High tech on a budget

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Google, I love you.

Google does for phone what it did for your email. They remove the shackles and set you free.

http://www.grandcentral.com/home

I tell everyone who is nailed down to a single provider for email to get onto a online service. Yahoo and Hotmail have become unmanagable with spam. Besides that, Yahoo delays the receipt of email. When you are waiting for a email for a password code or a response you have to keep clicking the check mail button to refresh you page which forces you to refresh the ads as well. My email is delayed from 1 to 20 minutes. The same query in GMAIL I will receive the message instantly. This kind of manipulation has caused me to stop using Yahoo for anything important.

Have you ever been at the checkout of a store and forgot your discount card? They say punch in your phone number. Most of these cards have phone numbers from years ago. Imagine if you could have one number for every phone for now and in the future. Imagine if you could actually take control of and filter your calls.

http://www.grandcentral.com/home

Google has acquired GrandCentral Communications, a company that provides services for managing your voice communications. GrandCentral is a service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. This is similiar to services provided by may VOIP companies like Vonage.

GrandCentral offers many features that complement the phone services you already use. If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones, based on who's calling.

This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. The service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more.

You can even listen in on voicemail messages from your phone while they are being recorded, or switch a call from your cell phone to your desk phone and back again. All in all, you'll have a lot more control over your phones.

Screen Callers
Know who's calling and screen unknown callers
ListenInTM Hear why someone is calling before taking the call
Call Record Record calls on the fly and access recordings online
Block Callers Unwanted callers won't be able to reach you anymore
Notifications Receive voicemail notifications via email or SMS

Ring Different Phones
One number that rings different phones based on who's calling
Greetings Personalize your voicemail greetings by caller or group
RingShareTM Go beyond the ring and choose ringback tones for your callers

WebCall Button
Let people call you from a web page without showing your number
CallSwitch Switch phones in the middle of a call
Click2Call Call from your addressbook and save your typing
Mobile Access Visual voicemail for your mobile phone

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Too good to be true, Too good to miss.

http://www.adrive.com
Online storage has just expanded 10 fold. 50GB for free.

This uses a Java applet to upload files and to do file management. Since this space is so large it looks like I'm going to make it my primary online storage. I recommend creating a true crypt directory and only storing encrypted files.

The upload speed is respectable. I would like to see a FTP solution with this kind of storage space. Im going to load some family movies and go from there.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Increase the clarity of text in XP

Do your fonts look blocky or washed out? Are they too small to read? Here are some suggestions.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/personalize/screenimage.mspx

The article show step by step how to modify the clear type properties that will help improve the clarity of most fonts.

If that doesn't do what you need try this application:
Download Font Changer.exe

It is a simple executable app that requires no install. My only problem with both of these applications is that they don't display the fonts before you make your selection.

The developer has a application that will show all the fonts installed on your machine.
Download Font Query

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Clonezilla, should I be afraid?

What is Clonezilla ?

http://www.clonezilla.org/
When you get windows installed and you have all of your drivers updated and any software you always install then you need to make a clone image.

This program lets you do this from CD, DVD, or direct to another drive.

The best way to go about doing this is to make a backup and restore it as a test run before you reach that point of no return.

This is similar to the commercial package Norton Ghost®, and its Open Source counterpart, Partition Image.

How did he get in here?

Windows Password Reset Utility

http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system.
You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppydisk or CD.
Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!
It is also an almost fully functional registry editor!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

How can I beat it into you thick head?

http://www.physicsforums.com/

We try to categorize knowledge such as Math, Chemistry, History, Psychology. So what is Science?

Science Definition from - http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/science-definition.html

The word science comes from the Latin "scientia," meaning knowledge.

How do we define science?

According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world."
What does that really mean? Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge. This system uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. The term science also refers to the organized body of knowledge people have gained using that system. Less formally, the word science often describes any systematic field of study or the knowledge gained from it.

What is the purpose of science? Perhaps the most general description is that the purpose of science is to produce useful models of reality.

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So what is the point I'm trying to make here?

The http://www.physicsforums.com/ website has more than just physics. Understanding and learning concepts in physics gives us practical applications to use much of the math and chemstry we learned. It isn't just rote learning of concepts we already know but a place to apply what we know as we learn more and expand our knowledge.

This site has great resources for Math, Science, Engineering, and Technology.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Home Grown TV

More and more people are overcoming the controls placed on them by big media companies. They are producing unique focused content that likely won't make them famous but certainly can cause a following. They are opening more doors than just sitting at home playing an odds game. This is reality TV. Made by real people not mass media companies. Your looking at the next generation of media pioneers. If you enjoy their work donate anything to help them grow. Their success will pave the road for many more future success stories.