For those who are confused, the clipboard is where something is stored when you copy or cut something by right clicking or Ctrl + c or Crtl + x. Unfortunately, the clipboard in Windows only stores one item at a time on the clipboard. If you find yourself copying data sets or multiple items from one place to another, M8 Clipboard can save you a lot of time. It’s also good if you find yourself copying into notepad and recopying to remove the text formatting.
M8 Clipboard is simple yet powerful and doesn’t take long to get used to. Every time you copy something, it stores it on a list, always putting the most recently copied item at the top. To paste from it, you put the cursor where you want the item to be pasted, open M8 from your notification area and click on the item you want to paste. You can add or remove features such as change to all caps and remove formatting. If there is anything you don’t like about it, check out the settings and you will find that there are many things you can change as some of the default settings can be annoying.
M8 Clipboard been around for a while without updates and many similar programs have appeared on the scene but none seem to work quite as well.
There are many types of intrusive, dangerous programs for your computer. Some really aren’t that harmful; they are hackers just messing around. Many are more about gaining data for inserting advertising. The most dangerous ones are after your personal and financial information. All have the potential to slow down of crash your computer.
If you run Windows on your computer, you are by far the most at risk. About 95% of malicious software is targeted at Windows operating systems. These are steps you can take to stay safe.
Install antivirus software.
Don’t open emails if you don’t know the sender.
Avoid clicking on ads and visiting web sites you are unsure about.
Use Linux or Mac operating systems.
One of the best anit-virus programs you can use is Microsoft Security Essentials. Tests have shown it to be one of the best. AVG is the most popular but slows your boot time and isn’t all that good at detecting threats. Surprisingly, there aren’t many studies of on virus detecting software. Here is one.
These days, it can be hard to keep track of all of your social networks. Hootsuite makes managing Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts much easier. It allows you to manage all of your accounts on these sites in one page.
If you want to send a status update, you easily select which accounts it will be broadcast to and write your message.
I particularly like Hootsuite for my Twitter accounts. I have personal account, one that I am just getting up and running for this blog, and I am responsible for two Twitter accounts at work (Spanish and English). Hootsuite lets me manage them all in one place without having to sign in and out repeatedly.
If sometimes social networking seems more like work than fun, give Hootsuite a try. It should make your life a little easier.
I hardly ever watch TV anymore. The commercials drive me crazy and it seems like every year television channels have more and more commercials. Furthermore, if there is a show I really like, I have to plan my life around it because it starts at a specific time. That is why I use uTorrent along with a couple of torrent search web sites to get my TV, Movies and Music. If I have to download a large file such as a Linux operating system, I will use uTorrent if I can because it’s faster and I have more control over how the file is downloaded.
There are many file sharing applications and different ways to download media but I have found uTorrent to be the best. uTorrent is small, doesn’t take up much of your system’s resources, customizable and doesn’t contain any malware (viruses).
Using uTorrent is just a little more complicated than other file sharing programs but once you get the hang of it, it’s very easy. The first thing you need to understand is that uTorrent does not find the files you want to download; it is just a tool to perform and manage downloads.
Once you have installed uTorrent, then you must go to a torrent search site to find the files (torrent) that you want to download. My two favorites are ISOhunt and The Pirate Bay. Both sites are easy to use.
One other thing you need to understand is that torrents are downloaded from other users like yourself and not the sites you find them from. Equally, when you are downloading a torrent, you send the bits you already have to other users and after it’s completed, you send it to others until you tell uTorrent not to. When you search for torrents, the results will show the number of seeders (people who have the complete torrent and are sending it) and leachers (people who are downloading and uploading the torrent at the same time). If the number of seeders and leachers combined is below 5, you may not be able to get the full torrent. The more seeders and leachers that are sharing the torrent, the faster you will be able to download it. The most important point here is that you want to avoid torrents with less than 5 seeders and leachers if there are other results with greater numbers.
How to Watch the Video Files You have Downloaded
There are many different formats of video files. Most that you download won’t work in your regular media players. The best way to view these files (movies) is with VLC media player. It is free and easy to use and contains the decoding formulas to view most video files. VLC is free, safe and open source.
Files to Avoid
There are a lot of fake torrents, malware (viruses) and poor quality torrents out there. The first way to avoid this is to look at comments on a torrent when you search for it. Usually for video files, you will want the file name to end in .avi. There are also a lot of movies that have been recorded by a camcorder in the theater resulting in poor quality. Learning which torrents are best is a bit of an art and something you will learn over time. If you are at all unsure about any torrent, right click on it after you have downloaded it and select “scan” with your anti malware software.
Bandwidth
If you don’t limit your bandwidth while you are downloading with uTorrent, web browsing and other internet applications will be slow. To limit the amount of bandwidth uTorrent uses, simply right click on the icon in the notification menu and select “download limit” and choose a speed. You may also adjust bandwidth in the preferences section. You may also create schedule which allows for faster downloading at times when you don’t use your computer.
