Category — small office

If the warning above annoys you as much as it does me whenever you open an attachment in Office 2007, here’s how to get rid of it.

The Problem

Microsoft has understandably made security a cornerstone of its recent software releases. Each time you attempt to open a possibly malicious attachment in Outlook 2007, a warning dialogue box like the one above appears. It presents an always-checked, always-grayed-out box that reads: ‘Always ask before opening this type of file’.

Because Word, Excel, PDF and other document types can contain malicious code, you should, as the box warns, only open attachments from trustworthy sources. But, if you have a modern Anti-Virus program such as AVG or Microsoft’s Security Essentials (both of which are free), attachments in your emails should already be checked for malicious code. When this is the case, this warning dialogue box is an unnecessary interruption that becomes increasingly annoying if, like me, you receive emails with attachments many times a day.

The Solution in  Windows 7

Warning: You should only do this if you have anti-virus software installed on your computer that checks for, and quarantines, all emails that contain attachments with malicious code. And, as the warning says, you should never open attachments from anyone that you don’t know and trust! 

OK, you’ve been duly warned. Here’s how to do it:

CONTINUE READING →

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Last March, I switched ISPs from Rogers to Bell’s fiber-to-the-building Internet Max 16 service. I made the switch at the same time I ‘cut the chord’ – dumping Rogers cable in favor of HD, over-the-air only, TV recorded on my Series 3 TiVo.

Bell offered me a one year promotional deal for their Internet Max 16 service where I would receive (in theory*) download speeds of up to 16 Mbps and 1 Mbps upload for $41.90 a month. At the time, my theoretical 10 Mbps down service from Rogers (with a 95 GB cap) was costing me $59.95 a month.

As with Rogers, all of Bell’s plans have data caps – much smaller than comparable U.S. ISPs I might add. The data cap for the service under the Internet Max 16 promotional offer is 100 GB. 

Periodically during each month, I check my Bell Internet usage meter** (shown below, after the jump) to make sure I’m staying within the 100 GB cap. This becomes particularly important towards the end of the month where I am always running up against the cap.

As you can see in the picture below (circled in red after the jump), Bell’s ‘My Internet usage’ meter contains fine print which reads:

Note: Current total Internet usage activity shown may be delayed by up to 60 hours.

CONTINUE READING →

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When I first purchased my Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, several years ago, I dabbled with an earlier stand-alone version of Evernote. It presented a never-ending scratch-pad of sorts that I could write on with the tablet’s stylus. It was nice, even useful, but it didn’t supplant OneNote as my primary note-keeping software, until recently.

Evernote is the latest of several cloud-based service that I have been experimenting with. See my prior posts on  Google Apps Gmail with iMap, xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) and Dropbox.

The new cloud-based Evernote blows both the old Evernote and OneNote out of the water.

Evernote Benefits

• It’s free. Free accounts permit up to 40 Megabytes of new notes to be added / synced per month. I haven’t come close to using my monthly capacity in the two months I’ve used it (I have used, perhaps 1/4 of that).
• More than Text Notes: With the free version you can keep text, photo, audio clip and handwritten notes (in my case, written with a stylus on my tablet laptop). You can also import PDF files into notes in the free version.
• Multiplatform Syncing: These notes are continuously synced, accessible and editable across my three primary PCs (Thinkpad tablet, Dell XPS desktop and my iMac) and my iPhone.
• Accessible from the Cloud: I can access and edit these notes through my Evernote account in the cloud.
• Notes Backed Up: By virtue of its syncing across multiple platforms and a copy of all notes residing in the cloud, my notes are continuously backed-up across my systems and off-site.
• Tagging & Search: You can tag notes, structure the tags in a hierarchy (if you like – see the picture of part of my tag hierarchy on the right) and sort them how you chose. Or don’t. Instead, you can rely on its formidable search engine to find your notes. Either way, notes I wrote years ago (imported from OneNote) are as easy to find as notes I wrote yesterday.
• Indexes Text in Images: Surprisingly, Evernote can index text in images. If I take a picture of a bottle of wine, a business card, a plane ticket, or even hand written notes on my tablet, it will scan and index that text. That text then becomes searchable when looking for the note containing the image at a later date.
• Clip From Anywhere: Evernote adds toolbar icons in Firefox and IE that allow you to clip webpage contents, text, columns or images into a note. You can clip entire pages or just a few paragraphs. Additionally, pressing Print-Screen on a PC (Control-Command-C on the iMac ) fires up a screen ‘Clipper’ app that can grab a screen shot of any running app or the entire desktop (or portion thereof). You can cut and paste from any app on an iPhone into the Evernote app.

