Friday TechTips

Good Friday afternoon everyone! This week’s tip isn’t so much about the technology associated with the service as it is the good it potentially offers! In honor of Earth Day this past week I’d like to tell you about FreeCycle, which I know some of you are already familiar with. FreeCycle allows you to post items to give away that you would have otherwise taken to Goodwill or thrown away, thus taking up landfill space.

FreeCycle’s organizational website is located at http://freecycle.org, but they utilize Yahoo! Groups to run each community’s site.  You can browse all the groups, or go directly to the Richmond group here. The only requirement for use is a Yahoo! login.  Registration is free and is done in a few seconds. To list an item, simply create a new post with the term "offer." For example:

Offer: Lightly Used iPhone

You should also provide a brief description of the item.  You can either rely on responses via email to your Yahoo! email address or provide a phone number (I recommend cell) for them to call.  Once someone has arranged to take the item, you can either provide directions for them to pickup or select a location to drop off the item.

You should post another message to the group after the item has been taken to alert others that the item has been claimed.

Taken: Lightly Used iPhone

Personally, we’ve been able to get rid of several things via FreeCycle and have gotten some great freebie kid toys and even a Weber charcoal grill that was in near new condition (retails for $149.00)!  I encourage you to give it a try as your junk is probably someone else’s treasure!

Enjoy your weekend!

Good Friday afternoon library staff! Today’s Friday afternoon tech-tip is a service that is near and dear to my heart as I’ve been a long time user. It also came in very handy last night as my parents now have DSL service and I fully expect to be their tech support person. Fortunately, I installed the software I’m telling you about several months ago while they were using a standard dial-up connection.

LogMeIn - http://logmein.com

LogMeIn offers several tiers of service, but I find the free version meets ALL of my needs (look for LogMeIn Free in the “Products” section at the top of the page). LogMeIn allows you to remotely connect to any PC that you own from anywhere you have web access and have full desktop control. To get started, do the following:

Visit http://logmein.com and create an account. You will then need to “Add a Computer.” to your authorized list. Be sure to be using the computer you wish to access in the future, as a small client will be installed. In Windows, you will see it in the task tray. It’s very light weight and won’t bog your system down. You will also have to give the computer a name, so choose something that you will remember in the future (if you’re going to add multiple computers).

In the future, when you need to access the computer, go to the LogMeIn website, login to your account, and you will then see your “stable” of machines. Assuming the computer is on and connected to the internet, you will be able to login and have full remote control access.

I’ve used LogMeIn to email myself a document that I left on my home computer, upload files to Flickr, and yes, provide technical assistance. Let me know if you have questions or would like further details!

Enjoy your weekend!

It’s April 11, and time again for another Friday Afternoon TechTip! Today’s featured service is Jott, from http://jott.com. It’s a very easy way to put your mobile phone to work, helping you to remember things and stay more organized. Everyone on staff (even Tom!) probably has a cell phone. After creating an account, you can then dial in from your phone to leave yourself reminders, to-do items, and even email others. Jott will take your voice message and transcribe it to text and then send it back to you as an email message. It can also store the audio of your message allowing you to play it back later.

Here’s a quick list of all the things you can do with Jott and simple instructions:

http://jott.com/jott/how-to-jott.html

I’ve used Jott to send email, leave myself a reminder, and yes, even post an update to Twitter. Jott integrates with several web services (http://jott.com/jott/how-to-jott.html) which allows you to create an appointment on your Google Calendar, post a blog entry to Blogger, or even get a list of items you’re interested in purchasing from Amazon.

It’s free, so give it a test this weekend!

Good afternoon!  It’s time for another Friday Afternoon TechTip! This week I’m highlighting two free services that allow you to organize your to-do lists and projects.  Both are very flexible and easily integrated into other web services.

• Remember The Milk - http://www.rememberthemilk.com
• Toodledo - http://www.toodledo.com

Both focus on “reinventing the to-do list” in various ways.  Both offer to-do list builders, multiple categories, notes fields, and reminders via email, SMS, IM, and Twitter.  Both also synchronize with most mobile phones and PDAs as well as Google Calendar, etc.  You can also import your to-do list from Outlook, and let’s face it, the Tasks feature of Outlook is a little dated.  Both of these services bring Web 2.0 to life as ways to help you remain more productive and organized.  I’ve been using Toodledo for a while now and really like it.  It has a Firefox extension that gives me full access to my projects without having to go directly to the site. Since both are web-based, you can get your to-do list anywhere you have web access.  Toodledo will also print out a handy little booklet letting you keep a paper list of your projects in your pocket.

Take a look at both and let me know if you have questions or ideas about either.

Have a good weekend!