How To: Escape From Google's Clutches, Once and For All

So you're fed up with Google, and you've got a litany of reasons. Youdon't even have to explain—I'm just here to help you crawl out fromunder the shadow of the big G, step by step.

You don't have to be ready to commit to a full overhaul of your online lifestyle to understand why someone might want to yank their data from Google's servers, and hand it off to someone else: You've got Google's CEO deafly rehashing fallacious arguments about privacy—"If you have something that youdon't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the firstplace"—and hesitating on a drawback; you've got contextual advertisingthat seems just a little too closely tuned to that sexxxy love letteryour girlfriend sent you while you were on that business trip; you'vegot that violently insane ex husband who now knows where you are because of Google's clumsy Buzz rollout. Most of all, you've got reasons, and you're ready for change.

The decision to close your Google account has to be carefully considered—after all, this is the place that stores your email, yourdocuments, your contacts, your photos, your news, and even your healthrecords. But this level of investment to one service is as good areason to leave as it is to stay: If looking at your Google Dashboard,which lists all the services you use, and the amount and type ofinformation you store on them, doesn't make you feel a little uneasy,then hell, what would?

Anyway, I'm not here to make the case for you to drop Google altogether—it's not something I'm prepared to do, for a start—I'm justhere to tell you how to do it. Here's everything you need to know about life after Google.

Search

It's easy to forget that there are other search engines in the world, because Google has been so plainly dominant over the last fewyears. But they're there, and they're actually pretty good.

The best alternative to Google, by a long shot, is Microsoft's Bing.It's an evolution of the Live search engine, and it's offers adistinctly different experience than Google: it's far from minimalist,with a colorful interface, content-tailored results pages, and andemphasis on reducing clicks, rather than reducing clutter. Coming fromGoogle it can be visually jarring, and the fact that the results forcommon searches are different—if not better or worse—means that at first, you'll get the feeling that it isn't working right.

Give it some time and some patience, and you'll realize that it's pretty damn good. And even if search isn't perceived as the biggestthreat to your privacy, it's important to make the switch anyway—afterall, it was Google search that was the gateway to all the other Googleservices, which you're now trying untangle yourself from.

Honorable Mentions:

• Yahoo
• Wolfram Alpha
• Collecta
• Mahalo

Email

Back when it launched in 2005, Gmail lured users with insane amounts of free storage space: One gigabyte. Impossible. This caught the dominant services of the day completely off guard, and made their free webmail seem utterly ancient.

Today, that one gigabyte has grown to nearly seven, and on the surface not much has changed about ol' Gmail. Meanwhile, the companiesthat were blindsided back in 2005 have had plenty of time to catch upto, and in some cases, exceed Google's offering. Here's how to make the full switch:

Backing up your Gmail: There are a number of ways to do this, but one stands out as the easiest: The email client method.

1.) Download Thunderbird, a free email client from the same people who make Firefox (Download for Windows, OS X)
2.) Enable IMAP access on your Gmail account, by clicking the Settinglink in the top right of your inbox, navigating to the Forwarding andPOP/IMAP tab, and selecting the "Enable IMAP" radio button

3.) File > New Mail Account
4.) Enter your name and Gmail address, after which Thunderbird shouldfind your mail settings automatically, and set itself up as an IMAPclient: (If this doesn't happen, consult Google's guide for a manual setup.
5.) Once the account is set up, open Thunderbird's Account Settingspanel, and navigate to the Synchronization and Storage tab. Make sure"Keep messages for this account on this computer" and "Synchronize allmessages regardless of age" are both selected.
6.) Wait for your messages to sync to your computer—this could take hours, especially if you're near your Gmail storage limit.

What you've done here is imported all of your Gmail messages into a local client—Thunderbird—which lets you browse them, search them, orback them up to an external hard drive for posterity. And if you switchto another IMAP-based service, you can import these old messages intoyour new account simply by dragging them from your Gmail inbox folderin Thunderbird to your new account's inbox folder.

Contacts are a trickier question, but at the very least you can use Gmail's contact exporting tool (under your Gmail inbox folder list) tocreate a CSV file or or VCard, for importing into a client likeThunderbird.

