Computer and Web Articles

These days, who doesn’t want to save time? (And if you were being cheeky just then and answered “me” in response to my generic opening question there, you can just go ahead and skip this entry.)

If you’re not already doing so, I recommend taking advantage of at least one of the many online solutions that can help keep your bills and bill payments organized and up to date.

Paytrust (www.paytrust.com) is a popular example of such a site. For either $4.95 or $12.95 a month (see their “Learn More” page for the plans’ details), Paytrust offers a complete bill management solution for people like yourself. All your bills arrive online, meaning no more lost bills or late payments.

Review, pay, and organize your bills from one secure, convenient, online location. Plus, Paytrust offers a “SmartBalance” feature, which provides you with the most up-to-date, accurate picture of your bank balance by keeping track of your online bank account activity in addition to you bill payment records.

Let’s say …

You’ve put your road bike up for sale on Craigslist and know that people will be asking lots of questions …. or …

You’re asked to fill out a form requesting a good deal of personal information in order to enter a contest with an amazing prize… or …

A handsome yet somewhat questionable fellow at the bar states he’s not leaving you alone until you give him your phone number…

In each of the situations you’d probably prefer to not share your actual phone number, yet providing a fake one could very well come back to bite you in the butt. Thank goodness for LetsCall.me.

LetsCall.me is a free service that allows you to accept calls anonymously. This means that it can be easy and safe for others to call you — without you having to share your phone number.

With no Caller ID blocking, you’ll always know who’s calling, you can keep unwanted callers from reaching you by blocking their numbers, and the web address you hand out in lieu of a number is actually easier to remember.

Just visit http://letscall.me, pick your very own URL (like letscall.me/caketime, for example), and then instead of giving out your phone number, just share your letscall.me address. Simple, easy, free.

• http://tinyurl.com/46zfqw — At first I laughed when I watched this video. Then it slowly dawned on me that I’d just watched a clip proving that there are dogs out there in the world that are better climbers than me. That’s when I stopped laughing.
• http://tinyurl.com/24slfp — A list of 10 harmless (well, usually harmless) computer and internet-related pranks to play on your friends, coworkers or enemies. The list includes classics like turning webpages upside down or installing a fake “Microsoft blue screen of death” on someone’s monitor.
• http://ryan.buterbaugh.org/ wabble — Are you a Scrabble freak? Can’t get enough? Try Wabble — a totally free, online, multi-player Scrabble game. No registration required and no software to download.
• www.videora.com — A personal video downloading program, Videora automatically finds and downloads video you want to watch, hence offering you “the freedom to watch what you want, when you want, from anywhere in the world.” The only requirements for this free service are a PC (or Mac running Windows) and a fast internet connection.
• http://tinyurl.com/27nsqn — Ten things you really, really should know before you purchase software on eBay.

Question: Whenever I do a search in my Google toolbar a list of items automatically drops down showing terms that I’ve searched for in the past. Can you tell me how I can clear that list?  — John T., Dillon

Answer: Yes. Yes I can.

That list of terms you’re referring to is your Google Toolbar search history. And I’ve got wonderful news for you: clearing that search history list is ridiculously easy.

Alright. So first, do you see the Google logo that sits immediately to the left of your Google search box? Click it. You should now be looking at a short list of items. Select “Clear Search History.” Smile. All done.

If you still have a big, bulky fax machine in your office, I just have to ask … why?!

With access to a variety of premium, low-cost, and ever free web-based fax services right at your fingertips, why in the world would you opt to keep the clutter of a fax machine in your office? In fact, I’d wager there’s an affordable online service out there that can do absolutely everything your stand alone fax machine can do — and more. No extra phone lines, no extra supplies, no fixing the machine when it breaks, no more wasting paper or toner on faxes that didn’t need to be printed.

For those with occasional, basic faxing needs, check out FaxZero at www.faxzero.com. Send up to three pages anywhere in the U.S. or Canada for free, or send up to 15 pages with no ad for $1.99.

