This happened to a friend of mine a while ago. He spent months working on an e-book that he wanted to market, his computer crashed, and the e-book was gone!

Having a “backup and restore” system in place is absolutely crucial if you have files that you really don’t want to lose, like a school project or music or photos of the kids, or an e-book… Who of us don’t have such files?

I am a happy user of a free online backup service that is saving me a lot of trouble! Let me tell you about it…

Why An Online Backup Service?

Having any kind of backup system in place is already a step in the right direction, be it as simple as backing your files up to a CD or DVD, but here is what makes an online backup service great: It is off-site, i.e. not at your house or business!

That means that even if you have a fire at your house or business that destroys everything, your backups will be safe.

My Choice?

While there are a few choices available, I use Dropbox and I really like it because of some special benefits it gives me.

Dropbox is very simple to use and is truly a “set it and forget it” solution. All you have to do is sign up, download and install their free backup software, and move your important files to a special folder that Dropbox creates.

After that, Dropbox handles everything automatically. It copies all your files to your secure Dropbox storage space on the Amazon S3 Cloud. If you change any of your files on your computer, the new version is automatically and immediately copied to your Dropbox storage the moment you save the file.

If your computer crashes and you get a new computer, all you do is install Dropbox’s free backup software on the new computer, enter your account details into the Dropbox software, and it automatically copies your files from your Dropbox online storage space to your new computer. That’s it! Not a file lost!

What’s more is that if you use more than one computer, you can install Dropbox’s free backup software on both computers and have the latest version of your files automatically available at all times on both computers. So the two computers stay in sync all the time. This is another aspect of Dropbox that I find particularly useful.

A further benefit is file sharing. Let’s say you and a friend or colleague are in two different physical locations and you need to collaborate on a project of some kind. If your friend also uses Dropbox, you can share a folder in your Dropbox with your friend. Your friend will then have access to the files and any changes either of you make to the files are automatically available to both.

How Much Does It Cost?

Initially, nothing! When you create a Dropbox account, you get 2 gigabytes of storage for free. As long as your storage needs stay under 2 GB, Dropbox stays FREE.

It is only if you need more space that you need to pay. Currently you can buy an additional 50 GB for $99 per year, or 100 GB for $199 per year.

Online File Safety?

One of my first concerns was whether my files would be safe from prying eyes or other types of hackers in my online Dropbox account (Amazon S3 Cloud). I checked into this and came up with the following:

• All files are stored in a strongly-encrypted format and are completely inaccessible without your account password. Not even Dropbox’s own employees can view your files.
• When files move between your online Dropbox account and your computer, they are encrypted and sent over a secure internet connection.
• Only those people who you specifically share files with, can see those files, and only the shared files too.

This made me feel comfortable that my stuff would be safe.

Computer Platforms?

Another great thing about Dropbox is that the software is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Not many of Dropbox’s competitors can say that!

About a month after I opened my Dropbox account, my desktop computer crashed. I could continue working on my laptop because all my Dropbox files were available there as well, and when I finally got my new desktop, I installed Dropbox and a few minutes later all my files were on my desktop too.

I really like this online backup service and recommend Dropbox to all my friends without any reservations.

This whole exercise was an incredibly frustrating experience, but I eventually managed to get the problem solved. So I decided to document my experiences here to hopefully prevent you from also damning those virus writers to hell!

Symptoms?

How did I know that something was wrong?

The most obvious clue was that Firefox browser would go to websites that I had not intended. I would do a search on Google, and if I click on one of the links in the search results, I would end up on a totally different website. Without any action from me, Firefox would also open a new tab by itself and go to some strange website. Once I saw that, I knew that Firefox was hijacked and that I probably had a virus of some sort!

After this I installed Google’s new browser, Chrome, knowing that it is a safe browser and hoping that it would not have the same hijacking problem. Chrome installed OK, but it was completely blocked from any internet access. To me, this was confirmation that something big was wrong!

Identifying the Virus

I was surprised that I picked up the virus in the first place. I run Comodo Antivirus on that machine and it works well. Then I discovered that the virus definitions were about 3 months old (very bad). When I tried to update the virus definitions, the process kept failing. Some Googling led me to believe that my virus database was corrupt, which might account for how the virus slipped onto the machine. I managed to download an update using my Linux machine and updated Comodo on the XP machine.

