170 Spoons

eNewsletter six - Clocks, Wet Cellphones, and DVRs

If you are thinking, “Hey, I didn’t get the 170spoons.com eNewsletter last week. What happened?”

To you I say, “Oops. Sorry.”

My plan is to be able to send these eNewsletters on the weekends, hopefully every week. But sometimes I won’t be able to do it weekly. This week I’m making up for it highlighting four spoons since the last eNewsletter.

Know Your Time - And Theirs Too
It is important to know what time it is not just where you live but where others live if you are wanting to communicate with them. So I shared with you several options for having clocks on your computer and how to find out what time it is in other time zones.

How to Dry a Wet Cellphone or iPod
I hope you’ll never be in the situation where your iPod, cellphone, or any other electronic gets wet. However, it is always possible that you might get it wet or even soaked! Don’t fret. You have a fighting chance to save it if you follow a few rules for drying it out.

Extract an Image from PDF
Simple solution for a more common situation than expected - you need an image in a PDF document. So how do you get it out? I’ll show you.

Use a DVR to Watch TV on Your Time
Okay, this one was a bit of an indulgence for me but it is a technological spoon to make your entertainment more efficient!

Thanks for hanging out with 170spoons. I really appreciate it. If you are already receiving notifications for new posts or the eNewsletter, thank you — and share it with others! If you are not being automatically notified, please subscribe in order to stay on top of things.

~ Rob Williams
170spoons.com

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Download Google Earth 4.3

WHY? It’s free and simply incredible.

Just watch this video…

Video Demo of Google Earth 4.3

Download Google Earth

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Use a DVR to Watch TV on Your Time

WHY? A DVR will change the way you watch TV forever.

Okay, that sounds like an exaggeration, but I love our Digital Video Recorder. Seriously, if you don’t have one, get one. Well, if you like TV. Here’s some of my favorite reasons why:

• Record what you want to watch and watch it when you want to watch it
• Pause what you’re watching. No more rushing back from the bathroom during commercial break
• No more commercials. If we watch a show live, we record it then start watching 15-20 minutes late to get past commercials
• Automatically record only new shows in a series - never waste time on a rerun (unless you want to)
• Keep hours of shows for as long as you want or until the DVR is full
• Automatically keep a certain number of episodes of a show (see below)
• Watch new-to-you shows you’ve not seen before
• Fast-forward through boring parts of recorded shows
• Record shows that air in the middle of the night to watch later

One of the things I like best about this is that we can record, watch, and automatically keep just a few episodes of shows. For instance, we record daily shows like Jeopardy!, Pardon the Interruption, and The Colbert Report. But for each of these we tell it to only keep 1 at a time. So if we don’t watch yesterday’s show, today the old one is replaced with the new one. I like that for these as I’m not going to take the time to catch up on old ones.

We rent a DVR from our cable company. Others buy TiVo. Up to you, but if you get a DVR, and you like TV, you’re gonna love it.

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Extract and Image from a PDF

WHY? Images are embedded in PDF documents but you may just want the image.

This was a little solution I needed to come up with last week for a friend. He had an image inside a PDF file and needed only part of the image to use in a document he was creating.

Since one can not extract an image from a PDF, and he didn’t need a very high quality image, I hit on a solution:

1. Open the PDF and make sure the view is set to 100% so the image is sized properly
2. Take a screen shot of the PDF
3. Open the screen shot image in a photo editor
4. Crop to suit your needs

Done.

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How to Dry a Wet Cellphone or iPod

WHY? If your cellphone gets wet, you actually have a chance to save it — if you do it right.

Hopefully you have never had to deal with this problem before. However many have. Just yesterday I was in a Disney park and one of the kids in a stroller spilled a bottle of water. Mom was upset because her bag was there and was concerned her mobile phone would be ruined.

Some of us live in regions that get a lot of rain. Some of us just forget and plunge right into the pool.

So how do you dry it off to try and salvage the phone? I’ve read a few tips online and so I’m going to consolidate some of what I’m seeing here.

Pre-Dry

1. Obviously the sooner you can get the phone out of the water the better.
2. Some say if the phone is wet with salt or chlorine water, to wash it in pure water first (clears out the salt and chlorine).
3. Turn it off and remove the battery if possible.

