Ask A Geek

Q: I am having problems logging into websites that require user names and passwords. What could be causing this problem?

A: There are two things that commonly cause this problem. The first one is having your caps lock on. This key is usually on the left hand side of the keyboard and when on usually emits some kind of light. You will know if this is on because everything you type will be in capitol letters. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Can somebody find out who I am by my IP address? Like if I went on a message board and my IP was listed on my post?

A: The Internet is like writing a letter to someone. You really have no idea where it will end up, who will see it, and when it will come back to bite you in the butt. Some people have a misconception that the Internet is more like chatting with a friend where there is no real record of you saying what you said but that isn’t how the Internet works. The minute something is put online it is there forever. There are hundreds of search engines that parse the Internet every second to get all new information and record it. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: If I change my Internet service provider would my IP address change?

A: IP addresses are much like phone numbers used to be where they are assigned to specific businesses/organizations and are not portable. Phone numbers, however, have moved into the 21st century and are now portable but currently IP addresses are not. There are many reasons why IP addresses are not portable but that is for a different discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: What does Cc and Bcc mean when sending an email?

A: When sending an email everyone knows what the To field is all about but not everyone knows what the Cc and the Bcc fields are all about. The Cc field, which stands for carbon copy, is really no different than the To field when it comes to emails. The people that are Cc:ed will get the email and they will appear to everyone else that was emailed as someone that also received the email. The conceptual difference between the To and the Cc is that it is expected that the people being Cc:ed are just being kept in the loop but are not the primary people in the email. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I hear people talking about looking at sold items on ebay to figure out what a good price to pay for an item is or a good price to list an item for but I cannot seem to find out where to find sold items. How do I find completed auctions or sold items on ebay?

A: I don’t want to say this is tricky but sometimes it is easier to do this than other times. The reason for this is sometimes you will see a link that says See Completed Listings to the right of Save this search, which can be found to the right of where it tells you how many matches were found and it is under the different tabs. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: How come when I post items online on sites like craigslist.org I rarely get people contacting me about the items?

A: There are a few things that can attribute to your listings going unnoticed by the people you want to notice them. If your item is an item that people should want then we can help you. We will discuss the 5 different things people often over look in a listing. These are items that you must include if you want to get your item sold fast. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I have a business and we really need to be able to have multiple users logged into PayPal at the same time running virtual terminal. The problem is when one person logs into PayPal the person who is already logged in gets kicked out. Is there a way to make it so multiple people can be logged in at the same time?

A: First we need to make sure that everyone understands that associating different email addresses with your PayPal account has nothing to do with setting up Mutli-User Access (that is the term PayPal gives to the ability to have multiple users logged into the same account at the same time). So if you have paypal@somedomain.com and billing@somedomain.com or even paypal@someotherdomain.com associated with your PayPal account so that you can receive money if it is sent to those email addresses then that has nothing to do with actually getting multiple users setup so they can work in PayPal at the same time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Q: How come I cannot get my promo code that I received from Papa John’s working on the Gaylord Palms ticket website?

A: This years sponsor of the Gaylord Palms ICE show is Papa John’s. When you order an item from them you should receive an advertisement/coupon for the Gaylord Palms ICE show and that promo code for 2009 should be SCPJP. Many people have problems figuring out how to get this promo code to work though. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I am downloading an ISO file with Flashget 1.9.6 on Vista Enterprise with Service Pack 1. Flashget shows a high download speed of 100-200 KB/s, the “Completed” column just shows a number that goes up and down between 8-24 MB. This has continued for a couple of days. Any suggestions?

A: Some servers do not play well with download accelerators so you should try downloading it in your web browser instead of the download accelerator. This will probably take a little longer but it should be successful.

Q: I have Windows XP and use Internet Explorer. A few weeks ago some of the sites I visit stopped working. Some of the links on the pages are showing up as gif files instead of html but only on my computer. Any other computer I use works just fine. Does anyone know what might be wrong and how to fix it?

A: The first thing everyone should do when getting started online is to make sure they have a good antivirus software package running like AVG. The second thing everyone should do when they get online is to download a second web browser. We suggest everyone download FireFox. Read the rest of this entry »