Tech Tips with Mr. Tech Savvy

POP is good. IMAP is better.

2008-05-29T01:04:00.000-07:00

Many business users already know what POP is and use it at their offices. For others who don’t, POP is a method that let users download emails on the server to their computer. In practical understanding, it allows you to download those emails on your Yahoo or Gmail account, or your own domain name emails, into your email applications like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, on your computer.

And why would you want to do that? Because you can read them while you are not connected to the internet. Getting the picture? This will also allow you store the emails “locally” on your computer which is a nice way to keep a backup of your precious emails.

So that’s POP. But what if you are a Super Multiple-Gadget user? You probably have a PC at home, another at the office, a laptop while you travel and a trendy mobile phone with you all the time. And you love checking mails, so, you check them all day on all devices.

POP will not help you much in this case. The downside of POP is that it is a one-way communication. With POP you only download emails from the server and that’s it. The server is not told if you have read the emails, replied to them, or even sent a new email. When you shift from your first gadget to the second your emails get downloaded again, and since the server doesn’t know about your previous actions, it will show nothing but new “unread” emails to you. Even more, your replied message is not available since you sent it from your first device.

How to get it all organized? How to make every action you do with your emails be common in all your devices? Here’s where IMAP comes in.

IMAP is an alternative method to “access” your emails from the mail server. Instead of downloading emails, you synchronize them. When you read an email, it tells the server that this mail has been read. And when you send an email, the same email gets “uploaded” and stored in the server as well.

Now when you use any other device, if you check emails using IMAP, you get the emails with their read or unread status. Your sent emails will be downloaded to your local “Outbox”. Even better, if you have organized your emails into folders, all folders will be automatically created and updated in all your devices. Way to go, IMAP!

However, all that glitters is not gold. IMAP does have a small downside. The storage space for your emails depends on your mailbox size allowed by the service provider. If you are a heavy email user with a mailbox limited to 100MB size, then you will have to delete emails every few weeks or so. This, therefore, will not let you keep an archive of your emails on the server.

POP vs IMAP

Now, all the POP fans out there may wonder, “Should I make the shift?” Well, it’s really your personal preference. If you are a single-computer user then you may want to stick to POP as it already suits the purpose. But if you are the Super Multiple-Gadget user, then this suggests you switch right away. It will help you get organized in a very big way.

Note that when you move to IMAP, do so on all computers and devices and stop using POP. Using both will get it all muddled up.

Update: Gmail Fans, here is a recommended reading for you posted by Gmail guys themselves!

Official Gmail Blog: Getting Gmail anywhere: IMAP versus POP

Have questions? Email them in!

Just for Geeks - Answer and Win!
In a web address like: http://www.mrtechsavvy.com, what does “http”, “www” and “com” stand for?

Have the answers? Hurry! Send them in! Earliest two entries win a stylish Apacer 1GB USB Flash Drive each!
* For Pattaya Mail and Chiangmai Mail readers only

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Why laptop when you have a flash drive?

2008-04-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Did you wish you had a laptop so you can have all your work anytime, anywhere? I think it's a bad idea carrying that heavy device with you when you travel. Why take the pains when you can now carry almost everything on a little device called "flash drive"?

Whatever you call it, a handy drive, a pen drive, a thumb drive or a flash drive, such a gadget was invented to give us mobility and portability of data. A flash drive (let's stick to this name) has become a basic gadget for people who use multiple computers and of course for avid travellers. And the good part, as the storage capacity increases, the prices are dropping. As a 1GB flash drive is now at stock-clearance price, a 4GB is a must-have carry-around gadget. Most people use flash drives just for storing or transferring of work files, pictures, music, videos, etc. Little did they know that this little flashy device you carry around has a lot more capabilities than you ever imagined.

One of the most amazing capabilities a flash drive can do that I recommend you to explore is that you can now carry your essential applications with you wherever you go. And by essential applications I mean, all office applications like word processors and its crew, email applications, web browser, instant messengers, anti-viruses and even more. Once these applications are installed into your flash drive, never worry about having to find a computer with the software you need again.

Is it really possible to install entire software into that little device? Well, the question is an under-estimation of flash drives. Not only can you install just software, but also an operating system into that tiny gadget you hooked to your key ring!

So how does it work? Just download the standalone application and install it into your flash drive. When you are on the go, plug your flash drive into any Windows computer and just launch the applications you want to use. Yes, it’s that simple!

