Another Tech Blog

Happy New Year all, let’s hope this year is better than last ;)

• iPhone Cut and Paste!!! It's is about time - Apple just announced that version 3.0 of the iPhone OS will have, among other things, cut and paste.  This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time, and frankly I can't believe it hasn't been done yet.  I don't understand how it......
• iPhone 3.0 release date - June 17, iPhone 3Gs details released Apple announced at WWDC 2009 that the iPhone 3.0 software will be available to current iPhone users on June 17th.  At the same event Apple announced that the iPhone 3GS will be available for purchase June 19th, 2009 in 16GB and 32 GB models for $199 and $299 respectively.  They......
• How do I find my Windows Product key? Another issue I come across now and again is finding the windows product key for a client who doesn't have the original software his machine came with.  In many cases, the OS product key is on the Microsoft label right on the machine, but if you need the Office product......
• Outlook for the iPhone? eWeek is reporting that a Microsoft Executive, Stephen Elop, while speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo hinted that Microsoft will eventually release a version of the Office suite for mobile devices, specifically the iPhone.  I think this is important for a couple of reasons.  It further emphasizes MS' current move......
• Outlook Secure Temporary File Folder Symptom - can't open attachments to emails. This is one of the things about Micrsoft that will eventually push me over the edge. A few months back, my CFO called me in to his office saying he couldn't open attachments from an email in Excel.  I poked around a bit,......

If you are fighting a virus/malware on your computer, it is best to boot in safe mode before you start removing things and running scans.  If you don’t, it is likely that the malware will likely just re-install itself.  I’m not going to go into a whole tutorial on virus fighting (maybe in a future post) but the basics are as follows:

1) As soon as you notice you are infected, unplug your internet connection or turn off your wireless.  This will prevent the infection from spreading, and will isolate the offending program from its source.

2) Boot into Safe Mode

3) Run your favorite antivirus/anti-malware program.

This post is really about Safe Mode – how do you get there?  There are a couple of ways depending on the operating system you are using.  Here’s the Microsoft Page on the topic.

Windows XP

If XP is the only operating system installed on your computer, boot into Safe Mode with these instructions.

• If the computer is running, shut down Windows, and then turn off the power
• Wait 30 seconds, and then turn the computer on.
• Start tapping the F8 key. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears. If you begin tapping the F8 key too soon, some computers display a “keyboard error” message.  If this happens, resstart the computer and try again.
• Ensure that the Safe mode option is selected.  If you are trying to clean a machine that is virus laden, choose Safe Mode Without Networking.
• Press Enter. The computer then begins to start in Safe mode.
• When you are finished with all troubleshooting, close all programs and restart the computer as you normally would.

If you don’t want to bother with function keys, you can use the System Configuration Utility method.

• Close all open programs.
• Click Start, Run and type MSCONFIG in the box and click OK
• The System Configuration Utility appears, On the BOOT.INI tab, Check the “/SAFEBOOT” option, and then click OK and Restart your computer when prompted.
• The computer restarts in Safe mode.
• Perform the troubleshooting steps for which you are using Safe Mode.
• When you are finished with troubleshooting in Safe mode, open MSCONFIG again, on the BOOT.INI tab,  uncheck “/SAFEBOOT” and click OK to restart your computer.  THIS STEP IS CRITICAL.  If you don’t change this back, then the computer will continue to boot in Safe Mode until you do.

Windows 7

Safe Mode in Windows 7 is basically the same as XP – use F8 to get to the Safe Mode startup screen.  MSCONFIG is slightly different – Safe Mode is called Safe Boot, but otherwise the process is the same.

• Firefox keyword search default Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than legitimate software that acts like malware.  Anything you install should, before it changes ANY settings, tell you what it wants to change and ask you if that's what you want to do.   The default browser, for example, is a setting that used to......
• Tesla Model S Tesla's Model S debuted in Manhattan on April 30th.  If only I had $50k that I didn't need, I'd love to pick one of these up.  Electric cars have been around a long time, but Tesla really gets it right.  There is no reason in the world that electric has......
• Add more destinations to the "Send To" right click menu There are tons of little tweaks to XP out there that make the GUI more useful.  One of the things I've found is that the default elements of the contextual menus in XP do not always have everything you want in them.  Thankfully, much of these things are customizable. I......
• Conflicker - I mean, seriously If you don't already know, conflicker is a worm that exploits a buffer overflow in the windows server service.  The worm is wiley - there are several hundred variants and it is difficult to know how widespread it is.  You can find more info on the Wiki or on the......
• Windows 7 - First impressions So far so good - I installed the beta on a couple of laptops in the last month, and so far I like what I see.  It's very much Vista centric, but without the sllllloooooowwwwwness.  Boot time is much improved (under a minute) and there are some added features that......

