Digital Photography Tips

Computer Care: Tips to shoot high-quality digital photos

	By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com

UPDATED: March 16, 2012 11:40 p.m.

Computer Care: Tips to shoot high-quality digital photos By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com UPDATED: March 16, 2012 11:40 p.m. Aside from being a technician and writer, I am a photographer. People often ask what kind of camera I have when they remark about my shots. The fact is, I only paid a few hundred dollars for my camera; it's not a professional model by any means. I explain that I don't have a great camera, but a good eye. Too often I see photos posted on Facebook, websites or blogs that people are proud of. They have the potential to be good shots but were simply posted prematurely and unedited. You don't need superior knowledge or special software (although the latter is nice), to transform an average photo into an extraordinary one.Most PHD cameras (Press Here, Dummy) come with software. Alternatively, you can download free software at download.com. Just use terms like "free photo editor" in your keyword search. A wonderful (free) open-source program is GIMP. It's a Photoshop-like program for the serious photographer. Download it at http://www.gimp.org. Whether you use Photoshop, GIMP or another freebie from the Web, there are a few simple steps to enhancing each photo you take. Crop your image, especially if you didn't get close enough when you took it. Try to delete extraneous background matter that could draw attention away from your subject. Optimize the picture. Lighten shadows, darken bright spots and add contrast when necessary. Some photo editors have a one-click button that does it all automatically. Watch for things like trees and telephone poles coming out of subjects' heads. Shooting from a different angle or asking your subjects to move could avoid this. If unavoidable, with the use of software, a clone tool can place sky or foliage where a pole may have been. Be aware of your background; if you can avoid it, keep stray people out of your shots (although you can learn to get rid of them with the software). Try to have subjects looking into the shot instead of out of it. The same goes for flying birds, sailboats, etc. It makes for a more interesting picture. Use the Rule of Thirds while composing your photos. Having your subject off-center just looks better. Wikipedia provides a good explanation of this concept at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds. Be aware of the sun and try not to shoot into it; but don't have your subjects squinting either. Consider its position in the sky. A high sun is the brightest, but causes facial shadows. A low sun has a softer light but causes long shadows. Watch for reflections in glass, especially if you're using a flash. Don't be afraid to use a flash outdoors. It will get rid of facial shadows. Keep in mind that most cameras' built-in flashes will reach only 6-8 feet, so make sure you are close enough for it to have an effect. If you do use a flash, watch for red eye. Your camera may have pre-flash burst that eliminates red-eye or you can easily treat it with your software. If you use a DSLR, you can be more creative and have more control over the camera by taking it out of Auto Mode. There is a direct relationship between shutter speed and aperture size. To get the same exposure, for each F-stop you decrease (higher number yields a smaller aperture), you need to add a time element.For example: shooting at 125th of a second at F-16 is the same as 250 and F-8. There are times you may need a faster shutter speed (to stop the action) and times that call for a smaller aperture (it yields a greater depth of field). Set your DSLR to bracket your shots. It will take photos at the exposure you want and one or a few on either side of that to ensure you'll get a good one. Remember the resolution: it all depends on whether you're posting an image online or printing it. To do the latter you want a hi-res shot. To get a good 8 X 10, you'll want at least a 4 MB image. For Facebook, you can put up a 60k image and it will look just fine, but you couldn't print it. Film and the processing of it used to be expensive. Digital photography is not. Take lots of shots. I often shoot a few dozen images just to get one or two good ones. Some will have a poor exposure, others may be blurred and a few will have the subject either not smiling or with their eyes closed. If you take enough shots, you are guaranteed to have at least a few quality photos. Even those few that appear to look fine will warrant some tweaking. Unless they were cropped while you took them, if you do no other editing, crop them with your photo utility. With just a $90 camera, a trained eye, some free software and this advice, you'll soon hear your friends tell you what nice shots you've posted. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page

Computer Care

Let a computer sleep or turn it off?        

By Arthur Glazer

glazer.tech@gmail.com

One of the most common questions I get asked by clients is: “Should I turn my computer off when I’m done or leave it running?” Many leave them on 24/7.  I have read good arguments on both sides of this debate. Here is my take.

Unless I’m done for the day, I leave mine on. However, when I’m finished working at night, I do absolutely power it down.

