In a cruel hoax someone posted on craigslist the address of a man in Oregon and indicated that everything on his property was free for the taking. The homeowner, who wasn’t at home at the time, became suspicious when he received a call about his free horse. On his way back to his home he spotted vehicles with his possessions heading the opposite way.

Even after arriving at his home, and with some 30 people taking his stuff in front of his eyes, the man had trouble convincing the people that his stuff was not for free. People showed the man the ads from craigslist stating the free offer. It wasn’t until police arrived that people started to scatter, some fleeing the scene with this guy’s stuff.

The cops are still trying to track down the suspects who made off with this poor guy’s belongings after the man provided the police with several license numbers. The cops are also trying to figure out how and who placed the ad on craigslist with the freebie offer.

When I first read this article my first thoughts were how is this guy going to prove to his insurance company that he didn’t place the ad himself?

Comments welcome.

Full details are here.

Adobe is offering to the public a free beta test of its Photoshop Express software. Included in the freebie is up to 2G of online storage. Users can then store, edit or use eye catching effects to modify their photographs. All of this online and is done through your browser. [Gee, this sounds like more cloud computing.] According to Adobe:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — March 27, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe Photoshop Express public beta, a free Rich Internet Application (RIA) available to anyone who wants to store, sort and show off digital photos with eye-catching effects. During the public beta period, Adobe will solicit Photoshop Express user feedback on product features and functionality, which will continue to evolve over time. As the newest addition to the Photoshop family line, Photoshop Express has taken much of Adobe’s best image editing technology and made it simple and accessible to a new online audience. Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2 gigabytes of images online for free, make edits to their photos, and share them online in creative ways, including downloading and uploading photos from popular social networking sites like Facebook.

For all of you who have been waiting to join in on a beta program, this is your chance to play with new software all for free.

Link to Adobe press release is here.

Sign up is here.

Just when you thought that Google has done it all, it is introducing Gmail Paper, which currently is in beta testing. Google Gmail Paper is the latest in a new concept where you can get all of your Gmail messages printed for you and delivered to your home. On its site it claims it will even do up to 100,000 or more messages. It also states:

Is it free?

Yes. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations — these are physically impossible in the paper medium.

How about attachments?

All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases.

Is there a limit?

You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.

But what about the environment?

Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.

I have already signed up for this free service and received my first shipment this morning from Google. I chose the 100,000 message option and received 22 boxes of printed emails. I plan to go through the messages this weekend and should be completed cataloging the messages by 04-01-08.

Comments welcome.

Gmail Paper website is here and it’s FREE!

PS If you need help with using Gmail Paper you can contact ubenhad@google.com.

Each year I use the months of March and September as friendly reminders to myself of some of the chores that need to be done on items that require maintenance. I get the car serviced, change the batteries in the smoke detectors, and also do a semi annual cleaning of my computer systems.

So when I saw that ESET, the makers of Nod32 anti-virus, had an online scanner, I decided to give it a try. I have previously mentioned that using an online scanner to check your system, no matter which anti-virus product you use, is wise. Critters can sneak through the best defense so it doesn’t hurt to check your system using a different product occasionally.

ESET online scanner needs to use IE. The scan itself on my system took 1 hour and 33 minutes, so be patient. All files were checked and no problems were found.

Give this freebie a try.

Comments welcome.

ESET scanner is here.

A reader by the name of Barrie Orton posted this in the comments section of a previous article I had written here. Not only does Barrie indicate that his system is infected but that he can’t seem to remove the virus as well.

Sadly, I have Norton 360. I read all the bad reports too late. Norton has let in the DOWNLOADER virus onto my machine. Restore replicates it. Norton want me to pay again to get them to remove it. Online Norton (ex) customers’ reports say they can’t get rid of it! Norton online instructions to remove DOWNLOADER are impenetrable to a novice like me and other reports say their instructions don’t work anyway. How do I get rid of DOWNLOADER? How do I get rid of Norton without crashing my machine? What is the best Antivirus to upload that updates itself?

Here are some of my thoughts:

First of all there have been many discussions and some disagreement about turning off System Restore while trying to remove a virus. While I respect those opinions about not doing this, I personally have found it necessary in some cases in order to remove a critter or two from a system. That would be my first recommendation, turn off System Restore. NOTE: After the bug is gone, turn it back on.

Second there are a bunch of fine online virus scanners such as:

Trend Micro House Call here. [highly recommended]

Kaspersky Free Virus Scan here.

Doing a Google will turn up more if the above do not work for you.

The virus you mention does not appear to be the type that you should have any problems removing. It’s been around since 2005 and I am sure that any good virus scanner should be able to remove it without a problem.

Removing Norton 360 should be straightforward as well using the uninstaller that comes with the program. If there is a problem, Norton posts its removal tool, which it indicates does in fact function with 360. The tool can be downloaded from here. I would also run a registry cleaner program such as CCleaner. Other free tools can be found at 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities located here.

At the above site you will also find recommendations for free anti-virus programs such as AVG and avast! with links to download these freebies.

If anyone has any further suggestions, hints, tips, or tricks that Barrie should try, please feel free to post them.

Comments as always are welcome.

This has happened to all of us at one time or another. A file gets stuck with a writelock causing another operation to fail. You end up not being able to copy, send to, or to delete the file. You get one of the following error messages:

Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Unlocker 1.8.5 is available for free and will work to free your file or folder that is giving you a headache. Unlocker comes with a full application installer so you won’t have to fuss with manually fooling with any .DLLs. The tool can be used right away and doesn’t require a reboot of the system.

Make sure you read the FAQ especially if you are a Vista user.

This is another tool for your toolbox that you will want to have available.

Get the free download here.

Though I do my own backups on a regular bases, I thought I would try a online backup service just to see how well or not so well it would work. I have heard all of the rhetoric about safety issues and so forth, and also the issues about security. After going through my important documents, pictures and other data I came to one conclusion. What I have on my personal computer is only valuable to me and may just bore others to tears.

Anyway, I decided to try the online back up system from Mozy. You sign up for an account which provides you with 2G of free backup server space. After setting up a username [email address] and password, you are sent a confirmation email. Than you can download their backup software to your system.

The backup software is very easy to use. Once installed you can click on the backup button and the software will auto find your files such as my documents, outlook, outlook express, IE favorites, Firefox favorites, picture & music folders and others or you can select expert mode to add additional files.

I did my backup at night before I went to bed. In the morning it had completed approximately 975MB of data.

I did not try the restore feature.

You must have a broadband connection.

See what you think. Are there other recommendations for online backup software? If so, let us know.

Mozy website is here. The free account is on your left about 1/3 page down.

PS Using an online backup service should not be a substitute for doing your own backups, but should be treated as an enhancement. Just my two cents.