Published on December 5, 2008
in TechTips.
Good Friday Afternoon!
Today’s tip is an update to the Friday, March 28, 2008 TechTip which focused on Microsoft’s Skydrive Service. In review, Skydrive offers you space “in the cloud” to upload and store/archive/share your electronic files. For instance, you could store all of your Office documents as well as photos, MP3s, PDFs, Zipped files, etc. Anything goes. The only restriction is a 50mb upload limit per file. This makes it a little challenging if you want to do a mass upload of multiple documents. However if you wanted to archive all of your Office documents and store them as a zip file, you could do so as long as the resulting file is less than 50mb.
So, you’re probably thinking “why is he rehashing this? This is so almost-last-year!” Here’s the scoop: earlier this week, Microsoft quietly rolled out a storage limit increase. The original limit was 5 GigaBytes. They have increased each user’s storage space by a factor of 5. Yes, you read that right, you now have 25 GigaBytes of “cloud storage” available to you free of charge. This is a fantastic opportunity to back up your photos, music files, or anything else you want to protect (as long as each individual file us under 50mb, yes, I find this a little annoying too, but still see huge potential).
To check it out visit: http://skydrive.live.com. You’ll need a Windows Live ID (either a hotmail address or live.com login) to setup your account. If you want to get absolutely crazy, read this Lifehacker.com post about downloading a free utility which will mount your Skydrive space as a local drive (it also connects to other web services including Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Amazon’s S3 Service, etc.) :
http://lifehacker.com/5100226/gladinet-mounts-web-storage-apps-as-virtual-drives.
Something New for Friday TechTips – Video Preview! Pardon the “ScreenFlow Demo” watermark as I’m using the free version to test it out.
Happy Last Week of Classes and Enjoy Your Weekend!
Published on November 21, 2008
in TechTips.
Today’s tip will help you take advantage of the myriad USB flash (or thumb, or jump, or your term here) drives that seem to surround us. PortableApps (http://portableapps.com) provides a suite of applications which you download and install on your drive of choice (1 GB recommended) and includes mobile (and fully functional) versions of Firefox, Open Office (the open source office suite, compatible with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), Pidgin which is an open source multi-service IM client, games, image and audio editors, as well as media players. It’s sort of like having a Swiss Army knife of software in your pocket! The benefit of using applications and documents on a drive is that they’re with you where ever you are, and can be used the same on any other computer (as long as it’s running Windows). You also don’t have to worry about losing any of your settings or customizations. However this is also a hazard, because if you forget your drive or lose it, then your docs and apps are gone as well. So be mindful and don’t leave it behind, plugged into a library computer like so many UR students do! When you download PortableApps you’ll see that it comes with a standard pool of programs, but you can download even more at http://portableapps.com/apps. For the Mac geeks, you can even run OS Classic 7 and relive 1991 all over again. Speaking of running a full computer off of a usb drive, there are multiple variants of linux you can install on a usb drive, giving you your own virtual computer everywhere you go, just plug it in, launch the OS and off you go. Check out http://www.pendrivelinux.com for additional details.
So if you’re traveling for Thanksgiving and aren’t sure if your hosts have Firefox, or you need to work on that grant proposal, try taking PortableApps along with your documents, and settings. It’ll probably make life much easier.
BONUS TIP!
And since we’re talking Turkey (or Tofurkey if you’re so inclined) that reminds me of all of the sites which host the leaked sale flyers of our national day of spending, Black Friday, which is Nov. 28 this year! If you want to get a jump on the competition and plan which stores to hit first, have a look at http://gottadeal.com/blackfriday. You can see each store’s sales, all of the early bird merchandise, as well as look at sales by product type (e.g. Laptops). So forget that Citigroup is currently trading under $5.00 and do your part to re-energize the economy!
Published on November 15, 2008
in TechTips.
Today’s tip comes from Microsoft, the tech company we love to talk smack about! That said, Microsoft has released a number of new projects lately that I think show it’s on the right path. These include:
- Microsoft Mesh
- The Azure “Cloud Computing” Platform
- An Overhaul of their Live.com platform which will fully integrate with other social sites and tools you may be using
I’ll leave it to you to search for the above topics, because today I’ll highlight PC Advisor. It’s a new tool that will examine your Windows system from top to bottom and alert you to any issues that might affect performance. It is not a replacement for antivirus or antispyware software, just a tool to address less serious performance issues. Paul Thurrott, a long time journalist and Microsoft watcher has posted about PC Advisor here and provides the download link:
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/10/24/download-microsoft-pc-advisor.aspx
I’ll advise that this is a new product, and they may have not worked out every but, but I’ve tested it on my two home XP computers with no difficulty. All of these changes makes me think that we’re going to see a “new and improved” Microsoft in the post-Gates era. Time will tell!
