Computer and Web Articles

Continuing to hone your Google searching skills over time can only improve your web surfing and researching experiences. The fact that few people ever become true Google Search Masters shouldn’t stop us from trying our best to improve our web searching skills.

And so today (and in many future articles as well) I’ll share Google-searching tips with you in hopes that, together, we can find the exact information we’re looking for more quickly and with less effort than ever before.

For today, let’s start off with two easy-to-remember, virtually-effortless tips.

Tip #1: Don’t waste time or energy trying to enter your search with “correct” capitalization. In fact, don’t waste time with capital letters at all. There is zero benefit to using capital letters in your searches as they don’t matter or alter your search results one bit.

Tip #2: Rein in those lengthy searches! It’s not made clear on Google’s homepage or in its search bar, but Google does have a 32-word search maximum. (Can you believe that prior to January 2005 it actually had a TEN word maximum??)

1. www.consumersavvytips.org – A site devoted to helping people become savvy consumers by sharing information on great deals, avoiding scams, keeping personal info safe, etc.
2. www.yellowbirdproject.com – Okay, yes, you got me. I AM ridiculously in love with this site’s logo, so if you feel a strong desire to send me one of their bird-with-a-crown hoodies or tshirts, I won’t try to stop you. The true reason behind my sharing this site with you, though, isn’t actually the rad logo–it’s the site’s fantastic belief that Indie rock bands are positively leaking with creativity, so why not harness their “magical indie powers” to help out those in need? The Yellow Bird Project exists to raise money and awareness for charities directly through the barter and trade of their fabulous tshirts – while simultaneously promoting the profiles and work of artists the site founders love. How awesome is that??
3. http://tinyurl.com/5johpx - Are you more of a paper-and-pencil type person who struggles to remember all your various internet passwords? This is the perfect pad of paper for you. It even comes with an area to record your Secret Questions and Answers.
4. www.fullseat.com – Hosting an event? Use fullseat.com to publish events, track attendees, and sell your tickets.
5. www.twitterbackgroundsgallery.com – Wish you had a sweet background for your Twitter page, but don’t have the graphic skills to create one on your own? If this is the case (and for some crazy reason you don’t wish to hire timeforcake and keep the work local), consider hiring these people who, for a $100 fee, will create the Twitter background of your dreams.

You love your company’s website. I mean, you have it set as your homepage for crying out loud. And man does it look good!!

To you. That’s right – to you. Your website looks good to you.

It’s important to remember that the individual users within your site’s assortment of visitors all use various combinations of: a) monitor sizes, b) monitor resolutions, c) web browsers, d) web browser versions, and e) operating systems. This means that how you see your website is most likely not how many of your visitors see your website.

Depending on how your site was designed and coded, some of your visitors may be running into display issues such as content that appears cutoff at the edges, drop-down menus that don’t work, overlapping text, or text that pushes outside the box/area within which it should sit.

Display issues such as these often occur when people opt to build their own company websites; these sites are created to look great on the creators’ monitors – and without consideration to the varying needs of the sites’ visitors. On the other hand, it should go without saying that any professional web company worth its salt will ensure that no display issues exist prior to launching a new site.

Several online resources exist to help business owners see what their visitors see. A few of the better services I’m aware of include http://browserlab.adobe.com, www.litmusapp.com, and www.crossbrowsertesting.com. I recommend taking a look. The more knowledge you have about your website, the better your decisions about future site improvements will be.

1. http://tinyurl.com/4vf5ek - Yes, we’ve heard of drunk dialing. But in the current age of emails and texting, it seems that an increasing number of people find themselves regretting drunk messaging. Enter: Mail Goggles for Gmail. Enabling Mail Goggles decreases the likelihood that you’ll send out that “late night memo — I mean mission statement — to the entire firm.”  It’s quite clever; have a look.
2. http://tinyurl.com/qwwzgj - Easily build animated introductions and banners for your website.
3. http://tinyurl.com/p63lg8 - A great post detailing some neat (and short) projects to do with the kiddos. Things to make, things to do, things to eat.
4. www.brownpapertickets.com – One of several alternative online ticket vendors that can be used by anyone hosting a ticketed event. Fair-trade, low cost ticketing for the people.
5. www.3dconnexion.com - Attention online gamers, Autodesk uses, and Photoshop aficionados! “Discover what’s possible with a 3-D mouse.”

(Note: This tip assumes you use a mouse with a scroll wheel on top!)

To engage in speedier web surfing when using Internet Explorer or Firefox, hold down one of your keyboard’s SHIFT keys while you use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoooooom forward or backward through the pages you’ve viewed.

Let’s imagine you’ve just moved all your photos from your digital camera into the My Documents folder on your computer. Everything is organized nice and neat – you’ve got all your vacation photos named by location and date, and—wait a second.

Oh no. Oh no no no. You suddenly realize that somehow, most likely in a sleep-deprived fit of senselessness, you entered the filenames of all 58 of your Hawaiian vacation photos so that they each start with “CaboTrip2005 “.