• Home Network Security [/caption] Home Computer security 1. What is computer security? Computer security is the process of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention measures help you to stop unauthorized users (also known as "intruders") from accessing any part of your computer system. Detection helps you to determine whether or......
• Internet will only work in safe mode? I am not sure what happened but I ended up with no internet in regular mode. In safe mode the internet works fine. I have ran several maware programs and have turned off my firewall. I dont know how to fix this. I also noticed that my network controller driver......
• The Decade in Tech [/caption] As 2009 comes to a close, it's time to take a look back at the decade that was. It’s hard to believe what the tech scene looked like 10 years ago, but here's a hint: Imagine a world without the iPod (much less the iPhone), without Facebook, without wireless......
• Got An Adware Problem - What You Should Do Boot sector virus removal can be a tricky business as these are some of the most evil and difficult kinds of viruses. They lodge in your boot sector, the part of your computer that is responsible for loading or “booting” the rest of it, so that as soon as your......
• Microsoft Registry Error-Fix Registry Error If you have noticed off late that your computer has become sluggish and showing windows registry errors, then it is time you fix the problem using a good registry cleaner.All the operating systems of Windows is really prone to experiencing having a microsoft registry error message at least once. It......

I will summarize here, but the full article by Nick O’Neill from www.allfacebook.com is a great read, and something I wish I had written.  Facebook is a great tool, but in a world where information and identity theft is rampant, you need to know how to protect yourself from, well, yourself.

1) Use Friends lists to group your friends into logical groups.  This allows you to grant different access rights to different groups of people.

2) Remove yourself from Facebook search results.  Like the author, my family is chock full of teachers.  For the most part, they don’t want their students to randomly find their personal information from a Facebook search, but still want to be on Facebook for family and friends.  The solution?  Remove yourself from Facebook search results.  You do this from the “search privacy settings” page.

3) Remove your Facebook self from Google search results.  As you know if you Google yourself (doesn’t everyone do this?) your Facebook profile will come up pretty quickly.  You can remove yourself from Google searches from the “search privacy settings” page – uncheck the “Create a Public Search Listing for me …” check box.

4) Control who sees your tagged photos – You can do this from your profile privacy page.  The cool thing is if you’ve set up your friends groups right, you can allow access to tagged photos by group.  That way the photo of you that you don’t want your boss to see won’t get you fired.

5) Control who sees your photo albums – as with tagged photos, not all pictures are for all eyes.  Check out the Photo Privacy Page.  From there you can control who sees what.  Very handy.

6) Control how your relationship status is displayed in news feeds.  Everyone likes to tout their relationship, but do you really want everyone (boss, business contacts) to know?  Uncheck the “Change relationship status” box on the News Feed and Wall section of your Privacy settings.  This will prevent people from seeing changed to your relationship status in their news feeds.

7) Be sure that applications don’t publish embarrassing news feed posts.  Many applications you sign up for post items to your news feed that are potentially embarrassing.  Be sure that you scan your profile every time you install an application, or better yet, avoid applications completely.

8) Control who sees your contact information.  If you use Facebook for business and for personal contacts, you can control who sees what contact information from you using your Friends Groups.  You can add multiple email address and phone contact items, then edit the custom privacy settings for each to control who sees them.

9) Avoid embarrassing wall posts.   Facebook lets you control not only who posts to your wall, but also who can see those posts.  In the Profile section you can change who posts to your wall by choosing “custom” from the “Wall Posts” drop down.  From there you can use your Friends groups to control who posts and who sees what.

10) Like your hands, keep your friends to yourself.  I love seeing who is friends with my friends, but some people don’t want to share, and in some cases, it’s probably not a good idea to share.  Once again, you can customize who can see your friends list using your friends groups.

There are endless ways to control your privacy on Facebook, but you need to take the time to sort through the settings.  Friends Grouping is a great place to start and ensures that you have separation of your business and personal contacts.  Get to know your privacy settings!!

• Goolge's newest employees? 200 Goats. I know this is off topic for a Tech blog, but it concerns Google, so please indulge me. According to Google's blog, they are using Goats to mow the grass at their Mountain View headquarters.  "A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at......
• WEP vs WPA Another question I get asked a lot is on Wireless security.  People get very confused by the security options out there, and the industry doesn't help by adding acronym after acronym.  So what do you do?  The answer is fairly simple - secure your network with WPA!! There are lots......
• Firefox keyword search default Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than legitimate software that acts like malware.  Anything you install should, before it changes ANY settings, tell you what it wants to change and ask you if that's what you want to do.   The default browser, for example, is a setting that used to......
• Kindle iPhone app After using the Kindle app for iPhone for a few weeks now, I'm totally hooked.  At first, I thought the small screen would be annoying, but I'm really loving this app!!  In my less busy days I used to read a lot.  These days life has taken over and I......
• Add more destinations to the "Send To" right click menu There are tons of little tweaks to XP out there that make the GUI more useful.  One of the things I've found is that the default elements of the contextual menus in XP do not always have everything you want in them.  Thankfully, much of these things are customizable. I......

• Review of eBay Developers Program blog This is a review of the eBay Developers Blog. One of the things that set blogs apart from news listings is the ability to interact with the readers, and their ability to interact back. Even a corporate blog should have the capability for readers to post comments to posts. Not......
• If you'd like to learn more about me, then read on, curious readers, read on! This was the week of the meme's. I was tagged by Weight Ladder to do a 6-word memoir. I had actually completed this meme in the past, but no worries. My "profound" words are still there for all to see. ;) JoLynn at The Fit Shack tagged me with a......
• 5th Edition of Author Love Today is the 5th edition of author love. Sorry to be so late posting it, but I had some technical issues. They are resolved (obviously) so please enjoy. I hope you find something interesting and helpful! Book Intros P presents Fave Authors: Patricia Cornwell ? The Kay Scarpetta Series......
• The Anonymous Surfer: 10 Methods to Ensure Your Online Search Security It is very disconcerting to know that any search for information and data online can be traced back to the user. Imagine using a search engine for hours at a time everyday and then finding out later that your online history, reading habits and finances can be used as a......
• Top 15 Flickr Google Google Extensions for Firefox [/caption] No matter how good a service is it can always use a few tweaks, and Flickr is no different. The 15 add-ons we’ve gathered below for Firefox will help with everything from navigation to uploading, accessing Flickr in countries that block the service, and much more. Take a look......

