Google Voice Local Search was launched a few months ago. It is available only in the U.S. and is a free way to get information on local business listings.

Read about it here.

Program 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) into both your home and cell phones for future reference. When you call, an automated voice will answer. Give him your city and state and then you can ask for either a specific business listing or a category, i.e. florists. He will give you the top eight results, asking you to either speak or punch in the number of the one you’re looking for. Then you’ll receive the address of the business and the option to either be connected to the business or have the info texted to your cell phone.

I tried it on a speaker phone and the system heard everything I said the first time. Don’t you find it frustrating to have to repeat yourself to a machine? Give it a go, I think you’ll find it convenient…and best of all – free!

When Windows 7 came along in October 2009, I heard about the ability to install a virtual PC and run XP in it. I was disappointed to find out that it was available for those running Windows 7 Enterprise, Ultimate or Professional. When I got Professional, I was crushed again when I found out it had HAV (hardware-assisted virtualization) requirements that my machine could not meet.

Fast forward to this Spring when Microsoft  made Hardware virtualization support (HAV)  no longer a requirement. So that means if anyone is running Windows 7 Enterprise, Ultimate or Professional, it’s possible to get your computer configured with Virtual PC + XP Professional for free!

I think Microsoft realized the previous requirements left too many users unable to utilize XP Mode. That meant that there were users out there who would NOT upgrade to Windows 7 because they had some legacy software that was holding them back.

I was interested in XP Mode because I have client work that can only be completed by using Windows XP, but I didn’t know that before I upgraded to Windows 7. Luckily, I have a Dell netbook with XP on it, so I could continue with my client. But I’d rather do that work on my production machine.

Next, I want to walk through the steps to get Windows Virtual PC & XP Mode on your machine.

Steps To Install Windows Virtual PC & Windows XP Mode

1. Have a  PC running Windows 7 Enterprise, Ultimate or Professional edition.
2. Download and install the three pieces of software in the order designated (below). This takes quite awhile – I’m talking about hours. This is because you’re installing a new operating system inside another operating system. Even though you get XP with SP 3 on it, there are still many more updates that will need to be installed. Don’t forget to install security software. Might as well use Microsoft Security Essentials – it’s free and lightweight.

Two steps, but budget a lot of time to do this. For me, it took probably 6 hours, but I wasn’t babysitting my computer – I’d come back every once in awhile and do the next thing and walk away again. I also shut down everything else and just put all my machine’s resources on the downloading and installing process.

When it finished with all the updates, I started it up and everything worked! I was able to do my tasks that I had been doing on the Dell netbook on my production machine, so I was very happy.

Here's my machine-I'm running XP inside of Windows 7-Cool!

The purpose of this article is really to let you know that the hardware requirements have been eliminated and now it’s much easier to use this software and have the ability to install and run your XP programs from within Windows 7.

USB Support & 1-Click Launch

Some really cool things they’ve added are the below. We’re not covering that here, but read about these improvements. I’ve heard more technical people talk about that perhaps with the USB support, it might mean that there will be hardware support for our old XP peripherals. That could help a lot of people who have printers that are in great condition, but can’t find a driver in Windows 7.

More Resources – check here for more comprehensive coverage of Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP.

If you’ve tried this, let me know how your experience went.

All Windows 7 versions from Home Premium and up have these features. However, saving your system image or backing up to a network device is available only with Professional and Ultimate.

System Image  

Windows 7 makes it easy to make an image of your hard drive. This means everything – from the OS to all your drivers, data and how everything is set up. Say you get a nasty Facebook virus or click on something by mistake or visit a malicious web page and get infected. Instead of spending hours trying to get rid of it, just restore the image you have backed up to DVDs or an external drive.

To get started, go to your start button>Control Panel>System and Security>Back up your computer. You’ll then see the screen below and you can get your backup started and running in just a few seconds. Of course, you’ll want to put your image on an external drive or network location in case your machine is compromised. In the event you need to restore, just go back to System and Security and follow the prompts to restore your system.

