Use YouSendit to send large files

You’ve probably seen it before. You send an email with a large attachment and an automated reply is returned by your corporate e-mail server saying that the message you sent exceeded the maximum size allowed for you. Or perhaps your message was sent but subsequently rejected by the receiving server because of a smaller message size threshold.

So how does it work? A sender logs into the web interface at YouSendIt.com and enters the recipient address or addresses. The sender navigates to the source file and uploads it to the YouSendIt.com servers. A custom URL is e-mailed to the recipient via YouSendIt.com. The recipient(s) then uses that URL to download the file from the YouSendIt.com servers.

There is a free level at which users can send files up to 100MB at a time. There are three subscription levels that add different functionality called Pro, Business Plus, and Corporate Suite.

How to find your computer's WPA key (Wi-Fi Security)

WPA stands for Wi-Fi protected access. It is a standard security protocol to secure wireless computer networks.

While connecting to your home network, you are often asked to insert a WPA key. This WPA key is either located in the modem or in the router you are using. In order to find your computer’s WPA key, follow the steps given below:

Step 1: First of all, you need to launch an internet browser. Press “Windows + R” keys to open the “Run” prompt and type “iexplore” without quotes to open Internet Explorer. You can also type “firefox” to open Mozilla Firefox. On the address bar at the top, type http://192.168.1.1 (Belkin routers use 192.168.2.1 as the default IP) and press “Enter” key.

This address belongs to your wireless modem or wireless router to which you are connected.

Step 2: A window asking for username and password will appear. In the username field, type “admin” without quotes and in the password field, either type “password” without quotes or leave the password field blank. Press “Enter” key to continue.

If password is correct, you will be redirected to the modem/router’s “Settings” page, otherwise, you will have to reset the modem/router. Check beneath the modem/router or check the manual for correct password.

To reset a Linksys modem/router or Belkin one, locate a small hole at the back of the modem/router and insert a pin to press the switch inside it. Keep the switch pressed for about 20-30 seconds after which the modem/router will restore the settings to “factory defaults” and reboot itself.

Repeat the step 2, in order to gain access to “Settings” page.

Step 3: On the modem/router’s “Settings” page, find “Wireless” option. Click the “Wireless” link to populate the wireless settings. Now, locate and click the “Security” or “Advanced Security” option.

On the security page, you will find “Network Authentication”. Different options available under the Network Authentication menu are open, shared, WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK, etc. Select either WPA or WPA2, to find your computer’s WPA key and insert this key when asked for.

If in step 2, you had reset the modem/router, you will not find any WPA or WPA2 key, and you will have to manually assign one. Select any of the WPA-PSK or any other authentication and assign a key to it. A key can be 8-63 long. For minimal security, you can choose 8 characters key, like “iN\/5R92”. For maximum security, choose 63 characters key like, “sJ0esmoU2cBD\m+oMp$nrXj5XPVRTvVA5fpwGSGI\RVz4RdQ7V3y\l$P1NrT9Be”.

After you have assigned a key, save/apply the changes and reboot the modem/router.

Note: The procedure shown above is common to most of the modems/routers. If this doesn’t apply to you, check your modem/router’s manual to find the wireless security option.

Smartphones - a simple guide

Smartphones, as the name suggests, are smart phones – an evolution of basic mobiles. The term doesn’t have a universally agreed definition and, confusingly, manufacturers often market even the most basic mobile phones as smartphones in attempt to jazz-up their devices.

However, most true smartphones share several basic characteristics: wireless internet support, touchscreens, instant connection into your email account, sat-nav style navigation features and downloadable applications.

The most iconic smartphone is Apple’s iPhone. It first appeared in 2007 and several variations have since launched, the most recent being the iPhone 4.

All smartphones rely on an operating system (OS) to function, just like computers rely on Windows. Various smartphone OS exist already, but the most common are Apple’s iPhone OS,  Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile, each with their own pros and cons.

Manufacturers periodically release OS updates that aim to fix any operating bugs and may also add extra features to your smartphone.

Smartphones can also access 3G mobile networks – a feature known as mobile web – to give you web access while, say, sat in a coffee shop or airport.

Applications tend to be referred to as apps. These downloadable programs let you add new features to your smartphone to keep the device up-to-date and interesting.

Apps are downloaded from virtual stores – the iPhone’s is called the App Store – accessed directly from your smartphone. Apps are available for almost anything, the most common app categories are: games, entertainment, social networking, music, travel, sports, news, finance, weather and books.