Another question I get asked a lot is on Wireless security.  People get very confused by the security options out there, and the industry doesn’t help by adding acronym after acronym.  So what do you do?  The answer is fairly simple – secure your network with WPA!!

There are lots of methods to use to secure your wireless network.  The most common is WEP, but that is being replaced by the newer (and better) WPA protocol.  You can also secure the network by allowing only specific computers on the network.  This is simple to do, and doesn’t require security keys and messy settings.  The problem with it is that the data you send wirelessly is not encrypted.  With WEP and WPA, the data is encrypted.

What are these things anyway?

WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy (see the Wiki for more info) is an encryption protocol developed in the late 1990’s to secure wireless networks.  It offers 64bit and 128 bit encryption using a key generated by a passphrase you enter, but is easily cracked.  Despite this, there are a ton of people who still use WEP since it is the default protection on many routers.

WPA (WiFi Protected Access) is the next generation encryption algorithm that replaced WEP.  WPA uses 256bit encryption keys, and is far more secure than WEP.  It’s not the be-all-end-all, but is very good.  As with WEP, you have the option of generating a security key using a passphrase so that you don’t have to remember a string of random hex digits.  This is great, BUT you have to be careful about the passphrase you use.  DON’T use things like your pets name, your kid’s name, your street, or anything that can be guessed.

The clear answer is to secure your network with WPA.

BUT – do you have to secure your network at all?  The safe answer is yes.

What happens if you don’t secure your network?  That depends on where you live, how close your neighbors are, and how you secure your computers.  Most wireless routers have a range of 150 feet.  That means that if your neighbors are more than 150 feet away, they will not be able to get on your network unless they are standing outside your house with their laptop.

If you don’t change the default security settings on your computers, chances are that even if someone did get on your network, they wouldn’t be able to do much.  By default settings I mean:

• No shared hard drive locations
• Remote control disabled
• Firewalls up and running on every computer
• Anti-Virus up and running on every computer

Of course, this is not always realistic – I have lots of shared directories, and remote control enabled on my machines because I like to be able to work on any machine from anywhere if I need to.  For that reason, I like to secure the network so that if someone manages to get on they won’t get to my personal files.

The bottom line on security for wireless networks is best practice is to secure your network using WPA.  That said, if you live in a remote area where no one will likely be in range of your wireless, it’s not really necessary, just a good idea.

• 10 Windows 7 Tips So far, Windows 7 is the bee's knees.  The more I find out, the more I like, which is saying a lot - with operating systems, it's usually the other way around! Here are a few things that make Windows 7 neat.  Big thanks to Tim Sneath for most of......
• Conflicker - I mean, seriously If you don't already know, conflicker is a worm that exploits a buffer overflow in the windows server service.  The worm is wiley - there are several hundred variants and it is difficult to know how widespread it is.  You can find more info on the Wiki or on the......
• Add more destinations to the "Send To" right click menu There are tons of little tweaks to XP out there that make the GUI more useful.  One of the things I've found is that the default elements of the contextual menus in XP do not always have everything you want in them.  Thankfully, much of these things are customizable. I......
• How do I boot into Safe Mode? If you are fighting a virus/malware on your computer, it is best to boot in safe mode before you start removing things and running scans.  If you don't, it is likely that the malware will likely just re-install itself.  I'm not going to go into a whole tutorial on virus......
• Outlook Secure Temporary File Folder Symptom - can't open attachments to emails. This is one of the things about Micrsoft that will eventually push me over the edge. A few months back, my CFO called me in to his office saying he couldn't open attachments from an email in Excel.  I poked around a bit,......

• 7 Common Security Issues Found in Most VOIP Implementations Voice over IP (VOIP) has finally overcome Quality-of-Service issues and demonstrated enough ROI to be deployed in most Enterprise Network Environments. If you walk into any Fortune 500 company or a medium/large financial institution you will find VOIP phones being implemented. The core VOIP technology has greatly improved and......
• Netgear wpn824 Rangemax Netgear wpn824 Rangemax Wireless Router Roam the office with complete security or surf from any couch in the house The Netgear wpn824 Rangemax Wireless Router has made my life allot easier. I get lots of questions from SOHO and SMB techies about how to set up a secure wireless network......
• How to Encrypt Your VoIP Network For a Secure Connection The security of VoIP networks have been the subject of much debate. With internet hacking at an all-time high these days, VoIP users have every right to be concerned their user information, phone services or even their phone calls are being listened to. Because of this risk, individuals and......
• Why You Should Have A Home Security Alarm Many neighborhoods have a neighborhood watch nowadays. However, your neighbors are not always watching your home. That is why having a home security alarm is the best way of protecting yourself and your family. Do not let unwelcome guests into your home to do what they please. Setting up an......
• Learning How to Finance Your Future Most of us think about retirement and panic. It can be tough trying to figure out how we’re going to survive and plan for our futures when we’re just trying to make ends meet right now. If you’re strapped for cash at the end of every month, chances are you......

