Service Renaissance

by Roger Barnette

Talk about a late issue. I have taken up the bad habit of writing when life slowed down a bit. With all the interesting things that occur in the life of a large family and an IT professional, I bet I wouldn’t have a hard time convincing you that life is indeed running on high-speed. That said, it has been too long between issues, and I hope you’ve missed us, but not too much. Along with our return to writing we have made a few changes to Bardic.com. Come along. I will fill you in.

We have changed the name of the newsletter from “Digi-tales” to “Bardic Bulletin” to align it better with the website and also to focus less on the whimsical elements of the Internet and more on using these articles to educate and assist the public.

We have changed the layout of the website to be more professional in appearance and hopefully more functional to the average website visitor.

Best of all I have been able to re-open the computer housecall portion of our business to assist local businesses in-person, and even better, using the many remote access solutions that exist today, we can also offer remote housecalls to assist with less interruptions in your business day.

We hope you can find the answers to your questions on the website (use the Search feature; it’s dynamite!), but if not, send us an email or request a service appointment and we will help you answer your question or solve your problem promptly.

TIME SAVING WEBSITES:

Google Coolness

by Roger Barnette

During our quiet times, Google has gone public, become the Search Engine king, and pretended to be Micro$oft by buying up many smaller companies.

I won’t patronize, but a short travelogue on some of these features proves them a treasurehouse of a tremendous amounts if nifty information.

Do you need images? Pictures or drawings? Google Image Search is your tool of choice. Go to: http://images.google.com and type “iceberg tip” and then click on the “Search Images” button. What returns from the search are a collection of images from the vast array of websites in the Google index of websites. Pick your favorite and make it your background or save it for your personal use.

Better still is the new Google Local Search. This amazing index records websites relative to their zip code and keywords within each website. Go to: http://local.google.com and try “Bardic computer” in the “What” box and your zip code in the “Where” box and click “Google Search”. If we are within 45 miles of some part of your zip code, then you will find us. If you wanted to get good directions to our address, just click the “Directions” link and it will direct you path. Use it too to find a pizza joint near your hotel as your travel, or your nearest theaters or fast food joints. It is a relatively new database, but due to the extremely high value to individuals and the businesses alike, I would expect this tool to only get better over time.

Central to the Google Local Search results is a map. This is part of a larger system that is more vast than I initially imagined. Click on the “View Larger Map” link to begin exploring this system or go to: http://maps.google.com. If you double-click on the map it will glide to center on your click. If you click + or – symbol the map will zoom in deeper or zoom out further. Within the map system you could put in the address you seek and zoom all the way down and see the very street you were seeking. From a map perspective, this is interesting but not all that useful. Then I noticed the “Satellite” link to the top-right of the screen.

Enter an address and Zoom all the way down then click on “Satellite”. BAM! Now don’t panic! Big Brother is not providing a live video feed on your house. These are images updated once or twice a year when the weather is clear. You almost certainly were not out in your front yard when it was taken.

If you use the Directions button and completed that form, the system will allow you to toggle between the Map and Satellite views to allow you to reconcile the instructions versus the visible landmarks.

If you would like even more clear satellite views, go to one of the companies that Google has purchased recently, Keyhole. Go to: http://www.keyhole.com.

Keyhole has the photos that you have seen turned into fly-by animations on CNN and other news shows. If you find this valuable at all, the annual subscription rate when I looked at it was just under $20 a YEAR!

Perhaps this is all trivia to the average user, but one or two of you, I bet will find it nifty indeed. If you would like assistance with any of this technology, we are available for remote training as well. Contact us for a remote training appointment.

BUZZ WORDS:

PDA

by Roger Barnette

PDA is a fancy acronym that stands for Personal Digital Assistant (it also stands for Public Display of Affection, but that is another story).   The description didn’t help me much but it really does make sense when you break it down.

These devices are the Palm Pilot, Pocket PC, Visor or even Blackberry that you may have seen or even purchased.   These gadgets are everywhere and for good reason.

They are labeled “personal” as they are small and portable much like your wallet or pocketbook.   They are appliances that become deeply yours and the information enshrined therein is often your most personal of assets; your money and your identity; such as your passwords and personal notes.

