Eddie and the iPhone…

My friend and fellow technophile, Eddie, has a fantastic post over on his blog, Practically Efficient.

His feelings pretty much sum up my own. Apple has done some amazing things for mobile technology, but for me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to jump full-on into the Apple ecosystem.

Check out this fantastic post in full.

TQT: New Fonts…

The internet can be a scary place. The most terrifying thing you can do is type the word “free” into Google. An excellent example is if you want a few font on your computer and you end up searching for “free fonts”. There is an excellent chance that if you proceeded to the resulting links, you would probably end up with at least one virus on your computer.

Last week, I needed a cool font for a project I’ve been working on, so I did some research for a great place to get fonts that wouldn’t damage my computer. Here’s what I found: dafont.com.

From dafont.com, you can easily search for free fonts, fonts that require a donation to use, or even demo fonts that you can purchase. The search can also filter for styles (gothic, fancy), effects (distorted, metallic), or even dingbats which are just symbols and pictures. I ended up finding exactly what I wanted: an old-school typewriter font.

What do you think of the results?

I also want to include a little warning. If you end up downloading new fonts and using them in a shared document, the person you’re sharing with may not be able to view the font unless they have it install. However, they will be able to see it if the document is first printed as a PDF or saved as a picture, like mine above is. Otherwise, you will have to “embed” the font in the document (check out this article for more info).

If you do find a font you like, it is simple to install and every page on dafont.com give instructions that look like this:

• Windows 7/Vista: Right-click on the font files > “Install”
• Windows XP: Put the font files into C:\Windows\Fonts
• Mac OS X: Double-click the font file > “Install font” button.

Let me know if you find any great fonts out there as I’d love to have some other great fonts to use on various projects I work on from time to time. Also, if you have a go-to site for fonts, stock images, or other design elements, feel free to share with the other readers.

iPad: Here and Back…

About a week and a half ago, I stood in line for about an hour and a half waiting for an iPad at the local Apple Store. I brought it home and Mrs. Digitante was very excited, as was I.

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out and I’m going to share with you why. First though, let me tell you that this is my opinion of why it didn’t work for ME. However, it may fit your needs great and I already know of a number of people who have an iPad and love it and are spending many hundreds of dollars buying apps and accessories for it.

The Pros:

• The screen is amazing. You really haven’t ever seen a screen that is this crisp and pleasant to look at.
• It is super fast. Granted it can only run one application at a time, but I never had to wait for anything other than webpages to load.
• Simplicity is the name of the game. One button on the device, little icons on the screen, and minimal options to change are all Apple hallmarks. There really isn’t much thinking or learning involved.

The Cons:

• Lack of Flash video. Honestly, I didn’t think this would be a huge deal, but the problem is that it ruined my flow of work. I enjoyed reading Twitter on the iPad, but during a reading session, I would come across at least one or two videos that I wanted to watch, but wasn’t allowed to. This means that I had to mark the tweet as a favorite, get on my laptop later, and then watch the video. It just wasn’t convenient.
• Basic staples such as a file system are missing. I purchased an eBook in pdf format on my laptop and put it in my Dropbox because I knew there was a Dropbox app for the iPad. I was sorely disappointed when I found that I couldn’t just save the pdf to my iPad and open it with the default pdf program. Instead, I had to purchase an app that would allow me to access the files in my Dropbox app and open it in the pdf reading app. I only knew this because I know other techies that have had to do this. Otherwise, I would have been stuck. For all the simplicity Apple loves, this simple task was really complicated.
• The iPad costs $500. Over the last week and a half, I’ve tried to come up with $500 worth of usage scenarios and I just can’t do it. If this thing was $300, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about buying it, but $500 really makes me hesitate.

So after a couple of days of both me and Mrs. Digitante playing with it, I asked her what she thought. We were on exactly opposite ends of the spectrum but came to the same conclusion: it was more than she needed and it was less than I wanted so we decided to eat the $50 restocking fee and return it.

