1.  Go to mail.google.com

2.   Sign in with the e-mail and password OF THE ACCOUNT YOU WANT TO DELETE.

3.  If Gmail automatically takes you to the wrong account the go to the upper right hand corner where the email address is displayed and use the downward arrow to log out and log in with the account you want to delete.

4.  In the upper right hand corner of the window it will show your email address.   There is a drop down arrow to the right of that address, click on that.

5.  A small window pops up.   Under your name and email address click on the link for "Account".

6.  A new window will open named "Accounts".   NOTE:  I had trouble getting Internet Explorer to display this window until I turned off all add-ins.    Firefox and Chrome display it fine.

About six lines down, under Services, is a line:
Delete entire Google account   Close entire account and delete all services and info associated with it

MAKE SURE YOU ARE LOGGED INTO THE ACCOUNT  YOU WANT TO DELETE.   ONCE  YOU DELETE YOU CANNOT GET IT BACK!   NOTE ALL GOOGLE DOCUMENTS IMAGES, ETC. ASSOCIATED WITH THIS ACCOUNT WILL ALSO BE DELETED.

7. Click on the link "Close entire account and ....." and follow the directions

- Good luck!   - Richard

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Firefox has determined that the following add-ons are know to cause stability or security problems.    Java Platform SE 6 V11  6.0.110.3   - Disable

Of course most users don't know what this means but soon find out that Java is no longer loading within their Firefox window.

Solution:

1.   Start up Firefox

2.   Click  to Tools menu item and select Add-Ons

3.  In the Add-Ons window select the Plugins option on the left

4.   In the list of Plugins, probably at the bottom, you will find the entry for Java Platform SE 6 V11 6.0.110.3.    It will be disabled.   If you click on More Information you will see:

Java Plugin has been blocked for your protection.

Why was it blocked?

Outdated versions of the Java plugin are vulnerable to an actively exploited security issue. All users are strongly encouraged to update their Java plugin. For more information, please read our blog post or Oracle's Advisory.

Solution: What to do:

1.  Temporarily you can click on the Enable button to the left of the Java Plugin.   This will allow you to get your immediate work done.   Beware that their is some sort of security problem with the Java program.   However until they get it fixed we need to get our work done.

2.   Once Java gets their act together (not as off 5/412) you can update your Java add-on.      In the Firefox Add-Ons Manager window at the very top there is a link:  check to see if your plugins are up to date.   Click on this link.

3.   This will take you to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ the Firefox plug-in checking window.     In the list of blocked plugins will be a mention of the Java plugin:

Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.270.7

To the right of this entry is a button "Update Now",  click on this button and follow the directions to update the Java plugin.

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Cons:
1.    Higher cost:    $3600 a year, year in, year out.   The total hardware cost of a new Dell Xenon Server (decent but basic) is probably around $2500.
2.    If you lose your Internet connections you lose access to your Server.
3.   You still need an IT person to install and maintain software, insure backups, etc.   The hosting companies provides hardware IT support, and probably some operating system IT support and be even backup functions.   But it does not install, maintain or debug your production software such as Quickbooks or any client/server software.
4.   Slower connection to Server.  You are accessing your data over the Internet rather than over a 100 or 1000 Mbps Ethernet local connection.  You are at the mercy of the Internet speed for all you computing.
5. Privacy issues - your are storing your company data on someone else's computer where they can access it.    There are ways to protect data in this situation but that is yet another IT project!

Summary:   I don't see this option as a cost saver for anyone, but rather the opposite.   However such a virtual server does provide one with less responsibility, less to worry about and less to own.   That may be a recipe for peace of mind!

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Samsung Exynos Processor - Based on the ARM Cortex A8 reference design with a PowerVR SGX540 series 3D accelerator.  It contains one or two cores clocked at up to 1.5GHz.  The Apple A4 processor used in the iPad2, iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4 is made by Samsung and is very similar to the Exynos processors.

Freescale i.MX family - Freescale (formerly part of Motorola) sells a range of ARM processors.  The i.MX50 and i.MX6 are the most recent models.  The i.MX50 series is based on the Cortex A8 reference design and is only available in single core models, while the i.MX6 series is based on the Coretex A9 reference design and comes in 1, 2, or 4 core models.  All i.MX processors come with proprietary Freescale 3D video accelerators.

