Tech Tutor Mark

Open New Web Pages to the Max IE New Window Maximizer is a utility that could have been grouped with the other great utilities or Power Tools listed at various points in this blog, but it is too good, too essential not to devote an entire post to it. If you spend any time on the Web using Internet Explorer, you know how irritating it is to click on links in Web sites, only to have these links open up in a new window. The new window is not the problem, but the fact that they open up in a newer, smaller window. Sure, you could click on the "Maximize" square in the top right corner of the window, or, if you dare, you could double-click on the Title Bar of the new window - to make it maximized. But having to do that over and over and over for every site you go to and every link you click on gets tedious. Wouldn't it be nice if every link you clicked on just automatically opened maximized, taking up the whole screen, requiring you to do nothing but look at the page? That wou...

You read it right...529 Tips ( http://snipurl.com/2672t ) All right. This is it. If this comprehensive list of computer tips doesn't answer and solve your recent, current, and future tech questions/problems, nothing will. At least for now. PC Magazine published this article on their site, and I'm posting it here, just in case you missed it. Leading off in a very worthy place, the Windows Vista operating system, this compendium of tips tackles hardware as well as software (even Excel, PowerPoint and Word are covered) and business. With hundreds of tips in each section by the magagazine's analysts and editors, they have really outdone themselves here. Included are hacks, add-ons, advice, how-tos. This collection of tips will take a while to wade through, but it's well worth it. Here is a tip for you. Click on the links at the left of the site to jump directly to any particular section in the 529. Then you don't have to tirelessly click on the arrows at the bottom of e...

One of the most entertaining and informative technology trainers working today is Leslie Fisher. If you have not seen one of her one-hour sessions at Michigan's MACUL conference, or any other tech conference for that matter, then you really should seek her out. And if you don't get a chance to see her perform, then you can stop by her Web site: http://www.lesliefisher.com/ Leslie is truly one of the most engaging tech people wandering around the planet today, and she really knows her stuff. She is one of those rare people who could be considered an expert in her field. Specializing in training sessions on Adobe and Apple products, she has gained quite a following as a speaker, after appearing in some of the bigger tech conferences in the country. Her dynamic sessions for the past several years on the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional have been a great draw at MACUL . Here is the page where you can download her handout from that session: http://www.lesliefisher.com/...

A C C E S S O R I Z E Your Tech Let's face it. You don't really need a $500 iPhone or a $300-400 iPod , or even an $1,800 laptop that will fit inside of a manila envelope. Instead of spending all of your hard-earned money on the glitzy new tech toys that are out now, take care of what you already have first. Here are some recommendations, many of which are items you may not have thought about. These are the tech accessories you really need. USB to PS2 Adapter/Splitter : If you have a newer computer that has no little round ports (known as PS2 ports) in which to plug in your older mouse and keyboard, there is no need to buy a new keyboard and/or a new mouse. Instead, look for a USB to PS2 adapter. I found many of them on eBay for around $10.00. Then you can keep the mouse and keyboard that you've grown accustomed to and not have to replace them. This adapter can then be used on other computers in the future. Sometimes you can get them in sets of two. It's handy to hav...

If you're looking for the online how-to magazine for everything Adobe, here is the site: http://www.layersmagazine.com/ . Every day, you will find reviews, contests, a blog, articles and Creative Suite tutorials added to the site. Just click on the program you want, such as Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, AfterEffects, Dreamweaver, etc. There are icons at the top for each of the big Adobe applications. Clicking on any one of them will bring up tips and tutorials for that program. For a more comprehensive collection of tutorials, click on either the " Tutorials " link on the top navigation bar, or click on the "Tutorial Center" link at the very top of the site. You can subscribe to the site (to obtain the latest updates) by clicking on the RSS feed link on any page. There is a tremendous amount of free content on this site, but if you prefer to subscribe to the newsstand magazine subscription, a one-year subscription costs $30.00 or $50.00 for two years. The full ...