In a way, I got lucky with identifying FakeRean. I spotted a file called ave.exe amongst all the open processes (using Task Manager). I Googled that and discovered that it was part of a trojan called FakeRean.

What is FakeRean?

You can read the a lot more about FakeRean here, but basically it is a fake antivirus / anti-malware program that comes under a variety of names, like “XP AntiSpyware 2009″, “Vista AntiVirus Pro”, and about 30 other names.

It displays fake warnings about infected files on your computer, and asks if you want to remove the files. If you say “yes”, it saves a file called ave.exe to your computer. It changes your computer’s registry to make sure that ave.exe is run every time you open a program. When ave.exe runs, it hijacks your Internet Explorer browser and Firefox browser, disables your Windows firewall and Windows Security Center notifications.

I am assuming that it is also during this time that the TDL3 rootkit gets installed because, in the end, that was the last part of this thing that I removed and it was responsible for hijacking Firefox and blocking Chrome.

Removing FakeRean

I took two steps to remove Fakerean:

1. Download this file from MalwareHelp.org and save it on your Desktop. (Right-click on the file and select Save Target As). Don’t worry, the file is safe. This file fixes the changes that FakeRean made to your registry. Double-click the file and click Yes to merge the file with your registry. This will stop ave.exe from starting up every time you run another program.
2. Download and install MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware. Start the program. Go to the Updates tab and make sure you have the latest updates installed. Then go to the Scanner tab to run a full scan. After the scan, the Scan Results shows all the bad stuff that was found. Make sure all the bad stuff is selected and click the button to remove it.

In my case, these two steps killed off the initial infection… but wait… there’s more…

The Firefox redirection and Chrome block was still in place despite the original cause (FakeRean) being removed. I discovered that it was the TDL3 rootkit doing it.

Removing TDL3 Rootkit

I don’t know much about rootkits other than that they can be very difficult to remove. These things get embedded into your system in very smart and hidden ways. That being said, there are supposedly some tools that can remove them. It’s just a matter of finding the right tool.

Kaspersky’s TDSS Killer was reported to kill TDL3. It did locate TDL3, but reported it to be in the file atapi.sys while Comodo reported it to be in the file viaide.sys. Several attempts to remove TDL3 failed because subsequent scans, with computer reboots between each, kept reporting that atapi.sys was still infected with TDL3 (and it said nothing about viaide.sys).

I discovered Hitman Pro to be the tool that can remove TDL3.

So here’s what I did to get rid of TDL3 rootkit and its effects:

1. Download Hitman Pro, activate their free 30-day license, and scan the computer. In my case, it found TDL3 in viaide.sys as Comodo had also reported. It cleaned the infection and a second scan reported no further threats.
2. Flush the DNS cache: Go to Start -> Run and type in cmd and click OK to open the command window. Then type ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter. You will get a message that says, “Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.”
3. Download HostsXpert to reset your Windows hosts file to its original configuration. Sometimes browser hijackers will modify the hosts file. After downloading and extracting the zipfile, run the program, click Make Hosts Writable?, and click Restore Microsofts’ Hosts File.
4. As a final step, do another scan with MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware (dowloaded and installed earlier).

At this point your problem should be solved, i.e. Firefox no longer spawns new tabs and goes to strange websites, and Chrome is no longer blocked from internet access. This was the case for me.

There are those who believe that you can never know if a computer is 100% in good shape after cleaning a rootkit infection. They say that it is best to rebuild the machine. I haven’t done that (too much work and I’m still recovering from the frustration of dealing with this) and I’ll leave it to you to decide if you want to do it.

Final Thoughts

The people who write malware as sophisticated as FakeRean and TDL3 are obviously very talented programmers. I don’t understand why these people will use those talents to purposefully create something bad. C’mon guys, use your talents for something good instead!

Credits

Thanks so much to all the good people at websites like BleepingComputer.com, MalwareHelp.org, SevenForums.com for providing me with the information that helped me solve this problem. You rock!

Is it important to have lots of followers? How do you go about getting more followers on Twitter? Do you follow back all your new followers?

