Facebook’s New Member

Surely you’ve heard references to the social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. You may or may not know just what these sites are all about.

The term “social networking” describes what the sites are used for – they are a place where people can go to share information about what’s going on in their lives. Just like real life, there tends to be a lot of mindless chatter on the sites, but there can also be some really useful information.

The social networking (SN) sites can be very useful for keeping friends and family up to date with what’s going on with you if you use one of these sites. They also are excellent marketing tools.  The current favorite is Facebook. The volunteer organization I work with, RSVP of Tulsa, now has its own Facebook page. You will be able to go there to see what’s going on with various projects, and you can join in discussions if you want.

In order to view the RSVP Facebook page, you must join Facebook yourself. It’s free, and easy to join. Just go to facebook.com, and sign up. You will first enter your name, e-mail address, the password you want to use, sex, and birth date. That will create your account and from there you can add more information about yourself if you want.

For the initial sign up, my advice to you is not to give any more information than you are comfortable with. You will be able to choose just who sees any information you put on there.

At any rate, once you have created your own Facebook account you will then have access to the RSVP page and you will be able to read what’s going on, enter into discussions, add your own comments, and join in the fun.

Heck, after you create your own account you may find you have lots of other friends who are also Facebook members and you may enjoy it a lot.

I have a Facebook account, and though I really don’t spend much time on it at all, I’ve found it to be a good way to keep up with old friends I went to school with. My high school class reunion is going to be later this year, and several of my classmates have become members and we have posted lots of pictures for others to see, and it’s been fun catching up with people I haven’t seen for a long time.

I realize some of the things I’ve said in this post won’t have much meaning for you until you actually get to the site to sign up; this link will take you to a series of online tutorials about using Facebook. Take your time, look it over, and see if you want to join in on the current craze. Go here for the tutorials: butterscotch.com

Have fun with it!!

Closing E-mail Accounts

I’ve gotten several requests over the last few months from people wanting to know how to close their e-mail accounts and open new ones. The primary reason for these requests is that they find they are getting too much spam and want to just close down the account and start over.

Folks, it’s just not that simple – depending on what e-mail provider you are dealing with, it can be really difficult, if not impossible to just close out an account.  The best advice I have is, don’t close the account, deal with it.

Spam is a fact of life – there are things you can do to decrease the amount of spam you get, but let’s face it, no matter how hard you try there is going to be some amount that gets through.

Having said that, now let’s take a look at how best to deal with it. There are various spam blocker programs, and all sorts of applications that promise to keep your inbox spam free, but the fact still remains, some is going to get through.

All the e-mail programs I know of have their own way of trying to prevent spam, and most of them do greatly reduce it, but some still gets through. Are you getting my message here? Some spam is going to find its way to your inbox no matter how hard you try.

So here’s my best advice to you – lighten up and don’t let it bug you so much! I strongly recommend using more than one e-mail address. Decide which address you are going to use for family and friends, and others you actually want to hear from. Only give that address to those people.

Use another address for those online instances where you have to give an e-mail address – you know, when you sign up to be able to read a news site, or when you place an order for something online and have to give an e-mail address. It’s a sure thing that once you sign up for anything online and give them an e-mail address the volume of spam you get at that address is going to increase. If you buy something online, from that point forward you will be getting solicitations to buy other things.

Coincidentally, as I was getting ready to write this post, in my mailbox landed a newsletter covering  just this subject. It’s from the “Ask Leo” website, and while he doesn’t talk about the advantage of using multiple e-mail addresses, he does go into some detail about the problems with closing an account.

Take a look here for what Leo has to say about it.

See More of the Site

Sometimes you come across a site that is difficult to view because the print is too small, or maybe there’s a photo on the site that you’d like to get a closer look. This is especially true if you happen to be viewing on a screen that is small like the netbook. Netbooks are great for portability and ease of carrying around, but sometimes the small screen is a hindrance.

If you look at the top of your screen, chances are excellent that you have several toolbars using up screen real estate. Looking at mine right now I can see 6 bars at the top; since I’m using a large monitor to type this, the bars only take up maybe 20% or less of the screen. When I use my netbook though, the bars take up closer to half the screen! To deal with this, tap the f11 key at the top of your keyboard and see what happens.

Well, what do you know – look how much extra screen real estate that gives you.  All the toolbars disappeared; the taskbar at the bottom, and even the address bar, now how do you get them back??  Never fear, they aren’t gone forever and you can easily get them back  just the same way you got rid of them. Just tap the f11 key again and you’re back to the way you were.

