The UsefulTechnology Blog

Completely random post:

Fans of bubble wrap now have 365 reasons to look forward to next year. The immensely desirable Bubble Calendar is a handmade poster sized calendar with a finger sized bubble to burst every day!

A truly novel way to count down the days until 2010; popping bubbles certainly beats chalking on the wall each day.

If you occasionally need to change settings on devices connected to your network like your modem router or other computers, you’ll know it’s difficult to remember their IP addresses. One way is to write all the IP addresses down on a chart and pin it above your desk. Another, slightly higher tech way, is to edit your Host file. Done correctly you’ll then be able to access your router configuration page by typing something like ‘router’ into the address line of your browser instead of having to remember a long IP address like 192.168.2.1. Here’s how:

1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > then right-click on Notepad and select Run as administrator.
2. Now open the Hosts file located in the folder c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/. If you cannot se the Hosts file, simply type the word Hosts into the File Name box.
3. Notepad will open the Hosts file which will look something like this:
   
   # Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
   #
   # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
   #
   # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
   # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
   # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
   # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
   # space.
   #
   # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
   # lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
   #
   # For example:
   #
   #      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
   #       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

   127.0.0.1       localhost
   ::1             localhost
   

4. Now, at the bottom of the code, add the IP addresses of every device on your network followed by a space then the shortened name you’d like to enter into your browser address bar to locate the device. For example, if your router is at IP address 192.168.2.1 and your laptop uses 192.168.2.12 you might add the following lines to the bottom of your hosts file:
   
   192.168.2.1 router
   192.168.2.12 laptop
5. Now close Notepad, open the internet browser of your choice, and try typing router or laptop (or whatever keywords you chose) into the address bar. Neat eh?
6. Remove the chart pinned above your desk and replace with something more calming.

Got Windows Live Messenger? Want a new display picture? Try this, it’s free: www.minimise-me.com.

Hot off the press this month, two new must have add-ons for Outlook:

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta (with added ooomph!)
With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages, contacts and calendars for free! [GET IT HERE]

Outlook 2007/2003/2002 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup (updated version)
The Personal Folders Backup download creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2002 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up. [GET IT HERE]
For instructions on how to use the .PST backup tool see this page

Microsoft Word 2007 can report a wealth of information in the status bar that adorns the bottom of the screen. To change what you have on display simply right click on the status bar and you’ll see this:

Just switch settings on and off until your status bar reports only the information you care about.

Sorry for the woeful lack of posts recently. Life has been busy on all fronts. However I was reminded this evening of the importance of maintaining one’s blog by an old friend in France who called me wondering what had become of me. So, for all my fans around the world, yes both of you, I am happy to confirm that all is well at Useful Technology Towers. More updates to follow when I figure out why Windows Live Writer has stopped working on my laptop.

And now, that same entry in French, thanks to www.worldlingo.com, the free* translation service included in the 2007 Microsoft Office system:

Désolé pour le manque affligeant de poteaux récemment. La vie a été occupée sur tous les avants. Cependant j'ai été rappelé ce soir d'importance de maintenir le blog à un par un vieil ami en France qui m'a appelé se demandant ce qui était advenu de moi. Ainsi, pour tous mes ventilateurs autour du monde, oui tous les deux toi, je suis heureux de confirmer que tout va bien aux tours utiles de technologie. Plus de mises à jour à suivre quand je figure dehors pourquoi l'auteur de phase de Windows a arrêté travailler à mon ordinateur portable.

* You know, I could have paid $92 to have that paragraph professionally translated but it’s much more entertaining in franglais.

• If you have chosen to synchronise RSS feeds between Internet Explorer and Outlook, turn this off:
  • In Outlook, choose Options from the Tools menu
  • Click on the Others tab, then Advanced Options
  • Clear the tick against 'Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List' then click OK twice
• You may have a massive Personal Storage File (.pst) so consider creating a new one to reduce the amount of data held in memory when using Outlook:
  • Find out if your .pst is big by right-clicking on your .pst root folder (the topmost folder(s) in your Outlook folder list) then choose Properties, then click the Folder Size button.
  • If your folder is bigger than, say, 500,000KB, consider starting a new one or splitting its contents over two or more .pst files.
  • To create a new .pst file in Outlook, click File > New > Outlook Date File.
  • Once created, simply drag 'n' drop items from one .pst folder to another.
  • And, always remember to backup your .pst files to an external storage location like an external hard drive or USB memory stick!

