E-Geniuses is continuing its steady growth and has opened a new location in the “Media Capital of the World”, Burbank, California. They’re currently in a soft launch phase and are making preparations for their official grand opening in December of 2009. Although the main office has moved to its new home on the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Florence Avenue, they still maintain an off-hours drop-off and pick-up location in Downtown Los Angeles and will continue to serve all of Southern California with their on-site computer repair technicians. During this transition, E-Geniuses is continuing to operate fully, both on-site and at the Burbank storefront.

Moving from a strictly office location in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles to a full blown storefront location has brought many perks to current and future E-Geniuses clients. The newest Burbank computer repair storefront is situated in a small shopping center that is anchored by E-Geniuses’ neighbor, Andre’s Cafe. While they wait for their computer to be serviced, clients can grab a bite to eat at the family owned and operated cafe that serves affordable American and Thai cuisine until 3 PM everyday. Additional highlights are a private and free parking lot, a comfortable and technologically equipped media waiting room with WiFi access and refreshments.

The expanded location will also serve to hold seminars and workshops, held by E-Geniuses owner, Joey Mariano. Topics will range from computers, new technology, and training sessions to website development and design for small businesses. Mariano, who grew up in Burbank, felt that relocating the central headquarters of his company was a natural move. “I grew up in Burbank and I have always admired the city and its traditional way of life. Burbank has a great community and this is my way of giving back. With E-Geniuses, I want to provide the residents not only computer repair in Burbank but additional services that will fulfill all of their technological needs. I want to provide a different type of computer service that goes beyond just computer repair.” Clients both new and old can continue to expect the same great customer service and quick turnaround times that they’ve become accustomed to from E-Geniuses.

With this new move, they’ll also be providing local repair individuals with the opportunity to become part of the E-Geniuses team. As a team member, they’ll be equipped with a personal workstation with an ample work area, fiber optic high-speed Internet and the use of all common area facilities such as the media waiting room. All of this is in addition to all of the added benefits of being part of the E-Geniuses team.

For more information, feel free to contact the office through their website at e-geniuses.com or by calling (877) My-Genius. Your newest stop for computer repair in Burbank is located at 2718 W. Burbank Boulevard, Burbank, California 91505. Proposed hours for the storefront will be 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 5 PM on Saturdays and by appointment on Sundays.

Repairs in Burbank

Virus and Spyware Removal in Burbank

Reinstallation of Operating System in Burbank

New Computer Setup in Burbank

Upgrades in Burbank

Memory Installation in Burbank

Hard Drive Installation in Burbank

CD/DVD/CD-RW/DVD-RW Installation in Burbank

Internal/External Device Installation in Burbank

Data Migration in Burbank

Wireless Networking in Burbank

Preventive Maintenance in Burbank

Optimization in Burbank

Personal Technician Service in Burbank

Monthly Maintenance Plan in Burbank

Drive Imaging in Burbank

Other Services in Burbank

Tutoring in Burbank

Telecommuting in Burbank

All prices subject to change. Call for services not listed. i.e. Software Installation, Motherboard Installation, Screen Replacement.

A $49 service fee is applied to each on-site service for travel and diagnosis. Hardware is not included in any of these services.

E-Geniuses does not assume liability for data corruption or loss at any time. Customer must backup data prior to service call. E-Geniuses is not a reseller of computers, parts or accessories. Returns for all products purchased and installed for clients is the responsibility of the client and the reseller of that product. E-Geniuses is only responsible for the delivery and installation of that product. Parts can only be returned to the reseller if within the seller’s return policy. Charges for the visit and reinstallation will be incurred by the client. If a part is found defective during the initial installation the E-Geniuses will only charge for the extra visit, but not for the additional installation. E-Geniuses assumes no responsibility for the products purchased on the client’s behalf.

*Any additional visits are $49 per visit and each additional hour is also $49.

**Payment options for Monthly Maintenance Plans include: $19 a month if pre-paid for 6 or more months; $20 a month if paid monthly through PayPal; $25 a month if paid monthly through check or money order. Avast home an optional install.

Yelp is a directory listing website of all of the local businesses in your particular area. It is similar to the Yellow Pages in that respect. Yelp also adds a social aspect by allowing “yelpers” to review different businesses the same way that Amazon.com allows users to rate products.

Yelp makes finding good restaurants much easier. It’s like word of mouth on the web. You can easily see the price, parking, hours and much more.

Yelp’s social integration goes far beyond what most sites with feedback capabilities allow. Yelp allows members to post pictures of themselves, add other users as friends, allow friends to contact one another, and find other Yelpers based on similar likes/dislikes.

Yelpers themselves are also rated by their peers. You can comment on whether you thought the review was useful, cool, funny etc.

Yelpers are not all equal either. Yelpers who Yelp more often and have positive feedback on their reviews have more credibility on Yelp. Yelpers may even achieve elite status and become members of the Elite Squad.

What is great about Yelp is the quantity and quality of the information. Users can even submit pictures of the business and many even post pictures of the food they ordered!

There is plenty of interaction between customers and business owners. If a customer writes a bad review about a company, the business also has the ability to respond back. This is the reason that as a business owner, it is important to keep track of what people say about your business. You can do this by claiming a business as your own. This requires verification by Yelp. Many businesses are not even aware that someone has created a Yelp listing for them and have no idea what others are saying about them.

