I hope you are fit and well. Here’s a roundup of the latest news

Free Music and Video downloads.

There are many ways to downloads music, videos and movies from the Internet. ITunes and Amazon are the most popular, but they can be expensive paying up to 99p per track. There are various illegal file sharing sites which I would definitely not advise anyone to use, for many reasons.

There is now another safe and legal way to download music etc for free. It’s a bit tricky until you get the hang of it, but it does work. It’s a 2 stage process, starting with YouTube. If you search on YouTube for the song or video you want to download. When you find what you want, then simply highlight and copy the full URL (website address) from the Address bar at the top of the screen. The next stage is to go to www.zamzar.com and paste the URL into the zamzar site. Zamzar is a site which allows you to convert from one format to another. Tell it to convert to MP3 and enter your email address. You will then receive an email from Zamzar with a download link button. Download and save the file into a convenient place in your computer e.g. My Music. It can then be copied into ITunes if you wish to load it into your Apple or MP3 device.

It’s not too complicated but if you would like help doing this, then I’d be happy to come and show you how to do it.

IPhones & IPads.

More and more of my customers are getting IPhones & IPads and asking me for help. Although I’m hardly an expert, I do know a lot about them and learning more every day. This week I learned two new things which may help you if you own an Apple device. Firstly, how to delete unwanted emails. In the past you had to open the message and then tap on the trash icon at the top. But I’ve just learned (by accident) an easier way. If you are in your mail, with the list of messages on the left column, simply drag your finger slowly over the sender’s name, and hey presto, a red Delete button appears, which you tap to delete that message. So easy. Secondly, I’ve just set up my first IPad which prints wirelessly. In order to do this, you would probably need to buy a new Wireless printer which is compatible with the Ipad. I use and recommend HP printers. They only cost from about £50 upwards, so not a fortune. If the printer has an EPrint facility it takes about 10 minutes to set it all up, but once it had been properly connected, it works perfectly. So you can print out emails, web pages, pictures etc, wirelessly from your IPhone or IPad easily.

Personal Domain Names.

My email address is henry@henrymoss.co.uk and many people are choosing to buy their own domain names to give a more personal look to emails and websites, rather than using an address given by their broadband provider (e.g. btinternet.com) or a standard yahoo, hotmail or Gmail account. This is not expensive to do and simple to set up. So you could be yourname@yourname.com or anything you wish, for not a lot of money. You could even have your own website which, without any technical knowledge, would look professional and friendly,  such as www.yourname.com without costing an arm or a leg. I use a company called Easily (www.easily.co.uk) to buy and administer my domain names. I find them very efficient and always helpful if there is ever a problem. They also have a webmail facility, which means that you could access your emails from any computer in the world. So if you fancy having a better email address or even a personal website, look at their site or call me and I’ll help you get everything set up properly.

Cloud Technology

From next month, I will be able to offer Cloud Technology, to all my customers. Very simply, it means that you will no longer need to worry about backing up your computer, as it is done automatically for you. No need for any memory sticks, external hard drives or CDs, all your valuable documents, pictures, emails and music etc will be automatically be stored in The Cloud, which is secure and accessible from anywhere in the world.

It will also mean that if you have multiple computers, smartphones and tablets, the Cloud Virtual Server will automatically synchronise every one of your devices, so every new email, file or picture is identical on every device.  Brilliant. More about this next month.

And finally....

No No No No No No NO Pussy cat. I challenge you to watch this video and not laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFJ_4A03Xqw

That’s it for this month. If you need any help or advice, please do not hesitate to call or email me.