My view of technology

Goodbye for now and thank you

Bruce Ganek — Sun, 01 May 2011 13:30:12 +0000

When I started this blog I had several goals in mind.

Try to help others with technology issues
To force me to learn about new applications and ways to do things on my computer (I tend to do better when I force a deadline on myself)
To learn how to actually write and publish a blog

I am happy to say that I believe that I have met all of these goals. It has been a pleasure getting comments from a lot of people letting me know that a certain entry really helped them and I have learned a lot while writing this blog. There are many programs and websites that I am now currently using because I researched them for this blog.

However, as the old saying goes, you can’t do everything and I am going to be starting a couple of new projects in my life that are going to require a fair amount of my time. These aren’t bad things, just things that I want to try now.

Because of that, something has to give and I’ve decided it will be this blog. I’d like to come back to it at some point but for now, I have made other commitments that I am excited to begin.

So please keep in touch and if I can help you in the future please don’t hesitate to ask.

Regards,

Bruce

A different way to search from your Firefox browser – Drag And DropZones

Bruce Ganek — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:24:00 +0000

Normally, when you want to search on a phrase that you see on a webpage, you tend to go to a search engine’s home page, enter the phrase. and search. There is a person that has created a slick way to do this via drag and drop in your Firefox browser to different search engines. The add-on is called Drag And DropZones and is available here.

How it works

Once you have installed it, when you highlight some text and hold down the left mouse button, a grid will come up with different zones representing all of the different search engines that are available for your browser. Now you just drag your text into one of these zones and a new tab will come up that will function the same as if you went to the search engine’s home page and entered this phrase.

Here is a screenshot from the developer showing the different zones when you highlight text and start dragging it.

Configuring the add-on

From the Tools Menu, you can select “Drag And DropZones Settings” to get the following dialog box. This will let you configure the order of the zones, as well as delete any that you don’t want. Note, the list of search engines is what is configured in your browser, if you want to add other ones to this list, you need to add them to the browser first.

To switch the order of the zones, just drag one of the icons to another square (or back to the list of search engines on the left if you want to remove it from available zones).

How do you turn off this add-on if you have other drag and drop extensions?

If you have other add-ons that use Firefox’s drag and drop capability, you can turn off this add-on by adding the following icon to your toolbar (you can get to it via the Views/Toolbars/Customize menu option – then just drag this icon to the toolbar).

This is the icon you are looking for:

When the add-on is deactivated, it will look like this:

Keep track of all of your social networks – Yoono

Bruce Ganek — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 22:41:00 +0000

Do you have a lot of social networking accounts and would like to be able to look at them all in one place, instead of having to log into each site individually? Well, here’s a way to do it that is free. It is called Yoono and is available here.

Installing Yoono

Yoono can be installed either as a browser add-on or as a desktop app.

As a browser add-on it works with:

Firefox
Chrome
IE

As a desktop application, it works with:

Windows
Mac
Linux

Using the add-on (Firefox)

I’m going to discuss the Firefox add-on but they will all work the same.

When you install the add-on, it becomes a sidebar in the browser. Currently, here are all the services that it supports:

There is also a button that will appear in your toolbar that will bring up this sidebar menu:

To add more services, go to the “wrench” icon and click on it to bring up a menu option that will allow you to add more services:

What you will see

Once you add the services, they will appear either in one column on the side of the browser (and you click on the one you want to see), or you can have a multiple view by clicking on the icon right above the “share” icon (I’m not going to show you my notifications to respect people’s privacy.

Single column view (click the top icon to get that service to display):

Multiple column view:

If you use the multiple column view, you can decide what to see (in separate columns) for example:

Updates
Friends
Notifications

Updating status

A neat feature is that you can update your status on multiple sites at the same time. When you click on the status bar, the following popup will appear asking you which services you want the status update to apply to:

Sharing

You can share links, images and text across your networks by either highlighting something and then clicking on the Share button or just click on the Share button to share the page.

If you highlight text, this is what you will see on the page when you click the Share button (there will be green arrows at the top of the text you selected as well):

When you click the share button in the toolbar, the following dialog box will appear:

Backing up your email accounts MailStore

Bruce Ganek — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:07:00 +0000

With more and more people using web-based email (i.e. Hotmail, Yahoo, Google), one risk for people is what happens if that service crashes or loses your mail? People are always saying that you should have backups of your data, how do you backup a web based email account? Is there an easy way to do it for multiple accounts? Fortunately, I found a free service that can do backups and restores of multiple email accounts, and it also gives you the ability to quickly search your email on your computer. The company is MailStore and is available here.