Apple’s iPhone App Store currently boasts over 185,000 different apps. The Android OS’ app store – known as the Android Market – has around 40,000 apps.

Some apps are free and others carry a charge. Prices range from 50p to well over £100, so be careful what you click on.

Focus Booster \ Break Timer \ Eye rest

Staying focused while working online (or offline) is a challenge. The distractions are too many. If you need something to increase focus while working then Focus Booster might help. It is a nifty timer that allows you to set work and break timings, and alerts you accordingly.

The tool is based on Francesco Cirillo's the Pomodoro technique, a time management method that advocates 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes break cycles for productive output.

This is excellent for your eyes too!

http://www.focusboosterapp.com/

Outlook - Image attachment resize

In Outlook 2007 after you have attached your picture as a file (and not when inserted as an image in the body) you can press the little expand arrow in the right bottom corner of the Include section. This will show you the Attachment Options pane which allows you to resize the picture.

In Outlook 2010 this option can be found in under the File menu, once the image(s) are attached to the e-mail.
File - Info - option: Resize large images when I send this message.

In Outlook 2010 you can no longer choose between different sizes but the image will be resized proportionally so it won’t be larger than 1024×786 pixels.

Itunes - Add video to the TV Programmes library

Once you have your video files added to the Itunes Film library, select all the videos for the the series you are looking to pair together, for instance the six videos of The IT Crowd Season 2.

Right click and select 'Get Info', agree to update multiple videos at one time, under the Video tab put the program name and the season number as you see fit.

Next go to the Options tab, and go to the Media Kind drop down and select TV Programme.

That'll transfer the videos to TV Programmes and also pair them all up by whatever you put in the Video tab section.

Sync your iPhone to both your PC and your Mac

Prerequisites:

- 10 Minutes of your time

- On iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod (Repeat for all devices you wish), select “Manually mange music and videos”

- Backup of iTunes Music

- iTunes closed

- Ability to find your iTunes folder: in Windows XP, its default location is in “My Music” and, for both Windows Vista and Mac OS, it is located in “Music”.

- Download HexEdit for Mac or UltraEdit for Windows for the secondary machine with which you wish to sync

- Knowledge of how to open a file with the editor downloaded in the point above on both Windows and Mac (however, you do not need to if using Mac to Mac).

On the Primary Computer (with which the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod was first synced):

- Make sure iTunes is CLOSED!

- Backup the iTunes Library on the machine with which you wish to sync. Backup “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “iTunes Music Library” (or iTunes Music Library.itl on Windows). It is important that you back these files up to a safe location because we will be modifying the files.

- Retrieve your iTunes Library ID. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” with a text editor (TextEdit on Macs, Notepad on Windows). Find the entry after tags, after “Library Persistent ID”. In the screenshot 8B6C633F7DACB74B is my iTunes Library ID. Copy this entry exactly to a piece of paper or email this to yourself. After you have stored the iTunes Library ID you may close the file.


On the Secondary Computer:

- Make sure iTunes is CLOSED!

- Retrieve your iTunes Library ID. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” with a text editor (TextEdit on Macs, Notepad on Windows). Find the entry after tags, after “Library Persistent ID”. In the screenshot 0E958526D15C67FAis my iTunes Library ID. Copy this entry exactly to a piece of paper or email this to yourself. Do NOT close the file yet!

- Replace the the iTunes Library ID, in my case 0E958526D15C67FA with the one from the computer (8B6C633F7DACB74B-iTunes Library ID from the Windows machine) the iPhone is already syncing with. Save the file, then close it.

- In Hex Editor open “iTunes Music Library” (iTunes Music Library.itl on PC)

- Choose “Find and Replace” from the Edit menu. Make sure the “Hex” matching is selected not ASCII. Find the iTunes Library IDs you found from both the primary and secondary computers.

- In the “Find” section, enter the iTunes Library ID of the secondary computer and, in the “Replace” section, enter the iTunes Library ID from the primary computer. There should be one match. Save the file and close.

You should now be able to sync your devices with two or more computers. Now, you will not be alerted by the annoying “Erase Your Data” prompt from iTunes.

You might need to reboot your router to see a website

If a website you visit regularly no longer loads then rebooting your router can solve the problem. This forces the router to flush it's cache and find the website at it's current address and not from an address it's remembered using previously.

Windows 7 - printing to a shared printer on an XP PC

Assume the computers are call XPMACHINE and W7MACHINE.

1) Ensure Printer on XP machine is shared - assume it's called SHAREDPRINTER.

