I was clearing out some old computer magazines and files the other day when I came across a flyer which brought back memories…from 1988! I had saved up enough to buy my first computer and decided on the Opus PC V AT-compatible. Had to drive up to the city to a small supplier – no computer stores in those days, just the occasional small tech shop. Needless to say, the machine was state-of-the-art at that time.

In those days PCs weren’t for everyone. Pre-Windows and no internet so why would you want one. Apart from us geeks, PCs then were the preserve of business and were mainly used for word processing, spreadsheets, databases and DTP. But what really shocked me were the specs… and the price I paid for 1988 state-of-the-art tech. This is the flip side of the flyer:

I’ll pick out the ‘best’ points:

30MB hard drive – that’s 0.03GB in modern money! And that was big enough.

5.25” floppy drive – Disks had a capacity of 1.2MB.

1MB memory – no, not 1GB but 1MB. And that was just about enough.

6MHz clock speed with Turbo button taking it to …10MHz. Modern PCs are a gazzilion times faster with the latest Core i7 processors running at 3.33GHz clock speed.

14” display – amber on black ( I subsequently paid out even more for the optional colour display).

And the price – yes, only £1295 – that’s currently equivalent to US$1960.

And remember, there was no GUI in those days, just a command line – I think it was running Microsoft MS DOS 3.2. But it got the job done. And just for good measure, here’s a selection of 5.25” floppy disks with some of the programs I used in the early 1990s:

Tech has come a long way in a generation – in specs and price!

What was your first computer?

If you regularly find yourself copying and pasting text from websites or desktop applications then you should really have a look at PureText. When activated, this free utility quickly removes text formatting such as bold, italics, colour, underline, bullets and hyperlinks allowing you to just paste the text. For example, I commonly find myself having to paste portions of information I’ve found online into Word documents but I don’t want all the web formatting to be carried over. Similarly, I sometimes copy sections out of Word files into other applications and I often don’t need all the Word formatting. With PureText installed, once the information has been copied to the Windows clipboard in the usual fashion, I just click the PureText icon in the system tray and paste the text into the new document (or there’s an alternative hotkey combination to paste without the formatting – by default, it’s Windows key + V). Pure Text only removes rich formatting from text and won’t remove carriage returns or tabs.

There are free utilities for just about everything you need to do on your PC. In fact, you could end up downloading way more than you need – and forget they’re there on your PC. But if copying and pasting is something you do regularly then this is one utility you’ll end up using on a regular basis. It only takes up about 3MB of memory.

PureText

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If you’ve ever used a browser on a netbook, you’ll know that pretty much half of your screen can be taken up by menus, address bars, bookmark bars and tabs. Here’s a screenshot of the full netbook screen showing Firefox on my Acer Aspire One netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Remix – just 12 lines of posts in Google Reader – not too good.

Okay, I know all you keyboard ninjas know about this one, but for those out there who do everything by mouse, try pressing F11 when your browser is open. This is the same screenshot of the full netbook screen after pressing F11.

Great isn’t it. As you can see, the Firefox menus are gone from the top and the status bar from the bottom, and we now have 16 lines of posts. And the F11 full screen trick works in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer as well, and on a desktop PC of course. Hitting F11 again will toggle the menus on again, but here’s a nice feature. If you’ve maximized your screen real estate with F11 and then move your mouse up to the very top of the screen in Firefox and Internet Explorer, the address bar and tabs will auto-show allowing you to open new tabs or key a new URL in the address bar! Move the mouse back down and the menus auto-hide again.

Now if you want even more control over which menu bars and address bars show in Firefox, you could add the Hide GUI Bars extension as described on How to Geek.

Okay, so you knew about F11. Well did you know that in Firefox, hitting Ctrl-F brings up a search bar at the bottom for searching that browser window? Not only that but you can highlight the search results too and click through them. Also works for the other browsers I’ve mentioned. Here’s an example of a search for ‘Facebook’ in my Google Reader feeds.

Okay, so you knew that too and you’ve been short-changed by these simple tips. Well how about the ultimate list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts – head over to ShortcutWorld. There are pages for Chrome and Internet Explorer there too. More keyboard shortcuts than you’ll probably ever need!

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Another small milestone here at Tech and Life – the 100th post! Time to thank everyone who’s been following the blog so far – I’m enjoying doing it in my spare time and am really encouraged by the subscriptions to the feed since I began about 18 months ago.

