What in the world is on my hard drive?

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

I might be in the minority here but I have a problem with never deleting things I save to my hard drive.

That eventually causes a problem when the hard drive becomes full. Then I’m forced to delete or move some of the files.

My favorite program for evaluating my situation is called WinDirStat.

This program gives you a visual representation of your hard drive.

Run the program and first it tells you how full the hard drive is. Then you choose to run it on one or all drives.

Click OK and you will then see a window with little pac-mans scanning the computer.

It took about 40 minutes to finish scanning my computer. Then I got the following results.
Double click it to see the full picture.

From here I found that 38% of my data are avi files, 15.9% are CFA files, 12.8% are mp3, and 2.5% are iso files. I also have 3.5 GB in the recycle bin.

So from here I can see that media files dominate my hard drive. These are files that I can bury to a dvd or simply delete them if I don’t watch or listen to them anymore. The same goes for the iso files. I have no reason to leave them on my computer.

Using this program helped me clean up about 20 GB of space on my hard drive.

Even if you aren’t having space problems with your hard drive this program will help you better understand how it is being utilized and it just looks cool.

Ways to use a whiteboard

Friday, May 30th, 2008

From Web Worker Daily

The traditional whiteboard isn’t exactly a hip Web 2.0 app, but it has many uses for the web worker. If you already have one or you’re thinking of getting one, consider the following roles it can handle when it comes to your work and life:

Daily task list. If you prefer to do your task management the analog way, you might find the whiteboard to be a very effective task list – assuming it’s visible from your work station. Having a private task list makes it easier for you to switch your schedule around and procrastinate, but if your task list is on a whiteboard and out in the open for everyone to see, it might be more embarrassing for you to leave some things undone.

Pending area. Some whiteboards are magnetic. If you have a magnetic whiteboard, you can attach your “pending” items to it. These pending items are the paperwork, receipts, letters, faxes, etc. that you receive but don’t know where to file yet. This keeps the clutter off your desk while keeping it in an area you can easily access.

Message board. Face it – the other people living in your house aren’t as web savvy as you are. Sending them a short note via Twitter just won’t work. In this case, you can use a whiteboard to write little reminders and notes to your family. When a friend lived with me, she’d use a small section of my whiteboard to say where she went and what time she’ll be back.

It’s also handy to use a whiteboard as an ongoing grocery list that everyone can contribute to, and anyone who happens to see it can pick up the listed items and erase the list.

Calendar. You can draw a calendar template on your whiteboard in permanent ink and just fill out the dates and days each month. It’s not as feature-rich as your Google or Outlook calendars, but like the messageboard, it’s a good way to share your schedule with your more analog-inclined housemates.

Also, not all web workers are comfortable with digital calendars. So if you find that you prefer to use pen and a planner for note-taking and and scheduling, then you might find a whiteboard calendar useful.

For bloggers, you can also include your editorial calendar on your whiteboard to remind yourself of your blog’s regular feature articles.

Brainstorming. If you prefer brainstorming using a tactile medium, you can opt for the whiteboard instead of your mind-mapping software. For the draft, at least. Designers might also find a whiteboard handy when making quick sketches or studies. It’s not going to be as wasteful as using all that paper. Personally, I’m often intimidated by the idea of drawing directly on blank paper when I’m starting a design project, but it becomes less daunting when I already lay out the basic elements on a whiteboard and move on from there.

If you’re brainstorming with another person face-to-face, a whiteboard can work much better than software – because you’re both equally familiar with the tools and the brainstorming isn’t constantly interrupted by technical errors and questions such as “What button do I press now?”

Inspiration area. If you like receiving a dose of inspiration throughout your workday, you can use your whiteboard as your source of inspiration. You can write down motivational quotes (in my case, it’s “Stop looking at this and get to work!”) or attach photos that interest you.

Contact number list. My whiteboard contains a section of emergency numbers, as well as the mobile phone numbers of everyone living in my house. That way, we don’t need to waste time going through an address book (digital or otherwise) during emergencies.

Presentations. If you need to create a video presentation for your vlog but don’t have the time or skills to make a tight PowerPoint slideshow, making the presentation via a whiteboard could work if you’re a good enough presenter. After all, it works for SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Fridays.

You don’t have to limit these kinds of presentations to vlogs. You might also need to make a quick presentation or video proposal for an overseas client, or to demonstrate a point during a video conference.

If your whiteboard is big enough, you can use it to fulfill all the functions listed above. As web workers, we often laugh and mock old school tools like the fax machine, the Rolodex, and the whiteboard. But if we look hard enough, we can often find that there are more ways to use them than we originally thought.

Track your mood through Twitter

Monday, May 26th, 2008

HighxLow.com tracks your mood through twitter

Once upon a time my Dr told me to track my moods and give him a report. He gave me a paper chart to track them but of course I didn’t do it. After all it seemed to be such an inconvenience. Now for those of us who use twitter we have the perfect solution.

First you must have a twitter account obviously.

Then to track your mood, which they refer to as biorhythms, you send messages to one of three options.

Send a message to @highiam if you are happy. Example @highiam I am happy

If you are unhappy send a message to @lowiam

If you want to encourage someone you can do so by typing @cheeron @theirtwittername then your encouraging message

To see a chart of your history go to http://highxlow.com/yourtwittername

The picture was too big to post so follow this link to see my chart http://www.highxlow.com/MelRidger

The only problem I have with this application is that it takes several minutes for it to show up in highxlow. Other than that it looks like another great new twitter application.

Finding pictures for your blog

Monday, May 26th, 2008

From: http://www.makeuseof.com

Be it your desktop, a post to your blog or your homepage banner, the right image can help bring your point across, make it stand out and shine or simply look very cool.