Here are a few essential applications you could start with:

Open Office Portable allows you to have your office life on the go. This install includes all office applications like word processor, spreadsheet, etc.

Portable Firefox, the admirable browser, comes to you in a portable version as well. All bookmarks that you saved are stored securely on the flash drive.

Portable Thunderbird is an email application that lets you carry your emails wherever you go. Send and receive emails from this application, running on your flash drive.

Pidgin Portable will never let you lose touch with your friends again. With this multi-network instant messenger, carry your buddy list with you and log on to your MSN, ICQ, Yahoo! or Google accounts when you want to chat with them.

GIMP Portable lets you edit your photos and images the same way you edit them on Adobe Photoshop. This is a credible image editing tool that you must consider giving a try.

These are just a few. All these applications are easily available for you to download at PortableApps (http://www.portableapps.com/), a website that specialises in providing you with a list of recommended portable applications. So start downloading and install it into your flash drives.

Having a second thought about your laptop now? Leave it behind! Go enjoy your vacation!.

Just for Geeks - Site of the Week

Musicovery
www.musicovery.com

Music lovers will enjoy this. Listen to non-stop music while you define the genres, mood, tempo, year of release, etc. to your heart’s content. Even better, mark your favourite songs and ban the ones you hate.

Till next week… Tata ;-)

Control your music from taskbar

2008-04-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Most of us enjoy listening to music while working on the computer. We would select songs into a playlist and let it play while we carry on with our work. This week features a small and simple tip but a sensible technique to help you control music faster and easier.

Normally, while you are listening to music, when you need to skip a song, you would have to switch back to the media player window and press the ‘Next’ button. Even in a situation when , say, your phone rings and you need to lower the volume or mute it completely to answer the call, you would have go back to the player again. Plus, don’t you think having a maximized window of a media player opened on your screen is a mere clutter of your workspace? Let’s make our tech life easier. Put that media player on your teeny taskbar at the bottom of your screen.

Most Media Players come with an inbuilt feature that allows you to minimize the player’s controls to fit into the taskbar on your Windows computer. Isn’t that neat? With this you can play, pause, stop, go to next or previous song, control the volume or even mute it. And if you want to watch a video as well, Windows Media Taskbar puts a little screen on your taskbar for you to enjoy. As long as it is on your taskbar, you don’t have to switch back and forth between programs again!

This feature may already be enabled on your player, but if you haven’t seen it, here’s how to activate it on Windows Media Player and Apple iTunes in three easy steps:

1) Right-click mouse on the taskbar.

2) Click on Toolbars. Then click on Windows Media Player or iTunes

3) Whenever you want you put your player on the taskbar, just minimize the player and it will automatically be embedded into the taskbar.

There you go, easy and neat!

Happy Songkran to one and all!

It’s awfully hot out there, yet the only way to diminish the heat is to go out this weekend. While some of you might have already enjoyed the thrilling water festival in Bangkok and elsewhere, for the people in Pattaya, this weekend is your turn. Here’s wishing you a Happy Songkran! (Hoping that you read this before the newspaper in your hand turns completely wet!)

All hell breaks loose in this showery festival, so, here’s a little advice: Do remember to keep all your electronics and gadgets, especially mobile phones and digital cameras in a sealed waterproof bag, if you decide to carry them with you. Now go get drenched!

Just for Geeks – Answer and Win!

In the midst of confusion of whether Yahoo! would be taken over by Microsoft or not, did you ever wonder what Yahoo! stands for?

If you have an answer to that let me know and you will get a chance to win a Carvery for two at Jameson's The Irish Pub.
* For Pattaya Mail and Chiangmai Mail readers only

Till next week… Tata ;-)

The Battle of Browsers

2008-04-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Do you remember Netscape Navigator and how it used to look on our old "boxed" computer screen? That same “navigator” was the first commercial internet browser introduced in 1994. It started off very well, being the dominant browser with up to 90% of users worldwide. The only competitor that Netscape had to battle with at the time was Microsoft's one and only Internet Explorer. Referred to as the First Browser War, It was a beginning of a ruthless competition. And eventually, the year 1998 gave way to Netscape's defeat with IE souring to over a 90% monopolizing share of internet surfers. It was evident that IE enjoyed a sweet symphony of being the leader in the browser war from then.

At that point of time, it was obvious to say that if you have browsed the internet, then you have used Internet Explorer at least once in a lifetime. Or if you are a Windows user, you are sure to have used it and probably are a big fan too.

