Computer and Web Articles

1) www.bustaname.com — Via their handy-dandy (and free!) Word Combiner tool, bustaname.com helps you search for and find good domain names that a) aren’t already taken yet b) can still easily be memorized. If you’d like, bustaname.com will help you manage your domain names as well.

2) www.showmypc.com — View remote PCs or invite others to view what’s on your own computer screen. ShowMyPC.com offers an open source (i.e. free!) remote-PC-access application, which acts as “an alternative to subscription based sites like WebEx or GoToMyPC”.

3) www.idreamofcake.com — Though my company’s name is timeforcake and though I do indeed love cake, I promise I have absolutely no affiliation with this website. I just enjoy the beautiful cake photography. These cakes are works of art. They made me smile. They might make you smile, if you like cake as much as me.

Earlier this week as I finished reading an entry I’d found on one of my client’s blogs, I thought to myself, “Wow. This is really good. I know she’s my client and some people might think I’m just trying to do her a favor here — but I’d truly like to share her writing with others.” So I am!

Joanne Hanson, a local Realtor, keeps a regularly-updated, well-written, Summit County-focused blog at www.MountainLivingBlog.com. Unlike many of the blogs I come across as I explore the web each day, her blog offers entries that are consistently genuine, thorough, and informative. Although I’d visited her site to read a specific entry, I ended up reading her past eight posts or so simply because I found her writing enjoyable, relevant, and easy to read.

Not restricted to the world of real estate, Joanne blogs about various aspects of Mountain Living, including local attractions and events, dining out in the county, arts and culture, and pertinent news topics (such as pine beetle infestation).

I recommend taking a look next time you’re surfing the web.

• www.dressforsuccess.com - a site that helps solves a common catch-22 encountered by disadvantaged women trying to join the workforce: without a job, how can you afford a suit? Without a suit, how can you get a job? A wonderful charitable site indeed.
• http://pixelnovel.com/flickrshop.html - Do you use Photoshop? Do you use Flickr? If you answered yes to both these questions, make sure to check out this sweet Photoshop plugin.
• http://tinyurl.com/2xf3pv - “2 Pane Bookmarks” is a fantastic little Firefox plugin that splits your Bookmarks sidebar and makes bookmark browsing a good bit easier.

If you’re still using LimeWire or BearShare to share and download files, stop. Right now. Those programs involve spyware and loads of other junk that are guaranteed to slow down your computer.

Try using Gnucleus instead. It’s free, it’s spyware free, yet it’s still powerful and easy to use. See for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/yvv3vp.

Please note that the site I’m about to share with you here will not make you a better person, help you better understand your computer, give you reason to chuckle, nor save you time. All this aside, it’s still one of those … well … really neat things that you’ll look at for 30 seconds or so whilte thinking “Huh. This is pretty cool.”

Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/37he7.

A few years back a smart fellow from M.I.T. by the name of Ben Fry developed Zipdecode, a little program that accounts for every single zip code in the United States. Click on the map and type in a number, any number. Try typing in the number 9, for example See all the dots along the entire West Coast turn white? Try typing another number, then another, then another. Delete one of the numbers and try another. Isn’t this clever? Isn’t this just neat?

Again, it won’t save the world, but it’s always interesting (to me at least) to see people exploring the realm of technology mixed with fresh ideas and design.

FastStone Capture is a tiny little application that allows to you take a photo of your computer screen (aka “screenshot”) and then do just about anything you’d like with that image.

FastStone Capture is quite handy for people who like to put screenshots into their Word or PowerPoint documents — especially if they wish to mark up the image or add effects to it first. The program also enables you to e-mail screenshots to friends, print them out into hard copies, crop them down to emphasize specific portions of the screenshots, or magnify them to get an even closer look at that webpage you were viewing.

Some of FastStone Capture’s main features include a screen color-picker, a screen magnifier, an “add-caption” capability, its small size (so it never slows down your computer when you use it), undo and redo options, its send-screenshot-in-an-e-mail feature, and global hotkeys that allow you to “activate the program’s capture capabilities anytime, anywhere.” (Though I have a sneaking suspicion that I could prove their boast of “anytime, anywhere” a bit misleading if I tried …)

A lifetime license will run you $19.95. To learn more, hop over to http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm.

As the recent deluge of tourists in the county has now passed, I was a bit sad to come across these cards only yesterday. Just a bit too late. Oh well.

I can still print these out to ensure I’ll be ready come Labor Day. And I suppose I can bring them with me whenever I have to stand in line at the post office, just in case I end up waiting behind a local who’s forgotten his or her manners.

So what exactly *are* these shhh cards, you ask? See for yourself: http://www.coudal.com/shhhcards.pdf

Which one will you use? The one that reads “Inside voices, Please” or perhaps “The rest of us DON’T CARE what he said to you” or maybe one of my personal favorites: “The world is a NOISY PLACE. You aren’t helping things.”

Attention all Gmail users: use the following tips and you’ll be on your way to Gmail greatness:

• Enable your keyboard shortcuts by clicking on the Settings link (top of your screen, on the right), then clicking on the General tab. See the Keyboard Shortcuts area?
• Make sure the “Keyboard Shortcuts on” option is selected.
• Once your keyboard shortcuts are turned on, use those shortcuts! If you’re reading an e-mail and determine that you’d like to reply to it, just hit the “r” key on your keyboard.
• Alternatively, if you want to forward an e-mail you’re reading, simply tap the “f” key on your keyboard.
• Hit your forward-slash key (/) and your cursor will instantly jump into the Gmail search box.
• If you’re in the middle of composing an e-mail, but decide that you’d like to save it and work on it later, click on the “Save Draft” button in Gmail (usually located between the Send and Discard buttons). Later, when you’re ready to work on it again, go to Drafts, located under Sent Mail and above All Mail, click your message, and keep typing.
• Remember that you can easily set up a signature that will go at the bottom of all your e-mails by going to Settings, selecting the button next to the edit box in the Signature section, and typing in the text you’d like to have in your signature.
• If you’d like to be whisked immediately to your Contacts list, hit the “g” key, then the “c” key.
• If you ever access Gmail from a computer other than your own, make sure to login to https://gmail.google.com — note the extra “s” after the http. Logging in at this address means your Gmail password is kept safe and secure, and (other than that creepy guy sitting next to you who keeps glancing furtively at your monitor) your e-mails are kept private.