Archive for computer tips
New SkyDrive App-Cloud Storage & Desktop Sync
Posted by: | CommentsI wrote about some new SkyDrive features on 4-13-12 and now the remaining newest features were released the week of 4-23-12 and they are great! If you have Dropbox, it’s very dropbox-like, only you get 7GB of free storage (25GB if you act quickly). I think I mentioned in my last SkyDrive article that I wished they would make it more like Dropbox as it’s rests in your system tray and is easily accessed. Now SkyDrive has finally made this change!
What the new SkyDrive Does
instant access to your SkyDrive from your computer on windows explorer or you can go to SkyDrive in the cloud- back-up and sync of your documents, pictures, videos, etc. across all your computers
- ability to access your files from anywhere – just log in with your Windows Live ID
- make a change on a document on one computer, save it and SkyDrive immediately syncs the document with the SkyDrive folder, making the updated document available
- apps are available for Windows, Mac, Android phones, iPhones and of course, Windows Phones
- SkyDrive icon rests out of the way in System Tray
- my SkyDrive icon is on the last row, last icon on the right. You can see my Dropbox icon in the third row, first one on the left.
Get SkyDrive for Windows
You’ll need to go here and get your Windows or Mac download.
Follow the steps – download
SkyDrive is being installed on your computer
You will need to sign in with your Windows Live ID. Do you have more than one ID? I do and I’m still working on some questions I have about that, but for now, having my data and pictures from my three computers in one place seems like a smart thing to do.
The install goes pretty fast, then you’ll need to start copying folders over to your SkyDrive through Windows Explorer. Make sure you copy folders – don’t move them. I’m keeping the same folder structure on SkyDrive and in Windows Explorer – makes sense. The actual copying and syncing process can take awhile depending on how much data you have. There is a limit to the size that can be uploaded. 
Once it’s finished, you’ll see the green check mark, indicating it’s synced from your local machine to the SkyDrive in the cloud.
Upgrade to 25 GB free to loyal customers
To get this free upgrade, simply right-click on the SkyDrive icon in your system tray and select ‘Manage Storage’. You’ll be taken on-line where you can get your free upgrade to 25GB. I don’t know how long this will last.
Now you can see everything on all your connected computers
The view below is from SkyDrive. I clicked on Lynn-DellPC and instantly see everything on my computer. It’s like having it on a drive. To get to music, pictures, etc. just click and navigate to where you need to be.
This is So Cool
It took quite awhile, but I think I have everything I was longing for to make SkyDrive robust, usable and easy. These new features might make it possible for home computer users to utilize SkyDrive as their backup. You may not need to pay for a backup system any more – something to think about.
New SkyDrive Features
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Microsoft has been quietly making SkyDrive easier to use. If you have a Windows Live ID, then you automatically get 25GB of free storage courtesy of Microsoft. If you don’t have a backup system on your computers, this is perfect for that. In addition to back-up, you can easily share documents, photos and videos with any one or group. You can instantly publish pictures or documents to your social media circles or on your website.
To get to your SkyDrive, simply sign in using your Live ID – go to http://skydrive.com and sign in.
Your documents are filed in alpha order and can be viewed all together, or you can click on ‘Photos’ or ‘Documents’ and they’ll be separated. A new feature is the ability to right-click on a folder or document and instantly share it with anyone – you’ll just need their email address. Your recipient doesn’t need to have a live account in order to retrieve and/or look at the document. Other actions you can do with a right-click are:
edit in your browser
open in Word/Excel, etc.
view version history
download it
move it
copy it
delete it
rename it
I’ve circled the other ways you can share. On the social side, you can share your photo or document to Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. Your document or photo is instantly published. If you prefer, you can ‘get a link’ and put your link in an email that you send from your email program.
Do you want to make a document or photo available on your blog or website? That’s a new feature too. To do this, click on a folder, photo album or document and you’ll see the option to ‘Embed’ (see illustration below). Click on ‘Embed’ and then you’ll get the pop-up to generate the code. Then copy and paste the code into your blog or website. Cool!