Remember that this is a snapshot in time, so it’s something you may want to schedule monthly or quarterly.

When I finished running my system image, it prompted me to make a repair/boot type disk. It’s good to do this in case your computer becomes unbootable for whatever reason.

Backup

Backing up files, pictures and music is something we all know we need to do, but how many of us only get the ‘backup religion’ after losing data? Don’t let it be you! I use Carbonite, but I like to have another form of backup as well.

Windows 7 makes it easy to click through several screens and tell it which folders you want to have backed up and to what location. You’ll need to remember to have an external drive attached, or if you’re using a network location, that it is available at the time the backup is scheduled to run (backing up to a network available with Ultimate and Professional versions of Windows 7).

You get to the backup area the same way you get to System Image – then select ‘Backup’ and go through a few screens to get it set up. Alternatively, you can let Windows manage what is backed up.The image below would probably capture all data, pictures and music for typical users as those items are stored in our ‘Libraries’. Simply expand to see what has been selected and select and un-select as needed.

The last step is to select the time and frequency of your backups and you’re finished.

Microsoft has made it pretty easy for users to select the option to automatically update our computers whenever an update is pushed out, but most typical users don’t think about updating the other software on their systems. For example, Adobe has been plagued the last couple of years with many flaws and vulnerabilities in their popular Reader, Flash, Shockwave and Air programs. Browsers need to be updated regularly as well as Java, Skype and a multitude of other software programs on our systems that we may not use regularly and don’t think about them needing updating.

So what’s a typical user to do? Go to Secunia.com and run their free and fast OSI–(OSI-on-line software inspector). It scans all the programs on your computer and then it’ll give you a list of all the programs needing updating or patches. The best part is Secunia provides a link to download all the patches you need to get your system up-to-date!

I’ve run it on all my computers – here’s a result of one of my scans – looks like I need to update my Adobe Flash Player. So I downloaded and installed it. I went back a day or so later and checked it again. They said I still needed to update my flash player. This time, I went in the control panel and uninstalled the existing Adobe Flash player and plug in. Then I installed the freshly downloaded Flash Player–and got the same message. So I’ll have to keep working on that.

Or, you could try Secunia’s PSI (personal software inspector), a download to your computer and run your scans from there.

Secunia also publishes an advisory page which lists the newest vulnerabilities. This page looks like it’s updated hourly. The page also offers a searchable database if there’s something in particular you want to research, or you can scroll through the extensive list of vendors to see what the newest threat is from using one of their products.

They make their living from selling their products to corporations, but they’ve made doing a scan or downloading their personal software free for individuals. So there’s no reason to not run their scanner and take a few minutes to fix/patch your system.

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.

I previously posted about Jing from TechSmith. Back then, I had compatibility problems with the program and had to uninstall it. Now, it’s rediscovered – at least by me. I installed it and didn’t have any problems using it with Windows 7.

I use the Snipping Tool to capture illustrations, (ships with Windows Vista & 7), but one thing it can’t do is get a capture of a drop down menu. Jing has the ‘capture hotkey’ feature. With this feature you can click to get to your drop down menu, initiate your capture key combination (I chose Crtl + J), and then the Jing interface appears and you can get your capture—slick.

Here are some of the newer features

• ability to add up to 8 additional customizable buttons to have Jing do different things
• Send your screencast to twitter to share
• updated help section with videos showing you how to do just about any Jing task
• Get an embed code and post your content to a blog or website

Other Jing Features:

• Takes a snapshot of your whole screen or a small portion of your screen
• Option to save your output (.jpg) to either a free screencast account, your computer, or if you’re really geeky, you can save output at your FTP site or YouTube (Pro Version).
• Ability to capture a video running on your computer to share with someone
• Ability to make your own video – be it instructional or just fun in nature. Videos can then be instantly shared via IM, web or email.
• If you have a microphone, you can record your comments or instructions while capturing what you want to share. Nice feature and really allows for personalization.
• Output your jpgs to your Flickr account
• There is a 5” time limit for videos.
• A Pro version is available that will allow direct import to YouTube and the ability to save your videos as MPEG4s instead of the default SWF Flash Video. Other advantages to Pro as well. See them here

The Pro version is only $15/year. If you are one who likes to make instructional videos – for fun or for business, you’ll want to upgrade. With the Pro Version, you’ll be able to use a webcam and get smoothly transitioned shots of yourself, along with what is on your screen. Then post to your YouTube account with one click.