What does royalty free mean in the first place?

Simply put, you don’t have to pay royalties or license fees for using the material. It doesn’t necessarily mean the material is completely free, in most cases you will still need to pay a small initial fee to obtain the image, icon or sound. Then however, you can use it in any way the end user license agreement allows you to, meaning no further license fees will have to be paid.

In this post I will share with you some great resources for royalty free photos, which are free to use for non-commercial work.

I was a little surprised at first to find that Flickr is one of the best sources for royalty free photos. Without doubt, Flickr has one of the greatest and constantly growing collections of individual, unusual and beautiful images. Now, you can’t just use any photo found on Flickr. If you want to stay within legal boundaries, start right here at Flickr’s Creative Commons page and pick the license agreement that suits you best. With The Attribution-Non Commercial License for example, there are almost 10 million photos to pick from. Click on “See More”, then go ahead and use the search as usual. It might be helpful to select “Most interesting” instead of “Most relevant” in order to see only the most popular images. It’s important to note that all Flickr photos must be credited, indicated by the BY: sign in the license.
Now that I think about it, it’s quite logic that Flickr would be your number one stop for photos, but from the legal point of view, I didn’t expect it to be so well organized in the first place. And at this point I need to give credit to Skellie from skelliewag for a wonderful article on Flickr Images.

My personal favorite is stock.xchng. I’ve been using this site for around two years and find it very convenient. To get your hands on any of their images, you have to sign up, but in this case it’s worth it. Most images come with “standard restrictions”, indicating the site’s image license agreement. Some users may wish to be credited or notified when their work is being published, some want to be asked before you use their images.

Stock.xchng offers a few extras. Members can upload and share their own material, rate and comment on photos, and send other users private notes through their profile. Favorites are organized in so-called lightboxes, which can be made public. Members can also contribute image related tutorials and there is quite an impressive collection to browse. As a member you can submit posts to the community blog, which in fact is an aggregate of individual user blogs. You see, there is a lot to be discovered on stock.xchng.

Everystockphoto is a search engine for license-specific photos. It crawls many of the popular stock image sites, making it easy to search many sources at once. Since this is only a search engine, the images are not stored on their servers, and some sources, such as stock.xchng, require you to set up an account before being able to download anything. Also, be sure to check the site specific terms of usage. What’s cool is the everystockphoto Firefox Search Plug-in (found under Tools) with which you’ll have free stock photos right at your fingertips.

Use Corn Meal to keep weeds away

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

From lifehacker.com

weed_cropped.jpg Gardening

Keep Weeds from Sprouting with Corn Meal

Spring brings with it eager thoughts of planting for gardeners, along with ominous thoughts of keeping weeds at bay. If you’re planning on using pre-potted plants or want to protect an entire area from the ever-growing menace, try corn meal, according to the This Garden is Illegal blog:

Corn Gluten is a pre-emergent, which is a fancy way of saying that is it is a seed birth-control. Corn meal scattered around an area will keep any seed in that area from growing into a plant. This means a weed seed or a desirable seed. This method is a good option for areas that you plan on planting grown plants in.

Hit the link for six more ways to kill unwanted growth in your garden, and share your own weed-stomping tips in the comments. Photo by Cyrstl.

Live search cashback offers

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

Live Search Cashback Offers Discounts for Searching

windows-live-cashback.png
Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback program is a product search engine that provides—you guessed it—cash back for searching for products through their site. As Salon’s Machinist points out, the cash back initiative may seem desperate, but considering that Live Search Cashback is also a better product search, it becomes less desperate and much more appealing. For example, Live Search factors in additional charges, including shipping—details missing from Google’s Product Search
From lifehacker.com

Convert to PDF online – PrimoOnline

Monday, May 19th, 2008

PrimoPDF and many other free applications are available to convert your files to PDFs. These however must be installed on your computer. What if you are at someone else’s computer or even a public computer. That option is not available to you.

Here is where PrimoOnline comes in. It is a website that will convert over 300 file types to PDFs.

All you need to do is type in an email address, browse to your file, and click create PDF.

It will then send you an email with the PDF as an attachment.

Below you can see where I opened the PDF. Upon further inspection I confirmed that it was a perfect conversion.

Turn a Hallmark Music Card into a Cereal Box Speaker

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

From LifeHacker

Turn a Hallmark Music Card into a Cereal Box Speaker

cereal_speaker.jpg
Instructables poster Justin Seiter didn’t let a slightly cheesey but expensive Hallmark card with audio go to waste. Using a glue gun, a junky set of old headphones, electrical tape, a utility knife and a mini-cereal box, he created a speaker for his iPod (or any stereo-jack-accepting device). It might not power your home theater, but it gets stereo sound from the headphone wires and might make for a geek-pride spare speaker in a bedroom or bathroom. Hit the link for full instructions on piecing your childhood breakfast favorites and throwaway electronics into modern audio accessories.

iTweet iPhone twitter client

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

Right now my favorite twitter client for the iPhone is http:\\itweet.net

It has a slick user interface with big buttons, many options, and the colors are red on black.
Some people might not like the color combination but I like them a lot.
Open the browser on your iPhone and go to http:\\itweet.net
Now click the login button to bring up the login prompt. This screen also has a search field at the top.

Click the post button and type in your update.

Now click the refresh button and your post will appear.

When you click the menu button you can see that itweet has many different options.

My favorite option is how you can see the name and buddy icon of those you are following or who are following you.

Wakeup/Reminder calls Braincast

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Braincast can also be used for wake up calls and reminders. First you need a Braincast account.

Then call the 1800 number they give you to record your message.

Find your message and click the calendar icon. Now add a reminder with the date, time, and phone number.

braincast.viatalk.com/