Securing a Text File

Do you have some data you would like to keep on your computer, but you want to hide it from prying eyes? Perhaps things like bank account numbers, passwords, safe combinations, or more. Here is a neat little app that you can use to create a locked text file. Yes, I said text. All the data is in text form just like you were using the Notepad app that comes with Windows.

Download it for free at http://locknote.steganos.com/

Open locknote.exe and type or paste text into the open window. SaveAs to give it a name and then you will be asked for the password needed to unlock the file. The file is saved as an EXE with the name you keyed. To reopen, simply double-click the file you created. You will be asked to provide the password and then you are back into it to view or change the data. If you change the data, the only save option is SaveAs. You can use the same name to replace the original file.

Understanding Copy and Paste

First let’s define some key concepts:

Right-click means to point at something on the screen with the mouse pointer and then clicking the right button on the mouse. Click means to click the left button on the mouse.

Drag means to point at something with the mouse pointer and then, while holding down the left button on the mouse, moving the mouse. This is generally used move what is being pointed to or to select what is dragged over. Right-drag means to use the right button instead of the left.

Select means to drag across a series of words or objects on the screen. This action causes what is dragged over to change color indicating it has been selected.

Copy and Paste

Copy and Paste is such a simple but misunderstood concept. Your computer has a hidden from view area called the clipboard. To copy something, select it—words in a document, an image, the URL of a Web site, or even text on a Web page. Then right-click on the selected piece and select Copy. You can also use the keyboard command that has been around since the beginning; Ctrl+C. To use it, hold down the Ctrl key, tap C, and then release both keys. Do not attempt to press both keys at the same time.

What you had selected is now in the clipboard. You cannot see it, but just take it on faith. It is there and will stay there until you either copy something else which replaces the content of the clipboard or you turn off your computer which clears memory.

Open the app you wish to copy the material to, like Word. Click to place the insertion point (that vertical line indicating where your next keystroke will appear) where you want the pasted material to be located, and then right-click and select Paste. You can also Ctrl+V to paste from the clipboard.

This same method can be used to copy a file to another location on your computer.

The Shift+Click Method

This method works whenever you want to select multiple items. It could be file names in a list of files, a series of sentences or paragraphs in a document, or even a part of a Web page to use in a document.

Locate the first word in the section to be copied and mouse over it to select it. Without touching any button on the mouse, bring the pointer down to the end of the section to be copied.

The key is to hold down the shift key, point to the ending position, and then click the mouse and all between the first selected entry and the place you last clicked have been selected.

Now that you have selected all of it, you can right-click and select Copy or simply Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard for pasting in another application.

Copying from a Web Page

When copying from a Web page even the behind the scenes coding is copied. You cannot see this information, but when you paste the selection into another app, like a Word Processor, the results are not just the text. Included are all the formatting, links, images, and often other things we may not understand.

To avoid this “mess”, I suggest pasting first into a pure text app like NOTEPAD. This app accepts only the raw text dropping any other coding and images. Then select all the new data. Another shortcut is Ctrl+A which selects all data in the window having focus. Then right-click and copy to place that text data into the clipboard for pasting elsewhere.

Recovering Data from a Bad SD Card

Now that was cool. My wife went to transfer her pictures from her camera yesterday. She took the SD card out of the camera and plugged it into her netbook. Instead of displaying her folders, it displayed a message telling her the disk was not formatted and giving her an opportunity to do so.

What to do? I tried it on my computer and the same error message appeared. This was not good. Granted, I had already transferred a number of the images at various times. Some are on Facebook, some on Flickr, and some on my hard disk for potential future use. But not all of them, especially a few she had recently taken.

I have one machine running Ubuntu 10.1 so I booted it and tried again. No luck. Same error message.

Google search to the rescue! I located an open source multi-platform application distributed under GNU General Public License that claimed to be able to read an un-mountable disk and recover files. I wnet to http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec and downloaded the zip and extracted the files.

