The Same Page

You no longer need to use the default browser on your Android phone.  You can now download directly from Mozilla the beta version of mobile Firefox (not from the App Market!).   Check out Mozilla’s for more info:

Our first Firefox 4 beta for mobile is now available to download and test. It’s built on the same technology platform as Firefox for the desktop and optimized for browsing on a mobile phone. Firefox beta for mobile comes with many of your favorite Firefox desktop features like Firefox Sync, Add-ons and the Awesome Bar.

https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/beta/

We recently purchased a flat panel TV and wanted to hang it on the wall rather than use the stand that came with the set.  Why hang it on the wall?  Most of all, having it on the wall keeps it away from the little hands of children.  Secondly, there is zero chance of it falling onto the floor.  It can’t get more secure.

The first thing you need to do when hanging a TV is plan.  Where is it going to go? How high should it be off the ground? What will be around the TV?  What will be under the TV?

Where is it going to go?  I had two walls to choose from and picked the wall that would be easiest to run the wires within the wall.  You’ll want a wall you know you can fish wire through the inside of the wall.  Something you may run into is fire-blocking in the wall.  This is a 2×4 about three or four feet horizontal from the floor.  This can put a damper on your fishing expedition.

How high? What’s going to be around and under the TV?  These I needed to answer together.  From what I found shopping at furniture stores, you’ll find that most entertainment centers or credenzas are 24″ to 26″ tall.  I also know that I need to account for the center speaker for the surround sound and front side speakers.  This also meant buying a credenza that was at least 55″ wide (the TV is a 55″ LED TV).  Now for figuring out how high I needed to hang the TV, I added the 24″ for the credenza + 6″ to account for the center speaker + half the height of the TV.  This put the center of the TV at 48″ from the floor.  This put the TV a few inches higher than how high the TV would have been on the stand on the credenza.

As for actually hanging the TV, the wall bracket we purchased came with excellent directions and was generally easy to install.  The only thing I was worried about was getting the ~3″ lag bolts screwed into the center of the studs.  Once the bracket was on the wall, I screwed on the brackets on the TV and my wife and I lifted the TV and slipped it right onto the wall bracket.  Pretty easy.

Now for fishing the wire, I had it easy.  Since the wall I hung the TV on was a wall that was open on the other side, meaning that I had access to the exposed studs (it’s under the stairwell in the finished basement I built).  What I will tell you is to find low voltage single gang boxes for running the video cables.  The local big box hardware stores also stocked the ‘hole’ plates I needed to neatly make a hole in the wall.  One issue I did run into was when I bought a nice fixture that combined the electrical wall outlet and ‘hole’ in the wall.  This unit was designed for TVs with, what I’ll call, “straight” electrical plugs, like those that are common for PC electrical cords.  The electrical outlet was therefore inset into the unit/wall.  Our TV had a flat profile, so I could not plug the TV in.  I had to scrap the fancy combo unit and go with a regular electrical outlet.

Hopefully this will help some of you in installing your TV on your wall.  Good luck!

Being a big user of Microsoft Outlook at my place of employment, I was looking for a way to see only my unread messages in Gmail.  Here’s how to do it:

In Gmail,

1. 1. go to Settings (upper right hand corner):

   

   2. Then click on the “Labs” tab (on the right):

   

   3. Scroll down until you see “Quick Links” and select “Enable”:

   

   4. Remember to scroll back to the top and click “Save Changes”:

                      

   5. In the search box at the top of Gmail, enter “in:inbox in:unread”:

   

   6. Click Search Mail.  You’ll see all of your unread messages.

   7. To save this search, us the Quick Link app you just installed.  You’ll find in on the left side of your Gmail window:

   

   8. Click “Add Quick Link”.  You’ll see a popup like the one below.  You will see that I named my link “Unread Mail”:

9. Click okay when finished.

10. You’ll now see this search in your Quick Links box.  Click it to see all of your unread messages:

I’ve seen a couple stories come across about people like myself that will fill the role of tech support on family holiday visits.  I personally don’t mind at all…am I strange for actually enjoying it?  Don’t get me wrong, I am a guy of many talents with knowing my way around a computer just one of them.  Usually the things I have to work on are slow computers or the work involved around that statement “is used to do <insert computer activity here> before, but now it just <insert unwanted problem here>”.