Good Friday afternoon everyone!
Today’s tip is Evernote from the fine team at http://evernote.com. Evernote is a VERY useful “web clipping” tool that is highly flexible and can be used in just about anyway you can creatively imagine. Using Evernote, you create “notes” to yourself to remind you of:
- work to-do items
- shopping lists
- capture a photo or image you want to remember
- leave yourself a voice note
- paste in a web site or text you want to remember later
- include a pdf in your notes for later review
- your idea here!
It’s very handy with so many different uses. Maybe the best way to describe it is that it’s an organizer for things you want to remember, now matter what format or media type. And instead of me yammering on about it why don’t you watch the introductory video:
Best of all, Evernote is free and has mobile versions for the iPhone & iPod Touch, and Windows Mobile Devices (sorry BlackBerry users, at least for now). Perhaps most importantly, there are desktop clients available for both Windows and Mac integrating all of your notes into your daily work without having to necessarily surf to their site in your browser. Give it a try and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And don’t take my word for it, here are some real world examples:
Knitters using Evernote - http://spice.littlefeetbigsky.com/2008/10/01/iphone-knitting
Bloggers using Evernote - http://www.idano.net/new-blogging-tool-evernote-on-my-iphone-380.htm
20 Awesome Ways to User Evernote - http://www.inquisitr.com/2179/evernote-why-it-will-make-it-20-awesome-ways-to-use-it
After a pause I again have a collection of tools and services to bring to you each Friday afternoon. Today we’re going to look at a new service which just so happened to win best new app at the TechCrunch 50 conference held earlier this month. The announcement was forwarded to me by a library colleague. I’m sure most of you have heard of twitter, a sort of microblogging, public IM, life broadcasting service where you’re free to say anything you want as long as it’s one hundred and forty characters or less. Today’s tip is very much like Twitter, you might even say a “Twitter clone” (a term being used frequently these days). What I’m talking about is: Yammer!
Yammer provides the same functionality as Twitter BUT it’s geared toward the workplace. In fact it’s even restricted to your email domain, which means that only people with richmond.edu addresses are able to sign up for our shared space. Your posts can’t be viewed outside of the richmond.edu environment unless you purposely broadcast the RSS feed of your submissions. A number of people have already signed up under our domain, so I encourage you to do the same. How might this be useful? Here are a few ideas: keep others or your team up to date on projects or things you’re working on, a change in meeting locations, quick exchanges to help prevent email inbox overload, etc. Like Twitter, Yammer is a flexible platform that allows you use it as you see fit.
After creating an account, it might be a good idea to look at the other members and “follow” everyone whose update you’d like to receive in your account. There are also multiple ways to access Yammer: the web site, downloadable clients for Windows and Mac, and iPhone and BlackBerry apps. You can also send and receive updates via SMS.
Site - http://www.yammer.com
TechCrunch50 Site - http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference
Yammer Video Tour - http://www.yammer.com/company/tour
Give it a try as I’m eager to see what ideas people come up with on how to best utilize it!
Hi all, happy Friday and 5 weeks before the start of the fall semester! Today’s tip is inspired by a question from by one of our colleagues. He was curious about which multi-service instant messaging clients are considered to be the best. It’s very common for people nowadays to have IM accounts with AOL (AIM), Yahoo Messenger, Windows Messenger, Google Talk, etc. and also have friends that only use one service exclusively. This creates the need to have multiple pieces of software open in order to keep up with all of your friends and co-workers. Below are my recommendations to get around this problem and keep up with everyone you IM with in one place. Please note that you’ll have to have pre-existing accounts with each service you want to use before trying the applications below.
Meebo – (all operating systems, all browsers) Many of us in the library use Meebo on a daily basis for our Reference IM service (add BoatwrightInfo to your buddy list). Meebo is “portable” in that it’s a browser-based application. To access your IM accounts, just got to http://meebo.com. From there you can login to one of your existing services, OR if you want to have all of them available to you in one browser window you need to create a Meebo account and add all of your services. Once finished you’ll have access to all of your buddy lists in one place and can talk with your all of friends regardless of the service they’re using. Note that in order to provide free service, Meebo includes minimal advertising in the browser page which can easily be hidden.
