Another Tech Blog

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

• 35 best iPhone apps of the year so far 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......
• 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......
• 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......
• 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......
• 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. ......

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.

• 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......
• 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......
• 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......
• 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......
• The Nickname Cache in Outlook - Get to Know your .NK2 file Have you ever wondered where Outlook stores data it uses to auto-complete email addresses when you are typing in the To or Cc field?  Microsoft stores this data in a file with the extension .NK2.  The file is stored in each user's profile in drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.  Note......

• Windows Computer Registry Computer maintenance? Personal Computers are more and more vulnerable these days. It's not only viruses or spyware that you need to protect your computer from, but also from your operating system clutter up. Some people de-fragment their hard drive(s) on a regular basis but that is not enough today. windows-computer-registry......
• How to Change Your Computer Name [/caption]For every PC or computer that is made, there is a computer name that is made for it as well.  The name is what you would normally see when you first log onto the computer and put in your password.  When a computer belongs to a network or a specific......
• 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......
• McAfee anti-virus program freezes PCs [/caption] NEW YORK – Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an anti virus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus. McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time caused its anti virus......
• Free Firewall Recommendations (Protect Yourself Online With These Free Firewalls) If your home computer is connected to the internet, or to other computers that are connected to the internet - you need a firewall. It's as simple as that. Hackers and hacker software are constantly probing the internet for computers without a firewall. When such a computer (A.K.A. "victim") is......

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!!

• 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......
• 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......
• 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......
• The Nickname Cache in Outlook - Get to Know your .NK2 file Have you ever wondered where Outlook stores data it uses to auto-complete email addresses when you are typing in the To or Cc field?  Microsoft stores this data in a file with the extension .NK2.  The file is stored in each user's profile in drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.  Note......
• 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......

• 7 Essential WordPress Plugins Here are seven of the plugins I consider essential for any WordPress website I setup. These can help your WordPress site be more secure, more search engine friendly, easier to deal with, and more engaging for your visitors. To find these plugins, login to your WordPress administrative area, click......
• Backup Database Wordpress How to Backup your Wordpress Database The easy and secure way, using phpMyAdmin. Backup of your database should be done regularly, especially before installing a Plugin or Upgrading Wordpress. Then, when and if trouble arises, you have an entire copy of your data including users, pages, posts, comments, plugin variables,......
• 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......
• The Top Notch Wordpress Plugins I Use I frequently get asked about which Wordpress plugins I use or how I implement various features on my site, like my Featured, Archives, and Contact pages. So instead off replying in "one off" answers, I thought I would just post a listing of the various plugins I am currently......
• What Search Engine Should You Use? [/caption]There has come a time in which you’ve need information and the internet was the best place for you to turn. The problem is, what search engine should you use to find the highest quality of information and find it quickly? With the release of Bing, a search engine of......

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.

• 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,......
• Eye-Fi How cool is this?  This is the Eye-Fi wireless memory card for your camera.  It wirelessly transfers photos and video from your camera to your computer and/or to your favorite photo site whenever you are in range of the wireless network you specify.  No more cables, no more uploads, just......
• iPhone 3.0 will have landscape mode, Skype for iPhone I took a deeper look at the 3.0 release and there will be landscape mode for email and SMS messages.  Check out the preview here.  It's about time that Apple put this out, but the proof will be in the pudding. On a related iPhone note, I installed the Skype......
• 10 Facebook Privacy Settings You NEED to Know. 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.......
• Outlook 2007 tips 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......

• Hacked in under 5 minutes: How to protect your wireless LAN I went to my parents house last week to investigate a problem with their internet connection running at prehistoric speeds only to find that some cheeky hacker had cracked the security code (64-bit WEP Key for the geeks) and was using Mum's internet connection. I will admit, as embarrassing as......
• How to catch hackers on your wireless network [/caption] Wireless networks are a wonderful invention. They give us the ability to easily deploy a complex network of computers without the need to physically wire them up. However, this ease of use can also mean that, without proper precautions, neighbourhood parasites can leech bandwidth and generally use your network......
• Wireless Security Wireless security is important, the convenience of having the ability of using a laptop anywhere around the house and using multiple desktop computers without having to fish wires through walls and make holes and tripping hazards.  I still see wireless security a big problem, doing a local WiFi scan on......
• 100 Quick Tennis Tips pt 1 Here are 100 quick and easy tennis tips to get your game going. We're going to spread this list out over a couple of posts to keep it interesting. Tip #1 - Before you pick up the game of tennis, you should absolutely make sure to consult a physician to......
• Petaluma Marina, Petaluma, CA Petaluma Marina is located in: Petaluma, CA Phone: None listed. Boat Launch: Yes, the marina does offer a boat launch facility. Launch Fees: Day Use: $2.00 Season Pass - June 1 through May 31: $25.00 Senior Pass - Sixty-two (62+) and Older - Season: $12.50 Berth Rates: Single Finger......

