Andy Warhol had a profound influence on the artistic world in the 1960s and 1970s. Several decades later, his work is still admired, copied and transformed. Good graphic editors can turn any photo into the iconic color-block style Andy Warhol used in his most famous paintings, but it can be hard to find the right [...]
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Create an Andy Warhol Style Image from a Photograph
For those who used Microsoft Office Word to create their documents, the thesaurus was a life saver when trying to find the right word. When switching to OpenOffice Writer, the thesaurus isn’t exactly the easiest feature to find. For quite a while, I assumed this was just one of the features Writer didn’t have. However, [...]
Using the OpenOffice Writer Thesaurus
There are many free plugins that give extra features to Windows Media Center. Using these plugins, you can watch videos, listen to music and view other media that isn’t typically available in Windows Media Center. There are also plugins that help you to organize your media library in Windows Media Center. These are some of [...]
Modern digital cameras take very big pictures. Sure, these pictures are alive with detail and striking colors, but they must be resized for Web use. Unfortunately, resizing often results in lost picture quality. BigImg.it allows photo lovers to keep their big-photo’s quality, even when the photo is displayed in appropriate Web dimensions. The service creates [...]
Most people think of filters in email programs as ways to curb spam, but filters can also be used to help you manage other kinds of email messages as well; for example, say you get a lot of messages from your brother. You could set up a filter to automatically put all messages from him [...]
Apple recently changed the terms of service agreement with app makers to where apps like Kindle can no longer allow in-app purchase. This makes the process of buying an e-book more hassle then necessary. You have to go to Amazon, find a book, choose the right device to send the book, then open the Kindle [...]
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Read Kindle Books in Chrome and Safari
Evernote, the popular note taking and idea collection program is one of the best tools for students and business professionals. It helps you stay organized, but is also extremely flexible, allowing you to draw inspiration from all kinds of sources. We have previously covered some basic features and analysis of Evernote here and here. However, [...]
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Use Evernote’s Peek Feature for iPad 2 as the Ultimate Study Tool
Many Twitter lovers use the service to promote their businesses. Writers post their latest articles to Twitter, while retailers send sale and coupon information. Most of this information is useful even for non-Twitter lovers, but reaching them is a challenge.
TwitFooter is an inventive way to reach those non-Twitter followers with whom you communicate regularly. The service automatically adds your latest Tweet to every email you send—and self-updates, too.
On the TwitFooter homepage, click the Sign in with Twitter button.
Once authorized, you can decide which information to display on your signature. You can use your Twitter bio, latest Tweet or a random Tweet.
The code for the signature is automatically generated to the right of the selection. Click the Preview tab just above it to view your new signature.
When satisfied, copy the code.
Click the the icon for the email client of your choice directly below the code, then follow the directions that appear for adding the code to your signature.
Installing the code is fairly simple for all of the major email clients. Within minutes, all of your outgoing emails will include your picture, your Twitter address, and your latest Tweet.
TwitFooter also counts the number of times people click on the link from your signature to your Twitter feed. You can see this number by logging into the TwitFooter again from the homepage. Overall, this is a great idea for finding new Twitter followers, and for reaching those who do not Tweet, but do email.
Picasa comes with simple tools that let you upload your personal photos to your online photo albums. Using these tools, you can upload multiple photos at once to popular websites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr, either for backup purposes, your own private enjoyment or to share them with friends, family and coworkers.
In the Picasa photo library, select the photos you wish to upload to Picasa Web Albums. Select the Upload button in the Photo Tray below the photo library window.
Under Upload to this album, select an album from the drop-down menu. If you don’t want to upload to an existing album in Picasa Web Albums, click New. Type a title and description for your new album. Then select a size for upload. Select Original if you want to back up your photos.
Select Recommended if you plan to print the photo from Picasa Web Albums, use it as a screen saver or share it with family and friends. Choose Medium if you just want to share your photos. If you plan to use your photos on a blog or website, select Small. Keep in mind that you only get 1 GB of space with a free account.
Under Visibility for this album, select whether you’d like your album to be public, private, or available to anyone with the link. Then select whether you’d like to share your album with family, coworkers or friends.
If you choose to share your photos with one of these groups, you can also select to let them contribute to your album. When you’re finished selecting your options, click Upload.
