CNN Alerts

How do I stop them?
John Kirkham

JS: You can’t, but they should be sorted into your spam folder. If not, create a rule to do this. These emails are not really from CNN, though they are a good imitation. Click a link in the latest version, My Custom Alert, and it takes you to a Russian website, where you are asked to download a malware version of Adobe’s Flash player (adobe_flash.exe). This installs a Trojan downloader which runs a service called CbEvtSvc and connects to a remote host. Your anti-malware software should remove this. If not, try running SuperAntiSpyware.

Photos to share

I have used Nikon Fotoshare to send photos by email. It was very quick and easy. Nikon is now offering My Picturetown. This is very slow to upload, and I cannot find out how to email the photos.
Robin Hood

JS: Fotoshare is an online photo album. Nikon plans to close it on September 10 and will then delete all the photos people have uploaded. MyPictureTown.com is similar but has drag-and-drop uploading and is claimed to be easier to use. There are a great many alternatives, including Photobucket (owned by MySpace), WebShots (American Greetings), Flickr (Yahoo), Picasa (Google) and Windows Live Photo Gallery (Microsoft). SmugMug is good but not free.

They all have their fans, many of whom use more than one, so now there is framechannel.com to manage multiple services. There are even more sites that cater for people who want to upload one or two images, such as Imagevenue.com. You can use them without opening an account or signing in. When you upload a photo, these sites usually provide several links to cater for web pages and different types of message board.

Unfortunately, many of these sites make their money by displaying popup adverts, and some may even try to install malware. The best rule is to copy the “direct link” and email that instead of the photo. Avoid any links that contain the letters php.

What’s Kontiki?

I have installed the BBC iPlayer, but every time I activate it, a program called Kontiki pops up.
Denis

JS: When you download TV programmes using iPlayer - as distinct from watching streamed versions online - they are downloaded using Kontiki. This is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, which is also used by similar services such as Sky by Broadband and Channel 4’s 4oD. Kontiki seems to load and use your bandwidth, even if you are not using iPlayer: use the Windows Task Manager to see if Kservice is running.

The BBC has a page that explains how to stop it running on startup and when you are not using iPlayer. You can remove it altogether using the kclean.exe program. However, if you do, any Kontiki-based programs such as iPlayer will stop working.

Printer disposal

I have a not-that-old HP OfficeJet 6110 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier which I’ve recently replaced. It works, but is a little streaky on some printing. I’ve been trying to get rid of it in an ecologically sound way, but to no avail.
Chris Rowbury

JS: You could offer it on eBay, noting the fault and offering it as for “spares or repair” and probably “collect only”. Otherwise, try Freecycle.

Backchat

· Paul Niemiec wanted a cheap way to digitise cassette tapes, and I suggested using the open-source Audacity software. John Blackburn suggests the shareware CD Wave instead: “This software is simpler than Audacity and has the very useful (and, indeed, important) feature of being able to split the music into tracks, either automatically or with manual assistance. CD Wave will save the resulting tracks as WAV, MP3, OGG or FLAC files. WAV is for making audio CDs and MP3 is for the car. FLAC files are lossless, as you say, and are about half the size of WAV files.”

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