2) On the Network Browsing on your Windows 7 machine ensure you can "See" the Printer share.

Now on the Windows 7 machine do the following (doesn't matter if it's x86 or x64).

3) Control Panel==> add LOCAL (Yes LOCAL) printer. I know it's on a Network but hold your horses -- what we are actually doing is fooling the Windows 7 machine into thinking it's running the printer.

4) Create NEW port==>Local port

5) Portname is \\XPMACHINE\SHAREDPRINTER

6) Now Windows 7 will load a driver and you'll be able to print on the XP machine

Rename Multiple Files at Once

Once all the files you want to rename are highlighted, press F2, or right-click on one of the files and select Rename. All of your file selections will disappear except for one, but don't panic: Type in your new name and click Enter. That's it! One file will be now be named "renametext" and the others will have sequential numbers in the format of "renametext (1)" and "renametext (2)" and so on

Gmail - Save Attachments to the Desktop via Drag-and-Drop

Saving dozens of e-mail file attachments to your computer just became a whole lot easier.

Google has added a new feature to Gmail: the ability to save file attachments by simply dragging-and-dropping them onto the desktop. If you hover over the file icon or the “Download” link for any attachment, you’ll notice the new text prompting you to drag the file to your desktop to save.

It’s really as simple as it sounds. There is one caveat to saving file attachments via drag-and-drop, though: The feature is only available in Google Chrome.

Google has been adding more drag-and-drop functionality to Gmail in recent months. Back in April, Google launched the ability to add attachments to e-mails via drag-and-drop. In May, Google gave Gmail users the ability to add images to e-mails via drag-an-drop.

Outlook Sorting contacts and messages by multiple criteria

It’s a trivial task to sort your Outlook contacts: simply display them in List view and click any of the column headers. So, to sort by category, click the Category column header; to sort by name, click the Full Name column header.

It’s an equally trivial task to sort your contacts by multiple criteria. Trivial, but not obvious.

You perform the first sort as usual, by clicking the column header; you then perform the second sort by holding down the Shift key while clicking another column header.

For example, to sort your contacts by category and then by name first click the Category column header and then hold down the Shift key and click the Full Name column header.

You can sort by up to four columns using this shift-click method. You can also use the same technique to sort your email messages.
Finding phone-less, email-less contacts

I sometimes find it useful to sift out any contacts in my list who have no phone number and no email address. To do that, I click Business Phone, then shift-click Home Phone, shift-click Mobile Phone and shift-click E-mail. This lets me see at a glance any contacts who have no information in any of these fields.

Note that you may need to double-check fields such as E-mail 2, Business Phone 2, Assistant’s Phone and so on if you’re checking to see whether you have no phone or email info whatsoever for a particular person. You can do that either by double-clicking the contact and checking out their details or by adding those columns to the List view and sorting on those fields. To add a column to the List view:

• Right-click any of the column headers and select Field Chooser from the context menu.
• In the Field Chooser, use the drop-down menu at the top to select the type of fields you want to add – E-mail Fields, Phone Fields and so on.
• Select the specific field you want to add and click-and-drag it alongside any of the existing columns in your contacts list.
• Repeat the process for additional fields, then close the field chooser.
• To delete a column for the contacts list, right-click the column header and choose Remove This Column from the context menu.

[Note: These instructions are for Outlook 2010. The process is similar for Outlook 2007 and  2003.]


Combining sorting and categories

Because of the 4-column limit on sorting, if I need to sort by additional columns, I’ll usually sort by the first four and then categorise all the matching contacts. I can then do a simple sort on the category column and use the shift-click method to add deeper levels of sorting.

For example, say I want to find all those contacts who have no e-mail, e-mail 2 or e-mail 3 address and no business phone, mobile phone or home phone listed. I can do this 6-level sort in this way:

• Click the E-mail header to sort by that column.
• Shift-click E-mail 2 and E-mail 3.
• Select all the matching contacts (click the first matching contact, scroll to the last matching contact and shift-click it).
• Right-click in the Category column and select All Categories from the context menu.
• Click the New button to create a new category called No Email, then click OK twice to close the dialog boxes and apply the category to the selected records. (In fact, I have a special ‘Temp’ category set up that I use for this sort of on-the-fly categorising: I apply it whenever I need it, then remove it once I’ve finished the task at hand.)
• Now, click the Category column header to perform a new sort based on that column alone.
• Shift-click Business Phone, Mobile Phone and Home Phone to apply the deeper sort levels.