URL Shortening Services I am not going to be so foolish was to compare the different URL shortening services. That would be like comparing the different types of apple peelers or cherry pitters . They provide an important service, but not a particularly sexy one. Suffice it to say, we could hold a death match between three of the top names: SnipURL , TinyURL and the newer dwarfURL . I have been using both Snip and Tiny for several years interchangeably. For those uninitiated to URL shortening, it is a very common practice. Here is the situation. You need to share a Web address (URL) with someone, and you start typing it, but you miss one or more characters, or worse yet, your e-mail service cuts off the link or doesn't hyperlink it correctly as it spills over onto the next line. Or, still worse yet, the URL is so long that you just get tired of typing it or copy it wrong. You get the point. Wouldn't it be easier to share Web links if they were just much shorter? Bring in the v...

Firetrust's MailWasher Free A Unique Spam Blocker As you can see from the screenshot at the left, Firetrust MailWasher Free Edition contains advertising at the top right corner of the interface. This is one of the main drawbacks in the free version of this wildly popular Spam-blocking utility. Like many free versions of products that also have a Pro (pay) version, you are nagged to purchase the more powerful, better version, which is not a bad idea in this case. MailWasher Pro is a more fully-functional version of this anti-spam option. But first, before you decide whether or not to go with this as your Spam-killing choice, let's look at how MailWasher handles Spam. What makes this utility unique is that it catches the Spam before it ever reaches your machine. MailWasher doesn't remove it from your PC, rather it removes spam from your mail server before you download it to your PC. This may seem strange, but it makes a lot of sense. It means that when you download your E-ma...

HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners (Just Part of Dave's Site) People who are serious about creating Web sites often put the cart before the horse and learn WYSIWYG programs like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, GoLive, etc. But where they really should start is with HTML programming. They should learn the basics of HTML code, so they can at least understand how it works. It helps to know some HTML, especially when problems arise. This way you can figure out how to fix some of those problems. It's kind of like knowing a little bit of Spanish or a little bit of French. You never know when you'll need it - to help get you out of a jam. Inspirational cancer survivor Dave Kristula owns and runs Dave's Site ( http://www.davesite.com ), which has some excellent Interactive Tutorials (as he calls them) for such topics as CSS, Web Site Design, and the Internet in general ( Dave's Beginners Guide to the Internet ). But the overall highlight of the site for many people is ...

What is your choice for the best free Internet radio site? Mine, at least for now, is SKY.fm . There is no .com at the end of the address, and if you do type in SKYfm.com, you will not get this site, but a pretty bland Web page with just the SKYfm logo in big bright letters. Why is SKYfm so good? Well, first of all, from a purely educational perspective, it is not blocked by most school district Web filters. In fact, it is not blocked by any of the Web filters I have seen so far. I'm not exactly sure why that is yet, but it's your best bet for online radio at work, and maybe that has become its reputation. It sounds good to me. Here is what you get for free: 35 completely different radio channels convering every format imaginable, A recent playlist of the last 6 songs and the current song for each station, Support for both Windows Media Player and Winamp players, as well as others, Up to 96 k in MP3-streaming audio quality, just under CD quality and higher than most offline F...

A Serious List of Software Tools I have been an avid list-maker since I was little kid. Lists of favorite actors, actresses, movies, songs, TV shows, etc. The list goes on. Maybe it stems from borderline OCD. I just think it's fun. Well, Jane Hart and the Center for Learning and Performance Technologies (out of the UK) has compiled a list from the contributions of 155 learning professionals (from both education and workplace learning) who shared their top 10 Tools for Learning, both for their own personal learning/productivity, and for creating learning solutions for others. Now, here is the final result. Drum roll, please. The Top 100 Tools for Learning : http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html The Top 10 in More Detail : http://tinyurl.com/3gnmze The Spring 2008 PDF file is now available. You can download it here . The point of this amazing list of software tools is that these people took it very seriously. The analysis is incredible. Just take a look at how they broke ...

