All Tips And Tricks » Tech & Internet

How To Zip And Encrypt Your Documents For Free

Simonne — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:49:45 +0000

Do you remember how long ago you have heard about Zip for the first time? I think it was even before Windows was invented. Internet was an unknown word yet at that time. Computers were DOS operated and the instructions for compressing and decompressing documents seemed like magic words to me. What I didn’t know by then, but I’ve just found out tonight is that the .zip standard was invented by PKWARE. This explains why those commands were starting with pkzip and pkunzip. For those of you who are interested, PKWARE is giving away a non-commercial use license of a much more modern version of zip, the SecureZIP Express. Not only it is free of charge, but you have the chance to win cool prizes in the new “Decrypt and Drive” contest.
SecureZIP Express has several useful features. The basic ones are compressing/decompressing and encryption of files that you store or send. Compressing files is a great way to save storage space, especially on memory sticks and CDs; besides, there are situations in which we want our files to be secured, as they are not meant to be seen by anybody. The software also includes a digital certificate so you can exchange files securely with others without using passwords. Only the person the file was encrypted for can open it when you use a digital certificate. SecureZIP Express has no toolbars or spyware. For years, PKWARE has given free .zip software away. Now, together with the software, they are giving away a lot of prizes including a Honda scooter, bicycles, Wii games, gas cards, and more.

For entering the contest, you need to visit www.DecryptandDrive.com, download the free software, then come back to play the game. You need to have SecureZIP, and the digital certificate it installs, on the computer you play the game from. SecureZIP Express is also available for download at www.securezip.com. Good luck and let me know if you win something.

Multimedia Software For Video Encoding And Conversion

Simonne — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:45:37 +0000

The multimedia age made all music devices I’ve used in my teens look obsolete. I grew up in the vinyl discs era and I have a great collection of such discs I don’t listen to anymore, but I can’t throw away either. Now we can do anything we want to our music: we can listen to it while relaxing, we can take it away with us when we go out, we can edit it and record our own original songs if so we wish. Of course, we can’t do all these without the help of specialized multimedia software such as an audio converter for changing the audio file format, a video encoder for converting AVI and WMV files to MPG formats. After we convert the files, we surely could use a DVD ripper software, so we can write the music on CDs or DVDs to archive it in our library or to take it with us in the car.

How to Choose the Multimedia Software

Multimedia software defines those computer programs which let you do all things I’ve mentioned above and even more. When choosing a multimedia application, you need to take into consideration your needs: what do you want the software to do? What’s your final purpose? Do you need only to rip music on CDs, or you could use some video creation and merging as well? You need to see what are the supported formats of files, to see if it is good for you.

Blaze Media Pro: All-In-One Multimedia Software

Blaze Media Pro is a multimedia application which offers all these functions: audio converter (supporting MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG and other known music files formats), an MP3 encoder and decoder, MPEG encoder and decoder, CD and DVD burner, video and audio editor, to name only a few of its facilities. The system requirements fall within the average range (800 MHz processor, 1GB RAM, 30MB hard disk, sound card). Of course, for creating CDs you’ll need a CD writer. The operating system can be Windows 98 SE/2000/ME/XP/Vista. I don’t know if it works also on MACs, but you can ask the support staff if you are interested.

I’ve shot some videos recently, and I needed to edit and merge some of them, so I’ve used the free trial version of Blaze Media Pro. The video editing operations that can be done with this multimedia software are multiple, covering actions such as deleting frames, cropping, trimming, flipping, mirroring, text overlaying. If you need, you can overlap an audio file over the video - this was the feature I needed so badly, because I had a part of video where the person speaking made a mistake and I needed to replace the text with the correct one.
What I also liked, but I didn’t have the time to play with yet, are the effects and color adjustments you can add to the video - this is on my to do list for the weekend.
Despite the fact that it’s a big time hog for me, I’m happy I discovered this multimedia software. I enjoy making my own videos, you know.

How Often Do You Buy New Gadgets?

Simonne — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:03:17 +0000

I don’t know how unusual this is for a girl, but I love to buy new gadgets. If one month passes and I don’t change my keyboard, or get a new mobile phone, or even a new Logitech universal remote, I feel like a child without toys. I suppose I could very well live without all these cool, shiny, tech things. However, my life principle is something like: if your money is not enough, don’t cut on spendings, just go and earn more money. I know this is easier said than done, but still, I don’t want to change this lifestyle which I find fun and comfortable.

How Do You Find Out About New Gadgets?