On my laptop I have it set to go into sleep mode when I close the lid. On both desktop and laptop I use power settings to first dim the display, then a few minutes later, kill the hard drive and finally after an hour I have them go to sleep.

To awaken from a sleep mode, all you need to do is tap the space bar or shake the mouse. Give it a few seconds and the display will come back alive, waking the rest of the system with it.

This is good at times when you’re working, but get called to the phone or to dinner. There is no reason to keep the computer running if you’re not using it.

There is sleep or standby mode and there is hibernation. Let me say that I don’t advise an XP machine to hibernate. Often an XP PC will fail to awaken properly from hibernation to experience data loss. I recommend you turn off that feature if you use XP.

The difference between the two modes is that in standby, all your work is saved to RAM (system memory) and comes back quickly. When a system hibernates, the data is saved to the hard drive. It takes another few seconds to recover when you wake it, usually by hitting the power button instead of the mouse or keyboard.

Don’t confuse screen savers with sleep mode. They are nothing but a distraction and were initially used to prevent phosphor burn-in on the old cathode-ray tube monitors. Today they are just something to look at or something to block your screen from prying eyes.

There is an argument that a computer can’t handle daily power cycles. I don’t subscribe to that theory. Your television, stereo, game box and a plethora of other electronic devices power down often with no ill effects. Computers are manufactured to actually withstand up to 40,000 on/off cycles before failure. Considering they will last 5-7 years, most computers will fail from something else in that time frame.

By cycling down computers, the fact is not only are you saving electricity (we’ll get to that in a moment), but it is actually better for the system to be turned off every now and then.

By turning your cell phone off every day or two, you reacquire the signal from the cell tower. By turning off your computer, you refresh the system memory. It also fixes little ailments.

Often my wife will shout across the house that her browser won’t open or that she can’t play a song. After I ask her if she tried rebooting, I get a “Never mind.”

When you terminate a program in Windows, you don’t get the entire amount of RAM back that it was using. Some simply gets lost. Only by using a memory utility that refreshes it or rebooting the computer, will all that system RAM be available again.

Aside from the fact that your computer can benefit from turning it off, it will save electricity as well as the planet.

It’s not just your computer either. I walked in my dark lab one evening and thought I was at NASA. There were glowing LEDs from assorted PCs, monitors, battery chargers, power adapters/transformers, devices in standby, devices with illuminated clocks, power strips, my modem and router. Except for the last two, I have since changed what I leave on.

You don’t think it adds up, but it does. Even a cell phone charger not connected to a phone still draws current. Multiply that by everyone who leaves theirs connected. That’s a lot of wasted electricity.

Using sleep-mode on a computer that is on only four hours a day will have a 70 percent energy savings over leaving it on 24/7. Experts claim that electronic devices in standby mode burn up 5 percent of all the electricity used in the United States.

Energy Star says that by using devices with their logo on it will conserve a considerable amount of electricity by powering them down when not in use. Smart power strips monitor power usage and will terminate electricity at appropriate times.

Even non-smart strips have power buttons on them. If you toggle it off when done, it will help save electricity.

Turning off your devices not only reduces energy consumption, it also reduces pollution that is created by the power plants that makes our electricity, no matter by what method unless wind or solar.

On the average, you could save approximately $200 annually by turning off your computer when you’re done with it.

So I say to those power abusers who never power down their systems: Get with the program. Save money, save your computer and save the Earth.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business Page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

A Windows Chronology

Computer Care: Looking back through Windows, and what lies ahead

	By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com

POSTED: February 17, 2012 11:59 p.m.

