Friday, October 9, 2009

Easter eggs (and it's nearly Christmas!)

Easter Eggs is a quirky name that techies give to messages or features hidden inside software applications or games. Most of them are amusing, and some are even useful (though being useful is probably the last thing the authors intended). The How-to Geek has a list of some of the better-known ones. There's even a website devoted entirely to the genre, and the range is quite mind-boggling. This could become addictive.

Google offers advice on secure passwords

Who better to give advice, I suppose. Michael Santerre, Google's Consumer Operations Associate detailed Google's password advice in a recent blog post. Read more at PC World.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Where do tired buttons go to rest?

This webpage really brightened my day.
Do you ever give a thought for all those buttons on the Internet? You know, the things you click. They say things like "Submit" or "Send" or "Reset", and you click them and they take you to another page. Don't you think they might get tired? The Internet is open 24 hours a day! Most web sites never give their buttons a break. Here at EnglishClub.com we don't make our buttons work all day and night. We give them a few hours off and let them come to this special page to have a rest and a hard-earned sleep. On this page you can watch different types of buttons sleeping. But please be very, very quiet and, above all, don't click any buttons that you find here!

Launch programs with MouseExtender

Launching programs in Windows can be a bit clumsy. Mostly, I add program icons to the Taskbar at the foot of the screen and click on those. But that can be quite slow. Just as slow is using the Start button, and you can only in so many items to the Start menu before you run out of real estate. So I am delighted to have discovered a neat way of launching programs called MouseExtender. Once you have installed it, a click of your mouse's middle button opens the MouseExtender window wherever your cursor happens to be. Then you just click the program icon or folder you want. Adding programs to the launcher is very simple: Right-click in the MouseExtender window and choose Add Running Program. You can also choose other files or folders that you commonly use. ME also provides three system buttons - Control Panel, Restart, and Shutdown - which is very handy. If you need your middle mouse button to do other things - like opening new tabs in your web browser - you can "exclude" MouseExtender from specific programs, which means the middle button goes back to its regular function when those programs are active.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Opening a Word document where you left off

One of the frustrations of Microsoft Word is that it opens at the top of the document, rather than where you left off reading or editing. If it's a long document, it can be a pain trying to find that spot again. Fortunately, there is a solution, using a little-known feature of Word: the Go Back command. No matter where you are in a document, when you press Ctrl+Alt+Z your cursor jumps back to the last place you edited; on the Mac, it's Command-Option-Z. In fact, each time you use the Go Back command, your insertion point jumps among four places: the last three edit spots and your current position. When you re-open a document, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Z will also take the cursor to the last editing point. So if you are reading a long document and have to close it, make a small edit (for instance, adding a spacebar space) and using the Go Back command will take you there when you return. One proviso: When you open the document, hit the Go Back command keys immediately - don't so much as touch your mouse - otherwise it may not work.

Maximise your browser window

Sometimes, your browser window becomes so cluttered with toolbars, there's barely any room left for the actual web page. You can temporarily turn off all the toolbars (those at the bottom as well as the top of the screen) by pressing the F11 key on your keypad. This works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. On the Macintosh, press Ctrl-B. Bingo - it's like going to wide-screen TV! You can restore the bars by pressing the same key again.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Free internet phone and video calls

Skype really started something six years ago, when it introduced the world to free phone calls over the internet. Today a huge number of people use either it or many imitators to call friends and family, video conference and the like. It's still not for everybody. Forget it if you don't have broadband or live outside the cities. And New Zealand's slow broadband can make the video part almost a nonsense. Other disadvantages with Skype seem to be problems with compatibility between the PC and Mac systems, and Skype's tendency to insert its own code into html documents. And with all systems, if you want to use video, you need a webcam, although these are pretty cheap.
Skype's not the only player in town, and Stuff has an article today outlining some of the alternatives. There are some surprising omissions from the article, though. For instance:
Probably the best-known alternative is Windows Live Messenger (formerly known as Windows Instant Messenger or MSN). I know this works fairly well because our Chinese daughter uses it to chat with her parents every week. Google is also introducing a new chat system, Google Talk, although I don't think it has been launched in NZ yet.
TokBox is a web-based video chat application that lets you set-up video chat channels with unregistered users in seconds. The application has a simple user interface with controls for volume, muting and camera off. When you want to invite some to a video chat all you have to do is send them an email link or direct them to your user page. You can also add their Facebook application or embed your video chat channel on your website or MySpace page. There were early problems with Tokbox, but a quick check online seems to indicate these have largely been ironed out. Its main advantages appear to be that you don't have to download special software, and that you can talk to several people simultaneously.

Is the internet melting our brains?

Dennis Baron doesn't believe so. The author of "A Better Pencil" explains why he considers such hysterical hand-wringing is as old as communication itself.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Do uninstallers uninstall?

I try out a lot of software, much of which I later uninstall. But the uninstall routines on the PC often leave artifacts behind (bits which the installation has burrowed into your system like tics, and which can cause all sorts of problems later on). This is one area in which the Mackintosh excels, because when you install a program it does not modify the system, so the number of system and software conflicts are greatly reduced. So how can you extract those last bits you don't want? PC World's Lincoln Spector provides one answer.

Migrating Outlook Express's inbox

The days are starting to look numbered for Outlook Express, Microsoft's slimmed-down email client. (Why do they call email programs 'clients'?) It was not added into the Vista suite of programs, and neither is it be in Windows 7. You either buy the full Outlook program, or use one of the many free email clients, like Thunderbird, which is what I use at home. But I still use Express at work, because I like its simple interface, even if it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of its big brother (most of which I find a distraction). So if you are planning to switch, how do you migrate the contents of your Outlook Express inbox? If you switch to Thunderbird, the latter walks you through a simple process. If you switch to Outlook, it's a bit more complicated, but PC World has a good description here.

New Google features

Google has added some new features to its Search Options feature, a list of search-refinement features on the left-hand side of search results page that you can choose to turn on or off. They include the ability to filter for blogs, books, or news; and to see only sites you’ve already visited, or only sites you’ve never visited. For me, the most helpful new features are two that allow you to restrict results to a specific timeframe - for instance the last hour, or any range you specify. This latter one is enormously helpful. It lets you, for instance, find articles about John Key published prior to last year's elections. These new features follow on from others Google added just a few months ago.