After reviewing the documentation found in their Step-by-Step documentation at http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step I found the command line I had to use to run it. The command had to be run from the root at a command prompt in Ubuntu. I am just starting to fiddle with Ubuntu and had no idea how to get to the command prompt. In Windows I just Win+R to open the Run dialog box, type cmd, and press Enter. No such thing in Ubuntu/Linux.

Another Google search revealed that the command mode is called terminal mode and Ctrl+Alt+t would open a window. Following the guidelines in the documentation I found in the extracted folder, I typed:

sudo Downloads/testdisk-6.12/photorec_static

Sudo enables a normal user to run a superuser command in linux. Downloads is the folder I saved the app into. Testdisk-6.12 is the folder the program was extracted into. Photorec_static is the name of the program.

A series of DOS like windows offered me various opportunities to look at all the disks on the system including the one I was unable to read, the SD card. After some poking around I was able to recover hundreds of pictures saving them to the hard drive. Interesting that each image had two sizes, the thumbnail size used when looking in a folder from explorer in Windows and the full sized image.

I was then able to reformat the SD card and copy the recovered images (large ones only) onto the disk. This same method could be used to find data on a badly behaving hard disk drive, a flash drive, or any other mountable disk. Real CSI stuff!

By the way, you do not have to use Ubuntu. The app works in a variety of operating systems including Windows.

Bounced Email

Q;
I have a  number of deletes of email I put through, several times. They keep coming back on my screen. How can I prevent this ?

A:
I assume you are referring to bounced emails or delivery errors. Bad email addresses will bounce back to you so you know your mail was not deliverable just like the USPS returns undelivered mail. When someones address is good, but cannot receive mail for the time being for reasons such as their mail box is full, the email system keeps trying to deliver and lets you know the progress. Read the delivery error message to understand why it was bounced back to you.

I have my bounced messages go to a special folder so they are not in the middle of all my "normal" email.

Of course, if an email address is no longer valid, you should stop sending mail to it.

Creating a Book

Q:

I am putting a book together using Microsoft Word. I downloaded a template where I see the 2 small pages at once all the time as I am writing. I would like for the page numbering to begin after the title page, forward, and T. of C. pages but the template is locked. It starts numbering after the title page and I can't eliminate the "footer" option.  Is there an easy fix to this?

A:

Downloaded the template from where? If you are going to publish on LuLu.com, you need the template from them and you will NOT see two pages at once. If you are printing on your own computer, you do not need a template. Just: Page Layout > Page Setup > Margins > Pages > Book Fold. Then when you print, print two sided. If your printer does not do it naturally, Word will have you do all of one side and then have you put the paper back in to print all the other sides.

Page numbers are easy: Insert > Page numbers. Getting them on just the body is another thing. You have to section the book so the portion to have page numbers stands by itself. To create a separate section: Page layout > Breaks > Section Break Next Page this is instead of Ctrl+Enter to start a new page. To stop the page numbers from flowing from section to section, you have to turn off Link to Previous in the header and/or footer area in the section you do not want to carry forward from the previous section.

TOC is easy also, you just use a heading font for the subtitles, have the insertion point at the page you want the TOC to be created at, and then: Reference > Table of Contents. It will create a TOC with those subtitles as the wording and the current page number as the number.

Booklet Printing

I like to print long documents as booklets printed on both sides of a standard size paper. This ends up being 5.5 X 4.25.

In Word this is an easy task under Page Layout > Page Setup > Margins > Pages > Book Fold > OK.

That's it. Your document is reformatted to fit, page numbers are redone, and you are ready to print. A duplex printer is nice, but a simplex one works just as well. You just have to follow the instructions and put the pages back in upside down for the second sides to print.

But what about using a word processor other than Word? If you have the document as a PDF, this becomes an easy task.

Open the PDF version of the document in Adobe Reader. File > Print and choose Page Scaling > Booklet Printing. Then Booklet subset > Both sides and OK to begin printing.

Simple, right? One issue that might be a concern is the size of the font printed. What happens is the 8.5 x 11 formatted document is resized to fit on a sheet half that size. Therefore the font size is a lot smaller. Depending on your eyesight, that might work for you.