How it works

You will be downloading an application that you run on your PC that will take all of your desired email accounts and put them in an archive on your computer.

The program works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

The main page

The opening screen of the application looks like this (note, you can always get here by pressing the Start button at the top of the program):

The main icons

On the top right of the screen are the function icons.

The icons are:

Get to the Main page (Start)
Archive
Search
Export
Settings
Help

Backing up your email accounts

MailStore can backup a wide variety of email accounts from Outlook to generic POP3 and IMAP accounts (POP3 and IMAP are web based accounts – you can check with your provider to see which your provider uses). Backing up PC based email is good too in case your email file gets corrupted.

Here is an expanded view of the top of the Archive E-Mail screen listing the different email accounts that you can backup.

The settings screens are straightforward. Here are the screens to set up the Google Mail account:

Note, on this screen I add an exclusion for the All Mail folder (it is huge and I find things I need are already in one of the other folders).

Once you create the account it is put in the list, clicking on the Properties button will bring up these configuration screens again.

Searching your archive

Clicking on the search icon will bring up this screen:

Exporting your archive

You can take your email and export it into another account (for example if you want to change email providers and want to bring all of the email over to the new account):

Administrative Tools

Here is the General Settings screen:

Backing up your archive

From the main screen (which you can get to by pressing the Start button in the toolbar) you have options to backup your archive to either a CD, DVD, USB drive or another hard disk directory.

Bing-411

Bruce Ganek — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:06:00 +0000

I have previously mentioned GOOG-411 as a great, free way to get directory assistance. Unfortunately, Google has decided to discontinue the service.

So, if you still want an equivalent service are there any alternatives? Happily, there are several, one of which I will talk about today – BING-411 from Microsoft.

How to use BING-411

Using BING-411 is as easy as using GOOG-411. The number is 1-800-246-4411 (1-800-BING-411) from any phone. Once you are connected, you will be asked to say the company’s name and the city and state (or give a business category and it will list appropriate companies for that area). When BING finds the business, you can confirm it is the correct one and then BING-411 can either dial the number for you or you can get directions (either spoken on the phone or texted to your phone).

What else can you do with BING-411?

You can also do the following from the main menu (you can get to this main menu by saying “Tell Me My Choices”):

Weather conditions
Stock Quotes
Sports
Cheap Gas
Traffic (it will give you the amount of time between two places and the traffic conditions)
Movies times and theatre information (you can say a movie title and get the next show times and theatres)
Horoscopes
News
Time

Limitations to BING-411

Right now it only works in the US.

Make things easier for people that don’t want the details – Internet Buttons

Bruce Ganek — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:17:17 +0000

Do you know someone who isn’t very Internet savvy? Would you like to make it easier for them to be able to use the Internet? A company has created a website that allows you to create a simple launch screen that they can use to access websites on the Internet. You can fully configure it, pass it to your friend, and it is free. It is called Internet Buttons and it is available here.

Here is a sample from their website:

Who created this program?

The program was created by a non-for-profit company called We Are What We Do, In their own words:

We Are What We Do is a not-for-profit company that creates stuff that makes it easier for people to do small, good things everyday.

So what does Internet Buttons do?

Again, from the company’s website:

6.4 million people over 65 are offline, yet 90% of communication between 11-18 years olds is digital.

We wanted to create something that made it super easy to use the internet, as part of our current campaign to get people from different generations talking more, sharing more and spending more time together.

So we made Internet Buttons.
It lets you set up a personalised page of buttons which click through to your favourite sites or services.

It removes all the complicated bits of the internet and makes it easy to keep going back to the places you want to go to. There are also helper bars on the site to explain everything.
You can not only set up a page of Internet Buttons for yourself, but you can also set one up for someone else (helping you do ACTION 137: Get someone offline, on.)
So if you know someone who is flummoxed by tweets, links and pokes or who’d appreciate learning how to email, Skype, or get the grocery shopping done online, why not set them up with a page of Internet Buttons?

Internet Buttons is being used by our partners UK Online Centres, Age UK and Race Online 2012.

Internet Buttons was made possible through funding by the Nominet Trust

What can you do?

When you first go to the site, you will be greeted by this page:

When you click on the “Set one up now” button, you will get the following two screenshots (it didn’t fit on one screenshot). Note, the helper bar can go away if you click the check box icon on the top right.

If you click on the “upload your face” icon or the “Phone Number” text, you will get the following popup window:

If you click on the “Add a button” button, you will get the following popup screen:

This is the screen when you select the ready-made button:

When you add a new button, you get the following 2 screens:

Once you are done and are ready to save you will be given a setup screen so you can go in later and modify these settings:

Then you will set up the information for the person you are setting up this page for:

Want some recommendations? Take the quiz

At the bottom of the helper bar on the start page is a “Do the quiz” button that you can use to have the site make some recommendations:

The quiz will ask up to 16 questions like this:

And at the end it will make its recommendations:

You can go to the quiz directly by clicking here.

