Archive for Web Tools
Lessen Meeting Arranging Frustration With Tungle.me
Posted by: | CommentsHere is a free web tool you’ll want to remember and use. It’s called Tungle.me and it is a free service. Whether for business or personal reasons, there are times we need to pull a group together for a phone call or a meeting. Tungle.me will handle this usually time-consuming chore and the best thing is your attendees/invitees don’t have to create their own account to use it. You don’t have to try and share a calendar or send multiple emails any more!
When I went to set up my account, I found I could sign in with one of my other
accounts (see graphic), that means one less login and password to remember!
After signing in, you can choose to flesh out your profile, adding a picture, phone number, website address and any social media you’d like to add (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning, Skype and Xing). Tungle.me gives you a shortened URL that you can add in your emails, twitter messages, etc. to make it easier for people to schedule time with you.
You can choose to sync your tungle.me calendar with your Outlook, Google or iCal/Entourage calendar to ensure you don’t doublebook yourself. When you add a calendar, you’ll also be adding your contacts, so everyone’s email addresses will be accessible. There’s an iPhone app so you can take Tungle.me with you. There are options to get a widget to put on your website or blog and an RSS feed you can configure. Lots of choices.
Check out the Tungle Video
Setting Up Your First Meeting
Your account is ready to go and you want to get started. Click on the ‘Management’ button at the top of your screen and then click ‘Schedule a Meeting’. Then it’s simply a matter of following the prompts to enter in the information for the meeting, select several open times to make it easier to get something scheduled and then you can preview the email that will be sent out, OR you can opt to get a meeting URL and send it from your own email (more control for you).
I like that the invitation emphasizes that they will not have to sign up for an account to schedule the meeting.
Then click the send and that’s it – your invitees will be able to go to your Tungle.me site and enter in their availability and you’ll be notified via email when your meeting gets booked, when people submit their availability or if there are questions you need to handle.
I sent one to myself to test it out and it worked with no glitches. No software to download, use an existing account to sign up and in and take the frustration out of scheduling meetings with multiple people – priceless!
Jing-Make a Video, Take A Screenshot
Posted by: | CommentsRecently, I was wanting to do an instructional video for a friend who needed to perform edits of her website and I remembered how I had used Jing a year or so ago. If you’ve never used the program, you may find it helpful to download the guidebook (pdf), as it quickly steps
you through how to do a screenshot and how to make a narrated video.
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.
64-Bit Browser Comparisons
Posted by: | CommentsI recently purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad complete with Windows 7 and a 64-bit processor. It’s been a great laptop, full-size keyboard and some cool features from Lenovo that I’d never used.
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.
Wordpress and Blogger Comparison
Posted by: | CommentsIt seems the two major players in the blogging space are WordPress.com (not .org), which is owned by Automattic; and Blogger (owned by Google). Today, we’ll talk about the two platforms, contrast some of their features and conclude with some observations of which is best.
For the similarities:
- Both are hosted, which means you don’t have to find and purchase hosting from a third-party and learn how to install software. Your posts are automatically backed up for you
- Both are free
- Both give the author the ability to upload photos and videos
- Both allow submission of posts via email and mobile phone. I see there’s a WordPress iPhone app, didn’t find one for Blogger
- Both feature helpful videos, although WordPress has recently come out with WordPress.tv, which seems a cut above what Blogger has
Blogger Features:
- Use your Google account credentials to sign up for Blogger – one less account login to keep track of
- Choose a name (URL) for your blog and have the ability to easily change it later, or use your own domain name
- Add a gadget to your blog that connects your blog to your Picasa account to show off your photos (limited to Picasa photos (owned by Google)
- We mentioned the ability to embed videos in your blog – you can link to Google Video or YouTube
- Ability to make your blog private, i.e. by invitation only. Great feature for families with kids to keep photos and family information for friends and family only
- Ability to add others as authors or administrators. An Administrator can do everything you can do (may not want this), Authors only have the ability to write, post and edit their own writings
- Ability to embed audio (podcasts) into your blog. Also provided are instructions to get your podcast into iTunes
- Wide choice of themes and Blogger makes it easy to revise your theme to customize to your needs
- If you have a blog on another platform, you won’t be able to import it into Blogger, so if your blog is somewhere else right now, you might not want to switch
- Limited to 1GB of on-line storage, (less than WordPress), but if you have your pictures linked to Picasa, that doesn’t count against your limit
5 Tools For Everyday Use
Posted by: | CommentsIn thinking about this week’s topic, I decided to highlight the tools I use nearly every day to get my work done or to make getting my work done more fun. In no particular order, here they are:
Tree Style Tabs
This is a browser add-on – for Mozilla Firefox users only. You can click the link to read about all the features of this great add-on. I got it because it neatly puts all my browser tabs on the left side of my screen (you can put it right or on top too, your choice). The names of my windows/tabs are all right there and they are easier to see and locate than when I had the ‘old-fashioned’ tabs at the top of my screen before this add-on. When I didn’t have it, then my tabs would become too scrunched up and messy-looking at the top of my screen. It seemed difficult to locate what I was looking for. Now, they flow down the left side of my screen and sub-tabs will automatically open under a main tab, i.e. if I have Facebook open and click on something, the tab will indent and keep it all very orderly. I just love it and wish all browsers had this feature.