During subsequent years, there came along a lot of new names and brands with new features and designs. But the one that we have surely heard of and which has really shown success is Mozilla Firefox. With newcomers becoming more and more popular, it brought us to an era of a Second Browser War. By this time, we've barely heard of the name "Netscape". After a long struggle with its competitors, Netscape's doubtful existence officially died a cold death on March 1, 2008.

Let's look at the top three warriors that are battling it out in today’s war.

Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer still leads in the browser race today. Including all versions, IE holds an over 50% user share. Its popularity significantly owes to the fact that Windows operating systems comes pre-installed with IE. While over 85% of the people around the world use Microsoft Windows operating systems, it is no doubt that majority of internet surfers are attached to IE. However, recently, as numerous others have proven this war to be a tough one, IE has been struggling to maintain its superiority. Introduced with the public release of IE7 in 2006 were features like tabbed browsing, phishing filter and search tool. It might have proved a little success but by this time, these were no longer exclusive features. The competitors would have emerged with the same and even more features to offer their users. IE7, therefore, did not succeed as expected. Nevertheless, Microsoft announced its beta release of IE8 recently, which we eagerly wait to see some great enhancements.

Firefox
The closest competition to IE today is Firefox, and to be exact, according to W3Schools.com, the percentage of Firefox users is now above 35%, which has never stopped growing since its first release. Standing in the second position, Firefox is an open source browser developed by Mozilla and supports Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Firefox has certain highlights that definitely please its users. These include features that allow users to add extensions or change the browser’s interface by applying downloadable skins. Moreover, being an open-source platform, independent software developers can create extensions on their own to tune up the browser in the way they want and share them with Firefox fans around the world. This creates a strong community of users who will always try to improve the browser. While the testing version is already out, Firefox is giving finishing touches to its new 3.0 version.

Safari
An official browser by Apple, Safari is one of the youngest entries into this war. Having only about 2% users in hand, Safari has a long way to go to get closer to IE and Firefox. However, its growth rate is believed to be very interesting. The infamous iPhone and iPod Touch that have taken the world by storm come with Safari as the default browser. With more such gadgets being sold, the popularity of this browser is inevitably boosted. Just recently, Apple released its latest Safari update for Windows, the 3.1 version, claiming it to be the fastest browser. With this, Apple does hope to widen its market on the Windows platform.

The world has already bid farewell to one of the major warriors of this war, while there are still stronger ones working extremely hard to dominate this battle. As the technology devotees pursue the fate of this war, common users enjoy the result of new and better products. The war has a lot more coming its way for us to expect the unexpected. We shall wait and watch.

Just for Geeks - Site of the Week

TripIt
www.tripit.com

This is one website travellers must not miss. TripIt is a unique, free online tool for travellers to organize all their travel plans in one place. To start with, all you have to do is forward your travel itineraries to a given email address and they will all be organized for you. The tool will put your flight, hotel and car rental confirmations on one page which can be easily accessible anytime on the website or even through email. You can print these itineraries while you are travelling or even share these travel plans with your friends.

Till next week… Tata ;-)

Living Life Online

2008-04-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

It has been too long since we remember the time we created our first email account, leave alone learning how to connect with a Dial-up connection. Since then, we’ve come a long way. Today, the moment we sit at a computer, there's a least chance we're not connected.

Thanks to the rapid growth in technology, the internet speed is becoming closer to the speed of light day by day. With this effect, the line between "offline" and "online" rapidly thins down, making the majority of our lives "online".

Sure, everything is going online. Our childhood videos, our graduation pictures, our personal diary, we’ve already posted them there. We explore the entire planet's surface from the same screen we check our emails. And what about those essential tasks you do every day when you are offline?

Like Microsoft Word, Excel or Power Point, these basic applications that you use every day in your offices or at home can be found in plenty online. And most of them are free! Yes, it's true. You have most features and functionality just as you had it with those offline applications. Additionally, we can share documents, photos, audios and videos with friends to view and enjoy or collaborate with co-workers to edit and approve. This wasn't possible in offline mode. And Hey! Don’t forget, it’s free! No more buying and installing those expensive softwares.

Another practical use of these online applications is that it is an anytime-anywhere tool. Tired of carrying your laptops with your favourite software when you travel? As long as you can find a nice cyber cafe, you don’t need to worry about those softwares ever.

How does that sound? Here’s a list of online alternatives to your favourite softwares you should fall in love with. Enjoy!


