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An analog tip for digital passwords

Sometimes the best solutions for our digital problems can be found in the analog world. Today I had a client who used a great method to remember all of her passwords.

She used a little address book – the kind you keep next to your phone or in your car to keep track of important contact information.

For example, you can put your Visa.com user name and password under the V section. Best of all, it doesn't look like a password list so bad guys aren't likely to find it interesting enough to snoop through.

“That’s such old technology”

I was reading a review of smart phones the other day and had to comment on a topic that comes up frequently in technology…old technology. You all know that my philosophy is 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Too often, I think companies roll out upgrades simply for the sake of upgrading when their original product functioned perfectly. Think about products like Norton AntiVirus, Microsoft Word, McAfee, Acrobat Reader, and others that hit a peak of performance and features about six or seven years ago and did their jobs well. After that, the company's programmers (maybe pushed by managers) continued to roll out product after product with very little extra functionality, but an awful lot of extra junk that was not needed nor is it used. All leading to products that slowed down computers and didn't increase efficiency in any way.

I still think that we are in the infancy of the technology age and many products and technologies need to be continually pushed and improved, but sometimes products perform all the needed functions and need not be over laden with the extra weight of unnecessary code. Microsoft Word worked great in the 1997 version and no

Another reason to use Picasa

I mentioned in yesterday's Shotgun that I took nearly 900 photos on my recent vacation. You have read and heard us hype the free Picasa digital photography software from Google many times. The features and execution of the features are nothing short of wonderful. I use Picasa to upload and organize my photos after a trip. Then I usually upload the photos I want to print to my favorite online photo developer (Shutterfly ) and get a bound book made of my favorite 100 or so photos for less than the cost of developing three rolls of film.

Doing laundry and accessing wi-fi

We have made it to the far north California coast and found a great camp ground. Laundry has stacked up so we went to the campground laundry room and lo and behold, I found a wi-fi hot spot there as well. So, while doing the mundane laundry routine, I can catch up a little on the news that I haven't missed and make a quick entry here at HMR (I love this acronym that some of you adpoted in your comments). We appreciate all your support and also love that you are spreading the word about HMR. 

“I can’t find stuff on your web site”

We get this comment more often than we would like. I'm going to split the responsibility between our web site design and web surfing experience of the folks who tell us they have trouble navigating our site.

Our site has gone immense changes in the past year…for the better. If you might be in the camp who thinks that our current site is tough to navigate, you may have never returned to our old site after an initial visit. Our old site didn't have consistent menu navigation and had a horrible search engine. Our new site has the same menus on every single page that let you navigate to the main parts of our web site. You will find these menus at top right of every single page on our site.

How to Email Your Digital Photos

Emailing Your Digital Photos

A few things to remember:

  • Always save a copy of the ORIGINAL photo

  • You can always go down on resolution, but you can never go up.

  • 72 dpi for email and web – 300 dpi for printing

Organizing and Backing Up Photos

Getting organized:

The best way to get your photos organized is to start with a system that works for you.

My system is to create a single folder for all my digital photos on my hard drive. Inside that folder, called "Digital Pictures," I place a sub-folder for each month of the year. In each month's folder I may place more folders for each activity held during that month.

For example: Digital Photos –> April –> Easter –> Grandmas

I then place the digital pictures into their respective folders.

Future proofing your new PC

We have talked at length about the upcoming Windows Vista on our show and eluded to it here on the site. Microsoft says that it will come out in the first quarter of 2007 which leaves us about six months give or take. Adam and I had our first look at Vista during this year's Consumer Electronic Show (CES). We weren't impressed. Since then, I have read many Vista articles, reviews, blogs and even downloaded the beta version of Vista. I'm still not impressed.

All that being said, at some point you may want to upgrade to Vista (or its upgrade). I don't recommend waiting for Vista before buying a new PC because I truly believe that Vista will be a flop for the first six or so months (putting us into 2008). BUT, when you are buying a new computer or laptop, you might as well plan a little for the future. Here's what I'm telling callers and clients this month about what to look for in a new computer.

I love my Treo

Today I helped a couple setup their brand new Motorola RAZR phones. These are do-it-all phones, or at least they do a lot. They have built-in cameras, they do email and Text messaging, they have Bluetooth radios and that's about it.

Motorola RAZR

RAZRs are very popular right now because they are thin and they do a lot. But they aren't very easy to use. Granted, they are some of the easiest cell phones to use, but that doesn't mean that they are easy to use.

In order to check your voice mail, you have to hit the little mail button, then go through a menu to choose voice mail (as opposed to text message, email, and about three other kinds of mail). Everything involved several menus.

Computer BIOS

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Many times on the show we guide people to the computer BIOS for troubleshooting some problems. BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. The BIOS, speaking very simply, controls and monitors the hardware on our computers. Keyboards, mice, hard drives, CDROM drives, the date and time (from the CMOS chip), and more all get inventoried and controlled via the BIOS. Think of the BIOS as the parts manager of your computer. The software written to monitor our hardware is stored on a flash memory chip inside the computer. Occasionally, hardware malfunctions or conflicts can be resolved by changing settings in the BIOS. Some hardware upgrades (new memory chips, video cards) may require an upgrade to the BIOS through a process known as flashing the BIOS.

Two of the most common functions why you might access your system's BIOS are changing the boot order to allow a CD or other device to boot before a hard drive or supplying a security password to lock your computer.

Unfortunately, the BIOS and the way we access the BIOS is far from standardized. Any of the following keyboard keys can invoke the BIOS (sometimes referred to as system setup): F1, F2, F10, F12, Del, Esc, or Ins. Once in the BIOS, you must use the keyboard to navigate the menus and change the settings. Again, this isn't standardized either and there are at least a dozen implementations of the BIOS interface. I have included two of the most common BIOS screens in this tip.

Because there are so many different configurations and ways of accessing BIOS, I've included some of the better tutorials regarding the subject on the web. Also, make sure you read your computer's documentation or visit the manufacturers web site for even more specific information.

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