Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Posts tagged How To
How To Bulk Unfollow Twitter Snoozers From Your List
Feb 20th
Twittering is a way of life. Either you tweet or you don’t. There’s no half-way in between.
You can’t just log in once in a blue moon and expect others to think you’re part of the Twitterverse community. What other group would embrace you with open arms if you showed up just 3 times in 2010 for example?
Spring is around the corner and that got me thinking of Spring cleaning for my Twitter follow list. It’s time to pare down my follow list to those that I really have a real interest, connection or excuse to follow.
I found a great little web-app at http://www.untweeps.com that lets you identify who on your Twitter follow lists has NOT tweeted in __ days.
Just input the cutoff and you’re ready for a 1-click bulk unfollow.
I filtered my follow list to see who hasn’t showed up in 100 days.
Just like that, my Twitter follow list was pared down by over a 100 people for one of my Twitter accounts.
There’s other bulk unfollow tools that let you see who’s not reciprocating a follow, those that are spammy, etc. But this is the first place I think most people should go when trying to clean out their following list.
What other Twitter UNFOLLOW sites do you use to manage your lists? Please leave a comment below!
Twitter 201: What Can You Do With Twitter?
Feb 10th
Once you get past the initial learning curve required to really understand that Twitter is not just knowing what everyone eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you start to ask, what else can I do with Twitter?
There’s actually a TON of stuff for which Twitter is useful. That’s why there’s a social media revolution afterall. But the Twitterverse isn’t so easy for newbies to get on what seems like a speeding bullet train at times.
The best place to start for most is to understand that you can control what you get out of Twitter. It is not just a continuous moving feed of random tweets from all that you follow. Once you find Twitter Search, your imagination starts to open up for what you can do with Twitter.
Here’s a quick video that explains just a few practical things you can do with Twitter beyond monitoring your network’s latest moves and ponderings:
How To Boost Your Ebay Sales With A Single Click
Nov 2nd
With so many listings, it is vital to capture your audience at first glance when you are selling your merchandise on eBay.
Customers often become inundated with the overwhelming number of like items available for sale on eBay. Your job is to catch their eyes and pull them in. The best way to do this is, take better photos.
If you just take a little extra time to setup a simple photographer’s set, it will be worth it. The best part is that you don’t need fancy equipment or dedicate space in the house. You can achieve this by using everyday items found around the house, you will be able to sit back and watch as your eBay views and sales skyrocket.
The best part about this competitive edge is that you can create your own professional looking photo set with items that probably are already in your home. Here’s a look at how to boost the look of your eBay listings with ease . . .
• table/stool
• white sheet/table cloth
• 2 chairs
• rope – about 10ft
• light (softbox if possible)
• white pillow case
First, place your table near some large windows with one chair on each side of the table. Between the chairs tie your rope — this is used to create a white backdrop by draping the table cloth over the cord.
Use a very light table cloth that will diffuse the light from the window, but be careful not to use to thin or thick of a sheet. This could result in a gray background, or over exposure from the sun.
Then place a light/softbox in front of the table. If you do not have a softbox use the pillow case to cover the light. This will help create a soft lighting effect. Lower and adjusted lighting as needed. While shooting be sure to keep make sure only the white from the sheet is in the photo. Also keep an eye out for random shadows.
When shooting your eBay product photo, be sure to get as much light as possible on the item you’re selling on eBay. This will allow users to view small details better.
That’s it! This is a really quick and simple way to create a better product shoots with every day household materials. Once you start to post some better photos of your items, they’ll stand out in the eBay gallery and search listings.
Hope this mini tutorial teaches you about one CLICK (of the shutter!) that you’ll want to master which leads to more sales and higher winning bids!
Matt Johnson – Social media guru, with a love for connecting with people around the world. His passion for food and photography are evident in his two personal blogs BibleDogMan.com and NoGrilledOnion.comHow To Get WiFi-N Signal Strength From WiFI-G or WiFI-B Routers
Aug 24th
Personally, I have wifi-B routers in the house. To extend the coverage, I’ve daisy-chained two of them to increase the footprint of reception. It’s really easy to use a 2nd wireless router to basically act as an extension cord. All you have to do is turn of DHCP and make it into a wireless switch (switches are different than routers, but that’s a different blog post right there).
But I still have areas of the house and backyard deck where the signal strength is a bit weak. So I’ve been monitoring prices for the latest WiFi-N routers of course. The other option is to buy an “extender” or larger antennas – but the price is about the same with option A or option B.  Since what I have set-up basically works for 90% of my needs, I’m in no rush to spend full retail for the upgrade.
I recently heard of a hack that turbo boosts your signal. Here’s an amazingly simple router hack that lets you boost your Wi-Fi signal strength (in truth, it works for 802.11N / G / B / etc) for about $0.25.
The secret is in the parabola. . . check out this video tutorial to see how to create the wifi signal extender in less than 10 minutes:
If you don’t want to risk 10 minutes of your time to make an actual antenna dish, here’s a video that shows all the steps in detail. It’s not that involved in making the wifi extender parabolic reflector from the printable template. Remember all you need is the printed template, aluminum foil, scissors and a glue stick.
Ok, now do you like what you see?
Here’s the link for the printable wifi-extender template:
QUESTION: HOW MANY WIFI DEVICES DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR HOUSE?
Samsung Blackjack Tip: How To Perform A Hard Master Reset on the Samsung Blackjack i607 [video]
Jul 31st
Although I clearly still love the Samsung Blackjack even after the release of the iPhone, I came across a little glitch last week (which is a MICROSOFT PROBLEM, not Samsung Blackjack issue) with Windows Mobile. It would not let me re-boot past the Windows Mobile start-up screen. This problem started after I upgraded to ActiveSync 4.5.
AT&T Wireless / Blackjack tech support told me to go back to ActiveSync 4.2 becuase 4.5 wasn’t as stable in their experience. So uninstalling I went.
In the meantime, I had to get my phone back to normal so I could re-sync with the old ActiveSync.
After trying the normal troubleshooting, I just said, it was easier to do a hard master reset and wipe the phone clean. However, AT&T tier 1 support didn’t know how, since you had to be at the Windows Mobile desktop to do a “hard reset” supposedly.
Luckily, I asked to go to Tier 2 support, and as I guessed, there was another way.
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!