	It seems like I just recently upgraded my computer's operating system. Windows 7 came out in October of 2009, yet here we are with Microsoft announcing the release of its successor already, slated for the fourth quarter of this year. That's about the same amount of time between the releases of Windows 95 and 98 and of 98 and XP. So I guess we are due. Although XP is over a decade old, I along with millions of users still have it installed on a computer. As of eight months ago, 75 percent of businesses in the U.S. still used XP on their computers. With 450 million boxes of Windows 7 sold, it only recently exceeded overall use over XP. In January, XP was reported to still have a worldwide market share of almost 50 percent. I have XP Pro on my desktop and Win 7 on my laptop and am quite content with both installations. It's doubtful that I will jump on the Windows 8 bandwagon this winter. Back in the early '90s, home computing really took off. Windows came out a decade before, but until version 3.0 or really 3.1, did it go mainstream. It was the first graphical user interface or GUI (pronounced "gooey") for the PC. Simultaneously, Apple had the MacIntosh. Almost each new version of Windows brought novel innovations to the table. Windows 95 had Plug and Play, integrated Internet and showed us the Start Menu and Task Bar. Win 98 introduced us to the Universal Serial Bus, better known as USB. The Millennium Edition had but one use for me: I used the installation CD for a coaster. Aside from my beverage, all else on it was junk. I think Microsoft must have agreed, as it was gone as quickly as it appeared. XP had a refined GUI, an easy to use Network Wizard, Media Player and Movie Maker. It was the first Windows to have wireless networking support. The much-maligned Vista was next. They should have put a fork in it; it wasn't ready. Although high on security, it is slow on speed and is a clunky, overburdened operating system that manages memory poorly. Personally, I'd rather use XP. Its successor, Windows 7 is everything Vista tried to be and wasn't. It was like going from black and white to color; from four cylinders to eight. It is smart, secure and stable; it is quick, easy to control and has cloud capabilities. I enjoy Win 7 so much that I see no need to upgrade to 8 when it comes out. I'll wait until I get my next computer, which will have it pre-installed. Windows 8, or Metro, as they are calling it, will still function with a mouse and keyboard, but will also offer support for tablets and other touch screens. It will supposedly be offered in various incarnations, depending upon the way you will be using it, touch or otherwise. Picture your smartphone on steroids, 10 times the size for your next personal computer. But they don't stop there. Touch screens are used from 4-inch smartphones to 60-inch classroom/boardroom presentation screens. You may have already seen these large displays on network news shows. Aside for the business and home computer market, I believe we will see Microsoft give Android and Apple and run for the smart phone market with Windows 8 as well. Currently, cell phone use is dominated by Android, which is a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices or iOS if you have an iPhone. Windows has a small share as does Blackberry, and a few others. Almost 500 million smart phones were sold in 2011, so the market is rapidly growing with Microsoft and Android battling for placement in it. Android and Linux are forces to be recognized. You may not see Linux-based PCs when you go shopping, but they are around. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy, as well as many municipalities, schools and businesses use it. I tried Windows on my phone, but like Droid better. On my PC I prefer Windows over Linux. The new version of Windows is supposed to have enhancements other than those for touch screens. It should run more efficiently, using less memory. It will have a new user interface. The start menu will be gone, to be replaced with a tile-based grid of images including your applications and photos. To log on, you will click a series of points on an image, not unlike some smart phone logons we use already. Much of what we will need will be a la carte via a Microsoft website, Window Live, rather than clog the operating system with things that we may or may not use. Windows Live currently has a half billion accesses monthly. It sounds like Windows 8 has gone through a major overhaul, but until I find myself showing up at clients' homes with my touch screen tablet computer, I'll think I'll stay with Windows 7. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

What you can do online beside check email

Computer Care: Behold the wonders of the Web By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com POSTED: February 4, 2012 1:00 a.m.

