Monday, December 31, 2007

Back from vacation

Greetings all - for those of you looking for the Monday morning computer tip, it is just below this post. My family and I have just returned from two weeks in Cuenca, Ecuador, spending the Christmas holiday with family and friends. It was fantastic!

Allow a pop-up window - just this once!

It is now common for most users to have pop-up windows blocked for most websites. I recall those days of trying to view the content of a site, only to have a bunch of annoying ads sprouting in the middle of the screen, all trying to get my attention. These days, all of the major web browsers have pop-up blockers turned on automatically so you don't have to be bothered with those ads.

However, there are some sites that use pop-up windows legitimately for their content. For those, you actually WANT the new little window to open in front of the main window. How do you do that? There are a couple of ways.

First, if you visit that particular website regularly and trust it, you can just enable pop-up windows to work on that site all the time. This would be a setting in your browser options (usually under Tools - Options).

The other option is if you are visiting a site for the first time, and you click a link, and nothing happens. Or, you get a message that says "Please disable your pop-up blocker in order to view all content" or something similar. In this case, just hold down the CTRL button on your keyboard and then click the same link again. The CTRL button just temporarily disables the pop-up blocker for that one click, so that you can see what the website is trying to display.

This week's video is a clip from Fenway Park in Boston. This particular day was Disability Awareness Day, and the National Anthem was sung by a man with autism. When he got nervous, the crowd rallied in support and helped him out.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

No posts for a couple of weeks



For those of you that subscribe to my newsletter that links to this blog, I wanted to let you know that I will be taking a few weeks off for the holidays. Next newsletter and blog post will be on Monday, December 31, 2007.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Follow-up to Gmail recommendation

Last week I talked about using Gmail as your primary email account (for more details, just see my last blog entry - below).

When I work on a Gmail user's computer, one thing that I often see is that the Gmail website inbox has hundreds or thousands of emails just sitting there. What a mess! The reason for this is that Gmail does not offer the use of folders like other email services. Instead, they allow you to "label" an email (that's a subject for another tip, another day).

There is a quick, easy solution to cleaning up your Gmail inbox - and it doesn't involve losing or deleting any of your emails:

1. Click the link that says "Select all"
2. Click the new link that says "Select all ### conversations in Inbox" (where ### is the number of emails in the Inbox)
3. Now that all Inbox emails have been selected, click the "Archive" button and then click Yes on the "Do you want to continue" question.

Now you will see that your inbox is completely empty. If you want to see all of the emails that were just there a minute ago, you can always do that by clicking the "All Mail" link on the left side.

Note: the above procedure only applies when you are looking at the web-based version of Gmail (at www.gmail.com). If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express, you can clean up your inbox by placing those emails in a folder or folders of your choice.

This week's video - a boxer having trouble getting into (and out of) the ring

Monday, December 3, 2007

Choose your new email address carefully!

Lately, I have been getting several emails from my clients to advise me that they have a new email address. This is because high-speed internet is becoming more and more widely available. Obviously a higher speed for your internet connection is always desirable.

However, there is another factor to consider. With your new internet provider comes a new email address. Should you use this as your primary email address? In my opinion, no.

Here's why not: How many internet providers have you had in your lifetime so far? For me, I just counted 7. No matter how much you like your current provider, the chances are very good that they are not going to be your internet provider for the rest of your life. Why would you want to go through the hassle of changing email addresses every time you change your internet provider? Why not just get one email address and use it for life?

Another reason is that most of the spam filters that I have seen for email accounts that are provided by an ISP are not very good. You will miss some email because your internet provider's computer thought it was spam, and you will also get some spam in your email inbox.

What I recommend is to get an account (or multiple accounts) with Gmail - Google's free email service. Some reasons why:

1. You have this email address for life. It doesn't matter who your internet provider is. It doesn't even matter if you are using your own computer - you can get your email from any computer with internet access.

2. You can automatically have your emails come in through Outlook or Outlook Express, if you want (Yahoo charges $20 per year just for that service, last time I checked).

3. Gmail gives you a ton of service space - so you can store all your email there, instead of taking up space on your computer.

4. Computer crash? No problem as far as email is concerned - your emails can all be stored on the Gmail server, so nothing was lost.

5. The Gmail spam filters are very good - it is quite rare that I find a spam email in my inbox.

So next time you change internet providers, don't automatically go for the one they offer you - instead, get one with a lot more features. In fact, get several if you want - Gmail accounts are all free.

This week's video
is one I may have posted before, but I don't recall. It is a clip of the Human Slinky.