Evernote – Remember Everything 
Evernote is a great web-based tool that does so many things and stores them for you. I use the free version, but if you’re a power user, there’s a paid version for you. I’ve used it for storing software keys, receipts, research, pictures, even some blog posts with great information in them. Of course, there’s a portable version for your Blackberry, iPhone, Android and other phones. There’s great help videos and Evernote suggests many uses for its product.
The best thing about it (besides being free), is that Evernote organizes all the notes you throw up there and makes them searchable. For example, I grabbed some information I wanted on flights and using my evernote icon in my system tray, quickly saved it to my space. Then later, all I had to do was to go back and type in a couple words in the search box and it found it right away – no tedious searching through pages of information. If you’re the ultra-organized type, you can type in your own tags and make notebooks from within Evernote. Great software.
Snipping Tool 
This is for Vista & Windows 7 users only. Perhaps Apple has a version of it, I just don’t know. If you have the aforementioned OS, you’ll want to pin this one to your start menu. I find myself using it nearly every day. There are so many times I need a screenshot, a logo, or there’s something I need to show someone. It just takes a moment to start the tool and capture the image or text I need. You can snip anything from a small section to the entire page. Then you can annotate it before cutting and pasting into your email, or whatever. Read about it.
Pandora
Pandora is your internet music source – at least it is for me. I found it a few years ago and find myself pulling it up nearly every day to use. You do have to set up an account and then you’ll get 40 free hours of music a month. Once I went over my limit and for .99, I could listen for the rest of the month – paid via PayPal. You can pay $36 for unlimited and ad and commercial free listening per year. There are portable versions for different phones and there’s information on the site about different appliances that will stream Pandora (Roku, Sonos, etc.). I used to see them advertise a free standing radio-type device that worked with broadband or wi-fi, but I don’t see it advertised on their website.
Goog-411
Never pay for phone information again! I’ve got 1-800-GOOG-411 programmed into my cell phone and use it as my 411 source now. J
ust dial the number and it’ll ask you city and state and then it’ll ask for a business name or category, (pizza, movie theatre, etc.). It may return more than one result, just listen carefully and press the number of the one you want and it will connect you for free. I think it will also send you a text of the number in case you want to store it in your phone for future use. Right now, it only has business listings – no personal/residential listings. Put it in your phone, or read more about it.
Fax Services On-line
Posted by: | CommentsPerhaps fax machines and sending and receiving faxes are fading fast, but many of us still deal with companies by fax. Most corporations still use and even require certain documents via fax. Some folks don’t feel comfortable with email and some don’t know how to attach documents in an email!
We ditched our landline earlier this year and now use T-Mobile’s @home service. We still have our old land-line phone number, but we can’t use it to fax, bummer. That’s when I became interested in what was out there for faxing from my computer.
First, I have to say if you have documents generated on your computer, internet faxing is a quick, inexpensive and convenient way to send your information directly to a fax machine where it prints out just like you fed it through a machine on your end.
Here’s a place to look at several fax reviews. These all come with a monthly fee, but it’s much less per month than paying for your phone line and the ink your fax machine guzzles each month. Have you priced your local print shop, Staples or Office Depot for their fax fees? Our local Staples quoted me about $1/page and the guy told me the prices were pretty much the same around town.I think he was embarrassed to tell me the price, but I’m glad he warned me before I had to shell out $12 for my fax. What a racket!
If you’re looking for free faxing, efax allows free incoming faxes. It’s hard to find this feature on their site anymore, but you can use the link. You’ll be assigned a number, but don’t expect to get one in your area code. If you sign up for the pay accounts, then that is available. I believe you have to receive a fax at least once a month to keep your number.
I recently found FaxZero and really like it, with a couple of reservations. I like it because you can send two free faxes a day with a limit of 3 pages each. The three pages can be text you type or documents. There are two shortcomings: they accept only .doc, .docx, or .pdf and only one document per fax. So an excel or picture file can’t be sent with FaxZero. The other is that only one document can be attached per fax. Even with their premium service, only one document can be attached. Their premium service is $1.99 per fax with a limit of 15 pages/1 document per fax. It’s great if you can get everything into one document. But this is too limiting for me.
The fax service I found that allows multiple documents to be attached and supports up to 178 file formats is myfax. Their lowest plan is $10/month, which seems to be a great deal if you fax more than 10 pages a month.
I’ve used both efax and FaxZero and they’ve both worked just fine. For my needs, I still need a stand alone fax machine from time to time to send documents not on my computer. Luckily, I have a friend at a near by office who allows me the use their machine for free.
