This week's tip is probably one of the simplest ones I have ever published, and most people probably don't know about it. But it can make viewing some web pages a whole lot easier.
For me, a fairly good portion of my Firefox window is taken up by menus and toolbars. I only keep the ones that I use, but those are several. I have the Stumbleupon toolbar, the Linkwad toolbar, the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar, the regular address/search bar, and then there's also the Status bar at the bottom of the screen. I need a good size monitor just to see any actual content!
What if there's a website for which you need more screen space to see it all? That's easy.
Just hit the F11 button on your keyboard.
Go ahead, try it (it works with both Firefox 2, Firefox 3, and even Internet Explorer). When you hit F11, all of those toolbars and menus disappear, and all you see is the actual content of the web page. Want your menus and toolbars back? Just hit F11 again.
Sometimes the best things in life aren't just free, they're simple too.
This reporter gets a surprise while she is doing a live report. I guess when the report is about wrestling, anything can happen.
More and more people are deciding that the only phone they need is their cell phone.
Here are some statistics that I find interesting:
Today, according to a USA Todayreport, 16% of US households have disconnected their regular home phone and only use cell phone service.
Phone books are getting slimmer. The population of Manhattan is increasing by about 10,000 people each year, but the 2007 residential listings had 142 fewer pages than the prior year.
I believe that this trend will continue. Virtually everyone has a cell phone anyway, so having another phone line that is tied just to your residence would seem to be unnecessary. And cell phones are so much handier than a regular land-line phone.
Here is my prediction: three years from now, less than 50% of the US population will have a land-line phone. You read it here first.
Check out my new blog layout! I went from 2 columns to 3 columns so I would have room to fit some additional content on the page. Many thanks to my friend Chad, who did most of the coding modifications for the new look. Chad is a web designer - check out his site at www.TheHappyGeek.com - you'll see my blog in his portfolio. Thanks Chad!
Today I'm just letting you know about an Easter egg that is embedded in the current version of Picasa. If you don't know what an Easter egg is in terms of computer software, read about it here.
Open Picasa. Hold down the Shift key and the Ctrl key. Tap the letter "y". Continue tapping the letter "y".
Don't ask me what it's supposed to mean. It is just something encoded into Picasa by the programmers at Google.
If you have any ideas about what it's all about, click the Comments button below and let me know.
Do you get tired of seeing this error report every time a Windows program malfunctions:
If you're like me, you have better things to do than click "Send" or "Don't Send" to tell Microsoft that their programs are messing up. There are lots of other people that do that anyway, so Microsoft stays well-informed of their problems without you and I volunteering our time to help them out.
Good news! You don't have to do that any longer. Here's how to disable it:
1. Click Start
2. Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties
3. Click the “Advanced” tab
4. Click the “Error Reporting” button
5. Check “Disable error reporting”, but also check “But notify me when critical errors occur”
Click OK twice, and don’t be bothered by that error message any more!
This week's video is a short clip from a news show. The anchor is interviewing an animal specialist and he is answering some questions that were emailed in to the show. Sounds a bit boring. Oh, did I mention that the animal guy brought a hyperactive chimpanzee with him?
That's a question that some people are still asking. The deadline for upgrading has been extended to June 25 (just 5 days from now). Generally, the computer users that still have the old version of AVG (7.5) are now getting this warning message:
Do you need to upgrade to AVG 8.0? Yes- but not by clicking on that warning.
Clicking on that AVG warning message takes you to the most expensive version of AVG, which most people don't need. I wrote about this in great detail in a previous post. You can read that if you want, or you can just take care of this correctly now by following the steps below. This will give you a 30-day fully-functioning free trial.
2. Click on the tab near the top that says Trial Versions:
3. Look on the left side of the page for the "Free Download" button under AVG Anti-Virus (it's the one on the left - be careful because you don't want the AVG Internet Security download).
4. When you click that button, the download will begin.
I have also written a complete, step-by-step guide on how to download, install and configure the new AVG Anti-virus version 8.0. Many of you have already gotten this from my site. This guide is available free to my readers. You can get it by clicking here. Just follow the steps in that guide and your computer will be properly protected.
One thing of which the internet has no shortage is free software. Of course, most of it is junk, or loaded with spyware. However, not long ago I found a free program that I use almost daily. It is called Gadwin Printscreen.