Microsoft Office	Google Docs - http://docs.google.com Write documents online with this amazing word processing tool. The best part with Google Docs is you can store documents online and access them to view or edit anytime from anywhere. You can also share with a friend and allow him/her to edit the same document.
Microsoft Excel	Google Docs (Spreadsheet) - http://docs.google.com Accounting is made easier and mobile for you; create spreadsheets with this tool.
Microsoft Power Point	Google Docs (Presentation) - http://docs.google.com Create presentations, share with people or invite them to watch it at the same time. All this online! Equally as good, you might also want to take a look Preezo - http://www.preezo.com/
Adobe Photoshop	Adobe Photoshop Express - https://www.photoshop.com/express Very recently launched (in beta mode), a free web-based photo editing tool. Another option is Splash Up - http://www.splashup.com
Microsoft Outlook	Gmail - http://www.gmail.com You can download emails from other accounts to Gmail via POP just like any offline email applications.
Instant Messengers: MSN, Yahoo!, Gtalk, ICQ and AIM	Meebo - http://www.meebo.com An all-in-one instant messaging tool; login to any of your chat services right from one location.
Adobe Acrobat Professional	Doc2PDF - http://www.doc2pdf.net/converter Nothing can be easier than this! Use this to convert a Word document into PDF format. Very quick and easy.
Calculator	InstaCal - http://www.instacalc.com/ Calculation of complex mathematics or conversion of currency, weight, length, etc. can all be done here.

Just for Geeks
Bring family closer; build a family tree, create timelines and share photos with Geni – www.geni.com

Till next week… Tata ;-)

We love our computer, let's keep it clean

2008-03-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest, we are the laziest when it comes to computer maintenance. We know how to copy, download, transfer and install files and programs on our computer so much that it half turns into a box of junk. When the computer is overloaded with unwanted or never-used files, the question is, "Who's going to clean that up?" Of course not the computer!

Keeping your computer clean is the first step to making it run faster. A computer can only run smoothly if we maintain and do clean-ups regularly. There are a big bunch of files sitting in your computer that were temporarily generated, copied or downloaded onto your computer, especially when you surf online. These files help in loading visited web pages or opened program files faster. After a few days, most of them do not have much use and can be removed from your computer safely to re-gain free space.

Here's the simplest way to get rid of that old junk on your computer. Trust me; it's really quick and easy. Many of you may already know this, but let's face it, when was the last time you did a disk cleanup?

Let's go…

Go to Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools and open the Disk Cleanup utility program.
You will be prompted to "Select Drive" for clean up. Being the most crucial one, let's start our clean up with C Drive. Select the drive from the list and click OK.
The program will scan and analyze "junk" files which can be removed from your computer to clean up space. This can take awhile depending on the temporary files on your computer.
Once the scanning is done, you will get a list of file types that can be deleted. By default, some of them will already be selected. Apart from those, you might want to select "Recycle Bin" as well, if you decide to clean up that too. Another one you should choose to clean up is "Temporary Files". Click OK and when you are asked to confirm the clean up, click Yes.
The cleanup utility will take awhile to do the work for you.
Repeat the steps if you want to clean up other drives as well.

Told you it was easy! Make this a regular practice, at least once a week and you will stop thinking about buying a new computer.

Just for Geeks - Answer and Win!
According to InternetWorldStats.com, about 20% of the world’s population is using the internet today. While the world’s population is 6,606,971,659*, there are currently 1,319,872,109* internet users around the world.

* Estimated values

The answer to last week's Just For Geeks – Answer and Win! question "What does "http", "www" and "com" stand for in a web address?" is:

http stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
www stands for World Wide Web (of course!)
com stands for Commercial

Wasn’t that easy? Once again we had a lot of entries coming in. The lucky winners to take away Apacer 1GB USB Flash Drive each are Pete Eades and Russ Blohn. Congratulations!

Five Reasons why Gmail stands among them all

2008-03-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Gmail has become a part of our lives. A big one for many. And for those who don’t have an account yet, here’s what you are missing:

Space. Lots of space.
6497 MB available to you as of today, and counting! This is as close as it gets to having unlimited space. Ask your friend to send you emails with attachments of 10 MB a day and it would still take him 2 years to fill up your mailbox. My own Gmail mailbox has over 2500 emails and yet it never crossed the 5% mark. Gmail is very generous at this feature so why not take advantage of this? Never delete emails again. Use this as your email backup. Or how about using Gmail as your virtual 6.5GB Flash Drive?
POP? Free. IMAP? Yes, Free.
The feature we always wished for with free web-based email is to be able to download emails to your emailing software on your computer like MS Outlook. Gmail lets you do just that with POP download feature. The best part, its Free!