See this ‘What is Evernote’ page for more details on what it does.

CONTINUE READING →

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I have recently been experimenting with various cloud-based services. Among the best are EverNote, Google Apps Gmail with iMap, xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) and, now, Dropbox.

As described in more detail below, among other things Dropbox: (i) allows me to securely sync office documents between my PCs and Mac at any location; (ii) unchains me from my office PC; (iii) liberates me from coding on a single PC; and (iv) allows me to draft and maintain my Windows Live Writer blog posts from any of my PCs situated anywhere.

Dropbox Benefits

• Sync: Dropbox synchronizes your key files between any number of Internet-connected PCs, laptops or Macs, effortlessly and instantaneously.
• Access Your Key Files Anywhere: Synced files are also maintained on the Dropbox servers. You can login to your account from any web-enabled computer to securely access your files (download or upload).
• Security: All file transmissions occur over an encrypted SSL channel. All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted using AES-256 encryption accessible only by you with your account password.
• Backup: Because your files are synced across at least two PCs, your files are effectively backed-up.
• Real-Time Offsite Backup: Because your files are also copied to the Dropbox servers, they are effectively backed-up, off site, in real-time.
• Undo/File Recovery: Remarkably, Dropbox maintains a 30 day history of every change made to your files so you can undo changes or undelete accidently deleted files.
• Shared Files & Folders: You can share files and folders with other drop-box users. For example, you could set up a shared folder of photos accessible only by friends and family through their Dropbox accounts.
• iPhone App Coming Soon: You can view all your Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, etc. files  using the free Dropbox iPhone App coming soon (see iPhone, Blackberry and other Dropbox mobile details here).

Click here for a detailed list of Dropbox features.

Dropbox Demo

How I use Dropbox

• Office Document Use: As a lawyer I access, edit and annotate Word documents and pdfs all day, every day. When I move from my PC to my laptop, I save the file I’m working on and by the time I shift to my laptop, the changes made to that file are synced to my laptop. Similarly any edits made on the laptop are instantaneously synced back to the desktop. No longer do I have to email the document to myself, save it to a USB key, copy to/from network drives. I simply open and save files on whatever PC, laptop, or Mac I’m using, and the latest version is instantly available on the other synced devices.

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Since purchasing my iPhone back in August 2008, every time I connected my iPhone to my PC (originally Vista, now Windows 7 RC), iTunes would automatially start the Windows ‘Import Pictures and Videos’ wizard (“IPVW”), regardless of whether or not there were any new pictures on my iPhone to import.

Since I connect my iPhone to iTunes every day (to update my podcasts, backup data, install new apps etc.), I had to cancel out of the IPVW every time I connected. This was a daily frustration!

Along the line I had collected up some 30ish pictures in my iPhone’s ‘camera roll’ for the following reasons:

1. Originally, I had not set the ‘delete from iPhone when importing’ option in the IPVW, so those pictures remained on the camera roll even after syncing; and
2. For some good pictures, I just wanted to keep a copy on my iPhone for viewing.

Strangely, there is no way to move  pictures from the iPhone’s ‘camera roll’ to an album in the iPhone’s native Photos app.

Most of the time I want pictures to be copied off my iPhone when I sync. As a result I had set the IPVW’s Import settings (see link in picture above) accordingly. To my mind, the iPhone should only automatically pop-up the IPVW when there are new pictures that a user might want copied over to the PC. That is not how it works.

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I upgraded my iMac and my Windows 7 machines to Firefox 3.5 (available here) today. 

All went well. The total download/install time was about 4 minutes on my iMac – 2 minutes on Windows 7 RC.

This isn’t a particularly important release for me. I was happy with Firefox 3.0.1. But they promised more speed so I gave it a whirl.