You can easily upload your photos to Flickr using Picasa’s email upload feature. Since Flickr has an Upload by Email feature as well, all you have to do is send the photos to your Flickr email address. To get started, sign in to your Flickr account. In the left side of the page, click You, then select Your Account from the drop-down menu.
Click Emails and Notifications. Copy your Flickr upload email address, then go to your Picasa library and select the images that you’d like to upload. Click the Email button in the photo tray at the bottom. Select whether you’d like to upload your photos using your default email program or by Gmail.
If you don’t use email software or if you don’t have a Gmail account, then you must configure an email software program or sign up for a free Gmail account before continuing. If you would like to sign up for Gmail through Picasa, click the Google Mail: Use my Gmail or Google account button, then click the blue Want Gmail? link above the sign-in field. After creating your account, sign in through the same dialog window.
Paste your Flickr email upload address into the To: field, then click Send to complete your photo upload.
For more tips on this subject, you can read Migrate pictures from Flickr to Picasa.
Facebook discontinued Static FBML, the app previously used to build Facebook Fan Pages, on March 11, 2011. Since then, most companies have chosen to move their Facebook Pages to the new iFrames design method.
The iFrames design method has advantages—anything you can do on a standard Web page with HTML, Flash and Javascript now works on Facebook pages. But, you have to host your pages off-site, on your own Web space, and call them as an iFrame with Facebook Developer. This requires HTML skills.
For those without HTML skills, or who would rather not host pages off-site, Static HTML is the answer.
Once installed to your Facebook page, click the Edit link next to your page name to create the page.
Click the button for WYSIWYG mode or HTML mode. If you already have the HTML written for your Facebook page, you can paste it straight into the box in HTML mode. If you are an HTML novice, choose WYSIWYG mode.
The WYSIWYG mode is simple, but very familiar to those who blog. Use the icons to add images, hyperlinks and format text the way you want it to appear.
If you use a service like Photobucket, you can paste URLs for images. Otherwise, you can upload images directly into the editor. These images are then hosted on ImageShack.
Static HTML can also act as a reveal tab. You can create one page to appear for visitors who have Liked your page, and another page for users who have not liked your page.
When you are satisfied with your changes, click the update button at the bottom of the page. Immediately, your changes will be made to the Static HTML tab on your Facebook Page.
To change the name of the tab from Static HTML to a custom label of your choosing. Click Edit Page in the top-right corner of your Facebook page, then click Apps from the left menu.
From the bottom of the list, under Static HTML, choose Edit Settings. A box will appear with a text entry box for a custom tab name. Enter the name you want and click Save, then Okay.
Static HTML is a definite help for Web novices who want a Facebook page, but do not want to learn HTML and iFrames. While the editor’s features are simplistic, they work well enough to make a page in 5 minutes or so. More advanced users will prefer the new iFrames method of adding tabs to Facebook pages.
Many people that use Microsoft Word on a regular basis assume they know everything there is to know about formatting paragraphs, but there is one area, where many may not, and it all falls under the Paragraph section on the main ribbon in Word 2010:
Most people know about the bulleting and centering options on the left side of this section, so we’ll concentrate on those on the right; first up are the indenting icons
These are used to indent a single paragraph, like this:
Here it is before:
…and here it is after:
Clicking on it successive times moves it farther in each time. The other icon puts it back.
Next up are the paragraph line spacing options, using the Line Spacing icon:
Clicking on it brings up this popup:
Here you can choose which sort of line spacing you want for just the paragraph highlighted, or whether to add or remove a space before or after the paragraph.
In this example the line between the two paragraphs was removed.
So, far, pretty simple stuff; the next option is a little more useful, but before using it, here’s a little trick; first add a number as the first character for several of your paragraphs, like this:
Then, highlight them all, then click on the the Sort icon:
Change text to number on the popup…
…then click OK, you should see your paragraphs have been reorganized into a different order based on the numbers you typed in:
This is a very convenient way to move several paragraphs around quickly, but it also shows off what the sorting icon does. You can do the same thing with text.
Next is the show/hide paragraph icon, clicking on it shows you all of the paragraph markers in your document, in case you ever want to do that:
After that are the formatting icons, and they likely offer far more than you ever knew, first highlight one paragraph, then click on the Shading icon:
Here you can pick a color or shade for the background of just one paragraph to help make it stand out for you;
It also has some other color options in case the defaults aren’t enough for you.
Next, is the very handy Paragraph Border and Shading icon.