A couple of recent studies on Twitter and people who tweet point out that over 40% of all tweets fall into the category of “pointless babble”.  Pear Analytics put out a report with these and other interesting findings.  I’m sure it comes as no surprise that 75% of all tweets come from just 5% of people who tweet. 

Sysomos also does research into twitter usage and in their blog report  that 24% of all tweets are bots and other programatic postings.  Not surprising since the top contributors are posting 150 tweets and more a day.  Interestingly, they also put together a list of the top posters who have 5000 or more followers, and less than 50 posts per day.  The assumption is that these are reall posters, not bots.  Chris Brogan tops that list.  Who is he?  He’s a guy that helps businesses use social media.  Practice what you preach I guess.

Lots of other interesting facts.  55% of tweeters are women, 78% are caucasian.  The number of African American twitter users is well above the average for African American internet users.  I have no idea what that says about African American internet users, but there it is. The demographic information on Twitter is from quantcast.  A very cool stat site for websites.

So what does this all mean?  Be careful who you follow, and don’t feel bad about dropping the people who post too much – they are likely just a bot anyway.

• Conflicker - I mean, seriously If you don't already know, conflicker is a worm that exploits a buffer overflow in the windows server service.  The worm is wiley - there are several hundred variants and it is difficult to know how widespread it is.  You can find more info on the Wiki or on the......
• Romanticizing Technology I've been thinking a lot lately about why we love and hold on to technology gadgets when they are not necessarily all that great.  I can think of several things I've bought or used at work that were "the next big thing" or just new and cool that turned out......
• iPhone 3.0 installed I've been using the iPhone 3.0 software for a couple of days now and other than a minor installation glitch (my fault) the upgrade was painless.  Everything seems to work as advertised, and so far, I like what I see. WiFi improvements - One of the things that really bugged......
• Adding multiple emails accounts on your iPhone If you are like me, you have too many email accounts. Work account, personal account, account for public use (spam mostly ends up here), blog email account, side business account, test accounts from various services. Too many to check all the time. What do I do to manage them all?......
• Bypass the Recycle Bin in XP I have a love hate relationship with the Recycle Bin.  When I need it, I'm glad its there, but for the most part it is just a pain in the rear.  Most people forget to empty it (don't we all hate taking out the trash?) and end up with loads......

• Twitter Hashtag Introduction If you are looking to increase your awareness on Twitter, one of the best things that you can do is to explore the capabilities of Hashtags, which are capable of helping you to add significant value to your brand while quickly expanding your visibility at the same time. On Twitter,......
• Keep Readers Coming Back to Your Blog If you have a blog, you want to keep readers coming back. You can attract readers in a variety of ways, but keeping them is a little harder. You may end up high in the search engines for tons of keywords and pull in tons of unique page views. But......
• Free Online Dating Site Love Recommendations For Newbies So you’ve decided to venture into the world of online dating with the hope that the Internet can hook you up with great people for fun, excitement or long term relationships. Then you find the free dating sites and end up confused, overwhelmed and perhaps ignored, pestered or having a......
• Ok View - Accommodation in Thailand During the past three days I've been busy testing Twitter for internet marketing purposes. I will go on testing all kinds of Twitter applications and I will try every trick in the book to see if you can really generate business with Twitter. Follow this blog for the remaining......
• Oh, To Be Young & Debt-Free [Well One Out Of Two Isn't Bad] USA Today has a good story about a young 29 year old with $165,000 of student loans. She got a degree in Chiropractic health and makes $44,000 a year. Not surprizingly she can't afford to eat out or feel she's making any headway reducing her debt. She also isn't saving......

AppVee (www.appvee.com) has released their list of the 35 best iPhone apps of the year so far. If you don’t know about AppVee, they are awesome. Basically, they look at every (well almost every, they do ignore the nonsense) iPhone app published and winow out the good from bad. They seemingly impossibly review more apps that I thought possible, and they do a really good job.

The list of apps they like so far is here.

Notable inclusions are TweetDeck, Skype and Kindle – three of my personal favs.

Thanks AppVee!!

• iPhone Tips - 10 things you may not know Here are 10 things you may not know how to do on the iPhone. Web Clips:You can create a short cut to a web page as an icon on your iPhone.  To do this, tap the "+"  when on a web page, then tap "Add to Home Screen."  This will......
• Bypass the Recycle Bin in XP I have a love hate relationship with the Recycle Bin.  When I need it, I'm glad its there, but for the most part it is just a pain in the rear.  Most people forget to empty it (don't we all hate taking out the trash?) and end up with loads......
• 10 Windows 7 Tips So far, Windows 7 is the bee's knees.  The more I find out, the more I like, which is saying a lot - with operating systems, it's usually the other way around! Here are a few things that make Windows 7 neat.  Big thanks to Tim Sneath for most of......
• Romanticizing Technology I've been thinking a lot lately about why we love and hold on to technology gadgets when they are not necessarily all that great.  I can think of several things I've bought or used at work that were "the next big thing" or just new and cool that turned out......
• iPhone 3.0 release date - June 17, iPhone 3Gs details released Apple announced at WWDC 2009 that the iPhone 3.0 software will be available to current iPhone users on June 17th.  At the same event Apple announced that the iPhone 3GS will be available for purchase June 19th, 2009 in 16GB and 32 GB models for $199 and $299 respectively.  They......