Imagine one Web site where you can get practically all of the software updates that your computer needs. SoftwarePatch.com is a site devoted to one thing: Patches. Not just Microsoft Windows updates, but Adobe updates, bug fixes, Vista drivers, game updates and patches, tips to fix PC problems, office services packs (including those for Corel's WordPerfect Suite). Virtually every security update in the history of Windows XP is found here as a single download. Unlike the free utility Software Inspector (which I also plan to do a review of soon), these various patches are here for the taking, but you don't have to feel obligated to download them. Just pick and choose. Although there is an abundant and constantly-updated list of the latest patches and updates on the SofwarePatch home page, there is much more on the left side panel. Click on Windows , for example, and you will find an Internet Explorer software archive, its service packs and even the most recent beta release of ...

Alibris .com is an excellent used book site. I was looking for a very particular book entitled Internet: Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks and if you will click on the link, you will see what Alibris brought up in its search results. Pretty impressive indeed. I bought the book for $1.99 plus $3.99 shipping. This rate is nearly identical to Amazon.com. The point here is that this site is able to compete against one of the all-time monsters of the Internet in terms of 1st and 2 nd -hand books. Remember way back when Amazon.com was strictly a bookstore? Actually, I have been able to find some used books on Alibris .com that I could not find (or at least not as cheaply) on Amazon Marketplace (Amazon's used merchandise center). It is pretty simple to maneuver through Alibris's site. Like most online used book outlets, this site is expanding to now include movies and music, as well. A tip that I discovered is that if you click on the word " Search " in the top left ...

Janine Warner and Her Digital Family of Tutorials Since I do computer training for a liviing, I really marvel when I find others who do the same thing, but who train in areas that I have yet to learn, or who have skills that I aspire to. Trainers who have reached standout status. Authors, high-paid conference speakers, etc. I could list some of my favorites: Leslie Fisher, Patrick Crispen, Deke McClelland, Colin Smith and Scott Kelby. The list goes on, but these are some of my mentors, even though they don't know me personally. Recently I glimpsed some of the training titles available from the exceptional Total Training collection by Janine Warner . I was immediately intrigued by her smooth, knowledgable demeanor and excellent, calming vocal delivery. She's easy on the eyes, too :-) Janine is a master of all things Web: from Dreamweaver (she's the author of the best-selling Dreamweaver for Dummies and Web Sites for Dummies books) to tackling the daunting task of creatin...

12 Great Free Apps from Ou Lately I have been on a free software kick. It's kind of a hobby of mine. Finding what I consider to be essential applications that help make life easier as a Windows user. Just recently I stumbled across a blog entry on ZDNet by George Ou, their former Technical Director. Interestingly, he lost his job on March 26th due to corporate restructuring. As a testament to his wisdom, he listed 12 essential Windows apps that he includes on every system he builds, and all of them are free. I couldn't agree more. Here is that complete article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=989 Included in his list (along with excellent screen shots) are: uTorrent Skype Paint.NET Infra recorder Dr. Divx FastStone Photo Resizer K-Lite Mega Codec Pack IZArc CCleaner Autoruns Process Explorer AVG Antivirus Free Edition If you just want to jump through George's image gallery for each app, go to this site . I can honestly say that I have used 8 out of 12 of these, and I can vouc...

The Fastest Defragger on the Planet I have experimented with other disk defragmentation utilities besides the one included with Windows XP. I ended up going with Diskeeper and was pretty happy with it through versions 9 and 10. Not that it is a bad product. It was certainly better at defragging my hard drive than anything included with Windows. It had a better, cleaner interface, and it worked more quickly. However, it still wasn't as quick as I would have hoped for. And, of course, being the frugal person that I am, I hated having to shell out the money each year (upgrade or otherwise) to accomplish a task that Windows should do a better job of by itself. But, in case you're interested, Diskeeper 2008 runs $29.95 for the Home version and $49.95 for the Professional version. Only the Pro version works with Windows Vista Business and Vista Enterprise. What I wanted was a free defragmentation program that does this unpleasant task better than Windows, faster, and for free. Bring...

Find Out What's Inside Your Computer without Opening the Case In the past, I have used a popular little utility called Belarc Advisor , which will tell you an amazing amount of information about your computer, including all of the installed software, serial numbers, amount of memory, etc. However, there is still a lot of information that Belarc does not report. For this missing information, I recommend that you also use CPU-Z . With CPU-Z, you can find out just about anything about your computer, and particularly that elusive statistical information like temperature, motherboard serial number, very specific memory information, and much more. You will learn important items like your processor name and vendor, processor package, internal and external clocks, clock multiplier, partial overclock detection, and processor features including supported instructions sets. CPU-Z is available from http://www.cpuid.com/ and this site is where you can find many other useful utilities like HWMo...