The best alternative service: As long as it's been since Gmail showed up on the scene, the webmail scene hasn't seen manyexciting new players—Google has a knack of preempting new competitionwhen it moves into a product category. So, for the best remainingalternative is a veritable oldie: Yahoo mail. Consider the facts:

• It's still free
• It offers unlimited storage
• POP access is available in the free version, and with a little fiddling, so is IMAP access
• Free text messages in certain countries
• The interface doesn't look like it was designed in 1999, like certain other webmail clients.

The matter of Buzz: Now, when you ditch Gmail, you'll also be losing Google Buzz, which is a sort of location-aware status update system that nobody hasreally had the time to get into yet. Don't worry: Buzz was a responseto other services, not a trailblazer, so you'll be served just finesticking with Twitter (which lets you update you status with geolocation), FourSquare(which lets you alert your friends as to which particularestablishments you visit, and see what other people think of saidestablishments), and Facebook (forposting media and accepting comments on it). Buzz didn't have time tobecome vital, so switching away from it should be easy.

Calendar

Exporting your Google calendars: This one's easy. Just:

1.) Navigate to your GCal settings page, and click on the Calendars tag.
2.) Export calendars to an ICS file, like so:
3.) That's it!

The best alternative: Yahoo calendar is fine, but in the spirit of spreading your vital info around, let's go with Windows Live Calendar. One you've created a Live ID—you pretty much need one of thesenowadays—you're automatically given a Live Calendar account. To importyour Google Calendars, just do the following:

1.) Open Live Calendar
2.) Click "Subscribe"
3.) Import the ICS file you exported from Gmail, like this:

Photos

Not that many people use Picasa, so this one should be easy. Plus, there are some obviously superior alternatives.

• Flickrdoesn't stop at being a great photo sharing site, it's also an amazingresource for photographers, both expert and amateur. Storage is limitedwith a monthly upload cap.
• Photobucket is a simple gallery service, with an emphasis on sharing over archiving. Storage is limited to 1GB.
• Shutterfly is another super-simple service, with unlimited storage (Google doesn't even offer that for free)
• Facebookshouldn't be counted out—its photo compression may be aggressive, butit does allow you to upload and tag a virtually unlimited number ofphotos.

Documents

A lot of people find themselves using Google Docs because it's just so damn convenient—you receive a document in yourGmail account, and suddenly, hey, it's in the Google Docs service! That's how they get you.And interestingly enough, despite Google's acquisition of Writely andsubsequent improvements on in the Docs service, there's still anobjectively superior online document editing service out there.

ZoHo Docs is a full online office suit(among other things) which does virtually everything Google Docs cando, and often more. It offers deep document editing, offline editing(!), and collaborative editing. Document compatibility on ZoHo isabsolutely tops, and the formatting and editing options far exceedGoogle Docs. There's a text editor, a spreadsheet editor and apresentation editor, to name a few.

Pulling the Plug

So, you've migrated what you can, and settled into you new services nicely. Now, it's time to close your Google account out, once and forall? Are you ready? Are you sure? Ok.

For any grievances you may have about Google's privacy practices, you have to give them credit for making the process stupidly easy.

1.) From any Google page, click the Settings link in the top right, then Account Settings from the submenu.
2.) Next to "My Products", click the "Edit" link
3.) From here, choose to delete individual services, or close your Google Account altogether.

4.) Confirm that you want all of your data deleted.
5.) DO IT.

Feels strange, doesn't it? For anyone with enough spite and motivation to follow this guide, though, I suspect "strange" could bereplaced with any number of more gracious adjectives. So, ex-Googlers:Do you feel better now?

We couldn't cover ever last Google service and piece of software, so if you have more tips and alternatives to share, pleasedrop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important toour Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy diversifying, folks!