TripIt – A Traveler’s Solution
Posted by: | Comments
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.
Bring Twitter to LinkedIn
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, I wrote about getting your Twitter fix on LinkedIn by using the Company Buzz feature to search for topics while in LinkedIn. Wish I would have known then that Twitter and LinkedIn were going to be sharing updates as it would have been all one article – so this will be pretty brief.
It was announced this week that folks using LinkedIn now have the ability to have their LinkedIn updates go to Twitter. I even got a personalized invitation to link my two accounts.
It’s a very simple process. Log into your LinkedIn account and look under ‘Applications’. There you’ll see the Twitter hyperlink. Click and you’ll get to Twitter settings:
Of course, you’ll need your Twitter log in information. After that’s entered in, then you’ll be able to apply further controls as seen in the graphic below. It’s nice to have the flexibility to control who sees the tweets and what kind of tweets you want to share.
Adding your tweets to LinkedIn probably isn’t a good idea if you’re using Twitter for personal purposes instead of business. It’s probably not advantageous to your professional profile to see ridiculous tweets coming through for co-workers and prospective employers to view. A workaround is the ability to use the hash tag #in when you want to have your tweets go to LinkedIn. For me, it’s a good fit since I use both Twitter and LinkedIn for business. Of course, you can post an update either at Twitter or LinkedIn and it will appear in both places.
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Google Voice-Keep Your Original Number
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle Voice made some attractive changes announced in their blog October 26th. Until now, those of us lucky enough to receive an invitation had to make a difficult choice to change our number over to our Google number—or not.
This week, Google said they recognize how difficult it is for some to give up their numbers, so they’ve been able to tweak the technology to allow people to keep their original number and keep these GV features:
- free voicemail transcription (delivered to your email address)
- ability to do an on-line search of transcribed voicemail
- customized greetings for different callers
- SMS and email notifications
- low-priced international calling
If you decide to make your GV number your only number, you also get these features:
- ability to use your Google Voice number to reach you on all your phones
- SMS via email
- call screening
- call recording
- conference calling (up to 6 people)
- call block
Here’s a chart from Google that gives a side by side of the above for easier comparison.
The big appeal of Google Voice for many of us is the ability to use one number that we can program to reach us from all of the phone numbers we use. We don’t get that if we keep our original number.
Having the ability to import my contacts, assign groups to them, record a specific greeting for business, personal and family groups is both efficient and professional. I can further direct GV how to handle a specific group or person’s calls at a certain time of day. For instance, I would program GV to send all my family calls to all of my numbers so I wouldn’t miss them. I would program my business group to ring only certain phones at designated times of the day.
Here’s a short video that quickly explains the benefits of Google Voicemail.
Having It Both Ways
I’ve got a Google Voice number—and I still have my mobile and home numbers because I didn’t want to be too hasty in eliminating numbers I’ve had for a long time.
Why not use both numbers. I’ve decided that’s what I’ll do for now. I can give my GV number out for certain purposes/circumstances and enjoy the ability to program instructions for specific groups or callers.
If I go out of town, I can choose to forward my mobile and home numbers to my GV number and have the ability to handle all my calls in a specific manner. Any voicemails will be transcribed and emailed to me for easy review and retrieval.
I’m not using my Google Voice number very much yet, but it’s nice knowing it’s there and on the few occasions I have, it’s such a timesaver to get voicemails emailed to me instantly. The transcription isn’t perfect, but enough so I can recognize who called.
One thing I haven’t gotten to work is the free SMS. It’s my understanding that if I use GV SMS, charges wouldn’t apply. However, after using it exclusively for several days, I checked my on-line T-mobile account and they were still being counted in there. I will check out the Google Voice Help Forums more to see if I can get an answer there.
Facebook Fan Pages-Link To Twitter
Posted by: | CommentsFor those of you with Facebook Fan/Business pages, you and your page
admins now have the ability to have your updates from Facebook show up in your Twitter stream. So, post an update, a link to an interesting article or a picture on your Facebook Business Page and almost instantly, it shows up in your Twitter stream as well.
This functionality will save the busy business owner having to duplicate postings. Even if you have a ping.fm or other aggregator account, it didn’t link to Facebook business pages, only personal pages. Just make sure having the same message appear both in Facebook and Twitter is strategic to accomplish your objectives.
Instructions
Simply go to your Business/Fan page and at the top you’ll see the above notification to link your page to your Twitter account.
Click the link and you’ll be taken to a screen where you fill in your Twitter name and password.
Then you’ll have the choice to edit your settings. Here’s where you decide what all you’d like to have on Twitter. When finished, save and you’re ready to post!
I tried it out with a client and it showed up in Twitter almost instantly. If you decide this type of linking isn’t for you, simply click on the set-up and select the ‘unlink from Twitter’ option. It was easy and just took a few minutes. Try it out!
