Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Useful Shortcuts
How To Sort Your Internet Explorer Favorites Bookmarks Alphabetically
Apr 19th
Bookmarks, booksmarks, bookmarks. As you surf the web there’s tons of great sites we come across that you know you’ll want to reference again at some point in the future…So, we all accumulate them but never throw them out it seems — even the neatfreaks amonst us.
Soon, you have a LONG list of “FAVORITES” in Internet Explorer that’s longer than the screen…and it becomes hard to find that site you saved to your Favorites list eons ago. Seems like you have a lot of favorite websites, huh?
Perhaps sorting them ALPHABETICALLY will help your cause…but how? Read the rest of this entry »
Poor Man’s GPS: Getting Step-By-Step Directions When You’re Lost (with your phone)
Apr 11th
You’re driving somewhere and inevitably you get lost. What do you do? Sometimes you don’t even have the telephone number of the restaurant or office that you’re going to. You do have their address, but you STILL don’t have a GPS system in your car. Ok, Ok, yes, you’re still lost after kicking yourself for not splurging on that nice and shiny new GPS gadget you’ve been eyeing for yourself. Your current situation would have rationalized that purchase right there and then. Oh well. What to do? At least you have your cell phone…no you don’t have to do any James Bond or McGyvver type operation on your cell…instead you can dial yourself to destination. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Call Any Airline Free Without Knowing Their Toll-Free Telephone Number
Apr 11th
There are many things in my brain that are completely useless facts. Like I actually remember the toll-free numbers to American Airlines and Delta Airlines. But I don’t know any of the other gazillion airlines out there including JetBlue and Continental which my family flies often. And when my wife travels on business, I like to loosely keep tabs on her flight back to make sure it got off the ground on time, or if it will look like it will be late, etc. But this means I’ll make several calls to the airline during those flight days.
So I just pick-up the phone, simply say the name of the airline, and I get connected free of charge — all without every knowing or looking up the toll-free customer service number for any airline. How? Are you saying “c’mon, Tell Me!” Read the rest of this entry »
How To Jump To Another Email Account On Your Samsung Blackjack Cell Phone
Apr 11th
One of the better features of the Samsung Blackjack i607 is that since it uses Windows Mobile, you have the ability to set-up multiple POP3 email accounts so that you can read & respond to emails using each respective email account — I have a personal email account, gmail email account, a business email account, the synchronized Outlook account from my desktop, and the SMS/MMS messaging account that I manage on my AT&T Blackjack PDA phone right now.
Instead of “backing out” of an email account to get back to the total list of email/messaging accounts and then selecting the next email account you want to manage and drilling down again to get to that email list, there’s an easier shortcut that bypasses all that clicking. Read the rest of this entry »
GOOG-411 Google Local Voice Search Has Secret Access Number That Is Never Busy
Apr 7th
If you read the details about Google’s new GoogleLabs product called “Goog411″, the free 411 service that gives you local business results over the phone, you’ve probably tested it out.
I’ve been using it a lot to test it out on my Samsung Blackjack cell phone since I found out about this service this week and I get a fast busy signal (remember, this is a Labs product still) sometimes. Perhaps it is because the service launched and everyone that hears about it is trying it out simultaneously — kind of like the American Idol effect, just like AI, Google is so ubiquitous, it can serve up major spikes of phone calls. Or perhaps they just did not anticipate the “regular” volume of calls a service like this would need.
I discovered that there’s a 2nd access number that is unpublished and can access the same service and I have never gotten a busy signal so far — here’s both: Read the rest of this entry »
Tivo Tip: 30-Second Commercial Ad Skip Secret
Apr 4th
Why does everyone buy a Tivo? So that they can skip the commercials. Then why isn’t there a button on the Tivo remote control that allows you to skip commercials?
In order to appease Hollywood, Tivo didn’t explicitly include this functionality out of the box. Nor does it make it the the USP (unique selling proposition) in it’s marketing to the masses. Only through WoM (Word of Mouth) does the real reason to buy Tivo come across.
BUT, the Tivo-folks ain’t no dummies. And they know what their customers want.
So here’s the “Tivo hack” or “Easter Egg” that everyone knows about that you’ve been scratching you head about. It’s easy enough to Google it and find the exact programming sequence, but I post it here for educational purposes of my family in hopes that they don’t keep asking ME to re-program the remote every time there’s a blackout or a power surge causing our Tivo to burp and re-set itself. Read the rest of this entry »
How to “Bookmark This Site” or “Make It Your Homepage”
Mar 29th
How many times have you seen “Bookmark this site!” or “Make us your homepage!” on a website you’ve visited. That’s our dream here too. But we realize that you may not be super confident on how to do that. How about this? Instructions in plain English? You can thank me be trying the tutorial below with this site, http://www.essistme.com/
Read on to learn how to bookmark a site or make it your homepage with Internet Explorer… 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!