Yelp knows when a business is attempting to game the system by writing fake reviews. These users are quickly blacklisted.

Sign up for an account and find out what you are missing out on.

Make sure to check us out and leave feedback for us at http://www.yelp.com/biz/e-geniuses-los-angeles

Could you tell the difference between your anti-virus program and malicious website attempting to install viruses into your computer?

Real (Windows Security Center)

Fake (Antivirus 2008)

Studies show that cybercrooks have a 3.4% success-rate infecting users’ computers. Chances are high that you will eventually come across an infected website. It would definitely be a good idea to make sure that you can spot the good security suites from the rogues.

Tip #1

The first thing you should do is find out which antivirus you are actually using. Remember the name of the program and what the application windows and interface look like. You should do the same for your antispyware and firewall applications as well. You will therefore be able recognize when a hacked site is attempting to lure you into a trap using scare tactics. Here’s an example of a rogue antivirus program using the scare tactic, “found infections, now buy me or else!”

Fake “Virus Detection”

Tip #2

Use Firefox and the Web of Trust addon. The main reason we recommend Firefox to our clients is because of the wide variety of addons available for it. When setting up a new computer, one of the first things I install is Firefox and the Web of Trust (WOT) addon. WOT shows you ratings for websites before you even click on them.

Let’s say you do a Google search for an anti-virus program. From my experience using WOT, I have found that at least one of the links on the page will receive a bad rating from WOT. Here’s one of the links WOT shows as having a poor reputation when searching for “anti-virus” in Google.

Notice the red warning circle next to the link.

What this means is that other WOT users have checked the site out and have found it to be unsafe. WOT even allows you to see other peoples’ comments about the site. You can rate sites and comment as well. In fact, the WOT community relies on users like you and I.

Here’s what you will see if you enter a site that WOT users have deemed as having a poor reputation.

Of course, websites are constantly being infected so there may be some newly infected sites that have not yet been detected by the WOT community. In these cases, you will need another layer of protection.

Tip #3

Malwarebytes, The Best Free Anti-Malware Program That You Really Should Buy.

Malwarebytes is a free program that has excellent detection rates. It is able to find and remove viruses, spyware and malware that many security suites cannot. It is maintained by a small group that regularly browses forums looking for infection trends and stopping them early. Like I said, the program does an excellent job of removing viruses, but for $24.95 for a lifetime subscription, the full version can actually prevent threats from infecting your computer. Prevention is really the key to safe browsing. (Buy Full Malwarebytes by Clicking Here.)

So lets just suppose you visit a website that was just infected a few hours ago. Since it has just been newly infected, the WOT community has not yet rated the site negatively in order to warn you. So you go to the site and a window comes up saying that your computer is being scanned for viruses and that it is infected with numerous trojan viruses. Assuming you didn’t follow Tip # 1 and cannot differentiate between the rogue anti-virus and your real anti-virus, you download the “fix”. Many times, I have found that Malwarebytes will actually block the download based on the IP address of the website. If it doesn’t, it will detect that the file you’ve downloaded is malicious once you try to install it. Malwarebytes will block these attempts by the virus to infect your computer.

Malwarebytes detecting and removing infections.

Summary

1) Familiarize yourself with your security programs and what they actually look like.

2) Use WOT, Web of Trust addon for Firefox so that you know whether links are safe or not.

3) Use Malwarebytes to prevent malware from infecting your PC.

Back to School Special

Free Diagnosis on all E-Geniuses drop-off repair services until August 30th. Just mention our back to school special when you bring your computer in and the diagnosis is free!

Computer skills are of utmost importance in today’s world, be it to find a job in a large scale organization or in a small business. An IT-literate workforce has become more and more desirable, while many applications and software programs are being employed by different sectors to process and store data easily than ever before. Whether you are a middle-aged adult already working in a company or a teenager still in university, computer skills training is something you must receive for better chances at a job. There are a large number of courses available, which you can choose based on what your job requires and which programs in particular you need to be working with. And the best part is that you need not frequent classes or a school to gain such knowledge because all material you need to successfully self study are included in books and CDs. These would provide you with all the theoretical and practical skills you require.

So here are a few tips if you are looking to train your employees with computer training skills::

Select which employees need to go under computer skills training – this way you can stop spending a fortune on skills development. Some employees may need to know only the basics whereas others may need to know how to use various software s and programs to aid them with their work, depending on their job. Identify these employees as they may require more computer skills training.

If you wish to provide computer skills training in your office, you would need to find an area where you could conduct such training sessions and you would also need to provide time slots and the duration of the computer skills training so as to ensure that your employees would be able to attend them without it interfering with their work or leading to stress.

In house trainers will be easy on your pocket, but even if requires an external consultant’s help, budgeting resource requirements will save you a lot of time and money that would otherwise be spent on errors that will occur in the future.

Knowledge from the training program could be lost after a few weeks, therefore it is important to have in-house trainers trained to assist others or to facilitate a help line for those who’d need further clarifications.

Patrick Sia is a passionate believer in the power of technology to better the lives of everyone and his passion and drive are hallmarks of his attitude to doing business. Find out more about various ways to earn income online and hassle ways earning through adsense. Visit Computer skills – great importance when finding a job.