When I say “it was more than she needed” she was looking for an eReader like the Kindle. Having all the apps and other features weren’t appealing to her and really over complicated it for her. When I say “it was less than I wanted” I wanted to be able to pick up a device and have it do everything I required. Type a reply to a  Wordpress forum post? Nope, no text boxes were editable. Watch video linked in Twitter? Nope, sorry, Flash doesn’t work. Install any number of applications that I wanted? Nope, only what Apple approves through the App Store using their clandestine and inconsistent rules.

Will I miss it? Most likely not. It’s been sitting in our bedroom, unused, for the last three days. Normally I get all giddy and can’t put gadgets down, but this thing turned old hat very quick.

Did you buy an iPad? What was your opinion? Let me know what you think of the iPad, even if you don’t have one.

TQT: iPod charging…

Since Tuesday came and went without a post (actually, this entire week came and went without a post), I figured I’d try and squeeze in a Thursday Quick Tip. Let’s just say you are lucky there are two days that begin with the letter T.

Tonight’s tip refers to charging an iPod, but this advice is equally applicable to many of your electronic devices, especially your phone. The USB port on your computer can not only be used to transfer data to your mobile device, but it can also be used to charge your mobile device.

When I’m traveling, I like to do everything I can to not have to check a bag. This inevitably leads to me cutting back on as much stuff as possible. To do that, I generally take a USB cord and simply plug my cell phone or iPod into the USB port of my computer to charge. This saves me from having to take a cord with a big bulky plug with me.

Additionally, there has been a movement in the last year or so to standardize the charging ports for cellphones and other devices to use a connector called micro-USB. The beautiful thing about that is instead of taking a cord for your cellphone, a cord for your camera, a cord for your wife’s phone, etc, you will be able to just bring one cord and charge all your devices. Convenient!

Got your own tips on how to charge various devices or how to pack lighter for a trip? Let me know in the comments!

SyncBack: Synchronize and Backup…

I’ve covered a number of posts about backing up your information (Twitter/Facebook/Gmail with Backupify and documents/spreadsheets with Dropbox), but I haven’t really touched on how to protect yourself from a catastrophic failure of your computer.

In a tweet by Eddie, a frequent commenter here, he posted another lecture on backing up your data, by Merlin Mann. A quote from that article says:

Assume that [your hard drives] are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last.

While in his article he talks about a schedule for backing things up, I am going to give you a tool that will help you get things backed up in a simple, quick, and scheduled fashion.

If you have important documents and want a completely automated system for backing them up for a cost of $250 (which includes setup, external hard drive, and USB thumbdrive), you can skip the rest of the article and instead contact me from the About The Digitante page.

First of all, you are going to need a place to put everything and placing all your important info on the same hard drive that it is on right now is a terrible idea. If your hard drive crashes, everything is gone, including both copies of your Barbie doll database you’ve been working so feverishly on compiling. What you need is to invest a few dollars, in an external hard drive (this Seagate can be had at less than $80).

Once you’ve hooked that up, you need to get a program called SyncBack Free (a paid version is also available, but probably unnecessary for our needs). You end up downloading a .zip file which you will have to extract. You can extract it wherever you like, but keep track of where it goes. Extracting it to your desktop is probably the best place for it.

Double click the file you extracted to start the installation. You can pretty much click your way through the Next > buttons. After you finish installing you are going need to set up a profile so answer ‘Yes’ to the dialog that pops up. Then we need to choose between the type of set up we want: Backup or synchronization.

Here are some usage cases for each of the options above:

• Backup – Used to keep a copy of a file or files elsewhere for safekeeping. These should be kept on a separate disk and should also be stored away in a safe place such as a safe deposit box.
• Synchronization – Used for organizational purposes such as making sure your music or picture files are the same in two different folders. If changes are made in one place (adding new photos on your living room computer), then changes are copied in the second location (a folder on your laptop).

We are going to choose Backup. The default settings should be fine, but you can certainly tweak them on the Advanced tab if you like. The only thing we need to add is the source and destination directories.

