Jocelyn Shaw: Tools and Gadgets

Filemail

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:58:46 GMT

Emailing Large Files

Sometimes you need to email a file larger than your email client allows you to send. The next time that happens give Filemail a try. It is free for files up to 2GB. Download Squad has this to say: "You can also password protect your files, and customize how many times each file can be downloaded and how many days it will be available on the site. Filemail also lets you ZIP and encrypt multiple files. And you can receive email notification when a file is downloaded."

I want to...

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:21:34 GMT

I Want To...

I found this site via The Librarian in Black Blog. It is a listing of differnet ways to do things on the web called I Want To. It lists a set of "Web 2.0 resources to help collaborate, communicate, discover, email, laugh, generate images, podcast, use multimedia, store photographs, use RSS, internet search, shop, create start pages, store information, time management, train, teach and do things with webpages and websites." Have fun with these tools!

Nifty Time Savers

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:41:48 GMT

Nifty Time Savers

There are all sorts of utilities on the web to help make your life easier. The blog Web Worker Daily has lots of posts about web tools. Their post Monday Morning Time Savers has three different tools that can help you manage your online time.

Firefox Addonsetc.

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:58:07 GMT

Firefox

Firefox is a web browser alternative to Internet Explorer. One of the neat things about Firefox is the ability to customize it with downloads and addons and other "hacks":
From Download Squad: Fight Firefox resizing with 4 simple steps
From What I learned Today: Firefox extensions for power surfing
From Web Junction: Managing Firefox Search Plugins
From the Michigan Library Consortium: MelCat Title Search Plugin for Firefox Users (Lakeland Library Cooperative will be joining MelCat in the near future)
From Download Squad: Permatabs and Favicons in Firefox
From Download Squad: Reminder Fox
From Download Squad: SearchLoad Options
From Download Squad: Zotero Firefox Bibliography Add-on
From Download Squad: 6 Handy Firefox Tweaks
From Librarian in Black: Firefox tricks

Tips from GovGab

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:19:04 GMT

Web Based Applications to make your life easier

I recently started reading a blog called Gov Gab, which is put out by staffers in the Office of Citizen Services and Communications, part of the General Services administration. It covers a lot of interesting consumer oriented topics. One of their posts dealt with Identity Theft and Credit. It goes into a lot of detail on getting your credit report and dealing with Identity Theft.

Another good post by Gov Gab was Tips for Traveling Overseas. The post had lots of links to helpful sites from entry requirements to exchange rates. If you are planning a trip overseas in the near future, check this one out.

Free Software

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:48:44 GMT

Free Software

PC magazine has a list of the 157 best free software tools. They are organized by type of software, as well as a "Hall of Fame" list of the best of the best.

Free Software

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:03:10 GMT

Free Software

Webworker Daily has a post with links to Four pit stops for free software apps. If you are looking for free applications, check it out!

20 Firefox Shortcuts

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:24:18 GMT

20 Firefox Shortcuts

From The Librarian in Black: Here's a site with 20 shortcuts for Firefox users. It has tips to helping you work more efficiently in Firefox.

Tools and Gadgets

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:52:06 GMT

Tools and Gadgets

Have you ever misplaced your cell phone in your home or office? If so, give this website a try next time: Where's My Cell Phone. Enter your cell phone number and this website will dial it and let it ring until you find it. (Found through Web Worker Daily.)

PDF To Word Converter

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:35:57 GMT

PDF to Word Converter

I found this on Download Squad. It is a free program to convert PDFs to Word documents. You can download it at Free PDF to Word Converter. According to Download Squad it is fairly easy to use.

FontEXPRO

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:53:25 GMT

Fonts

From Download Squad: "Are you constantly struggling to remember the difference between Arial, Times New Roman and Palatino Linotype? Sure, you could just keep changing fonts from the drop-down menus in your word processor, or you could use FontEXPRO, to preview all the fonts stored on your computer and choose the right one for the job.

When you first run FontEXPRO, there's a chance the main window will just be blank. We thought that navigating to the "Windows Fonts" folder would help, but it didn't. We're guessing it didn't know where to find our fonts since we run Windows XP off of the E drive, not C. But once we clicked "Select Folder" and found the font directory, up popped a list of fonts. You can then enter some text and see how it looks under each available font."

