You cool with tech tips?

EDIT: Could you folks do me a favor? When you see a tech tip the you like or helps you in some way, post a comment to that tip so I know what you like.

Every Tuesday I post a tech tip (you can see all of them by clicking on the "tips" label below). Okay, most Tuesday's I post a tech tip.

Anyway, my question is: Are you cool with them? Handy? Not handy? What kinds of tech material would you like to see covered?

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Fooling around with Google

Lifehacker.com highlighted some pretty neat Google tricks. Oh, like what you say? Check dis out:

1. Type what time is it in Norway into your Google search bar. Bam! Instant local time and an easy way to see if it's night-time in Norway. Or wherever. Me, I want to know what's doing in Norway. Who knows what Olav is up to.

2. Convert currency (type "what's 7 US dollars in euros" as an example). Heck, convert any units. Try what's 3 cups in quarts as another example.

I'll stop here. Fact is, lifehacker already did a nice job, so just go over there and check out their article.

Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks (via Lifehacker.com)

BONUS TECH TIP

Firefox 3 users -- stop squinting at your screen for those hard-to-read sites. Font too small? Hit CTRL + and CTRL - to increase and decrease magnification on the fly.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Optimizing Firefox 3

Well, now that all the cool kids are using Firefox 3, I guess it's time to share some tips and tricks.

1. Adblock Plus

I'm a fan of Adblock Plus. Who wants to look at ads anyway? ABP zaps the majority of them from your browsing experience. Go to your menu and click on Tools --> Add-ons. A little window pops up, showing you your installed add-ons. Click on Get Add-ons and type Adblock Plus into the search field. Then click the Add to Firefox button.

It will be installed the next time you load Firefox. Take the time to tell it what "list" to use when blocking ads. I use "EasyList (USA)". I think it asks you what you want to use when you install it. If not, you can click the down arrow on your new ABP icon (looks like a stop sign to the right of your search bar) and tell it what you want.

If you want to see the ads on a particular site, just click the down arrow next to the ABP icon and say "Disable on this site."

2. Full-screen mode

Firefox has a nice full-screen mode that hides all the extra junk (called chrome) and maximizes your screen's real estate. Hit your F11 key to toggle full-screen mode on and off. What I like about it is that not only does it hide all the chrome, but it auto-hides -- and reveals -- your open tabs whenever you hover your mouse near the top of the screen.

3. Robots

Type about:robots into your address bar and hit enter.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Firefox 3!

Woot! The new version of Firefox -- Firefox 3 -- is available for download today!

It's packed with all kinds of great stuff, including a new Smart Location Bar that has already been dubbed the "AwesomeBar."

Affectionately nicknamed the “AwesomeBar”, the new Smart Location Bar lets you use the URL field of your browser to do a keyword search of your history and bookmarks. You no longer have to remember the domain of the page you’re looking for — the Smart Location Bar will match what you’re typing (even multiple words!) against the URLs, page titles, and tags in your bookmarks and history, returning results sorted according to an algorithm that combines frequency and recency.

The Smart Location Bar results also show pages’ favicons, full titles, URLs, and whether you have bookmarked or tagged the site previously. While the change from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 can be a little jarring for some, once you’ve used the Smart Location Bar for a while, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Learn more about the Awesome Bar and other new features here.

DISCLAIMER: This is new software. Many people recommend holding off on new software until the developer has had time to address bugs/exploits/problems. Me, I'm going to install it as soon as it's available. Others -- especially neophytes -- might want want to wait. Scaredy cats.

WARNING: Firefox 3 is a bit of a big deal, so keep in mind that their servers are getting slammed today. It might be a while until you can actually connect to a server and download Firefox 3.

Get Firefox 3

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Customize your start page

What's your browser's start page? When you fire it up, is your "home" screen plain-old www.google.com? Or is it some crappy product page from your PC's manufacturer?

As you know, you can set that start page to anything you want, so let's set it to something you want to see. Wait, you do know that you can set your start page to anything you want, right?

Sigh. Okay, in Firefox you click on Tools --> Options on the menu bar. See where it says "When Firefox starts ..."? There's a drop-down list. The "Show a blank page" option is nice for people who want to see nothing when they fire up Firefox. The "Show my windows and tabs from last time" is a pretty cool option for absent-minded people. Anyway, we want the "Show my homepage" option.

Now just type whatever you want into that field below for your homepage. You can type in "http://www.espn.com", "http://www.msnbc.com" or whatever you want.