Here is how to solve that issue. Go back to the original document and change the size of the paper and the margins, then save it as a PDF and try it again. If you get the document size down to a smaller size page the font size will be "normal" on the booklet printing.

Change the Page size to 5 X 8.

Change the page margins to .3" all around.

Now save it as a PDF and the booklet will have "normal" font sizes.

You might have to play around with the margins and paper size to get it to print the way you want. But the end result will be booklet printing from any word processor.

I use Google Docs a lot and when you select printing, it creates a PDF for you. If you do not have a word processor that allows the creation of a PDF, there are a number of printer drivers you can install that will give you PDF printing capability. One that I use is called "PDF redirect v2". It is a free download and works great.

For a PDF version of this white paper with screen shots: Booklet Printing.pdf

Tiny Tabs and more

If you upgraded to FireFox 4 (and I suggest you do), there is a new feature you might like. I like to have three open tabs all the time while browsing—my Google docs page, my email, and my Facebook. Those three tabs take up about half of the space for tabs. As I open other pages, the tabs get smaller and smaIler. 

Right-click the tabs you always have open and select Pin as App Tab. The tab is instantly made the size of the icon and the words go away. To reverse the process, right-click and choose Unpin Tab.

A couple of shortcuts that have been around for a while can help you "see" the window better. F11 removes all the data above the page you are displaying. Mouse up to the top of the window to have it pop back in temporarily. F11 again to bring it back.

Words too small? Ctrl + to enlarge the page and Ctrl – to reduce it in size.

Auto Creating Lines in Word

In Office 2003 I used to be able to type three dashes and it would automatically create a line across the page. Now in Office 2010 all I get is three dashes. After some searching in Word Help, I discovered how to turn that feature back on.

1. Click the File tab
2. Help > Options > Proofing
3. Click AutoCorrect Options
4. Select the AutoFormat as You Type tab
5. Check Border Lines and then click OK

While you are in AutoCorrect Options you might want to poke around and enable or disable other options as well. For example, I do not like a fraction like 1/4 to automatically become a superscript, or for a "double-quote" to be turned into a left or right double-quote.

Now in addition to getting a horizontal line when I type three dashes followed by pressing enter, three of these characters work to give different types of border lines across the page:

~             Wavy line

-              Lite line

_             Heavy line

#             Triple line

*             Dots

=             Double line

Try them out. You will be glad you did and will start using them in your documents.

Join.me

By Dick Evans

Here is a great product and it is FREE! Need to help someone with a computer problem and they are at another location, maybe even in another state? Need to show a group of people how to do something on the computer while they watch what you do – with phone support? 

This is a free tool from LogMeIn. Download the app, run it, share the URL and conference 9-digit code with a friend, and you have sharing your screen with a friend. It includes text chat, voice conferencing, mouse and keyboard sharing, and more.

1. Support someone else

Have them open a browser and type join.me 

Then have them click the orange button with the triangle inside

With Internet Explorer, click Run to install

Using the phone or an email, have them communicate the 9 digit code to you. This is a one-time code, so you do not have to remember it for later.

On your end, type the 9 digit code into the join box, and then click the green button with the triangle inside.

You are now connected to the person needing assistance, but you do not have mouse control.

On your window have a similar set of icons. Click the mouse icon and then the Request Control box.

They will be asked a question on their end about allowing you access. Tell them to do so and you have control of their system as though you were right there.

2. Set up a demonstration or training session

Just like the above example, but you are the one installing the app and obtaining the code which you will share with as many as you want to join in the session. I strongly suggest that you DO NOT give them control of your mouse and keyboard (unless you want to for some chaos!).

Click the telephone icon to obtain the free conference number they can call to hear what you are saying in your presentation. Once they dial in you can all voice chat while watching the demonstration on the shared screen, and even share files with each other.

It couldn’t be easier!

For a PDF with screen shots, see http://rwevans.com/JoinMe.pdf

The Power

Remember that old TV show, "Have Gun--Will Travel"? 

Paladin was a good guy with a black hat. His services were for hire. This was one of the most popular shows of the late 1950's. Okay, so you were not even born way back then. Google the show title and watch an episode or two. His Colt .45 gave him the power and those who hired him, the authority to fulfill his missions.

