Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Ever since I was a newbie, I’ve been interested in forums, tech help sites, and tutorial sites. It wasn’t too easy finding them, though. It took a lot of searching back then to find good sites.

Nowadays, there’s a glut of help and tutorial sites (of which I am thankful). But did you know that you can receive great information in your email inbox? I’m talking about subscribing to computer “e-zines.” My two favorites are the daily emails from Kim Komando and WinXPNews.

I loved Kim Komando’s Tips email– I looked forward to them every morning. Now that I have a lot of years and experience under my belt, they aren’t as helpful. But they are still very good, and I try to read them when they interest me and when I have time. They are excellent for newer computer users. Kim keeps things very simple, and she makes herself personally available to help out users with specific problems. You can sign up for her free emails at her website. There are several to choose from, or get all of them! Her message boards are also a very good way to get to know the computer world a little better.

Another helpful email I get is from WinXPNews. I’ve been receiving these for a few years now. They cover topics that are a little more advanced, so they keep me challenged. They’ve recently expanded their subscription service to include VistaNews, an email solely about Vista issues. I haven’t opted in to receive that one, as I don’t have Vista and so far, I haven’t been impressed enough to buy it. I’m sticking with XP for a while. If I ever do choose another operating system, it will be Ubuntu.

I also get emails from CNet, because I’m a download junkie. I’m not terribly impressed with their emails, though. Wired is another good site but I haven’t gotten around to signing up with them, yet. I’m pleased with what I have right now, anyway.

So if you are hankering for some down-to-earth information to make you a better and more informed computer user, I recommend getting emails. It also helps to read the emails.

According to internet marketing, before anything, internet safety comes first. This means that all the policies of web marketing should revolve around safety for us as well as others. Since long, people have associated risks with email marketing. This is why internet marketers charges are increasing, since everyday they are coming up with a new marketing solution that suits everyone.

For many years, I suffered under the grips of the only real word processing and spreadsheet program out there: the Microsoft Office Suite. At least it was better than Microsoft Works, ha ha. But Word and PowerPoint always crashed on me a lot. I learned to save my documents at every single change or line of new type (so MS Office did do one good thing for me– gave me a good habit). But the constant crashes and the burden it put on my laptop processor had me longing for something else.

I found it with OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org, like Firefox, is an open source program. This means that the making and the “engine” of the program is not a stealthy secret hidden in the confines of large file cabinets in Seattle, Washington. Open source means that everyone can see what the code is that makes up the program, and you can even contribute to it to make it even better. Ah, the beauty of the Internet.

I first became familiar with OpenOffice.org several years ago, when I had dial-up service. It took f o r e v e r to download. I am happy to say there have been many improvements to both OpenOffice.org and my internet service (now DSL).

OpenOffice.org is a great bundle of free software. It is split up into several smaller packages. I’ll give you a run down of what’s included, with a very, very brief summary description of each. Click on the links to learn more at OpenOffice.org website.

Writer is the word processor and desktop publisher. I use this the most. You can use it to make diagrams, letters, documents, indices, etc. Anything MS Word can do, OpenOffice.org can do better. OpenOffice.org has the added benefit of allowing you to save your files in PDF format with the click of a button. With MS Office, I had to download and configure a separate program to do that.

Impress is similar to MS Powerpoint. You can make slide shows and other multi-media documents with this.

Math is for stuff like… well, math. It can handle all those funky equations that mathematicians and my homeschooled kids need to use. Thisis something we were unable to do in MS Word, which was a continual frustration. I love OpenOffice.org Math!

Calc is a spreadsheet program. It’s very nice and more advanced than MS Excel. I like it much better.

Draw is a very fun program. My kids love it. I love it, too! I often use this program to concoct cover sheets and other image-based documents.

Base is a database program. I haven’t used it that much. Even though I love the computer, I still use a good old pencil and notebook for a lot of things. I’m getting there, though! I have yet to tranfer mounds of paperwork and archived administrative files onto computer. I’ll use Base when I do.

These are a lot of excellent features, all part of the OpenOffice.org package, and the best part of it all is that it is free! I love my OpenOffice.org. Give Microsoft a run for its money and try it out.

