Hello world!

We’ve received a few questions lately about how to make a strong password for akaQA, or for any other website for that matter. Although the Internet security on akaQA is very strong, a weak password is easy to hack even if the hacker is a beginner. Therefore, we decided to post a short tutorial, that will teach you how to make a strong password!

1. First of all, never ever choose birth dates or addresses as passwords. They may be easy to remember, but also very easy to guess. Choose random numbers\letters\signs.

2.  The longer the password, the more difficult it is to guess. Make sure your password contains at least 7 characters.

3. Always make sure your password contains both numbers and letters. The strongest passwords contain not only numbers and letters, but also signs (@%^&$%^*).

4. Once you’ve picked up a strong password, write your password on a piece of paper and keep it hidden somewhere you’ll remember in your home. Don’t throw the peace of paper until you’re 100% sure you remember your password by heart.

That’s it! if you’ve followed these 4 simple rules, your strong password is ready!

If you have further questions about how to make a strong password,  feel free to contact us through the “contact” button on akaQA.com.

The akaQA team.

With Aloha!

It’s been an amazing year, and it couldn’t be amazing without your contribution. Yes you, akaQA members. It’s your love to akaQA and your never ending desire for helping people who seek answers to their questions that made akaQA the great place it is today.

Here is a special video created by Colleen, with the help of other akaQA members, where they explain what akaQA means to them:

Happy birthday akaQA

Thank you for this amaizing gift, from all of the akaQA team!

I am “Flip”, a nickname given to me as an infant by an aunt that stayed to help my mother after my “at home” birth. My given name Phillip when said very fast sounds like Flip. Upon graduation of high school and entering the army, the nickname went away and I am now known mostly as Phil. I grew up in a poor country family of eight with high family values. The family garden, cow and wild game provided food for the table, and “hand me downs” clothes on our backs. My shyness and lack of self worth made my school time difficult, and graduation was greeted with the utmost of glee. My tour of duty in the army and being on my own proved to be a time of growing up and gaining self confidence.

My working career was just short of 43 years as a service technician in the printing and copying field. It began with small wet process single copy photo copiers and the purple printed “ditto” copies, to full color high speed photo copiers and multi color printing presses. My department moved to another state in November of 2006, so I decided to retire. I now run a small shipping business that specializes in shipping large boxes to the Philippines. I also help my wife with some of her many side jobs (house/office cleaning etc.). Marriage about a year after leaving the army, produced a daughter and son, and 29 years of a rather “rocky” relationship, ended in divorce after the children had left home. Second marriage was nearly 9 years of bliss, and introduced me to the customs of the Philippines, her home country. Her daughter decided I would be called “Dad”, but now it’s mostly “Padre”. Our marriage came to an abrupt end with her untimely death at the age of 49. My present wife, also a Filipino, has been with me for the past seven years. She has a married son and three grandchildren in the Philippines. She continues to work so as to support her son and his family as well as her mother. Our attempts to immigrate them to this country has been hindered with red tape and very long waiting lists.

My health is rather good though I suffer the aches and pains that come with age. I am a cancer survivor, thanks to finding it in it’s very early stages. I had cataract surgery a year ago so I can see better than in years, but that doesn’t solve the “Face Blindness” that has plagued me my whole life (and I thank Witchway for telling me what it is called).

I joined this site in March of 2011 and have been here ever since. I am rather non-confrontational, so I usually by-pass the “issues” that arise ever so often, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion. If there is a subject that doesn’t appeal to me, I just pass it by. I have probably typed out and then deleted (before posting) 10% of my answers. I find it nice to get a TU, but I would just as soon see the total Karma points done away with. I only give a TU to the answers I feel are the best, and TU the question if it has generated much interest. The computer and its “wonders” have fascinated me for years. I remember the first mapping program I had, and couldn’t believe the info and detail it contained. Data and data processing has intrigued me to the extent that years ago I put our local phone book into a data base where, if I knew someone’s phone number, I could determine who they were. I have also made a data base of the members of akaQA which lists their name, location and birth date. To all, I wish you health and happiness, but most of all I wish you peace……

Flip.

