TechLoaf.blog (Entries tagged as lifehacks)

Ubuntu Linux Experience

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:54:39 -0700

Ok, lately I've been playing around a LOT with Linux. I have a Gateway MX7118 that I use as my main computer. In the past few weeks I have reloaded it several times going back and forth between Linux and Windows Media Center. I have also used VMWARE to run a virtual version of both. I have really settled with UBUNTU. It's easy to load and there is a lot of documentation available on their forums.

Linux isn't always the easiest OS to work with. It really stinks in the area of wireless networking, but that is coming along too though. But, it is an amazing OS. It's ultra stable. There are thousands of free apps available. Overall, this has been a great experience for me.

I'll be blogging about my experience in the near future.

Convergence: Bringing your Voicemail, SMS, Email, and Desktop TOGETHER!

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:59:00 -0700

I found an AMAZING service this week. It allows anyone to bring their SMS, Email, Voicemail all together. You can access your voicemail from your desktop! It's called CALLWAVE. Here is how it works:

1) You Sign up for their FREE service. They help you replace your
current voicemail, which comes through your provider, with their free
voicemail service. They help you set up your voicemail message and
other options.

2) You tell them your email address.

3) Your Done!

Now, when you get a voicemail, several things happen. First, a text
is sent to you to notify you of the voicemail. At the same time, an
email is sent to you. Of course, the voicemail is saved on their system.

Once you get a voicemail, you can deal with it in two ways. You can
get your voicemail through a phone. No big deal. You already could do
that. The cool new way is through the email
notification that was sent to you. Open the email, click on the link to
your voicemail. Your message's caller ID info will be displayed, and
the voicemail will play in your browser! Once you listen to it, either
close the window and the message will be saved, or you can just delete
the message. You can even update the caller ID info so you have more
info the next time the person calls. If they called from a mobile
phone, you can text them a reply! It's pretty sweet.

You can get CALLWAVE here.

UPDATE: The service uses a Nevada number for voicemail retrieval. Be
sure you can call to that state toll free and that you have enough text
messages on your plan to cover the extra texts that will be sent to you.

Six Reasons Why Gmail is Better than Yahoo Mail

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:36:00 -0700

I must say that I write this article with a twinge of guilt. Yahoo was my first search engine. Yahoo Mail was my first permanent online email account. I have a twinge of guilt because Yahoo Mail has always been there for me. But, times have changed. A new mail program has come into my life and let me tell you, it has swept me off my feet. Well, it has for now at least. You see, Yahoo is web 1.0 in many ways, but Gmail stereotypifies all that is web 2.0. One day, most likely, there will be a web 3.0 mail client and I will run to it. But for now, Gmail is the one I love.

For the uninitiated, I want to write about why Gmail is better than Yahoo Mail (YM). I'll tell you, the differences are huge. Here we go...

1) Gmail is more streamlined than Yahoo Mail - Gmail has a cleaner,
simpler interface. Gmail has AJAX technology built in, so new mail
comes and the whole page does not have to load. But it is still
cleaner. It's even cleaner than the old YM interface. I really do not
like the new YM interface. It is just so bulky.

2) Gmail has a
better spam filter than Yahoo Mail - I get hundreds of spam emails
everyday. My Gmail box will get a few spams a month in it. My Yahoo box
gets at least 10 a day in it. Enough said. You can read more about
Gmail and spam in my article about how to deal with spam here.

3)
Gmail allows forwarding AND pop email access for FREE - What a great
feature. I recently asked YM if they were going to allow free pop
access like Gmail and I received a rude 'no' from the customer service
rep. That was the nail in the coffin for me leaving YM!

4) Gmail
has more storage space than Yahoo Mail - When Gmail first came out with
1GB of space, I was only allowed 25MB with my YM account. Gmail now
STARTS with 2GB and goes up from there. I am at 2.8GB right now. My YM
account only allows 1GB.

5) Gmail has a better search function
than Yahoo! Mail - I hate to sound harsh, but sheesh, what a sorry
search interface YM has! They are the original major search company.
They should have it down by now. The Gmail search interface is simple,
intuitive, and effective.

6) Gmail has a better PDA interface
than Yahoo Mail - This was what made me decide to switch to Gmail in
the first place. To their credit, Yahoo was one of the first companies
to have a wap (cell phone compatible) page. But, that interface has
HARDLY changed in five years! So now, with Yahoo, you have two choices,
'wap' and adavanced html. I have a Windows Mobile 5.0 pocket pc phone.
With Yahoo, I can only use their wap page. Gmail has an intermediate
page they call 'basic html.' It works great on my PDA phone and has
many of the features found in the regular Gmail interface.

