I seem to be on a thumb-drive and back-up kick lately, as far as tech tips go… So, why not combine the two? If you’re worried about things getting deleted from your thumb drive, or from your home computer, Back4Sure will relieve all your worries! Install it, and you can select what folders you want to back up to a thumb drive. It will do it automatically, even compressing the files to take up less space if you’d like! This is a good idea to do, as you never know when you may lose your thumb drive. They keep getting smaller and smaller!

Click here to download Back4Sure!

As you know, I’m always bringing you the latest and greatest in the tech world. Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and germs, I believe this will perhaps be THE GREATEST tech tip to every grace this Earth. Late last night, delving deep within the tech resources of my la-bor-a-tory, I stumbled upon an ingenious concoction of technical serums and salts, and I believe I’ve found the greatest tech invention yet! What does it do? Nearly everything, my friends! Email, word processing, picture sharing, blog reading, financing, mapping, translation, video sharing… the possibilities are almost endless! Creatures of the earth, I present to you… without further ado… mankind’s greatest creation yet… the great… the illustrious… the magnificent… Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s tech tip was suggested by Katie and Anna, who expressed their concerns to me about auto-saving. Don’t you just love it when you’re working on an essay, or a big Powerpoint, and your computer freezes, or the power goes out? Now, yes, they do have that “Auto-Save” feature, but it always seems to cut off your latest additions. The default auto-save value is around 15 minutes… I think, however, something like 5 minutes, or maybe even less, is a better idea! To adjust it, if you have Word 2007 or newer, click on the Microsoft Office button on the top left of your screen, and at the bottom of the dialog, click “Word Options”. Selecting the “Save” tab of the window that opens, adjust the AutoSave, where it says “Save AutoRecover information every…”, to a value that suits you. And that’s it!

For Word 2003, it’s a fairly similar process: instead of using the Microsoft Office button, click on the Tools menu, and click Options, and then follow, basically, the same steps as for Word 2007.

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Ah, the W2WHS club station, with the addition of eQSLs outside the door! Beautiful!

This week’s tech tip was suggested by one of Ms. Schlegel’s Spanish 4 Enriched classes. I’m sure many of us have, over time, developed a veritable mountain of email accounts from various providers: Yahoo, gMail, Hotmail, AOL mail, etc. It’s come to that point in your life, however, where we need to consolidate! What does one do, so that “checking your email” doesn’t mean checking every single account? Email forwarding is the solution, and it’s fairly easy to do if you already have a gMail account. If you don’t, visit gMail.com and create one! Click “More” to see how to do it! Read the rest of this entry »

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My TI calculator has been branded by my new Dymo labeler, thanks to AF2K!

This week’s tech tip is for those of us who are a little… absent-minded sometimes, like myself! How many times have you left your thumb drive plugged into the computer you were working on, walked away, and forgot about? A bunch? None? Well… I don’t care, you want this program anyways. PendriveReminder (click to download) is a little program that reminds you every once in a while to unplug your thumb drive, and you can set it to auto-run when you plug your thumb drive into the computer. Just download it, put it on your thumb drive, run it, and click the “Auto Run” button so that it starts when you plug in your thumb drive.

This week’s tech tip was suggested by a teacher here at Thomas, Mrs. Heveron-Smith. She felt that most teachers take for granted that a student has Microsoft Word installed on their home computers, but sometimes this is not the case! So, students, what can you do to avoid having to go out and pay hundreds of buckaroons for the latest version of Microsoft Office? It’s easy, free, and it won’t get you arrested! OpenOffice.org is a full office suite that is compatible with the Microsoft Office suite that is very, very similar to the Microsoft product. I use it exclusively on my home computer, as, for one, I’m cheap! And secondly, it works just as well for a fraction of the price, and in some cases, has more functions than its Microsoft counterpart. OpenOffice.org will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, but specifically for Mac users, NeoOffice.org offers a more streamlined, faster version of OpenOffice available for your downloading pleasure.

Are you a Facebook addict, attention deficient, or simply can’t pay attention to ANYTHING?!?! Well, ladies and gentlemen, today is your lucky day, because I have a solution to your endless procrastination. No, it doesn’t cost 3 easy payments of $14.95 and you won’t get a second one free if you call within the next thirty seconds, either. What is it, then? It’s called CinemaDrape, and it’s free. What it does, basically, is allows you to black out everything on your computer screen so you can concentrate on what it is you need to do. There’s a few other programs out there which allow you to accomplish a similar task, such as Ghoster, Dropcloth, and for Mac users, Isolator. I know, it’s a lot of information at once, but I have a solution for that too: Visit tech.maxkelley.com in order to get download links for all of these programs.

Also, not mentioned in my on-the-air tech tip are the following:

Q10: is a free word processor which is very minimalistic, simply text-only, no formatting, meant for those who just need to concentrate, not worry about the pretty stuff, and get a story out. This program was designed by a writer for use by writers. It has a built-in spell checker, and other stuff… Check it out! (a screenshot of it is on your right)

CreaWriter: is a very cool, relaxing sort of word processor. It allows you to have rain noise, raindrops, or other pretty, relaxing stuff in a full-screen writing environment, again, removing distractions. Try it out!

OmmWriter: is for you artsy Mac users, who also feel the need to relax (get it, Ommmmmm!) and write. Get your creative juices flowing, download OmmWriter!