How about doing the same thing Internet Explorer? I dunno. I don't use IE. Should be pretty similar, though. You Safari users are on your own, too, because it should "just work," right?

You know what I like? Google's customized homepage. Check out mine (click to enlarge):















You'll need to sign in to Google (your homepage will be "http://www.google.com/ig") and then customize the start page so it has what you want -- and how you want it -- on the page.

See, mine has local weather, my gmail account, general news, sports news, tech news, and, of course, the feed for Voices from Main Street. That's what I want. You might a link to your calendar, local gas price updates, local movie time or gardening tips. Do whatever you want. I'm okay with it. Really.

Just click on the "Add stuff" link and customize to your hearts content. You can even rearrange stuff by clicking on it and dragging it to its new spot. You can customize the stuff (called widgets) itself. You can even add themes to your whole start page. Knock yourself out.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Clean your microwave with a lemon

Today's tech tip is cleaning your grody microwave with a lemon:

Put 1 to 2 cups of water in a microwave-safe bowl.

Squeeze half a fresh lemon into the bowl and then drop the lemon into it.

Close the door and microwave until the water boils.

Stop the microwave and then let the microwave sit there with the door close so it steams the gunk.

Wipe down with a clean towel.

Admire your clean microwave.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Cleaning your notifications area

We spent the last two weeks trying to clean up your Windows desktops. We started by pinning stuff to your Start menu and then worked on your Quick Launch toolbar. This week we'll spend some time on your Windows notifications area.





See where the arrow points in the above image? You can click the image to enlarge it. That's the Windows notifications area. Most people have them littered, littered, sir, with junk they don't need. You only want to see what you need.

If you right-click on a blank spot on your bar (for example to the right of Adobe Photoshop), you can click on Properties in the context-sensitive menu that pops up.

Make sure the box next to "Hide inactive icons" is checked. Then click on "Customize..." and you'll see a complete list of icons hiding in your notifications area.

Each icon has a behavior (like "always hide this icon"), so feel free to hide whatever you don't need to see.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Using your Quick Launch toolbar

We're working on cleaning up your messy Windows desktops. Last week we worked on pinning stuff to the top of your Start menu.

This week we're going to work on your Quick Launch toolbar. See the red arrow in the image below (click to enlarge the image)? That's the Quick Launch toolbar.













If you don't see one on your Windows XP or Vista machine, we need to turn it on:

1. Right-click on a blank spot on your the bar.
2. Select Toolbars and then
3. Select Quick Launch.

Now you should see your Quick Launch toolbar with a bunch of icons in it. If you have a lot, you can click the little arrow at the far right end of your Quick Launch toolbar to show the rest of the icons in there. Time to clean it up.

Anything you don't use every time you use your computer should be deleted. I only need FireFox and Outlook on my home machine, so those are the icons you see in the above image. Right-click on anything you don't use very frequently and select Delete in the context-sensitive menu that pops up.

Now, is there anything you need in there that isn't? If you have a shortcut icon on your desktop that you use all the time, just click on it and drag it to your Quick Launch toolbar. Delete it from your desktop.

If there's a program somewhere in your Start menu that you want in your Quick Launch toolbar, do the the same thing. Click on the program and drag it onto your Quick Launch toolbar.

Now you can mess with the order. If you want the second item in front of the first, just click and drag it into the position you want.

At this point, you shouldn't have any program shortcuts on your desktop. Why? Last week you pinned anything you use often to the top of your Start menu. Today you put anything you use almost every time in your Quick Launch bar. Anything else you use so infrequently you can live with firing it up from your Start menu --> All Programs list.

Here's another Quick Launch tip for Vista users: See the order the icons are in? Say you want to open up the 2nd program instantly. See the Windows key on your keyboard in between the CTRL and ALT key on the left? The one that opens up your Start menu? Hold down the Windows key and tap "2". That opens up the second program in your Quick Launch toolbar instantly.

Next week: Cleaning up your Windows notifications area

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Pin stuff to your Start menu

Let me be frank, people: I've seen your desktops and they are even more cluttered and messy than your real desktops.

Cluttered? Messy? I've given it some more thought and cluttered and messy isn't sufficiently accurate. I'm going to use words like apalling and landfill-like.

We're going to spend some of these Tuesday's Tech Tips on cleaning up your Windows XP and Vista desktops.

We're gonna start with, well, your Start menu. That's what the red arrow is pointing at in the image below (you can click on it to enlarge).