I hope you find this helpful!
Randy

This article is part of 'Gmail Week,' February 26-March 3, 2007

Four Ways Gmail Can Simplify Your Life

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:49:00 -0700

Sometimes people overlook how Gmail can actually SIMPLIFY their life. The truth is IT CAN! Gmail is amazing. I use it everyday to simplify my life. It's more than just an email program. You can use it to:

1) REDUCE YOUR SPAM TO ALMOST NOTHING - I wrote about this earlier this week. It's amazing how simple and cheap it is to use Gmail to eliminate your spam.

2)
READ ALL OF YOUR EMAIL IN ONE LOCATION - Gmail is innovative in
multiple ways. This is one of my favorites. Properly configured, I can
use Gmail as a tool to read ALL of my emails from my many different
accounts. My post about spam also tells how to set up Gmail for all of your email acounts.

3)
PERMANTLY STORE ALL OF YOUR EMAIL ONLINE - Gmail is setup to deliver
ads to you based on the content of your emails. This is all done
mechanically so it is not an invasion of privacy. The more emails you
store the better ads Gmail can serve up. To encourage this, they offer
an ample 2GB of email storage space. It grows the longer you stay with
Gmail. I'm at 2.8GB with my main account! The advantage for us is that
we can archive ALL of our email, thus safely storing it forever. Very
nice feature.

4) STORE NEEDED FILES, PERMANENTLY OR TEMPORARILY
- I use my Gmail account as a storage facility almost everyday. I do
that by emailing files to myself. For example, I keep a list of
articles I want to write for my blog. After I edit the list, I email it
to myself at my Gmail account. Then I archive the email, saving the
file forever. I've used this method to safely store files, transfer
files, and move files for a temporary purpose. Having Gmail really
helps me in this way.

I hope you find this helpful!
Randy

This article is part of 'Gmail Week,' February 26-March 3, 2007

How to Rid Your Life of Spam NOW!

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:18:53 -0700

There are tons of awesome uses for Gmail. One of the best uses for Gmail is to rid your life of SPAM! Billions of emails are sent out as spam every year. Soon that figure will be everyday. Countless millions of dollars in productivity are wasted by workers around the world as we wade through the piles of spam. Most people just get a new email address when the spam gets too bad. Others spend money for solutions such as Choicemail. Gmail allows you to keep your old address (in most cases) AND get rid of spam, all for FREE!

Here’s how to rid your life of spam...

1) SET UP A GMAIL ADDRESS FOR NON-PERSONAL USE – Since Gmail is free,
you can set up as many accounts as you need. So you’ll need to get a
Gmail address that is ONLY for non-personal transactions such as
ordering stuff online, signing up for services, etc. Do not give this
email out for personal correspondence. You might be thinking, I can do
this with ANY email address, can’t I? Yes, that is true, but eventually
you will be overloaded with spam. Gmail has an incredible spam filter
so when the spam comes, Gmail will handle most of it. By most, I mean
99.99%.

Here’s another advantage to using Gmail: Gmail NEVER
loads images in emails unless you tell it to. Spammers use images to
verify that you are real. Once they do, they will spam the heck out of
you. Gmail protects you by never loading the image. Right now, my Yahoo
mailbox is full of spam partially because this feature is turned off by
default in Yahoo.

2) SET UP ANOTHER GMAIL ADDRESS FOR PERSONAL
USE – You can send an invite to yourself from your non-personal Gmail
address. Once you get this address set up, ONLY use it in cases where
you know the other party involved will not give it away to spammers.

3)
USE GMAIL TO ACCESS YOUR NON-GMAIL ACCOUNTS – If you are like me, you
have several email addresses that you use. If the accounts come with a
FORWARDING feature or a POP ACCESS feature, then you are in luck! Using
your personal Gmail address, Go to the ‘Settings’ page, then to
‘Accounts.’ From that page, you can set up all of your emails to be
accessed through Gmail. When you do this, Gmail will run every email
you get through their spam filter! Also, you can tell Gmail to reply to
every email you get using the email address it was sent to!

For
example, say some sends you an email to your address at
mail@yourdomain.com. Gmail would retrieve the email and put it in your
inbox (assuming it’s not spam). You see the email and reply to it.
Gmail would automatically put mail@yourdomain.com as the ‘reply to’
address. It’s totally seamless.

If you like, you can have
your non-personal Gmail address forwarded to your personal account.
That way, all of your mail is coming together in one place, almost
totally spam-free! Don’t worry about running out of space. Gmail starts
with 2gb of space and GROWS as you use it. My main Gmail account has
2.8GB of space available as we speak!