The same for IMAP. Don’t download but sync your emails on your computer, laptop or even your mobile phone through the IMAP feature. Every action is automatically synchronized with all your devices. Mobile users can check their mail by pointing their browser to http://m.gmail.com

There’s more. You can even download emails from other accounts that you have POP access to Gmail mailbox. This allows you to check multiple email accounts from one location.
Speed
With the standard version of Gmail, it’s almost as quick to check your mails as you were doing with the email software on your computer. The web-based email is fast and highly responsive. Try your hand at it and find out if it’s fast enough for you.
Kick spam in the face
Spam and junk mails are the annoying part of our communication life. Get rid of it. Gmail is very effective when it comes to blocking unwanted messages. To my experience, Gmail leads at this feature. It can never be a 100% clean mailbox, but for Gmail, 99% is possible.

Forgot that mail? Search it!
We love Google and we know it’s the best search engine on the planet. Use the same technology to search your email. Looking for an email sent to you 2 years ago? Remember what it was about, put in those keywords, and let Gmail search feature find it in a flash!

Other features that will help make your communication life better may include archiving emails, auto-saving into Drafts as you compose a new mail, chatting with your contacts from the mailbox itself, really “Quick Contacts”, displaying emails of same context in a group or “conversations”, and countless more… Judge it yourself and let us know what you think about it.

Just for Geeks
Why not backpack your ideas, to-do lists, notes, clippings, photos and have them on the go? Check out this really cool organizer tool - www.backpackit.com.

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Hate slow downloads? Let download manager help you

2008-03-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

It gets very frustrating when you come across some interesting and useful downloads online and it takes just way too long to download them. We always blame it on our poor internet connection speed. Yes, we've all been there. And when you sit and wait for that download bar indicator on your screen trying to fill it up with the tiny boxes and suddenly the internet connection just cuts off. Aaah! What a pain!

Wish you had a way to overcome this?

What you need is a download manager and there are a lot of them that are doing a good job in solving download frustrations. One of most popular and the one that I would recommend is FlashGet.

Unlike the default download feature on your system, with FlashGet, if your internet decides to take a walk or you decide to shut down your computer, the download is automatically paused and can be continued when the connection returns or when the computer is switched back on. But what's more important is the way FlashGet can enhance the download speed greatly. It can split the file being downloaded into multiple parts and download each part simultaneously. So, if you're downloading a 3 MB file, the download manager can split the file into parts of 1 MB each and download them in parallel, increasing the speed by up to 3 times!

FlashGet can also help you download multiple files at the same time and you can easily manage the download list on a single interface.

So, let's get started. First we shall download the latest version of FlashGet from http://www.flashget.com/en/download.htm. Of course, you will have to bear the pain just "one-last-time" for this 4 MB download. Patience is a virtue!

Installing the application is quick and easy. Just follow the instructions provided.

If you happen to be a Mozilla FireFox fan, to use any download manager you also need to install an Extension called FlashGot. Get it easily from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/220.

Once the installation is done, you will notice a small white box with FlashGet logo on the top-right corner of your screen. This box is called the DropZone. Whenever you want to download something, all you have to do is drag the download link into this box and it will start downloading the file automatically.

If the DropZone is not what you like, get it out of your sight by right-mouse clicking on it and unclick "Show DropZone". Now to download something: just right-mouse click on that link and select "Download with FlashGet" for Internet Explorer users and "FlashGot Link" for FireFox users.

Files are downloaded to the "Downloads" folder on your C Drive by default. To change this, go to Tools > Default Download Properties and change "Save to:" to your preferred location.

Have fun downloading!

Question from Mario:
How to change the language to English if the FlashGet interface was installed with Thai languange by default?

FlashGet supports multiple languages but it becomes a trouble when the program sets the local language automatically. However, there are two ways to fix this. The usual way is to go to the View menu which is next to the File and Edit menu, but of course it’s all in Thai! Well, if you want to give it a try, blindly click on the third menu and you will see "Language" (luckily, this is in English), and select "English" under this menu.

The second way to work around this may seem a little technical, but it’s easy actually. Go to C:\Program Files\FlashGet\Language and you will see a list of FlashGet languange files. Delete all of them except for the one named "JCENG". Restart your FlashGet and it won't look "french" to you again!