You can use these options if you really want a paragraph to stand out. Clicking on it will get you this popup:
As one example, choosing All Borders gets you this:
On the other hand, by playing around with the Borders and Shading… option at the bottom of the menu, you can create stuff like this:
In summation, the Paragraph formatting tools on the main ribbon in Word can help you do things with individual paragraphs to make them stand out so that readers will be drawn to reading them.
The most popular place to listen to the radio is in a car. Music and talk show antics help us pass the time while driving from point A to point B, but when we reach point B, the station must be shut off so we can continue our daily activities.
DAR.fm acts like a Tivo for radio stations. Instead of listening to the radio in snippets while driving, you can schedule DAR.fm to record your favorite shows, then listen to them whenever you have time.
To start recording your favorite shows, you must register for an account. Click the Click here to register link at the top right of the page to create an account.
Enter your email address, choose a password, then click Sign Up Now.
Next, select the shows or stations you want to record. If you do not see the radio station you want in the list, you can add it. Click the red record button to schedule a recording.
If recording a station, you will be asked for particulars such as how often to record, the length of the recording, and the starting time.
To listen to your recordings, click the Play button at the top of the screen.
To see the list of programs scheduled to record, click the Scheduled button.
Because DAR.fm uses MP3Tunes to store the recordings, you can listen to them from most any mobile device, including iPhone and Android. For iPhone, look for an app called Airband in the app store. Android’s app is called MP3Tunes.
You can also listen to recordings offline with LockerSync software, which links directly to iTunes.
DAR.fm includes 2 GB storage space for free, with more storage available for a fee. 2 GB is about 100 hours of radio recording, which is more than enough to sufficiently try the service. Overall, we had no problems using the service, and were impressed by the clarity of the recordings.
Audacity is the most popular open source sound recording and editing software on the Internet for Windows computers, and for good reason, it’s loaded with powerful tools and can perform some of the simple functions you’d like to do without a lot of fuss. One such application is recording a podcast so you can post it on your website.
To use Audacity to record your podcast, first download it if you don’t have it yet, install according to the instructions, then run it.
Before you start recording though, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re using the right software driver for your microphone, to do that, click on Edit, then Preferences:
Then under Recording, click the dropdown labeled Device, you should see something like this:
Choose the device driver associated with the microphone you’ll actually be using.
Next, move down the same preferences menu and click where it says Quality, then click the dropdown next to where it says Default Sample Rate; change it to 44100Hz if that is not your default, anything higher and you’ll run into problems with some media players that don’t support higher sampling rates.
Click the OK button and you should be ready to roll.
Before you begin however, be sure you know what you’re going to say, also be aware of using um and ah and uh a lot as that makes it hard to listen. When you’re ready, click the Record button…
…and start speaking.
Try not to speak too close to your microphone because you’ll get a lot of pops. If you make a mistake, simply pause a moment, then start over, you can edit out mistakes later. When you’re done, hit the Stop button
Special Note: It’s always a good idea to do a couple of practice runs before recording your whole podcast, otherwise you might find yourself having to do the whole thing over and over again if there are problems with the microphone etc.
If you find your voice doesn’t sound right, you can try adjusting the volume control:
Also, be sure to leave an empty space on the track so that you can Get Rid of Ambient Noise Using Audacity once you’ve finished your recording.
Once you’ve got your podcast recorded, you’ll most likely want to edit it; you can begin by highlighting sections with your mouse, and simply hitting the Delete key to get rid of unwanted sections:
Also, to cut a section and paste it in somewhere else, highlight it with your mouse, hit Ctrl-X, move to the place where you want to paste it in, then hit Ctrl-V.
Note: You can also cut a section out of a different recording (such as your intro for a prior Podcast) and paste it in if you wish.
When you’re happy with your recording, click the File menu choice, then choose Export…
…then click on the dropdown labeled Save as type: and choose your format (generally MP3).
Then, type in a file name, choose your location and click Save, and you’re done recording your podcast.
One the downsides to having all kinds of templates and style sheets in MS Excel is that you pretty much get locked in to creating sheets that look like everyone else’s; which doesn’t do much for creativity or inspirational ideas. This is why it’s a good idea to learn how to use Excels formatting tools.
