Frugal Tech

Okay, here’s a little internet quiz. How many of you have seen URL’s (universal resource locators, internet speak for a web address) like this?

http://www.ryansaghir.com/archives/www.thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensomeandthensomemoreandmore.com

Or maybe this?

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

Yeah one of those broken web addresses you have to copy by hand into your browser to make work. Always a barrel of laughs those are.

So what to do?
Well shrink the multi-line monstrosity above to this:

http://tinyurl.com/6

Sound appealing doesn’t it? The tool to use is called TinyURL and it takes super long URL’s and makes them shorter. You can try it out yourself at http://www.tinyurl.com We think you’ll find it handy and helpful.

But are there any downsides?
Not really as far as we can tell but then again somedays we don’t get quite enough caffeine to make our brains work properly. But others have found a voiced a key concern that being it’s poor writer etiquette to make your reader wonder where it is your new shorter, spiffy link is taking them. With phishing in vogue today that’s a valid concern of course. So a possible compromise is to show the longer link so your readers see the original and post the shorter for their web surfing convenience. Another option is, presuming your readers trust you (you are the honest type are you not?) you simply put a descrtiption near the link such as, “Click over to the wikiepdia by going to this link here” where “here” is the link to the Wikipedia article or other locations.

Are there any alternatives?
Why yes there are! DoIP will do essentially what TinyURL does with one simple twist: you can choose the suffix or last part of the new shorter URL you create. For example, a standard URL to an article in the Boston Globe looks like this:

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/11/03/plaintiff_alleges_alito_conflict/

Using TinyURL it looks like this:

http://tinyurl.com/2lntfq

Using DoIP it looks like this, based on your choosing the suffix:

http://doiop.com/bostonglobe

So, readers know they are going to see the article you referenced in the Boston Globe. It’s a nice touch.

“Too complicated, gotta do it on the fly from my browser”
Always a naysayer in this crowd but we’ve got you covered as well. Firefox has a addon that allows you to use TinyURL right from the browser. You can get to that add-on at this link here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/126

Like all things frugally at the Frugal Tech TinyURL is a bargain in price and usablity.  It’s free and easy to  use so it meets our tightwad desires well.  So bring back web address elegance with TinyURL, your readers will be happy they don’t have to cut and paste your long URL’s again!

I used to publish with Blogger and then Typepad but finally settled on a self hosted blog at A Small Orange using Wordpress. You can read about my odyssey in my comment on the article, “What Blogging tool Do You Use And Why”on Lorelle on Wordpress, at my article,”Thoughts on Moving On“, and at my article “A New Home for Beck’s Cafe”

One of the (many) great things about Wordpress is how responsive the community is. To that end if your running Wordpress 2.1.1 HEED this ANNOUNCEMENT from the Wordpress Development Blog:

If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Clearly malicious hackers still have way too much time on their hands…

• Download 2.1.1 from Wordpress.org by visiting this link HERE
• See the official notice of the 2.1.1 code risk at this link HERE
• Reach the Wordpress community support site at this link HERE

How many times has this happened to you?

You get sent a file via email. Could be at work. Could be at home. The file provides you the information you need but now you want to do something with that file or you want to use it in another program that let’s you work the way you want to (or perhaps need to). And what happens to you? Well your stuck. Stuck fiddling and diddling trying to make it work.

This my friends is what is known as a sticky wicket. You need the file so you keep fussing meanwhile the deadline to your project ticks on whilst you are amired in file format fuss. Not alota fun.

Well NOW there is a fun way to fix your function and that way is a service called Zamzar (and did we mention it’s free, we frugal techie’s love free…too bad the cheapskate Becki won’t give us free coffee for writing this column).

How it works is very simple. You upload a file to the service by clicking the browse button on step-1. That opens a little pop up box that lets you explore your hard disk on your computer for the right file. Click on your file and it uploads it. Then you choose what you want to convert the file to. There is a HUGE list. Once complete an email is sent you telling you that the file has been converted. This whole process, even for large files, is amazingly fast. This, my fine coffee swillers, is a service that’ll take away your headaches, not cause you more.

We tested it with PowerPoint files, Word files and PDF’s and it worked flawlessly converting from one file format to another with nary a hiccup. It was the way we like our software; allowing us to quickly grasp how to use it, made our lives easier not harder, and was reasonably priced (in this case free!).

So give Zamzar a try next time you need to convert some files.  It’s a quick and frugal way to easy your file conversion madness.

(and now an actual conversation….)

High Tech Indian Dude: “So we’ll get together at say 9AM right?”
Becki: “Yep that’s great 9AM”.