SkyDrive is getting easier to use and navigate – faster too. If you haven’t checked it out, give it a try. What cool tricks have you discovered while using SkyDrive?
(Republished on 4-26-12)
New in Microsoft SkyDrive
Posted by: | CommentsMicrosoft has been quietly making SkyDrive easier to use. If you have a Windows Live ID, then you automatically get 25GB of free storage courtesy of Microsoft. If you don’t have a backup system on your computers, this is perfect for that. In addition to back-up, you can easily share documents, photos and videos with any one or group. You can instantly publish anything to your social media circles or on your website.
To get to your SkyDrive, simply sign in using your Live ID – go to http://skydrive.com and sign in.
talk about
Right-click to share Office docs from SkyDrive
Share your Office docs on social networks
Share an Office doc with everyone
Embed your Office doc in your blog or website
there’s also a video here
Brandify–Check Your Business Clout
Posted by: | CommentsBrandify is a web tool (in beta), that gives a business owner a score/ranking of their on-line business presence. They say they do this in about 70 seconds, and it was pretty close to that for me. I thought I’d relate my experiences using it and give a little mini review.
I got an email from Microsoft (they are a sponsor), telling me of this new, free service. I decided to try it out, not being too excited about Klout (another on-line ranking service of a different sort). I was glad to see I could sign in with my Microsoft Live ID – no having to set up yet another account. Facebook and LinkedIn would have worked too.
Their objectives are listed below (taken from the website):
- Where your business’ overall reputation stands online by way of a single, overall score, using a number scale very similar to your FICO credit score.
- The specific categories in which your business’ reputation is strong (and where it’s not), along with specific insights on your local competition.
- The one or two simple actions you can take immediately to start improving your online reputation.
Registration Screen
The first screen was simple to get filled out – just needed a few pieces of readily-available information.
Brandify Tries to Find and Select Your Social Presence
I thought this next screen was great because it showed the below social media giants and all I had to do was connect to them. There were a few glitches which I’ll write about in my summary.
My Initial Brandify Score
I wasn’t very happy about seeing the 508 (low on the scale). After looking more closely and checking out the recommendations (over to the left), I found that even though my Facebook page was highlighted on the previous screen, somehow it didn’t make it through the last part and indeed, it was not there when I went to look.
This is where I (or the business owner), would take the time to look through the recommendations which cover how to optimize your website, your LinkedIn or Facebook profiles, etc. I’m not on Yelp or Foursquare and really don’t care to be, so I’m not going to join. The Bing and Yahoo parts just said I had 2 total hits for my business name. It wasn’t clear to me at all what that meant. But let’s move on to my higher score…
My Better Brandify Score & How I Got It
I scrolled through the recommendations and realized somehow my Facebook link had dropped off. I didn’t get asked about Twitter during the process, so I went back and corrected those two things and my score jumped dramatically. I believe my score is still undeservedly low because of the LinkedIn portion that is not linked to my individual account. But at least I’m in the green – I’ll summarize my thoughts below.
Summary of Brandify
- It was definitely easy to use – sign in was painless using a current ID
- Directions were straightforward and the user is walked through the process in a simple manner, complete with graphics and radio buttons to check
- Brandify showed who was linking back to my website – very cool
- The recommendations were concise and each one had a link to find out more about how to make things better
- The only LinkedIn profile I could put in the tool was my company profile. With LinkedIn, you can build a company profile after you’ve built a profile based just on your name. I have a company profile, but it is not developed well at all, so I had 4 black marks against me in the recommendations because of that. They should allow people to link to their personal LinkedIn profiles. I went back and tried to fix it, but couldn’t get it to connect.
- It missed the link to my Facebook account I put in there and I needed to re-enter it.
- Some descriptions (like the Bing & Yahoo parts), weren’t clear
- As I recall, the software didn’t ask me about Twitter, Yelp or Foursquare when going through the process
Overall, it was useful for me to go through this process and I think it’ll get better as time goes on.