What Is Twitter About?

I think the answer to these questions lies with looking at what Twitter is all about.

In a nutshell, Twitter is about the conversation. It is about people sharing thoughts and ideas with those who are interested in what they have to say (i.e. their followers). It is about listening to others’ ideas, and if possible, making a valuable contribution to the conversation.

Your Twitter stream, made up of your tweets and the tweets of the people you follow,  is where the conversation takes place and is where the value lies. If someone in your stream tweets junk (spam) or even just stuff that you are not interested in, it diminishes the value of your stream. At that point  you can simply unfollow that person!

You are the guardian of the value that your Twitter stream offers you!

With that in mind, the right approach would be for you to look for people who tweet about things that you have an interest in. Like Elaine in Seinfeld, who judged men to see if they are “sponge-worthy”, you need to ask, “Is this person Twitter-stream-worthy?” Then you will build a stream that offers you value and one that you can contribute to.

Why Would You Want Lots Of Followers?

The basic thought behind having lots of followers is that the more followers you have, the bigger your influence on Twitter (the more people will read your message). This sounds wonderful, but…

What if you have 1,000 followers and 900 of those followers are “twitter bots” or people that aren’t really interested in what you have to say? Then, effectively, you have only 100 followers.

So, having lots of followers is a good thing, but the quality of those followers count a lot towards determining what influence you really have.

Two Philosophies On Getting Followers On Twitter

There are two basic philosophies on how to get more Twitter followers:

1. The Reciprocating Follow: Some people follow a bunch of other people in the hopes that those people, or at least some of them, will follow them back. Some people in this group will actively search for and unfollow the people they followed and who did not reciprocate. Tools like FriendOrFollow make it easy to find out who is not following you back.
2. The Interesting Tweet: Other people merely rely on their own interesting tweets to get followers. Their philosophy is simply, “if they like what I tweet, they will follow me.” This group may look for interesting people to follow, but they aren’t particularly concerned about whether those people follow them back or not.

The Interesting Tweet philosophy should be at the heart of anybody’s efforts to get more Twitter followers. If people find your tweets interesting, they will follow you. Not only will that bring you followers, but your focus on “interesting tweets” ups the overall value of Twitter for everyone.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at this guy (warning: some profanity) who tweets about all the funny stuff his dad says. He follows only one person, but at the time of writing this he has almost 800,000 followers and has tweeted only 74 times!

The Reciprocating Follow philosophy can bring you a lot of followers too, but you may not want to be too set on the “reciprocating” part of it. What if you follow somebody who tweets really interesting stuff, but declines to follow you back? You will lose out on the value they offer if you unfollow them.

The other side of the Reciprocating Follow philosophy is that someone follows you in the hopes that you will follow them back. Don’t ever auto-follow them back (there are tools that will let you do that) or you will end up with a Twitter stream filled with junk. Take a look at each new follower, and if you are interested in their tweets, follow back. Don’t ever feel that you have to follow anybody!

Guidelines For Getting More Twitter Followers

With all this being said, here are my guidelines for following people and getting more followers on Twitter:

1. Add a photo of yourself to your Twitter profile. People like to deal with other people.
2. Complete your profile bio to show people that you are a real person. Give people an idea of who you are and what your interests are.
3. Use Twitter directories like WeFollow or a tool like WhoShouldIFollow to find interesting people to follow. Then follow them without being too worried about whether they follow you back. Some will, some won’t.
4. Take a look at new followers before following them back. Never auto-follow people back!
5. Focus on posting interesting tweets. This will bring you new followers.
6. Retweet other people’s interesting tweets. This will also bring you new followers.

Happy tweeting!

Despite running into issues from time to time, I am a big fan of Ubuntu Linux!

I started out with Ubuntu version 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and made my way up to Hardy Heron (8.04). Then I stuck with Hardy Heron until after Intrepid Ibex (8.10) and Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) were released. Hardy Heron was a LTS (long term support) release and I liked that it was so stable.

Then Ubuntu Karmic Koala was released on Oct 29, 2009 and I decided it was time to upgrade.

Since Hardy Heron was a LTS edition, Ubuntu’s update manager never notified me when Intrepid Ibex or Jaunty Jackalope was released, and it also would not have done so for Karmic Koala. So I had to force the update manager to give me the update option.