It is properly “digital” in that it is in fact, a computer.   Information is really stored as ‘0’s and ‘1’s, and that is what technically makes it digital.   The average owner would also appreciate that is able to process information and upload to and download from your full-size computer.   These features also brand it “digital”.

The “assistant” moniker is dedicated to those personal and administrative assistants that so few companies actually employ anymore.   These tools can store your entire address book, your current calendar, any notes you have recorded lately and some even have live access to the Internet via email.   With the exception of the human-touch, that is everything my experience with administrative assistants have led me to expect; but then again, if that were the case, I suppose we would need a different name.

If your business finds these pieces of science-fiction wizardry necessary, and you want assistance researching your purchase, we would be glad to help

URBAN NETWORKING:

You CAN Use Two Computers at Once

by Roger Barnette

Most people don’t have two computers at their house but a few folks are like me and have one or more at the office and one or more at home.   The challenge with so many workstations is that you always have information that you need from a computer at the other location.   Or perhaps you would like someone to connect to your computer remotely to help troubleshoot a problem.   In both cases, there are tools that allow us to use the Internet to solve this problem.

For full-time access to a given system, my preferred product comes from a website called GoToMyPC.com.   This system allows you to sign up and get a trial account for a few days for free. During this time install the software and try it out.

Once installed, a client program awaits the call to relay your keystrokes and mouse motions to the monitored system and the screen displayed back to you.   To connect to your system simply login to their website with the assigned username and password and the website will connect you to your monitored system.

Setup can seem unfamiliar the first time, but if you would like our assistance, please call on us.

ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT:

Fancy Timewasters

by Roger Barnette

Now, I know I stated earlier that I stay busy, and I do, but in my unending quest for useful websites I really have to address online games. The easiest to get to it Yahoo!. Go to: http://games.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Games provides an environment for solo play as well as multiplayer gaming. After all, what computer opponent can match the thrill of defeating an actual person? Whether you are a Yahtzee fan or prefer cards, boardgames or word puzzles, Yahoo! Games provides a way to pass a few minutes online at a time.

These games are produced by many, many different companies, but two super ones come to mind. Pogo; go to: http://www.pogo.com and MiniClip; go to: http://www.miniclip.com.

Don’t let them suck you in, but when you need a mental-reboot, these are strongly effective sites.

MUST-HAVE SOFTWARE:

Get FireFox

by Roger Barnette

Once upon a time, wa-a-ay back in 1995 there was a web browser called Netscape and later the Netscape Communicator.   It was not part of the Window’s operating system and in fact you may have had to install something as strange sounding as Winsock (they don’t come in pairs) to even connect to the Internet.   During this wild frontier-time of the Internet, the company called Netscape went public, made a lot of money and sold their server Interests to Sun Microsystems and their browser products to AOL.   They also did an interesting thing and gave their source code (the original instructions to a program) to the browser to something called the Mozilla Foundation.

The pre-release versions of the Netscape browser were nicknamed Mozilla and the name had stuck.   The Mozilla foundation began knitting together the thousands of lines of code to make a free product, but as we all know about the Internet, nothing stays the same.   While assembling Mozilla the remainder of the Internet browsers were not laying idle.   They were innovating and adding functionality.

With the release the FireFox browser the Mozilla movement finally has caught up.   This product represents a full featured browser for all Internet accessing platforms and offers something unique for most Window’s users; a browser with (very) few back doors for hackers to take advantage of.

One of the greatest weaknesses of the MS Internet Explorer web browser has always been that Microsoft left in hooks to enable features such as Windows Update that have been exploited by many hackers.   Also, as it was an integral part of the operating system, it was impossible to uninstall MSIE and reinstall it fresh from the CDROM.

There are a host of other wonderful benefits but suffice it to say that I have almost no web browser support calls from the clients that I have converted to FireFox and many, many calls from those that decided to wait and see.

Making the conversion is quite easy.   Go to: www.getfirefox.com and download the version for your operating system. Then simply “run” it.   The program will convert your bookmarks or favorites from the most popular browsers into the FireFox format.   It even converts your browser’s cookies (ask me later if that doesn’t make sense; it is really a clever addition).

If you have trouble, don’t make yourself miserable. Please call on us for assistance.  That is why we’re here.