Take a second to look at that desktop. What don't you see on it? How about:

1. Install programs for stuff I already installed
2. Desktop shortcuts for programs
3. Files that I don't actually need immediate access to

For now, let's focus on programs you use frequently. If you look at the top of the Start menu in the above image, you'll see four such programs above the horizontal line -- Firefox, Outlook, iTunes and TomTom Home.

They are pinned to the top of my Start menu. They are always above that line. Let's clean that up your pinned items on your Start menu.

1. Open your Start menu
2. Right-click on the icon of any program you don't use or only use rarely
3. A context-sensitive menu opens. Click on "Unpin from Start menu"

Do this for any program currently pinned that you don't use or don't use often. Now we need to pin any programs that you do use often.

1. Open your Start menu.
2. Go to "All Programs" and right click on any program you use frequently.
3. A context-sensitive menu opens. Click on "Pin to Start menu".

Now your Start menu has pinned programs that you use often and that's it. Delete the shortcuts for these programs from your desktop (click on the shortcut icon on your desktop and click the "Delete" button or manually drag it into your trashcan).

That's it. In future Tech Tips I'll show you how to use your quick launch bar (the little area to the right of the Start button), how to clean up your notification area (the area to the far right that has the little clock in it) and how to continue cleaning up your desktop.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Talk to a human

Are you tired of calling toll-free numbers for assistance and then fighting your way through hundreds of prompts? Wanna talk to a human instead of a droid?

Use GetHuman.com.

You'll find an alphabetical list of companies, their phone number and instructions on how to get a human on the line.

The instructions for Belkin Tech Support, for example, says: "At prompt press 2263; press 1 at each prompt thereafter."

Link to GetHuman.com

Bonus Tech Tip: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Now that HD-DVD lost the high-def format war, those of you with Betamax tapes are two generations behind in obsolete recordable media.

The wonderful Betamax to HD-DVD Converter allows you to stay up-to-date in obsolete technology.

Betamax and HD-DVD are like a match literally made in heaven (you know, that place you go when you die?), and now you can get a slice for yourself. Featuring simple one-touch record between either format, your media has never felt less obsolete.

Link to Thinkgeek's Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Tech Tip: Broken LCD screen

April Fool's Day, eh?

Here's an easy trick you can do to someone. Download the broken LCD screen image from this website and set it as your victim's background.

They'll still see their taskbar and any open windows, so they'll figure it out pretty quickly (or should).

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Microplanes

Yeah, I know it's Wednesday already. You'll just have to deal with it. I'm giving you a couple of simple food tech tips today.

Yes, food has its own technology. Sometimes we get clever and borrow technology from other areas. That's what the Microplane is -- something borrowed from the woodshop. And at ten-ish bucks, it should be in every cook's kitchen.

Imagine I give you a taste of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I'm talking about the real deal here, not that powdery garbage that comes in a green can. Tasty, eh? But the good stuff is kinda expensive. That's where the Microplane comes in.

Buy yourself a small block of Parmigiano-Reggiano and grate some on your food with the Microplane. It does such a nice job, you'll use less cheese than if you used an old-fashioned grater. Wrap the cheese tightly in some wax paper and then plastic cling wrap. It will keep nicely in your fridge for a month or two. It's hard to believe, but over the course of a couple months, you really aren't spending much more for a high quality cheese.

You can also pick up some real nutmeg nuts. Keep them around for any recipes that calls for nutmeg. Throw out your powdered stuff and use the Microplane to grate your nutmeg on demand. One or two nuts will easily last me a couple years.

Cinnamon? No problem. Need lemon/lime/orange zest? Look no further than your Microplane. Tattoo removal? Well. Let's draw the line there.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Parental controls and the internet

We talked about parental controls and the internet yesterday. As far as I can tell, Comcast and AT&T give the software away for free to their customers. I believe Verizon charges $4.99 a month for their parental controls.

If your internet service provider (ISP) isn't on this list, look around on your ISP's website or google it. You can always fall back on calling them if you don't mind being put on hold.

• Free Comcast Security Suite
• Getting Started With Verizon Parental Controls
• AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Parental Controls

If your ISP doesn't offer free parental control software, you can find many off-the-shelf solutions by googling "parental control software" or checking out the software section of your favorite retailer.

I also mentioned AdBlock Plus, a free plug-in that comes with the Firefox internet browser. It blocks most ads. Firefox also has a built-in pop-up blocker. It should install with Firefox.