It's a good idea to get into the habit of creating a new .pst every once in a while. How frequently depends on how much email you send and receive. I typically start a new .pst file annually, but may move to a six monthly regime to help keep my .pst file sizes down. I also delete all rules and recreate my folder structure from scratch each year as this encourages me to spring clean and unsubscribe from distribution lists that no longer interest me. Maybe a bit of spring cleaning is exactly what your Outlook world needs?!

Ever seen one of these messages?

If your computer reports that a data file did not close properly the last time you used Outlook the chances are you may have interrupted the normal shut down routine of your outlook.exe process. This could have happened for a multitude of reasons: maybe your laptop battery ran flat, or you had to force your PC to shut down in a hurry. But most likely, you simply closed Outlook then shut down your PC normally without giving Outlook enough time to finish its business.

It takes several seconds for the outlook.exe process to finish when you exit from Outlook. If you quickly also tell your PC to shut down, the outlook.exe process may be only partially closed when your PC switches off. The result: that nagging warning the next time you start Outlook.

Here's how to avoid this problem: Never close Outlook. Just leave it running. And when you next shutdown your computer Windows will carefully close down Outlook properly in the background before shutting itself down. If you must shut down Outlook, be sure to check that the outlook.exe process is no longer running in the Task Manager (SHIFT+CTRL+Escape, then Processes tab) before shutting down your PC.

So, for a pain free Outlook life, just ignore everything you ever learned about shutting down applications before shutting down your PC. Leave Outlook running, and leave the operating system to do the work for you. And, I promise, you'll never see that nagging message again.

You're not going to believe this. After mentioning BigPockets.co.uk's clever 'Bag O' Crap' promotion several times on - this - blog, I decided to enter my own video. And it only went and won the top prize of £200! Fancy that!

My son, the real star of the video and undoubtedly the only reason my video scooped the prize, has decided to invest his share of the winnings in Premium Bonds in the distant hope that he might win some more money! He has much to learn about smart investment strategies... I've decided to invest my share in a new barbecue so I can spend the summer months mastering the fine art of turning good food black.

As the old slogan says 'You've got to be in it to win it," so next time you see an interesting competition have a go. Who knows, you might even win.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. But there is such a thing as a free search and an Indiana Jones whip thrown in for good measure!

If you take Windows Live Search for a 'spin', you could win one of over 1,000 prizes including a private screening of the movie for you and 50 friends, and a VIP holiday in New Mexico to visit the film location. Not bad for just trying a different search engine for a change!

Play here: http://try.indysearch.co.uk/

Just released: 7 funny little viral videos for Windows Live Search. If you've not yet tried Live Search, take it for a spin and decide for yourself if it's better than your current search engine.

If you're still not sure, why not put a metasearch engine to the test to instantly compare the results of different search engines? www.dogpile.co.uk does a nice job of comparing the top results from up to 6 different search engines to help you decide which is best.

Live Search is growing on me; over the last year it has definitely improved, and seems to give the most relevant results much of the time. The best feature, by far, is the Image Search with its infinite scroll (just keep scrolling down, none of that silly clicking through to the next page) and spookily accurate refinement options (narrow your search down to just show faces, certain colours, or sizes). The scratchpad, once mastered, is mega-useful too.

Mini-tip: One thing I tend to change on my search engine options is to increase the number of results that are returned per page. This saves having to keep refreshing to a new page so often. By default most search engines return 10 results. To increase it (to 50 in my case) click the Options link on the search home page and remember to save your preferences.

