Microsoft has recently introduced a new feature for hotmail users. Now when you receive an email that for one reason or another just does not seem right to you, you can click MARK AS then "MY FRIEND'S BEEN HACKED!". Thats right, got a suspecious link, or perhaps you 80 year old father is emailing you suggesting you check out the latest Rap Video, well if you think its a fake, report it.

Microsoft does not use this as the only factor and suddently turn off their account, but it triggers them to look for other signs of hacking such as if they recently sent the same email to everyone in their address book. Then they lock the account and the next time the user tries to log in it will attempt to verify they are the real owner with a series of questions or send a recovery password to them via other methods.

I know I get these all the time from friends and clients and have to call or notify them about their account being hacked and suggest they change their password immediatly. This just helps get it done faster and easier. Its a nice step and probably something others like Gmail and Yahoo Mail will soon implement or at least should implement.

On Monday Apple announced the newest version of the iOS operating system for iPhones and iPads along with a new online service called iCloud. The new features in iOS 5 sound great. Here is a summery of them...

iOS5 adds 200 new features to your iPhone or iPad but lets face it, they change a box from squared corners to rounded and they call it a new “feature”. There are just a few (but nice) improvements. Here are the big ones.

Airplay
If you have an Apple TV ($99) you could watch online content like YouTube, buy and rent movies from iTunes, but now you can also mirror you iPad. This means whatever you have on the screen on your iPad will appear wirelessly on your TV. Play a movie through NetFlix, Hulu or another app and watch it on your TV. Even more exciting is using your apps on your large HD TV. Play a game and it appears right on the screen. Very Cool.

Notifications
Until now, when there was a notification (a message from a game, an upcoming appointment, etc.) it simply popped up on your screen in the middle of whatever you were doing. Apple has copied (that's fine...its a big improvement) the Android method of notifications. They appear unobtrusively at the top of the screen and you can drop down a menu to view all notifications.
See More http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html#notification

PC Free
If you went to the store and bought an iPad or iPhone and ran to your car to unpack and play with it you may have been very annoyed to find it would not work until you connected it to a computer to activate it. (Apples way of tracking whats going on with it and who you are). No Longer. You can now get your device and it no longer requires a PC. Nice of them to listen to their customers on this one. They will also be updating your devices with new software versions over the air, not requiring you to connect it to iTunes to download an update.

Reminders
A cool app that keeps track of your lists but also does much more. They can be location based. Using the GPS in your iPhone, you can set a reminder to pop up when you leave your home. So you get outside and it alerts you something like “Don’t forget the report for work” or your on your way home and since it knows your not at the office anymore it alerts you “Your wife said to bring home milk”. The reminders app looks nice and clean and easy to use.

Newsstand
Magazine subscriptions just got much easier. Lets face it, we all would like to be able to read all our books and magazines on our device, but it just hasn't worked out that way. Until now each magazine you might want to subscribe to on your device had its own app to install and there was no consistence. That will all change with Newsstand. You can go to one app that will have all your magazine subscriptions and they will automatically update in the background each time a new issue is available. That’s the way it should be. Turn on your iPad and its all just there!

Safari
There have always been many alternative browsers you can buy for the iPad and you should have bought one because the Safari browser left a lot to be desired. They are finally updating it to have tabbed browsing and be more functional like on your computer.

Camera
No longer will you have to try to find the screen button to take a picture when holding the camera, tapping in the wrong place, missing that picture and getting annoyed. Hold your camera sideways and press the volume up button to snap the picture, just like with a real digital camera. It should have always been that way! They say they have also made it faster and easier to get to.

Mail
Did you ever realize that you could not BOLD, ITALIC, or UNDERLINE in emails before? Well soon you can. There are other nice features finally being added too.

WiFi Sync
Well its about time! No more connecting your iPad or iPhone to the computer to sync videos, pictures, music or anything else. It can be done all wirelessly with iOS5. Again, the way it should have been.

Multitasking Gestures
Just like you can use two fingers to pinch and zoom pictures, there is a host of new multi finger gestures. Swipe left or right to switch between apps. Swipe up to bring up the multitasking bar, no more double clicking the button and doing it too slowly so you get thrown back to your main app screen then having to go back into the app then...whatever...its getting easier.

Well that is the list of features that 99% of the people will use the most. You can see more at Apple’s website at http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/

iCloud
Yes its just another online cloud storage service like Dropbox or Amazon Cloud Storage but since its Apple, it will be very seem less and provide some other nice features across your apple devices. If your a big apple user, someone who uses an iPad, iPhone and Mac then this is great. If you use just an iPad or iPhone its nice but not as big a deal.
iCloud can keep your email, contacts, calendar and more and automatically provides the same information across your apple devices so you always have access to that information. You can also store your iTunes purchased music for streaming, so you don’t need to keep all that stuff on your iPhone or iPad taking up space. Being that its Apple and they already have the largest music store in the world (iTunes) has also worked it out so you can let them scan your computer hard drive for music you already own and they will make those songs available online through iCloud as well. You get 5Gigs of data, which does not sound like much, but your purchased music, apps, books and photo stream don’t count towards that space. That 5Gigs can be used just for your documents, camera photos and other data.. Its Free for the 5Gigs and we suspect you can purchase more space if needed.

