Some goodies spotted

1. Are you annoying at having to register on a free web site just to read some news or view some information? Here is a simple method to get access to protected content without need to endure the annoyance of signing up for an account.
2. Restart Windows without restarting your computer. The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart. Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over the right arrow that is to the right of the padlock icon until the pop-up menu appears that contains “restart” as one of it’s choices. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “restart” choice. Windows XP: Select Start. Select “Shut Down…”. Change the drop-down combo box under “What do you want the computer to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.
3. 15 coolest Firefox tricks. Browser Firefox is great right out of the box. And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, it just gets better and better. But look under the hood, and there are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser, writes Leo Babauta. Make it faster, cooler, more efficient. Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.
4. Carry an entire operating system in your pocket. Scott Dunn says that running applications from a USB flash drive on a public computer is convenient but exposes you to malware and other limitations of the host PC. By installing a Windows-like version of Linux on a flash drive, you can take a complete operating system wherever you go and work in a safe, secure environment, even in an Internet café.

Goodies from the past week

It's back in harness at the desk, and here are a few goodies noted around the traps:
1. Create a Flash-based website. Most websites are constructed using a mark-up language called html, which while not as complicated as computer programming still takes a bit of learning, even for the basics. Wix aims to bypass that, and let you construct a free website just by dragging and dropping elements.
2. Web conferencing. More and more organisations are using web conferencing (sometimes called webinars) to keep their members in touch, especially if they are scattered geographically. How do you go about it? Dimdim is one answer.
3. Online collaboration is another way to get things done. Glasscubes is a new online system allowing you to do that free of charge.
4. Unstick "stuck" applications. One of the frustrations of computers is a programme that refuses to quit no matter how hard you try to close it down. Jessica Dolcourt at CNet has a solution.
5. Automatically refresh Firefox tabs. I would love some of my tabs to refresh automatically, for instance when I am bidding on TradeMe, or following breaking news on Stuff or the NZ Herald. Thankfully, there is a handy Firefox extension called ReloadEvery, which can automatically reload a browser tab at designated intervals.
6. The Greatest Windows Tips of All Time. "If you don't know every one of these 26 classic tricks, utilities, and shortcuts for XP, Vista, or Windows 7, you're not getting your money's worth out of Windows," writes Patrick Miller at PCWorld.
7. Compress PNG format photos. PNG (pronounced "Ping") is becoming an increasingly popular format for photos, largely because you can have transparent areas, which is a boon for graphic and web designers. But the file sizes are much bigger than JPG pics. Fortunately, tools are available to compress a PNG image without losing quality, and PNGGauntlet is an easy-to-use one. You can choose levels of compression,but be aware that the higher the compression, the slower the processing time. If you don't like PNGGauntlet, an alternative is PunyPNG.
8. Email attachment reminder. I constantly forget to attach a document when I email. So here's a great face-saver if you use Thunderbird - Attachment Reminder. It pops up when you hit the Send button if it thinks you have omitted to add your file to the email.
9. Bigger thumbnails in Google's image search. The default setting for Google image search produces pretty tiny thumbnails, but there's a very simple way to enlarge them. Hold down the Control key, rotate the scroll wheel away from you, and bingo! the thumbnails increase in size.

View two Word documents at once

Here's a helpful tip that lets you view two Word documents side-by-side without using the Document Compare function. "In other words, the documents aren’t compared and marked up as with Doc Compare—they are laid out side-by-side so you can do a visual check of them. And you can synchronize the scrolling of the documents too so that you don’t have to change focus or jump between each one as you work through them."

Some Christmas goodies

With holidays looming, this will probably be the last last posting for 2009, as a major work project around the house beckons over the next couple of weeks. To tide you over, here are a few gleanings...
Have you ever wished for a magic wand that could make annoying Windows problems disappear? Like, say, a missing Recycle Bin icon, or those pesky Runtime Error messages in Internet Explorer? FixWin is that magic wand. This ingenious free utility requires just over 500KB of space, runs without installation, and quickly fixes 50 different Windows glitches--many of which would normally require a trip to the Registry. These are divided among five categories, including Windows Explorer, Internet & Connectivity, and System Tools.
Have you been looking for a quick and easy way to take partial or full screenshots of a webpage in Firefox? Now you can have either type with just a couple of clicks using the Abduction! extension for Firefox. (Instructions courtesy of the HowTo Geek).
And here's a way to add a built-in QuickNote function to Firefox.
Locked or restricted PDF files cannot be accessed without a password. If you want to remove passwords of protected PDF files, Try PDF password remover. It can be used to remove passwords and restrictions of locked PDF files. This is a Christmas special giveaway from PCsPlace.
And finally, Sean Silverthorne at Harvard Business writes on how information overload is an addiction:

We’ve discussed in this space the many methods available for controlling information overload. Scheduling meetings with yourself. Setting up action folders. Checking e-mail just a few times a day. You know the tips.
So you’ve conquered info overload, right? You always have a plan, a schedule, a process for getting things done.
No, of course not. Tom Davenport writes on Harvard Business Publishing that if we wanted to tame this problem we would have done so. It’s not that we enjoy 24/7 availability, but rather we hunger for what it brings us. Davenport doesn’t use the analogy, but I will:
We want to kick the drug, but we like the rush too much.