I’m trying to improve the blog when I can and have just signed up to FeedBurner, primarily to add the option for readers to subscribe by email for those who prefer that. I’m a little slow at getting round to it and my apologies. Anyway, please sign up for emails in the side bar if you prefer to receive updates that way. I post at most 3 times a week so I won’t be flooding your inbox! Be sure to add our email address to your ’safe list’ in your email client to make sure newsletters reach your inbox and aren’t diverted to your bulk or spam folders. Let me know if you have any problems with the subscription or any improvements I can make.

I’ve also added Google Translate to the sidebar. Although it’s not perfect, you may prefer to have this option to translate the blog into your own language. I’ve blogged about automated blog translation before. I had some problems getting it to translate to other languages and discovered that the Firefox extension Flashblock causes a conflict with Google Translate. Disabling the extension solved the problem. So if you’re using Google Translate and getting the error message: Error: The server could not complete your request. Try again later, try disabling the Flashblock extension in Firefox.

I’ve also recently added the Wapple Architect plugin so this blog can be viewed on mobile phones.

Finally, I hope to have more guest posts in the coming months – look forward to the first coming up soon. Oh and if you have any suggestions for the blog or for blog topics, drop a comment below.

Image credit: Mzelle Biscotte

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Computers. Don’t you just love them! Time rushes by when you are in front of that screen. Oftentimes I’ve let the fire die, or the potatoes boil to a soggy mush as I try to solve a computer problem or devise a workaround. And I’m not alone. They’re supposed to make you more productive… save you time, but sometimes I wonder. I loved this recent post on thrive as the author tried to do some photo editing and the catalogue of problems that ensued and the time wasted – I could identify with so much there.

We’ve all been there – a seemingly simple software problem to sort out or routine to master but it can take an eternity to get a satisfying result. In my experience, with the best will in the world, even after reading software help files, checking the preferences, often you may not get the direct easy solution you wanted but have to resort to a workaround or even have to hunt for an alternative program. Many’s a time I’ve found that with computers, for some reason to get from A to B you have to go via C and D!

Some applications like Photoshop are complex and you need to invest a fair bit of time to master them. Then when these apps are updated, they lose functionality or do things differently and you have to relearn stuff. Other applications just aren’t intuitive enough. I’ve often found that during a software installation or when using an app, the choice of options and the result of choosing an option aren’t clearly explained. I’m often left scratching my head wondering what exactly will happen if I chose a particular option, check a box or follow a particular route – and of course often the wrong choice is made and you have to start over losing more time. If I get the wrong result when using an app, very often I just have to work though the possible options by trial and error, changing one item at a time until I get the right result – more time gone. And of course don’t change two or three things at once as a shortcut – invariably, if you solve it you won’t know exactly which tweak solved it.

But having said that, there’s a great sense of achievement when you crack it no matter how long it takes. I’ve blogged some of my tips when I’ve solved a PC problem so as to try and help people through the same problems – and that’s my point here. When I started with PCs many years ago, there was no real help other than the good old manual, if that. Nowadays, we have so much help, from a quick Google search to tech forums, Twitter and sites like Mahalo Answers and MakeUseOf Answers where you can ask tech questions.

And when you’ve cracked that problem, be sure to make a note of what you did in something like Evernote, so you know for next time. There’s nothing worse that sitting down 3 or 4 months later faced with the same problem and scratching your head wondering how you solved it last time. Use your PC to remind you!

Have you solved a PC issue that’s given you a great sense of achievement? How do you solve PC problems? What do you find frustrating and a real time sink? Have you ever given up in disgust and taken drastic action! Have you resorted to changing your operation system or finding new software? Tell us in the comments!

photo credit: ap

If you carry your data on a USB drive, I’m sure you’re always worried about losing it. Of course you should always take the necessary precautions about protecting the data on it like making sure it’s backed up somewhere safe and encrypting the data on it if necessary. But we don’t always do this and so we might end up losing some valuable information.

You could use Flash Drive Reminder which pops up a reminder when you try and log off Windows without removing your USB drive. Putting the drive on a car key ring might also help you to remember it but if you haven’t done this, what about getting the stick back? Doubtless if lost, some finders would just keep it, look at the data, or delete the encrypted data and reuse the stick, but I’m sure many with good intentions would return it if given the chance.