You can always find out more at www.apple.com

Epsilon handles email mailing lists for many large companies. Best Buy, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Walgreens, Disney, Barclay’s Bank, US Bancorp, Marriott, Ritz Carlton, LL Bean, Home Shopping Network and TiVo are just a few. You may have an received email from some of these about this.
Someone broke in and stole their email database of names and email addresses. They claim at this time that is all that was stolen.
What this means is that the attacker has these lists and can email customers with fake emails knowing your a customer. So they could send out a fake Best Buy email to all real Best Buy customers trying to get you to reveal information such as passwords, credit card info, etc.
As someone who follows Computers Solutions you should not be affected by this because you know that you should NEVER click on links in emails. Following that one simple rule you will remain safe.
The affected companies are sending out warnings so customers know they may receive fake emails but if you get one and are concerned, just go to the site yourself. You would just open your browser and go to www.bestbuy.com, for example and login with your username and password and check your account. Just dont click on the email link.

Do you use a password or security pattern on your Android phone? If not, then you should! If you use your phone for email, contacts , calendar, Facebook, etc. then you defiantly don't want someone to be able to access that information if you loose your device.

One annoyance has always been that even when your home you have to constantly unlock your device or enter your password to use it. If your like me and pickup your phone every 5 minutes, this gets annoying fast. So with a little searching I found some greats apps I wanted to share.

First, I found "Unlock With WiFi". this new app won't be out until middle of this month, but if you know how to download and install a .APK file you can get it now at http://tinyurl.com/3n6h8re but how to do that is too much to explain here. Otherwise just wait another week or two for it. What is does is allow you to tell the phone that when your connected to your home WiFi network, well then your home and therefor don't need the security on. But as soon as you start to leave your home and get out of range of the WiFi it automatically locks the phone again so the password is required. It can also be set to turn the wifi off as soon as you leave your home, which I do, then they it's not picking up any open or unsecured WiFi hotspots as you are away.

Then I started to realize one small problem with this...when I got home I had to always turn the WiFi back on so that it knew I was there and would keep the phone unlocked. So I started to look for a way for my phone to know I was home and turn the WiFi back on. After a bit of searching I came across "Auto WiFi Toggle". this app allows me to tell it that when the phones WiFi is off, turn it on every 5 minutes (or whatever interval you want) and check if I am near any trusted WiFi spots that it knows (I have it set just for home). If I am, then it turn s my WiFi on, if not then it turns the WiFi instantly back off. Once the WiFi is on, the Unlock With WiFi app knows this and unlocks my phone for me. This always happens within 5 minutes of my getting near my house.

You can set multiple trusted spots to keep your phone unlocked (friends or families homes) and if you forget your phone somewhere else, it's ways going to remain locked and secure. Both these apps are free but I believe the Unlock With WiFi app will start charging a few dollars for it when it's officially released mid-month.

Now what if you loose your phone? Check out www.preyproject.com for a free app and service that will allow you to locate and wipe your phone should your loose. It's free for up to 3 device.

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If your ever on the go and need access to your files...ok even if your not, you should know about cloud storage and Amazons new Cloud Drive.

First, What is cloud storage?

Cloud storage means your files are up on a server somewhere on the internet and not on your local computer. The benefit of this is as long as you have internet access you can access your files from anywhere and they dont take up space on your computer or smartphone. Also your files are probably safer as they are backed up regularly, something you probably dont do. Downside? Only that people still worry about security and privacy to which I say dont put anything there that it would be disastrous if it got out. Or Encrypt them first (How to do that is a totally different topic.

There have been many cloud storage services, probably the most popular of which is DropBox. I often recommend this service to people who need to send someone large files (typically larger than 20megs as thats the max you can usually email). You can upload the file or files, send someone a link and they can download it. Or if you prefer, keep it password protected then just tell the other person the password, then you know they are the only ones with access to the files.

You may not have realized it but GMail is cloud storage. So are all other internet based email systems called Webmail. All your data is stored on their computers, not yours. Get a new computer, not at your computer, just log in and there is your email. So there is a good change you use it now. If you use Google Docs then you clearly are using cloud storage to store your files.

So what makes Amazon's cloud storage different?

Well for starters, just being from Amazon because they are a well liked, well trusted reliable company. Next, have an amazon account? Sure you do! Then you already have Amazon Cloud Drive. Just go to https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive.

They give you a generous 5 Gigs of space for Free. You can upgrade all the way up to 1000 Gigs at $1/gig per year (In certain increments). But here is the kicker...Do you buy music from Amazon? Any music you buy from Amazon goes right in there and does not take up any of your space. Why is this good? Well, download their free Android App and you can play any music thats in your Amazon cloud storage direct to your Android phone over the internet without taking up any space on your phone. From your computer you can upload any music you already have to the cloud storage and also play it on your phone. You can also stream it to your computer and the iPhone app should be coming soon. On Android it seems to work pretty well.

Here is another little perk, buy any full MP3 Album from Amazon and instead of paying $20/yr for 20 Gigs of space, you get it for Free! Remember...that album goes right in there and does not use any of that space. So its $20/yr for 20 Gigs or buy a album for probably half that and get the same 20 gigs. So it makes sense just to buy an album that you like. They are really trying to push purchasing music from them over using iTunes. And they should...Their prices are cheaper, you get the music in standard MP3's so you can do anything you want with them and now you get free cloud storage. Apple has been talking about doing a cloud storage service like this, but out of nowhere Amazon beat them to the punch.

Another way to use cloud storage is backup. While right now Amazon does not have any automated way of sending up files, you can put important files up on their Cloud Drive so if you loose a file or your computer crashes, your files are safe. I'm sure the features and ways to use it will only get better. Right now the biggest draw back to Amazons Cloud Drive, is unlike DropBox its not setup to share files with others. Hopefully that will change soon.

Something you would like us to explain or write about? Send us your ideas at blogideas@ineedbob.com