Just for Geeks
Google Earth is one of the greatest innovations so far. And there’s always more to it. Check out Google Mars - www.google.com/mars

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Be your own Journalist – start a Blog

2008-02-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, we all have heard of it. Many of us may already have one. But yet, we didn’t know it is now very easy to create one of our own.

The concept of writing a personal blog is very much an old one. The early bloggers started posting even before the Y2K craze of the year 2000. But that was the time when the online freedom of speech was only accessible to tech geeks. To have a website or a personal webpage at that time wasn’t so easy for the non-techies until recent times. For common internet users, if they wanted to have a personal website, they had to have knowledge of all that HTML, or Java or...Hoof! Let’s stay away from those for now!

Getting to the basics of what a Blog is; a blog (also called weblog, from combing the words web and log) is a personal webpage or pages which has entries or posts in reverse chronological order. It is more like an online personal diary for some, and a platform to communicate ideas and thoughts to the world on a particular subject for others. What’s special about a blog is that it allows interactivity between the blogger and his/her readers. While the blogger publishes thoughts, the readers can give feedback by commenting on the posts. Even more, a blogger can post photos, videos, music, audio or podcasts picked from around the web or even a creative work of his own.

For an idea, www.MrTechSavvy.com is a website in the form of a blog. It has weekly posts of articles that have been published in the Pattaya Mail newspaper.

There are many free and paid blogging tools provided out there, some of the common ones being WordPress.com, Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. Take a look at all of them and get a idea of what it is all about. These websites have a simple walk-through in setting up a blog making it very easy for you. For starters, you might want to look at Blogger.com’s easy to set-up and easy to customize blogging tool.

Let’s get it started; creating a blog with Blogger.com:

Log on to www.Blogger.com and click on Create Your Blog Now.
You will be asked to create an account and provide some information. If you already have a Google or a Gmail account, you can use the same email as your Blogger.com account as well. Your Display Name will be the name which will be used at the end of every post or in every comment you write on someone else’s blog. Once you’re done, click Continue.
Next, choose a nice Blog title and an easy-to-remember Blog address. Be creative but at the same time, use short and simple keywords which say something about the subject of your blog. The Blog address will look something like http://harrythehiker.blogspot.com/. Make sure it is available for grabs.
You have an option of going advanced if you decide to host your blog on a domain name that you already own, just like www.MrTechSavvy.com. But for a starter, I suggest you go with the basic option of having your blog hosted with Blogger.com. It will be easier to manage and maintain for beginners.
Chosen your Blog address? Click Continue.
Now, choose a template that suits the subject of your blog. If you are going to be writing about Nature, you would want to have your blog based on green color. Again, be creative but simple. You can customize this template or switch to another template later as well. Click Continue.
Your Blog is now created! Clicking Start Posting will take you to the Create Post page. Creating a post is as easy as writing an email. Explore the tools available. Once you’re done with writing your first post, click Publish Post. Go to your Blog address and you will find your first blog post there!
Click on all the tabs above to get an idea of the tools available for you to enhance your blog. You can customize the template, fonts and colors in the Layout tab.

If you have questions or want advice, feel free to comment them below or write to mrtechsavvy@pattayamail.com. All feedback is welcome!

Just for Geeks - Answer and Win!
Want to be a part of saving the world’s environment? Save paper, ink, trees and of course - money. Start now with GreenPrint - www.printgreener.com

The answer to last week’s Just For Geeks – Answer and Win! - question “Who created Google?” is:

Google was created by “Larry Page and Sergey Brin” - Students of Stanford University. The idea was started as a research project in the year 2006 by the two geniuses and has grown to be the biggest search engine in the world today.

The lucky winners to win an Apacer 2GB USB Flash Drive each are Ewan and Howard Bloom. Congratulations!

Till then… Tata ;-)

Backup and Restore your Outlook emails easily

2008-02-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

It is good practice to make a backup of your important data regularly. And even otherwise, you would want to backup your Outlook emails and contacts when you are sending that old PC for an upgrade. This helps you get all those emails and contacts back to Outlook easily and neatly, without much work.

Let’s take a quick look at how Outlook keeps your personal data. The new versions of Microsoft Outlook use a format called “Microsoft Office Outlook Personal Folder” file, or “PST” file. This file contains all your Outlook folders including Inbox, Calendar and Contacts. This is the file which you need to backup in order to back up all of your Outlook information.