• At Macworld, Next Wave of Apple iPhone Apps Emerges [/caption] By Tom Kaneshige The forthcoming wave of iPhone apps leaves bodily noises behind. At Macworld, the focus was on social networking apps and businesses using iPhone apps to better serve their customers. Super-smart iPhone apps will replace silly iFart-like apps in the second wave of iPhone app development, said......
• CNN Money's 21 Dumbest Moments In Business 2008 CNN Money put together a nice slide show of what they think are the dumbest moments of 2008 as they relate to business and the economy. Like most lists, even mine, some were great and others were a stretch. I've picked out a few of my favorites but make sure......
• I Shouldn't Be Giving Wii Tennis Tips (and some links) This weekend, I got to spend a little time with a good friend and we enjoyed a tasty beverage. I wanted to show him my Wii (that sounds dirtier than it should) and perhaps play a game of Wii Tennis and/or Wii Boxing. We both got a couple of surprises.......
• Tell me what you think of Obama and why? Tell me what you think of Obama and why? Lets have some facts stated first. Here are just a couple of the bad things he's done so far. Obama has basically created 8 trillion dollars and we dont know whats happened to most of it. Obama doesnt support an audit......
• 4 Tips to Improve Your Finances The more steps that you take to improve the finances, the better off you will be in the long run. With consumer debt levels reaching an all time high and personal rates of saving reaching an all time low, personal finance is beginning to more closely resemble rocket science. Here......

While I’m on the subject of tips, here are a few tips for Outlook 2007.

1) Stop Outlook from suggesting names in the TO field.

This is related to the .nk2 file I blogged about awhile ago.  If you don’t like that outlook suggests names for you, then you can turn this off.  Go to Tools, then Options.  From there choose the Preferences tab, then click the e-mail options button.  In the e-mail options dialog, click the Advanced E-mail Options button.  Uncheck the radio button for “Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields”.  Click “ok”.

2) Configure Outlook to NEVER send read receipts.

Personally, I think read receipts are annoying.  Some people love them, and who am I to judge, but I’d prefer to keep when I read your mail to myself, so I turn this “feature” off.  To do this, go to Tools, then Options.  From there choose the Preferences tab, then click the E-mail options button.  In the E-mail options window, choose the “Tracking Options” button.  Look for “Use this option to decide how to respond to requests for read receipts. Only applies to Internet Mail accounts.”   There are a couple of radio buttons – choose “never send a response”.  Click “ok”.

3) Remove the System Tray icon for new email

Another love it or hate it item.  I like this one, but when the system tray gets cluttered, out it goes.  To remove the icon, once again go to Tools, Options and from there choos the Preferences tab.  On the Preferences tab choose the E-mail Options button.  In the E-mail options dialog choose the Advanced E-mail Options button.  Under the “When new items arrive in My Inbox”, uncheck “Show an envelope icon in the notification area”.  Click “ok”.

4) Configure Outlook to empty the deleted items folder when you exit.

This is really helpful if you have limited mailbox space.  Deleted items count toward your mailbox space limits, so you either need to remember to empty your deleted items, or have outlook do it for you when you exit the application.

To configure Outlook to empty deleted items on exit, go to Tools, the Options, then choose the “Other” tab.  Under “General”, check “Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting”.  Click “ok”.  Your sysadmin will love you ;)

5) Add Holidays to your Calendar

Outlook support iCal, so there are thousands of calendars you can add to Outlook.  To add holidays from the default list, go to Tools then Options, then choose the Preferences tab.  In the Calendar section, click the Calendar Options button.  In the Calendar Options window, click the “Add Holidays” button.  Scroll through the resulting list, click the radio button next to the ones you want, then click “ok”.

Just a few things for now.  I’ll add more another time.

• Windows 7 - First impressions So far so good - I installed the beta on a couple of laptops in the last month, and so far I like what I see.  It's very much Vista centric, but without the sllllloooooowwwwwness.  Boot time is much improved (under a minute) and there are some added features that......
• Firefox keyword search default Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than legitimate software that acts like malware.  Anything you install should, before it changes ANY settings, tell you what it wants to change and ask you if that's what you want to do.   The default browser, for example, is a setting that used to......
• SVCHOST.exe - What is it and why are there so many of them? I get asked this a lot.  When you run Task Manager in XP and look at the process list, you see tons of svchost.exe processes running.  You can't kill them (you don't really want to) and there's no obvious reason that there are so many of them. What are they? ......
• Gmail Calendar and Contacts Sync to Outlook You would think this would be easy, right?  Well it is.  Sort of. Google in their infinite wisdom provides an application to sync your Google Calendar to Outlook, but not your contacts.  I hope this on the way, but for now you need to use a third party app to......
• Growl for Windows Growl v2.0 beta 18 was recently released for Windows - should you care?  If you are like most people, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with everything happening around you on the web.  Twitter, facebook, email, calendar, IM - the draws on your attention are almost overwhelming. ......