Part of my sickness when fixing one computer issue is looking for more or an area of improvement.  That’s where one of the posts I came across today fits quite well.  It’s about updating and adding some useful Google and 3rd party software.  Jeffrey Chang writes on the Google Blog:

If you’re unofficial tech support for family this holiday season like I am, one of the things you’ll want to consider is checking that your family is using the latest version of their browser. Why? For me, an up-to-date browser makes a huge difference: not only so that my parents can get to what they need when they’re on the web, quickly and easily — whether they’re writing email, viewing photo albums online, reading cross-stitching blogs or checking the weather in Chicago — but also so that I can rest assured that they’ll be browsing the web more safely and securely with the latest version of the browser with security updates.

Check out his full post here to get Google Pack, a one-stop shop for some basic apps to install.

Happy Holidays!

If you’re like me, you tend to visit the same web sites daily or weekly to get new information, whether it’s product news, blog articles or maybe a good web comic strip.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could be notified when these web sites are updated?  Well, you guessed it, there is something out there that will do this for you.  This ‘something’ is called an “RSS Feed”.

What is it?

The newspaper is printed everyday and is typically available for purchase early in the morning.  You could always check the newsstand every morning for the latest copy.  Or a better option is to have someone deliver the news right to your door.  All you need to do is check your driveway for the latest edition. 

An RSS feed basically is like a subscription to a newspaper.  The information is delivered to you without any effort on your part.  And like a subscription to a newspaper where you have to setup a subscription, the same goes for RSS feeds. 

To subscribe, I use Google Reader.  I’ve tried others and I like this service because I can see my RSS feed subscriptions anywhere.  For an easier option, you can easily subscribe to feeds if you are using Internet Explorer 7 or above.  I’ll show you how to subscribe to the feed on this site:

How To:

Assuming you are using Internet Explorer,

1.  On the right hand side of the page, you’ll see the RSS icon

2.  Now left click on the icon

3.  You’ll be taken to a new page that looks like this:

6.  Next, click on the link

7.  A window will pop-up:

6.  Click the Subscribe button.

7.  To see your new subscription, click the Favorites icon in Internet Explorer

8.  And select the Feeds tab

If you click on the feed link, you’ll see my website stories in the browser.

A couple weeks ago,  I had a client that had a problem with his computer. It would not start up.  It had power, but he couldn’t get into Windows.  Turned out the hard drive was failing, so I had to replace it.  Luckily he didn’t have any vital information on his computer, so saving important files, music or photos wasn’t an issue.  I replaced the drive, reinstalled Windows and life was good.

Not a week later, I get an email from the same client telling me about an anti-virus window that popped up on his computer.  He ran the scan and of course, it found an infection.  However, the virus could not be cleaned until he bought a license for the anti-virus software.  The thing is, I installed anti-virus software and this window that popped up was not from the software I installed.  What my client saw was actually a tricky popup that is a virus.

In this same email was the question “Am I protected or what?”

Right now, there is nothing to prevent you from clicking your mouse on a fake anti-virus window.  You really need to read any windows that suddenly pop-up on your computer.  If it doesn’t look familiar, don’t touch it!  If you really don’t know what to do, ask someone.  If no one is around, shut your computer down.  Most likely you came across a website that spreads the infection. 

As far as protection goes, there are a few things you should do to recover from these types of disasters. 

Backup your files

One option is to buy yourself some external storage.  These are hard drives in their own cases that plug into your computer using a USB cable.  Generally there is software that is included with the device that will backup your computer files.  You will need to do a little work to pick what you would like to have backed up, but the time spent up front will save you from any future headaches.  Hard drives have moving parts.  They can wear out and there is no telling when this can happen, but it will always happen at the wrong time.

Another option is to use an online service.  There are some free options that give you about 2 gigabytes (GB).  This might be okay for documents, but if you have pictures or videos to save, you’ll need to pay for more storage.  Here is a list of some services:

www.Mozy.com

www.carbonite.com

www.sugarsync.com

Install Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware

There are a couple free options for both of these.  I typically use the free AVG antivirus software.  It runs while you’re using your computer and regularly updates itself.  But I’m switching to the recently released Microsoft Security Essentials software.  It has antivirus and antispyware all in one.  So far it’s working well.  (if you’d like to read more, check out this article on LifeHacker.com

But what is the best way to stay protected? 