Pidgin – Pidgin is an open source Windows application that you can download from http://pidgin.im. While installing, it will prompt you to add your accounts, and once completed you’ll be able to see all of your “buddies” and can simultaneously send messages to multiple services, just like Meebo.
Adium – Adium (http://adiumx.com) is Pidgin’s equivalent for the Macintosh and really quacks. 
Hope this helps to simplify your computing experience a little, have a good weekend!
Happy Friday (and iPhone Day) everyone! Today’s tip is a digital/analog hybrid. Do you find yourself caught in the grey area of managing your calendar in Outlook, but prefer pen and paper for your to-do lists and notes? Do you find interacting with a digital device cumbersome and annoying? Then PocketMod is the tool for you!
PocketMod lets you build a booklet and load it with various tools like daily/weekly/monthly calendars, multiple to-do lists, reference charts, emergency contact information, shopping lists, and so on. The customization options seem limitless! Here are the steps to create your own PocketMod:
Go to http://www.pocketmod.com
Click “Create a PocketMod” on the right side of the screen
Choose all of the options and where you want them to appear (hint: click the item first, it will then appear and you can drag it onto the page where you want it to appear)
Finally, print your PocketMod and fold it according to the instructions. There’s also an instruction video on the home page.
What you’ve just created is small and compact, easily fits in your pocket, wallet, or organizer and can be filed away later so you can have a record of your activities and completed objectives. Good luck and make sure you fold along straight lines!
Today I want to pass along an important upgrade to an oldie but a goodie: Skype. A few years ago Skype was on the cutting edge computer-to-computer voice and video chat. What really set them apart was the ability to purchase credits and use Skype as a voip service allowing you to make calls from your computer to land line telephones, and vice versa. Since then the field has become crowded as both Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) now offer the same services. However my personal opinion is that Skype is still best in class when it comes to video and voice quality in a computer-to-computer “call.” We recently used it in a library presentation to video conference with another librarian who lives in Missouri. I simply pre-arranged the chat, initiated the call during the presentation, turned on my laptop’s webcam and voila, free video conferencing!
The reason I’m mentioning Skype this week is that they’re preparing to release version 4 which will offer an updated user interface and other enhanced features. You can download the Windows version here:
http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/beta/
A few possible uses include videoconferencing with remote colleagues or calling in to family and friends while away on business. The main requirement is that each user have a webcam as well as built-in microphone or headset w/microphone. Download it and give it a try! If you’d like to test it out, let me know. My screen name is andy_morton.
Today’s tip is a little late as I had to get access to some photos of my kids in order to demonstrate today’s site: Animoto. Animoto is a new service that lets you upload photos, pick a soundtrack (or upload your own), and Animoto will automatically build a slide show for you. There are A LOT of sites and local software that will do this for you. What makes Animoto unique is that it uses web mojo to “analyze” your photos and music to create a unique (and flashy) slide show. You’ll also have two options of slide shows, free ones up to 30 seconds in length, or longer ones that involve a small fee.Here’s the breakdown:
- Create an account
- Decide what kind of slide show to create (free or fee)
- Upload your photos OR it can automatically pull them from Flicker and other photo hosting sites where you have accounts
- Choose one of their songs or upload your own
- Hit Submit
It’s that easy and gives you something to do with the photos you take this summer! Here’s the example video I’ve created:
http://animoto.com/play/S3KrCc5HGeq1gQ0Est9rnw
Have a great weekend!
Last week I provided a very brief introduction to what Web 2.0 is all about (using the web as a service, sharing content, distributing content using RSS, etc., etc., etc.). This week I want to direct you to a site that covers all things Web 2.0 and actually awards sites based on functionality and voting from actual users.
http://webware.com
I’ll highlight two parts of the site which are very beneficial, the Newbie’s Guide, with links directly off the homepage to various sites, as well as the Webware 100 Awards Site. Each year Webware receives several thousand nominees and goes through a weeding process resulting in users voting to select the top 100 sites and services. The winners are a combination of sites including standards like eBay and Amazon, as well as up and coming services like Vimeo, Twitter, and so forth. I think it will be well worth your time to review the winners and learn more about what each service offers. You’ll also see that many of these sites now interact with each other, letting you move your personal information and other content back and forth.
Let me know what some of your favorites are!
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