I hope you find this helpful. I hope you are successful in ridding your life of spam!

This article is part of 'Gmail Week,' February 26-March 3, 2007

GMAIL Week! February 26-March 3, 2007

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:24:22 -0700

I am really enamored by anything Google does. It's sad, but they have earned their reputation with me. Gmail is especially awesome. So this week, I am dedicating the entire week to Gmail. And no, I do not work for Gmail! Enjoy!

Post 1 How to Rid Your Life of Spam NOW!

Post 2 Four Ways Gmail Can Simplify Your Life

Post 3 Six Reasons Why Gmail is Better Than Yahoo Mail

Post 4 TAGS! TAGS! TAGS! One Improvement Gmail Really Needs

Post 5 Making Gmail's Organizational System Work For You

Post 6 How to Use Gmail for non-Gmail email addresses

Five "Must Have" Extensions for Firefox

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:26:00 -0700

I have grown to LOVE the Firefox browser. When I made the switch from Internet Explorer it was mostly because of the memory problems that I was having with IE. But once I switched I never looked back.

I now rely on several Firefox extensions to make my surfing more fun, productive, and enjoyable. So here they are, five "must have" extensions for Firefox:

1) IE Tab
- This is one of those programs that makes the switch to Firefox a
NO-BRAINER. Why? Because there are some sites that you HAVE to use IE
for them to load correctly. When you reach one of those troublesome,
non-standards compliant sites just click the little IE tab icon at the
bottom of your browser and BAM!... IE loads inside of Firefox. The
whole deal is about 166k! From their website: "IE Tab - an extension
from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of
Mozilla/Firefox. This is a great tool for web developers, since you can
easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and
then switch back to Firefox."

2) Forecast Fox
- Ok, i admit it. I'm a weather junkie. I really don't know why. This
amazing little extension puts the weather in the bottom of your browser
for you to see it. You can even hold the mouse over a little icon and a
radar map for your area will pop up. Sweet. From their website: "Get
international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in
any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive
extension."

3) FireFTP
- FireFTP is an FTP program that runs in your browser! If you are like
me, you need an ftp program on occasion. This extension lets you do
your ftp'ing as simple as can be. From their website: "FireFTP is a
free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which
provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. Along with
transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes
more advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing
directories while navigating, SSL encryption, file hashing, and much
more!"

4) Del.icio.us Extension
- This cool little extension lets you tag a site to your favorites
without leaving the site! I really do not know how I survived life
before Del.icio.us and this extension makes that even more true for me.

5) FasterFox
- Firefox is already fast, but this little extension lets you speed up
your Firefox experience EVEN MORE. From their website: "Performance and
network tweaks for Firefox. Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network
and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining,
cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay."

How I recovered my BIOS from a nasty virus

nospam@example.com (Randy Bryan) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:24:00 -0700

Recently, a good friend gave me a nice HP computer. It had been infected by a virus that screwed up the BIOS! It would not boot up. Most of the time I could not even get into the BIOS set-up. My computer was really messed up! He told me that 3 other computer technichians had attempted to fix it to no avail. So it sounded like a great project to work on. I unwind from my real job by “fixing” computers, reloading ROMs in my routers, and stuff like that. So I though I would give it a shot… and it worked! Here is what worked for me…

First, using a working computer, I downloaded a copy of the latest BIOS
update from HP’s website. I copied the file onto an extra hard drive.
Then, I shut down the computer and removed the extra hard drive and put
it into the broken computer.

I was unable to boot correctly to
run the DOS-based BIOS upgrade. So I booted up the computer using my
Ultimate Boot CD. This CD is a “must have” for anyone who works with
PC’s. My thinking was that I would use the “FreeDOS” on the Ultimate
Boot CD to load the BIOS upgrade. So I booted into FreeDos and loaded
the ROM upgrade. I though it worked correctly, so I rebooted the
computer.

But the computer would not reboot! It was totally
fried. I was so disappointed. I thought the computer was finally gone
for good. Then, in a moment of inspiration I tried to boot to a floppy
and it worked! So I tried the BIOS upgrade again. It seemed to work so
I held my breath and restarted the machine… after a few seconds it
booted up! That was about three weeks ago and the computer has not
messed up since!

As I thought about what happened and why it
worked, here is what I came up with: The FreeDOS load of the BIOS was
somehow screwed up. Normally, that would be really bad. But it was good
in this case because it disabled the virus! Then, when I came back with
a floppy the BIOS update was able to load correctly. And that’s how I
was unable to recover a hopeless BIOS from a nasty virus.