Excel Tips on Formulas & Circular References
Posted by: | CommentsThis week I have some video tips on some things I recently figured out while using Excel and I thought I’d share them on my blog.
Some spreadsheets I use daily gave me an annoying message every time I opened them about a circular reference error. A circular reference is created when you refer to same cell either directly or indirectly. For months I never stopped to figure out exactly where it was as I thought it would be too time consuming since my spreadsheets have multiple formulas in them.
I use Excel 2010 and it’s ridiculously easy to fix a circular reference. It’s up first here in the video.
Check your Formulas
When in Excel, click on the ‘Formulas’ tab at the top and you’ll find some very useful functions. In the video, I demonstrate how to ‘Trace Precedents’ and ‘Trace Dependents’. These tools tell you what cells are included in a formula and tell you what cells are affected by the value of the currently selected cells—well, it all makes more sense when you watch the video!
I hope you enjoy and please stop over at my YouTube channel as I have more short videos with tips and shortcuts that may be helpful to you.
Looking at Ooma Phone Service
Posted by: | CommentsDo you still have a land line? Is it really a land line or a VOIP line? If you have your phone service through a cable company, it most likely is VOIP. We have the Cox service and we started out with their ‘digital’ phone lines, not realizing it 
was really VOIP. When the power went out, the phone line went out too.
I like to research phone possibilities and when we switched to T-Mobile for our cell service a couple years ago, I saw they offered their own VOIP phone service. For $15/month, we could use their router and plug our phone into it and it’s been working great. I blogged about it a couple years ago. However, T-Mobile no longer offers the service, however, we are able to keep ours, but you never know when they will announce they’ll discontinue service. So, I’ve been doing some research once again and I’ve pretty much settled on Ooma.
Why Ooma
- Longevity – It’s been around for 4-5 years now and has very positive reviews over on Amazon
- Number Porting – I want to keep my number and with Ooma, I can ($40 fee for porting and it can take 2-3 weeks)
- I own the equipment – no renting or monthly fees anymore
- Features – all the ones you’d expect: caller ID, call waiting, voicemail (one-touch voicemail from anywhere in the house)
- Use my same phones – no need to get new phones and the phones I have plugged in around the house will work with the telo unit
- Free calls in the U.S. (5,000 minutes/month) and low price international calling
- Only monthly fee is for taxes (usually $3-5)
- Optional features to add are a wireless adapter (frees you from keeping your telo next to your computer/router) and a bluetooth headset
- There’s a mobile app (Android or iPhone) for $10. You get 250 free minutes per month – could come in handy for some people with limited minutes
As far as comparing features among Skype, Vonage and Ooma, I read this article by Michael Bluejay that gives a nice synopsis and comparison of the three services. Head on over there and check it out.
The upfront cost for Ooma is $199 and you can buy on-line from them, or from Amazon, Best Buy, Costco and others. I did see some coupons at retailmenot.com that I will definitely try to use when I place my order.
If you’re a Vonage or Skype user, let me know why you prefer that service. If you like Ooma, I’d like hearing from you too.
Reflections on This Week
Posted by: | CommentsThis week has flown by in some ways and crawled by in others. I’m taking a break this week from reviewing or writing about software and gadgets because I’ve been keeping up with more things than usual this week. So I’ve decided to write a bit about what’s been going on.
- I finished up a website for a client, presented it to them and now I’m completing the documentation (written and video), so they will be able to update their WordPress website on their own. I believe every business – no matter how big or small needs an on-line presence – preferably multiple presences such as a website, a Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter – the major ones anyway.
- Along with finishing the website, I used this great plugin from iThemes called BackupBuddy to move my site from my test site to the client’s hosting site. I’d used it just once before and had someone walk me through it. This time, I wanted to do it on my own and I did it! It took awhile to go through each step since I hadn’t done it for awhile, but with some good tutorials and a great video I found, it all worked!
