Archive for May, 2008
Posted by thetechmanual on May 29, 2008
Rules of thumb
Treat All contests as fake. Treat all emails that promise free things as scams. Delete or report as Spam to block future correspondence.
Email
Email is the de facto standard to communicate in the Internet. Email is the equivalent of a fax machine. It is a very convenient way to send documents without needing the receiving party to be by the phone. They can read the document or message at their leisure in full clear color at virtually no cost.
Power of Three
If you are new to the Internet setup 3 email addresses. If you already
have an email you need to have at least 2 web based email i.e.: Yahoo
or Gmail
1. One email for personal contacts. People you know in real life. This should be your name preferably your full name if you have to, add a memorable number behind it. Sample JohnSmith911@gmail.com
2. Second email is for website registrations. Free website registrations are common and are usually very useful sites. Sometimes though they might build mailing list for Spam or advertisement which you don’t want getting mixed with your personal correspondents. Sample JohnEmail@gmail.com
3. Third email address is for beginners and use this if you don’t know that company your singing up with at all, but you want to get some quick info from them such as they require an email address to check out one page. You’ll probably never go back to the site, but you are curious. Also for experimental memberships, so you can check out a site and if you like it then you can change your email address with them to your secondary email address which you do check often. Sample JohnSurvey@gmail.com
The reason that I recommend web based email is two-fold. You can access it from more places than having to be tied to your computer at home. Most phones let you access web based email. The second reason is simply because in the future you might move and switch internet providers. Having email setup away from your internet provider means you can move and switch and still your email address stays unchanged.
In conclusion, never enter any of the emails you’ve setup unless you were already planning to do so. Never email passwords or sensitive information to anyone. Never respond to advertisements, not even to tell them to stop sending you information, just mark them as Spam.
Always be aware that sending an email is very unsecure. It is the equivalent of screaming your message across the net and so expect little privacy.
Posted in Email, Essentials | Tagged: Email | No Comments »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 27, 2008
Often I get the question of what book do you recommend to learn to use a computer. My advice is go to GCFLearnFree.org This site teaches you just like a book and also has great video lessons!
Link to a free and great computer lessons site
This site does require a registration, but is well worth signing up for. Its essentially the equivalent of an online class.
Posted in Essentials, Tutorial Links | No Comments »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 27, 2008
Web based email is the most convenient email, because you can access it anywhere you have an Internet connection. It is also the easiest to sign up for. Here are the two places I highly recommend for reasons I’ll explain in another section.
Both sign ups are only one page long and easy to complete. Best of all both are totally free!
Yahoo! Email
Gmail from Google
Both offer so much space that you need not ever erase an email, but you can if its unimportant to you.
The most important reason to use web based email is that you can keep your email address for life. If you decide to change internet providers you don’t have to change your email address. If you move out of state you can still use the same email address. Ok, you get the idea.
Posted in Email, Essentials, Quick Tips | Tagged: Email, Email in 5 Minutes | No Comments »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 26, 2008
Here’s a list of things to do some research in, if you are new to the internet.
Google.com - This is the best search engine bar none
Gmail.com - Free webbased email
Yahoo Mail - Free webbased email easy to use for beginners, just make sure you use the classic interface. They have the best tutorial section.
Yahoo! is great for people who are starting out. Explore as much as you can. After you setup your email with them you can use that user name to customize My.Yahoo.com this is a great way to customize your internet sources. You can setup RSS feeds which is a way to get news about subjects you are into. A quick way of doing this is:
- make sure you have signed in to your email then
- go to news.yahoo.com
- locate the Search all news field
- type in a subject you are interested in: NFL Falcons
- find the:
and click on it.
- you’ll get dialog confirming that you want it added to your personal page
This personal page is just like your own personal newspaper. You can add pages and sections. Add a Sports page. A National news page. Even an Entertainment page. Its a great morning paper.
Well explore and enjoy.
Posted in Beginner, Email, Essentials, Tutorial Links, Yahoo! | Tagged: Beginners, Gmail, Google, Yahoo! | No Comments »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 25, 2008
On my quick tips I mention a way to send links to online articles for later viewing and archiving. This strategy is good for the short term. The scrapbook strategy I’m about to discuss takes it a bit farther. It preserves the article for the extreme long term.
Gmail as a scrapbook of the internet.
Ever found a great article on a subject that you want to save complete with pictures. And you want to save it for the long term. You can build your own personal library with Gmail and the Google toolbar.
Yes a toolbar. The Google toolbar has many uses, but to keep it simple we’ll focus on one feature. A powerful feature that sometimes gets lost in the jungle of options. So here it goes.
Optional
If you don’t like the Google Toolbar and want to end up with a clean interface follow the following steps:
The following example of course deals with Firefox, like most of my articles.
- Install the Google Toolbar. Click on View Menu | Toolbars | Customize
- Instead of using the Customize Toolbar dialog, direct your attention to the Google Toolbar and locate the “send to” icon
- Drag this icon to be a part of your links Toolbar.
- Then close the dialog. Click on View Menu | Toolbars and uncheck the Google Toolbar. Now you have a clean system again with the exception of the new send to icon.
Usage
Now when you see anything on any webpage you want to save.
- Highlight and click the icon.
- Select Gmail.