Now let’s say you really like all the extra elbow room, but don’t want to have to be toggling back and forth to navigate to another site – check this out: after you’ve done the f11 tap and have a full screen to look at, just move your mouse up to the top of the screen and your address bar will pop back into view so you can tell the browser where you want to go next.

Once you did this you also lost the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, so you can’t glance down there at the clock to see what time it is, and unfortunately, that one doesn’t show up if you hover the mouse over it. I just put this in the category of, “you can’t have everything”.

Along the same lines, if you’re having trouble viewing some particular item on a page, you can make the page temporarily larger or smaller – hold down the Ctrl key, and while holding down the key, turn the scroll button on your mouse and see what happens. If you by chance don’t have a scroll button, or that doesn’t work, try holding down the Crtl key and tapping the plus (+) key to make larger, or the minus (-) key to make smaller.

I was recently looking at a photo posted online and wanted to get a closer look, and used this to get a really close-in view. You don’t have to suffer with limitations in your viewing, and these tips should help.

The caveat for both these tips is, while they work just as I said in the Firefox browser, they may or may not work or may work only partially if you’re using Internet Explorer or some other browser. This might be a good time for me to put in another plug for using Firefox, my very favorite browser!

Give the tips a try and see if they help.

Using RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are very useful – (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, not that it’s necessary for you to know that).

How so, you say?

As you surf around the web, and stumble onto things you want to get back to, chances are you save the web address to your favorites, or bookmarks, depending on which browser you use. That’s a great idea, but if your list is like mine, it just gets longer and longer and after I’ve saved a site, I either don’t remember to go back and look again at all, or if I do, I can’t remember which site I marked for what.

Enter RSS feeds. If there’s a site that regularly or periodically updates its content and you want to see the new things that have been added, these feeds are for you.

I follow several blogs, some of the bloggers are very prolific and add entries to their sites many times a day – some daily, some weekly and others just periodically. Following blogs is where the feeds come in really handy.

My blog is updated periodically, when I come across something that I think might either be of interest to you or useful for you to know. So if you’d like to be notified when there’s something new on here, sign up for the RSS feed.

See that orange icon up there on the top right part of the page – actually, there are two of them, one to sign up for new posts, and another to sign up for if there are new comments. Click on the orange icon and choose where you want the notification to be sent then whenever I post something new on here you’ll know. Much better than trying to check your favorites all the time, and since many days might go by with nothing new, you won’t be wasting your time.

Now as you’re surfing around the web watch for these RSS icons on the sites you visit often, and sign up for the notifications.  Not all sites have the capability, but an awful lot do. Give it a try.

Another Money Saving Site

I came across this site in one of my newsletters today, and it looks pretty interesting.

It’s onefrugalchick.com, “the site for all free things”. She lists other sites or locations where you can get free things. One thing that caught my eye, chocolate lover that I am, was this entry from the site:

Starting at 9:00 AM EST every Friday until September. Get a coupon redeemable for your choice of one (1) single-sized package of any M&M’S® Brand, MILKY WAY® Brand, SNICKERS® Brand, 3 MUSKETEERS® Brand, TWIX® Brand and DOVE® Brand product.

Note* you are allowed 4 COUPONS per household/address!!!

Click here: https://secure.realchocolate.com/

So now if I’ve piqued your interest, check out the site to see what might be waiting there for you!

Microsoft News

Two things today – I just read that Microsoft has put the word out that Windows 7 (the next operating system) will be showing up for sale on computers in October, just in time to get in the holiday sales. All the reviews I’ve been reading on this have really been positive, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

For folks that buy a computer before the official time Windows 7 is on the market, there will be an opportunity to upgrade. I’ve not yet seen a firm time frame on that, but had seen earlier mention of systems bought from July forward. All this means to you is, if you’re in the market for a new computer, and it’s not an immediate pressing need, hold off for a bit to take advantage of getting the latest operating system.

Now for the second thing – anyone who knows me knows what a fan I am of all things Google. It’s been my favorite search engine from its beginnings – from the time when I’d mention Google and people would say “huh??”

Well, nothing has happened to change me on that, but I do have to say Microsoft is giving it a good try. They have launched a new search engine called Bing. Their intent, of course, is to knock Google off its perch and take over as the most used search engine.

I just took a look, and I must say it looks very interesting. I’m going to be giving it a run to see how it stacks up. It’s such a normal thing for me to head for Google at the slightest need to look something up I don’t think that will change, but it’s always fun to take a look at something new.

Take a look and see what you think, at bing.com

A New Find For You Cooks

OK, I admit – I’m not a cook, but I found this today and it looks pretty neat.

Advertised as “fun, easy and free“, (note my favorite word, free in there) – it’s a website called SuperCook.

