theme:

In Chrome > click the wrench icon > options > personal stuff > get themes Install a theme. This will help you differentiate which Chrome profile you are using.

I created three profiles for Chrome and put their shortcuts in my taskbar (see image below.) They each synch up with seperate Google accounts so that I can install Chrome on any computer and access my browsing data; this also keeps my Laptop and Desktop’s favorites synched up through Google’s cloud. Have questions? Comment below.

(left to right) Business Chrome, Personal Chrome, Education Chrome

By: Jonathan Gibbons
Web Ventures Plus
Owner & Chief Webmaster

The Skunk Whisperer is happy to announce the launch of our redesigned website. We are a local and national leader in humane wildlife control. Based in Oklahoma, we service all areas of the state and will be expanding to other states.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 25, 2011 – Servicing all critter needs for bees, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, bats, beavers, cougars, coyotes, foxes, geese, armadillos, feral cats, opossums, rodents, snakes, wild birds and various other critters; we have grown our website to provide critter facts and information for visitors from around the world. Our mission is to utilize, improve, elevate and advocate cost effective, eco-responsible wildlife damage remediation and prevention methods allowing humans and wildlife to co-exist without conflict.

We’ve made several changes to our totalwildlifecontrol.com website. Visitors will now find it easier to navigate to pages they need. There is an enhanced search feature built into the website and various other embedded features to increase user engagement. We have dedicated sections for Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Norman, and Grand Lake clients. The breath of the resources and information provided on our website cannot be understated. We’ve implemented a brand new news, blog and RSS feed section of the website for the most up to date information as well. Feel free to drop in and leave us a comment on our blogs.

We hope you enjoy the new design, functionality and ease of navigation. totalwildlifecontrol.com

Contact

info@totalwildlifecontrol.com

918-261-4444

###

view the official press release