• Be careful when surfing the web. 
• Don’t install software that you’re not sure about.
• Be careful of those joke emails with links, movies or files.  It’s okay to not open them even if they are from mom.

Now back to my client.  It has a happy ending.  Windows Vista System Restore Point saved the day! 

Do you have any advice to share?  Please feel free to leave your comments!

I was like most people and said “what in the world would I use Google Voice for?” That was until I signed up for an account and tried it for myself. Let me first begin by telling you what it is.

Google Voice is a service that allows you to assign one or more phone numbers to a single phone number.

That’s it.

I know some people have thought that it is a service that you can use to send or receive calls, like Skype. This is not what it’s made for.

What else does it do?
Voicemail
It allows you to setup a voicemail. Some neat features of the voicemail are that you can setup different greetings based on who is calling. You might want to setup one type of greeting for your family, friends or business clients. When someone does leave you a message, the voicemail can be listened to online or read online. Yep, that says ‘read’. Google Voice does its best to type out what the caller said. From the messages I’ve gotten, it’s not perfect. I’d recommend that you listen to your messages. Another nice thing about when people are leaving you a voicemail, you can listen to is as they are leaving the message. If you decide you want to talk to them, you just hit * and you’re connected!

Contacts
You can customize how Google Voice treats callers by using settings in your contact list. You can create groups with specific settings or you can setup Voice for individual contacts. For example, I have a group called ‘Friends and Family’. Voice will ring my mobile and work phones at the same time without prompting the caller with the default system greeting.   Ringing both phones at the same time almost guarantees that you’re going to reach me no matter if I’m at my desk or out to lunch.  Alternatively, you can setup calls to go directly to voicemail each time, treat them as spam (which puts their voicemail into a spam folder), or block the caller (in which the caller will hear a ‘number not in service’ message).

Texting
Google Voice allows you to receive and send text messages. You can send them from your phone of from the Google Voice website. All of your messages are saved online.

Okay, that all sounds great, but what is this good for? Here is what I like about it. It frees me from having to hand out ten different phone numbers for people to contact me. I can also switch mobile phone numbers when my contract ends without worrying about getting a new number to give to all of my friends, family and business contacts. And since my mobile phone is my main phone, this means less updating of records (like for banks, the electric company, business cards or letterhead) that I have to do.

I could also add more numbers to my Google Voice number. For example, I might be staying at my mom’s house for the weekend. I might want to add her home phone number to my Voice service and have calls directed to her phone temporarily.

I also like that I can setup how Voice treats each caller or a group of callers. I can send calls directly to multiple phones all at once or I can send calls from people I don’t know right to voicemail. And if I don’t have my phone on me and I am near a computer, I can still check my messages. So far I’m a big fan of the service and I hope to see more people use it.

There is so much more that this service can do. I know I’m leaving a lot out and I encourage you to check it our for yourself. Once you get an account, the help section tells about so much more that it can do.

If you’d like to find out more and request an invitation for an account, visit www.google.com/voice

I recently found that I assume everyone knows everything they would ever need to know about Google’s email application Gmail. I also admit I don’t know every little detail of what this little gem is capable of.  This was only after I read an article that showed an undocumented trick for replying to messages. My response, to myself, of course, was “huh? Would you look at that??”

My recent epiphany came a few weeks ago when I was talking to my mother-in-law about organizing emails. She wanted to create multiple email accounts for different purposes. I suggested that this could work and you could use Gmail to organize all of this for you.  I suggest she use labels and she would only need to login to one account. She then asked me about labels, which now brings me to this post.

If you’re not using labels in Gmail by now, you should be. This is assuming that you have a Gmail account ( go to http://mail.google.com/mail/signup for an account). Gmail does not have the folder concept like most people are used to. At first, this might seem like a bad idea, but let me ask you this before your “no-folder snobbery” takes over: remember that one time that you were looking for that one email and you had a really hard time finding it? If you’re a user of Microsoft’s Outlook or Express, you know what I’m talking about.