Here’s how you can backup your emails from Microsoft Outlook 2007:

First, you will have to locate the PST file. With Microsoft Outlook 2007 open, go to File and select Data File Management.

On the Data File tab, you should see a list of your Personal Folder files that Outlook has created for you. Select one of them and click “Open Folder”. This will open the Outlook folder where the PST files are stored.
Select the PST or “Microsoft Office Outlook Personal Folder” files in the folder, one of which should be “Outlook.pst”.
Copy the files to a backup location in another hard drive, or even better, burn it on a CD.

Now, whenever you want to restore the backup files, you can do that by simply copying the backup PST files back to the same folder. And to locate that folder, follow the same first two steps above.

Safe and easy it is!

Just for Geeks - Answer and Win!
Who created Google?

Answer and win a trendy Apacer 2GB USB Flash Drive!*
* For Pattaya Mail Newspaper readers only

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Protect your important files - Move your My Documents away

2008-02-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Most, if not all, of us store our documents, pictures, music and video files in the most common place in the world - “My Documents”. Windows XP gives you the freedom to keep your My Documents folder in any location you wish.

Now you may ask, “Why should I move My Documents somewhere else?” Remember the day when the guy at your favorite computer store said, “Sorry Sir. Your Windows crashed, your files are lost and we cannot do anything about it but to format your computer.”

Let’s not let that day come back to us. Moving your My Documents away from C Drive or “System Drive” can save your files when your computer accidentally crashes or needs to be formatted for any reason. Plus, My Documents tends to be a very large folder as we have music and videos in there as well. By moving it to another drive, it frees up a lot of space in your C drive.

To do this, you must have a second drive, like D drive, in your computer.Here’s a simple and safe way to relocate your My Documents folder in Windows XP:

First, you will have to create a “My Documents” folder in a new location. I recommend that you create one in D drive. The path should then be “D:\My Documents\”.
On the original My Documents icon, which is usually on the Desktop, right-click mouse on the icon and select properties and you will get the “My Documents Properties” box.

Under “Target folder location”, click “Move”.
When asked to “Select a Destination”, choose the location of the new My Documents folder you have created earlier, which is, the My Documents folder under the D drive. Then, click OK.
Click OK again on the My Documents Properties box. You will then be asked to confirm if you want to move the files from the old location to the new location; verify and click Yes. The files in your old My Documents will then be automatically moved to the new one in your D drive.

Your My Documents is now officially moved to a new and safer location!

Just for Geeks
Check out www.geogreeting.com – The coolest way to send greetings to your friend!

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Get trendy – add cool fonts to your computer

2008-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Aren't you bored with those over-used fonts that are pre-installed on your computer? Fonts like Arial, Times New Roman and other basic fonts have become too common to be considered for trendy design work. They do give a professional look, but we can always add some spicy typography to our creative artworks.

Let’s get started then. Firstly, let's get some cool fonts downloaded. Log on to any of these websites and you will find an abundance of fonts that you can download for free:

Remember to save your downloaded fonts in a convenient location, say, in new folder called "Downloaded Fonts" on your desktop.

Having fun downloading them? Go ahead, download as many as you want. But make sure you don't crowd your computer with fonts. Some programs require pre-loading your fonts which makes it slower to start up these programs. This, sometimes, becomes frustrating.

Now to install those fonts you've downloaded, do the following:

Open the Downloaded Fonts folder you've just created.
If the fonts you downloaded were “compressed” or are in ZIP files, you will have to unzip them first. Once done, you should have a list of files that are True Type Font or TTF.
Select all TTF files that you want to install and press Ctrl + C to copy them.
Now open My Computer and go to C Drive > Windows > Fonts
Press Ctrl + V to paste the copied files into the Fonts folder.

To check if the fonts are installed, you can try using them on any text editing or design program.

That's it. Now get creative!

Just for Geeks
Amazing facts about the word “Google” – The name came from the term “googol” meaning the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. “Google” is a verb which refers to using the Google search engine. It exists as an official word in Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. It was chosen as the “most useful word of 2002”.

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Increase font size on Windows without using spectacles

2008-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

This one is especially for those who want every new technology to come with BIG text size on its screen. On Windows XP, it is possible to increase the size of almost every text that you see on your screen.