Clear Your Browser Cache

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:23:35 GMT

Clear your Browser Cache

From Download Squad: information on Clearing your browser cache, along with reasons you want to do this periodically.

Social Web site toolbar

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:10:04 GMT

Social Web Site Toolbar

Check out this Download Squad article about Mahalo, a toolbar that will submit your information to multiple social networking sites

Zoho Powerpoint Clone

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:52:51 GMT

Zoho Powerpoint Clone

From Download Squad: Online office suite Zoho has rolled out Zoho Show 2.0. Probably our favorite part of that sentence is the fact that Show and 2.0 rhyme. Try saying it out loud. Fun, isn't it? But seriously, brings much of the power of Microsoft PowerPoint to a web based application. In fact, there are some things that you can do with Zoho Show that you can't do with PowerPoint. For example, you can embed a presentation on a web site, or invite a group of people to watch a presentation live in real time while sharing comments in a chat window. A few of the updates in Zoho Show 2.0 include: * New themes * Clip Art * Zoho Meeting and Zoho Chat integration * Enhanced import feature * New user interface

Chatmaker

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:30:09 GMT

Chatmaker

From Download Squad: "Ever need to organize a group chat with a bunch of people who have never heard of IRC and can't seem to agree on a common IM client? ChatMaker makes it easy to set up a temporary web-based chatroom which you can discard when you're done. How easy? All you have to do is name your room and click the "Go" button. Seriously, that's it. There's no registration required. In fact, there's not even an option to create an account, which means that when you login to a chat room you'll have an unwieldy name like Guest 1817. But you can easily change your name using the IRC-like /nick command. You can also designate actions by typing /me, but that's about it for the IRC commands. ChatMaker also supports some basic HTML commands like for providing a hyperlink, for italics, and for bold. While ChatMaker probably isn't going to win any awards for its interface, the service could be the easiest we've ever seen for setting up a multi-user chatroom."

Keyboarding

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:16:49 GMT

Keyboarding

Typing skills are very important when using the Internet. If you want to learn to type, or just improve your skills, take a look at Keybr, an online typing tutor. Download Squad has a nice description of it.

Navigating in Firefox

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:24:27 GMT

Navigating in Firefox

If you use Firefox as your browser, check out this post from Web Worker daily about Navigating More Efficiently in Firefox.

How-to Sites

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:36:16 GMT

How-to Sites

Need to know how to do something? Check out A great big list of sites that teach you how to do stuff. (Found via the Librarian in Black blog.

Ten Mini-apps for a flash drive

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:24:35 GMT

Ten mini-apps for a Flash Drive

I read about this on Web Worker Daily, a new-to-me blog about working on the web. This post is about Mini applications that you can install on your flash drive so you always have them with you, no matter what computer you end up using.

Booktagger

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:02:03 GMT

Booktagger

Would you like to discuss books online with others? Try Booktagger. It is free to sign up. Once you are signed up, you can add books that you have read, or those you want to read, and find people who like the same books. (Found via Download Squad.)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:20:17 GMT

Keyboard Shortcuts

If you use your computer a lot, or use a laptop a lot, knowing keyboard shortcuts can be very handy. Download Squad has a nice pointer to and description of a webpage that shows shortcuts. A good page to bookmark

Tech Toys: del.icio.us

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:43:44 GMT

Tech Toys

Have you taken a look at del.icio.us yet? It is a social bookmarking site. You can sign up for a free account, and use it to keep track of your bookmarks, so they are available even when you are away from your own computer. You can "tag" the bookmarks to make them easier to find, and you can see what other people have used as tags for the same bookmarks. You can also see what other people are bookmarking. If you travel a lot, or use a lot of different computers, this could be really handy.

Open Source Software

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:53:43 GMT

Open Source Software

If you are interested in getting your feet wet with open source software, check out OSALT.COM, Open Source as Alternative. It has a listing of open source solutions for well-known commercial applications. (Found via Download Squad.)

Firefox Tweaks

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:17:43 GMT

Technology

Download Squad reports on 6 Firefox tweaks you can use to make Firefox work the way you want it to.

What Should I Read Next

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:19:34 GMT

Techie Toys

Chech out Download Squad's review of What Should I Read Next, a web service that helps you decide what to read next based on books you like.