Usually, I take my info about new gadgets from internet, TV and magazines. Even if I read about some cool device in a magazine, I still like to browse the net, to find reviews and opinions of other users, before I buy it. This is how I came across a website which offers information about gadgets and tech news. Gadget Advisor is one of the places where you can find out more about new gadgets and computer software and cool programs such as online backup service or top extensions for Firefox. All reviews offer detailed information, including prices and technical details. Besides, Gadget Advisor has a clean, pleasant layout, not crowded with ads like most of these new gadgets and tech review blogs.

So, what are your best tips for buying new gadgets?

Computer Repair Tips That Never Helped Me

Simonne — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:47:38 +0000

I’ve only had experience with Windows operated computers, so this is what I’m referring to in here. Computer repair specialists were always hard to find, and many times we had to try to figure out a solution to fix a computer which stopped working, because no specialist would come home, and to take a PC to the service company was extremely troublesome, mainly because such computer repair centers were in the center of the city, where we barely had any parking spots. So, you had to carry that heavy computer for more than 1 km, to get it fixed. You can imagine that we tried to exchange information between us, to discover tips which worked, in order to fix the bloody PC without all that hassle. If I tell you that Internet wasn’t invented yet, then you can see that information was very hard to get.

If you don’t know, Windows operated computers tend to get sluggish after a time, especially if you repeatedly install and uninstall various applications. These are a few tips which everybody told me should help me make my computer faster, which I didn’t notice to help me very much.

Computer Repair Tip 1: Defragment Often

The information on the hard disk is written in chunks called sectors. One application can spread across many such sectors, and if they are not next to each other, the head which reads the information on the hard disk has to make additional movements, thus increasing the reaction time of the computer, resulting in sluggish, slow launch of the respective application.

While I believe the reasoning behind this, from experience I can tell you that defragmentation had no effect on my computer’s speed, at least not an effect that a human can notice. Milliseconds that I might have gained by performing the defrag operation every week were not worth the actual time spent on doing the defragmentation itself.

Computer Repair Tip 2: Clean Up Disk Errors

This is easy to do: on My Computer, select the drive you wish to clean up errors on, right-click on it, then select Properties. The first option from the second tab of the menu that opens is Check Disk. It won’t run, but you can schedule it to start next time when you’ll reboot your computer.

Computer Repair Tip 3: Remove Temporary Files

This is called the Disk Cleanup and you can find it in the same menu as in Computer Repair Tip no 2. It will free up some space on your hard drive, which is good, but the speed gain won’t be noticeable for human senses.

The only computer repair tip that worked perfectly each time, and offered me a fast system, at least for a couple of months was to reinstall Windows. I’m seriously considering switching to Mac at the next computer upgrade I’m going to get.

Do you have any more computer repair tips that never helped you improve your computer’s performance?

Better Email Accounts Management with Zimbra Desktop

Simonne — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:02:00 +0000

If you are involved in a lot of internet activities, like social media or running blogs, you may need to have multiple email accounts. While both Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook allow receiving messages from multiple POP3 email accounts in the same inbox, not all web-based email services offer this possibility. GMail does, but Yahoo doesn’t, as far as I know.

Recently, this feature has become available for Yahoo email accounts, thanks to Zimbra, a Yahoo company which deals with in open source, next-generation messaging and collaboration software. They have launched Zimbra Desktop, a desktop application which allows people to gather all their email accounts in one place.

Zimbra Desktop Key Features

Operating systems compatibility: Windows, Apple, or Linux desktop computers
Applications: email, contacts agenda, and calendar all in one application
Account Wizard facility: set up Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail Plus, AOL and Gmail email accounts without having to know technical issues
Other types of email accounts that can be added: any POP or IMAP email account
Email storage space: unlimited
Accessibility: both online and offline

Should you be interested in trying this desktop application which is currently in Beta, you can discover more advanced features and download it for free. Support is offered via Zimbra applications dedicated discussion forums.

How To Fax

Simonne — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:22:35 +0000

I thought faxing was already obsolete these days, when we can scan and email all kinds of documents. However, a couple of days ago I needed to learn how to fax, because that was the only desired form of communication of a company I had to send an official paper. The only alternative to faxing being the snail mail, which I hate because of those immense lines of people waiting in post offices, I decided not to buy a fax machine but to discover how to fax using the internet.

How to fax to US or Canada for free

It took me less than 10 minutes to discover how to fax for free in the US and Canada without using a fax machine: use the Interpage free fax service or FaxZero free fax. I’ve tested the FaxZero website and it worked. I was able to attach my scanned document as a pdf file.