Here’s how simple it is…

Right-mouse click on your desktop, on any empty area.
As a menu pops up, click Properties. You should get the Display Properties box.
You can also find Display Properties in Control Panel
Select the Appearance Tab
In Font Size, choose Large and click Apply
Click OK

This would change the default font size used all over Windows. To some it my look awkward, but for others who hate small font size, this is a great help.

Alright, you can take off your spectacles now.

Just for Geeks
Did you know YouTube.com is the top-five most visited website in the world today? Make a quick guess, who is number one?

Till Then... Tata ;-)

What ELSE you could do with Google.com

2008-01-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Searching online is fun, when you know you’re going to get what you’re looking for in seconds. Most of us trust and use Google for almost everything online. You may not know that Google offers you even more than just plain searching. Try these tricks and I’m sure you will enjoy Google even more!

Google: Your World Clock
Google can help you find the time of any location around the world. All you have to do is type “location time” into the search box and you’ll get the exact current time of that location. For example, type “Lisbon time” and you should get the current time in Lisbon, Portugal.

Google: Your Quick Currency Converter
Type “2.99 USD in THB” and you would get the value of $2.99 in Thai Baht currency. Don’t know the code for that currency? Just type “2.99 US money in Thai money”. That would fix it. Neat!

Google: Your Calculator
Even when you cannot find the calculator on your desk, Google can help you. Do a quick calculation, right there in the same search box. Type “1234+5678” and you should get “6912”. Go ahead, try something more complex.

Google: Your Weather Forecaster
Just like time, type location and “weather” and Google will give you a 4-days weather forecast of that location.

Just for Geeks
Think you’re fast at typing? Check your speed at www.keybr.com.

Till Then... Tata ;-)

Explore your keyboard - the time saver!

2008-01-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

Wonder how you could speed up your day-to-day work on your computer and rest your eyes and save time for your family and friends? To get started, I have here, simple tips for office people who want to shorten their time in getting tasks done.

We all are experts at multi-tasking when sitting on a computer. Ever been in a situation where you find yourself having a whole lot of programs open at a time? And at some point, you wanted to get rid of everything that’s blocking the view of your Desktop icons likes My Computer, My Documents or just files on the Desktop. Many of us do that by clicking on the “Show Desktop” button next to the “Start” button on your taskbar. Try the easier way just by pressing and holding the Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt keys) and press “M”. Done with Desktop? Press and hold the Windows key, Shift key and “M” and you should find all of those open or “maximized” programs back on your screen. What a life saver!

Try some more shortcuts below:

Getting started…

Alt + Tab	Toggles between open programs Use this when 2 or more programs are open and you want to switch from one to another
Ctrl + Tab	Toggles between open documents in the same program Different from Alt+Tab, use this when 2 or more documents are open within the same program and you want to switch from one document to another
Alt + F4	Quits any open program – works for shutting down Windows too! Exactly like the “X” button on the top-right corner of every Windows program, use this to close any program
Ctrl + F4	Closes only the current document Use this when you want to close only the current open document and not the program altogether

While editing text…

Ctrl + C*	Copy
Ctrl + X*	Cut
Ctrl + V*	Paste
Ctrl + B	Bold
Ctrl + I	Italic
Ctrl + U	Underline
Ctrl + Z*	Undo
Ctrl + A*	Select All
Ctrl + P	Print
Ctrl + Left or Right Arrow	Move the blinking cursor left or right skipping one word at a time
Shift + Left or Right Arrow	Make text selection one word at a time

* Can be used while dealing with files and folders as well

While dealing with files and folders…

F2	Rename a file
F3	Open Find tool to search for files or folders in your computer

While surfing the web…

F5	Refreshes the current webpage
Alt + Left Arrow* or just Backspace	Go back to previous page
Alt + Right Arrow*	Go forward one page
Esc (Escape Button)	Stops the page immediately from loading
Alt + Home	Go to your Homepage
Home	Go back to the top of a webpage
End	Go directly to the bottom of a webpage
Ctrl + N	Open a new browser window
Ctrl + Enter	Automatically put the preceding “http://www.” and succeeding “.com” when typing a website address in the Address Bar
Shift + Click on a link	Open the link in a new browser window
Ctrl + D	Add or bookmarks the current webpage to your Favorites

* Works well while dealing with files and folders too

Getting used to these shortcuts can really make life easier, giving back to you all that time you needed to catch a movie with your family.

Just for Geeks
Don’t like small text size while surfing the web? While on a website, roll your mouse wheel upward while holding the Ctrl key and see what happens!

Till then… Alt+F4!