Have a great Christmas and be back early next year.

Pimp your browser

"Thanks to online video, Web apps, social networking, and so on, the humble Web browser is being pushed to do more and to do it faster," writes Chris Brandrick in PC World. With a few simple tweaks and tools, you can improve your browsing experience and save yourself some time in the process.

Duplicate tabs in Firefox, IE

Sometimes you want to duplicate a tab in your favourite browser. Here's a very simple means to do it.
1. Insert your cursor in the address field at the top of the screen.
2. Press Alt-Enter.
This works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Incidentally, you can use the keyboard command Ctrl-T to create a new blank tab.

Firefox macros

Sometimes when working the web, you have to go through a lot of repetitive actions, like entering long addresses, or going through numerous checks to get to a particular page. DejaClick is a Firefox add-on that aims to automate these tasks. I have been searching for a long time without success to find a good freeware macro recorder. This might be the closest thing around, even though it only works in your browser.

Treat USB drives with care

USB drives (pen drives, flash drives, memory sticks - they have almost as many names as styles) have revolutionised portable media. How many of you still use a floppy disk? And they can carry massive amounts of data, or even bootable operating systems. But as Dave Thompson points out in The Press, they can fail if not handled carefully, potentially leading to as much grief as a failed hard drive.

Privacy is dead

So what's scary? The day when you can quickly point your smartphone at a person in the street and know within seconds that person's name and particulars may not be all that far off.

That's the logical consequence of a new technology called Google Goggles, being run out now by - who else? - Google. At the moment the technology is very much in its infancy, but the promise is that one day you will be able to upload an image - any image - and Google will be able to tell you loads of information about it. So someone will snap my face with their cellphone while I am walking down the street, upload it to Google, and within seconds know who I am and all about me. Think of the power that would give anyone trying to sell you something on the street, for instance; or a Mongrel Mob member who is acting as a none-too-subtle enforcer for a debt-collecting agency; or Inland Revenue agents tracking down payment defaulters; or .......

Best free... firewalls, photo editing

If you are confused about which firewalls to install on your computer, Gizmo has a very helpful article listing the best free utilities available. And also gives some good pointers about how they work.
And seeing it's nearly Christmas, here's a list of 10 free alternatives to Photoshop (a number of them are Mac only, but it's about time the Mac got some attention). Surprisingly, the article does not mention either PhotoFiltre or Photoscape, both of which I would recommend.

Recovering files erased from memory stick

I accidentally erased some files from a memory stick this week. Normally, when you delete files from your hard drive, they reside in the computer's Trash Can until you finally empty the trash. And before that, if you realise you still want them, you can restore the files from there. But files erased from a memory don't go to the Trash in the same way - they are gone. Well, not exactly. A good recovery utility can still get them back. So I tried the free program Recuva, and it did an excellent job. Some of the files were not recoverable, but 90%-95% were, so I'm, a happy chappy again. Incidentally, you can perform the same rescue operation from a digital camera. In both cases, make sure you save the recovered files to a different disk. The Piriform website is also the home of CCleaner, an indispensable anti-spyware utility, and some other goodies worth investigating.

New Thunderbird features

The Thunderbird email program (for some obscure reason in the computer world, email programs are called "clients") has just had a major upgrade. Thunderbird is a stablemate to Firefox, and I use it very successfully at home, so the new features sound welcome. I'll be downloading the new version asap.

Troubleshooting PC problems

I have been having some major hassles with my home computer lately. All of a sudden it has taken to switching itself off in mid-flight, or rebooting randomly, often at quite frequent intervals. I have begun running all the usual checks (spyware, viruses, etc), but so far nothing obvious has shown up. If you're in the position where your technology is refusing to cooperate, you might find this advice from Rick Broida helpful. Don't get mad, he says, get methodical.

Google and Bing leapfrogging

It seems that Google and Bing release new features almost every second week, in a bid to try and establish dominance.
Bing has a new Visual Maps feature, which tries to outdo Google Earth and Google Maps. It's similar to Google Street View, but adds some mash-ups, many of which are more applicable to the USA than here, but no doubt will migrate before long. One particularly clever app is Photosynth, a photo-management tool from Microsoft that stitches together digital images to create "synths" - 3D renderings of multiple photos of the same scene. Bing users can rotate and view the synths from many angles. The more photos supplied by Bing users, the better the 3D effect.
Meanwhile, Google has a released two new features: a dictionary in English and 27 other languages, plus the ability to search in English across websites written in other languages.