Well you could use LostDrive and edit the contact details. Or just put a text file in the root directory of the stick with your contact details. You could call the file ‘Read-me-if-you-find-this-USB-stick.txt’. But you mightn’t be happy about putting contact details in there in case the drive falls into the wrong hands.

Well I’ve come across a free service called whspr! which allows you to be contacted by email without giving away any personal details in the text file.

If you fill out the form there they give you a URL which you could put in the text file. Anyone who finds your USB stick hopefully will open the text file. You could put a message thanking them for opening the file and that you’d be most grateful if you could get in touch with the owner by clicking the URL. This would send them to a form at whspr where they can send you an email message. whspr forwards the message to your email address and now you can get in touch with the finder whose email is on the form. The URL lasts for up to 365 days so you have to remember to renew it before then. So set up an email or text reminder with your reminder app, for example Task.fm, to remind you say a week before the URL expires and get a new URL from whspr.

Hopefully, these tips should help you minimize the loss of a USB stick. Have you any tips? Drop a comment below.

Image credit: jatop

Another Google Reader topic today to follow on from my last post. This annoyance has been bugging me for a while and I’ve found a solution to it today.

More and more webmasters and bloggers are using FeedBurner to manage their RSS feeds. FeedBurner has introduced a feature which allows tracking of feed clicks in Google Analytics so as to track visitors from FeedBurner feeds. Problem is that when Google Analytics tracks FeedBurner visitors, it appends the feed item URL with Google Analytics tags, e.g. utm_source=feedburner, utm_medium=feed, etc. I’m sure you’ve all seen this. If you hover over the link to the feed URL in Google Reader before clicking it, it will start something like http://feedproxy.google.com…. Just as an example, here’s what appeared in the browser address bar after I clicked a link in Google Reader to a web page on Techie Buzz:

http://techie-buzz.com/google-chrome/google-chrome-now-supports-greasemonkey-scripts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techiebuzz+%28Techie+buzz%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Pretty ugly. If you now bookmark that web page in Delicious or Diigo, all the tracking stuff is included in the link. I don’t know about you but I just want to bookmark the URL of the web page without all that tracking data. So from the above URL, I just want:

http://techie-buzz.com/google-chrome/google-chrome-now-supports-greasemonkey-scripts.html

You could of course delete all that stuff off the end before you bookmark it, but there’s a simpler way to remove this tracking data in Firefox and Google Chrome. In Firefox, it involves installing a Greasemonkey script, while in Chrome you just install an extension.

Firefox: Greasemonkey script to remove FeedBurner tracking data

First you have to install Greasemonkey. If you haven’t already done this, visit my last post for more info. Then install the FeedBurner Tracking Query Stripper from here. Once installed, when you click a link in Google Reader, the URL will load initially showing the tracking data then, after a second or two, it will magically disappear.

Chrome: Unburner extension to remove Feedburner tracking data

If Google Chrome is your browser, then install the Unburner extension from here. Again, once installed, when you click a link in Google Reader, the URL will load initially showing the tracking data then it will be stripped out.

Now when you follow a link in Google Reader in Firefox or Chrome, all the tracking analytics will be stripped out and the web page will load as it should.

I spend well over an hour a day going through my 250 feed subscriptions in Google Reader. I always work in List View so I can skim through the post titles as quickly as possible. If the title of the post doesn’t look interesting to me, I move right along. Anything that would speed up working through the feeds would improve my productivity. What I really needed was a way to filter out stuff so that I didn’t have to read uninteresting posts and at the same time that highlighted stuff of real interest.

Coincidentally, I found the answer I needed when browsing through though the posts in Google Reader, and it’s a real gem. Thanks to Arpit Kumar at Techie Buzz for blogging this great tip about filtering within Google Reader. Don’t worry, it’s real easy to install and set up so please try it out.

Google Reader Filter

Installation in Firefox is a two-stage process. First you have to install Greasemonkey then the feed filter. But first what’s Greasemonkey? Well it’s just a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. So first download and install the Greasemonkey Firefox extension from the Greasespot homepage. It will install just like any other Firefox addon, and you’ll probably have to restart your browser. Once it’s back open, you should see a Greasemonkey icon in the lower right corner of the browser window. Now you can add Greasemonkey scripts. Hundreds have been written and are available here but today we’re going to install the Google Reader Filter script available here. Just click install on that page and then reload Google Reader.