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.

• 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......
• The Nickname Cache in Outlook - Get to Know your .NK2 file Have you ever wondered where Outlook stores data it uses to auto-complete email addresses when you are typing in the To or Cc field?  Microsoft stores this data in a file with the extension .NK2.  The file is stored in each user's profile in drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.  Note......
• Application Virtualization with ThinApp (formerly Thinstall) I don't know why this is not getting more attention.  VMware and Landesk's Thinstall (now called ThinApp) has been out for close to two years now and I continue to be surprised that it is not more widely adopted. It is a great product that really lives up to the......
• 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......
• Outlook 2007 tips 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......

• Ad.ly Launches Analytics For Sponsored Tweets There’s been a bit of controversy around Ad.ly, which aims to link up high-profile advertisers with celebrities on Twitter and then distribute links to marketing campaigns through the user’s tweet stream with full disclosure. Launched this fall, the startup has created an interesting way to use the viral nature......
• Why the Type of Life Insurance you Buy Doesn't Matter This is a guest post by Aaron, the president of Clarifinancial – the only way to get custom life insurance quotes from multiple agents anonymously. Because they let real life insurance agents compete for you without any unwanted phone calls or emails from agents, choosing from the competition is a......
• Top 3 Social Media Sites Today What YouTube, Twitter and Facebook can do for your business. With the advent of the computer, no greater advancement has taken place in social media marketing than with the three best examples:  Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.  These three programs together have captured the market and made it possible for their......
• YouTube surpasses Yahoo! as the Internet’s 3rd most visited site [/caption] In an interesting testament to what users consume on the Internet, YouTube has just passed Yahoo! for the #3 spot of the “most visited” sites on Alexa. Numbers 1 and 2, as you might expect, belong to Google and Facebook respectively, but YouTube’s launch into the 3rd slot is......
• How To Pay Your Price On Your Next New Car Purchase - Part One. This is the first of my posts on buying a new car and paying the price you want. Part two can be found right here, part 3 right here, and part 4 right here. So even though it is not the smartest thing to do, you are dead-set on buying......

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!!

• 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......
• 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?......
• iPhone 3.0 will have landscape mode, Skype for iPhone I took a deeper look at the 3.0 release and there will be landscape mode for email and SMS messages.  Check out the preview here.  It's about time that Apple put this out, but the proof will be in the pudding. On a related iPhone note, I installed the Skype......
• 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......

• Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss Reviewed Tim Ferriss' Book 4-Hour Workweek has been around for some 2-3 years now... and yet, while it's right in the Lazy Man wheelhouse, I hadn't read it until recently. Why didn't I read it? Here are the two biggest excuses: I Hate Books - I'd like to blame Ethan Frome......
• iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 4 Revealed Apple has released iPhone OS 4.0 beta 4 along with SDK 4.0 beta 4. In this new update, there’s a Utilities folders which contains the clock, calculator and voice memos. There are new backgrounds included. Also AT&T tethering is available in this update. The update is available for developers at......
• Skype delivers app for the iPhone 3G voice calling [/caption] There's good news and a little bit (just a little bit) of bad news. Good news first: the iPhone Skype app has been updated to allow for calls using AT&T's 3G data network. AT&T's restrictions on cell data usage have evolved over time. Recently, download data caps have been......
• Best Top 20 apps iPhone and iPad [/caption] by Josh Lowensohn A few weeks back we put together some screenshots of games on the iPhone versus their iPad iterations. It was a resounding hit with the exception of our execution, which was to shoehorn the lovely, full-size comparisons into a little under 600-pixel-width screens. To make amends......
• GRS Video Contest Winners Over the past two weeks, I’ve had a chance to filter through the 57 submissions to the Get Rich Slowly video contest. Contestants made two-minute videos sharing a financial success story or a favorite money tip. Nearly every submission was interesting or amusing or insightful. You guys did awesome! Although......

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.

• 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......
• 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......
• Gmail calendar sync to iPhone I've been looking for a way to sync my Google Calendar to my iPhone using the native iPhone calendar app.  Google has come out with (I have no idea when this came out, so I may be late to the party here) a calendar and contacts sync to the iPhone......
• 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......
• 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......

• Explore Find Out Every Step To Learn How To Obtain Free Traffic! Simply put, free traffic is having visitors view your website with no cash obligation to you. You simply enroll in the program and begin to watch the hits viewing your site grow. Truthfully, no money is needed to have these hits come to your website. With any promotion, there......
• How to Lock a Computer Using Windows XP [/caption]Windows XP is one of the best versions of Windows ever produced. Even after the release of Windows Vista a lot of users still use XP because of its user-friendly interface and easy to navigation. Locking a computer in Windows XP is not hard. There are various ways of locking......
• How to clear Google search history Every time we make a search in the search engine Google , the browser adds to those already made history. While this is useful to accelerate and simplify navigation during subsequent searches, the other may be a possible threat to our privacy, especially if using a computer shared with......
• Collecting Autographed Sport Memorabilia Are you thinking about collecting autographed sport memorabilia? If you are interested in creating a sports collection of some kind, one of the options that is available to you is collecting autographed sport memorabilia. If you want to add autographed collectibles to your own personal collection, what you may like......
• MyPoints at ludicrous speed Photo by: dsearls MyPoints is a great program, but let's face it going through their emails can get a bit tedious and time consuming. I tend to work through my MyPoints emails every couple of days. I used to do them daily, but it just wasn't worth the hassle for......

