Friday TechTips

Friday TechTip – Growl (also get a free MP3 from Amazon)!

Today’s tip highlights Growl, a unified notification system for both Windows and Mac. Us Mac fanboys users have had Growl to keep us company for a long time and alert us anytime an IM arrives, email lands in the inbox, a new track starts playing in iTunes, etc. Growl for Windows is now up to version 2.0 and there’s a new beta version out. Growl is handy because it allows you to turn off the default notification system (assuming one already exists) in your favorite application and channel all notifications into Growl. This gives you one utility to alert you to new system events. Did I mention that you can customize Growl’s appearance? There’s even a plug-in giving Growl the ability to use text-to-speech to give you a voice alert, perfect for your cubicle mates! All kidding aside, I really like Growl and appreciate it’s low profile appearance versus the default Outlook notifier.

Growl’s Home – http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/default.aspx

App Plug-Ins – http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/apps.aspx

Growl Displays (skins) – http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/displays.aspx

Bonus Tip!

Amazon is currently giving away a free MP3 of your choice in recognition of gaining over 1,000,000 followers on Twitter (http://twitter.com/amazonmp3). To claim your MP3, go the celebration site and follow the directions. You’ll need to press a button which brings up a pop-up box where you enter the code (FIRSTMIL) which is displayed on the page. This gives you a credit to then go purchase your song.  Why not download your favorite song to kick off the weekend?

Free MP3 site – http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=dm_tw_firstmil?ie=UTF8&gcIsProcess=1&gcpcCode=FIRSTMIL&&docId=1000420651

Tip for August 14, 2009: Meeting Schedulers!

Meetings, we all have them. Some days it’s all we do. Fortunately we have Exchange / Outlook / Entourage to help manage our on-campus meetings. What about external meetings? How do you arrange a meeting time with a colleague from VCU or schedule time for a visit from a vendor? As the trendy new expression goes, there’s an app for that! There are two services that I’m highlighting today giving you the ability to schedule meetings online with external colleagues.

MeetingMade lets you create an account and then block out the times you aren’t available. You then invite other meeting attendees to do the same. This gives you a common point of reference within MeetingMade where you can decide on the times that work best for everyone. MeetingMade’s goal is to eliminate all of the back and forth E-mail and phone calls which happens especially when trying to organize an event with multiple attendees. MeetingMade offers a 30-day free trial, however since it is in beta status it’s free to use until they decide a pricing plan. My instincts tell me that a free option will remain.

ScheduleOnce offers to accomplish what MeetingMade performs, but utilizes Google Calendar to facilitate the process of choosing a common meeting time. ScheduleOnce is a free service and works by downloading a Google Calendar add-on for your browser which then connects you to the service and the people you are trying to meet with. The only disadvantage ScheduleOnce has when compared to MeetingMade is that you have to have your Outlook calendar synced with your Google Calander. Don’t dispair, there’s an app for that too! The Goolgle Calenendar Sync tool will sync your Outlook calendar data with your Google Calander. If you’re concerned with losing data in Outlook, you can set the tool to only update your Google Calender, not import data from Google into Outlook. I’ve been using this personally for quite a while now and have found it to work flawlessly.

Speaking of meetings, since they do tend to take up a lot of our time, its important they be productive and stay focused. Here’s a short list 7 Tips from Web Worker Daily to help you keep your meetings on-task.

Bonus Tip!

Forbidden City – For a while I was really excited about Second Life and the potential it brought to online learning, meetings, discussions, etc. In my opinion it has really jumped the shark. However in a related note, The Forbidden City project offers much more educational potential, at least if you’re interested in Chinese history. Through a collaboration between IBM and the Palace Museum, you can download a fully digitized virtual version of the Forbidden City and tour it in real-time. It’s available for PC/Mac/Linux and offers a great opportunity to tour an incredible facility that you would otherwise have to travel thousands of miles to see.

Tip for August 7, 2009: Vanish!

In this era of hyper-data portability securing your information is becoming more important than ever.  Tools such as old-fashioned email and newcomers like Facebook, blogs and practically anything that can be associated with Web 2.0 have made it almost enjoyable to create voluminous amounts of content. It’s possible that you have not given too much thought to the things you send into the ether, but you need to be prepared for it to live in perpetuity and also be found with Google.