Did you know that Finley Stephens of Weston, Mo., lays claim to the largest ball of string (not twine) at 19 feet in diameter, weighing 3,712 pounds? How about the fact that it would take about 80,000 years to travel to the nearest star in Alpha Centauri with the technology that we have today? Australian shepherds don't come from down under but originate from Colorado. Really? Yes. I didn't know those facts, either, but I found them quickly (with multiple sources) on the Internet. Many of my clients tell me all they need their computers for is email, and they don't know what else they can do with them. I often sleep but five hours a night because I get caught up in Internet searches. Much of my computing knowledge I've learned from websites. I read news stories online, watch missed TV shows, do comparative research for products I want to buy, find programs for my computer and apps for my cellphone, learn how to repair things that I break and sell things that I no longer need. I have booked vacations, sold cars and artwork and bought cameras and laptops, all online. Most of the electronics I need for my computer business are purchased online at better prices than I can get locally, even considering the shipping costs. My point is that if all you use your computer for is email, then you need to take your mouse out for a ride. There is a world out there just waiting for you to explore. Too often I hear excuses like, "I am too old to learn," or "I don't know how." Well, bunk. (Synonym I found online for a more aromatic term I usually use.) When I was a kid, the only research I had access to was the World Book Encyclopedia. Each year, my parents would buy the annual supplement and I was thrilled. It was nice, but limited, and it cost a small fortune. By comparison, today the Internet is huge and it is free, aside from your connection fees. The information is literally available at our fingertips and is enormous, almost infinite. You don't need any special knowledge, only a desire to know or want something. Just ask Google a question. Speak like you would to a friend. Type your query in question form. Don't worry about grammar or using caps. If I want recipes with broccoli, but without cheese, that's what I would type: I would ask, "What are broccoli recipes without cheese?" (without quotes). Have a hankering to understand Einstein? Type, "Explain the Theory of Relativity." You will get pages of hits to your queries; the first few on the first page will usually answer your question. Avoid responses that say "ad," as they are paid-for responses and will steer you astray to the sponsors' product pages. Look at a few pages and save them as bookmarks or favorites, depending on what your browser calls them. Shop online. Do comparisons between products and stores and read what shoppers say about what you want to buy. If you buy online, you can have your purchase shipped or pick it up at local stores like Target, Sears and Wal-Mart, to name a few. Use snopes.com to dispel those email rumors we all get. (Bill Gates will give you $50 if you forward this column.) Feeling bad? Look up your symptoms online. Did your doctor prescribe some new medications for you? See what you shouldn't mix with them on the pharmaceutical's website. Discover which foods are antioxidant-rich or low in fat. Aside from Google, I like ask.com, howto.com and youtube.com. You'll find that many queries will refer you to these three sites often. You Tube is great if you need to know how to do things like fix a leaky toilet, change your car's water pump, refill your inkjet cartridges or install RAM in your computer. If you are a DIY enthusiast and a visual learner, you will like their videos. Watch, pause and rewind them. Bookmark the videos and watch them again. Are you tired of the bar scene? Internet dating has increased over the years. Approximately 5 million singles use online dating services worth about $4 billion worldwide. (Yes, these statistics come from the Internet.) If you have a webcam, download and install Skype, a free video-conferencing application. You will truly enjoy chatting with your dates or your out-of-town children and be able to see them at the same time. Welcome to the 21st century. The Internet works. My wife and I met online back when the information superhighway was but a dirt road. We have watched the Web and our marriage grow for almost 20 years, although I do believe Teressa knows more trivia than Google. If all you go online for is email, live dangerously. Go look up something. You can't break your computer — not like that, anyway. You don't need a Ph.D. or any special knowledge. The latter is what you'll gain. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Did you know that Finley Stephens of Weston, Mo., lays claim to the largest ball of string (not twine) at 19 feet in diameter, weighing 3,712 pounds? How about the fact that it would take about 80,000 years to travel to the nearest star in Alpha Centauri with the technology that we have today? Australian shepherds don't come from down under but originate from Colorado. Really? Yes. I didn't know those facts, either, but I found them quickly (with multiple sources) on the Internet. Many of my clients tell me all they need their computers for is email, and they don't know what else they can do with them. I often sleep but five hours a night because I get caught up in Internet searches. Much of my computing knowledge I've learned from websites. I read news stories online, watch missed TV shows, do comparative research for products I want to buy, find programs for my computer and apps for my cellphone, learn how to repair things that I break and sell things that I no longer need. I have booked vacations, sold cars and artwork and bought cameras and laptops, all online. Most of the electronics I need for my computer business are purchased online at better prices than I can get locally, even considering the shipping costs. My point is that if all you use your computer for is email, then you need to take your mouse out for a ride. There is a world out there just waiting for you to explore. Too often I hear excuses like, "I am too old to learn," or "I don't know how." Well, bunk. (Synonym I found online for a more aromatic term I usually use.) When I was a kid, the only research I had access to was the World Book Encyclopedia. Each year, my parents would buy the annual supplement and I was thrilled. It was nice, but limited, and it cost a small fortune. By comparison, today the Internet is huge and it is free, aside from your connection fees. The information is literally available at our fingertips and is enormous, almost infinite. You don't need any special knowledge, only a desire to know or want something. Just ask Google a question. Speak like you would to a friend. Type your query in question form. Don't worry about grammar or using caps. If I want recipes with broccoli, but without cheese, that's what I would type: I would ask, "What are broccoli recipes without cheese?" (without quotes). Have a hankering to understand Einstein? Type, "Explain the Theory of Relativity." You will get pages of hits to your queries; the first few on the first page will usually answer your question. Avoid responses that say "ad," as they are paid-for responses and will steer you astray to the sponsors' product pages. Look at a few pages and save them as bookmarks or favorites, depending on what your browser calls them. Shop online. Do comparisons between products and stores and read what shoppers say about what you want to buy. If you buy online, you can have your purchase shipped or pick it up at local stores like Target, Sears and Wal-Mart, to name a few. Use snopes.com to dispel those email rumors we all get. (Bill Gates will give you $50 if you forward this column.) Feeling bad? Look up your symptoms online. Did your doctor prescribe some new medications for you? See what you shouldn't mix with them on the pharmaceutical's website. Discover which foods are antioxidant-rich or low in fat. Aside from Google, I like ask.com, howto.com and youtube.com. You'll find that many queries will refer you to these three sites often. You Tube is great if you need to know how to do things like fix a leaky toilet, change your car's water pump, refill your inkjet cartridges or install RAM in your computer. If you are a DIY enthusiast and a visual learner, you will like their videos. Watch, pause and rewind them. Bookmark the videos and watch them again. Are you tired of the bar scene? Internet dating has increased over the years. Approximately 5 million singles use online dating services worth about $4 billion worldwide. (Yes, these statistics come from the Internet.) If you have a webcam, download and install Skype, a free video-conferencing application. You will truly enjoy chatting with your dates or your out-of-town children and be able to see them at the same time. Welcome to the 21st century. The Internet works. My wife and I met online back when the information superhighway was but a dirt road. We have watched the Web and our marriage grow for almost 20 years, although I do believe Teressa knows more trivia than Google. If all you go online for is email, live dangerously. Go look up something. You can't break your computer — not like that, anyway. You don't need a Ph.D. or any special knowledge. The latter is what you'll gain. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Computer Care: Stop Online Piracy Act takes things too far