I've reinstalled Windows Vista on my main home computer this week. Things had become decidedly sluggish, due in no small part to the massive amount of junk software I've tested over the last year. Having upgraded the PC from Windows XP over a year ago, I was dreading having to find suitable drivers to get everything working again. But, do you know what, it was a breeze. Yes, really. The difference between installing Windows Vista at the start of 2007 and now, midway through 2008, is extraordinary. Gone are those frustrating hours trawling through hardware manufacturers' web site; now Windows Update has everything my computer needed. Sure, I needed a lot of updates - about 57 I think - but these all installed in one go and only one reboot was needed. And I have, as you'd probably guess, a lot of gadgets attached to my PC!

To test this wasn't a one-off I wiped and reinstalled Windows Vista on one of my laptops too. Same story: the installation was fast and Windows Update took care of the rest.

As long as you make sure you back up all your important files, and approach the installation in a methodical and measured way, installing Windows Vista from scratch really isn't difficult any more.

Of course, some tips are definitely worth knowing:

• Downloading software is fastest when Internet traffic is low. So save yourself time by running your downloads late at night, or early in the morning.
• If you're offered a choice of mirror sites, select one where local time (at the mirror site) will mean that Internet traffic is low. Don't pick the mirror site nearest to you if your local Internet traffic is likely to be high as the server may be busy and your files will take longer to download.
• Check your Device Manager for any unrecognised devices. If you're unsure what anything is, reboot your computer without any peripherals attached then plug in each one in turn and monitor the changes in Device Manager.
• If you're still having trouble finding a driver for a mysterious device, try an online scanning service like http://driveragent (thanks Rusty!). This will help you identify any missing drivers and point you to a solution. Take out a paid subscription if you like, or use the information provided to find the drivers elsewhere online if you have time.

This just in from Xobni HQ:

Dear Xobni Beta User,

Today is an exciting day for Xobni. After seven months of invite-only beta, we're proud to announce that Xobni is now publicly available for anyone to download. Your feedback has been essential in helping us improve the performance and features of Xobni during this period.

If you are currently running Xobni, it will automatically update to the latest version. If you need to re-download Xobni, download it instantly here:

http://www.xobni.com/download

You can read more about Xobni's launch in today's New York Times by going here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html

Of course we will continue to work hard to improve the Xobni experience. And we hope that you will continue to provide valuable feedback.

Please let your friends and colleagues know that a better Outlook email experience awaits them at http://www.xobni.com.

Thanks!

Matt Brezina

Cofounder

So, for all of you who were not lucky enough to secure a Beta trial, now's your chance!

The Organize drop down box in Windows Explorer (accessed via the Windows Key + E shortcut) hides a little known feature of Windows Vista. Under the Layout option you'll find the ability to switch on the Menu Bar from Windows XP plus two handy new panes: the Search Pane and the Preview Pane.

Here's what they each do:

The Menu Bar

The Menu Bar is simply the conventional drop down menu choices we had in Windows XP. I suggest you leave this switched off. If you ever need to revert to the old menus you can make them reappear at any time simply by pressing the ALT key.

The Search Pane

The Search Pane allows you to quickly narrow a search using filter buttons like E-Mail and Music or input more precise filtering details like tags and file size.

The Preview Pane

The Preview Pane shows a thumbnail preview of your selected file which can be very handy when hunting through photos and documents. If the file is multimedia you'll see a mini Windows Media Player appear allowing you to preview music and videos right there in Windows Explorer.

Note that the selections you make in the Layout option only apply to your current location. When you move to a new folder the default view will reappear. However, once you make a change in a folder, that change is persistent. So, for example, if you'd like the Preview Pane to appear when viewing your music folder, make this change once and it will reappear every time you visit that folder.

Have a fun weekend!

With the local elections upon us today here in the UK, here's a timely reminder of the nifty voting feature in Microsoft Outlook. Whenever you wish to poll your email recipients on their preferences, you can save them and yourself time by using voting buttons as follows:

1. Create your email in Microsoft Outlook
2. Tick the icon labelled Use Voting Buttons in the Options tab and choose Custom from the drop down list
3. Type in the available voting choices in the Use voting buttons box, placing a semi colon (;) between each entry. For example, voting options to match today's London Mayoral election might read Ken;Boris;Brian;Sian;Gerard;etc
4. Click Close then send your email as normal

Some important considerations: your voting email recipients must be inside an Exchange Server organisation for this to work reliably. They must also be using Outlook as their email client. If outside of an Exchange organisation, voting may still work as long as Outlook is used and your email is sent in Rich Text format only. HTML and Plain Text emails with voting choices simply will not work outside of an Exchange Server environment. You can switch your email to Rich Text mode before sending by highlighting the relevant option under the Options tab.