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 -

• 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? ......
• Clear the page file on Shutdown in XP This is one of those tweaks for XP that is useful if you have users that have a lot of sensitive information on their machines and you want to be sure that none of that information is left in the Page File forever.  It's not a panacea, but is extra......
• 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......
• 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......
• 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......

• Windows Phone 7 Offers Superior Business Smartphone [/caption] Microsoft used its annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington, DC this week to reveal more details about the impending Windows Phone 7 smartphone platform. While Microsoft's smartphone market share has been plummeting, Windows Phone 7 could emerge as the best smartphone platform for businesses, and help Microsoft regain......
• Reduce, Reuse & Recycle - Turning An Old Window Into A New Mirror Part 1. As I write this, I am just back from yet another couple of hours in the garage scraping old caulk, rubber, paint, mold and assorted other crap off of a very old broken window that I found on the side of the road. I have had to use a hammer......
• MIX 2010 : Windows Phone 7 App - The Associated Press ( AP ) AP worked with Microsoft on a rich news reading experience to serve as a launching point for AP Mobile on Windows Phone 7 Series this year. A panoramic user experience incorporates news, social networks and photos as a way for people to select the newsmakers that interest them. Windows......
• Prosper Relases site Redesign and Other Features -- One Bug Found So Far. Here is the official announcement (here is a link to it on the forum: http://forums.prosper.com/index.php?showtopic=22667)  Hi everyone,  Tonight we released another update to the site. Without further ado... Site redesign The overall visual design of the site has been overhauled. The main pages have also been reconfigured to simplify the......
• Top Best 100 Incredibly Useful & Free Mac Apps [/caption] Everyone loves free applications. One of the greatest things about Macs is the wealth of extremely talented developers that are willing to share their amazing creations without asking for a single cent. We’ve compiled an enormous list of 100 amazing free Mac applications that you can download and start......

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.

• Outlook 2007 tips 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......
• 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......
• 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......
• Gmail calendar sync to iPhone I've been looking for a way to sync my Google Calendar to my iPhone using the native iPhone calendar app.  Google has come out with (I have no idea when this came out, so I may be late to the party here) a calendar and contacts sync to the iPhone......
• 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......

• Foreign Exchange :: Currency Trading For Beginners You are probably aware that currency exchange market goes under different names like Forex, fx, foreign exchange. People exchange currencies to try to gain profit. You know that rat of exchange of one currency for another always fluctuates due to economic new of certain country, political news, etc. Let’s consider......
• Site Notice: New Email I've decided to change my email address for this blog for a couple of reasons. 1. Yahoo Mail has a terrible search function. 2. Yahoo Mail has started giving me a bunch of error messages. 3. Gmail has a wonderful search function. 4. I can easily import this new......
• How to Get Gmail to Make Emoticons [/caption]Face it they are cute, yet practical. There are times you don’t want to be bothered by having to type out “Right now I feel like rolling around on the floor laughing in response to the zany comment you just made”. There’s an emoticon or a cute little animated face......
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• 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......

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?......
• 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......
• 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......

• The 28 Smartest Smartphone Apps for Business Travel [/caption] Trip Tech: An App for That by Mike Haney Mike Haney puts the latest smartphone applications to the test to find which make work—andlife—easier on the road ON THE MOVE Organize your itinerary: TripIt is the easiest way to consolidate all your travel details—flights, hotels, cars, events—on one site.......
• Choose the Best Carbon Monoxide Alarms Carbon monoxide alarms beep or whine to alert you to the presence of potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas in your home. Many people who would never dream of going without a working smoke detector or fire alarm still don't use carbon monoxide alarms. But carbon monoxide poisoning is the leading......
• Mac vs. Windows Right away, I’ll tell you which type of computer to buy. The one that you’re most comfortable with. There really isn’t a right or wrong answer. Now, we’ll move on to the rest of the article, which will focus on the Mac. Personal Experience The first computer I ever used......
• Visiting Childhood Haunts Was at Peace Centre in SG for dessert. I used to wait on the 2nd floor at the banister for my dad to finish work to get a lift back home aft school. Amazed the place still looks & feels the same.I even got picked up here once ... was......
• Wordpress Backup Wordpress Backup is an essential plugin for all Wordpress blog administrators by the Blog Traffic Exchange. It performs regular backups of your upload (images) current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don't get caught without a recent backup of......