These are the issues which lead a research team at the University of Washington to create Vanish, a tool which will render your messages (and more) unreadable after 8 – 9 hours. The Mission: Impossible producers would be proud! To use Vanish you will need the following:

• Java 5 or above and FireFox 3.x
• The Vanish System
• Vanish Plugin for FireFox

If you are interested in trying the system before installing, they provide an online version to let you create self-destructing messages, one by one. Their site points out that while the Vanish system is fully functional, it is still a research project and should be treated as such. If you’re interested in trying Vanish, I strongly recommend you spend time reading about how it works and what to expect. They provide several screencasts and screenshots to explain their objectives and how to properly install the system.

Bonus Tip!

Are you envious of all the people who have found fame by starring in a video that has gone “viral?” If so, you’re in luck! Don’t worry about taking the time and effort to create your own video, just superimpose your face on any of the most popular viral videos and become your own star with family and friends! Just connect your webcam and head over to Fun Face Cam. You can choose from some of the most popular videos, like Laughing Baby, Numa Numa, or my personal favorite David After Dentist.

Today’s services: Vanish & Fun Face Cam

Tip for May 15, 2009: Backups!

The computer upgrade process has officially started for IS and library staff! If you haven’t done so already it’s time to back-up your data to prepare for the move. It’s also a good time to get into the habit of regularly backing up your data. As staff we all have access to 1gb in Netfiles, however you may find it’s not enough to meet your needs. Past TechTips have suggested different tools for this purpose. Today I’m going to provide you with a few more options.

Last year I posted this piece about Microsoft Skydrive. Shortly after that post the kind folks in Redmond bumped the storage from 5gb to 25gb. I love the service but the downside is that you have to use the web interface to upload individual files. One way around this is to create a zip file of the documents you want to backup and upload the single zip file, but this is a hassle if you only need to get to one of your documents. However, there is another solution. Those of you with Windows systems who are particularly adventuresome will want to checkout the starter edition of Gladinet. After installing it lets you mount SkyDrive (and other storage options) as local drives allowing you to drag-n-drop till the cows come home.

Another service receiving positive reviews is Mozy. Mozy offers free accounts which include 2gb of storage with Windows and Mac clients available. They also offer unlimited storage, available for $4.95 per month per computer you use to access their service.

The last service, one I personally really like is Jungle Disk. If you have A LOT of data that requires save and secure storage you’ll definitely want to try it. The service works by providing local clients for Windows, Mac and, Linux which you use to access your files. The storage component is handled by Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service (S3 stands for Simple Storage Service). Jungle Disk offers unlimited storage for $2.00 per month plus $.15 per gigabyte of data. There are also fees for data transfer ($.10 per gb uploaded / $.17 per gb downloaded). Here’s a possible pricing scenario: if you had 5gb of data including 1gb of photos recently uploaded, your monthly fee would be $2.85 ($2.00 monthly fee + $.75 for 5gb of storage + $.10 for 1gb data upload).

Bonus Tip!

Re-live a little history with the very first television spot for cellular service from Centel! You’ll want to note two things. First, compare the size of your current phone to those shown in the ad. Second, look for all the fun and adventure the early adopters had (look for jeep at 15 seconds in).

See it at YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptbJZ9HBw2k

So, your mission for the weekend is to get out there and live it up! Afterall, you own a cell phone!

Services: SkyDrive | Gladinet | Mozy | Jungle Disk

Tip for April 3, 2009: Xobni

Let’s face it, most of us spend each work day living in our email inbox, no matter if it’s through a locally installed application (Outlook, Entourage, Apple Mail), or web-based (Outlook web interface, Spidermail, GMail, Yahoo, etc.). Since we as modern workers need to be email ninjas, it’s critical that these applications be flexible and offer features to help cut out “the noise” created from thousands of messages and attachments. Xobni (pronounced zob-nee) offers to do just that. It’s an add-on which installs an additional panel in your Outlook client and offers the following features:

• Much improved searching for emails, contacts, and attachments compared to Outlook’s built-in search features.
• The ability to locate your contacts in your social networks (Linked In, Facebook).
• Threaded conversations (one of GMail’s best features) where you can see all of the emails you’ve exchanged with a contact in one place.
• A complete statistics package showing you have many messages you’ve sent to your contacts, what day you email the most, who responds to you the fastest (so you can treat them to lunch), etc.