“Just a girl, two kids, one man. That is what is says in my information section on akaQA. I live in the present. Knowing that my past has made me the person I am today. Every hurtful word every scar or bruise has open my eyes to the kindness of strangers. Make-up and and a smile hid the pain. Those who chose to look deeper could see the stain of tears on my soul. I was raised in New England US. I grew up hard. Never knowing what it meant to be carefree. Learning that trust had to be earned and forgiveness is for myself not the world around me. Understanding that there would be a day that I would control my own fate. “You teach people how to treat you.” I don’t share my childhood memories with people. I believe that is changes ones perception of me. I have known kindness and compassion and try to emulate those inspiring traits in my comments to aka members. I feel the words that are kind and up lifting are words of wisdom. In turn I receive understanding and support from the forum. “If you are waiting for a sign that God wants you to go to Church… this is it.” I never met my biological father. All of my life I spoke to God as if he were sitting next to me (my heavenly father). Never knowing the bible or the stories in it. At age 21 I drove passed a sign on the highway that read… “If you are waiting on a sign that God wants you in Church… this is it.” That Sunday I was in the third pew from the back. That church taught of forgiveness and love for sinners and saints (we are all sinners). Although I may not be in church right now I KNOW that my Christian duty is to love and accept people as they are. My job is not to judge or condemn, but to comfort and care. I don’t wave a banner of faith on the akaqa forum. I am the only bible that some may read. I want my words to fall on open hearts. Hoping that one day someone will ask where I find such peace. “My heart, my soul, my everything.” My husband. He is my warm safe place. Together we have built not only a marriage but a friendship. We have been married 17 years this summer. I still cant help but smile when he walks into a room. I see my children grow happy and confidant, knowing that their parents will move heaven and Earth to make their future as bright as the stars. My family fills me with laughter and pride. I am just a girl, two kids: one man. I have found peace, love, and the childhood I never knew. I am carefree and undefined. I am Jenn.”

If you’d like to share your life story on the akaQA blog as well, please write something and send it to us through the “contact” button on akaQA.com. This blog is also the place to share your thoughts on interesting posts and discussions you came across on akaQA.

Times are changing. There is no escape from that. Flat screen televisions, palm computers, cars that run on rechargeable batteries, smart-phones that have similar processing abilities to those of NASA’s computers from 1969, when they sent a man to the moon.

Remember the days when “getting the morning paper” was a standard morning ritual for every man or woman that wanted to stay updated on current events?
Well, these times have definitely changed. Now days, all you need is a computer with an internet access and nothing more. Not only all the major newspapers and news channels these days have websites, but there are also many news providers that are work exclusively over the internet. There are also many bloggers that work as journalists and their blog posts attract millions of people, but what made the biggest impact on the media, are the social networks.

Imagine a protester in Syria, a country where freedom of journalism and freedom of speech is merely a dream for the common people, in the middle of a large protest against the government. No foreign press is allowed to enter the country, the government is using tanks, snipers and special forces in order to terminate the protest and hundreds of people are dying almost every day. The internet access is limited, as well as the access to to social networks and only a few people are capable of breaching the governments internet security networks. Our protester, who is one of those few people, is filming the protest using his smart-phone while the military is firing live ammunition on the protesters. He then uploads the video on Youtube, from Youtube he shares the video on Facebook and on Twitter and then there is no way of stopping the snow ball that he created. The whole world will see what’s really going on in Syria and it’s all because of the huge part that the internet and social networks take in our life. Even the pictures from those protests that are shown on newspapers are taken from sites like Twitter, Facebook and from blogs that are written by some of the protesters.