*silence*

Becki: “is that 9am India or 9AM my time?”
High Tech Indian Dude: “umm, 9am my time”
Becki: “isn’t that like 1AM my time?”
High Tech Indian Dude: “I have no idea, can you make 9AM India time?”
Becki: “Umm, I’m not sure, I mean I don’t know what time that is for me”
High Tech Indian Dude: “Perhaps you can have more coffee and just be ready for our call”
Becki: *stunned silence* “Yeah well I guess I could do that; wouldn’t it be better to like pick a time that works for us both?”

With business being more and more multi-national and all of us wage-slaves taking on more tasks, having meetings in different time zones (and dimensions) is not uncommon. The problem comes in coordinating those meetings with the right times so people are actually awake at some reasonable hour for everyone and can have an intelligent, collaborative meeting.

The question is how do you do that?

At the Frugal Techie we tackled this problem with the gusto of a St Pauli Girl beer maiden brandishing steins of rich ale to thirsty Oktoberfest patrons. The answer we found was effective and cheap - key measures of a Frugal Tech’s dream!

The key tool is called Time and Date, and it’s alot of things, it’s a calendaring system, a world clock, a calendar generator, world time search, and, most importantly in our caffeine induced view, an outstanding time meeting planner.

Using the tool is a snap,

1. Click to the main page at: http://www.timeanddate.com/
2. Then click on the meeting planner option: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
3. Then you choose your month, day and date
4. Then you can pick up to four cities to display
5. Then press the Show Timetable button and voila! A table of time zones by location. Each one lined up so you know when it’s 9AM Thursday in Boston, it’s 2PM Thursday in Casablanca.

One of the real joys in this tool is that it uses tables and color instead of graphics in it’s output. Because of this it’s easy to use and understand and it’s very fast.

So for your next conference, don’t be left scratching your head on what time to get everyone together, give Time and Date a try and make surprise everyone that you know what their time zone really is!

(Photo of clock courtesy of Elaron’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

Blog content theft is beginning to be a big issue. I don’t think it’s happened to us here at Beck’s Cafe but who knows? Maybe we’re too busy swilling capuccino to notice. Still though it is disturbing. It’s so damn wrong. Someone’s thoughts on their blog are there for public reading, debate and consumption not to be snatched up and made to be someone else’s. It’s rather goulish really.

I guess the real issue isn’t if some wonderful article you or I have written is going to be ripped off, it’s when. One question you might ask yourself is, why? Why steal our drivel when someone else can come up with their own perfectly drivelly drivel themselves? I thnk the answer to that question is money and time. The time to write the drivel to earn the money. And the money is earned by witless readers who go to a site that’s ripped off content and then see Google Adsense Ads and click on those. Get enough clicks and I’d imagine such a scam is worth creating hatred for yourself in the blogosphere. But there are some things you can do, cheaply we might add, to hunt down and combat these miscreants.

Lorelle on Wordpress has an excellent series of articles on the issue of Blog Content theft. Starting with her excellent series will get you up to date as to what the issue is. You can click to Lorelle’s site by clicking on this link HERE.

Spoken For’s blog has an outstanding series of free methods to fight back, and fight back hard. You can read her sad tale and then learn how to fight back by clicking to her post on this subject at her blog HERE.

(Photo courtesy of Caribb’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

The Frugal Tech hates bulky software. Why? Because bulky software tends to drive up the cost of development, which gets passed to consumers (that would be you and me). And bulky software generally requires you to have a more expensive system than you might have otherwise bought, so you can run the bulky software. For sure, bulky software is, generally, easier software to use, (or seems to be) with pull down menus and a smart graphical user interface. There appears to be an option to this in a very fun, efficient and user friendly program called Note Tab Pro by Fookes Software.

Note Tab Pro is essentially a text editor. That’s what all word processors are and that includes Microsoft Word, Open Office Writer, Wordperfect, among others. Text editors are tools that help you put your words on paper. Over time, most text editors started to get more user friendly (a good thing) with drop down menus and GUI’s (graphical user interfaces). But then started getting very bulky. The reason they started getting bulky is the slow inclusion of desktop publishing features into the editor. Desktop publishing is about styling and making things look right and presentable and readable. Text editing is about editing text. Both when you publish to the web the bulky software is actually a drawback. You don’t need all the nice features to do what you need to do.

That’s where Note Tab comes in. There are three versions, cheapskate (or free) Note Tab Light, Note Tab Standard (for $20), and what the Frugal Techie uses, Note Tab Pro for $30.00. We didn’t review all three flavors, just the Pro version, but you can see a nifty comparison chart at this link HERE.

