Archive for category desktop utilities

File Taxes Online for Free

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of eSmart Tax. All opinions are 100% mine.

Every year, more and more people take advantage of the convenience, speed, and ease of online filing for taxes. Fling the taxes is painful and stressful. Doing ALL that paperwork makes the task absolutely onerous. I know, I am self-employed and am slammed with tons of paperwork (not to mention, tons of taxes)! There’s a website that will make filing your taxes a little easier– it’s eSmartTax.com, and you can file for free at their website! Moreover, they have a very neat deluxe version geared specifically for people who have the surname Johnson: Johnsons file free! Actually, the new spokesman for eSmartTax.com, Daryl Johnson, may find it helpful! Did you know that there are over 2 million people in the United States named Johnson?! That Johnson is the second-most common name in this country?! (I assume the most common is Smith). eSmartTax.com wants to make filing taxes as painless and quick as possible, for people named Johnson and those with other names. :D eSmartTax.com also offers a more extensive deluxe version that you can purchase, as well. It’s very affordable– under $10! See the website for more information on filing taxes with eSmartTax.com.

Doing your income taxes is painful enough. Alleviate some of the discomfort with the convenient eSmartTax.com.

Visit my sponsor: eSmartTax.com

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Turn Web Pages into PDF Files

This is an amazing little application! It’s PDFmyURL. I heard about it from Kim Komando. It’s a little application that converts a web page into a PDF file. I love it! I frequently travel to areas with no Internet connection, yet I do still need to work from web pages for my jobs. PDFmyURL allows me to save the webpages into PDF files while I am at home; then, I can move these files onto my netbook, and away I go! It’s extremely convenient.

PDFmyURL also has a little bookmarklet that you can drag onto your Firefox bookmark toolbar. So, when you visit a web page, you can click the little bookmarklet and the page will be immediately converted into a PDF. This is a great app!

You can see my bookmarklet (circled in red) in the screenshot, below. I converted my blog, TheOlderGeek.com, into a PDF file. The quality of the conversion is excellent.

TOGscrsht

TOGscrsht2

Thumbs up on this app!

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Neaten Your Desktop With Fences

I downloaded this freeware two weeks ago from Download.com, after reading their review. I absolutely love it! I am a neatnik, and I love having a neat, organized desktop. Fences is the answer! It’s created by Stardock, a reputable company; when I used Windows ME and XP, they created skins and other skinning programs that I liked and used.

It’s free to use. It seems to take up few computer resources, but I have a pretty powerful computer; so Fences works without a hitch. The nice thing about Fences is that you can create new ones, rename them, delete them, move them, etc. Best of all, if you double-click on the desktop, all the Fences will disappear! I love this. Double-click again, and they reappear. A great piece of freeware!

WifFencs

NoFencs

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Know What’s Running on Your Computer

One of the best resources I have for my Windows computer is the “Task Manager.” (Right click on your sidebar, and in the menu that appears, choose “Task Manager.” A new window will appear with several tabs. The Task manager shows what is currently running on your computer at the moment. The “Processes” tab has a “Processes Library.” This shows the individual file running.

Some of those names can be a little confusing or misleading. BEFORE you decide to “End Process” (killing the application), be sure to find out if it is an important program. You can do this by searching online for the application name. For example, do a search for “explorer.exe” and you will discover that this is a critical file. You can also bookmark a few reliable process library sites for future reference. The few I have found to be most reliable with concise information are:

ProcessLibrary
TaskList.org
Bleeping Computer

Be sure you know what a file is doing and know of its importance before you end the process, or you could cause your computer to crash. Searching for various processes also helps to determine and discover any malicious files or extra files that may not be necessary to run in the background (such as the Quicktime updater).

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How Are Your Passwords?

Clark Howard had an interesting post about the 10 Most Common Passwords. The results gave me the heebie-jeebies! I cannot believe that people have such lame passwords! I am a password FIEND. I am always preaching the need for stronger and better passwords. Here are the top ten most common passwords. Please tell me yours is not among them:

    1. password
    2. 123456
    3. qwerty
    4. abc123
    5. letmein
    6. monkey
    7. myspace 1
    8. password 1
    9. blink182
    10. (your first name)

I know that creating, keeping, and typing passwords all day is such a chore. I work on the computer, so it is an ALL DAY drudgery for me. There are a few password-management programs that help make password-making and storing a little easier:

LastPass
KeePass
KeePass Portable (you can install the program on a flash drive and take it with you)
RoboForm
There’s a review here of the Top Ten Password Management programs (all of them cost money)

I wish banks and online credit-card companies had better encryption, though. Oftentimes, they only allow 6-10 characters with only upper- and lower-case letter and numbers. This is very unacceptable– a simple password-cracking program can crack these passwords very easily. My account at Photobucket has a better password than my credit-card account. :-p That really stinks.

Passwords should be very lengthy, up to 20 characters, and preferably should have lots of hexidecimal symbols like @ $ & ^ and so on. You can check the strength of your password with Microsoft’s Password Checker.

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