Our generation can’t be kept in the dark anymore, whether governments want to keep us there or not. We are no longer limited to the information that is given to us by newspapers that some of them belong to billionaires with political agenda. Printed media Is destined to stay in the past but not only for the above-mentioned reasons. Just like the case with electric cars, it benefits our planet tremendously as well. Thousands of forests worldwide were destroyed over the course of history because of our need for newspapers and books. Less printed media means less tree mining and advancing technologically while paying attention to our planet means a brighter future for us all.

akaQA.com is growing bigger and bigger every day and in a few months we will celebrate its first birthday on Feb 11, 2012. As a site with many registered members, we are constantly working on improving akaQA in order to make it as comfortable and accessible as possible for everyone.  There are many things we can add to the site to make it better, and that’s where you come in!

If you have any ideas for how to improve akaQA, please share your thoughts with us. The more ideas, the better. We know that many of you have great ideas and some of you send them to us, but now we want everyone to know that these ideas are more than welcomed.

If you have an idea on how to improve akaQA, feel free to send it to us through the “contact” button on akaQA.com.

Following Colleen’s footsteps, another top member of akaQA.com has decided to share his life story with us. If you want to share with us your life story or just an interesting experience you’ve had, feel free to contact us through the “Contact” button on akaQA.com.

This is Randy Palmer:

“akaQA gives me good down time. I’m retired and when I first joined I got hooked and was on 10-12 Hr. a day for awhile but then got behind on other things. It’s a great place to share the things you have learned through living and helping others with your knowledge. My experiences have been in a door factory, Harley-Davidson dealer, oil field, plumbing, electrical wiring, Ins. & mutual funds. I’m a christian and love to talk to others about Jesus, GOD and the Holy Spirit.”

I wanted to share some life experiences I’ve had.
I had going through some bad times, I went through a divorce, my youngest daughter had become diabetic at age five. I was working three jobs and raising 4 kids alone, along with having some health problems of my own, complications from diabetes.
I was at my shop and working by myself on a motorcycle, it was about noon. As a diabetic I knew I needed to eat, but I wanted to finish what I was doing. I would keep working on the motorcycle.
It was about two p.m. when I realized that my sugar was getting low, as I haven’t made any progress on what I was doing for several minutes. I had a Snickers bar in the refrigerator and got it out to eat and bring my sugar back up so I could finish the job.
I started praying to myself as I ate the bar, feeling sorry for myself, asking God why people had to suffer, why do people need to go through hard times and why do bad things happen to good people. Divorce, death of loved ones, sickness especially with children.
As I prayed my sugar was so low that I slipped into a diabetic coma, then something happened that I not sure that I can fully explain, I got an answer from God, all of the sudden I knew the answers, I knew why good people go through bad times, I knew why all things good and bad happen. It was like I was seeing through Gods eyes, everything was so clear. I wanted to tell everyone what I had found out.
Then I realized, I was sitting on a stool eating a Snickers bar, my sugar had come back to a level that I had come back to my right mind or should I say my human mind. As I couldn’t remember what had just seemed so clear a few seconds earlier. I remembered the experience but not the details.
However, now I didn’t feel sorry for myself anymore, I felt blessed. As I look back I don’t think my human mind could retain what God had reviled to me. However in my diabetic coma, I could stand to see a glimpse.
I know God is in control and all will work out for the best. I still don’t understand sometimes how things will work out, but I know God knows and that’s all that’s important.
I’ve had a lot of bad experiences since that day but I know they have all been for the good. I still don’t know why each and every experience has happened or what good can come from them. Only God knows that and who’s life can be effected by us when we are living as he wants us to. That means not only when things are good but even more when things are uncomfortable, painful and scary. That’s when our faith in God shows.
Who knows who’s looking?
GOD.”

As a part of our Continuous work on improving akaQA.com, we added the new “bump” button for you.

Don’t you hate it when you are posting a question but no one answers it? well now you have another opportunity of getting an answer to that question. If your post is unanswered, you’ll notice the new “bump” button under the post, next to the “Answer this” and the “Follow this” buttons:

Pressing the Bump button will automatically place your unanswered question at the top of the unanswered questions list just like a new question. It can be used up to 5 times per question and only once a day, so choose the right time to use it carefully.

We hope that this new feature will help more people to get answers to their questions.

We will be extremely happy to hear your thoughts about the new “bump” button…