• Manual e-mail account setup (Exchange server) If automatic account setup does not work for your Exchange account, you must exit Outlook and set up the account through the Windows Control Panel. Although some of the dialog boxes look the same, you cannot set up an Exchange account manually while Outlook is running. To complete this setup,......
• Performing a Mail Merge from Your Contacts Mail merge is a technique that lets a form letter be addressed and sent to many different individuals. It can also be used to create mailing labels, envelopes, and catalogs such as a mailing list. Microsoft Office has merge tools built into several of its applications, most notably Word, and......
• LISTS To create a bulleted or numbered list, use the list features provided by Word. Bulleted and Numbered Lists - Click the Bulleted List button or Numbered List button on the formatting toolbar. - Type the first entry and press ENTER. This will create a new bullet or number on the......
• The Communications Question - Click to Call at Its Finest We're all aware that there is no simple solution to the communication puzzle. Customers remain the foundation block of any successful business. Small or large, big or little, businesses are more than ever relying on new mediums such as Click to Call, to interact with their customers in an......
• Choosing the Right Golf Clubs If you want to move past your current golf skill level to the next one, then you need to learn how to choose the right golf clubs. Having some basic tips and tricks in your arsenal when you go looking for professional golf clubs is absolutely vital. Skim through these......

So far, Windows 7 is the bee’s knees.  The more I find out, the more I like, which is saying a lot – with operating systems, it’s usually the other way around!

Here are a few things that make Windows 7 neat.  Big thanks to Tim Sneath for most of these.

1) Windows Management – in XP, your choices on what you could do with arranging windows on your screen was somewhat limited.  You could maximize a window to take the whole screen, you could manually shrink it to the size you wanted and move it to the side, iconize it, etc.  In Windows 7, several “docking” features were introduced that make moving things around on your screen really easy.  If you press the Windows key, then the left arrow, the current window will dock to the left side of the screen.  WIN+right arrow will dock to the right, WIN+up arrow will maximize the window, WIN+down arrow will restore the window.  In addition to the WIN shortcuts, you can drag windows to the top to maximize it (double clicking the title bar still works too), or you can drag the window to the left or right to dock the window there.

On a related note, in a multi monitor setup, you can move windows from one screen to the other using WIN+SHIFT+right or left arrow.  Now were talking!

2) Get rid of the noise – Have you ever been working on a document and been annoyed that all of you other open windows are just in the way?  Press WIN-Home in Windows 7 and all windows but the current are minimized.  Press WIN-Home again to restore the windows.

3) Browser load times – This is really an IE8 tip, but I’ll include it here.  If IE is taking a long time to load, it may be because of the add-ons you are running.  Go to Tools/Manage Add Ons and you will see  a list of what IE loads at startup.  The neat thing is if you scroll to the right in the list, you can see the load times for the Add Ons.  This is a great way to see where the bottle necks are.

4) Quick start for taskbar apps – you can use WIN+1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 to quickly go to or start any of the first 5 apps in your taskbar.

5) Look at the desktop – Another helpful feature is WIN-space bar.  This combo lets you look at the desktop and see any icons or widgets you have.  You can also click on the rectangle all the way in the lower right hand corner – this is the old “show desktop” icon.

6) Additional instance of an open application – there are a couple of ways to do this, but by far the fastest is to hold the shift key while left clicking on the taskbar icon.  Way better than going through the start menu again, or right clicking and choosing to open the app.

7) Running with elevated rights.  If you hold CTL-Shift while clicking on a taskbar app, you will bring up a new instance with full administrator rights (assuming your account has permissions).  When Windows 7 is deployed in an enterprise, this will be GREAT.

8) Specialized Window switching – this one I love.  If you are like me, you have tons of windows open all the time.  In XP if you want to switch between windows you can ALT-Tab through them all, or you can click on the taskbar icon and guess which window is the one you want.  In Windows 7, you can essentially Alt-Tab through all of the open windows associated with a specific application without scrolling through every open window.  You do this by holding down the CTL key, then clicking on the taskbar icon for the application you want.  Windows will “scroll” through the open windows as you click the icon.  This is great if you want to scroll through all of your open Outlook windows, for example, but don’t want to run through everything you have open.

9) Move focus the taskbar – this is neat keyboard shortcut.  If you press WIN-T you will move focus to the taskbar.  You can then use the arrow keys to move through your taskbar apps to choose the one you want.  For keyboard shortcut junkies, this is great.

10) Open windows explorer keyboard shortcut – Press WIN+E.  This will open up and explorer window at the Computer Node.  Note that SHFT+click on the explorer icon opens at the Document Library Node.