If you download Xnobi be prepared for the installation process to take about 10 – 15 minutes. After installation Xnobi will launch Outlook and begin indexing your messages, attachments and contacts. After 10 minutes Xnobi will index in the background in order to allow you to get back to managing your inbox. If you want to know more before downloading visit the Xnobi Learn More page. There are tutorial videos for each feature.

Xnobi

Bonus Tip!

Speaking of email, let’s take a lesson from a drummer and learn some unique exercises to help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis! This video was featured earlier this week on several websites as a way to beat the arch-nemesis of technology and desk workers. Watch the video below, or head over to YouTube for the larger version. Start stretching! And one, and two, and three…

Tip for March 13, 2009: PDFs, Attachments, and Browsers, Oh My!

Good Friday afternoon! Today’s tip is going to have you slicing and dicing through work documents like a brand new set of Ginsu Knives. Our first tool is PDF to Word from NitroPDF. It’s a free service which converts your PDFs to either .DOC format or .RTF so they can be opened and edited in Microsoft Word. No muss, no fuss! Reviews on the web indicate that the conversions are fairly accurate but not flawless. Nevertheless having access to a Word version of a PDF is not an unusual occurrence for me. They don’t really indicate what’s happening behind the scenes (garden gnomes with scanners) but here’s their full set of features. I also reviewed their privacy policy due to the sometimes confidential nature of certain documents and was pleasantly surprised to find a very streamlined plan:

Your files

• The PDF files you upload for conversion are deleted straight after being converted.
• The DOC/RTF files we generate are deleted immediately after we email you them.
• At no stage are your files looked at or touched by the administrator of our PDF-to-Word service.

Your email address

• The email address you use to receive your converted files will never be used to send you unsolicited emails or sold off.

Along with PDF to Word, their site offers a number of other tools including:

• PrimoPDF – A free download allowing you to create PDFs on your desktop.
• PrimoOnline – An online version of the above.
• PDFHammer – An online PDF editor.

There are certainly a lot of PDF tools available elsewhere on the web, but I think you’ll find the simplicity of these services appealing.

Feature #2

Today’s second item is OutlookViewAttach, a nifty little application that scans all your mail in Outlook for messages with attachments. There are numerous ways to organize and arrange the results, batch download the attachments, and a search feature allowing you track down missing documents. If you plan to download OutlookViewAttach, here are a couple of tips:

• If you have a lot of mail stored in Outlook (let’s be real, we all do) expect the scan process to take several minutes. As a tip you can export the scan reults as an Excel file for quick review later.
• You may see a lot of “attachments” that are actually vCard files from yourself, people who have sent you mail, or mailing lists.
• Be prepared to organize and arrange the results in order to get the most out of this application!

Bonus Tip!

There has been a lot of web browser activity lately, especially with Google entering the market with Google Chrome. Internet Explorer 8 is also set to debut with Windows 7, and Safari 4 Beta for Mac was released last week. Mozilla is also planning to release the next version of Firefox: Firefox 3.1 which is now in beta 3 status (close to release). If you’re interested in being on the cutting edge of browser technology you may want to give it a try. 3.1 promises to handle complex websites and code much faster than previous versions. If you’re going to try Firefox 3.1 beta, I’ll reiterate what their site says:

This is pre-release software: you may encounter compatibility problems with some websites and add-ons.

With that word of caution, happy browsing and enjoy your weekend!

Tip for March 6, 2008: Foxmarks (soon to be Xmarks)!