After sending your email inviting people to vote, you can get a quick count of their voting choices, by re-opening the original email from within the Sent Items folder. There you'll see an infobar summarising the total number of votes cast, how each recipient voted, and how many votes each choice received.

If only choosing which local councillor should receive your vote was as easy!

Did you know that you can print documents simply by dragging their file onto a printer icon? This is a great shortcut if you don't want to have to open a document before printing. Of course, to make this really convenient you need a way to quickly access your printers folder. You could maybe add a shortcut to your printer to the desktop, or pin it to the Start menu. Here's how to do these in Windows Vista:

To create a desktop shortcut in Windows Vista:

1. Click on the Start button and type Printers in the search box then press Enter
2. Click and drag your preferred printer from the Printers window onto your desktop (or just right click and choose Create Shortcut; your shortcut will automatically be created on the desktop)
3. Right-click on the new desktop icon to rename if desired

To pin this shortcut to the Start menu in Windows Vista:

1. Drag the newly created desktop icon (from step 3 above) over the Start button, wait a second for the menu to open then drag upwards to drop your shortcut at the top of the list, normally just above the Internet Explorer link

To print your documents:

1. Locate your document file in Windows Explorer and drag the icon onto your Printer shortcut icon. Windows will automatically open the file, invoke the print command, then close the file down once again.

Bonus tip: Windows Vista users who regularly print files in this way may also like to try out the Drag&Drop and Print Sidebar gadget that does exactly what its name suggests

I received a handy reminder yesterday from Diane Poremsky's excellent Outlook Tips web site that it's best not to rely on the Windows Easy Transfer (WET) tool when moving your Outlook settings to a new Windows Vista computer. In fact, using WET can sometimes cause problems including a corrupt profile.

It's far safer, and quicker in my opinion, to take a backup of your important Outlook files and manually copy them over to the new computer. Diane has provided the locations of the major Outlook files that you should copy across on this page. By working this way you'll not only be in complete control of your Outlook files, you'll also benefit from taking a backup and learning about the different support files that make Outlook work just the way you like it.

I've noticed more and more email signatures carrying a 'Think before you print' reminder. And that's a good thing, because the less we print, the less damage we do to our fragile planet. Or course, if you do want to add a reminder to people to discourage them from printing your email, I suggest you keep the type size and colours to a minimum otherwise your words could actually prove detrimental to the environment when printed! To learn more about email signature editing in Outlook, see some of my most popular previous tips here, here, and here.

And there's another simple step that many of us can take to reduce our printers' ink consumption: tell your printer to print everything in draft mode, black and white, thrifty mode or whatever your printer manufacturer calls their economy printing mode.

To do this open the Printers folder (in Windows Vista simply type 'printers' in the Start Search bar, in Windows XP locate the printer settings in Control Panel), right-click on your default printer, click Properties, then Printing Preferences. Now set your printer to run in economy/draft/thrifty mode and press OK. Next time you print, the default settings will be saving you ink and money, and shaving a few micrograms off your carbon footprint.

And on the rare occasion that you need to print something higher resolution simply change the printing preferences in the Print dialog box just before you print. As a general rule this should be the exception rather than the norm. From what I can see, the low quality setting on most modern printers is plenty good enough for general use.

One of the things I like about gadgets for Windows Vista is that you're not limited to a single instance of each gadget. So, for instance, if you'd like to see the time in more than one time zone, simply add another instance of the clock gadget and give each clock a name like this:

Or, if you like to keep track of the weather in different locations, but use a weather gadget that only allows one location, just add the gadget another time:

Plus, of course, you can move gadgets around anywhere on your Sidebar or Desktop so you can customise your world to your heart's content.

Can't find a gadget you like? Try again, there are now gazillions at the Windows Live Gallery.

Now, go forth and multiply your gadgets!