The description on the web site says,

Supercook is a new recipe search engine that finds recipes you can make with only the ingredients you have at home. To begin, simply start adding ingredients you have in the green box on the top left. The more ingredients you add, the better the results will be.

You can watch an introductory video explaining how the site works. You don’t have to sign up for anything if you don’t want to, but if you do, the site will let you save your favorite recipes.

There’s also a grocery list you can print off, it will suggest other recipes you can use by just adding some other ingredients if you don’t mind a run to the store – I haven’t explored all the things it will do, but it looks interesting enough to give a try – what’s to lose??

Check it out at  www.supercook.com

Save on Printing Costs

I make a point of not printing anything unless it’s really necessary – I don’t like using the paper, or the ink.

Today I needed to print out several pages for an online class I’m taking – and I was reminded again of the value of a software program I’ve been using for many years. It’s FinePrint, and if you do much printing at all this one can save money for you.

How many times have you printed something from the web, only to find that the last page has no information on it but maybe one line of print at the top with the web address, or something similar?

Or what about those times where you have several different things to print, each of which only takes up a few lines on a sheet?

How about when you’re web surfing, find something you want to print, then just a few mouse clicks later find something that suits what you were looking for better, so you want to print that too – now you’ve used several pages for nothing!

These instances and more are where FinePrint comes in handy. Now I just realized it sounds like I’m doing a commercial for this product, but really it’s a good product and it will save you money. The document I just printed this morning started out being 42 pages, and after I went through it and eliminated unnecessary pages with FinePrint, I wound up printing only 36 pages. Now I think that’s a pretty significant savings.

A license for FP is not cheap; it’s $49.95, but – there is a free trial version you can use as long as you want and it’s fully functional. The only drawback to the trial is that whenever you print something there is a line across the bottom of the page announcing that the page was printed with the trial version. If all you’re printing is something for your own personal use, who cares if it’s announced at the bottom?

And if you do care, you can get the license and remove the line; I think it would easily pay for itself with the savings you get. Take a look and give it a try. Find it at fineprint.com

More GMail Info

You know what a fan I am of GMail; I’m definitely not the only one! I found this article today, and it gives much more information and links to all the things you can do with GMail – just take a look: http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/how-to-make-gmail-your-ultimate-productivity-center/

He also give some links to other articles that tell even more, you can find some really good info all in one spot!

Options for Phone Service

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time; my intention was to research each of the things I’m going to mention and give you a rundown on the features and costs.

Well, I’ve still not found the time to do that, so I’m just going to tell you the services I’ve heard about, and give you links to see for yourselves.

Wherever you live, you likely don’t have more than one or two choices for who provides your landline service – in Tulsa, for instance, we have a choice of AT&T or Cox. In the southeast part of Tulsa and Broken Arrow, it’s Windstream or Cox.

Here’s the rest of that story – you do have other choices. The caveat is that all of the things I’m going to mention depend on having a high speed internet connection.

With these services there is lots of money to be saved. Here’s what I know about so far:

Vonage – this one has a monthly fee – 9.95/month for the first 3 months, then 24.99/month after that. Gives unlimited local & long distance calls. More info here: vonage.com

Skype – software installs on your computer, you plug in a headset to your PC, then calls to other skype accounts are free. You can make calls to folks who do not have Skype, these are low cost and you can use pay as you go, or sign up for a monthly fee. More in depth at skype.com

Magic Jack – now this one is interesting, and I believe the cheapest of all the options I’ve seen. You purchase a Magic Jack gizmo (technical term) for 39.95, plug it into a USB port on your computer, then plug your regular phone into it and calls are free then to anywhere in the US and Canada. More in depth at magicjack.com

Ooma – with this service, you buy a device for 249.95, your regular phone plugs into it and away you go – no further charges for local or long distance. Find out more at ooma.com

Clark Howard has talked about all these at one time or another, and the latest I heard from him was that he was really impressed with the Ooma service. He said it was the only one that passed the “Elaine test”, Elaine being his wife who isn’t always as thrilled with money saving things as Clark is. He says the sound quality is excellent.

Now one thing to be aware of if you’re thinking of kicking your regular landline to the curb and using one of your other options is to check whether they can handle 911 calls. I believe Ooma says it can, and some of the others have some tweaking you have to do before 911 gets handled, and some of them just don’t do 911. So don’t leave yourself without a way to get emergency calls through.

In some cases you can choose your phone number with any area code you want – this would be handy if, for instance, you had friends or family in another location that you wanted to be able to call you without it being a long distance call for them.

Think about your calling patterns and see if maybe there’s something here that could save you some buckaroos.