Dry

1. Pour out as much water as possible and pat it dry with a towel.
2. If you are outside, place the phone open to expose as much of it to the air as possible. Let warm air dry it.
3. If you are home, submerge the phone in uncooked rice! Yes, this will help absorb the moisture.
4. You may need to give it a day or two.
5. Do not use a hair dryer as it will blow moisture into smaller areas that may not dry out.

Hope for the Best

The truth of the matter is that your phone, iPod, or any electronic dropped in water could be a goner. But hopefully this will give you a fighting chance to recover it!

Some of my sources for this (since I’ve never had to dry an electronic) include Freidbeef’s Tech, the Washington Post, and Digital Inspiration.

Have you ever gotten your cellphone, iPod, Blackberry, whatever wet?  What happened? Did you salvage it?

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Know Your Time - And Theirs Too

WHY? The world runs in time - so know yours.

Time is of the essence. And we always want to know what time it actually is. We have clocks all around us. We have them on our mobile phones. We even put them on our wrists.

And what about when you are at your computer? Sure, there is a clock already showing on your desktop. So why not have a little fun with that clock?

Fuzzy Clock
I really like Fuzzy Clock. The concept is to use words instead of numbers to display the time. It also rounds off minutes to the nearest 5-minute word. I like it because most of the time I just need a “round-about” time. Besides, when you ask someone for the time, don’t they usually respond with a rounded off response? “It’s a quarter till six” or “half-past twelve”.

If you have a PC, you can download and install a lightweight program called, ironically enough, Fuzzy Clock. Mac users can get a fuzzy clock too.

Screensaver
My favorite screensaver is a Flip Clock from 9031.com. There are other clock screensavers, but I just love the Flip Clock.

I like having a clock as my screensaver because it just gives me another opportunity to know what time it is.

And it’s fun.

Time Around The World
What if you need to find out what time it is somewhere in the world not in your time zone? Easy. Visit the Qlock website to see a map of the world, where the sun is currently shining, and then just click on the map to see the time there. At the bottom of the page you can search for a city if you’d rather. If you’re dealing with multiple time zones on a regular basis, you might even consider downloading their desktop clocks. They are quite handy (and there is a free version - just look at the bottom of the download page).

Alarm Clock
Need an alarm clock? Try this simple online alarm clock. I’ve used it before and it’s pretty good.

Time and Date
If you really are into this stuff, then you must also check out TimeAndDate.com. They have a world clock, a customizable world clock, calendars for any year, and a world clock converter. I’m telling ya, it’s the full deal.

Extras
There’s many other ways to keep up with the time in other places. Two that I’ll mention now is an add-on for your Firefox browser called FoxClocks. The other is to add a clock using Google Gadgets.

How do you keep up with the time on your computer?

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eNewsletter five - Open Multiple Sites and Stay Safe

Good news! I believe the eNewsletter is back and working properly again!

You may find that you would rather receive a weekly email that summarizes the activity of the week. This eNewsletter summary will be delivered over the weekend and will highlight the week’s tips, tools, and tutorials. To sign up, simply provide your email in this form and verify your subscription. You may also be interested in checking the eNewsletter archive.

Among getting the eNewsletter working again, I have also officially opened a business with my wife called Orangejack LLC. We provide Internet strategy, consulting, marketing, and training. And, yes, this site is part of the training division of Orangejack LLC. So thanks for being a part of our startup company!

With everything else going on, we still were able to talk about one of my most-used tips - opening multiple websites in tabs at once. It’s one of the easiest shortcuts to start the day off with my most used websites.

The other post this week has to do with safety online again and a couple of myths. CBS News had such a great article about what it’s like interacting online, especially for kids and parents, that I wanted to quote much of it for your benefit.

Thank you again for your support of this site. I encourage you to share individual articles or the entire site with your friends or in your online networks!

~ Rob Williams
170spoons.com

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Keeping Kids Safe Online: Myths & Tips - CBS News

We’re taking a slightly different format today because I want to point you to a great article I read and quote from it heavily. It’s one that everyone should read.

Keeping Kids Safe Online: Myths & Tips, Things To Think About To Ensure Online Socializing Remains “Smart Socializing” - CBS News

MYTH: Your kids have all the answers when it comes to the use of technology.
MYTH: Internet predators typically deceive their victims by lying about their age or their gender.