Michelle Norris interviews Jay howard the next seat occupant in the christmas day bombing

click to listen to interview here : http://bit.ly/aDAyUw

The man at the center of this story, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, remains in federal custody in Michigan. It's been nearly two months now since he allegedly tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253. On that flight, Abdulmutallab was in seat 19A. In 19B was Jay Howard, a 21-year-old college student from Grand Rapids, returning home from a semester abroad. He spoke with my co-host Michele Norris about that flight.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Melissa, Jay Howard says there was nothing unusual about Abdulmutallab. He said he was just an average seatmate.

Mr. JAY HOWARD (Student): I had gotten in first, so when he came by, I had to stand up and let him in. And then he thanked me for getting up for him, and we sat down together.

NORRIS: Throughout that flight, their interaction was minimal. Abdulmutallab told Howard he felt ill. And he mostly listened to music and slept. Then 10 minutes into the plane's final descent, everything changed.

Mr. HOWARD: Well, there was a large pop - like, almost everyone on the plane, I'm sure, I heard it. So, I was very curious to what had happened because it sounded very close to me. So, I was looking around and I noticed that my neighbor, Umar, had his blanket up over him, up to his chin and but I saw that there was smoke coming from underneath his blanket. And I also noticed a repulsive smell. And so I kind of questioned him, and I asked him about the smoke but he didn't respond. And so, I removed his blanket from him and smoke dispersed throughout the plane.

And he had his hand down his pants. So, when he removed his hands from his pants, fire erupted. And he and another passenger, who had come over from a couple of rows away, tried to put it out together. So...

NORRIS: Well, if I can just reach back for a minute, when you asked him about the smell, when he had the blanket pulled up to his chin, did he just ignore you?

Mr. HOWARD: Well, he didn't exactly ignore me. At that point, I just what I got out of him was that he didn't exactly know either but, of course, he did know. He seemed very surprised and shocked at what was happening, like he didn't know.

NORRIS: As you can hear, Jay Howard is very calm in describing a scary situation, but he says many of the other passengers were quite frantic. And I noticed something talking to him: He kept referring to Abdulmutallab by his first name, Umar, as if they were friends.

Mr. HOWARD: I only call him that because I mean, I don't want to call him a terrorist because he hasn't been treated as a terrorist and it wasn't a national threat, and so using Umar seems to be more human.

NORRIS: You have an interesting perspective - that you choose not to see him as a terrorist, and you don't see what he did as presenting a threat.

Mr. HOWARD: Well, I mean, it was a threat, of course, it was a threat because initially, he was trying to blow up the plane but he didn't succeed. I mainly treat him this way because of how he reacted towards what he was doing. And what his actions told me on the plane was that he was in over his head, and that he didn't exactly know what he was doing would entail.

NORRIS: That plane, of course, landed in Detroit. Jay Howard was questioned by the FBI. He was told not to say much about the incident. His clothes were taken for chemical analysis to help determine what Abdulmutallab's bomb was made of. FBI agents bought new clothes for Howard on the spot, but given the limited retail options at an airport, Howard's replacement ensemble was far from his usual style.

Mr. HOWARD: It's was a long-sleeve, yellow polo with blue stripes across it and blue pants. And they didn't find any shoes for me. And so I actually ended up wearing these enormous slippers that were like, golf-shoe style. It was so funny, it looked like I was just going to go golfing or something. Everyone was kind of giving me a strange look in the airport.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOWARD: So, they had no idea what my day was like.

NORRIS: Jay Howard has since put the day behind him. He is focusing on his studies. He's not following Abdulmutallab's case very closely. And Melissa, he says he doesn't dwell on what-if scenarios.

MORE TO COME !

Retrospective checks have it that the most notorious of them is the one associated with one Chief Vincent Duru, popularly known as Otokoto. The police in the
southern Nigerian some years back in the city of Owerri arrested
a man, Innocent Ekeanyanwu, with the head of a young boy, Ikechukwu
Okonkwo. In the course of the investigation, the police discovered the
buried torso of Ikechukwu on the premises of Otokoto Hotel, owned by
Chief Duru, and uncovered a syndicate that specialized in ritual killing and the sale and procurement of human parts. The horrifying discoveries sparked off violent protests in the city of Owerri which led to the burning and looting of properties belonging to suspected killers.