Jing is a free product by TechSmith (who also brings you SnagIt (like Jing, only not free), and Camtasia Studio (a high-end video producing software, also paid). Jing also integrates well with both of these products.

This open source program is hosted at Sourceforge, a reliable source for innovative and free software. GO Contact Sync supports categories, so if you have set up groups of categories, it will find and keep them categorized. If you use contact photos, it will sync those too. However, if you have different photos for the same contact, it will not do a sync.

The best thing are the number of sync options available.

Sync options from the website…

• Merge Prompt: This will ask you which contact to overwrite if both have been updated.
• Merge Outlook Wins: If both contacts have been updated, the Google contact will be overwritten.
• Merge Google Wins: If both contacts have been updated, the Outlook contact will be overwritten.
• Outlook To Google Only: Only updates Google contacts based on Outlook contacts.
• Google To Outlook Only: Only updates Outlook contacts based on Google contacts.

Once the program is installed, you’ll have an icon in the system tray. Here you can click to sync your contacts on the fly. However, you can choose during the setup process how often to sync, or to sync upon startup.

I just found this program and haven’t decided if I’ll use it yet since I have different sets of contacts in my Outlook and Google contacts and I’m not sure if I want to merge them or not. The program is in beta, so they do say to use at your own risk! It’s always good to do a backup before trying something new.

A month or so has gone by and I really hadn’t thought about the differences between the 32 and 64-bit software. Then I was reading an article about Firefox and Chrome browsers made for 64-bit machines and I realized I just had to try them out.

When I went to Mozilla.com, I typed in 64-bit firefox in the search box, but came up with zilch. Luckily, I had the link to Firefox 64-bit in my Windows Secrets newsletter.  When I went to install the program, I was a bit concerned to see it was called ‘Minefield’, but went ahead and found that it’s a new (beta) version of  Firefox. I was wondering how my add-ins would fare with a double switch to a 64-bit and a beta of a browser. My tree-style tabs still worked (my most important add-in). Unfortunately, Foxmarks (this add-on syncs my browser bookmarks across computers), will not work with this, but I can live with that for now. So far, I haven’t gotten any messages about other add-ins.

While in Minefield, I tried playing an embedded video and got a message that I needed a plug-in, an Adobe Flash plug-in. So I downloaded what they suggested, but got a message that ‘it might not have installed correctly’. Evidently, I must need a different version of flash. I’ll keep looking, but if anyone can provide a link-that would be excellent!

Then I went to find the Chrome 64-bit installation. That one was actually a lot quicker to download and install. So far, I’ve no problems at all playing the videos that Firefox would not play for me.

Internet Explorer comes in a disappointing third place in my un-scientific browser comparison. In fact, I couldn’t even find an install for IE 8 for Windows 7 64-bit. How amazingly short-sighted is that! I did find this link for IE 8 for Vista, but it won’t work with Windows 7. So I’ll have to stick with the same, slow IE 8 that 32-bit machines use.

My Findings

Fastest – Chrome runs faster on my Lenovo than the other two browsers

Compatibility – Chrome seems to keep everything working the same as before while I had problems both with Firefox add-ins and it won’t play Flash videos.

Security – I don’t find just a whole lot about how they rank with security—with Chrome, there’s the privacy issue that they say we really don’t need to worry about. Firefox has been highly praised by IT people I respect, so I will give that one to Firefox. IE has had multiple browser security problems and is a bit slow to release fixes for them.

