Archive for the ‘Tips & tricks’ Category

When Douglas Communications Group and Ken Hebenstreit, Bookseller go on a road trip, we are wired.  Here’s a list of our electronic helpers:

• Two laptop computers
• Smart phone, with 12-volt and 110-volt chargers
• 35mm camera
• Flip video recorder
• A 12-volt to 110 converter, to use computers in the car
• A converter to plug the smart phone into the car’s cassette player, so we can stream audio and play MP3s through the vehicle sound system, and
• The piece de resistance:  A Mifi card.

I’ve wanted to try Mifi ever since I learned about it, and boy, is it dandy.  Just turned it on and both our computers immediately found the wireless network.  It worked in the car, so we could stream Pandora radio even when we didn’t have 3G coverage.  It’s faster than the hotel network.  3/6/10

Our new site is designed with Wordpress, whose capacity extends beyond blogging.  You’re reading our blog here, but the rest of the site is comprised of static pages.  They’re easy to update, and those regular content updates keep the search engines interested.

A blog site’s design is based on a theme.  Wordpress offers a number of nice theme templates,  but I designed the theme myself using an inexpensive application called Artisteer.

When the going gets tough, the tough get nice.  Cheerleaders generate better performance than despots, according to research by a University of Amsterdam professor reported in this article in the November, 2009 Harvard Business Review.

The Lifehacker site is a constant course of useful information, including this list of 61 great free applications.  Sign up for their RSS feed!

Go to this site for information about how to avoid voice mail hell with more than 1,500 major companies. http://gethuman.com/

How to create safe but memorable passwords:  Create one nonsense word which combines capital and lower case letters and numbers.  Let’s choose z00md0G, where the “o’s” are zeros.  Now look at the domain for which you’re creating a password: ebay.com, for example.  Decide that you’re going to take the first two letters of that and every passworded domain and add them to the beginning of your nonsense word.  So the password for ebay will be ebz00md0G.  The password for paypal will be paz00md0G.  Unfortunately this doesn’t solve the problem of remembering your user name, but you can more safely write those down if you don’t have to write down the password.  Now go sign up for free, safe, online passwork storage at Keepass.info.