• Snappier: With its new JavaScript engine – TraceMonkey, it does appear to be snappier, but not a whole lot more snappier as some had suggested.
• New Tab Icon: I like the new tab ‘+’ icon. They are imitated  an IE feature here.  This is useful, especially for news.
• Moving Tabs Between Windows: Now you can drag a tab out of the browser and a new window will open with that page. Or drag a tab from one window to another. For multi-monitor users like myself, this is a terrific new feature.
• Addons – Extensions: All my extensions except 1 migrated nicely. I needed to do a manual update to my Tab Extensions 1 extension (discussed here and available here) but that was to be expected.
• Open in Tabs’ Overwrite Bug: This ‘bug’ still persists in Firefox 3.5 (discussed here ). Alas, as long as the Tab Extensions add-on is available, this is not a problem for me.

See also:

• Firefox 3.5: The Technologizer Review (Harry McCracken)
• Top 5 Killer Features in Firefox 3.5 (Mashable) Me: a bit of hyperbole in the title!
• First Look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to “upgrade” the Web (ars technica)

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While I am rather discouraged that Microsoft is not following Apple’s lead with aggressive Windows 7 pricing (snow leopard will retail for $29 U.S. in September), from June 26, to July 11, 2009, American and Canadian consumers can pre-order Windows 7 upgrades at deep-discounts (50% or more) off the retail price that Windows 7 will be selling for when it launches on October 22, 2009.

Below are tables showing the preorder and retail pricing available to Canadian and American consumers with links to Amazon.com and Amazon.ca where Windows 7 can be pre-ordered at the discounted price until July 11, 2009.

Note: See Paul Thurrott’s ‘Windows 7 Product Editions – A Comparison’ to see a detailed chart comparing the features of each. While I purchased the Vista ‘Ultimate’ edition in 2007, this time I will be purchasing the Home Premium edition for my PCs and laptops. I’ve been loving the Windows 7 beta and release candidate and heartily recommend it.

U.S. Windows 7 Upgrade Pricing (with links to Amazon.com)

Canadian Windows 7 Upgrade Pricing (with links to Amazon.ca)

CONTINUE READING →

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With a few easy steps that take only minutes to complete, iPhone users the world round can get access to some (but not all) of the iPhone Apps that are only available in the U.S.. I’m surprised it took me so long to try this.  I just used it to d0wnload the Lose It! which was previously not available to me in Canada.

[Note: Rogers is somehow still blocking Pandora and Skype even when I removed the SIM  card. Grrr! Here’s a Skype iPhone App workaround for Canadians – I haven’t tried it yet.]

Setup is a breeze. It took me about two minutes. You essentially set up a VPN connection to the U.S. through the HotSpot Shield servers. This, of course, would also be useful for safe surfing at coffee shops and other wifi locations.

Once you have set up your account, configured and activated the VPN (see instructions below), navigate to the App Store on your iPhone. Search for the app you want and (if its there) download it. It’s that simple.

Survives Desktop Sync

I was concerned that if I downloaded apps this way, they would be wiped out after I synced my iPhone with iTunes to my desktop. Not so. The sync went fine and the apps remained on the iPhone.

No Need to Keep VPN Turned On

You only need to activate the VPN to download the app. Once downloaded, you can use the app with the VPN shut off.

CONTINUE READING →

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Windows has not provided .iso file burning functionality before. Rather than use a specialized tool, I have, until now, used my iMac to burn iso files. This morning I discovered that with a couple clicks of the mouse, Windows 7 users can now burn .iso files. 

Here’s how:

• In Windows Explorer double click the .iso file you wish to burn
• Windows 7 opens the following dialogue

• Choose the DVD burner you wish to use (in my case Drive F:)
• Select whether or not you wish to verify the disk after burning
• Click the ‘Burn’ button and you are off:

That’s it. I’m surprised it took Redmond this long to finally include this functionality.

