Friday, September 18, 2009

Stop Windows from rebooting after automatic updates

One of the annoyances of Windows is a tendency for the computer to reboot after it has installed an automatic update. If it does this while you are away from the computer - maybe you've gone for a coffee, or off to bed - you can lose work in any unsaved documents, or windows you had open have been closed. Very frustrating. Fortunately, the solution is relatively simple, although it differs depending on whether you are running XP or Vista.
Vista: Click Start, type Windows Update, and then hit Enter.
Click the Change Settings option.
Change the setting to "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them."
Click OK.
XP: Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl, and then press Enter.
Click the Automatic Updates tab, and then check "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them."

Opening documents whose programs you don't have

I know Microsoft Publisher is extensively used, often by the office secretary or a club volunteer who is detailed off to produce a staff newsletter or somesuch. But I don't have a copy on either my work or home computer, partly because it no longer comes bundled with Office and partly because while it promises much it delivers very badly, and misbehaves something dreadful every time it goes visiting. My post here explains why. Unfortunately, from time to time documents created in Publisher land on my desk, and then what do I do? One answer is to use the free service Zamzar to convert the document to a format I can open. In fact, Zamzar can take an amazing number of document types - including spreadsheets, music, video, images and PowerPoint type presentations - and change them to formats you can handle. One really helpful one is WordPerfect, which once upon a time used to be king of the word processing world but has been almost completely supplanted by Word. Nonetheless, WordPerfect documents still hit my desk on occasion, and no other program I have will open them. Up to discovering Zamzar, I had to email the sender and ask him/her to resend in an open format such as RTF (Rich Text Format, which any word processor can read).

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Word tips: finding a document path, and hidden text

1) One of the bugbears of Word up to 2003 was difficulty in knowing where documents listed under "Recent items" were located. I frequently store different versions of a document in different locations. Perhaps I should give them separate titles, but there is a method to my madness. However, when I clicked on the File menu, the recent titles would come up but with no indication of their path. The only way to tell was to do a "Save As...", when the dialogue box would show the folder location. Thankfully, that has been corrected in Office 2007. Click on the Office button (very top LH side) and a list of Recent Items pops up. Hover your mouse over an item for a second or two, and it will display the location of the file.
2) Here's a tip on how to hide text or photos in a Word document.
* Select the text or graphic that needs to be hidden.
* Under the ‘Font’ section on the Home tab, click on the small arrow at the right-end corner to open the ‘Font’ dialog box.


* Under the ‘Effects’ section (bottom RH corner), check the box next to ‘Hidden’ and click ‘OK’.
* To make the text visible again, select the whole document by pressing [Ctrl] + [A].
* Then go back to the same options and uncheck the option ‘Hidden’. Your text is back again.
While your data is hidden, all the text closes up, so there are no gaps to give away that something is invisible.

Casualties of technology

With every new technological innovation, an old activity becomes outdated. From heading to the arcade to wearing a calculator watch, here are 40 things either gone or in danger of disappearing.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Google Fast Flip

Google is trialling a new kind of news feed. Fast Flip is based on Google News, and Google says it came up with it to address the fact that browsing through news sites is usually a slow process – not like the effortless instant gratification of flipping through a magazine or newspaper. Google has partnered with several dozen news sources–including the BBC, BusinessWeek, the Christian Science Monitor, the Daily Beast, Esquire, the New York Times, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, and TechCrunch – to create previews of their stories that live on Fast Flip but which display the first several paragraphs of the article in a form that looks like the originating site. You rifle through these previews by clicking left and right arrows, and the pages zip on and off-screen in high-speed, fluid animation–hence the “Fast Flip” name. Fast Flip is in Beta stage at the moment - and like many Google innovations, only time will tell whether it sticks around.

Read twice, send once

Murphy's Law: what can be misunderstood will be misunderstood. That's why you should be doubly careful with everything you write, especially in email. Things like personal responses to sender's questions, debating a point, or even just trying to be funny. Email guru, Heinz T., has a sound bit of advice on how to reduce miscommunications.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Overwhelmed by data

One in three organisations cannot recover files from backup tapes and a similar number would not be able to easily retrieve email from 18 months ago, according to research from data storage specialists Hitachi. This article in the NZ Herald probes how many companies are being overwhelmed with electronic data.

Boundaries between real and virtual are blurring

The boundaries between real and virtual, public and private will disintegrate further as augmented reality spreads. That's the prediction of one researcher discussing "augmented reality". Things that might have been considered science fiction even a decade ago are rapidly becoming very possible, or are already here. But what are the implications? This article in the NZ Herald discusses some of them. One trend not mentioned, though, is the tendency for technology to move rapidly along a continuum from the possible, to reality, to the norm, to the obligatory. And each one of these developments make it harder for the individual (that's you and I) to be an autonomous person. The scary thing is that we happily give away so much for the sake of the technological baubles. In a book based on the TV sci-fi programme Red Dwarf, the characters get hooked on a virtual reality system called Better Than Life. Read the book and ponder. Or if you can't get hold of the book, Wikipedia has a summary.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Quote of the Day

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. ~ Rich Cook

Disposable email addresses

There are times you don't want to divulge your real email address, especially when you are trying an online service for the first time. Maybe you want to take that "free" psychology test online, or test out a new download for your iPhone. There are services that will let you create "disposable" email addresses, where you can disable the address as soon as you want to stop receiving spam messages. About.com introduces you to eight of the best choices here...