You’ll see a new blue button called Filter settings at the top right of the Google Reader window as shown above. If you click on that you can add filter words to exclude or highlight posts in your list.

As you can see, if the post title has excluded words, the title will show as greyed out and if highlighted words are present, the title will be highlighted in green as shown above. If you check the box Hide excludes, you can drop the post completely if you like. Checking the box Prefer Highlights over excludes will highlight the post if it contains both highlighted and excluded words. Checking Hide duplicates does just what it says and any duplicate post titles in the list are excluded. The words in your filter list don’t appear to be case-sensitive. I did notice that if the word in the title is followed by a full point it won’t be excluded unless you add the word followed by a full point to the excluded list. If there’s a colon, dash or exclamation mark directly after the word in the title, it will be excluded or highlighted.

So now, in my case, I can filter out any feeds with the words iPad, Norton, etc., because I’m just not interested in these topics and my time can be more productively used reading other posts. At the same time, any topic I’m particularly interested in like Windows 7 will be highlighted and I can prioritise reading these posts if I want. Now, as I read post titles, when I spot further words I can add them to the filter.

I’ve set up the filter in Firefox on my Windows and Linux machines and they both work great. And yes I know, it’s yet another Firefox extension which is probably going to slow your browser even further. But if reading feeds in Google Reader is important for you then this is a must-have extension. And of course you can use Greasemonkey to run other scripts too. At the moment unfortunately, this filter doesn’t work in the Google Chrome browser.

All in all, a really simple way to filter your feeds within Google Reader and improve your productivity. I recommend you try it out and see what you think.

I’m constantly going to my file manager throughout the day, opening files from there, moving, copying and renaming. A good file manager has always been important to me, ever since my first experiences with a PC back in the 1980s, well before the dawn of Windows Explorer. I used a program called PC Tools for file management back then and when I moved to the Windows OS I used a file manager called PowerDesk Pro which has seen me right through to Windows XP. On and off, I’ve use Windows Explorer but never really fell in love with it – too many restrictions on what I want to do.

I’ve recently moved to Windows 7, so I looked around for a good free replacement file manager to take over from my aging copy of PowerDesk. As usual, my first port of call was my Diigo bookmarks to check out my ‘file managers’ tag. Had a look at Free Commander and didn’t like it much, then looked at xplorer2 Lite – the free version from zabkat which is fully compatible with Windows 7. I’ve been using it for about 2 months now and found it’s a very able replacement for PowerDesk …and more. I find the free version has all the features I need for just now.

Some of the best features of xplorer2

One of the main features I need in a file manager is a very simple one. When I reopen the program I want it to have remembered which folder I was in when it was shut down – for my work I’m usually going back to the same work folder the next day so the ability to save settings on exit is really useful for me.  xplorer2 can also open multiple tabs as shown above, so you have quick access to a number of essential folders – again I find this a really useful feature. You can display the tabs at the top or the bottom of the window. Hit Ctrl-Ins to open a new tab. And you can rename tabs – right click and choose Rename. You can move or copy files by dragging them onto the tab of the destination folder. But if you don’t like multiple tabs in a window, you can set up quick access to all your favourite folders from the Bookmarks menu. And incidentally, you can set up FTP access for file transfers to your website or server again though your bookmarks. FTP access is explained in this excellent Lifehacker article which also gives a great summary of the program.

Filtering your list of files is easy. In the address bar, just type ‘*.jpg’ to list the jpeg files in that folder, or type ‘e*’ to list all files starting with the letter ‘e’. Incidentally, coloured folders as shown above on my Windows XP set-up isn’t a feature of xplorer2. That feature is from a free utility called Folder Marker Free. Once installed, just right click on a folder and change its colour.

I generally use the single pane interface (plus folder tree) as show above, but you can also have a dual pane set-up which is very handy for copying or moving files. I also like how you can  preview images, videos, pdfs and mp3s within xplorer2 using the Preview button at the top.

Another nice feature is the way it autorefreshes when you plug in an mp3 player or camera and the new drive shows up without having to press F5. PowerDesk didn’t do that.

