Tips of the Week

This year, I'm trying to send out a weekly tip via e-mail to all our staff. Just short, quick things that might help them with their technology. It isn't all limited to work stuff...but I just try to make it all fairly current stuff.


And I decided I might as well share them here, as well. Today will be Tip #5 in our building...so below, you can get caught up with all of the first five.


Tip #1 - E-mail Attachments

When you receive an e-mail with an attachment, many folks highlight the attachment and hit Open. Oour experience with this has been mixed. For that reason, I've always encouraged folks to hit "Save" and save the attached document to their Desktop. Then go and open the document. That has always been more reliable.

Tip #2 - AccountKiller

We all create lots of accounts around the web...facebook, flickr, skype, ebay, amazon, iTunes, Windows Live, etc, etc, etc. Many of them we use – but some we create and then realize we don’t want or need. And we would like to get rid of the account rather than just go away and leave it hanging.

But how?

Sites don’t always make it easy to figure out how to delete an account. They like to add up users...not eliminate them.

If you have an account you would like to delete as effectively as possible, visit AccountKiller ( http://www.accountkiller.com/en/ ). This site gives you direct links to instructions for deleting accounts on many of the most popular sites.

And if you are considering creating an account, it is sometimes fun to check out AccountKiller first. They list sites by color code...with the “black” sites being those that are nearly impossible to actually delete without calling upon super powers and counting on a lot of luck.

Tip #3 - facebook help

There have been lots of new changes going on with facebook.

If you are trying to figure out the basics of the new changes that are in place, here are a few resources to help you sort out Lists, the Ticker, the Top Stories and Recent Stories breakdown, and some of the things you can do to manage what shows up on your wall and what you share with others. http://www.avitricks.info/2011/09/how-to-use-facebook-new-features-to-protect-your-privacy.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-privacy-2011-9#1-know-that-anything-you-post-or-comment-on-a-friends-wall-is-public-your-posts-will-show-up-in-others-news-tickers-1

http://www.bloggerclick.com/2011/09/new-facebook-news-feed-guide.html
(scroll down and watch the video at the end of the post) http://kikolani.com/new-facebook-timeline-profile-privacy-settings-news-feed.html

http://blog.identified.com/2011/09/how-facebooks-new-privacy-settings-can-be-beneficial-.html 

Tip #4 - VLC

We all watch videos online. We all get videos sent to us via e-mail. And we’ve all had videos that we could not play. But there is a simple solution that Mac-lovers have relied on for many years now...VLC.

VLC will play almost any video or audio. If VLC doesn’t play it, you can usually just give up.

Here is a quick review of VLC... http://www.cultofmac.com/116284/vlc-plays-just-about-any-video-file-you-can-find-50-mac-essentials-45/

And here is the site to download it. It is a free and safe download. http://www.videolan.org/

Tip #5 - Screenshots

There are lots of times you may want to share what you see on your screen. Grabbing a quick screenshot is amazingly quick and simple. It can be a quick way to grab a section of a web page and share with another person as an e-mail attachment. It can be a great way to save an error message to share with the tech folks when you ask for help.

Here are the instructions for the Mac folks...

To get a photo of your entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3 (all at the same time). If your volume is turned up, you'll hear a snapshot sound. And a document named "screen shot" with the date and time as part of the name will appear on your desktop. 

To get a photo of a specific area of your screen, press Command-Shift-4. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair. Click and drag to highlight the area of the screen you want to capture. When you release the mouse button, you'll hear the snapshot sound and the image file will be saved to your desktop.

Lastly, if you do a lot of screen captures...or if you want to take that shot of your desktop and then label items, draw arrows to highlight certain features, etc...download Skitch. It is a great free tool for capturing and working with screenshots.