Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

Having trouble managing home cell and business phones? And what about managing different answering machines and services.

Some days at work I'm on the phone 70 plus % of the day. So any way I can combine services, save time and make it easier, I'll do it.

Google Voice(GV) gives me the ability to give out 1 phone number and direct individual calls to specific phones, answering service and can even direct apam calls to a number out of service recording.

Just down loaded and installed the Google Voice(GV) app on a gPhone so out going calls use the the GV number and those receiving the call see the GV number.

All the Google Voice videos

Yes, even geeks need to take a break sometimes.

The google 15 is a widget that works inside of iGoogle or Google home page.

This is a great little widget that encourages you to get on the scale daily and will calculate a moving average from your daily weight. The average gives you a better idea of your weight trend by smoothing most of the day to day swings.

Then there are those days when the scales don't tip in your direction. The average gives you a better idea the direction your going, so you know when you are losing weight or trying to lose weight.

The Google 15 was created by Brian W. Fitzpatrick, a Google software engineer. Brian calls the Google 15, after the weight usually gain after starting Google jobs and being all the free food you can eat. I guess it's something like the first year of college.

Here is my example of the Google 15 in action. You can easily add this widget to your iGoogle home page by clicking on add more stuff and searching for Google 15.

How to use Flickr

There’s a lot of good reasons to use an online photo service. Online photo services make it easy to save and organize your photos for later. Have you ever tried to find a picture from your last trip and had no idea where it could be? Ever had your hard drive crash and were not able to recover anything on it? I have, and it’s not fun.

Sharing your Photos
Sharing your photos online is a lot easier and faster than emailing your photos to all your friends and family. And your friends and family can also keep up with your new pics.

Networking your photos
This maybe a little extreme: I just came back from Barbados and saw about 20 properties, and yes I have plenty more to go. Some unique features: These pictures are sized to fit on any area of a web site, each picture has a description, and are copy righted as creative commons so they can not be resold, anyone can use them, and there must be a reference that I am the photographer.

I liked Club Med so much I set up a Club Med Group on Flickr where others could share their vacation photos as well. What a great way to see other Club Med locations than through the eyes or photos of others that have been there. And if there are more questions there is a place to start a discussion or ask questions.

Managing you email

After a long weekend we all like to brag with our coworkers about how
many emails end up in our inbox. Yes spam is part of our online society.

After receiving 400+ emails after one weekend I decided it was time to
change things.

I started use Mozilla’s Suite and sometimes I would test Thunderbird
as my email program, and it’s not that much different than Mozilla Suite,
and both are great for:

• Organizing folders and files
• Managing (spam) junk email

Managing junk email

Mozilla Suites & Thunderbird offer easy to use junk email controls
with advanced security features.

From the main menu bar click on tools and click on Junk
Mail controls.

This image on the left is how I set my controls.

The controls are fairly simple:

• If the sender is in my address book then they will not be listed as
  junk.
• If the email is considered to be junk then it goes to the junk email
  folder and will be deleted after 14 days (Default).
• Thunderbird will also sanitize any html from any scripting included
  in the email.
• To mark or un-mark an email as junk: In the email list there will be
  an icon on the email row that can be turned on or off.

When you first start Mozilla or Thunderbird mail
expect about a 2 week learning curve. That’s right the junk mail controls
will learn what you consider junk by an algorithm that looks at the sender,
subject and the body of the message.

You may want to wait until you address book is a
certain size before you turn on the controls.

Managing folders

Mozilla & Thunderbird make it simple to add and direct incoming emails
to spicific folders. Why create folders? Simple: When dealing with groups
or subjects, it’s easier to follow and find information.

There is also a search feature that I use several times a week. This
saves lots of time.

Security features

Among the new security features in Thunderbird 1.5 are Kerberos
authentication and integration with server-side spam filtering. There
is also a built-in phishing detector to help protect you against e-mail
scams, providing an “extra line of defense” in preventing users from getting
caught up in e-mail identity-theft and information-theft scams.

Some of the new improvements in Thunderbird include automatic spelling
checking as the user types a message and auto saving as drafts. You can
also receive rss feeds as email messages.

June 11, 2006: Thunderbird is listed on PC World’s Best 100 Products
for 2006.

Know after a long (3 or 4 day) weekend there maybe 400+ emails coming
in, but there are only about 5 spam emails in my inbox.