With all of the hype and excitement over the iPhone 3G, it’s easy to forget the phones that have come before it and what they can do for you.
I actually spent Thursday of this week, the day before the new iPhone release, traveling on business. Due to my hectic schedule, I very rarely get out of the office, and this was the first time I had done so since getting my BlackBerry 8830 a few months ago. All I can say is that I was more than slightly amazed by all of the things I really could do from it.
Over the course of the day, I:
- Sent and received IM conversations on GTalk with no problems.
- Was able to check out some posts on Google Reader as I drove down the road (as a passenger, not while driving).
- Using Google Maps, I was able to track my location fairly accurately, even while moving down the road in a car.
It may not be as “sexy” as an iPhone, but it is a very functional piece of equipment, with a full physical QWERTY keyboard that is a heck of a lot easier to type on than an onscreen keyboard like the iPhone features. In my real-life tests of it while out on the road, with numerous issues happening back at the office, it worked with flying colors, and while I am sure the iPhone may handle things just as well, for now I am happy to stick with my BlackBerry 8830.
What is Mozilla Weave, and why is it something you need to ponder?
Weave is going to be a new addition to Firefox that allows you to synchronize your setting, bookmarks and passwords across multiple computers. This will even allow you to someday log in from an unknown computer and access all of your information, deleting all traces of your activity as soon as you log out. One other exciting feature is that it will let you end a session on one computer, and resume it on another with all of the tabs you had opened on the other.
This tool is in very early testing, and may not be suited to everyone at this point, but it is certainly something to keep your eye on it. This image below will give you some idea of what the service will do when it is completed.
As we said, this is very early in its development cycle, and if you do choose to give it a try, make sure to backup your Firefox before you install it! Until it is completed, if you still need to bckup just your bookmarks, don’t forget to check out Foxmarks.
We’ve talked about Firefox before, and how much we love it, but now comes the question of how you backup this wonderful tool.
You can backup Firefox anytime you want, but it takes several steps and can be a bit confusing. There is a tool that has been built specifically for this task, and it only takes a few easy steps that you can easily follow by using the wizard.
MozBackup is a stand alone desktop application that you open up, follow the onscreen prompts, choose if the file should be password protected or not, and you are off to a complete backup of your favorite browser.
As you can see from this screenshot of the program, you can choose just about every aspect of the program to be backed up. When ou need to restore the program due to a crash, or setting up an identical copy of Firefox on another computer, all you need to do is open the program again, choose the file and click “Restore” instead of “Backup” and it will take care of the rest.
The program works with the current version of Firefox and is essential for all heavy users of the program.
The first thing you need to do is to go to “Start” and then “My Computer”.
You will then click on your “Local Disk”, usually named “C” and locate the folder named “Documents and Settings”. You will need to double click that folder to open it up.
Once inside in “Documents and Settings”, you will need to locate the folder named “All Users” and double click on that to open it up.
The next to last folder you need to go to is “Start Menu” inside of “All Users”.
Finally, the last folder is “Programs” inside of “Start Menu”. Is it any wonder that people don’t know where this is hiding? Once you have Programs open, you move folders around just like you would for a normal file move, create new folders, delete others ad so on.
A typical example of folders I like to condense is all the various Google products. Every time you install one of their programs, they seem to feel that means you need another folder in your start menu. So I like to create a folder names “Google”, and then move things like Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Talk and so on inside of that folder, causing them to take up much less room in your Start menu.
While this may sound like general house keeping, it is, but it is well worth taking an hour of your time every so often just to organize your folders for your own sanity.
Even though Windows Vista is out, there are still plenty of people using Windows XP. One thing I notice when I sit down at other people’s computers is how disorganized their Start menu is.
As you install new programs, new folders get added to the Start menu, and they got placed all over the board, with no real order to them. In this first part we’re just going to show you the simpliest thing you can do which is just dragging the folders to some place else, hopefully addind some order to your programs.
The first thing you want to do is just click once on the folder you wish to move with your left mouse button. This will turn the selected item blue.
You will then click on it once more, and while holding down the left mouse button, you want to drag it to the area you want to drop it. If you are doing this properly you will see a shadow of the folder with it’s name, and a black bar will show up between folders to show you where it would end up when you release the button.
Once you’ve got the black bar where you want it, release the left mouse button and the folder will drop into that spot. All done!
In part 2 I will be covering how to condense folders.
A little while ago, I wrote up here on StarterTech about Are Extended Warranties Worth It. In general I think they aren’t but AppleCare is changing my mind.
I started this story in a post on my personal blog about AppleCare, but it seemed fitting here also. In short, I bought a slightly used iPod Touch off of a friend, and when he had bought it, he got the extended warranty with it. It turns out they transfer with the device, so when I had a recent problem with it, related to the hard drive crash we talked about, I called them up and they started taking care of me.
In short, I have never had a more pleasant product support experience. When my problem stumped the first guy, he passed me on the second tier of support, a gentleman named Rick, and he has been nothing but dilligent in trying to rectify my problems. When he was stumped, he took the issue up with engineering, and he has kept me in the loop now for over two weeks.
I know two weeks sounds horrible to solve a problem, but it is truly that baffling of a problem. All through it, Apple has been nothing short of ultimately professional and patient. I may not change my general stance on extended warranties, but with Apple, I will certainly always consider it from here on out.