Otokoto and his ritualist syndicate were arguably arrested and put on trial, and in February 2003, they were sentenced to death by hanging. Apart
from the Otokoto incident, there have been other instances of ritual
murder and mutilation in other parts of the country. For instance, in
Calabar, two men plucked out the eyes of a young lady, Adlyne Eze, for
money-making ritual. And in Ifo, Ogun state, a businessman inflicted
the same harm on his younger sister. In Ibadan,
the police in December arrested a taxi driver, Abbas, who used his
fourteen-month-old baby for rituals. Abbas killed his child in order to
secure a human head, which was one of the materials listed for him by a
local witchdoctor for a money-making ritual.

Twelve members of a family were killed in a fire which gutted their residence on Wednesday night in Kano. The tragic incident affected the family members of Ahmed Kabiru Boss which are his 38-year-old wife, her four children and seven other relatives that came from Gombe State for the naming ceremony of Mr. Kabiru's son, Umar on Saturday. One of the victims include the mother in-law of Mr. Kabiru, also the mother of chairman of Nafada local government area, Gombe State.

Miraculously, both little Umar and his father survived the incident.

A neighbour of the Kabiru at Chirancin Gabas quarters in the ancient city, Mustapha Auwalu, said he heard people screaming at about 10.30pm on the fateful day.

"This was replaced by people shouting ‘fire , fire' and when I came out, I realized that my neighbour's house was on fire," he said. He said the fire started from the kitchen attached to the one-storey building in which the victims were staying and it spread to the adjoining rooms.

Mr. Kabiru, a former staff of Oando Oil Plc, was weeping and could not talk when approached for comments. However, another neighbour, Abdulsalam Mohammed said more lives would have been saved if efforts of fire fighters and voluntary rescue workers had succeeded.

Lack of good roads

He said officials of the fire service could not gain access to the road that leads to the burnt building as a result of poor road planning. The burglar proof installed on the windows of the building also hindered rescue efforts.

"People came immediately the house caught fire and even the fire service came early, but they couldn't do anything because their vehicle didn't gain access to the slim road and they had to try using other means. But before they arrived, it was too late." Mr. Mohammed said.

Strong burglar proof

Mr. Mohammed, who frowned at the government's laxity in enforcing building codes, said this tends to promote the building of illegal structures close to public roads. He also advised the government to address the issue of insecurity as ‘the burglar proof that was fixed on the windows hindered access to the victims.' The Kano State commissioner of police, Mohammad Gana who was at the scene of the incident, confirmed the death of the twelve persons.

"Twelve persons lost their lives in the fire incident, may their soul rest in peace. Our men tried all their best, but couldn't do much because the burglar proof was so strong that we couldn't remove it. It is a pity that this kind of thing happened," he said.

The deceased were buried according to Islamic rites, with the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Bayero Nafada in attendance.

The Kano State governor, Ibrahim Shekarau paid a condolence visit to the family where he inspected the burnt house and prayed for the souls of the departed.

PNJ.com reports that deputies were already dispatched to deal with a noise complaint on Lost Bottoms Lane in Navarre at 12:51 a.m., when they heard what sounded like a large caliber gunshot. That sound was 48-year-old William Russell Kelly Jr. discharging a round of birdshot from a .45-caliber revolver into Randall Carter’s nether regions.

Bleeding and wounded, Randall Carter and his uninjured 18-year-old girlfriend Amanda Kelly ran to deputies when arrived at the scene.

Mr. Kelly explained:

I shot him in the nuts with birdshot because he was beating my daughter.

His daughter, however, told a different story and told deputies that her father had fired on her older boyfriend:

Because he hates him, dude! That’s it.

In examining Kelly’s silver-colored Taurus, a five-shot .45-caliber revolver known as “The Judge”, investigators noted an empty birdshot casing in the chamber, along with three other unfired birdshot rounds – the last shot was a lead slug.

William Kelly was charged with aggravated battery with intent to cause bodily harm or disability and later released from Santa Rosa County Jail on $20,000 bond.