More to come -

• How do I boot into Safe Mode? If you are fighting a virus/malware on your computer, it is best to boot in safe mode before you start removing things and running scans.  If you don't, it is likely that the malware will likely just re-install itself.  I'm not going to go into a whole tutorial on virus......
• Dual core processors for mobile devices? ARM dual core chips for iPhone, Palm Pre next year CNET is reporting that ARM, the company responsible for designing the architecture behind most mobile comuting CPU's said  that mobile phone makers will be delivering devices that run on ARM"s latest dual core CPU's as early as next year. They are referring to the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore application processor.  According......
• I hate viruses Working on a client computer for the last two days that is massively infected.  When they handed the machine to me, there was no firewall, no virus protection and windows updates were way out of sync.  Whoo boy. Windows update was not working at all - one if the viruses......
• Open Source Software PBX - ready for prime time? I've been working with a client who needs to replace an aging PBX but is (as is everyone) extremely cost averse.  What are their options? A vendor supported PBX plus desktop phone sets together would probably cost them more than $10k.  Obviously a vendor supported system has losts of advantages from a......
• SVCHOST.exe - What is it and why are there so many of them? I get asked this a lot.  When you run Task Manager in XP and look at the process list, you see tons of svchost.exe processes running.  You can't kill them (you don't really want to) and there's no obvious reason that there are so many of them. What are they? ......

• 5 Ways Golf is the Ideal Exercise /caption] This article was submitted by the Golf Ball Driver, author of Golf Ball Driver (rss feed). He strongly believes in discount golf balls and likes to collect vintage golf clubs. If you like the guest post please check out his website and consider subscribing to his rss feed. If......
• Monitoring cells with a Watch Window In some situations, you may want to monitor the value in a particular cell as you work. As you scroll throughout the worksheet, that cell may disappear from view. A feature known as Watch Window can help. A Watch Window displays the value of any number of cells in a......
• Three Essential Windows Mobile Applications Suddenly, the mobile phone industry is inundated with operating systems: iPhone OS, Google Android, Palm WebOS, Symbian, Maemo, BlackBerry, Samsung Bada, and of course, Windows Mobile. Microsoft recently released WinMob 6.5, in a sign that the company has not yet called it quits and is willing to fight it out.......
• Windows Phone 7 Interface: Microsoft Has Out-Appled Apple - VIDEO Rather than accessing an app to get contact information and make a call to a person, open another app to get her Twitter updates, and then another app to get her Facebook updates, and another for her latest mails to you, and yet another one to watch her photos,......
• Can Your PC Run Like A Dream Again? I'm sure you've all noticed that when you buy a new PC it works like a dream and that over time, the performance degrades and it gets slower and slower. I have a cynical viewpoint that I have to reinstall my PC every 6 to 8 months to make......

From the Gmail blog

One of the neat features of Gmail is that you can use it to aggregate all of your email addresses to one inbox.  You add the email addresses to your gmail account, and they connect via POP or IMAP to your other accounts and everything is in one place.  Until this past Thursday, when you replied to a mail that was not to your mail account, Gmail would put your main account in the “Sender” field so that your mail would not be kicked as spam.  What the recipient would see is a message that the mail was send “on behalf of” the intended address “from” your main account.  While this is ok in most instances, if you are trying to mask that Gmail is the tool you are using for all of your mail, then this can be annoying.

Thursday, Google introduced a way to route your mail through the SMTP server of your choice instead of their SMTP servers, so your mail will look like it is comming from the system you choose and the “on behalf of ” messages will go away.  Neat!  If your office allows POP/IMAP and you allows remote SMTP then you are golden.  If not, well then you have to live with the “on behalf of” messages.

• Romanticizing Technology I've been thinking a lot lately about why we love and hold on to technology gadgets when they are not necessarily all that great.  I can think of several things I've bought or used at work that were "the next big thing" or just new and cool that turned out......
• iPhone Cut and Paste!!! It's is about time - Apple just announced that version 3.0 of the iPhone OS will have, among other things, cut and paste.  This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time, and frankly I can't believe it hasn't been done yet.  I don't understand how it......
• POP vs IMAP I get asked this a lot - what is the difference between POP and IMAP, and why would I want one over the other? To put it simply, IMAP stores email on your mail server, POP stores email on your local email client. IMAP is better for a TON of......
• Adding multiple emails accounts on your iPhone If you are like me, you have too many email accounts. Work account, personal account, account for public use (spam mostly ends up here), blog email account, side business account, test accounts from various services. Too many to check all the time. What do I do to manage them all?......
• 10 Windows 7 Tips So far, Windows 7 is the bee's knees.  The more I find out, the more I like, which is saying a lot - with operating systems, it's usually the other way around! Here are a few things that make Windows 7 neat.  Big thanks to Tim Sneath for most of......

• Be a Blogger: Tools to Organize Ideas Back next week with the Sunday Conversation.  The following is a guest post from Mrs. Micah. Mrs. Micah writes about personal finances, freelancing, and getting out of debt at MrsMicah.com. She also offers blog consulting services at hire.mrsmicah.com. Previously in the Be a Blogger series, Frugal Dad wrote about capturing......
• Voice, Texting, Mobile Platform Ribbit Disclosure: I was paid as a consultant to produce the websites being discussed. I was not paid to discuss them on this website. Ribbit is releasing a RESTful API addition to their soft switch telecom platform. I was given an opportunity to get involved prior to the beta release as......
• What My Phone Doesn't Have That Others Do There was an article from TG Daily that made it to near the top of Digg today trying to compare Microsoft's new My Phone service to Apple's MobileMe service. There's also Google's new Google Sync that allows users to synchronize their mobile phone with their Gmail contacts and calendars. I......
• Google OS A Solution not an Alternative Google OS Desktop-based operating systems have been a core component to computers for the last few centuries yet Google's Chrome OS claims to eliminate the desktop all together. Some feel that this approach is inline with the uptrend in cloud computing and a natural progression for the operating system while......
• Creating and Maintaining E-Mail Accounts If you are the subscriber to the Office Live account, you can create, modify, and delete e-mail accounts. Office Live lets you set up lots of e-mail accounts (25 for Basic accounts and 50 for Premium and Essentials accounts). You can create e-mail accounts for your employees so that when......