Texas Instruments OMAP Processors - TI has been manufacturing ARM processors for a relatively long time.  Their latest processors for smartphones include the OMAP3xxx series, the OMAP4xxx series, and the OMAP5xxx series (not yet released).  The OMAP3xxx series is based on the Cortex A8 reference design with a single core clocked up to 1GHz.  Depending on the model they have PowerVR 530 series video accelerators.  The OMAP3xxx series has been used in a number of popular devices from Motorola, Palm, Nokia and Samsung, among others.  The Barnes and Noble Nook Color and Nook Simple Touch also use OMAP3621 processors.  The newer OMAP4xxx series is offered with dual cores based off the Cortex A9 reference design, with speeds ranging from 1 to 1.8GHz.  The OMAP4xxx is relatively new, but is already used in a variety of higher end phones from Motorola, Samsung, and RIM.  TI has announced the OMAP5xxx series processors almost a year before they are available.  They will be based on the Cortex A15 reference design and come in dual and quad core configurations with PowerVR SGX544 graphics processors.

Qualcomm Snapdragon - Qualcomm's range of cellphone processors was codenamed "Snapdragon" during development, and the nickname stuck.  The Snapdragon processor is not based on an ARM reference design, but bears some resemblance to the Coretex A8 design.  All Snapdragon processors use Qualcomm's own GPU, called the Adreno, which was developed with the help of AMD's graphics division (formally ATI).  Speeds range from a single 1GHz core to current dual core 1.5GHz models.  Future models on the road map include quad core models clocked at up to 2.5GHz.  Many companies have used Qualcomm processors, including HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HP and many others.

nVidia Tegra - In 2008 nVidia shocked the processor community by announcing their plans for an ARM processor, a major departure from their normal market of high powered graphics accelerators.  The Tegra series' main attraction has been the built in GPUs designed by nVidia, which usually claim better graphics performance than their competitors.  The initial Tegra processor (the Tegra 1) was by all reports a decent processor, based on the ARM11 reference design and clocked at 600-800MHz), but found its way into very few devices.  For Tegra2, nVidia was one of the first to build a dual core ARM processor, in this case based on the Cortex A9 reference design and clocked between 1GHz and 1.2GHz.  This time around nVidia focused on supporting OEMs, and so the Tegra2 found its way into many more devices, including phones and tablets from Motorola, Samsung, LG and Dell.  The Tegra2 remains popular in tablets, but is starting to show its age compared to newer processors (Tegra2 was released in Q1 2010).  The Tegra3 processor was released on November 9th, 2011.  It contains four ARM Cortex A9 cores clocked at 1.4GHz, as well as a low power core clocked at 500MHz.  Due to its recent release date, there are phones or tablets currently available with the Tegra3, although this is expected to change soon.

Rockchip 2xxx series - Rockchip, a division of Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Company, manufactures low cost ARM processors frequently used by cheaper phones and tablets released by Asian manufacturers.  The Rockchip 29xx series is based on the Cortex A8 reference design and can be clocked up to 1.2GHz.  Although not renown for their general performance, the Rockchip processors usually have excellent video decoding hardware built into the processor, which makes them excellent for use in media players. Rockchip also sells a variety of older ARM processors based on the ARM11 reference design.

Telechips 89xx series - Telechips is another manufacturer of very low cost ARM chips for cheap Asian phones and tablets.  Despite being a relatively new processor, the 89xx series is based on the ARM11 reference design using the ARMv6 instruction set, which at this point is quite outdated.  The Telechips processors have very low performance compared to other modern processors.

VIA WMxxxx series - The VIA WMxxxx series is the worst of the bunch when it comes to cheap Asian processors.  Based on the ANCIENT ARM9 reference powered by the ARMv5 instruction set, the WM8650 screams along at 700MHz, basically meeting the minimal requirements to run Android (miserably).  The processor is so wimpy that it is barely able to decode standard definition video smoothly.  Using a tablet powered by one of these is the definition of misery.  Even web browsing is unbearable.  The only upside of this processor is the price, devices powered by VIA chips rarely break the $100 mark these days.

