Archive for August, 2009

Here’s a quick video showing you how I fixed the screen on my Canon SD850IS.

I had left it in my bag on a motorcycle ride through NJ and when I took it out to take a quick picture I realized that something in my bag had cracked the screen and make it totally unusable.

I didn’t want to throw away a perfectly good $400 camera, but without the screen modern point-and-shoots are very difficult to use (can’t set the flash, view pictures, zoom level, etc).  Luckily a couple internet searches led me to the Canon customer support line 800-652-2666.  When I called them they were actually really helpful.  I told them what camera I had and what I needed and they found the right screen for me with no hassle.  Best of all the replacement was only around $35 shipped!

Watch the video below for a quick run through on how to replace a screen.  Let us know if you want to see anything else worked on or questions answered in a video with the contact page or just leave a comment below.  I promise I’ll frame the shot better next time!

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Ergonomics is a popular buzz word as it speaks to a particular concern for those of us who spend a major portion of our work week computing.   Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines it:

an applied science concerned with designing and arranging things people use so that the people and things interact most efficiently and safely…

There has long been some awareness around the term, largely because of the dreaded carpel tunnel syndrome and hand/wrist/forearm fatigue issues.   I found some interesting information online mainly about tips on choosing chairs that offer support, comfort, and multifaceted adjustment capability, which you can read here:

http://www.officechairadvice.com/ergonomic/best/what_is_an_ergonomic_chair.html

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Click in any icon that you want to change, I will use my internal computers hard drive as an example. Highlight the icon , then press apple key I. Highlight the icon up on top as seen in the picture.

You can now drag any icon to the highlighted icon on top. If it was successful the preview icon below should change as well.

Congratulations! You have changed your icon. Easy wasn’t it.

I love Firefox, but there are always minor issues with any piece of software that should to be addressed to make them run even better.  Here’s one that has bothered me for quite some time.  If Firefox has been running for a while and I have a bunch of tabs open Flash performance, especially video, tends to suffer.  It turns out there’s a simple fix.

If you’re watching video on Firefox and it seems to skip or stutter every ten seconds or so it’s because Firefox is taking a snapshot of all your open tabs in case your browser crashes.  You can either disable the session restore feature (not really recommended) or you can just change the interval from every ten seconds to something a little more reasonable.

To do so simply type about:config in your address bar, then type browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box.  It’s default value is 10000 (10 seconds in milliseconds) so just change this to something like  60000 for 1 minute intervals 120000 for 2 minute, etc.  You don’t even have to restart Firefox for this to take effect.

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Lets face it, Leopard is great, but you mac may be long in the tooth. What to do? You can always stick some more memory in the machine. I know, times are tough and you don’t want to spend money. Believe it or not , the 3D dock in Leopard takes up bit of resources just to make it shiny. “We don’t need that”, you yell at me. Very well, this is how to get rid of it.

Open up terminal ( it’s in your application folder under utilities, you can also just type terminal in spotlight).
Enter this in the window:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

The dock should close out and open up in 2D mode. There you have it, a short and sweet hack. If you ever want to change it back all you have to do is set the Boolean value to NO in that command.

http://www.winzip.com/index.htm winzip
http://www.powerarchiver.com/ osx powerarchiver

http://www.7-zip.org/

http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm

Archiving files

Why archive files? There are a few good reasons to do so. Back in the day when harddrives were expensive and space was at a premium, it made sense to compress files that were not used everyday to save space. It also made sense to take many files and put them in one archive to storage or transmission reasons. Back when data was transmitted over phone lines or even isdn ( if you were lucky enough to have that) you wanted to transmit the least amount of data. In compressing folders you concatenated many files into one and made the size smaller.

Over the years there have been quite a few archive utilities. The venerable zip , the new standard rar, and one new addition, 7zip. Each one of these has good and bad traits.

Zip is now incorporated into the last few editions of windows, it is not the fastest or the best compression.

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It is the middle of August and vacation is on everyone’s mind.  If you are not already somewhere vacation-y, then here is the perfect desktop background image for those with wanderlust.

For wide screen monitors, get a larger image to strech across the screen.  Simply right click on the image and choose “set as desktop background.”

[Photo by jferbal, Seychelles]

Disposing of unwanted electronics by recycling is one step in a positive direction, but considering a product’s over all green potential before buying is even better.  Fortunately, we have some great resources at hand for bringing some green forethought to our purchases.

EPEAT is a global, environmental attributes ranking system whose mark we will come to recognize like we now recognize Energy Star products:

“Desktops, laptops and monitors that meet 23 required environmental performance criteria may be registered in EPEAT by their manufacturers in 40 countries worldwide.” epeat.net

While you are listing out specifications for your new computer, you can now factor in EPEAT’s rankings of Bronze, Silver, or Gold for meeting green standards.

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Options for recycling technology and office items seems to just be getting easier.  In NYC especially, the commitment to cultivating everyman’s consciousness about how and where to dispose of defunct or dried up technology is showing up in local green markets and friendly, easily found websites.

In a previous post, I mentioned NYC’s Take It Back program where retailers take back rechargable batteries, cell phones, and other small electronic items.  There’s more!

You can recycle your ink and toner cartridges, which is fairly common knowledge, at Staples.  But the Take It Back program exists for compact fluorescent light bulbs, Brita Water Filters, and packaging material,  and more.  Have you set up a recycling station for these items in your office?

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Have you ever been at work and realized you forgot a file that you need for that presentation on your computer at home?  How about on vacation and remembered that you didn’t submit that file that needed to be in before a deadline that will pass before you get back?  What if you’re trying to convince your boss to let you telecommute once or twice a week but you don’t know how you’ll access your files while you’re gone?  There’s easy to use, free software out there to help you with these scenarios and more.

The best solution I’ve found is LogMeIn.

LogMeIn is most basically a remote desktop platform.  What sets it apart from older applications such as VNC is that you don’t need to make any changes to your firewall or forward any ports, LogMeIn takes care of it all for you.

Their free version is excellent and does everything most people need in a remote desktop application.

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