Setting it up

I have it set up just the way I want it now. If you already use the program or want to try it out, here’s a list of the features I find useful and how to set them up:

1. Save program state on exit: Tools, Options, General tab and check Save program state on exit.
2. For single pane/double pane toggle: Ctrl-O.
3. To force file names ending in a number to list in ascending number order 1, 2, 3…10, 11, 12, rather than 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3… go to Tools, Options, Advanced tab and check Natural number sort.
4. To show folder in tree on left side, go to Tools, Options, Window tab and check Keep synchronized with folder in active view pane.
5. To allow slow double click renaming of files: Tools, Options, Window tab and check Allow slow double click to rename files.
6. To prevent truncation of file names when window is not maximized:  Tools, Options, Window tab and set Max list column width to 150 – although from reading the forums this doesn’t always work.

And there’s a good xplorer2 forum here.

I’ve only just scratched the surface here with the features I find useful.  Give xplorer2 a try and see what you think. You may find yourself quickly won over from Window Explorer.

With the ever-expanding smartphone market these days, it’s important that your blog is mobile ready, meaning for example, that it can be rendered nice and clearly without having to scroll around too much on your phone. If you have a WordPress blog, there are a number of plugins which will remove the sidebars for example and convert the blog to a nice clean format for viewing on a cellphone. But which WordPress plugin to choose? Here’s a quick run through of how I narrowed the field down.

I went through my Diigo bookmarks and found I had bookmarked blogs discussing quite a few plugins: WordPress Mobile Pack, WPTouch, MobilePress, Wordpress Mobile Edition, and Wapple Architect Mobile to name just a few. But what I really wanted to get hold of was a comparison to see what people thought was the best mobile plugin.

Comparisons of WordPress mobile plugins

I found it hard to track down any blog which had reviewed and compared mobile plugins. In fact, if anyone’s interested and has access to a range of cellphones, there’s an opportunity for a really useful blog post here. WPFeed compared a number of plugins and chose Wordpress Mobile Plugin (but when you click the link now you’re directed to WordPress Mobile Pack), and the only other site I came across was Alpha2beta which I had Google translate from Chinese. They also compared a few and chose WordPress Mobile Pack.

I know that WPTouch is being quite well received, particularly for iPhone and Android platforms. Technically Personal uses the WPTouch plugin. In a reply to me in the comments there, Raju said he had tried quite a few plugins and found problems with them all. Wapple was a disaster he said.

Narrowing the choice down

On Mahalo Answers, I asked ‘What’s the best Wordpress plugin to make my blog mobile friendly?’ I received three answers recommending WPTouch, Wapple Architect and WordPress Mobile Pack. I was getting the feeling now that it was between these three. I liked the Wapple recommendation:

Finally, I tried a search on Twitter for wordpress AND mobile. Jumped into an interesting lead:

@dannybrown Did you test other WP mobile plugins before you settled on Wapple Architect? I’m finding it hard to pick one for my blog

@techandlife I did. Tried WordPress Mobile, WP Touch (good for iPhone, not so great others). Wapple best one I found

@techandlife And Rich Gubby of Wapple is just awesome http://bit.ly/7z2qwx

I checked back on my own bookmarks and Wapple Architect sounded really promising even though it doesn’t work for some. So I thought I’d try it first.

Installing Wapple Architect

Wasn’t just a case of downloading and installing the Wapple plugin. Had to register to receive the Developer Key, click a link in an email to complete registration, then received a Developer Key which was required to set up the plugin. Didn’t take too long though. During set up, you can upload an image to use for your mobile header and which would be automatically resized. Didn’t work for me on this occasion but I’ll try that again later. Incidentally, 2 days after registering, I received an email from Rich Gubby the Lead Developer at Wapple offering to help with the mobile styling – that’s a nice touch.

Testing Wapple Architect

I found a testing tool online to check mobile-readiness at mobiReady. My blog checked out okay.

At mobiReady, you can also check how your blog renders on a Nokia N70, Samsung Z105, Sony Ericsson k750i, Motorola v3i and Sharp GX-10.

I don’t have a smartphone but I fired up the browser on my LG Cookie and had a look at my blog:

Finally, at the top of the sidebar on the desktop version of this blog, I’ve also tried to indicate that it’s now mobile ready.

I’d love to hear how this blog renders on your mobile. Any annoyances you’ve noticed or any improvements you think I can make? If you do comment, let us know what mobile you’re using.