USB, short for Universal Serial Bus, is an easy, and universal way of plugging devices into your computer. However, if you’re like me, you never have enough ports on your computer, so what do you do?
USB 1.0 was introduced in 1995, but was badly flawed, never quite being as “plug and play” as they claimed it would be. In 1998, version 1.1 came out, correcting some of the problems, and then in 2000, version 2.0 came out, fixing all of the problems, and skyrocketing USB to the forefront of connectivity.
Once USB finally worked as promised, just about everything started connecting to your computer through those little slots, quickly filling up what space you has. Luckily, every USB controller can handle up to 127 items plugged into it, so even if your computer has 4 to 8 ports, that is not the extent of what it can handle. By plugging a hub into one port, you can turn that one slot into 7 or 8 more slots (the most I have ever seen is 8), greatly extending how many devices you can have plugged into your computer.
As the technology has become more and more common place, everything from thumd drives, to printers and even external hard drives, are using the USB interface. On my main computer, I have 8 ports, but even that isn’t enough for someone like me, and I have two 4-port hubs plugged into the system. I even travel with a mini-hub when I am out of town on businss. You van never have enough USB ports. Instaliation couldn’t be easier, either. Plug it in to a 2.0 slot and… it works.
So what are you waiting for? Get yourself some more USB gadgets, you have the space to use them now!
I originally did not plan on making this into “Blogging Week”, but it just turned out that way. So, now as I am getting into more advanced subjects related to it, what would you like to know about? Picking a theme? How to do Search Engine Optimization? Blog promotion? Let us know! We’re probably going to take a short break from blogging for a while as this is a general technology blog, but we will be coming back to this, that I promise.
To catch up with what we did this week, here are all the pieces
You’ve set up your blog somewhere that allows advertising, so now what do you do to make money?
The first thing you do is realize that you probably won’t be making a whole lot, if any. It seems like such an easy concept to just start your blog and start having the money roll in, but it sadly isn’t that easy. You will need traffic, good content and need to make sure you don’t pick the wrong types of ads.
Affiliate Programs
Amazon.com probably runs the most well known of the affiliate programs, but there are literally thousands of them out there for just about every niche you can think of. You place an ad on your blog, and a reader clicks on it to go to the companies website, they are marked as having come from your page. If they purchase anything, you receive a varying percentage of that transaction. Some programs will even allow the customer time to think, and if they return to the site within a specified amount of time, you still earn credit for the sale.
Display Ads
These are any graphical ads on a blog. You usually will want to contact companies directly about them purchasing advertising space. This has become more popular as of late due to being steady income where as the others all rely on user interaction to generate revenue.
Inline Ads
These are those words you see in some blogs that have two lines under them, and when you have your mouse over it, an ad pops up. This is another one to stay away from as it usually turns readers off because they have to be careful where they hover their mouse on your page.
Pop-ups/Pop-unders
These are uckily dying off, but pop-ups show up right in front of you without you doing anything, and pop-unders hide behind your web browser until you close it. Both are not a good way of winning over your users, and should should be avoided.
Sponsored Reviews
This is one of those ads you want to avoid. A company will pay you write about them, and in the process, this can damage your standings with some search engines as they frown upon such intrusive advertising.
Text Ads
This is usually accomplished through Google AdSense, but there are other systems out there. These allow you to put little blocks of what look to be classified ads on your site, and you hope people click on them. When they do, you get paid varying amounts of money based on how much the advertiser has bid.
In the end, you should use whatever form of advertising makes you the happiest, but do definitely heed our warnings on the bad ones.
We talked about getting free blogging accounts, but what if you want to venture out on your own, and set up your own blog on a web host of your choosing?
There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to running a site on your own hosting account, but there is certainly a lot of freedom it gives you. As we mentioned in the free blogging post, you have a lot of limitations placed on you from the blog hosts in the sense of what themes you can use, how many images you can post, no advertising allowed on some and, worst of all, he inability to have your own domain name.
A hosting account will allow you to do all of these things we mentioned, which definitely belong in the “pros” column, but in the “cons” column comes a lot of self maintenance. When you install something like WordPress, it can usually be installed by the web hosts automatic script installers like Fantastico or SimpleScripts, but you will be responsible for making sure that you keep the software up to date as well as being responsible for your own security.
Personally, I find it a much better to run your own hosting account because it gives you so much more freedom. Of course, there is then the question of who you should pick as a host, and for that I recommend the article, “How to select a web hosting service” that I wrote another site I no longer work for. Again, it can be a lot of work, but most serious bloggers will tell you this is the best solution, especially in the long term.
With all of the hype and excitement over the iPhone 3G, it’s easy to forget the phones that have come before it and what they can do for you.
What is 
We’ve talked about 
A little while ago, I wrote up here on StarterTech about
USB, short for Universal Serial Bus, is an easy, and universal way of plugging devices into your computer. However, if you’re like me, you never have enough ports on your computer, so what do you do?
I originally did not plan on making this into “Blogging Week”, but it just turned out that way. So, now as I am getting into more advanced subjects related to it, what would you like to know about? Picking a theme? How to do Search Engine Optimization? Blog promotion? Let us know! We’re probably going to take a short break from blogging for a while as this is a general technology blog, but we will be coming back to this, that I promise.
You’ve set up your blog somewhere that allows advertising, so now what do you do to make money?
We talked about getting 