What it does is very simple: it takes a picture of something you see on your screen. It can be the entire screen, or just a window, or just a section of a window that you select. From there, you can put that picture into a document or an email very easily - it is just a copy + paste.
Here's an example of how it could be put to good use:
There's an error message that keeps popping up on your screen:
Each time it comes up you just close it (bad idea, by the way). But finally it just gets too annoying so you call your Tech Support guy.
You: I keep getting this error message on my screen.
Tech Support guy: What does it say?
You: Oh, I don't know...something about my keyboard or something.
Without knowing what the error message says, we really have no way of diagnosing what the problem is. Wouldn't it be great if the Tech guy could actually see the error message himself? (Tech Guy says "Yes! Please!). With Gadwin Printscreen installed, it's easy:
1. Next time the error message comes up, hit F5 on your keyboard.
2. Drag your cursor from the top left corner of the error message to the bottom right corner, making a "box" around it.
3. Right-click outside the box you just made.
4. Open an email to Tech Guy, and in the body of the email, right click and choose Paste.
Now Tech Support guy will be able to actually see the error message and begin to figure out what the problem is.
Here is how you get Gadwin installed and configured:
1. Go to this link and download the free version (the free one is called Gadwin Printscreen - if you download Gadwin Printscreen Professional, they will ask you for $25). The program will download, then double click the icon to install it - the installation is standard. When finished, you will end up with a new icon on your desktop to run the program. Click that icon to run it.
2. You will now see a window like this:
Down the left side you will see buttons for configuring various functions of the program (Preferences, Source, Destination, Image and About).
3. In the Preferences section, choose F5 for the hot key. Leave all other buttons unchecked, except for "Run at Windows startup" (I leave that checked, because I use it so much I always want it to be running; it does not use much memory at all).
4. Under Source, choose "Rectangular area" and leave "Capture Mouse Cursor" unchecked.
5. Under Destination, check Copy Captured area to Clipboard.
6. Under Image, choose "JPEG Bitmap (*.jpg)" as the type of image. Leave everything else unchecked.
7. About just tells you about the program and the company; nothing to configure there.
Now you have an easy way to send an image to someone by email as I described above. Of course, instead of an email, you could open a Word document and Paste the image into that as well. Once you see how handy it is, you will probably use it more than you expected to!
I find it a bit annoying when someone gets back from vacation, and they have lots of cute pictures to show everyone, so they send out an email with dozens of pictures attached to it. So now you have all these high-resolution pictures taking up space in your email, and if you use an email program such as Outlook Express it can take a long time to download them. Then what do you do with them? You either save them for future reference or delete them. It's all a very inefficient process.
But there is a better way!
What if your friend or relative, instead of attaching all those photos to the email, sent you an email that just said, "Click here to see our vacation pictures". Zero download time, no wasted space, and nothing to delete. Big improvement!
If you would like to be able to show your digital pictures to your friends that way, here's what you do:
1. Get a Google account (if you use Gmail, that user name and password is all you need). You can get a free Google account at Gmail.com.
2. Get Google's free digital image program, Picasa (www.Picasa.com). Many of you already have this (whenever I set up a new PC, it is part of the standard installation procedure). If you do anything with digital pictures, you need it. It does soooo much, and it's free. Trust me.
(now I am skipping forward to the point where you have Picasa installed and you have a folder of pictures that you want your friends to see)
3. In Picasa, click once on the left side to highlight the folder that contains those special pictures. In the lower left "holding area" you will see that Picasa recognizes what you selected:
4. Now, look for a button on the bottom row of the Picasa window that says "Web album":
5. In the new window that appears, click on "Existing User? Sign in" and then log in using your Google/Gmail user name and password.
6. Now you have options. Since this is your first album, check "Create a new web album". Then, give your new photo album a meaningful title and a few words of description. You can also enter the location where the pictures were taken if you want. For photo resolution, I recommend the default selection of "Optimized: large size, fast upload". Check the box that makes them available for public viewing (unless you don't want anyone to see them, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise). Now click OK (you can click on the image below to see it larger).
7. Now you can watch Picasa as it uploads each of your images to the web. This might take a little while, depending on how many pictures are in that folder. You will be able to follow the progress as it happens. When it is finished, you get a nice message that says "Finished", and there is a button that says "View online" - click that button.