Luke 10:1,17

The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit... When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, "Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!" (NLT)

Jesus gave the disciples authority and power to go out two by two. Had they not gone would they have had the power?

If you want to have the power you have to do the work. It comes as a result of the doing. You do not get it first and then walk out. Power comes in the walk. As we walk God directs us onto the right path. But without motion there can be no direction. You just stand still looking around.

Just as in the law of physics that says every action has an equal and opposite reaction, every time we step out to complete the Father's work here on earth another piece is added to our spiritual man. We don't feel it, but we can tell when the next assignment comes along. We are able to recognize it quicker and complete it with an added level of confidence.

As baptized believers we have been given the Holy Spirit along with the authority and power to do whatever He tells us to do when we do so in the name of Jesus.

Making a Quick Video

I just discovered a great Web site to create quick animations of pictures. Take a dozen or less pictures and upload them to www.animoto.com to produce a 30 second video of your images with neat backgrounds and audio.

The site is easy to use and does just what it says it does. For a few dollars a month you can create unlimited flicks without their logo appearing at the end. It will link to your Facebook and Flickr pages (and other sites) so you can both grab your images and publish your results. You can also download the video to your desktop or publish it to your YouTube account.

Check out a clip I just made of some of my “old” pictures...

http://animoto.com/play/YlFIsz56JqepYDrCtrOyhw

Pictures in Documents

It is a wonderful change having digital cameras that take such high resolution pictures. Years ago we used 35mm film and it is costly and time consuming. You paid for the film, took your limited number of shots, then dropped the exposed film off to be printed. A week or so later, you picked up the prints and found a few worth saving. Then to make more prints you returned to the store and ordered additional ones from the negatives. Okay, some of you are not old enough to even remember doing that!

Back to the future. We can take as many shots as our SD card will hold. Even then all we have to do is pop in another to continue shooting. We get home and pop the card into our computer and get to see them right away. We can edit them, crop them, change the lighting, and even print them out in as good a quality as we used to see with the 35mm camera from years ago. And we can print as many as we need right in our own home.

The best thing is that we can send them to others in emails, post them on Facebook, include them in a Web page, and include them in writings created in our favorite word processing app.

To get that 35mm quality, the images are saved as pretty large files. Most are over 1mb and some more than 5mb. With hard drives of 320gb and more today, that is not a big problem. Even the SD cards for our camera are up to 32gb at reasonable prices. Size only becomes an issue when we want to email them to someone, post them on Facebook, or include them in a document.

Read the entire document at http://www.rwevans.com/Pictures%20in%20Documents.pdf 

LibreOffice

Downloaded LibreOffice this afternoon. The download was 220mb and it installed in a few minutes. When you open it from the shortcut it places on the desktop, it opens a window for you to choose the app you want to work with. The word processor is called Text Document.

You can save documents in its native format (.odf) or in a number of others including .doc and .docx. Yes, it support the new format for Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. No, it does not have ribbons like Microsoft and that may be a plus or a minus for you. But the toolbars are familiar and easy to work with.

Although I have only used the text document app, I can say it is fast and easy to use. It includes the ability to output as a PDF and as an HTML file. Of course there is a spell checker and those familiar red squiggly lines when you spell something wrong. No green or blue squiggles, though.

Why would I even try out a non-Microsoft app like this? Well, I have more than one computer and to upgrade all of them with the latest Office 2010 app is expensive. I used Google Docs quite a bit, but that requires an Internet connection. This app installs locally and is free.

Oh, it also does mail-merge, which is an important feature for me.

What other apps are included? A spreadsheet app, a presentation app, a drawing app, and a database app. Pretty much all you need for home or office work. And there are versions for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

Give it a try at www.LibreOffice.org

Another Excel Shortcut

Easy way to open a new sheet in an Excel workbook is to press Shift+F11

A New tab will appear at the bottom of the workbook with the name Sheet n with n being the next available sheet number.

More Online Storage

Yesterday I registered for Box.net. They are an online storage site offering 5gb free for personal use and a reasonable monthly charge for more. In addition to having a place to store files up to 25mb each, you can share and collaborate on those files easily.