My 'new' iMac-you can see the reflection of my Windows monitor!
- I’d been working after hours on a project getting some computers ready to be donated to a non-profit for a client. Some of the computers were Macs and since I’ve never owned one, I asked my client if I could exchange my fee for one of the Macs and she said ‘yes’! After I asked, I thought, ‘do I really want to do this? Maybe I’d be better off taking the money.’ But then I decided to go ahead and take it. I brought it up to my office yesterday and plugged it in and did a bit of personalization. Almost anything I want to do I have to ‘Bing it’ as it’s just not intuitive for this Microsoft person.
- Started on another website for a client with a due date of early April. It’s always exciting starting a new project and trying to make it the best I can and come up with creative ways to display their text and pictures.
- I’m taking calls all this week for a client who is on vacation, so I never know what each day will bring and how I might need to shift and adjust my schedule to cover for him and make sure his clients are happy.
- Today I started working on moving some domains over to Hover.com. I set up an account last year with them, but ended up transferring some domains somewhere else. In the meantime, I kept hearing all these great things about Hover and what great support and customer service they have, so I decided to call (and I never call-always do things on-line). To my great shock, someone answered the phone – no phone tree! Wow. I had a very cordial and informative conversation with the rep and there was no pressure or anything else. I’m going to call them to help get some email services set up before initiating a transfer with this particular registrar because they pointed out on their website that they will disable email, DNS services and a few other things when a transfer is initiated – yikes!
- Another interest of mine is Pinterest. I asked for and received an invite a couple of weeks ago, but really haven’t spent much time with it yet. I’ve been reading about its history though. Just found this article by Denise Wakeman about using Pinterest to boost visibility to blogs/websites, so I’ll check that out.
It’s nice to take a break and just write about what’s been happening – how about your week? Leave a comment.
How To Back Up Windows Live Mail
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have a Windows Live Mail account, have you thought about backing up your mail? Yes, I know it’s in
the cloud, but the unforeseen can happen. Your account could get hacked and you might want to close that account and start over but want to keep your messages. Something could happen with the cloud and your messages could get wiped out. Lastly, it’s your mail, and you need to be in control of it.
Backup Windows Live Mail
If you’re using hotmail or livemail on the web only, you may want to consider getting the free desktop client to install on your desktop. This way, you’ll have off-line access to your mail account and the desktop client has a few features that the web doesn’t. You can get it here by itself, or as a suite of free downloads from Microsoft.
Here’s a quick 3” video that shows you how to export your Windows Live Mail into an .ini file that you can store on your computer or a backup drive. Of course, you’ll want to back up at regular intervals to be as up-to-date as possible.
Backup Windows Live Contacts
Contacts are also important, so there’s a section here on how to export your contacts into a .csv file. This file can be imported into Outlook or Gmail, if you wish.
Windows Live Calendar
Calendar items can’t be backed up at this time. But if you use the web-based calendar along with the desktop client of Windows Live Mail, your calendar items will be synced. If you lose your account though, this won’t help you, will it? There are third party programs (for pay) out there that will back up your Live Calendar if you have that need.
Do you use Windows Live Mail or Hotmail for your business or just personal use? If you are a business, I’d suggest Office 365 at $6/month from Microsoft. For $6/month, you get Exchange mail that’s backed up for you – peace of mind. Read here for other advantages of O365.
LastPass Account More Secure With Google Authenticator
Posted by: | CommentsMerry Christmas! I missed last week as I was under the weather, but now am back. This week we talk about a great add-on for your LastPass account.
I wrote about LastPass awhile back and it has been an application that has truly saved my sanity ever since I realized how safe, effective and timesaving it is. It’s been endorsed by the paranoid Security Expert, Steve Gibson, and that’s good enough for me.
