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The Essential PIM for Management

September 11, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

I’d downloaded Essential PIM years ago, but never really used it. It was a bigger program than what I needed at the time. That was then, this is now. Back then, I did very little organizing on the computer– I didn’t even sign on every day! Today, my laptop has become my most favored accessory. And I just can’t carry and keep track of all the differrent notebooks, sticky-notes, and other pieces of paper. So I downloaded Essential PIM again, and WOW I love it! C|Net offers the download and information here.

At first glance, it seems complicated. There are a lot of various views, and choices. It seemed overwhelming to me. But after I deleted the “sample” entries, it looked better.

This is basically a scheduling calendar, appointment notebook, to do list, contact/address book, and quick notebook, all rolled into one.

It’s FREE (my favorite price!), so there’s nothing to lose. I think whoever built this did a great job putting it together. It also saves your data automatically and will minimize to the system tray in case you need to access it quickly. I’m pretty floored by the program. It’s been working great for me. So I recommend it.

Posted in desktop utilities, free programs, office utilities. Comments Off »

Extract Images from Microsoft Word

July 10, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

Before I had image-editing software, and before I knew what I was doing, I used to paste all my images in Microsoft Word. But after saving it, I had NO IDEA how to get the image onto, say, a web page. My image had been essentially locked by Word.

I came across a helpful blog post explaining how to extract images from Word.

Just open up the Word document, then go to file> save as option and save the document as a web page. This will create a new document with the images in a separate folder with the same name. Go into the folder and you will get 2 version of the image, one is in .jpg and the other is in .png.

The .jpg will be the smaller size and the .png will be the original size. If you like to use the original image since it is much larger to view but wanted in different format, just open up your image viewer and save the image in the format that you prefer.

I haven’t tried this yet, but I will. It looks like it would work perfectly. It’s a handy tip!

Posted in desktop publishing, how to, image editing, office utilities. Tags: extract images, Microsoft Word. Comments Off »

Sunbird Calendar Program

April 11, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

It was Shakespeare who said, “Know thyself.” I have come to realize that I am a calendar freak. A freak, I tell you. I have tried dozens of them and still cannot find my true love. I have even tried those “free to try” calendars with the intent to BUY them if I liked them enough. I just haven’t found the *perfect* calendar. In my dreams, the perfect calendar starts up when my computer starts up. It warns me with a gentle little beep and a window to remind me of my appointments that day. It has wallpaper capabilities– it can incorporate itself as my interactive desktop wallpaper. I can enter information or remove information. I can see all that information on my desktop. And the calendar boxes for each day are large– enough for me to type in the meticulous information that I like to have on hand, on my desktop. It’s also a calendar with customizable colors and sizes. It’s not too complicated.

Haven’t found it yet. The closest I’ve found is Tinnes Desktop Calendar. I love that in every way except that the calendar boxes are too small. I need more room to enter my appointments and information in.

I tried Sunbird. It is actually the best of all the calendars that aren’t what I am looking for, lol. Sunbird is clean, simple, and very configurable. However, the main downfall is that it doesn’t start up with the computer and doesn’t have an interactive interface on my desktop. Big downers. But still, I do like this calendar of all non-desktop calendars I ever seen. Maybe you’d like it, too.

Posted in office utilities, organizers. 1 Comment »

Notepad Pro+

April 4, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

I’ve been using Notepad Pro+ for a few weeks now. I have been hesitant to give it my thumbs up here, because I was unsure about the program, whether it would self-destruct after a day like some other open source Notepad replacements do. But I think I really, really like Notepad Pro+! It’s a free download here.

Notepad Pro+ is far superior to that boring old Windows notepad. Notepad Pro+ has the typical word wrap and font style options, but it also has a tabbed interface! It also has a word count! And it counts “lines” for html coding! I think I love it!

If you are dissatisfied with Windows Notepad, and are looking for something better but not too overblown or buggy, maybe you want to check out Notepad Pro+. It’s working well for me. It gets 5 stars from Cnet, too.

Posted in html coding, office utilities. Comments Off »

Online Scanning Service

March 25, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

Here’s an amazing thing: document scanning services! Sourcecorp, a New England company, provides a unique service with their document managing service, called ImageSilo. It’s a service geared toward making all the paperwork for businesses a little easier. Documents are scanned at the company, and uploaded to their “web based document repository” (conveniently named the “Image Silo”). It’s much like outsourcing your paperwork, except that this is an American company.

The documents are heavily encrypted, and the company promises 99.9% uptime so the data is always available. There’s a 30-day free trial. If you are a business owner looking for a way to consolidate paperwork and increase productivity, you might want to check into this. Online storage is available, too.

I’ve noticed that more document-type programs are going online. Spreadsheets, Word documents, and the like are becoming more popular as more applications go online. And everyone has heard of data backups. I don’t think downloaded programs will ever go away, but many computer-cluttering programs are going online.

Posted in desktop publishing, office utilities, technology. Comments Off »

Freeing Yourself From Microsoft Office- It’s OpenOffice.org

December 6, 2007 — Mrs. Mecomber

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.