Get Firefox

Tech tip: Stuff you don't need to know about

When it comes to technology, there's a ton of stuff you don't need to know about. Let's do a quick rundown of a couple items.

• The Death of HD-DVD. There was a lot of stuff in the news recently about the death of HD-DVD and the triumph of Sony's Blu-Ray format.

  Here's why you shouldn't care. First, unless you have an high definition TV set (HDTV), you can't take advantage of it anyway. Second, even if you have an HDTV, if it isn't gigantic and/or you sit very close to it, it's unlikely that you'll notice much of a difference. Wait for prices to come down before you care about switching to Blu-Ray. Now, if you have money to burn, that's another matter. Send it to me. It'll have a good home.
  

• The transition from analog TV broadcasts to digital. First of all, the important date is February 2009. That's right, it won't happen for another year. Then, when February does come, it only affects people getting over the air TV broadcasts. You read that right, cable and satellite subscribers. This doesn't affect you.
• The awesomeness of Linux. Linux, is a free, open-source operating system. And yes, it's awesome. It powers my car's GPS unit, my router, one of my PC's and one of my desktops (I like the Ubuntu flavor of Linux). But look, unless you're a techie and already use Linux, you don't need to know about it.

  Why? We're kinda at the point where Linux is becoming transparent -- it's so awesome that you might not even know you're using it. So as long as you know it's awesome, don't waste time thinking about it

BONUS TIP: Can't find something on the blog? You have two easy choices. One, use the blog archive in the bottom of the left-hand sidebar and two, use the search field (powered by Google) at the very top of your screen. Type in your keywords and then click the "SEARCH BLOG" button.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Cell phone tricks

Here are some cell phone tricks for today's tech tip:

1. Can't remember where you parked? Take a picture with your cell phone's camera. Most big parking lots and garages are labeled (Row B, Level 4 Orange and so on). Take a picture of that sign with your phone and you'll have a reference for when you come out of the mall.

2. Put the phone number of a reputable local locksmith on your phone. That way when you you find yourself locked out of your car or home, you'll have someone to call (yeah, yeah, assuming you have your phone on you).

3. Use SorryGottaGo.com to end annoying phone calls. You pick a section and then click on a sound effect to play in the background. For example, the At Home section has a sound for "Oh it's the contractor" and "The hot water is boiling over." I find it easier to say "I'm sorry I have to go," but some people need a little extra help.

A lot of these tips came via Lifehacker.com ("tech tricks, tips and downloads for getting things done").

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Formatting your comments

Did you know that you can use basic HTML tags to format your comments to blog posts?

Here's how. HTML works by telling it when to start doing something and when to stop doing something.

HTML knows you're telling it to start doing something when you put it in angle brackets like this: <HTML code goes in here>

HTML knows you're telling it to stop doing something when you put a slash ("/") at the start of the code you want to stop in the angle brackets like this: </HTML code goes in here> (see the slash?)

How to use italics

Let's say you write this: The quick brown fox.

But you want "brown" to be italicized like this: The quick brown fox.

The HTML code for italics is a simple "i": <i>

You tell it to stop by using a slash ("/") like this: </i>

So here's what you'll type to italicize "brown" in your comment: The quick <i>brown</i> fox.

How to embed a link

Embedding a link is a little more complex, but uses the same principle. The code is "a" (because you're anchoring a link to your text).

This is what the codes look like for embedding a link:

<a href="the link's address you want">text that should be a link</a>.

Let's say you want "fox" to be a link like this: The quick brown fox.

This is what you'll type: The quick brown <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox">fox</a>.

You see the bit that says "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox"? Replace the bit in quotes with the address of the link you want to link to.

Clear as mud?

Bonus Tech Tip: Heavy duty wrap

I found that by switching from regular aluminum foil to "heavy-duty," I am now blocking significantly more signals from CIA mind-control satellites.

I believe the Navy's new low-frequency sonar is aimed at controlling my mind in the tub, however.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can handle this new threat?

Tuesday's Tech Tip: More fun with Firefox

Here's another tip for Firefox users.

Do you see the search field in the upper right of your Firefox window? See the big "G" icon in it? That's the icon for Google. That means that Firefox will do a Google search for anything you type in that field when you hit "Enter" or the little magnifying glass icon.

Today we'll talk about tricking out that function so it's personalized to you.

Managing your search engines

Google is great, but there are other things I search for regularly. I search on Merriam-Webster (for definitions), Wikipedia (for general knowledge stuff) and Amazon.com (for books).