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• $199 for 16 GB in U.S. – $299 for 32GB version (on contract of course)
  • pricing only available to new AT&T customers
  • $700 Upgrade fee for current AT&T iPhone users
  • [June 10 Update: Rogers has announced that Canadian pricing will be the same as U.S. pricing – in Cdn $. So, $199 and $299 Cdn for the 16 and 32 GB units respectively. Only available on 3 year contracts again. No pricing for un-subbed units announced – un-subbed 3G iPhones still cannot be purchased in Canada. 8-GB, 3G Units will be decreased to $99. No word on 16GB units]
• Available June 19 (U.S. & Canada)
• $99 for prior 16 GB iPhone
• “up to” two times Faster
• Voice Control:
  • voice dialing
  • ask iPhone what song is playing and it will tell you
  • tell iPhone to play a song, or songs by an artist or a playlist and it will play it
  • developers can integrate into any app

CONTINUE READING →

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Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google. In the 2 minute video below he describes what he believes Web 3.0 applications will be.

In summary, he defines, Web 3.0 as:

• Applications that are pieced together.
• They are relatively small.
• The data is in the cloud.
• The application can run on any device, PC or mobile phone.
• Applications are fast and customizable
• Applications are distributed virally via social networks and email.

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With Windows 7 RC1, Microsoft limited the number of Jump List items showing above taskbar icons to 10. (click image for larger view). In the beta there was no such limit.

I gather that more than 10 was confusing for some. For me large jump lists are very useful– especially for programs that do not  make it easy to find and open recent files.

One such program is Windows Live Writer – the program I use to write blog posts. It remembers only the three most recent posts. However, I frequently tweak and retweak recent posts until I get it just right. The more prior posts showing up in the Jump List the easier it is to access and edit those posts.

To change the default number of items in the jump List that Windows 7 makes available:

CONTINUE READING →

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To me, and I suspect to many Windows users, it would be intuitive for Windows to bring whatever window the mouse is currently hovering over into focus without the need to click on that window.

It turns out that Windows 7 now makes this possible. I stumbled upon this tip when writing my ‘How to Shut Off Windows 7 Aero Snap – Stop it from Auto Arranging Windows’ post.

There are two additional reasons why I want Windows 7 to activate (bring focus to an ‘out of focus’ window) by hovering the mouse over it:

1. Symbiotic With Single-Click Item Activation

For the better part of a year I have been using the ‘single-click to open’ option in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (The option has been around since Windows 95). The idea behind this one-click option is to make the Windows use experience similar to the web-browsing experience. Instead of double clicking icons and options to open/access/activate them in Windows, you need only click icons, items etc. once.

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Window’s 7 new Aero Snap feature is, no doubt, a useful feature for those with just one monitor. In my case, where I use multiple monitors, it is a major pain. Windows 7 frequently auto-adjusts windows across multiple monitors when I have no desire for this to happen.

In the picture above, my Firefox window was originally open in just the lower, central, window. I was dragging the lower right corner with my mouse (see yellow arrow) to adjust the window when, suddenly, it popped up across three monitors (see four red arrows above). Yikes!

Windows 7 does this because it thinks that if you drag an edge of a window to the edge of a screen (any screen) you want the widow stretched across the full screen (or in my case, multiple screens). Nobody would want the result produced above.

Before disabling Aero Snap this happened to me several times a day. It doesn’t any longer. To disable Aero Snap, follow these steps:

CONTINUE READING →

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While listening to audio-only podcasts, iPhone users can press the ‘Sleep/Wake’ button to turn off the display, yet still continue listening to the podcast. iPhone users can also click the iPhone’s ‘Start’ button when listening to audio podcasts, use other iPhone apps, and continue listening to the podcast uninterrupted.

Not so with video podcasts. Clicking the ‘Sleep/Wake’ button, or clicking the iPhone’s start button shuts video podcasts off. The inability to just listen to video podcasts has been one of my primary complaints with the iPhone’s iPod functionality. See my other major complaints here and here.

Why Would Anyone Want to Just Listen to a Video Podcast?

All video podcasts are not created equal. Some video podcasts such as CO-OP, demand that the user ‘watch’ them to get the most out of them. Other podcasts , such as the ‘Cranky Geeks’, Geek Brief TV and Diggnation can usually be enjoyed without ever looking at the screen.

