Defrag your Hard Drive

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When was the last time you defragged your hard drive? If your computer is more than a year or so old, chances are your files are heavily fragmented all over the drive, which typically results in poor performance.

The defragmentation process reviews your hard drive and determines if it needs to be reorganized (defragged). There is a simple utility called “Disk Defragmenter” in your accessories, system tools folder (Windows only) that you should run about 1x per year that will keep your hard drive well organized and giving you the best possible performance.

It’s easy to do and pretty safe, though this might be a good time to make sure you’ve got a good backup.

iTunes 4.9 video demo walk through

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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)

If you’d like to see how iTunes 4.9 works, check out this video.

Overall, nice, simple UI. Better than iPodder Lemon. You can drag and drop podcast links to subscribe, and the directory is easy to browse. I like it.

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How to synchronize your podcasts with Windows Media player

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(And let me know if you experienced any difficulties)

If you don’t have an iPod but you want an easy way to synchronize your podcasts with your Pocket PC or any other MP3 player, you can configure Windows Media Player to automatically sync newly downloaded podcasts and even deleted podcasts.

It took a little while to monkey around with this but I got it to work and it works like a charm. Check out the video I’ve put together and let me know what you think!

If you don’t want to watch a video, here’s what I did:

  • Set Podcatcher directory
  • Set WMP additional directory
  • Create new auto playlist
  • Insert removable media
  • Edit sync settings
  • Assign playlist
  • Open properties of removable media
  • Uncheck convert files
  • Check create hierarchy & start sync

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Don’t get fooled by phishes

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Somebody asked me:

“I recently received an email notifying me that my account with Ebay had been suspended and I had to fill out a form to re-activate it. They asked for all kinds of personal information. Is this legit?”

I’m sorry to say that you’ve been the victim of what’s known as “Phishing” which is a new, dangerous breed of spam. This spam doesn’t ask you to buy anything, but rather warns you about having your account canceled unless you fill out a form. The official-looking form asks you the deepest, most personal information such as mother’s maiden name, social security number, bank account number numbers, bank card PIN access codes, and the like.

Of course what really happens is that this information goes to a thief who proceeds to take all the money out of your bank account and uses your credit cards to go on a shopping spree. Disclosing this kind of personal information gives someone else everything they need to completely steal your identity and perhaps cause a lot more damage than “just” stealing your money; for example, a criminal that gets arrested can use give out your identity instead. Suddenly, you have a criminal record!

How can you avoid becoming a victim of a Phish? Here’s a super-easy way: If you get an email that warns you of an account being canceled, don’t click on any of the links in the email under any circumstances, no matter how legitimate they may seem. Instead open up a new browser window and go ahead and log into your account using your known user name and password. If your account is truly in danger of getting canceled, the Web site will repeat the warning and tell you how you can recover from it.

Today’s Internet-connected world brings fantastic productivity but you must always be vigilant about scams like Phishes. It’s sad to say but you just can’t trust email these days, especially emails that “smell like a Phish”. But the good news is if you just don’t click on that link, and instead open a new browser window, you can easily avoid becoming another victim of identity theft.

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Podcasting: The Next Big thing. How to subscribe and download to FREE audio content

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What do the Pope and Paris Hilton have in common? They both have a Podcast.

Next Big Things don’t come along too often and those of you that know me may recall that my other company CyberCom created the first commercial Web site in Hawaii and I was very active in getting Hawaii to make the most out of that Big Thing called the Internet.

Well, I’m here to tell you about the Next Big Thing and while this one won’t be quite as earth-shattering as the Internet, it will completely change the way you listen to audio content and I’m not just talking about music.  Drumroll please…

The Next Big Thing is "Podcasting" and it’s a new way to surf the Internet for audio content. A podcast is typically an mp3 recording of a radio-like show that’s available for you to download to your mp3 player.  There are over 5000 different podcasts going on right now on just about any given topic you can think of.  What makes podcasting different from just downloading mp3 files is the use of a free "podcatcher"application which lets you subscribe to your favorite podcasts. The podcatcher then checks those Web sites on a regular basis and automatically downloads any newly published audio content.