The source directory is going to be all the information that needs to be transferred. To backup 99.99% of the information you will need in the future, you can try backing up the directory ‘C:\Users\USERNAME’ where USERNAME is the name you use to sign on to your computer.

The destination directory is going to be a folder on your external hard drive. You can just call it Backup if you like so it will look like ‘X:\Backup’.

After this is complete you will see a plain English description of what will take place when you run the profile you just created. Mine says:

Next, you can do a test run which does not copy anything, but does generate a report telling what copied successfully and what failed to copy. This is optional if you know what is going to be copied.

Be sure to schedule the backup to run on a regular basis, say once a week or so.

The only thing left to do is run the job. It may take awhile, depending on how much information you have to copy. Be sure to review the report briefly after the job has completed running error-free.

Congratulations! You just backed up your data. Be sure to take Merlin Mann’s suggest and do complete backups on multiple hard drives and keep one at home, one at work, and one elsewhere. Additionally, keep your absolute must-have documents encrypted on a USB thumbdrive. If you have gotten this far, you are truly a pro!

Tuesday Quick Tips: Middle Click…

If you’ve ever used a mouse, you pretty quickly notice there is a left mouse button which you can use to click, double click, and hold down to drag things around. The right button brings up a little menu called the context menu that has commands that you can use to perform available actions such as copy and paste, create a new folder, and look at the properties of various items. Finally, there is a scroll wheel that allows you to, well, scroll around on web pages and documents.

What you may not realize is that the scroll wheel also has the ability to click! You may have to investigate what it does in various circumstances, but here are a couple things for you to try out:

1. When browsing the web, click the scroll wheel on a link. You will notice that link opens in a separate tab or window in the background leaving your current page available to continue using. Most of the links on my site will open in a separate tab or window, however, they open immediately, taking you away from whatever you were reading. This is especially helpful for things like Friday Night Links. Try scroll wheel clicking each link, then you can go read them after you’ve read all my commentary!
2. Open up a PDF document (try it on a Form 1040 in honor of tax season). If you scroll wheel click on the PDF, you will see a circle with some arrows pop up. If you move the mouse, it will pan around the PDF. It makes for nice fluid navigation of PDF documents.

Now that you are armed with these tips, try scroll wheel clicking in other programs. Let me know if you find any other secret middle clicking secrets in the comments!

Portable Apps…

Last week I talked about using someone else’s computer and the traces it can leave behind. Furthermore, sometimes you aren’t allowed to install programs on the computer you are using such as when you go to the library or if you are in a corporate environment.

However, there are applications out there that can be installed onto and used directly from a USB flash drive. Probably the first thing you would want on a USB flash drive would be a  web browser. By carrying a web browser, you can use a secure browser, such as Firefox, and be sure it is up-to-date and can even bring your setting along for the ride.

If you are interested a USB flash drive pre-loaded with about 30 portable apps ranging from a PDF reader to an office suite, contact me from the About The Digitante page and for $25, I’ll send one to you, all loaded up and ready to go. If you have specific requests for programs you would like to see on your USB flash drive, we can make arrangements for that as well.

In the past, you’ve heard me ramble on and on about Mozilla Firefox. As a reminder, Firefox is an excellent replacement for Internet Explorer, a much maligned browser amongst savvy internet users. Firefox is fast and stable when compared to Internet Explorer and a few days of using it will turn you into a Firefox convert.

While using Firefox at home is great, sometimes you end up at other computers with no Firefox and hence, none of your settings or information.

By installing Portable Firefox to a USB flash drive, all those settings and all that information comes with you. Installing couldn’t be easier either. Just download the files from Portable Apps, begin the install, and select your USB flash drive.

Once you’ve installed it, you can head on over to the directory in which you installed it; in my case, I headed to E:/FirefoxPortable.

Once there, I was sure to read the help file since using a portable app isn’t exactly like using a desktop app. Once I familiarized myself with the help file, I simply double clicked on the PortableFirefox.exe and launched the browser.

