Chrome Click to Play

  April 17, 2011 - 9:43 pm |
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Here’s a fun little Chrome tip I picked up from a recent episode of the Security Now podcast. It might help some pages load a bit quicker and even help you stay a bit more secure with some control of Flash thingies on pages…

By default, you can go “under the hood” and determine if all plugins run automatically (the default) or are all blocked. To get there go to Options –> Under the Hood and then click on the “Content Settings…” button.

Default plug-in management

However, you can tweak that a bit to get to a “Click to Play” mode. Just type about:flags in the address bar and hit enter. Tons of interesting options here – be careful! Scroll down a bit to “Click to Play” and enable it. Now scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click “restart now” to have the change go into effect.

Next, go back under the hood and Content Settings. You have a new “Click to Play” option listed.

Plugin management with Click to play option

Select that and start exploring web pages. When you see a black box or a message like the one below you can click on it if you think you’re missing out – or just ignore it. Saves seeing a lot of ads…

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Old Gadget, New Use

  April 13, 2011 - 10:32 pm |
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iPAQ 4355 ImageThis isn’t the first time I have written about finding a use for an old Pocket PC. And, amusingly, the use is the same this time as it was last time I wrote about it: eBook reader!

I have had this iPAQ 4355 Pocket PC sitting in a desk drawer for a few years now – and that pains me as it really was a much loved little gadget. But, well… you know how it goes. I’ve had a series of new smart phones and the poor ol’ iPAQ just couldn’t compete.

My 10 year old son is really enjoying a series of books. Unfortunately, he’s read all the ones we have at home and our local library doesn’t have many more. I did some digging around and realized I have most of the series in various eBook formats that I’ve “accumulated” (*cough*) over the past decade. I suddenly realized we had a use for the iPAQ.

Calibre logoThanks to the wonders of Calibre – the BEST ebook library / conversion /utility tool – I was able to quickly convert the books to the native .LIT format and throw them on the iPAQ. My son has been devouring the books ever since. He’s loving the eBook experience.

[I just realized I've never written about the wonders of Calibre. Shame on me! A favorite utility!]

Having the iPAQ around has had me playing with it a bit as well. We’ve connected it to the home wifi network for some quick and easy web surfing. We have also rediscovered some old favorite games. And, thanks to that old post I linked earlier, I’ve been reminded about some more eBook reading programs to get installed on it.

It sure isn’t a Kindle or Nook – but the price is sure right and the screen is definitely larger than my smart phone’s.

Firefox 4 and Two Quick Tips

  March 24, 2011 - 10:24 pm |
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By now you’ve no doubt heard that Firefox 4 was released last week. I had used it through a few beta and release candidate releases and like it a lot. Here are a couple small tips that I thought I’d share. One specific to XP and the other to Windows 7 (and Vista?).

Firefox 4 on XP tip

At first, I wasn’t a huge fan of the redesigned menu but I’ve grown to like it, especially the amount of space it doesn’t take up. Here’s what it looks like on a Windows 7 machine:

Firefox 4 Menu on Windows 7

When I first installed it on my little XP laptop I was initially appalled. The bar was gone! Blah, it looked like the previous release:

Firefox 4 on XP -- old style menu

Fortunately, this is easily fixed. To get the snazzier menu, just go to View –> Toolbars and uncheck the “Menu Bar” option. Presto – problem fixed.

Firefox 4 on XP -- new style menu

Windows 7

When hovering over Firefox in the task bar, wouldn’t it be nice if it would show a thumbnail of all tabs, not just the current one? I sure thought so – and turns out it is just a checkbox away (assuming, of course, your operating system supports it).

Just go to Options and then the Tabs tab. Check the bottom option:

Firefox 4 - Show tab previews

Now hover over Firefox in the task bar:

Firefox 4 tab previews

From there you can click the tab you want to go to or even close them by hitting the little red “x”.

Search from the Address Bar

Bonus tip!

I’m not sure if this is a published feature or not, but I’ve noticed that I can type keyword searches straight into the address bar – instead of the search box – and it takes me to a Google search for those words. You know, like Chrome?

This doesn’t seem to be specifically listed on the Firefox Features page, but I sure like it. Also makes me think I could probably remove the search box altogether…

Revisiting the Productivity Stack

  March 20, 2011 - 7:12 pm |
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Last October I had the opportunity to change jobs and it has been a great experience. A little crazy at times but no regrets. I’ve had the ability to use many of my existing skills while having many opportunities to develop or enhance more.

Since we’re a MSP (Managed Services Provider) focused on IT we tend to run the same or similar platforms and apps as our clients. Makes it a lot easier to understand common issues and “pain points” they might have.

So, after years of advocating OpenOffice and Google Apps I find myself spending my days in Microsoft Outlook with our email server running Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 (Exchange 2007). This has been quite a change! Not gonna lie: I grumbled a bit the first week or two but the transition hasn’t really been that difficult and, honestly, in some ways I think it has improved things.

OneNote LogoFor starters, I’m back to using OneNote as my GTD’ish productivity system (previous mention). I’m loving how well OneNote and Outlook work together, especially the ability to flag things in OneNote as Outlook Tasks. In fact, I now use OneNote as my primary collection system, but I manage all my day-to-day tasks in Outlook – many of them originating from OneNote. Really cool once you get used to it.

In the past, I used Dropbox to store and sync my OneNote notebooks so that I could access them from more than one machine. Worked fine but I had to have OneNote on every machine. Sadly, that left the *nix machines out of the mix.

That’s no longer an issue with the advent of Office Web Apps on SkyDrive. This is some seriously cool stuff! Store your notebooks there and then open them directly via the OneNote web app or open them with the OneNote app if it is installed on the PC. Skydrive keeps it all in sync.

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The browser version is pretty slick, too. Not all the features are there but there are certainly enough to be very functional and useful.

What would be nice? An Android OneNote client. I’m miffed that Microsoft did an iPhone one first! But other than that, I’m probably about as organized as I’ve ever been. And that’s critical in my new role!