Legality:
Downloading copyright Material is Illegal in most jurisdictions. There are some exceptions. It’s not illegal to download music in Canada. It is up to you to decide which side of the law or how you feel about the morality of downloading. “Laws control the weak. Honesty controls the strong” – Paulo Coelho.
After the introduction of tabs in web browsers, I found myself getting a little lost at times navigating between tabs, my browser toolbar (located at the top) and my start menu, quick launch icons and open program tabs (located at the bottom).
I found an easy solution: Drag the taskbar to the top of the page. Dragging the taskbar to the top keeps all of your tabs, menus, and links to open applications close together, making it quicker and easier to switch between programs, open new ones and to know what you already have open. It takes a little getting used to at first but if you get past the first few hours of this change, you will find your computing becomes much more efficient.
In Linux Ubuntu, I eliminate the bottom task bar (the default is 2). I add the open programs and switch between desktops features to the top taskbar. This is particularly useful on my laptop to save screen space. If you have a smaller screen, you may want to merge or shorten the names of your menus to save space.
Windows 7 has been released for a few months now and the jury is out. Windows 7 is a really good operating system. But how good is it? Should I upgrade? The simple answer is if you are running XP, wait until you buy a new computer. If you are running Vista, you will really appreciate how much smoother things run but the $130 upgrade price tag might be a bit much if you plan on buying a new computer within the next year.
As someone who bought 2 computers that came with Vista, I feel cheated by Microsoft. At first glance, Vista looked much better than XP. It got a lot of bad press at first as many printers and other peripherals didn’t work but that was largely taken care of with Service Pack 2. I was used to Vista and everything was fine. When I got my hands on a copy of Windows 7, I realized that it was pretty much the same as Vista except my computer ran faster. Basically, Windows 7 is Vista running the way it should.
XP doesn’t have the prettiest interface but it works very well. Networking can be a little tricky but with XP, your computer should run reasonable fast. XP is not quite as as efficient as Linux but it’s still 3 times as fast as Vista. Keep in mind that if you upgrade, you should back up your personal files on the internet, on DVDs, a memory stick or an external hard drive and then do a full install. There is a feature that will keep your files and programs and do the upgrade from Vista but this is not recommended as it can create instability.
If you have a netbook, avoid Windows 7 Lite. There are few options for customizing. You are better off with Windows XP or Linux Ubuntu. If you have a really simple netbook, you might like Linux Puppy though it’s not the easiest to install.
If you like to read news online or have blogs you follow, you can save a whole heck of a lot of time by subscribing to RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow a single program to display articles or any type of new listing a website publishes.
There are many types of media that can be in feeds. News and Blog articles are the most common use but podcasts, videos, new products for sale and searches can also be subscribed to.
RSS is a good way to be alerted to new content. One time there was a new movie that my Spanish speaking wife really wanted to see. I had the movie but there were no subtitles for it. The site where I get subtitles had an RSS feed feature on their search. Every day it would search for the subtitles I wanted and when someone finally uploaded them, I was sent a notice to my RSS feed that the subtitles I wanted were in.
Think of Google Reader as a newspaper in which you are the publisher. You choose who contributes to it and how the articles are arranged. Having tested a few readers, I have found Google Reader to be the best.
My favorite use of RSS feeds is for podcasts. I don’t have to go to the web sites of my favourite radio stations, I just check my reader and when there is a new podcast I want, to listen to, I click on it and it plays from the web page. Even if you get most of your news from one site, Google reader can be helpful.
Many news sites have more than one feed so you can subscribe to the ones that interest you. That way you don’t have to waste time navigating around the sections that don’t interest you. It’s easy to sign up for Google Reader. It is a web based application so you don’t have to download anything. Just sign in and when you visit your favourite news site or blog, subscribe to the RSS feed that interests you.
Gmail makes life so much easier. Its simplicity and features really make it stand out from other email programs.
The best thing about Gmail is the spam control. If you find yourself sifting through spam, you must switch to Gmail. Very few unwanted emails make it through my spam filter and there is no need to check for important emails in the spam folder.
Switching to Gmail is easy. In most cases you just enter the email and password of your current account and Gmail will import emails from that account every hour. If every hour is too seldom for you, set up your old email account to forward all of the emails to Gmail.
Once your set up your Gmail account, the features are endless. Here are some of the more useful features:
Over 7GB of free storage: This blows the doors off of all other email web apps. If 7GB isn’t enough, buy 20GB for $5 a year, 80GB for $20 a year. There are other plans if you want more storage still.
Offline mail. Enable Gmail to be used offline. It downloads messages, attachments and contacts and you can change the settings if you don’t want it to take up too much of your disk space. If you aren’t always on the internet, this is a very useful feature. It will also run much faster if you have a slow internet connection.
Text, Voice and Video Chat. If you have a contact that has Gmail as well and is online, you can use this feature.
Canned Responses. If you get emails with similar questions often, you can save your response and quickly select and paste it into your message.