To begin, start by creating a table that has some rows and tables, like this:
Then, highlight the whole thing…
Next, click on it with your right mouse button, to get this popup men:
Choose the Format Cells option, to get this little window:
Using just these simple tools, you can create pretty much anything you’ve seen in Excel’s pre-formatted templates. To see how, we’ll move right across the top menu bar, first up, is the Number format option list, here we can set the number in our table to represent a regular number, a dollar amount, a time or date, or whatever we like; for this example, we’ll chose currency and go with the default of two decimal places, that makes out table look like this:
Next on the menu is Alignment:
All of these options are about making the contents of a cell or group of cells sit in their cell the way you want. Mostly they are about putting cell content at the cell, top, bottom, left right or centered; or whether text is wrapped on not; there is also an option to make text or numbers appear at an angle in the cell; but because we just want to show currency, we’ll chose to center it and that’s all:
Which makes our table looks like this:
Next on the menu is Font:
Since it works exactly like the Font command in every other Windows application we’ll just stick with the default and move on to the Border option:
This is the section where a lot of the magic happens, it’s divided into three sections; Line, Presets, and Color. The line section lets you choose what sort of border to draw around whatever cells you’ve highlighted, In this case, we’ll choose a double bar:
You’ll notice that nothing happens when you choose it, and that’s because you have to tell Excel where you want that border to exist, and that’s what the Presets section is about. Since we want a border that goes all the way around the outside of our highlighted area, we choose this one:
But, we’d also like all the borders between each cell to have a border as well, so we choose this option too:
The other little icons are for adding or removing certain walls of the border, like say if you’d like to not have a border across the top, you’d click on this one:
Then, all that’s left to do is choose a color for our border:
Notice how once you pick a color, the line color above changes to reflect your choice. Unfortunately, the border you added earlier does not change, so you make your choices again to make them the new color you’ve chosen.
Next up on the menu is the Fill feature:
Here you can add color to the background of the cells themselves. You have two options, to fill the cells you’ve highlighted with a background color or a pattern with a color. We’ll look at background first.
You can simply click on a color to choose a background color, or or click the More Colors button for a color wheel that gives you more color options, or you can click on the Fill Effects button to get this:
Here you can add colors or a shading style to create a gradient (a gradient is where color changes slowly across a cell or cells). The top part of the pane allows you to choose one or two colors of your choice, while the bottom selects the direction of the gradient. For our example, we’re going to choose light pink and a somewhat dark blue for the colors and from center as our shading style:
Then click the OK button and we’re about done.
The last menu choice Protection, isn’t really a formatting option, it allows you to lock the contents of cells so that you don’t accidently overwrite formulas and such. For now, let’s just click the OK button and take a look at what we’ve done to our original table:
The effects shown here can be used in very nearly unlimited and creative ways to show off your sheets in ways that stand out far more than you’ll ever get using the cookie-cuter styles that come with Excel.
They can be used in titles, or in descriptions or to create extra borders around the edges of your sheet, or to highlight certain areas, etc. They can also be used to alter your sheet after applying a style if you’d like to change things up just a little bit.
PDF, as a file type, lies in between a document and a photograph. We can edit it like a document, but at its core, it is a photograph of a document. However, most graphic editors do not allow us to make edits to a PDF.
One of the biggest edits we need is the ability to crop a PDF document to make it easier to read on our tablets and smartphones. A small piece of software called Briss makes PDFs easy to crop.
After downloading the software from SourceForge.net, extract it. The very first file in the extracted folder should be an application file simply named Briss. Double-click it.
A small window will open in the top-left corner of your screen. Click File then Load File and choose a PDF to crop.
A window will open asking if you want to exclude any pages in PDF from merging. We clicked Cancel.
The PDF loads and the Briss window should enlarge to the size of the PDF. If not, drag the window to the size needed. At first glance, your PDF looks like a jumbled mess—but this is ok. The odd pages are layered, one on top of the other, on the left, whereas the even pages are layered on the right.
Click your mouse and drag it across the areas you need to crop. All even or odd pages are cropped to the same dimensions. The first section you highlight is labeled with a one—it will appear first in the new PDF. The following section is labeled 2 and so forth.
When you have finished making your selections, click Actions and then Crop PDF.
A new PDF is generated with your cropped pieces in place of the original pages. The PDF may appear longer than the original, but this is because the cropped pieces are placed one after the other rather than side-by-side. This is perfect for cell phone viewing.
Overall, Briss works great for what it is designed to do. The initial PDF load with the text of all even and odd pages merged together feels quirky, but the cropping tool is great. It is a good way to make PDFs more small-screen-device friendly.