For those with more regular faxing needs, check out eFax at www.efax.com and start reducing your company’s paper clutter. Fully featured plans start at less than $20/month. You might also wish to take a look at RapidFax (www.rapidfax.com), which offers basic plans for personal use as well as professional plans tailored specifically for small businesses.

• http://tinyurl.com/5kulbn — Attention all Scrabble fanatics! Make sure you commit this blog post (entitled 10 Words That Will Help You Win at Scrabble) to memory.
• http://tinyurl.com/4bjt7v — Ever run disk defragmenter on your computer only to have it finish and then immediately tell you that you … need to defrag your computer?
• www.bookcrossing.com — Bookcrossing.com offers a unique, fun, earth-friendly way to share and give life to your books. Help “make the whole world a library.”
• http://tinyurl.com/4wvnqh — Complete interactive PDF forms without the need for Adobe Acrobat.
• http://tinyurl.com/53z8gj — Attention all Mac users: Have you by chance seen the sleek, beautifully designed Wireless keyboard from Apple? No cables, ultra-thin, and loaded with function keys and features.

Perhaps you’ve run into a situation like this: You’re type, type, typing away in Microsoft Word. Your letter/essay/review/article/report is coming along splendidly.

You finish up your brilliant conclusion, punch in the final period, and sit back in your chair.

And then you realize that your last few lines spilled over onto a new page — and my goodness does it ever look sloppy. Your document is just so perfect that you can’t remove any of the words — you spent far too much time carefully crafting them into grammatically gorgeous sentences. What to do?

Don’t waste time playing around with font-sizing or page margins. Let’s handle this in the easiest manner possible. Let’s shrink-to-fit, shall we? Click on File, then Print Preview. A new window will open — and you’re looking for the Shrink to Fit button.

Click the button and Word will instantly work a little bit of magic to reduce your document’s total number of pages by one. Pretty sweet, eh?

When you spend a good chunk of your life typing away at a keyboard, carpal tunnel isn’t a funny sounding term — it’s a genuine concern. In fact, whenever you regularly spend a significant chunk of time using a tool that requires repeated movements, whether it’s a piece of machinery or a musical instrument, Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) becomes a potential reality. RSI affects everyone from computer programmers to secretaries to store checkout clerks to assembly line workers.

To prevent computer users from experiencing conditions like carpal tunnel and RSI (and all the oh-so-not-fun associated pain and surgeries), a small team of helpful programmers developed an online tool called Workrave. Workrave is a free program that “assists in the recovery and prevention of RSI” by monitoring your computer activity, frequently reminding you to take breaks and micro-pauses, and providing stretching and movement recommendations to help prevent injuries.

View screenshots, learn more, and download Workrave here: www.workrave.org.

• www.plantabillion.org — A truly gorgeous site focused on the goal of planting one billion trees. For each dollar you donate, one tree is planted. And even if you don’t plan on donating, just take a peek at the site and browse around; it’s very well done and you’re sure to learn something interesting.
• http://tinyurl.com/3ro7fp — Learn how to keep e-mails private, secret and secure — because unless you take specific actions to ensure your e-mails’ privacy, prying eyes with the right skills can read your messages as they make their way to your intended recipients.
• http://www.die.net/earth — A well-done World Sunlight map that presents our spherical Earth as a flat map and allows you to watch where the sun is rising and setting everywhere at once. The clouds within this beautiful computer-generated illustration are updated every three hours, and you can see the lights from big cities appear as dusk arrives.
• http://www.die.net/moon — Waxing or waning? How many days old? What percent is lit tonight? This eternally-updated moon phase illustration was created by the same people who brought you the World Sunlight map mentioned in item #3 on our list today.
• http://tinyurl.com/283dd5 — A great blog post on what to do should you ever learn that another person or company has stolen text from your website and used it on their own. I’ve actually experienced web plagiarism like this; about half a year ago I discovered that a web company in Jamaica had copied the text from one of my site’s pages in its entirety and pasted it right into their own site, word for word. Not cool.