Forgotten Attachment Detector. If you use the word, “attach” or “attached” in your message and haven’t attached a file when you click “send”, a warning will appear asking if you intended to attach a file.
Undo Send. This holds the message for a specified period of time after you click send. If you realize that you forgot something, you can click “undo”.
There are many, many more features such as adding Google Gadgets to your page, and pretty much every feature you find in other email programs such as vacation reply, folders, message search and more. Chances are that you will find all of these features easier to use and organize with Gmail.
Opening a Gmail account makes other web apps available to you. Just a few of these are Google Calendar, Google Docs, iGoogle, Google Voice, Blogger, Page Creator, Picasa and more. Google isn’t just the king of search; it’s quickly becoming the king of software as well.
Dropbox is a fantastic backup and collaboration tool. If you have more than one computer, it is essential.
Sometimes I do work on my home computer. In the past, I would have trouble keeping track of documents. If I updated one on my home computer and there was another version on my work computer, I would find myself in situations where I wasn’t sure which file was more current, sometimes I made changes to the same file on different computers, creating a real mess.
Dropbox has solved these problems. Now when I save an Excel or Word file at home or at work, it automatically gets saved in the “My Dropbox” folder located in “My Documents”. When I save a file, it is instantly uploaded to the server which I can access on the internet at their web site. It is also downloaded to my other computer in the same folder instantly or the next time that computer is connected to the internet.
Dropbox is fantastic for backup. The files in your Dropbox folder are on every computer associated with your account as well as on their web site. With this type of backup, you should never lose those important files that you have worked so hard on.
Dropbox works with multiple operating systems. I use Windows Vista and Linux Ubuntu at home and Windows XP at work and it works in exactly the same way on each with no bugs. Dropbox also works with Apple computers and most smart phones.
If you visit the Dropbox web site, it you can download your files from your browser and view the history of ever file you have updated, deleted and added.
Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage free which can be upgraded to 3GB for free if your refer friends. It also has subscription options if you want more storage.
Speed: In every speed test, Google Chrome comes out on top. It opens much faster than all the other browsers, loads pages faster and allows javascript to run more operations per second. Part of the reason Google Chrome is so much faster is because it utilizes RAM. Firefox uses the least amount of memory so if you like having lots of tabs open on a computer that doesn’t have much memory, Firefox may fun faster though it takes ten times longer to open.
Compact: Google Chrome has an efficient design. It allows users to focus on content by taking up the least amount of screen space of any browser. This is particularly important for laptops and netbooks with smaller screens. Let’s look at it this way. Do you watch a sporting event on television to see the announcer, score and time or to watch the game? You want to know the game score and how much time is left when you watch sports but you don’t want this data to hide the action.
The “intelligent” address bar will go straight to a URL if you enter one or will do a search if you enter words. After using this feature, it makes you wonder why other browsers haven’t adopted something similar.
Simple Menus: There are only two main menu options that are well placed. This makes it easier to find the options you want.
Easy to navigate history: Hit CTRL + H and you will find the history simple to navigate as well as search. It seems like a no brainer that every page you visit should be listed individually in the order it has been visited but some other browsers make history so complicated that it’s useless.
Reopen Closed Tabs: How many times have you accidentally closed a tab? With Chrome, you just have to open a new tab and it will show your recently closed tabs. If you closed the browser with multiple tabs open, one click will restore them all.
New Tab Page: When opening a new tab, not only does it have recently closed tabs, but it has a large graphic representation of the pages used the most. These are customizable and handy.
Easy Bookmarking. Just click the bookmark star. It is very simple to use.
Web App friendly: Google Gears allows web apps such as Gmail or Google Calendar to be run off-line. This is handy if you can’t always be on the internet. Chrome also has its own task manager which allows the user see how many resources each tab is using.
Tab Management: Dragging and dropping tabs with Chrome is fantastic. Tabs can be dragged to a new spot it out of the tab bar which, opening a new window or drag and drop it into another tab bar that you already have open. These features aren’t unique to Chrome but they way dragging and dropping tabs is represented is much better than other browsers.
Bookmark Sync: This isn’t one of the 10 because it’s in the beta version of Chrome. If you have a Google account, it is easily set up a bookmark sync. This is essential for those using more than one computer. With bookmark sync, when a page is bookmarked on one computer, it will automatically add it to the user’s account and will appear on any other computer when the user is logged in to Google and using Chrome. This feature is also very useful for multiple users on one computer. Bookmark Sync ties bookmarks to a user rather than a computer
When it comes to adding features (Plug-ins), Chrome doesn’t have many. Firefox has a lot of extra features that can be downloaded.
Confusion
There is a lot of press these days about Google Chrome OS. It is an operating system like Windows or Linux. It runs very much like the Chrome browser but doens’t do much more. It is meant for very simple computers that only use the internet.
Conculsion
The first reason should be enough for you to switch, speed. After using Chrome, you will be tired of other browsers before they even open. Chrome opens almost instantly. If you do research or open and close web pages quickly, Chome is certianly the right browser for you.