I did this by pressing Alt-F2 and entering:

update-manager -d

Then the update button appeared in the update manager and the process could begin…

Upgrading

You cannot upgrade directly from Hardy Heron to Karmic Koala, but have to go through the versions between the two. The first upgrade was from Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex, and that went off without a hitch!

Part 2 of the upgrade was from Intrepid Ibex to Jaunty Jackalope. The upgrade itself went off fine, but when I started up Jaunty, I could not get the networking going! I needed to get connected to the internet because without that, the next part of the upgrade would be impossible!

Since I wasn’t planning to be a Jaunty user for very long, I didn’t really want to spend too much time trying to solve the network connection issue. So I simply booted into the previous version of the Linux kernel that was installed with Intrepid (2.6.27) and the networking was fine.

I could now do part 3 of the upgrade, which was upgrading from Jaunty Jackalope to Karmic Koala. The upgrade itself went fine, but then the fun started…

Problems

When I tried to boot into Karmic and the Caps Lock light started flashing and I had a blank screen, that was a sure sign that something was wrong! My laptop was locked up hard, and from what I could see, my only choice out of there was via the power button.

Since I had success with booting into version 2.6.27 of the kernel, I gave that another shot. That worked… sort of… The GUI started up, but then crashed after a few seconds and threw me out to the command prompt.

Long story short, and many frustrations in between, I figured out that either Karmic or Karmic’s version of the kernel, 2.6.31, did not like the proprietary driver (fglrx) of my ATI video card.

Then I found this great article on how to remove the fglrx proprietary ATI driver and instead use the open source driver. After this, the Karmic GUI started up.

In the process I uninstalled Compiz / Emerald that I had running under Hardy Heron. I’m assuming that the uninstall process did not restore the default windows manager settings. With no windows manager starting up, none of the windows I opened had a border or title bar, and the windows were unmovably attached to the top lefthand side of the screen.

The solution, I figured out, was to make sure that the metacity windows manager was starting up.

I did this by doing the following two steps:

1. Pressed Alt-F2 and entered gconf-editor in the box. Then I navigated to desktop->gnome->applications->windows-manager and entered /usr/bin/metacity for the current and default keys.
2. On the desktop menu I went to System->Preferences->Startup Applications and added an entry for metacity to start up during startup as well.

These two steps did the trick for me.

At this point, everything seems to be fine and I am really enjoying Ubuntu Karmic Koala!

After running Make-A-Website-With-Traffic.com on a different platform for all of its existence, I decided to switch it over to run on WordPress instead. Here’s why I did it, and what it took to get the job done…

It’s not that I was unhappy with the previous platform. In fact, I’m still running one of my other websites, Fun-Things-Texas.com, on Site Build It. Because this site is more a “labor of love” than anything else, I decided to find a way to cut down on hosting expenses.

My choice of using WordPress as the new platform also gave me the chance to experiment with WordPress and learn how to use it as a CMS, i.e. use it not only as blog (its traditional use), but also to recreate a traditional website.

Why WordPress?

I had previous experience with WordPress because I used it to set up a self-hosted blog. So I knew it was easy to install and set up.

The other attraction was all the “extras” that are freely available for WordPress thanks to so many people out there who develop these “extras” for the pleasure that it brings them.

WordPress Themes

There are a boat-load of very nice-looking WordPress themes available that will satify a wide variety of  website “look & feel” needs. The themes are all easy to install and extend, and when you want to change themes for a new “look & feel“, it is easy to do too.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins are used to extend the basic WordPress template to add all the extra functionality you need. Here you also have lots to choose from, and the plugins are mostly installable by the simple click of a button. Occasionally a plugin will require that you make some manual changes to one of your WordPress source pages, but there is usually clear instructions on what to do.

As you can see here, I was able to recreate the previous version of the website in WordPress (see the Menu on the right), and gain a blog in the process. The fact that my visitors can comment on most of the content on the website, is a big bonus to me. I think that the conversations that develop in this way add value to the original post, and everybody gains from that.

Coming soon… In the future I plan to write an article outling all the steps that I had to take to recreate my website in WordPress to use WordPress like a CMS.