What’s so great about labels? Simply put, you can assign multiple labels to one email. Let’s say you get an email from Bob in Marketing giving you vital Project information for your client in Pittsburg.  The information is project Links, Contact information, and Deadlines. For this one message, you could assign labels: Bob in Marketing, Pittsburg Client, Project, Contacts, and Deadlines. Think about how much easier this would be to find later. The idea is to label your message with multiple labels so you have many names to choose from when you are hunting for the message later. You might remember “Pittsburg Client” and forget the rest, but that’s okay! You’re going to find your email! In a folder system, you move the file from your inbox to ONE folder and you’re done. Hopefully it’s the right one!

Another way to use labels is to use them in conjunction with an email filter (I’ll have to cover filers in a separate post). You can tell Gmail to add a label to messages from certain people or subject headings just to name a few. I have a label called “Family” that labels all my emails from my mom, wife, or other relatives.
In Gmail, all of your labels are listed on the left side of your inbox. All you need to do is click on one label to see all the messages in that label.

How to do it:
First, create a label. I will create one called “test”. In the Inbox, click on Labels then Manage labels:

You’ll be taken to the Settings screen. You’ll see a section called “Labels” and a box asking for a new label. I will enter “test” and click Create.

You will now see it in the list below:

To get out of here, click on the Inbox link:

Now to assign it to a message, there are a couple ways to do this.

• Option one: Select the message by putting a check mark next to it. Click the Labels button and select “test”.
• Option two: With a message open, click the Labels button and select “test”.
• Option three: automatically using a filter (I will cover in a separate post).

Well, that’s it for now. Hopefully this will get you started in your new way to organize your email!

Tags: gmail, label

The need to share files is growing. You have a file that you’d like to share with a colleague or client and the first way to do this that comes to mind is to email it. We seem to email everything, but sometimes this isn’t the best method to send files. There are a couple reasons why this is a bad idea.

1. Size – not everyone has an unlimited amount of space to save files. In the large company I’m currently working for, the employees are limited to 100MB of space. I often get warnings that my inbox is over the size limit and conveniently the Outlook removes my ability to send emails as punishment until I delete or move the big emails out of my inbox. This is always caused be the big Excel and Word documents people are sending, myself included.
2. Can’t update the file – once you send the file over email, you can’t change it. I am often reading documents after I send them to clients and I see things that I need to change. I also have clients asking me to change documents that I send to them. Once I change them, I have to resend the doc out to all the clients. Do this a few times and I even get confused as to which email has the correct copy. Was it last Wednesday’s copy? Which one? The 11:00am copy or the 3:15pm copy?  Not to worry. There are services available that help with these issues and they do it quite well. Best of all, they have a free option. Although there are quite a few of these services available, I’m only going to mention a couple of the more popular services. Both services offer the ability to publically share files or select people individually (by email address). They also allow you to insert the link to the file right into your email message. NO MORE NEEDING TO SEND MONSTER FILES TO CLIENTS OR COWORKERS!!!!

www.dropbox.com
Overall the service is easy to use. The free service gives you 2 GB of space. This should hold a large number of documents and photos that you would like to share. If that isn’t enough space for you, they do offer a paid service that will give you more room to work with (50GB for $9.99/mo, 100GB for $19.99/mo). You can access or upload your files either online or through a downloadable program that runs locally on your PC. What’s slick about the local installation of this software is that for any of your computers it’s installed on, files that you copy to the Dropbox folder on one PC, it automatically syncs to the other computers. It’s also available on the web, which is nice when you need those chocolate chip recipes while you are traveling.

www.box.net

Another easy to use file sharing system is Box.net. Compared to Dropbox, the free service only gives you 1GB of space. They also have a paid for service and different tiers of costs based on your needs. There are a couple things that I like about this service over Dropbox is that it does not have a local installation and it has collaboration. Collaboration on files is great! Why? This lets you people you select actively work on a file or files. For example, let’s say you have a proposal you and your team are working on for a client. You might be able to create the initial document, but you need Angela’s input on the price quote. She can open the file and make the updates for everyone to see. You might then need some input from Dwight on the sales figures. Box.net lets you attach tasks onto the file, so you can add an “update file” task, fill in the task details and enter Dwight’s email to assign the task to him. Instead of the document being a static shared document, now it’s an interactive document between team members. Isn’t this much better than sending files back and forth over email?

I’d recommend checking out both services for yourself and see which one fits your needs the best. Either way, people will thank you for saving their email disk space.