Learn to turn your technology on...

Friday Night Links (2/5/2010)…

Do you like music? Of course you do! Then why aren’t you listening to Evan Roberts? A buddy of mine plays guitar on Evan’s albums and another acquaintance of mine is the producer. You can check out the HD version of the video as well or you can click on the above link to find out if Evan is playing near you. By the way, he does a nice blend of R&B and rock. Pretty cool stuff. (http://thedig.in/aq)

Evan Roberts – “Golden” (Official HD Video) from Anotha One Records on Vimeo.

Do you like videos on your computer? Of course you do! Then why aren’t you saving them from the web? Got that favorite video from YouTube? Take it with you! You can even toss it on your phone. (http://thedig.in/ar)

Do you like Comcast? Of course you don’t! Then why don’t you go ahead and avoid Xfinity? (http://thedig.in/as)

Do you like Canadians? Of course you do! Then why don’t you watch this one talk about pizza pies? (http://thedig.in/at)

CBC Archives: New 50’s Food – Pizza Pie

Do you like being in debt? Of course you don’t! But don’t get delusional that all your troubles go away when you get out of debt. So don’t just sock away your pennies and pay off your credit cards; you also need to work on your relationships, your decision making process, and your priorities. (http://thedig.in/au)

FYIJSYK: Internet Explorer Hole…

I’ve got a brand new FYI: Just So You Know. It seems that Internet Explore (you know, the little blue ‘e’ that is used to browse the internet) has a massive security hole and the worst part is: it can’t be patched. This means that any time you browse the internet using Internet Explorer (any version), the bad guys can access all your files and even upload their own files, essentially turning your computer into a petri dish for viruses and malware.

What can you do to fix this? Well, as usual, there is the hard way and there is the easy way.

The hard way

Some people might need to use the hard way if they are at work and are only allowed to use Internet Explorer. In this case, you need to follow the instructions provided by the How-To-Geek. While it doesn’t fix the problem, it certainly makes it much safer. If you must use Internet Explorer, please follow the How-To-Geek’s steps.

The easy way

Before we get to the easy way, I want to ask – why are you still not using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome? I’ve written before about the amazing extentions available for Firefox and Chrome recently added extensions as well. Both are much faster than Internet Explorer as well.

Extensions aside, both Firefox and Chrome are also much more secure than Internet Explorer and specifically, they are not affected by the current Internet Explorer security hole.

Before you do anything else, if you are reading this in Internet Explorer, please go get Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome and protect yourself. Your computer will thank you for it. FYI, just so you know…

Google Docs Update…

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about uploading any type of file to Google Docs. At that time, the largest file you could upload was 250Mb. Recently, the size was updated to 1024Mb, over 4 times larger!

This is great, especially given that if you wanted to store a Linux operating system live CD image, you could since they are 700Mb.

What files do you store on your Google Docs space? What’s the largest file you would want to upload?

File Hippo…

If you’ve been following The Digitante and installing every piece of software I’ve recommended along the way, you probably have over 25 new programs installed on your computer. You could probably spend one night a week trying to update all these programs to the newest version available, but that wouldn’t be The Digitante way.

Programs of all types come out with new versions which add features, increase usability, fix bugs, and increase the security of their wares. For this reason, you should try to be up-to-date at all times. Many programs have automatic updates or update checking built in, but certainly not all do.

We are going to check out File Hippo, a program that automatically updates all your installed programs, keeping track of that stuff for you.

As per usual, the first thing you need to do is head to the link above and download the file. It is super small and takes almost no time to download. The only decision you really need to make is if you want File Hippo to run when Windows starts up. Since it is a very small non-intrusive file, it probably wouldn’t hurt to run it at start up. Plus you would get up-to-date notification of new updates on the programs on your computer.

Once installation completes, File Hippo will proceed to check what you have installed. A bubble will pop up in the lower right corner. Once you click on the bubble, you will be lead to a web page that will contain your results. Here are mine:

You’ll notice it shows beta updates in addition to regular updates. Beta programs are ones that are still being tested and may crash or have other issues, but they also will have new, cutting-edge features. If you don’t want to use beta software, you can select to not show beta software, as shown below.

The only thing left to do is click the green downward pointing arrow next to each program and install the updated version.

You’ll need to excuse me now, I’ve got some software to get updated.

Do you have any annoying programs that don’t automatically update (I’m looking at you, PDFCreator)? Are you even concerned with keeping your programs up-to-date?

Tuesday Quick Tip: The Ctrl Key…

If you are in the mood to get things done, you need all the short-cuts you can get. A number of my favorite short-cuts involve the Ctrl key.

Since most people use a mouse, they don’t see much use for the Ctrl, Alt, and other non-letter/non-numeric keys on their keyboard. However you can save yourself a significant amount of time, especially if you use your browser, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel on a regular basis.

Example: Copying and pasting text via mouse

1. Select the text.
2. Right click on the selection.
3. Click ‘Copy’.
4. Click your destination.
5. Right click.
6. Click ‘Paste’.

Alright, six steps totaling approximately 10 seconds, because remember, you have to select exactly the text you want to copy, you have to aim your shaky mouse hand at the little ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ buttons, and you still have to get from one location in the page to another.

With the shortcuts Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, you can cut it down to 4 steps AND you will get rid of the errors made by shaky mouse hands.

Example: Copying and pasting text via keyboard

1. Select the text.
2. Hold Ctrl with your pinky and use your index finger to tap the C key.
3. Click your destination.
4. Hold Ctrl with your pinky and use your index finger to tap the V key.

Now you’ve used 4 steps that took approximately 5 seconds.

Saving those 5 seconds my not seem like much, but if you were to be instructed to copy and paste 100 items during a work day (probably not a stretch if you use Word or Excel much), you will end up saving 500 seconds, or 8 minutes.

If you add other keyboard short-cuts like holding the Alt key and tapping the Tab button to switch between windows or hold the Ctrl key and tapping the left and right arrow keys to select text, you could probably turn that 8 minutes into 30 minutes.

Programs like Gmail are a short-cutter’s paradise with keystrokes that will open the next message, compose a message, or open a reply.

Here is a nifty list of 100 popular short-cut keys for Windows.

What would you do with your 8 minutes? Sleep in? Read a chapter from a book? Daydream about a vacation to a warm part of the world? Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you have any favorite short-cut keys of your own, share those as well.

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