There are several reasons why one might wish to consume a video podcast with the visual element shut off:

• While Using other IPhone Apps: Since I can, and often do, use other iPhone/iTouch apps while listening to audio podcasts, I sometimes just want/need to just listen to video podcasts while using other apps. Why not?
• Increased battery life: Video playback consumes an enormous amount of battery charge. If you don’t need to watch the video to enjoy it, why waste the battery?
• Putting iPhone in Pocket: I often put my iPhone in my pocket while listening to podcasts. When the iPhone screen cannot be shut off, this becomes a bit clumsy. The act of putting it in my pocket (or taking it out) often results in unwanted screen clicks that can shut the podcast off, fast forward it, pause it etc.
• While Driving: Who needs the video on while driving?

Bottom Line: Hardly a day has gone by since I purchased my iPhone last August, when I didn’t wish I could turn off the screen and still listen to my video podcasts.

Turns out that there has been a way to do this all along. It took me 8 months before I stumbled upon this trick.

CONTINUE READING →

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I did an in-place Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) upgrade on April 26, 2009.  For changes made from the beta version of Windows 7 to Release Candidate 1 see:

• Some Changes Since Beta for the RC (MSDN blogs)
• A few more changes from Beta to RC (MSDN blogs)
• User Interface Changes in the Release Candidate (Paul Thurrott)

Below are my first impressions and initial observations:

The Good

• The System Seems Snappier: Moving from Vista to Windows 7 Beta provided a substantial performance boost to my system. After 1 hour or so, the system seems somewhat snappier still.
• Faster Access to Remote Drives: Navigating to and around my Drobo Drive (shared from another XP system on my network) seems dramatically faster than it was under either XP, Vista or Windows 7 Beta). This was a major annoyance under the Windows 7 Beta which was worse than under XP or Vista.
• System Search Indexing Problem Fixed:  During my first couple months of using Windows 7, the Start menu search function (eg: searching for, say, ‘device manager’) had indexing problems where it took 30 seconds to a minute to search for and find system files/apps. It stemmed from customizations I made to the indexing options. I was never able to recover from whatever I did. After this upgrade the system search is wicked fast again!

CONTINUE READING →

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I completed an in-place Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) upgrade from the original beta build 7000. The upgrade took approximately 1.5 hours and went smoothly. The upgrade went faster than my original upgrade from Vista to Win7 Beta. See my ‘Windows 7 Release Candidate First Impressions and Observations’ post for post-upgrade details).

[May 5, 2009 Update: Download the Windows 7 release Candidate here. It will be available here until July. They are not limiting the number of downloads this time. The release candidate will function until March 1, 2010 after which it will nag you several times a day to purchase the RTM version. It will cease functioning on June 1, 2010. Until then, party!]

The instructions for how to do an in-place upgrade are set out below. I edited them  to make them easier to follow from the instructions provided by Paul Thurrott on his SuperSite for Windows blog  here. See similar instructions here (scroll down to the ‘How-To’ section).

Despite Thurrott’s ivory-tower purity of not recommending users do in-place upgrades, I went ahead anyway. At worst, I could have rolled back to my prior Windows 7 beta image. Doing a fresh install is obviously the best practice. But anyone that takes even a cursory look at my ‘The Windows Apps I Use and How I Configure Them’ post can understand why I was loathe to do yet another clean install for just a release candidate. That said, I probably will do a clean install when the RTM version comes out this summer.

In the mean time, here are the instructions for how to do an in-place upgrade:

CONTINUE READING →

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The Daleisphere Command Center

In mid-February 2009, I made the unfortunate mistake or using a registry cleaner in hopes of tweaking even more performance out of my Windows 7 Beta (“Win7B”) setup. The net result – my ship was sunk!

All my data was backed up, of course, but it took me two months to gradually re-install and tweak ‘most’ of the dozens of apps I use to run my law practice, develop my websites, blog and otherwise run my world.

On the advice of my nephew Michael Kalistchuk, an IT consultant, I painstakingly documented the details of the applications I use and how I configure them. This post grew out of those notes.

It’s unlikely I’ll need these notes for recovery purposes because I have since used Windows 7’s built in image backup system to create a recovery image.