What will user will see?

When the user goes to the URL, they will get the following login screen:

Once they log in, they will see the Internet Button page that you set up.

Create a free reminder phone call – Wakerupper.com

Bruce Ganek — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 10:27:00 +0000

Have you ever wished you could get a wakeup call at any time, or receive a call that you can “take” so you can decide if you really wanted to stay at this meeting or social event? Well, there is a website that lets you do this. Wakerupper.com has a basic free service and is available here.

How does it work?

To place a call, all you need to do is enter the time, phone number, and whatever text you want to be said (up to 100 characters and this is optional). Once you enter the security words, the call is scheduled – that’s it.

Limitations to Wakerupper

Right now, you can only make calls in the United States or Canada.

How do you stop prank calls?

One potential problem with this service is the possibility of someone flooding you with lots of prank calls at all hours of the night.

When you receive a phone call, the Wakerupper voice gives you an phone key option to press to get your phone number on a do-not-call list.

Here is the information from Wakerupper’s site.

Wakerupper users are initially given the benefit of the doubt in that they are allowed to schedule calls to any number – as with regular fixed and mobile telephone services. However, unlike a regular telephone, if the recipient of a Wakerupper call indicates that they want to block further calls, the user who scheduled the call(s) is locked out of the system, and all calls scheduled by that user are cancelled. So, while Wakerupper is initially permissive, it takes a zero-tolerance approach to abuse of the service.

Premium Features

While the site has a good free service, it is somewhat limiting. If you choose to, you can move up to the premium service which will give you extra features such as:

Recurring Calls
Snooze
Voice Reminders

You can get more information about the premium package here.

The fee for the premium service is five cents per minute (plus any fees your telephone company adds for receiving a phone call).

It’s been one of those days calling tech support

Bruce Ganek — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:29:00 +0000

This came from xkcd.Com

Create a paper organizer (better for travel games) –PocketMod and re:PocketMod

Bruce Ganek — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:01:00 +0000

PocketMod is a program that allows you to create a multifolded paper organizer in booklet form. The website has a bunch of different templates that you can put on the different sections of the booklet (6 pages and front and back). The program is free and available here (or go here to just start creating a PocketMod). It is very straight forward, you pick the template you want and drag it onto the booklet page you want it to be on:

Since this project stopped being developed, another group picked up the project and enhanced it, calling it re:PocketMod. In their words:

Original PocketMod was developed by Adams Chad in 2005. We decided to continue it because of inactivity of original project. So we had modified some templates, created new and added different templates from other developers. We called our new project “re:PocketMod” meaning we made “reworked” and “redesigned” PocketMod.

We glad to present our work to you and hope you will like it.

I’m going to talk about re:PocketMod since it has more options that the original program, rePocketMod is available here.

Note, you will need Adobe’s Flash player for this to work.

What can you put in it

The program was originally built so you can have an organizer that you could carry around. While that may be useful for some, I prefer my Palm Pilot for that. Where it is really good for me though is for the games you can make a travel booklet for.

These games are randomly generated so if you drag one to the booklet and pick it again, it will give you a different game.

The Games

Here is a list of the games that I like from the site:

Battleship

Circuit

Jumble (a new one each time you pick it)

Maze Maker (a new one each time you pick it)

Micro maze maker (a new one each time you pick it)

Soduku

Dots

Other neat things

Folding Instructions (for after you print out the sheet – they are also on the website)

Conversions

Fraction to decimal

Standard and extended ASCII table (for the geek in us)

Tip tables

If you want to folding instructions from the website, they are here (click on the Folding Guide button, it is a popup window).

Making your own templates

If you are ambitious, you can download this application and make your own templates (note you will need to make the template as a PDF document to use this program.

Or, you can do a google search for templates other people have done and use them if they are distributable.

Adding extra items to your Send to menu in Windows 7

Bruce Ganek — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:17:00 +0000

One of my time savers is being able to highlight a document, click the right mouse button, and use the “Send to” menu to quickly put the document in the folder that it needs to be in.

How do you add your own folders to this menu? It is easy to do if you follow these steps.

1) Open up Explorer

2) Type the following in the address bar (i.e. where “the word “Libraries” is in the above picture)

shell:sendto

3) Take any shortcut and drag it into the opened folder.

4) Pick a document, highlight it, and right click the mouse – your additional shortcut will be on the context menu.