8. Your default web browser (either Firefox or Internet Explorer) will open, and there are all your pictures. From here you can do all kinds of things - add a caption to each one (which you should do), rotate those that need rotating, choose one of them to be the "album cover", etc. You can also order prints of some or all of them (not free, but cheap).
9. While looking at your online web album, click the link that says "View album". When that page comes up (showing thumbnail images of all your pictures), make a note of the website address that is showing up in the address bar. That is the link you would email to your friends, so that they can view the pictures online as well. Or, you can just click on the button in the top right area that says "Share album" -
When that is clicked, a form opens and you can just enter the email address of the person with whom you want to share the pictures. You can type your own personalized message and hit Send, and the link is sent to that person (or multiple people).
(If you would like to see what a Picasa photo web page looks like, here is one that my son David created after his recent trip to China.)
I haven't even scratched the surface of what Picasa can do - that will probably be a future post (Fun Things You Can Do With Picasa). Now go practice putting your pictures on the web!
This week's video is a series of creative Coke commercials. When guys are watching sports and it's time to celebrate a big play, they just gotta hug.
Digital cameras are just about as common as cell phones these days (and in many cases, they are the same thing). My guess is that you have lots of digital pictures on your computer right now (pop quiz - are they backed up?). Probably lots of these pictures are of family and friends. Want to have a little fun with them? Add some speech bubbles! Or you might call them word balloons - they are the things you see in the comics that tell you what the characters are saying.
There's a great site called Superlame (www.superlame.com) that let's you do exactly that. Just upload any photo that is on your hard drive now and you can add some speech bubbles to it. Then you can put it on your web page, Facebook, email, or wherever you want to use it.
Here's an example. This photo is sort of interesting, in a "Deliverance" kind of way.
But it's more interesting/entertaining if we know what these guys are saying or thinking:
You may have noticed - the speech bubbles can even extend outside the actual boundaries of the picture. You can also change the font, font size, whether the characters are speaking or thinking, and other options.
You have probably heard the term "Web 2.0" lately. But what does it actually mean? Is there some new technology out there? Where can we find this Web 2.0?
Actually it isn't about a new technology at all. It is about a change in the way we use the web.
Think about it. Back when the internet was in its infancy (around the early to mid 90's), there were websites, and most of them were pretty primitive. You could visit a website, view the content there, and perhaps benefit from it. You didn't really interact with other people on the internet to any great extent.
Now, that trend has shifted. Everything has to do with collaboration. You can go to websites and communicate with other people (online forums), you can connect with people you haven't contacted in years (facebook), you can write whatever you want for the world to read (blogs), and you can even notify all your friends, from your cell phone to theirs, what you are eating for lunch at the moment (Twitter). Okay, some of these things have more value than others.
Many websites are now being created with these new uses in mind. These sites are often based on interactivity with the website visitors. If you would like to see what these "Web 2.0" sites look like, you're in luck - there is a new Web 2.0 search engine (actually, it's technically a directory rather than a search engine). Check it out at http://www.go2web20.net/.
When you get there, click the button at the top that says "Select tag", then click a topic that interests you. You will see all kinds of websites in that category, and they are all looking for you to visit and participate. Have fun!
RSS will change the way you get information on the net
I know, that's a pretty big statement to make. But it's true.
There are basically two ways you can get the information you want from the internet: the old way, and the new way (RSS is actually not that new, but it's the first time I have blogged about it). To explain this, let's use an example. I believe that just about anyone can find several blogs that regularly post information that they find interesting. If you look long enough, you would find at least 10 blogs that you would like to read each day (or at least look at the post title, to see if it is something you want to read).
The old way would be to go to the first blog, read it, go to the second blog, read it, and so on. Bookmarking makes this faster; you could put all of your favorite blogs in the same bookmark folder. Firefox plug-ins like Linkwad make it even faster. But the bottom line is, you still have to go to each of those sites to view the content.
The new way is much easier. The new way is called Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Whenever you see that orange logo, it means you can subscribe to that blog with RSS. Now you don't have to go to each of those blog sites. You have one customized page that lists all the current titles of your chosen blogs or news sites, and you can read all of the content there. The blogs come to you.
Google makes this extremely easy to set up. Go to www.google.com/reader and sign in with your Google/Gmail account information (or create a free account). Then, start making the rounds to your favorite blogs and look for the orange RSS icon. When you click on it, you are requesting to subscribe to the "feed" for that blog, and you will be given the choice of what newsreader you want to use - just choose Google.