With the advent of internet phones, there has been an upward surge in voip deals. The internet voip is being used in every way imaginable. There is voip software for commercial as well as personal use. There has been an equal increase in skype download rate.

It’s time has come. Finally! A worthy PDF reader has replaced Adobe Acrobat! I can’t rave enough about Foxit PDF Reader. It’s light, it’s easy, it doesn’t track my every online move, and–most importantly– it doesn’t make my computer crash when I start it up (unlike other PDF readers, ahem). For the novice, it is a little complex with its updating features. When I updated it today, it asked me all these questions that I didn’t know how to answer! I just went with it, and it did fine. The update (the newer version, Foxit 2.2 for Windows) speeds up the program even more, and I love the “minimize to tray” option when I right-click the titlebar.

From the Foxit website:

• Incredibly small: The download size of Foxit Reader is only 2.1 M which is a fraction of Acrobat Reader 20 M size.
• Breezing-fast: When you run Foxit Reader, it launches instantly without any delay. You are not forced to view an annoying splash window displaying company logo, author names, etc.
• Annotation tool: Have you ever wished to annotate (or comment on) a PDF document when you are reading it? Foxit Reader allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
• Text converter: You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file.
• High security and privacy: Foxit Reader highly respects the security and privacy of users and will never connect to the Internet without users’ permission. While other PDF readers often silently connect to the Internet in the background. Foxit PDF Reader does not contain any spyware.

I found myself nodding over every one of those points, especially the first two and the last one.

I have hated Adobe Acrobat for a very long time. On all my computers, it crashes them. When I do manage to get the program going, Adobe is slow and stutters. It drove me beserk and for a few years I wondered why there was no PDF reader alternative. Now that there is, and a better reader at that, I wonder why I’m not hearing enough or seeing much marketing about Foxit. Adobe is the “standard,” kind of like Windows to Apple; so maybe Adobe controls so much of the marketplace and Foxit is squelched out? People should be hooting about this new PDF reader!

Politics aside, Foxit is free, is faster, it’s better. One note, the PDF Reader is free. The PDF Creator is not, it just gives you a free trial. But creating PDFs is easy enough with OpenOffice, a terrific word processing program I’ll tell you about soon.

In the meantime, if you open PDFs, get Foxit. You’ll be stunned at the difference.

Not every voip company is reliable. This is why when thinking of getting an internet phone software, it is much better to trust names like vonage. You can also download skype phone easily. In other case, an internet phone provider who has been referred through friends can be trusted.

I’ve been slow to join the social network. I only recently joined MyBlogLog yet I still have no MySpace or Facebook profile. I’ve loved blogging and I do love to interact with people, but I prefer forums and emails to the fluffier MySpace place.

There’s a browser out there specially designed for cyber-socialites. It’s the Flock Browser. I downloaded long ago when it was first released. I really liked it then, but it was a little too slow. Flock is a Firefox shell– it runs with a Mozilla Firefox machine but has Flock fenders and fins. I’d heard that a new release of Flock was out, so I wanted to try it.

I’m very impressed with its social networking capabilities. I can log into my accounts at Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, Photobucket, and etc with a few easy clicks. Talk about convenient! With Firefox, I have to individually go to each account and manually log in– not fun. I like Flock because I can log in to everything so easily.

I’m not terribly impressed with its appearance and interface. It’s a little clunky and bloated. It has too many buttons, big ones and little ones, all competing for my attention when I want to give my attention to the site I am on. It’s like staring at that gorgeous curly maple dashboard in your BMW so that you aren’t paying attention to the road.

Flock was also very slow for me. There was a distinct lag with everything I did, and I grew impatient with it very quickly. I closed the entire thing out and went right back to Firefox, as a matter of fact.

I think Flock still has some work to do. They’ve made great strides in flexibility, but it is too cumbersome and far too cutsie. Maybe there are different (read: more mature) skins for it. I was too disgusted to check after experiencing the annoying the lag time. Maybe when I am more patient I will try again. For the meantime, it’s back to individual logons with Firefox. Unless someone out there knows of an Addon for Firefox that will do the job…