Computer and Web Articles

I can hear the whispers now… “Is she crazy??” “Has she lost her mind?” “Is she shooting herself in the foot by writing about this?”

I have a hunch many people will feel a bit suprised by what I’m sharing today. Why? Because the tool purports to do for free the exact service my company offers to clients (not for free): create awesome websites.

Wix.com enables individuals and companies to build their very own Flash websites. For free. The Wix interface offers drag-and-drop site creation and requires zero knowledge of HTML or programming. To sweeten the pot, Wix sites are even search engine friendly!

Musicians can build beautiful sites to present and promote themselves. Designers can build their very own online portfolios using Wix.  Photographers can build their very own online portfolios without paying a web designer one single penny.  In fact, close to three million websites have already been created using Wix.

What’s the catch, you ask? How can such an amazing tool possibly be free? Well, while there is no actual catch, there are a few rules you have to play by. First, you can’t use your own domain name. Second, Wix ads will appear on your website. And third, you are limited to a set amount of bandwidth, storage, and number of pages.

If you’d prefer to build a website free of these limitations, you can do so by upgrading to one of Wix’s Premium Plans. Depending on what you’re looking for (eCommerce? Stats Tracking? Premium support?), a Wix Premium Plan could run you $4.95, $9.90, $14.90, or $19.90 per month. Pay a year in advance and your pricing becomes even cheaper.

And just in case you’re still tottering on the fence, Wix offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee that lets you to try one of their Premium Plans for two weeks and, if you’re not happy, get all your money back. Simple as that.

Check out the features. Check out the galleries of beautiful sites other Wix users have created. No need to hire your own website designer — just sign up, build your own website, and have fun.

Gickr.com lets everyday people instantly create animated photos (i.e., mini photo-slideshows) for their websites, to send to friends via email, and for Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr accounts, etc.

Choose up to 10 images or photos you’d like your image to animate through, choose your image size, then choose the animation’s speed. Easy!

Gickr even provides you with the code you need to drop your animated photos into sites like Friendster, WordPress, Orkut, Hi5, and LiveJournal.

Check it out at www.gickr.com.

If your livelihood doesn’t depend on Photoshop but you’d still love to have the high-level capability of manipulating and editing your photos, then I’m here to tell you there’s no reason to drop the $700 on the latest version of Photoshop. You have free alternatives.

One of these alternatives is called Splashup. Splashup is a powerful little photo editing tool that’s easy to use and, unlike many of its also-free competitors, allows you to work on many photos at once. The program works directly in your web browser, provides you with pixel-level control, offers layer functionality (just like that which is native to Photoshop), and comes loaded with tons of effects, filters and brushes built right in. Splashup even integrates with Picasa, flickr, and Facebook.

Download Splashup for free at www.splashup.com. Or, if you find too many bells and whistles a bit intimidating, I recommend you download Splashup Light (from the same URL).

It can be quite annoying when Microsoft Word butts into your business and assumes you’d like to create a numbered list in your document … when in fact you have no such desire. In fact, Word assumes that you’re creating a numbered list every single time you place a number in front of a new line.

Let’s take a moment right now and tell Word to stop making these annoying assumptions. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Tools > AutoCorrect Options.
2. Click on the AutoFormat as You Type tab.
3. Uncheck the box that reads Automatic Numbered Lists.
4. Click Ok.

In the future, you can tell Word when you’d like it to make a numbered list for you by clicking the numbering icon in your toolbar (the icon with “1 2 3″ listed vertically, on the left of three horizontal lines).

By default, clicking on any of Microsoft Word’s menu items at the top left of your screen won’t reveal the associated pull-down menus in full.  Instead, you’re shown abbreviated menus. And of course, the feature you’re looking for usually isn’t visible, meaning you’re forced to then click again at the bottom of the pull-down menu (or sit there and wait several seconds) just to see the full, complete menu.  How annoying!

So, let’s tell Word that we want the full pull-down menus to immediately appear when we click the menu items, shall we?

First, click Tools at the top of your screen, then click Customize. Now click the Options tab. Last, make sure that the “Always show full menus” checkbox has a check in it and click Close.  All done!

If you’ve used a PC for any length of time, chances are you’ve seen one of Windows many oh-so-fun error messages that read something like “SYSTEM ERROR. CODE: 32”. And chances are that you had absolutely no idea what caused the system error, let alone what the meaning behind the code number displayed in the alert box was all about.

“Error Messages for Windows” is a free little program you may download and install onto your PC that does nothing other than provide you with specific information about Microsoft Windows System Error messages. This tool is especially useful for people who do not have continuous internet access (and therefore can’t simply hop online and conduct a quick Google search when an error pops up).

Pistaschio is a free, teeny-tiny, overachieving little program for PCs that provides little bits of additional functionality to help with everyday computer tasks.

Pistaschio does quite a lot. Some of the tasks it will gladly handle for you include snapping a window to other windows when moving/resizing, disabling the Insert key, locking the mouse or keyboard while you clean them, minimizing a window to the system tray, allowing you to control sound volume using your mouse wheel, and restricting a window’s position to inside of your screen.

Might Pistaschio be a useful program for you to download? Learn more about the various bits of functionality it can provide and decide for yourself: http://pitaschio.ara3.net/index.htm.

I’ve long known about the option to change the case of text in a Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.) file via the menu option drop downs at the top of the screen or via a toolbar button, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that I learned how you could toggle the case of text straight from your keyboard.

Toggle between all uppercase, all lowercase, and title case capitalization by highlighting the text you’re looking to update, holding down the Shift key on your keyboard, and then tapping F3. I’ve found this to be quite a useful, time-saving trick to have in my Microsoft Office arsenal.

Question: Hi Erin. In a recent article you mentioned the VLC DVD player… I just had a quick question for you about that. Does it rip a DVD if the DVD is protected? I just tried to rip one with Roxio and the message came up that it was protected. – Barb W.

Answer: In cases such as these, you’ll actually need to remove the protection from the DVD before you’ll be able to successfully rip it; luckily it’s not a difficult thing to do. In fact, just Googling “remove DVD protection” will provide you with a plethora of options.

Some DVD protection-removal programs are free, others are not; I recommend comparing some of the various programs out there to determine which would best take care of your needs.

Specifically, a few popular programs that could assist you are:

1. http://www.slysoft.com/en/download.html
2. http://www.qweas.com/download/video_dvd/dvd_backup/clone_dvd.htm
3. http://www.dvdfab.com/dvd-fab-platinum.htm