Conclusions

When I’m using my Lenovo, I’ll probably use a combination of both browsers, but probably Firefox as my primary. It’ll be nice to have Chrome as a back-up browser for playing Flash videos. I only use IE when I’m editing websites in Office Live.

Even though 64-bit has been out since around 2003, the software to utilize it is still not there. I found a site called 64x Software that might be helpful, but I’d sure like to get some links from some of you who are more experienced with 64-bit software.

As the year winds down, I was taking a look at my blog post stats and thought it might be helpful to do a ‘best of’ post of my top 10 posts for the year. Below is the list and number of views.

Windows Calendar Sync with Google Calendar/Windows Live Calendar with Outlook
5,780 views

Windows Live Photo Gallery vs. Picasa – 1,305 views

Picasa 3 Movie Maker Review – 694 views

Windows 7 Review – 690 views

Do A Clean Install With Windows 7 Student Version – 406 views

Google Voice-Keep Your Original Number – 401 views

How To Add A Facebook Fanbox or Badge To Your Website -  336 views

Back-up Your Facebook Contacts – 314 views

Windows Live Mail-POP Account Enabled – 244 views

Microsoft SkyDrive & Photo Storage Upgrades – 231 views

As a traveler and travel arranger of hundreds of trips, I wish TripIt would have been around when huge chunks of my time went to making and communicating travel plans.

TripIt came about in 2006 from frustrated, but technically savvy travelers in Silicon Valley. They wanted the ability to have all their travel plans condensed in one place using software that builds and revises an on-line, shareable and printable itinerary.

TripIt does all this and more. Set up your free account at TripIt and jump right in setting up your profile and adjusting your settings for sharing and privacy.

TripIt seems really big on the ability to proclaim your travel plans to the world. Choose from LinkedIn, Windows Live, RSS feeds, Plaxo and a Twitter-like app as well. When you initially set up your account, TripIt will encourage you to let the software scour your contacts for any other TripIt users. If it can’t find any, they will ask your permission to send everyone in your address book an invite to join. So be careful where you click. Some travelers, especially groups, could find this feature helpful.

What It Does and How To Get It Done

It’s not complicated – simply forward your travel confirmations to plans@tripit.com. That’s pretty much it. The illustration below is a current listing of the many travel companies from which TripIt can process travel confirms. From there, TripIt will organize by date your air, hotel and car reservations. If you’ve made dinner reservations, it will add that too. In addition to this, it automatically adds in weather, maps and directions.

Say you have an upcoming trip and you’ve done some on-line research and wish it could be incorporated into your itinerary, just use TripClipper to send your ‘clips’ directly to your account. No more writing notes on scraps of paper that get lost.

Keep your travel plans in sync by following instructions to add and automatically have your travel plans updated in Outlook 2007, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, iPhone and iCal. Check the link for detailed instructions for each supported calendar type.

Mobile App

When we’re traveling we need instant access to our itineraries. TripIt has a mobile app and  has developed apps specifically for the Android, iPhone and is nearly finished with the Blackberry app.Go to m.tripit.com on your mobile phone to get set up. With these apps, you’ll be able to call your hotel or airline with a simple click.

Misplaced your itinerary? No problem. Just send an email to plans@tripit.com and your itinerary will be emailed to you.

For Travel Arrangers, Virtual Assistants, Admins

If you are a travel arranger for several people, simply set up an arranger account and have the ability to set up individual travel plans for all your travelers and keep them informed as to any changes.

With Tripit Pro you also get ($69/year):

• point tracking – keeps track of all your frequent flyer programs
• alternate flights – get options for alternate flights if your scheduled flight has problems
• itinerary monitoring – you’ll receive text messages about flight delays or gate changes
• ability to automatically share every trip with key people

Whether a corporate, small business or individual traveler, why not sign up for TripIt and try it out. It looks like a great timesaver and resource.