Click on that Google icon. You see those other search engines? Click on one (I think Yahoo might be one of the defaults). See how it changed the icon in your search box? Now anything you type in that search field will search Yahoo (or whatever you selected) instead of Google. Go ahead and try it.

Now click on that icon again. See where it says "Manage search engines"? Click on that.

In the window that popped up, click on any search engine you don't want to use and then click on Remove.

Now let's add some search engines you want. In your Manage search engines window, click on Get more search engines. A new page will open with search engines you can add. You'll see everything from A9 (Amazon.com's search engine) to Wikipedia. You can add any search engine that catches your eye by clicking on it.

The thing is, the list on that page isn't complete. You might be an eBay fanatic. Wouldn't it be cool to have that as a search engine so you can do a quick search of eBay right from your search bar?

Look at the bottom of that page. Under "Additional Resources" you'll see a link to mycroft.mozdev.org. Click that link and you'll find hundreds (if not more) of search engines you can add to the Firefox search bar just by clicking on the names of search engines that interest you.

Go ahead and install any search engines you want. If you click "start using right away" on the install window that pops up, you're good to go. Otherwise you need to restart Firefox.

Using your search engines

No big deal, you just click on the icon in the search bar, select the search engine you want, and then type in searches to your heart's content, right?

Right. But there's a neat trick you can use to find info on the fly. Click on your search engine icon and make sure Google is selected (the "G"). Now, let's say you're reading something on a website and come across this passage:

About one-fifth of the DNC's delegates are superdelegates at this time. Do I understand this correctly?

Now let's say you're interested in superdelegates. Highlight the word with your mouse (you can do this quickly by simply double-clicking the word). Highlighted? Good. Now right-click with your mouse on the highlighted word. This brings up your "context-sensitive" menu. See where it says "Search Google for superdelegates"? Click that.

You just performed a blindingly fast search of Google that was both on-demand and required very little work to interrupt your train of thought.

Where it gets neat is that it will search with whatever search engine is currently active. So if eBay is your active search engine (you'll see a little eBay icon instead of Google's "G"), highlighting a word or phrase will search eBay with that text.

This makes searching Wikipedia, Amazon.com, or whatever very, very convenient.

Bonus tabs tip

Have you been fooling with the tabs feature in Firefox? Check this out: You can change the order of the tabs just by clicking on the tab and dragging it to the place you want.

Remember our earlier example of researching a new TV? You can re-order those tabs so all the reviews come first and the product pages from online stores come last.

Have fun with Firefox and remember, post labels are your friend! If you want to see all of our tips, you can click the underlined word "tips" under this post to see all of our tips.

Get Firefox

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Firefox and tabs

Okay, I mentioned earlier that when it comes to my internet browser, I'm a Firefox fan. You can get it here (it's open-source and free).

There's a lot to like about it, but one of my favorite features (now emulated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer) is the tabs feature.

Let's say you're at one of my favorite websites, Arts & Letters Daily. You see three articles that interest you. Rather than clicking on each one, reading it, and then hitting the Back button, you can use tabs.

Here's how. You know that scroll wheel on your mouse? Well, it's also a button (we'll refer to it as the "middle-click"). Hover your mouse pointer over a link you're interested in. Now click the scroll wheel (middle click). Did you see a new tab open up at the top of your screen? Good. Now, do the same thing with a few more links. Now you have a couple tabs open and each tab is one of those articles you want to read.

Just click on the tab to read the article you want. You can close it when you're done reading by clicking on the red "x" button on each tab.

Why is this handy? First, it makes it harder for you to lose your place when you aren't constantly hitting the Back button. And second, you can bookmark a group of tabs to look at later.

Suppose you're planning to buy a new TV. You can have a group of tabs -- maybe two tabs are reviews of the TV, maybe a couple of tabs are product pages on Best Buy's or Circuit City's website. Well, now you can go to Menu --> Bookmarks --> Bookmark All Tabs and type in a folder name (for example, "New TV research").

Now, let's say you come back to your computer tomorrow and you want to start your research again. Go to your bookmarks sidebar (the hotkey for it is "CTRL-B") and look for the folder you saved the tabs under (we named it "New TV research" in our example). You can click it open and click on any item to open it. We're impatient, though, so we aren't going to do that.

Just hover your mouse pointer over the folder ("New TV research") in your sidebar and click the scroll wheel (middle-click). It will now open every item in the folder as its own tab.

Neat, eh?

Link to Firefox