Kids today live in an interactive “Web 2.0” world, where they socialize, post photographs and videos and share common experiences with friends, friends of friends and, in some cases, strangers. Millions of kids are doing it every day and the overwhelming majority of them seem to be doing just fine. But that doesn’t mean that the social-Web is a danger-free zone.

To be sure, there are predators who would harm children. That’s one reason that it’s important for kids to be cautious when communicating with people they don’t know in person, especially if the conversation starts to be about sex or physical details. Fortunately most teens are pretty careful.

Kids can and sometimes do harm other kids. Threats often come from peers kids know from school or other real world situations. Whether it’s unwanted sexual advances, harassment or what’s now called “cyber bullying,” peer to peer threats are real and can be harmful.

The fear of an adult overreacting is one of the reasons many teens give for not coming forward if they have a problem. And parents need to know that taking away a teen’s online privileges could backfire by prompting him or her to go into stealth mode by finding hidden ways to get online. If you take away a child’s online profile for a service, he or she can easily create another one or - worse-find a service that doesn’t even try to enforce basic safety rules. And if you ban teens from using a computer or attempt to filter what they can access, the young person can find another way to get online including friends’ computers or a cell phone.

Special thanks to Jake for pointing to the article.

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Open Several Sites at Once with Open All in Tabs

WHY? An easy shortcut to start the day with your most used websites.

There is a nifty little trick that I use every day when I open my browser that helps me get a good start to my day online.

If you open any bookmark folder in Firefox you will see at the bottom of the list the words “open all in tabs”. When you click it, each bookmark you have in that folder will open each in its own tab inside Firefox.

The result looks something like the following graphic making it easy to navigate from one site to another quickly and efficiently:

Important Note: No matter how many sites you currently have open when you use the “Open All in Tabs” option, all current tabs are closed and replaced by the ones in the folder.

My favorite time to use this trick is first thing in the morning. I already have a folder saved in my bookmarks with the 5 websites I want to open to start the day. For me they are:

• My Google Reader - read my web updates
• My Google Email - read my email updates
• My Google Calendar - scan my appointments for the day
• My Financial Budget - to clear any transactions from yesterday
• My Weather Report - to know how hot it’ll be today

Everyone will have their own favorite sites to put in their folder. Pick a few and give it a shot.

What are your “must start with” websites for the day?

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eNewsletter four - Gas on a Map, Safe Web

Week number 4 is on it’s way out for 170spoons.com and to date, 16 “spoons” have been shared. Did you miss any of them? You can easily find them in the archives.

This week was a little lighter but we still covered some good ground. I hope you have or will find some of these tips useful to you!

First we talked about a great and inexpensive card reader you can purchase so that you can organize and utilize all of those different memory cards you have. WHY? You’ve got several kinds of memory cards so get a light-weight, inexpensive, and good multi-card reader.

Next we talked about a great website that lets you know where to find cheap gas on an interactive map. I’ve found using a little-known feature on Google Maps to be just the thing. WHY? Have you seen gas prices lately? Find updated cheap gas near you on an interactive map.

In the middle of the week I pointed you to a video that Google and Common Sense Media put together to help you and your family stay safe online. WHY? It’s good to stay safe online. Think of the children!

By the end of the week I was in a humorous mood so instead of postig up a new tip or tutorial, I posted a funny picture about upgrading your computer’s memory. WHY? Your computer is forgetting stuff and running slow.

I hope you are finding this a useful place to come and learn and have fun. Please let me know if there are any ways I can make your experience here a better one.

Thanks for coming — and tell your friends!

~ Rob Williams
www.170spoons.com

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Upgrade Your Computer Memory

WHY? Your computer is forgetting stuff and running slow.

see more crazy cat pics

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Keep Your Web Safe for Your Family

WHY? It’s good to stay safe online. Think of the children!

Google and Common Sense Media have partnered to help keep families safe online by offering the following tips and video:

1. Keep computers in a central place
2. Know where your kids go online
3. Teach Internet Safety
4. Teach kids to communicate responsibly
5. View all content critically

YouTube - A Common Sense Approach to Internet Safety

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