Here are the steps to upgrade your phone!

1. Download the linked file, on your phone.  http://www.mediafire.com/?jtetcupjdx6nmgm
2. Move the file to the root of your SD card from downloads directory. By "root" I mean not in any folder. The exact path is /sdcard/, do this thru "My Files".
3. Turn your phone completely off. Hold down the "End Call" button and select to shut down the device.
4. Boot your phone into recovery mode. All you have to do is press and hold Volume Down+Talk+End Call, in that order. Hold all three until your screen turns on, and then release. If it just boots normally, just try again.
5. Using the touch control on your Intercept (The square button in between Talk and End Call), scroll down to Apply sdcard/update.zip. Select it. If it asks you to confirm, select yes.
6. Be patient. The phone will do the rest of the work. Keep in mind that once the phone reboots, it will have to build its own cache, so it will take awhile to start. Don't panic, it can take up to 5 minutes.

That should do it!

In today's world we have all read about someone loosing a laptop or having it stolen with sensitive data that should never get out into "the wild". Well the solution to this problem is simple, whole hard disk encryption. That requires a password at boot-up to load the Operating System. As long as the computer is stolen/lost while its off it's pretty much impossible/impractical to crack any encrypted drive particularly if your password is strong.

I recommend TrueCrypt if you are looking for a great and easy solution to encrypt a standard desktop or laptop. It works with Windows, OS X and Linux also note that its Free and Open Source. I won't get into details about the software their website has great documentation and its very easy to use. Download the installer and follow the wizard to enrypt your entire hard drive.

What you don't want to do is install it and just create a encrypted virtual drive to store your “sensitive” files on, because windows creates all kinds of temporary files so opening a file might create a cached version on your system that is unencrypted. So simply put encrypt the whole hard drive will create a very secure environment that will keep your information secure.

I have only touched one feature that TrueCrypt provides, for most people it will be the only part of the software they will need but its a pretty full featured tool.

If you have a small business with 1-40 people you do NOT have to pay for email. All you need to do is use Google Apps (Standard Edition) What this basically does is give you Gmail for your domain. You get Email, Calendar, Documents and Sites all for free as long as you have less then 50 users. When you compare Google Apps (Standard Edition) to Microsoft Exchange Server its a no brainier for small business. You get your email address at your domain (you@yourdomain.com) with calendars that work very similar to Exchange Server. Create Events and invite other users (from your domain) and see if they are available for your meeting, Just like Exchange Server.

I currently use Google Apps for Salmon Bay Technology.com and love it. Number 1 is the price, you can't beat free. Its easy, I could train just about anyone to manage the account creation and deletion in minutes. Think I could do that with Exchange Server.

Don't pay for email if you have 40 people or less and don't expect to add any more people to email any time soon. Setting it up is trivial and can be done in a few hours, well worth the initial cost for the long term cost savings. And its one less thing you have to worry about being broken or your server dieing and you have backups to restore it from.

What happens if you go over 50 people, well Google charges $50/user per year. Which is well worth the price in extra storage and the other features that Google offers if you take advantage of them. Google Sites is a great place to create Intarnet sites to manage shared content or do basic data collection.

Before you buy a new computer, first and foremost evaluate your needs. Are you a power user ? I would say that 98% of the people I know are not. Just because you use your computer a lot does not make you a power user. Do you have 1-5 programs open at a time or less? Do you mainly surf the web, manage photos from a digital camera, check email and work with programs like Microsoft Office or other similar software? If this describes 90% of what you use your computer for I would say you are not a power user.

Now that we have established what type of computer user you are I will address what type's of computers to buy if you are not a power user. If you are a power user there are a lot of variables to decide what kind of computer you would need so I won't get into that here. I'll save that for another blog.

My advice is simple. Buy the cheapest computer or laptop that you can find. The best way to get the least expensive, quality computer is off the Internet or a big box store like Best Buy or Costco. The last laptop I bought was only $249. I mainly use it when I go around to clients and for business and it works great. Why do I advise the cheapest computer? Simply because computers are now a consumer item like a cell phone or clock radio. It will cost you more to repair a laptop/desktop then to buy a new cheap one.

Rather than buying a $1000 computer or laptop that I expect to last me 4 years, I can buy a $300-$350 laptop and expect to get at least 2 years out of it. After 4 years and two laptops totaling $600-$700 I come out $300 ahead and I have had two laptops. What happens if I have an $800 laptop or computer that has a hardware problem? It s going to cost you money to fix. Labor + Parts = more then $200, why not just by a new $300 computer?

 One of the biggest problems with security today is people still choose terrible passwords. Using your dog or kids name as your password is not secure. In today's social networking world (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), names of family members or other personal information like where you were born, your birthday, anniversaries, etc are not good choices. The list of what not to use is enormous but here are some key points. Any word in the dictionary is bad even compound words with numbers or symbols.

Here is how to create a strong password that you can remember and will not easily be cracked. Create a phrase to remember, "I walk to the bus every morning". That's pretty easy to remember right. All I have to do is remember "I walk to the bus every morning". Here is how to turn that into a password. Simply take the first or last letter of each word in the phrase. Using the first letter my password would be "Iwttbem", or using the last letter it is "Iktesyg". Look at those passwords. Who is going to guess one of those? They contain nothing a brute force dictionary attack would have.

Want to step it up even more? How about this, I hate to pound nails into concrete . Transform that into "Ih2#nic" instead of using the "t" from "to" we replaced it with the number 2 and we added a # (pound symbol) where the word pound was. You can use all kinds of symbol word replacement, using these words in your past phrase. Add dollar, percent, carrot, and star, dash and minus just to name a few. I will give you one more example with the above technique and the symbols above. I paid a dollar at the store for carrots , could be "Ipa$@tsf^". That's one of the strongest passwords I have seen in a long time.

Wrapping up, I have shown you a really easy technique for creating and remembering strong passwords. Yes that means you have to change your passwords but a lot is riding on the strength of your passwords. How many bank websites do you use that are using weak passwords as described in the first paragraph?