Good Friday afternoon! In the Friday TechTip for January 16, 2009 we reviewed the benefits of Firefox and a few of the essential add-ons. One of my favorites which I automatically install on each computer I use is Foxmarks. Up until recently Foxmarks has been an exclusive add-on enjoyed by millions of rabid Firefox fans. New versions are now available for both Safari and Internet Explorer. They now cover all major browser platforms (sorry Opera). Installation for each is very simple and straightforward. If you’re new to Foxmarks, here are the basic steps:

• Visit http://download.foxmarks.com/download and click “Download Foxmarks for (your browser here).”
• Go through the normal install process for your platform (Mac or Windows).
• If you don’t already have one, you will be prompted to create an account with Foxmarks which will store your bookmarks for synchronization purposes.
• You will then be prompted to sync for the first time. The program will ask if you want to merge your bookmarks or overwrite them (both locally or on the server). If this is your first time, you will use the ones on your computer. Be careful at this point on future installs as you don’t want to accidentally overwrite any existing bookmarks!
• Once the install process is complete synchronization will occur behind the scenes and be a semi-invisible process.

I highly recommend Foxmarks, soon to be renamed Xmarks, especially if you use multiple computers to doy our work. You’ll soon start thinking that you’re always at the same computer, with your favorite tools and sites and always at your fingertips.

Bonus Tip: Daily Mugshot!

Do you have a webcam? Interested to see how your appearance changes over time on a daily basis? Then visit http://www.dailymugshot.com, create an account and start shooting. You can create a daily email reminder to prompt you to visit Mugshot each morning to take a photo, or download a very small reminder application which will pop up and remind you to take your daily photo. After taking a series of photos, you can create a Mugshow to share with friends and family, or maybe just use it to remind yourself to get a haircut… Enjoy!

Tip for Feb. 6, 2009: SimplifyMedia!

Today’s tip comes to you via special request. Are you drowning in a sea of MP3s? Do you have audio files scattered between computers, not knowing which has your stash of KC & The Sunshine Band and Donna Summer tracks? Would you like to listen to your tunes on multiple computers without adding your music collection to each one? Then you need to simplify! Here are the requirements:

• Choose one computer to store all of your tracks and install iTunes

• Import all of your music into the iTunes library. It might help to organize your music within iTunes using playlists. You could start by creating “Secret 70s Disco” and add “That’s The Way (I Like It)” as the first track uh-huh, uh-huh!

Ok, we’ll now assume that your iTunes library is setup and organized the way you want it. You now need to visit http://www.simplifymedia.com and download the client. The SimplifyMedia client is free and supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and the iPhone/iPod Touch platforms. While installing the application you’ll be prompted to either sign-in to your account or create a new one. If this is your first time, create an account with a username and password you’ll remember. After installing, you’ll see the SimplifyMedia client running in your task tray. Don’t worry, it’s very lightweight and won’t slow your system down.

You are now ready to access your music on your other computers. You will need to have iTunes and the SimplifyMedia client installed on the other computers as well (but not your music, that’s the step we’re eliminating). Make sure you use the same SimplifyMedia account you created on the computer hosting your music. When you launch iTunes on the remote computer, you should see your SimplifyMedia user name and host computer’s name under the “Shared” heading in the left column in iTunes. If you don’t it could be that the host computer isn’t on, asleep, or not online.

Now, assuming everything is online and you see your host computer in the left column, click your shared computer’s entry. This will connect you to your host computer’s iTunes library. After connecting you can expand the entry and see all of your tracks and playlists, including “Secret 70s Disco.” Can you dig it?!?!

More hands-on? Watch my demo video:

BONUS TIP: – Cameroid!

Are you a Windows user and jealous of the Mac’s Photo Booth application which morphs your face into all kinds of craziness? You too can now join the party at http://cameroid.com. Cameroid is a flash-based application built directly into their site. Simply connect your webcam and start shooting. You can frame your face, become the Roaming Gnome’s cousin (my personal favorite), or completely distort yourself beyond all recognition. Now if only the UR One Card office would use this…

Enjoy your weekend!

Tip for Jan. 16, 2009: Your Favorite Firefox Add-ons and Bonus Video

Good Friday afternoon everyone!

To continue the discussion from last week I’m including some of the feedback I received about your favorite FireFox add-ons, here are some of the tools your colleagues are using:

• Carrie said “The Firefox add-in I could not live without is the U of R catalog search tool. LOVE IT. I use it daily.”