Growl v2.0 beta 18 was recently released for Windows – should you care?  If you are like most people, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with everything happening around you on the web.  Twitter, facebook, email, calendar, IM – the draws on your attention are almost overwhelming.  Wouldn’t it be great is there were some tools out there to help with all the noise?  The ability to be automatically notified when things happen would be really useful – enter Growl for Windows.

What is Growl?  In their own words:

Put simply, Growl lets you know when things happen. Files finished downloading, friends came online, new email has arrived – Growl can let you know when any event occurs with a subtle notification. The rest of the time, Growl stays out of your way.

Along with letting you know when things happen, Growl also gives you full control over how you are notified and what action (if any) you want to take in response to the notification. You can choose to be alerted with a visual indicator or an audible alert, both, or neither. You can choose the type of display that is shown, whether the display remains on the screen, the importance of the notification, and even if the notification should be forwarded to another computer. You can have notifications that trigger an email, run a script, launch a program, or are read out loud.

Growl has been available as a MAC application for some time now, so their foray into Windows land is a welcome addition to help you manage your machine. All of you have Windows Update on, right?  Well now you have a tool that you can configure to notify you and/or take action on lots of other things on your machine.

How does it work?  The setup is somewhat manual, but this is a good thing, since the whole point is that Growl is unobtrusive.  Once you install the application, the software sits in your system tray waiting to be told what to do.  You download pluggins from the Growl site for the applications you want.  There are tons of apps there – Firefox, iTunes, Outlook, Gmail, even a system monitor.  You run the setup for the app you want and let Growl do the rest.  What you get is a configurable pop up window for whatever application you choose.

You get configurable reminders for things as they happen – new emails, calendar appointments, what the tune you are playing on iTunes is (they have Pandora too).  New apps are being added all the time, and there is a GNTP library and command line tools that you can use to work with almost any API.

Neat stuff.  Not perfect, but I like it so far.

• Outlook for the iPhone? eWeek is reporting that a Microsoft Executive, Stephen Elop, while speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo hinted that Microsoft will eventually release a version of the Office suite for mobile devices, specifically the iPhone.  I think this is important for a couple of reasons.  It further emphasizes MS' current move......
• Remote reboot from MMC Have you ever needed to reboot a machine remotely? This is easy to do via MMC, the Microsoft Management Console. In XP, do the following. 1) Right click the My Computer icon and choose manage to bring up the MMC. 2) From there, go to the Action menu and choose......
• Adding multiple emails accounts on your iPhone If you are like me, you have too many email accounts. Work account, personal account, account for public use (spam mostly ends up here), blog email account, side business account, test accounts from various services. Too many to check all the time. What do I do to manage them all?......
• 10 Windows 7 Tips So far, Windows 7 is the bee's knees.  The more I find out, the more I like, which is saying a lot - with operating systems, it's usually the other way around! Here are a few things that make Windows 7 neat.  Big thanks to Tim Sneath for most of......
• TweetDeck to manage your Tweets Twitter is taking off like wildfire - you just can't get away from it.  I'm still not a huge buyer of the technology, but as the number of people I follow increases, I've been having a hard time sorting through the posts. Until now. Enter TweetDeck, "A Simple and Fast......

• Delta Squadron - Your Own Marketing Tools Delta Squadron and Method of explaining marketing tools for online shopsEveryone can name some of the most common marketing tools, but how to define marketing tools for online shops. Email is the favorite form of spammers and it’s not as simple as saying email. Important offline marketing techniques are flyers,......
• Three Essential Windows Mobile Applications Suddenly, the mobile phone industry is inundated with operating systems: iPhone OS, Google Android, Palm WebOS, Symbian, Maemo, BlackBerry, Samsung Bada, and of course, Windows Mobile. Microsoft recently released WinMob 6.5, in a sign that the company has not yet called it quits and is willing to fight it out.......
• Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android - Marketplace Comparison Detailed comparison between Windows Mobile Marketplace, Apple's iPhone AppStore and Android Market from developer point of view. By: Predrag Tomasevic (Click for bigger image) Introduction The article you are about to read is my compilation of thoughts on three currently most popular and talked about mobile platforms, sparked by whole......
• Best computer application... available as freeware software In my recent articles, I included and reviewed some great applications (see Freeware software in sidebar), which I found useful during my computer and Internet usage. I think this procedure gives a crystal clear view about the program but takes lot of time (in days and weeks to cover them)......
• Windows XP - Hidden Application, Explore How Much More You Can Do With Your Computer! There are a lot of hidden applications in Windows XP which can be quite helpful. These applications can be quite fruitful. Try them out. Here's how you go about doing it.In order to run any of these apps go to Start > Run and type the executable name (for......