I often use a search engine to explore and review my clients' websites and check if anything is untoward. The other weekI came across a report on one client's site that was obviously intendedfor internal consumption only. I immediately rang my client to warnthem. They explained that the report had been posted to the publicwebsite instead of the internal intranet by mistake and they'd removedit as soon as the error was discovered. Obviously they were quitealarmed that I could still access it more than a week later.

This is a great example of the all-consuming nature of Web searches, Google searches in particular. Google takes a snapshot of each page itssearch crawlers examine and caches it as a backup. It's also theversion used to judge if a page is a good match for a query. Myclient's report was only on the Web for about three hours and yet acopy of it ended up stored in Google's cache and was still availablefor anyone to read. The fact that sensitive information that getscrawled can remain in the public domain means data classification andcontent change processes are vital to prevent this type of data leakagefrom occurring.

Unfortunately, private or sensitive business information makes its way onto the public Internet all too often. In this tip, we'll discussreasons why this happens, and some strategies to help enterprises keepprivate or sensitive data off the Web.

The incident noted above gave me the opportunity to address with my client some specific information security problems that led to thereport being posted on its website. The first problem was that theorganization didn't properly classify its data and documents.Implementing a system of data classification and clearly labellingdocuments with that classification would make such an incident far lesslikely.

After the recent launching of the multi million dollar satellite and its eventual succesful failure to stay in the earths orbit , maybe Pluto will accept it some industry pundits say . So we can browse the internet and maybe an MTN base station in Mars ! .Now, Some brainiacs and original Naija Rocket Scientists have come up with another brilliant masterplan ! Let us make Handsets !

The Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT), plans to start producing handsets and computer hardware in the country in less than two years.

To this end, the company has completed and commissioned a locally made Printed Circuit Board Micro Electronics Centre, manned by NIGCOMSAT engineers.

The centre will focus mainly on the production of printed circuit board - which is the basis for electronic systems - for computers and handsets.

The Managing Director of the company, Ahmed Rufai, who disclosed this at the commissioning of the centre on Tuesday in Abuja, said it will have diverse implications on the electronic industry. "Imagine if all the basic electronics we use are produced in Nigeria. Everything you are holding today is imported. But our projection is that in less than two years, we will have standard handsets produced locally. We are also talking to some local computer assembly companies to use our mother boards produced here."

Manufacturing capacity

Mr. Rufai said that at the moment, the centre has the capacity to produce 500 handsets a day and can also produce good quality mother boards for computers. He added that within the next two years they will be able to perfect the products. "What we have here is the prototype. We just want to show the concept that it can be done," he said.

He explained that NIGCOMSAT engineers have been trained to produce these boards, utilising the best international standard to bridge the gap in the Information Communication Technology industry in Nigeria and Africa at large.

He also said that the technology is a spin off from the Know-How Technology Transfer and Training of over 100 Nigerian engineers in China, UK, US and the United Arab Emirates, adding that the satellite technology encompasses all engineering aspects. "It therefore affords these talented engineers the opportunity to look at this aspect of engineering, which is rare on this continent," he said.Mr. Rufai explained that this technological intervention is crucial in the achievement of Nigeria's vision to be amongst the top 20 economies of the world in the year 2020, and the realisation of the present administration's seven-point agenda since technology is the driver of every economy.

Furthermore, he said the revenue prospect for printed circuit board is high, as China has an annual production capacity of six million valued at $80billion (N12trillion), which if replicated in Nigeria will have a great impact on the socio-economic life of the nation.

Technological revolution

Alhassan Bako Zaku, the Minister of Science and Technology, while commissioning the project said the project has marked the onset of a technological revolution in Nigeria.

"It will not only impact on our technological advancement, but also, the socio-economic effect will be positively felt especially in the area of job creation for the youth. In the area of education, the microelectronic centre will also serve as a learning ground for our undergraduates to receive hands-on training and firsthand experience in electronics manufacturing, as the centre is fully equipped to meet their educational needs," he said.

The minister said the centre will also serve local manufacturers and reduce production time and costs - as before now, they had to import the circuit boards for the manufacture and assembling of local electronic products - thereby moving Nigeria from a resource to knowledge based economy.