• Scott said “My favorite Firefox add-on is Adblock Plus. I use Yahoo Mail and Hotmail for personal stuff, and this add-on blocks most of the annoying advertisements on those sites.”

• Anna said “I have many more, but these are the Firefox extensions that are essential to contributing to my productivity: Adblock Plus, Better Gmail 2, Better Greader, Delicious Bookmarks, Java Quick Starter, Meebo, Read it Later, Remember The Milk for Gmail, Screen grab, and Tab Mix Plus.”

All of these add-ons (except Carrie’s) can be found via the Add-On tool built into Firefox (Tools -> Add-ons) in the menu bar. To try the U of R catalog plug-in visit the library homepage and on the right column under Quicklinks you’ll see “Library Catalog Plug-In.” After you click it you’ll be prompted to add the search tool to the search box (top right corner of your browser, which normally defaults to Google). After installing you can search the catalog by changing the search engine to “University of Richmond Library Catalog” and your query will be execute in the catalog system. If you’re not a regular Firefox user, did you try it out this past week? If so let me know about your experience!

To conclude today’s tip, I want to share an excellent short video that came across the “tubes” last week. It’s an animated story of how the Internet as we know it came into being. It’s simple, but has enough depth to keep it intriguing. As with everything in our lives, it’s often difficult to appreciate the present without understanding the past.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Have a good weekend! – Andy

Tip for Jan. 9, 2009 – Release the Fox(es)!

Happy 2009! Every New Year’s day we each plans to “do better this year.” This year I want to challenge you do two things. First, develop a true understanding of the open source software movement. It is massive and will only continue to flourish as more people look for reliable, affordable (often free) software and services to enhance their productivity. Second, you need MUST make FireFox your default browser. If you find that request daunting, then give FireFox one month, if it truly doesn’t meet your needs, then you’re free to go back to that other browser! You may be asking “Why Firefox, wasn’t that a Clint Eastwood movie?” Why yes, it was! Cold War movies aside, the Firefox I’m referring to is the open source browser from Mozilla, a spin-off from the former Netscape group. Anyway, enough of trivial things like history, let me cut to the chase to ensure that Friday TechTips remains laser focused:

• Open source: Firefox is an open source browser, which means the underlying code is open for all to see. Here, take a peek!  The code can also be re-purposed for new projects or changed to enhance functionality. There’s even another browser based on Firefox: Flock.
• Security: Since the code is open, everyone can examine it for flaws, bugs, and weaknesses which might expose your system to nefarious scoundrels wanting to add your computer to their “bot network.” Firefox, while not perfect and has had to patch its share of vulnerabilities, may provide you with an extra layer of protection in the theory that there are more eyes examining the code and can report problems to the community. There’s also the simple fact that it’s still more productive for hackers to target IE as it still has around 70% of the browser market. Did the IE flaw found in December rattle you? It did me. Your computer could be infected just by visiting a malicious site, which is a rapidly rising goal among nefarious scoundrels.
• Expansion (my favorite): by utilizing open code, Mozilla has made it very easy for developers to make useful and fun widgets to expand Firefox’s abilities. Think of Firefox as your swiss army knife! The add-ons include simple things like ForecastFox, a weather toolbar that unobtrusively resides in the menubar which makes checking the weather a virtual breeze, or more complex tools like Web Developer extension which lets webmasters edit CSS code on the fly, etc. Want to browse the add-ons? Watch this video:

Another reason to consider your browser options is that it’s probably your most used application. Studies show that browsers are the no. 1 application on all operating systems. Think about it, when was the last time you sat down at a computer that wasn’t connected to the web. If you’re like me you probably weren’t sure what you were supposed to do with it!

Bonus Tip!

Here’s one for the Macs among us! Google has released a beta version of Picasa for the Mac! I’m very excited about this as it’s one of my favorite applications and is an essential tool for managing any photo collection. I personally find it more useful and offers more features than iPhoto.

Next Week: We’ll continue the theme of exploring open source by looking at other applications. Also do you have a favorite Firefox add-on? Let me know and we will share them with our colleagues!