Photoshop Now Online...Sort of What if I told you that Adobe Photoshop was now available for free? Would you be interested? Would you be skeptical? After all, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 costs around $99 in stores (slightly cheaper at Sam's Club), and the full-blown professional-level Photoshop CS3 costs over $600 retail. It is available for free? From what software bootlegger? I'm sure all of this is going through your mind. Well, it is free...sort of. Remember some years ago when Adobe was bundling a product called Photoshop Album for free with digital cameras and some scanners? Then it was replaced by Photoshop Elements, which now includes a new and improved photo organizer. All of this you have to pay for. Wouldn't it be nice to have some of these Adobe photo features for free on the Web? That is sort of the idea here. Adobe wants to compete with Google and Shutterfly, Kodak and Snapfish, flickr and picnik.com , all of which are Web-based services. You see, more and m...

Easily Send Those Big Attachments I know from experience that many people don't even consider things like file size and file formats when they send out e-mail attachments. Then they wonder why the person they were sending a 20 mb collection of pictures, or a 50 mb PowerPoint slideshow never received it. The reality is that most computer users have a free Hotmail, Yahoo or GMail account. And, even though Google boasts that their highly-touted GMail system allows you to store well over 2 gb of e-mail, they still have strict limits as to the file size of your attachments. Here is a way around that. Assuming that you are not trying to send a full-length feature film or collection of music CDs, this option will do very nicely. Senduit (www.senduit.com ) is a site that I stumbled across during a training session recently. It is an amazing exercise in simplicity, because it only does one thing, and does it well. It allows you to send any type of file up to 100 mb in size to anyone in the...

In the school district where I work, YouTube.com is blocked by our Web filter. I'm not complaining about this (although many do). We do have some other good resources for video available to us, such as DiscoveryEducationStreaming ( http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/ ), formerly United Streaming , and now TeacherTube . http://www.teachertube.com/ is a trememdous resource for educators and students. As you might expect, it has anything from lengthy educational slideshows to student-produced skits. What I like is that it is highly organized, just like YouTube. There are links at the top of the site for "Most Viewed," "Most Discussed," "Most Recent," "Top Favorites," "Top Rated," and (my favorite), "Random." This is a great way to bring up a video-of-the-day entry with one click. Of course some clips are better than others, and that's where the ratings come in. Each video can be rated from 1 to 5 apples. 5 apples ...

My Favorite Laptop Mice After three pretty exhaustive (and exhausting) posts in a row, it's time for a more simple and practical tip. People sometimes ask me, "What is the best mouse for laptop users?" Well, that really depends on what you're using it for. Are you just browsing the Web at home on your couch, or are you doing presentations in front of groups on a regular basis? There are many decent wireless laptop mice out there. But I basically only recommend about three types, and I prefer Microsoft in this category, although Targus and Logitech also make great mice across the board. The first type is for people in the first group. Those who just need a mouse for basic home use, and maybe some travel. If it is just going to be used as a mouse, and nothing more (not a presentation tool), then go with this one , the Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 3000 ($29.95) . It is small enough to work well with a laptop, yet comfortable, and its USB wireless receiver snaps ri...

The Best Advanced Google Search Features (and some you didn't even know about) Google's Advanced Search : Right next to the basic Search box, click " Advanced Search " to refine your search by file type, results per page, search within a site or domain, language, etc. At the bottom of the first Advanced Search options, click on Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more to bring up additional advanced search criteria like date range of searches, usage rights like whether a document might be licensed for free use, sharable use, or commercial use, as well as Region of your search, SafeSearch (on or off), and even where the key words will show up on the Web pages you search. How many of you have ever dug deep into these advanced search options? Google Book Search ( books.google.com ): Helps you find what you're looking for inside of a book and shows you where you can find that book in a bookstore or library. -- Full View Books are "complete" books in t...