Of course, you have no time to manually change each and every one of those 58 files so that they’re correctly named. “HawaiiTrip-1” . . . “HawaiiTrip-2” . . . “HawaiiTrip-3”. No way.

Before you consider leaving the filenames as they are, and before you pay your kid a few bucks to rename all the files for you—remember that you can rename multiple files at the same time!

The technique we’re learning today works just as well on two files as it does on two hundred files. Once we’re done, we’ll be left with files that are all named the same, but differentiated by consecutive numbers within parentheses. For our example above we’ll end up with “HawaiiTrip (1)”, “HawaiiTrip (2)”, “HawaiiTrip (3)”, and so forth.

Let’s give it a shot, shall we?

Step #1: We first need locate and select files to rename, so go ahead and browse to a location in your computer where you have at least three files with which you can try this technique.

Step #2: Let’s now select all the files we wish to rename. (For instructions on how to select multiple files, checkout the tips at the bottom of this post.)

Step #3: Now that our files are selected, right click on any one of those files.

Step #4: From the menu that pops open, choose Rename.

Step #5: We now have the ability to rename the file we right-clicked on. Continuing with the example from above, we’ll type in “HawaiiTrip”. (Note: if your file ends with something along the lines of .jpg, .doc, .bmp, etc – do NOT touch or rename that part.)

Step #6: Click an empty spot in your folder.

That’s it; you’re done. All your files have successfully been renamed and your computer did all the hard work.

Though you won’t need to simultaneously rename multiple files on a daily basis, this is a great trick to keep in your arsenal for saving time (and headaches) down the road.

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Tips on selecting multiple files at once:
To select multiple files that are all sitting next to one another, you can use your mouse to left-click on an empty spot near the files and—still holding that left mouse button down—move your mouse away from the spot you clicked and draaaaag a box around your files. Release your left mouse key once all your files have been highlighted.

To select multiple files that aren’t near one another, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and then use your mouse to left-click the various files. Let go of the Ctrl key when you’re done selecting the files.

If you need more help or would like to learn about additional methods for selecting multiple files, visit http://tinyurl.com/opghbq and http://tinyurl.com/qreml9.

During the upcoming weeks I’ll be covering a variety of dos and do-not-dos that I strongly urge business owners to consider when reviewing/thinking about their websites. Today we’ll start with five business website no-nos:

1. Do NOT underline text on your website if it’s not a link. It doesn’t matter if the text is important, if it’s a title, or if the boss told you to underline it. When there’s underlined text on a website, visitors will think that text is a link, and they will click it.
2. Do NOT date material in your website that’s not regularly updated. When the date after your “Site last updated” text or your last “Latest News” entry reads “May 4, 2001,” it looks like you don’t care about your business. Or like you’ve gone out of business.
3. Do NOT include a bunch of confusing acronyms in your site’s content that will make no sense to most (or all) of your site visitors. That’s just mean.
4. Do NOT put a hit counter on your website. It’s tacky, it’s unprofessional, and it’s SO 1997.
5. Unless it is a planned, specific part of your site’s design, Do NOT use a variety of fonts on the same page. Again, this is just downright tacky. Keep things consistent and professional–or else your site starts looking like it’s being updated by an over-zealous amateur.

This tiny (think iPod nano size) tech gadget clips to your belt or sits in your pocket as you go about your day (and night). Without any effort or attention from you, it quietly tracks how many steps you’re taking, how many calories you’re burning, and even how much quality sleep you’re getting. In sum, FitBit is a little tool that lets people gain a “general sense of their day and get motivation from improvements in their general day to day trends.”

The FitBit company just wrapped up its first round of pre-ordering in August and is currently going through beta testing and product tweaking. But if you’re intrigued by this tiny little piece of technology after you take a peek at its website (www.FitBit.com), you can submit your email address to receive notification when the next round of sales starts up.

1. www.priceprotectr.com – This site makes it easier for you receive rebates on price drops by constantly keeping watch for price changes related to your purchases. Did a competing online store just offer your product for cheaper? PriceProtectr will shoot you an email so you can receive a refund of the difference (assuming the store at which you shopped has price protection policies, of course!).
2. www.eWedding.com – Getting married? eWedding allows you to create your very own website that will help you “plan and share the details of your wedding day.” Unlimited photos, unlimited updates, unlimited rsvp’s … it’s all included!
3. www.280slides.com – Create and share lovely online presentations. Access your presentations from anywhere, no software to download, and nothing to pay for – it doesn’t get much better than that!
4. http://tinyurl.com/kwovt6 - A Q&A-based article reviewing current Twitter security issues–including information about what Twitter users can do to protect themselves.
5. http://community.electricsheep.org – A new generation of abstract artwork created from a form of passive internet collaboration. Abstract animations known as “sheep” are created when participating computers across the world go to sleep and begin to communicate with one another.