When you combine the podcatcher’s automated download feature with your existing mp3 player’s ability to synchronize files on your computer, the end result is that your mp3 player is automatically updated with the latest shows you asked for. You simply get up in the morning, disconnect your player, and off you go with your favorite audio in your ear.  And if you consider yourself an uberGeek you can add on an FM transmitter to your mp3 player so that you can listen to your favorite Podcasts through your car stereo.

I’ve put together an introductory video that will get you started on subscribing and downloading to podcasts. If you have an mp3 player or if you play mp3s on your computer at work, you gotta see why I’m all excited.  This truly really is the Next Big Thing.  When you get everything hooked up, make sure you visit my new sites VoteHawaii.com and a completely redesigned YourComputerMinute.Com and download the podcasts I have waiting for you over there.

Let me know what you think!

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Show notes (things I mention in the video):

A new way to get news and control the Web

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How do you get your electronic news today? I’ll bet you do it by subscribing to newsletters and also by visiting news sites, right? I used to do that until I got the hang of a new technology that everyone’s using called “News Feeds” or “RSS Feeds”. RSS feeds change the paradigm because instead of news being sent to you, your “Newsreader” software goes out, plucks the news you asked for, and puts it on your desktop for whenever you’re ready.

It’s important to stay current/ahead of what’s new, especially professionally. Using Newsreaders lets you get news from hundreds of sources, scan them quickly, and just pull out what you’re interested in. You just can’t do that with email newsletters.

This month’s demonstration shows you how this all works using a great piece of free software called “Pluck” (www.pluck.com) which installs as part of your Explorer Browser. Pluck lets you read news from any number of sources. But Pluck also adds some other killer features that I love, especially the one that lets you keep your work and home browser favorites synchronized. If you keep one set of favorites at home, another at work, and would like to have both of them synchronized, Pluck is the answer.

If you like reading news but are tired getting lots of newsletters in your inbox, you definitely want to get into this new way of retrieving your news and you DEFINITELY should check out Pluck.

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Quickly lookup Outlook contacts

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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!

Feedburner
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Launch your top applications and Web sites with one click

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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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Stop printing Acrobat forms! Fill and sign them digitally instead.

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Most Web sites publish their forms as Adobe Acrobat documents and that’s really cool. All you have to do is download the form, send it to your printer, fill it out, sign, and then fax it in. What could be simpler? Well, how about the Peter Kay Paperless Method (PKPM) of just filling the form on screen, giving it your digital signature, and then emailing it in? Yeah baby!

In order to do PKPM, you need to do 1 or 2 things: First, assuming that you have Adobe Acrobat (not just the Reader; you need the full version with the ability to create Acrobat documents), use the online help in Acrobat to setup your digital signature. Once you’ve got this setup you’ll be able to digitally sign any Acrobat document. Say buh-bye to printing and signing paper.

Second, for the given form you want to fill out, try clicking on the fields and see if a cursor shows up. Some forward-thinking organizations have made their forms fillable, like that advanced, cash-collecting organization called the IRS. If the Acrobat form is NOT fillable, then you can decide to turn it into one. While I don’t suggest this process if you’re only going to fill out the form only once, it becomes very efficient if the form will be used many times.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of digital signatures and Adobe forms, I guarantee you’ll love it because you’ll never have to print, fill, sign, and fax another document again.

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Bring those big spreadsheets down to size with outlining

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Did you ever create a spreadsheet that got just a little too big and you had to scroll all over the place to see the numbers you needed? I suggest you learn about Excel’s “Outlining” feature. With it, you can select a collection of columns or rows that you’d like to be able to collapse (perhaps because they have a lot of detail that you might not want to see all the time) and then “outline” them. Once outlined, you can collapse or expand the rows or columns you’ve selected.

Outlining gives you the ability to setup your spreadsheet so that you can collapse it all down to show the big picture while giving you the ability to expand any specific parts you may want to zoom in to. It makes even the largest spreadsheets very, very manageable.

Now what’s really, really cool is that if you setup your spreadsheet properly in the first place, using functions like SUM and SUBTOTAL, you can automagically apply outlines by just clicking on the DATA menu, then Group and Outline, then choose Auto Outline. Download my demonstration spreadsheet and try it.

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