Its as simple as that. If you want to get a little more complex, the help file also gives you some tweaks that will allow you to import the settings from your regular Firefox as well as enable most addons, plugins (eg Flash), and helper apps (eg a PDF reader).

A final note: while using portable applications on a USB flash drive is super convenient, it can also be super hazardous. PortableApps.com has also provided a safety guide so you can protect yourself, especially if you use your drive with an unknown computer that may already be chock full of viruses. With a little caution, you can avoid bringing all those viruses to your home computer.

Aside from Portable Firefox, do you use any portable apps that you would like to see covered here? Did you even know such things as portable apps existed? Let me know in the comments!

Recuva…

Ladies and gentlemen: A quick reminder to fill out the survey if you haven’t already. If you leave your email address, you will be in the running for one of three $10 Amazon giftcards. And I’ve decided to up the ante: if 50 separate people (no cheating by filling it out multiple times) fill out the survey by 11:59 pm on Friday, I’ll toss in a 4th card valued at $25. Be sure to get your friends to fill out the survey. To share the survey, just pass along this link: http://thedig.in/survey

Occasionally there are things in this world that do something amazing but you have to ask yourself, “Where the heck did they come up with that name?” For me, that one was Recuva. I couldn’t stop pronouncing it re-curve-ah. I didn’t know what it stood for, but then it dawned on me: Recover. Recova’. Recuva. Ahh, I get it now.

But really, that’s neither here nor there. What IS here and there is the fact that Recuva will find and recover files that you have deleted. Let’s talk about how it works first.

Delete? Not quite.

In real life, if you wanted to get rid of information, you can toss it in your trashcan and take it back out if you find that you shouldn’t have thrown it away. On you computer you can do the same thing by throwing files in the recycle bin on your PC. At any time, you can restore things in the recycle bin to the original location.

In real life, if you empty your trashcan into the dumpster out back, you could still get your information back, but it might be incomplete and you would most likely need some special equipment to get it back (rubber gloves, a gas mask, some boots). On your PC, you would need to get Recuva. Although you can’t see any records of your file being there any longer, it is actually still there and will be until that area of your hard disk drive gets over-written.

Recovering? Maybe.

As I said, the information, although not showing up, is still there, but you need a little luck and a little skill to be able to recover it. Some things that will help you be lucky are:

• A large hard drive – having lots of space to write new information means the location of the deleted file is less likely to be over-written.
• Infrequent programs – if you information is in an area used by a program that doesn’t write many files, you will be better off.

If you can manage to have these two things in your favor, Recuva may be able to help you out.

Simple to attempt? Definitely.

Head over to the site and download Recuva. Once again, it is free, but if you use it and recover some files. Please show your gratitude by donating to those who put the time and effort into making such a great program. If you aren’t a fan of the Yahoo! toolbar, be sure to uncheck that box during install.

For most uses, Recuva includes an easy to use wizard that should recover most of the boneheaded deletions that most of us make on a day-to-day basis (mp3s, pictures) as well as the gut-wrenching accidental loss of documents after a crash of Microsoft Office or the formatting of a camera memory card.

The types of files are very well explained in the wizard:

In the next step, you are asked for a location. The main thing this will do is speed up the search and exclude files from areas of your computer that you know you don’t want to look.

The last thing you need to do is determine if you want to do a deep scan or not. It will take longer, but it will also piece together information that may otherwise go unnoticed if you do a regular scan. I would recommend a simple scan followed by the deep scan if you don’t first run through.

Now all that’s left is to see if your files are found.

The scan I ran took less than a minute, but I would imagine deep scan could take many hours. It may also depend on the size of your hard drive and the type of file you are searching for (numerous small files will take longer to scan than few large files).

The standard information given is a preview of the file plus the file name. You may notice the ‘Switch to advanced mode’ button near the top right corner.

When you click it, you are presented with a list view as well as green, yellow, and red circles. These circles are an indicator of recoverability. You can find more information on the to the right side of the window.

