Don’t tell me you don’t have a CD burner!

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Have you installed a CD burner on your computer yet? Well if not I gotta tell you, you’re missing out bigtime. CD burners let your computer create custom CDs and this has a whole bunch of great uses. For one, you can build your own custom music. All you do is gather your favorite music CD’s, tell the computer which songs you want and it will automatically copy the right tracks and burn a custom CD just for you that works like any other music CD you have. Once you’ve tried this you’ll love it! CD burners are also great substitutes for floppy disks. The measly 1 mb capacity of a floppy means they can’t really store anything but you can copy 600 mb of data to a CD with your burner! Trust me on this one, once you’ve get a burner you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.

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How do you keep track of the birthdays and anniversaries of all your friends and family?

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How do you keep track of the birthdays and anniversaries of all your friends and family? Well here’s what I do and it works out just great. For each of these special dates, I enter a one year recurring event in Microsoft Outlook along with a note of special things like the date of birth. Now, when my niece’s birthday or anniversary rolls around, its shows up right on my computer. Then I’ll either fire off a quick email with my best wishes or if I’m feeling really good, I’ll send off one of those online postcards, and now I always know how old they are or how long they’ve been married. And since it’s a recurring event in Outlook, I’ll never forget about it ever again. Everyone always appreciates being remembered on those special days and with a little help from your computer, you get to be the family nice guy.

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Use AutoText in Word and save a lot of typing

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If you think about all the documents you create, you’ll probably realize that there are a few things that you end up typing the same way, over and over again. Things like maybe your company address, common phrases, standard clauses, or product information. Most people just end up actually typing that information in time and time again. There’s a much better way and it’s called “AutoText”. Autotext lets you store commonly used blocks of text, and then later if you need to use that text block it’s just a few clicks away. Autotext is even smart enough to watch your typing and if it sees that you’re re-entering a block of text you’ve already stored, it automagically tries to type it in for you. It’s a very cool feature that few people use and it’s really easy to learn. Just hit F1 for online help and type in autotext. You’ll love it!

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Archive documents by printing but not on paper

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When you want to archive a document, do you find yourself printing it out, and then filing it? Man have I got a better way for you! The next time you got the urge to print on paper, print it to Adobe Acrobat instead. Most of us have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader and you’ve probably used this to download, view, and print all kinds of documents from the Web. But did you know that Adobe Acrobat Professional lets you create your own Acrobat documents? The software works like a printer. But instead of printing out sheets of paper, it creates Adobe Acrobat documents which you can then archive on to CD ROM. I’ve used this technology for years now and you won’t find a single sheet of paper on my desk and I really can’t remember the last time I had to print something out of my real printer. Save yourself time and money by printing to Acrobat the next time.

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Automating repetitive tasks in Word or Excel

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When you use software like Word and Excel, do you find yourself doing tedious, repetitive tasks that you wish the computer could do for you? If you’re thinking to yourself, “There’s got to be a better way”, well, there is and it’s called a “Macro”. Most people have never heard of macros yet they’re easy to learn and use. A macro is really just a recording of certain keystrokes that you get to play back anytime just by pressing a button. Say for example that you do a specific search and replace on most of your documents. Once you’ve turned that operation into a macro, you’ll be able to do it with only a single keystroke from now on. Macros are really easy to learn. Just hit the F1 key for online help and search for “macros”. Once you get the hang of it you will be freed from doing tedious, repetitive tasks ever again (well, when using word or excel anyway).

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Next generation flat-panel TVs using “Carbon Nanotubes” coming

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I caught this story in CNET about a new generation of TVs that might be hitting stores in 2 years or so.

Called “Nano-emissive Display”, these new generation TVs are markedly improved over the old stuff. CNET says:

Among favorable attributes of Motorola’s new displays: They’re bright enough to be seen in daylight, they respond as quickly as CRTs, their colors are almost as good as CRTs and they can be viewed from a wide range of angles. And they’re “much less expensive” to build than current displays because fewer steps are required in the manufacturing process, Ilderem said.