	By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com

	POSTED: January 23, 2012 1:41 p.m.

	Could you imagine if we had newspapers that had items blacked out, censored by someone other than its editors? What if society allowed wealthy members of the business community or authoritative politicians the power to oversee the printed page? What if it were up to them what was considered fit for publication? Censorship controlled by the wealthy, with the endorsement and consent of the government? What are the chances of that happening? After all, this is the United States of America. Should House Bill 3261, better known as SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act pass, it could set precedent for censorship in this great country of ours. Its aim is to deliver massive control to certain industries over Internet content. It will start with the Internet and who knows where it can go from there. The Senate has its own bill, the Protect IP Act or PIPA, S 968. The bills call for domain blacklisting, which could stop Internet Service Providers from allowing access to certain Internet addresses. It blocks search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) from linking to those sites. Chinese and Iranian governments endorse this practice. That's quite an elite club to be part of. I am not in favor of piracy. Every author, artist, performer and creator has the right to profit from his or her work. However, these two congressional bills go way beyond demanding fair pay for fair work. The current drafts allow record companies and movie studios not to just have objectionable copyrighted content removed from websites but to see the sites shut down completely. Should these bills pass as they stand, unprecedented powers would in the hands of the Hollywood entertainment companies, artists and organizations like the MPAA and RIAA. For now, it seems the only ones to profit would be the lawyers. It would make more sense and appear more appropriate to request the site owners to remove the materials in violation of copyright laws. But taking down infringed songs, books or movies is apparently not enough for them. They wanted and received the authority to shut down entire websites. Any Internet-savvy web surfer could circumvent this obstacle by entering the numerical address of the suspect website instead of its name, rendering the whole ban mute. It may stop some, but not all from accessing a site. It is overkill to allow termination of a website in the name of piracy prevention. That means sites such as YouTube could be shut down because a ninth-grader posted a video he created with a Michael Jackson song in the background. Although a site as large as YouTube may be able to withstand that type of threat and survive it, a small startup site could not. It wouldn't stop there. Advertisers would be prohibited from selling their wares on those websites. Untold numbers of technicians would be out of work. In protest Wednesday, Google had its search box covered with a black band and asked Web surfers to tell Congress that censorship is wrong. Google reports that they collected over 7 million signatures in protest over these two bills. Wikipedia and thousands of other websites shut down for a day in protest this past week. Wikipedia briefly blocked content, and said afterward, "The problem with SOPA is that it prevents the "loss" of money, at the expense of knowledge and freedoms ... we care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors." Others in opposition to the bills include eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Linkedin, to name but a few. Those in the entertainment business in favor of the bills have already spent a whopping $100 million on lobbying for their cause to date. They may need to spend more. So far, the protests appear to have had a huge effect. After seeing all the public resistance, Congress is busy reworking the bills. Considering where they were a week ago, they have a lot of rewriting to do. There is also a compromise bill in the works. A group of House members is drafting a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act. We'll see. Quite a few members of Congress have reconsidered their "yay" vote on this controversial bill. Three co-sponsors have already dropped support of their bills, perhaps more by the time you read this. There are others yet who are waiting to make up their minds, waiting to hear from their constituency until they decide. That puts it in our hands, where it should be. We have the power, we the people. Write to your congressional representatives, sign online petitions and email the White House. Should these bills pass as they stand, this could be the beginning of the end of freedoms that this country was built upon. Don't let it happen. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