Recently, LastPass added a multi-factor add-on for all their customers. Multi-factor simply seems that whenever you log in to an account, you must give more than one piece of identification. So in addition to entering in my password, I also will use Google Authenticator on my mobile phone to let LastPass know it’s really me. It’s something I know (password) and something I have (phone).
Since this is from Google, it’s easily installed on any Android phone or device. There’s also an iPhone/iPad/iPodTouch & Blackberry app that will help you get going. I have a Windows Phone 7 and I was happy to see that someone had developed one for the WP7. I wish I could say I had an easy time getting it installed and working, but alas, it was difficult. Below is one of the steps for getting the WP7 app on my phone.
After you have installed the app on your phone, then click to follow directions to authenticate your phone with LastPass. You’ll be taken to a screen at the LastPass site where you can either scan your barcode into your phone, or you can choose to get a code delivered to your phone, type it in the box on the computer screen, click ‘Authenticate’ and you’re in.
It should be noted that you’ll have to use multi-factor authentication (your phone), to access your LastPass Vault only on unfamiliar or untrusted devices. I’m glad they built that in as it would be silly to have to use this system with your desktop or laptop. There is also a drop down to allow or disallow off-line access. This means, if you are having connectivity issues and are off-line, you can still log into your LastPass Vault. Again, a smart move.
This page contains a comprehensive User’s Manual for LastPass. If you don’t have a smart phone, there are still other ways to keep your LastPass account safe and secure. There are many other great features of LastPass in the manual, it’s a good one to look through.
Screenpresso-Free Screen Capture Tools
Posted by: | Comments(Originally published in March of 2010 – repeating here the day after Thanksgiving, 2011. Happy Thanksgiving all!)
Scre
enpresso came cross my radar just a week or so ago. It seems they are pretty new to the web because when I went to follow them on Twitter, I was just the 84th follower.
Screenpresso is a screen capture/editing/effects/twitter tool. Oh, and it’s free! It’s a bit like Microsoft’s Snipping Tool—only more feature-rich. After it’s downloaded, it resides in your system tray (I know, another resource drain, but you can turn it off). When you’re ready to get a screen shot, just right click on the icon and you’ll get a menu of items. This is where you choose if you want an entire screenshot or a certain region of a screen. There’s a cool feature called ‘screenshot autoroll’ which stitches together more than one screen-full.
Above is a shot of their main features—let’s take a look at the more advanced features:
- screenshot history – if you don’t want to save your captures, just leave them in the history of Screenpresso. If it’s something you won’t use again, just delete it. If it’s something you’ll use over and over, there’s an option to save it to a folder on your hard drive. It looks like they are saved in a date order and with a .png extension. If you find yourself making a lot of captures, I’d suggest filing them in folders to keep things manageable.
- add effects – here’s where you can add borders, shadows, etc.
- capture scrolling part – this feature lets you capture more than one screen-full using a stitching mechanism. I didn’t try out this feature, but this is pretty cool!
- screenshot to email – this is very nice because all you have to do is have your history open and drag your capture over to your email task bar and it will put it in your email as a .png attachment.
- screenshots to Twitter – pull up your history and you’ll see the twitter bird icon at the bottom of the screen. Click it and you’ll get a popup to sign in to your Twitter account and send it to twitpic and add a message.
- edit/enhance your image – here’s where you can add explanatory text, arrows or other formatting features to highlight an item or feature. Also a nice feature is the blurring tool – great for blocking sensitive/identifying data
Conclusion
Since this is a start-up, they are still working out kinks and probably trying to make everything work. They are working on a Pro version, which will probably be a for-pay service. I see it looks like they will be offering video – but that service isn’t ready just yet.
I liked using it, the features were pretty intuitive and didn’t take too long to catch on. I think Jing is a competitor of theirs (you can read my article on that), and has an advantage because you can video and record what’s on your screen and share it. I’ll still use Microsoft’s Snipping Tool most because I usually don’t have a need to put effects on my snips or save them. Screenpresso is great for full screenshots and being able to point out with text or arrows what you want your reader to see.