Here is an overview I wrote on signing up for Box.net. Once I dragged and dropped it to the site using the easy web interface, I clicked Share and was given this address:

http://www.box.net/shared/t627p0pip3

All I have to do is share that address with anybody and they have access to view it, download it, or share the link with others. And I can see how many people have opened it by signing into my Box.net account. I can also have Box.net email me each time the file is accessed.

Don’t like that strange link address? Use Tinyurl.com to turn it into something else like:

http://tinyurl.com/evans-stuff

Another Cloud Application worthy of mention. Give it a try.

More Shortened URL’s

I have been messing around with a couple of other short URL Web sites, and there are a number of them out there. TinyURL.com has been around for quite a while. No registration to be bothered with and you can get a randomly generated address like http://tinyurl.com/y6gr3d or something like that. Or you can enter the address you want and if available that is what you will get like http://tinyurl/mypicture. That is it. Pretty simple.

I wrote about Google’s goo.gl last time, and it works a lot like tinyurl. But it tracks the URLs you have created and give you a chart of how often they have been clicked on. Of course you need a Google account to get this information, but that is free.

Then I found tiny.cc. It works like both of the above sites and generates random addresses. But, if you register you have access to two other features and registration is free. First you get to edit the address and request one that people can remember easily like tinyurl does. Second you can a number of reports on activity occurring when someone clicks on your links. Not just how many opens, but where it was opened from and more.

Give them all a try and let me know which one you like best.

www.TinyURL.com
www.Goo.gl
www.Tiny.cc

URL Shortener

I am sure you have seen the funny looking URL’s showing up on Facebook and other places. They look like this http://goo.gl/...

Google has given us another great tool.

When you have a long URL of any length and want to pass it on to someone else, go to goo.gl and get a shorter one!

For example here is a YouTube URL to a talk my wife recently gave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vNp2t1ERvA

Using goo.gl by simply entering that URL into the box and hitting Shorten, I get this url to use:
goo.gl/KF8BA

A lot shorter and easy to type when Copy/Paste doesn’t work.

Using Windows Live

Have you tried Window's Live? I have had a Hotmail account for years. I don't use it much because I have my own domains. Every once in a while I may use the address when asked for an email address at a site I do not know well so any junk emails fall to my Hotmail account. Hotmail is much more than a free email account. Now it is a piece of this new Cloud App called Windows Live.

You get 25gb of free storage on SkyDrive and a Cloud version of Microsoft Office 2010 that works for 99% of my writing. In addition to Word, you get Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Add to that a calendar, contact manager, integration with Messenger and MSN, and storage to upload and manage your pictures!

All you need is a computer with Internet access and a browser. All the apps you need are in the CLOUD. Don't get me wrong, some need to purchase Microsoft Office to do more complicated tasks like MailMerge in Word. But for everyday writing and spreadsheets the cloud app works great.

Check it out today at www.windowslive.com and choose what cloud app to run or at the old address of www.hotmail.com and start at your email.

Keyboard Froze!

Recently I had to rebuild my main notebook. All of a sudden it the keyboard and mouse pad stopped working! I tried an external keyboard and mouse and they worked. It seemed software related, but I could not find the issue causing it. So back to basics I went.

I backed up all my files to an external drive and double checked that I could read them. Then I used my notebooks built in system restore option and back to factory specs I went. Everything worked great. No more keyboard or mouse pad problems.

But now I had to reload the applications I wanted on the “new” machine. Bad news is I had to reload them. Good news is I could leave off all those apps I had installed in the past and no longer used.

I came across this Web site that allows you to pick and choose the apps you want to install. It downloads them all at once and installs them. This is much quicker than locating them online one at a time, downloading, and installing. Great site. Check it out at http://ninite.com/.

Oh, the piece that took the longest was getting all the Windows updates. But now I have a clean machine running a lot faster then before. Took some time to finish, but it was worth it.