	Computer Care: Look for more QR codes in the future By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com POSTED: January 7, 2012 1:00 a.m. Everyone has seen them. They are in newspapers and magazines and on websites. No, I'm not talking about celebrities or politicians. I refer you to Quick Response Codes. They are those two-dimensional square mazes of black lines and white spaces that you may have seen. For the longest time, I had no idea what they were. I felt the same way many years ago when bar codes initially came out on products at the supermarket. They were on things like Cheerios long before the stores even had bar code scanners. What were those lines, I wondered. Those original vertical bar codes' design included a minimal amount of information embedded in them. Those initial bar codes are high-tech price stickers. They tell the customer what an item costs and allows a merchant inventory control. The purpose of the new QR codes is to show us products and educate us about them. We can also get discount coupons via a scan, go to a website, buy something, read an article or watch a video. QR codes have the ability to store more information in them than bar codes and will soon be seen on just about anything consumers use, from drink cups to business cards; anything they may read from periodicals to websites; and television to storefronts and even restroom walls. They are already in use at trade shows and conventions. I have seen them in brochures and flyers. They have even made it to billboards in some cities. The QR is easier to scan than the ones at the self-checkout counter. You can do it from a distance. Currently, a common use of the QR code is the ability to get apps for your smart phone. New York City's Central Park adapted them as park codes to show tourists more about the park. They are strategically scattered around the park on signs for visitors to scan. See the video here. According to my wife's friend, Kathy, the Weight Watchers bar code scanner app for use at the supermarket will help you make smart decisions while shopping for food. Whether you're in the store or at home, you can easily scan foods to keep track of the points in your diet. I thought calculators on the buggies were high-tech. Although this technology is new in our country, it's been around for a while in Canada and Japan, where it was invented in 1994 for use in the automotive industry. These soon-to-be-ubiquitous codes will be a boon to advertisers, but will create yet another source of possible malware. As long as you trust the source, just as in web browsing, this shouldn't be an issue. However, if you scan a code that you don't know, there is the possibility it will direct your phone to an infected site. You will then have what is known as a "brick." Your phone will be useless. To be clear, the code is not what is malicious; where is sends you to is what may be. To answer your next question, yes, cellphone infections are absolutely something we should be concerned about. The more mobile we become, the more we become dependent on our phones for information. It is simply easier to scan a website address (the code), than to type in the address on a tiny mobile keyboard. Although it is more efficient, it is yet another possible source of infection for us. Many anti-virus applications now include protection for your mobile device as well as for your computer. If you haven't yet considered this, perhaps now is the time. Check your anti-virus suite. You may already have protection for your mobile phone. If you don't yet have an app for your smartphone that reads QR codes, you can download a free one. Be sure you get the app specific for your platform, whether iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry or Palm. Use the link to your app store on your mobile phone to get the download. In most cases, the scan will activate the software. You usually don't even have to click the shutter release button on your phone. All you need to do is accept or deny redirection to the link that the QR code wants you to go to. Should you want your own QR code, there are many websites that offer them at no cost, with no strings attached. A few of the many sites that will allow you to create them are qrstuff.com,quikqr.com and qrcode.kaywa.com. Simply tell the code generator if you want an email, text or a URL (web address) embedded in your code. Create it and right-click the newly generated image, then save it to your computer to use as you wish. You may not have seen many economical comprehensive data plans for your phone lately, but I think you will be seeing a bunch more QR codes in the coming year. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Vipre is currently having a

 "Buy one year, get another free" Sale.

I like it because it doesn't slow my system down. You, my readers will like it because it is a great deal.