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Category: How to

  • Monthly Backups: Have you started yours?

    Before I start, a friendly remind­er that you only have 2.5 days left to enter the con­test for a free Click­free Trans­former backup sys­tem. Tell me a backup hor­ror story. One thing I like to do is, at the end of every month, veri­fy that I’ve got a full backup of what I like to call…

  • How to keep your travel communications costs down, easily.

    Wheth­er you’re on vaca­tion or trav­el­ling for work, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions costs are a pain, and can really impact your the cost of your travel. Recently I’ve star­ted using two tools that let me call home or the office, talk as long as I want, and not break the bank. …more This post is an excerpt from…

  • Upgrading from Windows 7 RC to Retail — easily!

    Well, being the cut­ting edge kinda guy that I am, I had the Win­dows 7 release can­did­ate (RC) on my sys­tem from the first day it was released. Of course, that means that I was enjoy­ing all the Win­dows 7 good­ness on my sys­tem, with the know­ledge that I’d even­tu­ally have to upgrade to the…

  • How to easily edit home video with free software from Microsoft

    Back in the day I used to be a news video­tape edit­or. This was before cam­er­as were digit­al — think back to the days of VCRs, Beta and VHS. Yep, that was the media of the day to record music and video. That was called Analog. The reas­on I bring that up is because edit­ing…

  • How to find good music online with social media

    In a recent post over at the Future Shop Techb­log I star­ted talk­ing about vari­ous Inter­net Radio ‘sta­tions’. Today I real­ized I did­n’t talk about one of my ‘go-to’ online music sources blip.fm It’s not your aver­age music service. Blip.fm is a hybrid social media site and music dis­cov­ery ser­vice, focused around the concept of…

  • How to easily convert almost any eBook to open ePub format

    My iPod Touch is also my eBook read­er. I use the Stanza app (recently upgraded), and the Stanza desktop applic­a­tion to get pdf and oth­er formats into my iPod Touch. But Stanza can­’t read all formats, and occa­sion­ally an impor­ted file will not dis­play cor­rectly — the lay­out gets messed up. This is where 2epub.com…

  • How to view PDF files on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with DropBox

    Drop­box really is an amaz­ing com­put­ing and file shar­ing applic­a­tion. I was ini­tially intro­duced to it when I needed to eas­ily share files with vari­ous com­puters across the inter­net — and email was not an option. Recently my wife asked me for anoth­er solu­tion to view­ing PDF files on her iPod Touch. She’d been using…

  • Using Google Wave to ‘book club’ Trust Agents

    Earli­er today I respon­ded to a tweet by @gregbd about form­ing a read­ing club for Trust Agents: And now we’ve done it. It’s a pub­lic Wave that you should be able to find by search­ing with:public "Trust Agents" in the Google Wave search box, and since it’s pub­lic, feel free to join in and share your…

  • The spreadsheet that saved Christmas!

    Ok, that’s a bit over the top, I’ll admit, but believe it or not, a spread­sheet cer­tainly did help me out this hol­i­day sea­son, by help­ing me and my fam­ily stay organ­ized as we worked through our hol­i­day gift list, fig­ur­ing out who is going to get what this year…especially if we’re in dif­fer­ent house­holds…

  • How to add a network activity monitor to Windows 7

    I like Win­dows 7. But there’s one thing that I noticed miss­ing right off the top, a net­work activ­ity mon­it­or in the Taskbar. Sure, you could ad a gadget/widget thingie to the desktop, but when you’re work­ing on some­thing, odds are you’re at full-screen resoulu­tion and the mon­it­or is behind whatever y ou’re work­ing on. Well,…

  • Friday the 13th: Refuge in the backup

    Ok, it’s a lousy title for a movie, but it is a great remind­er to review and execute your data backup strategies, both at home and online. Why Fri­day the 13th? Simply, it’s a day-date com­bin­a­tion that hap­pens infre­quently, almost ad-hoc. When it does occur, you can eas­ily plan to take time out to per­form your…

  • How to easily install essential applications on a new Windows 7 computer

    It does­n’t mat­ter if you’ve upgraded from Vista or XP, or if you’ve bought a new Win­dows 7 based com­puter, you’re going to need to install some basic and essen­tial applic­a­tions on your new baby. And this awe­some web­site makes it so, SO easy. 4 easy steps: Vis­it the site Select which applic­a­tions you want Press the but­ton to…