From this screen, you can also permanently and securely delete any files which you don’t ever want anyone to be able to recover in the future by right clicking on them. This would be very helpful if you are getting rid of your computer and you have tax documents or other personal data that you would prefer didn’t get passed around.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever accidentally deleted? Ever felt sick to your stomach when all your vacation photos vanished into thin air? Let me know in the comments.

Tuesday Quick Tip: Keyboard Cleaning…

I’m embarrassed to say this, but tonight’s keyboard cleaning tips took me years and years to figure out, yet it’s ridiculously easy to do. I should have figured this out long, long ago.

The first part is cleaning crumbs out from the inside. The automatic first move here is to grab a can of compressed air, but that would be the wrong move. Next thing you know, you are going to have everything from dust bunnies to chunks of old sandwich flying straight out of the keyboard and all over your work area. A better solution is to grab one end of the keyboard and lift it so it is vertically on its side. Then you lightly tap it on the table or desk. All the dust and dirt should tumble in to a nice little pile. You can then brush it straight into a trashcan.

The second task is wiping down the keys. Eventually, the grub from your finger tips begins to stack up. If your try to just wipe down keyboard between projects, you are going to end up with either with loud beeping as too many buttons are pushed at once or you will accidentally delete that novel you have been writing since the fifth grade. I’m sure all 15 pages will be missed.

Make things easier on yourself by first shutting down your computer THEN you can scrub away. This goes the same for most computer cleaning chores: cleaning fans and vents, cleaning mice and keyboards, and wiping down the case itself.

Got any other tips for cleaning up your keyboard or your computer in general? Toss them in the comments.

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware…

As you can tell, I’ve been on an anti-virus and anti-malware kick recently. This is mostly due to the fact that I’ve seen a flare up in the amount of people having issues with it.

As a result, I’m going to share another tool that I’ve used to clean up computers: MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (aka MBAM). It is a simple program that will help your computer get back on the road to recovery.

Install it

First of all, click here to download MBAM. Once you have it downloaded, install away. It should be pretty straight-forward. As you finish installing, it updates to the latest version and then leads straight to the scanning page.

As you can see, there are two modes. Quick scan searches for the most common issues and will catch most of the big stuff. This is recommended if you scan on a regular basis and haven’t been having any issues with your computer.

If you have had issues or you’ve never scanned for viruses, you may want to do the full scan to be sure everything is checked out. The full scan is going to take significantly longer than the quick scan, obviously.

After the scan is complete, you have two options:

1. If you had no malware detected, you are home free and can go on with your life.
2. If you had some malware, I would recommend looking through the list and making sure there wasn’t anything in there that you may need later such as your favorite mp3 album or a picture of your mother. Getting the wrong files like this is rare, but worth quickly checking out since getting rid of the wrong file could be a terrible thing. Typing the

I performed a full scan which took just under one hour and scannned 300,000 objects. A quick scan took just under 3 minutes and scanned around 100,000 objects, so you can see there is a significant difference. Of course the actual amount of time to perform the scan will vary based on how many objects there are to scan on your computer.

Once scanning has completed, you are prompted to remove the offending files. You can do this after you’ve checked them out as mentioned above.

Other stuff

Most of the other tabs in MBAM are easily ignored and don’t provide much additional value. One item that might help though is on the More Tools tab and it is the FileASSASSIN tool.

FileASSASSIN allows you to remove otherwise undeleteable files. Occasionally when attempting to delete a file, you will get a dialog that says something to the effect of “Windows is unable to delete the file as it is being used by a separate process.” If you are sure you want to delete it, you can use FileASSASSIN to remove it.

If you ALREADY have an infection and cannot download or run MBAM, remember that you may need to press the F8 key repeatedly before Windows start up so you can go into Safe Mode with Networking, allowing Windows to boot without loading the malware.

Any other programs you use that I should check out for preventing malware, spyware, or viruses? Had any issues using programs like this?