Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Entreprenuer/Small Biz
Stop Reinventing the Wheel
Aug 31st
Most business owners wear many hats. . .
You’re the accountant, janitor, marketing guy, sales guy, employee counselor, boss, friend, mentor, etc, etc.
Do you feel like somedays you didn’t do any “work” — but a lot of unnecessary time-sink activities that prevented you from doing what’s really important? Somehow as each day passes, you may feel like more items just get added to that LONG To-Do List.
Do you sometimes just want to drop it all and let out a big scream?
It’s time that you look for incremental gains and realize that there are free resources out there that actually will help you achieve your goals, not deter them. For example, how about that website you are supposed to design or get produced? What if you could find a way to build a website quickly that was A) professional, B) quick to create, and C) presented your company in a clear, easy to read & understand way?
Now you have some help. . .
Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine If You Could Read 500 Books Every Year
Jun 24th
I just recently read (in The Read Aloud Handbook) the fact that 60% of our adult population in the US doesn’t pick up a single book all year, every year. Less than 40% of adults read a single book in a given year.
Can you believe that 10% of the population reads 80% of the books read…Talk about Pareto Principle in action!
Knowledge is power. And if you can get ahead of 60% of your peers and competitors by gaining the knowledge from some of the best books published each year, then wouldn’t you?
Ah….you don’t have time! Well how about skipping a lot of the fluff in these great books and getting to the core message? Wouldn’t you love to do that? Think Cliff’s Notes for adults. Read the rest of this entry »
Seeing Is Believing: Watching Someone Else’s Desktop From Another Room, City or Country
Jun 14th
Computers are a fact of life. They are everywhere and used by everyone…
For example, even my daughter learned how to Shut Down Windows when she was in pre-school and 3 1/2…
Nowadays, you run into situations where you wish you could show someone you know what you’re looking at on your computer screen.
Perhaps this is especially true when you’re trying to troubleshoot some problem that keeps arising, and you just know that your geeky friend can fix it in seconds — only if he saw it first hand since you just cannot describe it in words well enough to get the quick fix secrets.
Introducing live desktop sharing. Long available to IT chipheads and business webcasts/web collaboration from huge companies like WebEx, this quite useful feature is now available to the masses….for free too.
Now, you can instantly and painlessly let someone else see your computer screen as if they had a long monitor cord to your PC connected through the internet. You can let them see what you’re doing on your monitor and they can watch everything that happens.
Laziest Way To Convert to PDF
Apr 27th
My brother recently emailed me about converting documents into PDF format. It can be a pain in the neck to generate PDF format files if you don’t own Adobe Acrobat software (not the Reader).
There are great online PDF conversion services, as well as free PDF printer drivers that let you print to a virtual printer which produces and saves a PDF document on your hard drive.
However, sometimes, you don’t even have the time to spend doing these simple tasks.
Here’s the easiest, laziest way I know of creating PDF versions of your Microsoft Office documents. . . Read the rest of this entry »
The PayPal Revolution: Completely Free Money Transfers
Oct 28th
It all started with PayPal, which allows you to send money electronically to other friends and associates just by knowing their email address.
The beauty of PayPal is that the recipient doesn’t need an account to receive it and they can free withdraw the money from PayPal into their checking account for free. eBay bought the company recently and is now building out the platform to compete on a real B2B comeptitive level with other merchant credit card processing services.
There are and were others out there that tried to build their own similar services – Western Union’s BidPay, eBay’s own eBay Payments, Citibank had their C2It which fizzled and there’s a couple of more out there. Now you can add another one to the list, which promises completely free money transfers end-to-end so that no fees would be paid at all in most cases.
Recommended: Domain Registration From Largest Webhost In The World
Oct 25th
Everyone in America wants one.
Companies have sites, churches have websites, families have sites, special interest groups have sites, students have sites, some pets even have their own websites, weddings — the “event” itself can have it’s own website, all people want their own personal website or blog.
The first step is probably the easiest, but for most laypeople, this could be the most expensive step if you don’t have a clue where to go to . . . Read the rest of this entry »
Email Tip: Sending Email On Your Laptop When You’re Not Home
Oct 21st
IF YOU TRAVEL OR USE YOUR LAPTOP AWAY FROM HOME, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST TECH TIPS YOU CAN READ TODAY.
Laptops are not just for business people anymore. Students just finished the back-to-school wave of purchases for tons of laptops while campuses are now being wired for wireless access in the libraries, classrooms, etc.
And with the fact that the laptop is becoming everyone’s “main” computer, email is managed from that machine as well. When you set-up an email address the free accounts that come with your Internet service provider, there can be a downside to using these accounts when you connect from remote location that’s not serviced by your ISP — any WiFi hotspot, friend’s house, vacation, hotels, etc. This is the same situation when trying to use your personal email account on a smartphone, PDA phone like a Treo, Blackberry, or Blackjack.
Depending on your Outlook, Apple email or Eurdora email settings, you may find yourself STUCK with mail in your outbox unable to be sent. That’s because you need to be connected to your ISP’s network in order to send through their “email gateway”. (Incoming emails aren’t problem – you can download and read your inbox from anywhere in the world with all regular email accounts out there) Using web-based email accounts to send emails when you’re away from home could be a solution, but it’s also a hassle to go back and forth, and have emails in different accounts all the time.
Here’s a great tidy solution to the problem of being able to use your laptop anywhere you want, the way you want. . . Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!