- Put your email address.
- Click send
That is it. Now you have a permanent copy in your massive Gmail account quickly searchable for your convenience.
You can also skip the highlight and simply click on the “send to” icon and send the whole page.
Advanced (optional)
What I do is create a filter which activates any time an email contains aStar or astar. It then archives, labels it as an “a Article” and adds a star to it. Reason for “a” is a strategy I use to sort labels not only alphabetically, but also by attention priority. My top labels have an “a” in front with a space. When I’m done reading the article I take off the star.
Convenience
You can archive more than just the Internet this way. You can email yourself pictures you take on the road business cards and the like. Just tag them as you email them. Not only with the “astar” operator but with key words such as “John Smith Business card.” If you forget to tag, reply to that picture with the key words as body or subject. That will create a conversation which is searchable.
Posted in Gmail, Google | Tagged: Gmail, Google Toolbar, Scrapbook | No Comments »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 24, 2008
Key Word surfing like AOL with Google.
Are you knew to the internet?
If so the first thing to learn is how to do a Google search. If you are not new still read this quick tip there is something new here for most people.
- Type in Google.com in the address bar.
- Type in cnn on the search field.
- Click “I’m Feeling Lucky”
Notice what happened. You didn’t get a search results list. You got CNN.com. Go back and try MTV, Yahoo, AOL. What you are getting is the best result for the keywords. You can even try “Yahoo Mail”. Using the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google.com is a great shortcut that seems to be underused.
Alright, hope this was new to you and see how simple the web can be.
Posted in Beginner, Essentials, Google, Quick Tips | Tagged: Beginner, Getting Started, Google | No Comments »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 20, 2008
Quick Tips:
iPhone, your printable paper.
Ever started to read an article on your computer but you had to leave your desk that exact moment? Click on File menu and send link to your email address. Now you’ll have an email on your iPhone with a direct link to the story to continue reading.
Gmail as your personal archives.
Now that you have emailed yourself that link you can have Gmail always archive anything sent to you by you and move to a self named folder. Now you have a folder which you can check quickly for your latest self sent email. And, now you have a searchable personal internet bookmarked sites and articles.
Posted in Quick Tips, iPhone | Tagged: Article Archives, Gmail, iPhone, Scrapbook | 1 Comment »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 19, 2008
For now what I want to do is get the idea out so you can see what Open-Source means. The basic idea is that this is free software. It is free software in the sense that you have liberties you don’t normally have. Such that if an independent programmer has an idea to customize it or to improve on it he is free to do so without legal reprocutions. Basically you are free to do modify and use it as you wish. Open-Source is also mainly done in the spirit of making it cost free.
I’ll probably re-write this post, but for now I just want to get you exposed to the idea. Here are the benefits. There is absolutely great software free to use because of Open-Source projects at SourceForge.net
This is a list of my most recommended software produced by Open-Source projects:
FireFox is an Internet Explorer replacement which is highly customizable. It is easier on your computer overall and you’ll notice the smoothness of its reaction time to your actions.
PDFCreator this free program installs a virtual printer which creates PDF files you can use to email documents that you want anyone to be able to see it without letting them modify it. A read only view of your document.
OpenOffice.org this is a Microsoft Suite(Word, Excel, Access, etc) replacement. If you don’t have a Word type suite than definitely install this. It can create Word documents and other Microsoft document types.
These are only the tip of the iceberg and I will elaborate more in the future, but these applications are a great start to get exposed to the idea of free open source application projects.
Posted in Open Source | Tagged: Firefox, Open Office, Open Source | 1 Comment »
Posted by thetechmanual on May 16, 2008
The iPhone is misunderstood. I can never think of the iPhone as a phone. It is a mobile computing tablet which can also make phone calls. There is a distinction there which gets lost by the way its being marketed and the way that is being perceived. If you don’t plan to use internet or email and are not at all a computer user, do not purchase it. The iPhone is an expensive phone, but it also is the most affordable mobile computing tablet in the market!
Why I bought an iPhone.
Battery Life
I bought the iPhone cause I wanted a mobile computer which had a great screen, smooth performance, and above all had to have a marathon battery life. After using and testing ultra-portable and micro laptops one things was common within all of them. Very poor battery life. Two hours was the average though you could squeeze some more minutes if you did this and that.
Practicality
Aside from battery life practicality had a great deal of weight in the decision making. I want it to fit in my pocket because I am not the type who likes to carry around a backpack everywhere I go. Its not very socially acceptable to pull out your laptop at every restaurant to do some web searching, check email, and view some video podcasts. Even if it were the annoyance of booting up a Vista or any other operating system to do a quick internet search or email check is comparable to watching paint dry. The iPhone for that most part has instant On.
Connectivity
Laptops need a wifi hotspot to surf the web. If there were numerous places that offered free wifi, maybe there would have been an argument for the laptop. The operative word there is free. That, is still very rare, but even if you found one, the iPhone can connect to it too and give you the broadband surfing with it. The iPhone allows you to not worry about connectivity. Go to whatever restaurant you like, heck go to the park and surf the internet, check your email, and see last night’s NBC news on podcast.
Posted in iPhone | Tagged: iPhone, iPhone Purchase, iPhone Review, Mobile Computing | No Comments »