What we liked about Note Tab Pro and what you might like too:

• Easy to use, we opened and got typing
• Clean creation of HTML for formatting, columns or whatever you like. We write in Note Tab Pro, cut and paste to Wordpress and that’s it. No messing about with the code afterwards.
• Built in wonderful spell checker
• Unique top tab keeps multiple documents open for speedy work on them
• Amazing speed. It opens, loads and gets you going in under 10 seconds
• Does not cause our system to slow down. We have a very robust system with 1GB of RAM. MS Word and Open Office Writer sometimes slow to a crawl. Note Tab Pro always works very fast
• Unique outlining feature allows for documents within documents so you can use Note Tab Pro as a low cost project manager

We’ve only just gotten to the very basics of the package but frankly it’s a big winner and one of the most handy and most used software packages we have here! It’s well worth the $30.00 price tag and you get free upgrades, a great deal.

In my day job I have to constantly learn about new technology. The good news is that it’s nice to be learning something new everyday or at least every week. The bad news is that it can sometimes feel like your constantly drinking from a fire hose. But now there’s help for me and for you. And, as we like to say at the Frugal Tech, it’s free and it’s good which is the best combination.

The source of this is ZDNet’s free, easy and quick learnin’ at ZDNet’s WhiteBoard. You can reach this fabulous service by clicking to The ZDNet’s White Board site at this link HERE. Whiteboard is basically a series of podcasts on various technologies. Everything from what is Wireless Networking, to understanding what Open Source technology is, to dealing with Demand Forecasting in Business is covered. The podcasts last from two to three minutes, are entertaining and informational. One of the best features is being able to get a transcript of the podcast for free.

Go check it out You’ll learn something new and be entertained too and for free. A nice frugal tech deal indeed!

(photo courtesy of katielips photos, used under Creative Commons License)

Psst, come here. Yes you the one reading this article.

Want to create files in a way that everyone with a computer can read them but no one can change them, like real paper? Want to do it for free? If this intersts you, then the Frual Techie has found something you don’t want to miss. Read on to find out about PDF’s.

PDF or Portable Document Format, is something you use every week, perhaps everyday, but may not be aware of it. It is, in some sense, the standard format by which electronic paper is distributed on the web. By Electronic paper I mean a format that is not alterable but deliverable electronically.

PDF was invented by a company named Adobe Systems. Their invention is part of a number of technologies that help make the web and the documents or content that makeup the web, readable by just about anyone in the world who wishes. But readability is only half the story. PDF makes documents placed on the web unalterable, meaning the author can put them on the web without fear of them being changed. This makes the web move accessible while at the same time protecting an author’s content.

I’m sure we’ve all read a document in PDF format. You click on it and “TaDa” a little popup comes up indicating you’re doing so and presto the doc pops up perfectly integrated in your browser or via launching of your PDF reader. If your certain you’ve never clicked a PDF before, click to the Nutrition Action Newsletter site and you’ll open up a nutrition article stored on their site as a PDF at this link HERE.

PDF’s allow organizations to share documentation with other companies in a form that is pretty much universally accepted, meaning, just about anyone can open a PDF version of a document you create. What are some uses?

1. To send brochures out
2. To send newsletters out
3. For final signed versions of legal documents (after having been scanned in).
4. For reprints of articles
5. For anything you want to send and have read but for which you want no changes made or even the content reused

With all this PDF goodness you have to wonder how you get the original document into PDF in the first place. Well there’s a few ways. One way is to buy such software from Adobe themselves. You can do that by clicking to the Adobe site at this link HERE. You could also use Open Office to write your documents in. They have a built in PDF generator in their software. You can click to Open Office at this link HERE. Finally you can use whatever tool you like today and then convert it into PDF for free. That’s right FREE.

The free tool to do that in is PDF Online. You can reach PDF Online at their site at this link HERE. We’ve been playing with this tool for about a month now and it has worked flawlessly. PDF Online is a tool that allows you to upload your documents to it, then it converts them to PDF and sends them back to you! We’ve found the tool to be flawless in execution taking everything we could throw at it. It’s really a great service and lets you get the goodness of PDF in an easy and painless way. Give it a try to share your documents worldwide!

Those of you who follow the Frugal Tech know that we like two things (a) stuff that works (b) a bargain. Pretty much in that order. After-all, if it’s a high tech bargain but doesn’t work then that’s known as a rip-off. We hate those. So we’ve found something that’s BOTH, and we think you’ll like it very much.