Notepad in the Cloud by Dick Evans

I was looking for a way to enter text on a Web enabled cell phone so I could take notes while I am out and about. My old PDA had a version of Word on it and I got very used to being able to pull it out of my pocket and type a note. Many of the newer cell phone have nice slide out QWERTY keyboards, but no apps to use. The keyboard is for texting and updating contacts. I wanted more.

A couple of useful cloud apps allow you to take notes and keep a things to do list. I have talked about the to do list before and that Site is http://www.tadalist.com. No need to explain it. Just open the site and start your list. You have to register, but there is no cost.

The other one I just located is a notepad in the cloud. The site is http://www.notepad.cc. It too is free. When you open the site you are presented with a blank page. Just start typing. It is being saved using the URL in your address bar generated by the site. You have the option of changing the name at the bottom of the page. You can also password protect the page or share it with the world.

I typed this post using notepad.cc. You can locate it at http://notepad.cc/sdfg67.

Back to the cell phone. I do not have a slide out keyboard on a data enabled phone. I assume one could simply go to either of these Web sites and work using the cell phone just like I have done on my notebook. How about giving them a test on your data enabled cell phone and tell me how it works?

Paste Options

When pasting text into a Word document, the Paste Options button displays and you have to go to the mouse and click it to choose the option you want. Well, usually I want to use Keep Text Only. There is a way to use the keyboard to select the option and keep your hands off the mouse.

Instead of Ctrl+V to paste the copied text, use Ctrl+Alt+V. A dialog box displays with three options and the second one is the equivalent of Keep Text Only. So, press the down arrow key once, and then press Enter.

Your hands never have to leave the keyboard and after doing it a few times it quick to use. Give it a try.

Another Word Shortcut?

I wish I could say I know all the shortcuts available in Microsoft Office. But, I do not even know all the visible buttons on the ribbons! Every once in a while I stumble upon something I have not used before. This time it is a shortcut to clear all formatting from a selected area.

Copy/Paste works great, but when what has been copied contains formatting and links and color we may want to clean it up for use in our new document. Sure, we can click the Paste Options button and select Keep Text Only. But that removes everything except text, even the images we may have wanted.

Now we could also select Match Destination Formatting from the Paste Options button. But, that makes the style of the character match the current document. It does not remove any links and actually changes them to be default, underlined blue. All images do remain.

Next time try this out. Paste the selected material to your document. Select it and then Ctrl+Spacebar. All formatting is removed and the images remain. Also, if any of the selected area was centered or aligned right, it remains that way.

Another useful shortcut is Shift+Ctrl+C and Shift+Ctrl+V. This is the equivalent of the Format Painter button on the ribbon except it does not disappear after using it. Yes, you can double-click the format painter button to have it stay on and press it again to turn it off-or Esc.

Simply click in the text with formatting you want to use elsewhere and press Shift+Ctrl+C. Now select text elsewhere and press Shift+Ctrl+V to paste the format to the selected text.

All the shortcuts I talked about in this article work in the previous versions of Word as well as the latest, Word 2010.

Change Normal Template in Word 2007

When I use Word 2007 I don’t care for the default settings in the Normal template—the default when you start a new document. I prefer the Word 2003 normal settings, but I do like the 1.15 line spacing. What do I do? Usually I start a new document and click No Spacing before starting. This gives me the spacing I like, even though it keeps the font and font size from 2007.

I have always known I could change the Normal template to be what I preferred, but never got around to it. Then I read an article on TechRepublic that reminded me of what I wanted to do and showed me step by step how to get it done.

To read the article and change the Normal template to your personal preferences, see
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6137320.html

Get the Message Out

Ever set up a phone tree to get the message out to members of a team or committee? Or even just had to make a bunch of calls to get the same message out to people?

Here is a site that will make the phone calls for you: http://www.phonevite.com -- 25 free calls twice a month or .05 per call for an unlimited number of calls. You record the message you want sent and give them the phone numbers--cool. Hours of phones calls done in minutes!

Disposable Email Address

Tired of all those spam messages clogging your inbox? Well, the next time you sign up for a new Web site or have to download something that wants your email address, use a valid dummy email address. Yep, I said dummy. It is really an email address, but only a temporary one. You can even check it on line to see what kind of spam gets to it.