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Error fetching directory contents of C:\Users\JohnSmith\My Documents\. Reason: check if you have appropriate permissions to fetch the contents of the resource

Solution:   The newer Microsoft operating systems maintain backwards compatibility with older versions by creating links to folders that only existed in older versions.    For example,  each user on XP had a home directory under c:\Documents and Folders that contained folders named NetHood, PrintHood, SendTo, Start Menu, etc.    Windows Vista and 7, Server 2008 provide backward compatibility by providing links instead of actual folders for these names.

iDrive is throwing these errors when it tries to back up one of these links.  I think you only get these errors if you are running as an administrative account.   Non-administrators cannot see these links.   You can ignore the errors if you want because your actual data is being backed up, e.g. the folder Documents is being backed up but the link "My Documents" is failing.    However I like to get rid of annoying error messages.   Just go into the iDrive selection window and uncheck the selection boxes for these links.

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

For any WordPress blog you should find a large orange button in the upper right labelled“subscribe via RSS”.   If the designer of the blog has used a different format the button may be somewhere else.   This button will take you to a page where you specify how you want to receive these notifications. You need to specify what e-mail reader you want to use. Your built-in choices are Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Live, Google, My Yahoo or you can "Choice Application."

I tried this out using Microsoft Outlook, and the process was seamless and took 1 second.   Within Outlook I now have a folder named "RSS Feeds".   Within that folder I have a folder named "WoodcliffeIT.com Computer Tech Blog".   Within that folder are the 10 latest entries to the blog in e-mail form.   There is also a link to the actual blog article.

As a second trial, when prompted for "Subscribe to this feed using"" I selected the option "Choice Application".    I then had to dig down into the file system to find Mozilla Thunderbird at c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe.

Once I selected the exe file the rest was automatic.   I now have a Thunderbird folder called "Blogs and News Feeds".   Under that is a folder names "WoodcliffeIT.com Computer Tech Blog" which contains the last 10 additions to the blog.

I assume that using other e-mail readers will be as easy.  Let me know if you have other questions.

- Richard

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Firefox:

1.  Download the latest version of Firefox from www.firefox.com.  You must have version 4 or later.

2.  Start up Firefox,  Click on the Tools menu option, then on  Options, then on Privacy

3.  In the Tracking form - check in the box to the left:  Tell websites I do not want to be tracked.

4.  Exit the Tools -> Options windows and restart Firefox.Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Dedicated blog hosting site:
There are a number of free blog hosts out there, including:
http://wordpress.com/ (uses the WordPress engine)
http://www.blogger.com/ (run by Google)

http://www.livejournal.com/

Contact one of these sites and create an account and you will soon have your own blog.  The only downside is that the URL (blog web address) will not match you website address.   For example, my website is www.woodcliffeit.com, but my blog address would be something different generated by one of the above hosts such as woodcliffeit.blogger.com.

Add the blog to your existing ISP Web Site:
My ISP, Lunarpages, provides WordPress blogging software and setting the blog up with them allows me to access it by URL of www.woodcliffeit.com/blog.   The actual blog files reside in a sub-directory named blog under the folder that contains my HTML web pages.   This is all very nice.

However this took a little fiddling to set up.  Contact your own ISP as this process will differ with each ISP although I imagine it will be roughly similar.  On Lunarpages ISP the process went as follows:
1.  Using the tools provided in the Lunarpages Control Panel I created a MySQL database for the blog.
2.  I then used the Control Panel tool phpMyAdmin to find out the server IP address.
3.  I downloaded the WordPress Software from the WordPress web site.
4.  Using WordPress I set up a basic blog.
4.  I had to follow detailed instructions to rename and edit the WordPress control file, wp-config-sample.php and enter my specific database name, username and password.
5.  Using an FTP client I uploaded all files and folders generated by the WordPress  program to a subdirectory named 'blog' under my web site folder.
6.  Then I went to my domain, www.woodcliffeit.com and I was redirected to an installation page for the blog.

Now you see how complicated it can be to set up a blog under your ISP.  You have to talk with your ISP about how to do it with your website. The first option, using one of the free blog hosts, is a lot easier.

Good luck blogging!  - Richard and Jeremy

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

run outlook /resetnavpane

Good luck! - Richard

 Richard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.

Adobe products can cause the obscure Side by Side error in the Application Error Log.   It seems to be an Adobe coding error.   I solved my instance by going back a version in Adobe Reader.  Here is a blog entry that discusses it:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/itprovistaapps/thread/a4c36078-6419-4424-8a43-ff3832786b59

Good luck!  - RichardRichard Ozer is President of Woodcliffe IT Inc., a company that provides skilled IT services to businesses. Let us ease your mind about your computer and data.