How To Fax Using a Fax Modem

Do you remember the times when we used to connect to the internet via dial-up lines? Many people are still using these services in many places of the world. The computer device which makes connection possible is the fax modem, and as the name shows, it also has the ability to send faxes, using the telephone line connected to it. All you need is a faxing software, which in the case of Windows XP is included in the operating system and you can make it work by following simple how to fax instructions.

In the case of a fax modem, once you set up the faxing module in the computer you can both send and receive faxes easily. This is not free of charge, you’ll have to pay the phone call bill.

Although it was not so difficult to learn how to fax, I still prefer emails, as they are much faster and more convenient. Faxis is for me pretty much like digital television conversion: I still don’t know why is it useful.

Do You Know How To Draw Anime?

Simonne — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:00:35 +0000

Anime, or manga cartoons are nice. Despite the fact that so many people use and abuse them, a bunch of original anime characters can make a blog memorable. Of course, your readers could use some content around your characters.

But how to draw anime when you cannot actually draw anything, and all faces you try to sketch look like alien potatoes?

I started researching some drawing tutorial websites, and it didn’t take long until I found a place where somebody who did the same research on free lessons on how to draw anime and manga put together the results, in a compilation split on categories of students: beginners, intermediate and advanced. From simple pencil and paper sketching, to 3D computer drawing, AnimeCubed.com has a link and a brief review for everyone who wishes to learn how to draw anime characters.

Why do I need to know how to draw anime faces? Simply because I happen to own a free greeting cards website and I need some fresh cards for my subscribers.

What Are You Buying Online?

Simonne — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:57:15 +0000

Some of you may know that lately I’m trying my hand at affiliate marketing. The process is simple: discover what people need, find out how they are searching for that on the internet, then work hard to be there with your website, promoting the product they need.

The theory sounds clear, but when it comes to practice, lots of questions arise. All I’ve ever bought online were books, and even for those, I had to go to the post office to take my parcel and pay for the order. This was how things were going in my place and they haven’t changed a lot ever since. Buying from USA stores is almost prohibited, as many merchants don’t deliver here, and even if they did, the shipping fees are high, so I can find those products cheaper or at the same price in local stores.

Under these circumstances, I have no idea what people actually buy on the internet. I work my affiliate stores based on the same principle I use for content sites, where I display advertising: find those keywords with good traffic and weak competition, optimize the websites for those keywords and watch people coming in.

In the advertising case, the next step was to watch them get out of the site by clicking a link. In the affiliate case, getting them leave the site via an affiliate link is not enough. The purchase is required for me to get paid.

I do have a clue how to see what products are hot online, but I want your input now, because you are people, not statistics, and with many of you I had the chance to talk more than once. What are you buying online? Shoes? Doors? Handbags? Pencils? Do you buy groceries such as corned beef and rice online?

I’m curious. Thank you.

Do You Spy On Your Online Competitors? How?

Simonne — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:33:15 +0000

I don’t spy on my competitors, for the single reason that I don’t compete with anybody online, at least for this website.

That’s because it is not focused on anything, it doesn’t have a certain target and I don’t want readers to do any specific action. It is just a toy and an experiment field for “smelling” good niches where to develop focused sites.

But for those of you who are keen on stepping in the competitors’ shoes, I’ve just discovered a cool tool, called SpyFu, which allows you to see for example, which are the top keywords your competitor websites rank for in search engines.

The free version of SpyFu gives you only the best ten keywords. If you want to see the full report, you need to get a monthly subscription.

So far, I’ve gone for the free version and I have fun with it.

Do you spy on your online competitors? If you do, what do you use?

My Recent Documents displayed in Windows XP

Simonne — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:42:01 +0000

Probably Windows 98 users remember that in the Start menu there was a possibility to see your recently open documents (as far as I remember, the list displayed the last 15 documents you opened). In Windows XP, this option is gone. Sometimes I found it useful, because I never remember the names I give to files, or the place I save them.
Windows XP has this information in memory, but it does not display it by default anymore. Here’s how to get access to the recent documents list:

Open Windows Explorer (if you don’t know how, use the shortcut keys combination “Window” + “E”)
Click on Local Disc (C:)
Select Documents and Settings
Select your user
Click on Tools on the menu bar, then select Folder Options
In the new window, select View
In this new list, look for the option “show hidden files and folders” and check it, then press OK
In your current folder, now you’ll see a new option called My Recent Documents. Double click on it, and you’ll see your recent documents list.
If you want to find it easier, you can assign a shortcut for it on your Desktop (Right click on My Recent Documents, choose Send to, choose Desktop (create shortcut).

That’s all. Enjoy!