Then, set your Google Newsreader as your home page (or one of your home pages) in Firefox or Explorer. All your blog and news content - right there on one page. It's a lot easier, you can absorb more content, and you save a lot of time. Hey, you could start by subscribing to the RSS feed for this blog - just click that icon in the right column.
Below is a video that explains more visually how RSS works with Google. Give it a try - it's the way of the future, and I think you'll like it.
This week's video is a hidden camera prank. What do you think it would be like if you were in an elevator, and the door opened to what you thought would be your floor, but instead you found yourself in someone's bathroom - and there's a guy taking a bath at the time. These people found out exactly what it would be like.
Today I will introduce you to a website that is very popular among internet "junkies". If you want to know what the hottest things on the internet are, the most popular news articles, viral videos, images, etc. there is one site that has it all: Digg.com
At Digg, the users submit the content and the users decide if it's good or not. Each article, video or image gives you the option to "Digg" it (which adds a point to its popularity), or "Bury" it (which deducts a point from its popularity).
Digg has a lot of power. When something gets really popular, it attracts a lot of visitors; some websites have gone down temporarily due to being overwhelmed by the sudden increase in traffic. Usually at that point another site will post the same content (this is called a mirror) so that it takes some pressure off the primary site.
One word of caution...Digg does have some rules regarding what sites are "acceptable" in terms of vulgarity, nudity, etc. But there is sometimes content on there that some might find offensive. Usually you can tell by the title, and you can avoid clicking on those if that is your choice.
With the price of flat panel monitors continuing to drop, many people are opting to actually have two monitors. I have done this at my office, and I can tell you it is wonderful. Some may view this as unnecessary and excessive, but I can tell you that once you have tried it, it is difficult to go back to using just one monitor at a time.
One of the advantages is that you can have one program open all the time, and viewable, on one screen while you are working on the other screen. I generally have my email open to see when something new comes in, and the other one has Photoshop, Firefox, or some other program that I am frequently using.
I have mine side by side like this:
You can also get mounts that will arrange them in a top/bottom fashion as well, depending on your preference. Some mounts will do either.
Another fun thing is that you can have one single wallpaper image that is spread over the 2 monitors. Here are some sites for dual-monitor wallpapers:
I regularly get emails from people who have a problem with their computer, and it is often difficult for them to describe accurately what their computer is actually doing. That in turn makes it hard for me to diagnose the problem and come up with a solution.
I also hear from people all the time saying that their computer is running a lot more slowly than when they first bought it. There can be multiple causes for this, so there's no quick answer for this unless I can see the computer and what is going on. Now I can do this very easily.
Some places may tell you to have your computer checked out every few months or every 6 months, but I think that once you have it set up properly with the right software and security in place, an annual checkup is fine. I m happy to be able to offer this service now, and you don't even have to install any software on your computer.
This week I am writing about one of the most annoying things about Windows XP (it also shows up sometimes in Vista). It's when the tooltips get mistakenly hidden behind the Taskbar or the System Tray.
When you hold your mouse over an icon in the System Tray, you are supposed to get a little tooltips window that appears briefly, to tell you about that particular icon and what it is. Like this:
But sometimes, Windows messes up, and that nice little informative window gets put behind the taskbar, like this:
This used to drive me nuts - sometimes I need to know what that window says, such as the status of a program (online or offline), or my IP address, etc. No matter how much I fiddled with the cursor or repeated the attempt to see it, it wouldn't work until some random time later on. Then I found the fix for it.
And the solution makes about as much sense as the problem. Both seem to be random. Anyway, if this happens to you, here's what to do:
Click Start, and find a program in the list (it doesn't matter which program). Right click on it, and in the new menu, choose "Sort by name" (near the bottom of the list). Then, do the same thing again. Your tooltips will now be visible again, where they should be.
This solution sounds like some kind of "ancient Chinese secret" or something, but it works. Maybe the Windows programmers at Microsoft just have a weird sense of humor.
This week's video shows what happened when a goofball ran onto the field during a baseball game. He got what he deserved.
Don't lug your computer to a repair shop.
I can speed up, tune up or repair your computer with a one-time remote access session, while we are talking on the phone. Get the details here
This week's tip is probably one of the simplest ones I have ever published, and most people probably don't know about it. But it can make viewing some web pages a whole lot easier.