You do not have to sign of for anything or register or leave you good email address. Just use it.

Go to www.mailinator.com and see how it works. Put simply, any mail you sent to xxxx@mailinator.com can be accessed at www.xxxx.mailinator.com or by opening www.mailinator.com and typing in the xxxx email name.

You use whatever you want for the xxxx. However, I suggest an odd combination of letters and numbers or you may be sharing the inbox with somebody else. Not that you really care since this is a disposable address anyway!

Want to check it out? I just emailed this message to myblog@mailinator.com so head over to http://myblog.mailinator.com to read it.

Save a Web Page as a PDF

I know I can save a Web page as an MHT file in IE and open it again in IE. But I really don’t need it in that format. I really want to send the page and not the link to someone else so they can view it.

Enter PDFmyURL.com. You supply the URL and it sends you a PDF of the page. Quick and easy and the links work on the PDF side. And it is free.

Try it at http://www.pdfmyurl.com

Making a Coloring Book

We have taken a good number of photos this summer and some of them would work nicely as pages in a coloring book. But how do you convert a full color digital picture into something that will look like a black and white line drawing? Good old Google. I searched and found a number of choices. This one works well, is intuitive to use, and is free.

Just download Photo to Sketch. It runs on any Windows PC from 95 up through Windows 7. I installed it on Vista and XP. It works great.

Here is the picture I used:

And here is the resulting sketch:

I downloaded it from http://download.cnet.com/Photo-To-Sketch-Standard/3000-2192_4-10547780.html?tag=mncol;1

Give it a try. Make some great coloring books for your grandchildren.
 

Building a Simple Web Site with FrontPage

Dick Evans has just released a new book called Quick and Easy Web Sites.

It is a simple approach to building sites using HTML and FrontPage and applications that come with Windows. There are plenty of screen shots and step-by-step instructions to walk you through the techniques I use. You will be creating great looking sites in no time.

Buy the book or download and print your own.

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Excel - Changing Case

Ever had a group of items you pasted into a worksheet and they were all UPPER case? What you copied was a list of names and you really want only the first letter of each name upper case. This a tedious change if you have to do it by hand, but you do not. Excel has functions for changing case.

Open a new workbook and enter the following in cells A5 down:

GEORGE SMITH
MARY JONES
HARRY HAPPY
SAM SPADE
JOE GERARD

Let’s say the names came into cells A5 down. Insert a new column between A and B assuming B is already occupied. Then, in B5 enter =PROPER(A5) and press Enter. The result is the name from A5 with only the first letter of each name capitalized. Point to the fill handle in B5 and double-click. The formula is propagated down through all cells adjacent to active cells in column A.

The fill handle is that square in the lower right corner of the active cell. As you mouse over it the white cross of the mouse pointer changes into a black plus sign. While it is a plus sign is when you double-click it.

Click on B5 to make it active. Scroll down to the row containing the last cell used in column B. Hold down the shift key and click once on that last used cell in B. You have just used the shift-click method to select all the cells from B5 down through the last used cell in B. Then Ctrl+C to copy.

Right-click A5 and select Paste Special > Paste Values. The properly formatted names now appear in column A. You may delete column B.

The resulting cells in A5 down now contain:

George Smith
Mary Jones
Harry Happy
Sam Spade
Joe Gerard

Two other case changing functions may prove useful as well. UPPER and LOWER. The former converts the text to all UPPER case and the later to all lower case.

Free Tape Calculator

I know, a great calculator comes with Windows. Just click Windows+R, type calc, and press Enter. It does all the basics and has a scientific mode and converts decimal to hex to octal to binary. What it does not have is a tape. So when you have added a column of numbers, you have no way to prove your work.

Enter the Moffosoft Free Calc. It has all the basics as well AND a visible and printable tape displaying all the entrees. So now you can add up a column of numbers and check your work before using the answer.

Check it out at http://www.moffsoft.com/

PageBreeze FREE

I just came across a great little HTML editor. Not only is it free, but it includes a WYSIWYG editor, a drag and drop form builder, spell checking, and FTP (download only for the free version). They have a professional version with a lot more features, but this version fits the bill for most of the day to day editing I have to do.