More likely, when the final version of Windows 7 is released, I’ll do a clean install (rather than install over my current install) requiring me to do all of this over again. These notes should dramatically decrease the time it will take to get my command center up and operational again.

CONTINUE READING →

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In mid February 2009, shortly after installing Windows 7 Beta on my primary PC, I made the huge mistake of running an automated ‘Registry Cleaner’ program. Suffice it to say, it destroyed my system.

Because, my data is backed up on a nightly basis, I lost no data. But I did lose years (stretching back to my first Vista x64 install in January of 2007) of application installations and tweaks. Two months later I have finally (mostly) completed the long and laborious chore of re-installing and tweaking the many dozens of applications I use every day.

To ensure that I NEVER experience this special kind of hell again I decided to create an image of my primary system C:\ drive. I looked at various commercial system image/ghosting programs but decided that the system image feature built into Windows 7 was sufficient for my needs.

Highlights:

• The process took about 30 minutes for a 100 Gig C:\ drive.
• I was able to use Windows 7 and all my apps as normal during the entire time the image was being created.
• Compression was terrific. It compressed my 100 GB system to a 45 GB image backup.

Below is a simple step-by-step description of how to use it. The process is simple:

CONTINUE READING →

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Next to my ongoing desire for a podcast delete function, the next-most glaring problem I have had with the iPhone and iPod Touch’s iPod playback functionality is its janky fast-forwarding and rewinding (also known as ‘scrubbing’).

The two most common scrubbing issues I have with my iPhone are when I want: (i) to skip back , say 10 seconds, to re-listen to something i missed – like I can with TiVo’s instant replay button; and (ii) to jump forward past podcast commercials – I can only listen to so many Audible ads on the Twit Network.

Scrubbing with the scroll wheel on iPods is a breeze. (See this ‘How to Scrub on Your iPod’ video, depicted in the picture on the right, for example.) You can easily jump back and forth to the exact desired spot within the song, podcast or video you are consuming by moving your thumb clockwise or counterclockwise on the scroll wheel as shown in the picture.

There is no scroll wheel on the iPhone or the iPod Touch. Instead, there is tiny round selector (see image above) on a small 1.25” horizontal scroll bar that you slide left and right to move around your media. This provides decent accuracy for short items such as a 3 minute song. For longer-form content, such as multi-hour podcasts and movies, the 1.25” scroll bar is too small to accurately select any given point of play. I personally consume long-form content the most. Such clumsy scrubbing has often left me 5 to 10 minutes away from the place I want to be.

The solution, variable speed scrubbing.

CONTINUE READING →

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While Firefox is my mainstay browser, I pretty much use all current browsers from time to time both to test my various websites for compatibility and to keep current with what’s new in the browser wars.

I recently installed the Safari 4 beta. In earlier versions of Safari, there was always an option to import bookmarks from IE or Firefox during the installation process. Not-so with the Safari 4 beta install.

Note: I purposely uninstalled Safari 3 before installing Safari 4. My hope was to get a fresh import of my most current Firefox bookmarks in the process. That didn’t work.

I use xmarks (formerly foxmarks)  to synchronize my bookmarks between computers. While there is an xmarks beta client for use on the Mac, so far there is none for the PC.

Here’s the easiest way I could find to import Firefox bookmarks into the Safari 4 beta:

In Firefox:

• Click on Bookmarks
• Click on ‘Organize Bookmarks’ (Ctrl-Shift-B)
• Click on ‘Export HTML…’ under the ‘Import and Backup’ pull-down menu

CONTINUE READING →

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The Twitter apps, tools and widgets I use are constantly changing. Below are the tools I currently use (click on the images for larger views):

Desktop Client – Twhirl

I use Twhirl as my desktop twitter application. I looked at TweetDeck but it was overkill and it takes up too much screen real-estate. I tried the gorgeous blu (works only on Vista and Windows 7), but it does not have an adjustable font. The default font is too small for my aging eyes. Twhirl is surprisingly feature rich but it takes awhile to figure out all the intricacies. I’ve tried others, but keep coming back to Thwirl.

iPhone App – Tweetie

Tweetie is terrific. I had previously used Twitterific and Twinkle on the iPhone but Tweetie ($2.99) satisfies me the most. Tweets are presented in bubbles similar to the iPhone’s SMS bubbles. Thankfully, the font is adjustable. Functions and information are an easy swish away. Twitterific does have the advantage of supporting both Twitter and friendfeed.