They use a new technology called “Carbon Nanotubes” which are tubes built from Carbon that apparently have the ability to pipe electricity. These tubes are connected to the coated class of a TV and then turn themselves on an off to create the picture.

I’ve still got an old Tube TV because I like the picture quality. Now if this thing is for real, I’ll gladly wait for a few more years to get something better, bigger, and cheaper.

Quickly lookup Outlook contacts

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Want to see how to use this feature the cool way?
Watch this video using your Windows Media PlayerCheckout the video for a step-by-step demonstration!
(And let me know if you experienced any difficulties)

The next time you’re looking up a contact in Outlook, click somewhere on the right hand side window where your contacts are listed and slowly type the last name of the person you want find. Outlook will quickly start flipping through the contacts to match the letters you’re typing. This is the fastest way to search. Try it!

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Got Vonage or VOIP? Make sure you got 911

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I caught a tragic story that went on NPR in March and it underscores an important thing: If you’re going to ditch your phone-company phone service and use one of those Voice over IP serices like Vonage , make sure the 911 services are included.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has sued an Internetphone company, saying Vonage does not adequately inform customers about limitations of its 911 service. The case stems from an incident in Houston last month. Robbers shot and wounded a husband and wife while their daughter’s 911 call on Vonage was blocked. The family had not activated the 911 service on their account as the company requires. Abbott wants an injunction to stop Vonage from advertising that it offers 911 service. He’s also demanding that Vonage clearly disclose its limitations. The lawsuit is asking $20,000 per violation.

Whoever you use, make sure that E911 is included. If I were you, once my service got installed, I’d make an E911 call just to make sure and then when they pick up the phone I’d just tell them I was testing to make sure my phone worked.

New Virus Alert – Sober.O

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I was catching a lot of these Sober.O viruses yesterday. They are so fresh my anti-virus definitions were not up to snuff in catching it.

Make sure your anti-virus software is fully up to date. This one is picking up steam pretty quickly.

What it does is send you email messages with an attached ZIP file. The message contents say something to the effect of:

Account and Password Information are attached!

Visit: http://www.cheqnet.net

or

This is an automatically generated E-Mail Delivery Status Notification.

Mail-Header, Mail-Body and Error Description are attached

What’s especially tricky is that it signs the email with what looks like your own anti-virus software stamp of approval:

*** Attachment-Scanner: Status OK
*** “yourcomputerminute” Anti-Virus
*** http://www.yourcomputerminute.com

My advice:

1. don’t open any Zip files that you may have received since Sunday of this week.
2. Make sure your antivirus is up to date and verify this with your IT folks before you open any other zip files

Launch your top applications and Web sites with one click

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Want to see how to use this feature the cool way?
Watch this video using your Windows Media PlayerCheckout the video for a step-by-step demonstration!
(And let me know if you experienced any difficulties)

How many clicks does it take to launch your daily applications? Tell me you don’t go through Start, Programs, etc. Please! How about your favorite Web pages? Don’t DARE say you type in the URL each time.

Many of us have bookmarked some Web sites in the Favorites menu and that’s a good start, but did you know that you can launch your daily applications and access your top Web pages with the Link Bar that’s included with Internet Explorer? Fire up Internet explorer and search the online help for “Links Bar” for complete details and you’ll find that you can drag and drop both Web pages and applications to the Link Bar. Once you’ve set it up just right you’ll love the convenience of a single click to execute those sites and apps you run 90% of the time.

The vast majority of your Web surfing only goes to a handful of sites and you really only use a few applications most of the time. Why waste time clicking through menus to get what you want when you can make them all accessible by a single button push. At my home computer, I have quick links for TV listings, Movie showtimes, yellow pages, and my favorite game sites. At the office, I have links to the Yellow Pages, News, our corporate customer support site, and of course, the surf report (hey, I gotta know when it’s time to leave early to catch a sweet swell).

If you haven’t already, setup Internet Explorer with a tailored Link Bar and you’ll love the productivity boost.

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