As the publishers description says “You'll find that you'll be creating great looking Web sites almost instantly with virtually no learning curve. It offers the kind of power you would find in the leading commercial products. It's visual editor is actually powered by Microsoft Internet Explorer, so you can always be certain that you are seeing exactly what you will get when your Web site is uploaded to your server.”

The reviews I read are mostly good. Looks like it works great for simple sites and a good way to learn HTML, but professional designers using lots of the tricks of the trade do not find it useful. Of course I would think they would be sticking to Expression Web or Dreamweaver anyway!

Give it a try.

Free Online HTML Editor

Often I have to create a line of HTML code. Rather than bringing up a large application like Expression Web or Dreamweaver this online service presents a WYSIWYG interface.

Create the document with graphics and pictures and lines and color. Then click the Source button to reveal the HTML. Select All and Copy and Paste it to your eBay product description, a newsletter you are about to send, or even to update a part of a page on your Web site.   

Try it out at http://www.free-online-html-editor.com/

Using the Cloud

So you just got that new notebook. It has plenty of hard disk space, a couple of gigabytes of memory, and the latest Windows 7 operating system. But you are not all set to go. Sure it may have come with a trial version of Office 7 or even 10, but after the trial you have to shell out almost as much as the notebook cost to continue to use it.

There is another way. Use the "Cloud". In other words, let the Web provide you a means to do your word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. All you need is a browser and an Internet connection. You can save the files in the cloud and access them with any type of browser capable "computer" -- your Windows based netbook, notebook, or desktop, an Apple Mac, Linux machine, and even your cell phone. If it accesses the Internet, you can work.

Save your work on your local machine or leave it on the cloud or both. While it is in the cloud, you can share it with others easily.

There are a number of different Web applications out there. The two I find very useful are Google Aps and ThinkFree. Both allow you the create Office compatible documents easily and for free. ThinkFree give you 1gb of free storage to maintain you files.

Try them by simply going to docs.google.com or thinkfree.com.

Use the cloud and save the bucks.

Resizing an Image

I have been a fan of many of the Windows XP Powertoys for many years now. One that I probably use more than any other is the Image Resizer. With it I can select a group of images taken with my digital camera and resize them to send by email, or resize them to upload to my Facebook page with just a right-click. Simple to do and the image sizes are reduced from 1-3mb down to less than 100kb!

I was not pleased to find that the program would not work in Vista or in Windows 7. Good thing I still have some XP machines to use…

Enter a new program that does the same job but in XP, Vista, and Windows 7!

Download the Prish Image Resizer (Click here) and install it. Now find an image (or a group of them) and right-click. Notice the new selection called Prish Resizer?

As you mouse over the option you see a number of options. Click any of the options indicating a size such at Resize to 1024 and the image you have clicked on will be resized and the results placed in a folder named resized. If you do not have a folder of that name, it will be created.

The top option is just Resize… It opens the application on the desktop and presents you with many options on how to resize it and where to place the results including overwriting the original.

Give it a try. I think it works great!

Convert PDF to Word

I have been waiting to see something like this for a while. Yes, I know I can purchase software to do the job. This one is FREE.

Run the application in the cloud by going to http://www.pdftoword.com/ three steps:

1. Browse your computer for the PDF you need to convert
2. Choose the resulting format—Word or RTF
3. Submit the email address you wish the results to be sent to  

Don’t expect instant response as the site places your conversion in the queue. When you get to the front of the line, it will be converted and sent to your email address. When I ran my trial, they were in the midst of a server upgrade and the conversion took a while to get back to me. It was worth it; the document was a perfect conversion of the PDF including pictures and links.

There is a 5 MB limit on the free on-line version, so if you have a larger file to do, split it into smaller pieces. To create a PDF I use PDFredirect and you can use it to print to PDF parts of an already PDF formatted document.

I have not tried it yet, but it is supposed to do Excel as well! Yes, you can pay for a version that will install on your machine and has more features.