The something is Open Office. You can visit their web site at this link here. What is Open Office? Well in their own words:

Open Office.org is a multi-platform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

Free is good, so that meets our (b) bargain criteria. What about (a) though, does it work? Most of you reading this are using Microsoft Office, AppleWorks, or even Corel Wordperfect Office. All of those are splendid options and help you get your job done. But how does Open Office stand up to those? Well a complete review is a bit out of the scope of this cappucino whipping barrista, still we can comment on a few aspects, the common ones we (and probably you) would use everyday. That is their wordprocessor (known as Writer), their spreadsheet (known as Calc) and their presensation developer (known as Impress). We use OpenOffice on an 1 GHz Intel based system under MS Windows XP with 1GB RAM.

Writer
Writer is pretty much perfect. It’s easy to use, seems to be completely compatible with Word (at least for what the average Jane does) and, best of all, with one “click” you can turn any document into a pdf with it. It’s a pretty good deal in my pocketbook! I found Writer to not lack anything that MS Word had and Writer was just as easy to use. In fact, I just downloaded the software and started it and with no training I was able to use Writer. When pulling Word documents in it’s good about 95% of the time. It seems to have problems with things like the error markup feature in Word. One of the nicest things about Writer is that there are so many formats you can save your work to, including XML. This allows you to easily and quickly post to the web. In fact, I found it to be a nice and simple tool to whip up a web page with. With the International Organization for Standards voting in Open Document Format OASIS as the world wide standard for document interchange (see the ISO press release HERE), Open Office is a perfect tool to adhere to that standard for your documents. MS Word doesn’t currently support that format.

Calc
Calc is another well done piece in the Open Office suite. It calculates everything nicely (as it better had!) thankfully so there’s no worries there. It also handles the flat file database part of using your spreadsheet well too, in terms of sorting and quick finds. Again, for what 90% of the people use a spreadsheet for, Calc is really perfect. As with Writer, there was no learning curve, I just downloaded it and was able to start using it immediately. Calc also supports the Open Document Format OASIS standards. All was not smooth sailing though. When it came to easily copying a wide are of spreadsheet cells to move formula’s around, Calc was not nearly as easy to use as Excel. That became a real frustration in using it. Calc is easily as powerful as Excel, it’s just the they implement that feature that makes it frustrating. Still the price of free can’t be beat for an excellent and full featured tool.

Impress
Impress might be the most interesting of the modules. I say that due to what I experienced one day at work. It appeared I had a version of MS Powerpoint that had some sort of bug in it such that the slides I created could not be read by some of my co-worker’s later versions of Powerpoint. As you can imagine, this caused alot of panic when we all found out during a major crunch to get a presentation out! But OpenOffice’s Impress came to the rescue. With it anyone could open whatever version of Powerpoint anyone had and then edit it. And then, either save it back as Powerpoint that anyone could then read in their later versions of Powerpoint or convert it into .pdf so that anyone anywhere could read it. Lifesaver is a mild word. I’ve found Impress to work a bit differently than PowerPoint, not harder just differently. For example, some pieces are easier, such as with tabs at the top of the area that you do your page layout in, making it simpler to move from what view to another. Powerpoint has these at the bottom and they can get confusing. Charting is also different, as full featured as Powerpoint, but feels sighty easier. As with the other two modules there was virtually no learning curve to get up and running.

So what’s not to like?
Open Office, at least running on a Windows PC, is very good, but there are some areas that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how it appears to be somewhat of a memory hog. When I’m running multiple applications at once - MS Excel, Firefox, IBM Lotus Notes database, IBM Lotus Notes email, Skype, Palm - and then run Open Office it seems that within 30 minutes or so my system will slow down. At first this wasn’t an issue but eventually it got to be a real turnoff. The only thing I can attribute it to is that Open Office, at least under Windows, is a memory hog. Running Open Office under Windows by itself isn’t an issue, it seems to get all the elbow room it needs. The other thing is that Open Office seems to open slowly. We are not talking minutes here, more like 30 seconds or so. That might be the configuration of my system, I don’t know, but it’s something to be aware of. All in all, whether an application opens in 15 second or 30 seconds for the average Jane doing work I’m not sure matters.

Open Office is free, is open source and is backed by Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Novell, Intel and others and you just have to download it from their site @ http://www.openoffice.org

*Update 07/08/2006*
Microsoft has agreed to support Open Document Format, see Microsoft announcement at this link HERE.

Techie Diva’s site is truly fun site to visit if you like techie toys. And you can occassionally find a bargain there too