See also: 29 Twitter Apps for the iPhone Compared (Mashable)

CONTINUE READING →

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With Google Apps’ Gmail you can set up personalized email addresses for yourself, up to 50 members of your family or 50 employees in your business, using an Internet domain you own and control – for free! Your email address will no longer be chained to your ISP or your web-based email provider such as Hotmail, Yahoo! or Gmail.

I have been using Google Apps to host my personal and professional ‘@daledietrich.com’ email (pictured above) for about a year now. In this post I provide detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to do this.

While Google Apps’ Gmail is completely free, to use it you must register your own domain. If you haven’t yet, you can register a domain with a Domain Host (‘DH’). I use GoDaddy. As of the date I write this, GoDaddy charges $9.99 U.S. ($9.99 on sale) for a one year registration of  a DOT COM domain ($6.99 to transfer in an existing .com domain) and $10.69 for annual renewals.

Screenshots below were taken when I set up my ‘daleipshere.com’ domain to use Google Apps Gmail using GoDaddy.com as my DH.

Why Google Apps for Email?

A. Email Hosting for Any Domain – for Free: I used to pay $65 a year to have my @daledietrich.com email hosted by Elehost (a terrific ISP by the way). Now my @daledietrich.com, @daleisphere.com and @wishhh.com email is hosted on Google Apps for free!

B. Freedom from ISP Domains: Most personal email accounts use the ISPs domain – eg: yourname@comcast.com, yourname@rogers.com. This artificially locks users into a given ISP. If you wish to change your ISP you may be reluctant to do so because you’ll have to change your email address. If a move results in a change of ISP, you’ll have the additional hassle of changing your email address. But, when you set up a Google Apps Gmail account with your own custom domain, email accounts you set up for your family or business can be used forever – regardless of your ISP.

CONTINUE READING →

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Self-hosting using DynDNS.com was working out well until recently. However, there are several reasons why I moved to Media Temple’s Grid-Service:

Cost: Not including the original home-server cost (I had been using a $600 Dell desktop), it was cheaper to use DynDNS.com for my initial 3 or 4 domains. As I add new domains, the cost of DynDNS was about to become more expensive than Media Temple which allows me to host up to 100 domains for $200 a year.

Future Sites Planned: I have several websites planned for the future. I’m hoping one of those will take-off or get Dugg – where I’ll need the surge capacity that media temple can support.

Bandwidth Caps: As of August 2008 Rogers imposed a 95 Gig per month bandwidth cap. Unlike in the U.S. where a typical user accounts have 200+ Gig caps, the 95 Gig Rogers cap was attached to their highest price consumer account. I have bumped up against and surpassed that cap over the last few months (Rogers charges $2.95 per Gig above the cap). Note: Bell’s highest end consumer account cap is 100 Gigs.

CONTINUE READING →

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[Update: As of April 18, 2009, the Facebook Connect glitch under Disqus discussed in this post appears to be remedied. As you can see, I have re-activated the Facebook Connect option on The Daleisphere.

I also note that commenters using Facebook connect have the option (when leaving a comment) to allow that comment to be posted back to their Facebook feed.

Finally, I have updated my ‘Why and How to Integrate Facebook Connect with Disqus’ post to reflect recent Disqus/Facebook implementation changes.]

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Disqus is in the process of enhancing their Facebook Connect feature. However, for the last day or so, with the feature enabled, only logged-in Disqus users were able to leave comments on The Daleisphere and on my iMedia Law blog. Neither Facebook users, nor regular commenters could leave comments here.

I recently updated sections 4.6 and 4.8 of my ‘Why and How to Integrate Facebook Connect with Disqus’ post describing the changes that Disqus recently instructed me to make on the applicable Facebook developer pages to facilitate the latest enhancements.  Clearly, they are not working.

For more information on the problem, I wrote a detailed description of Facebook Connect / Disqus problem here in the Disqus forums.

So, as of March 18, 2009, I have shut off Disqus’ Facebook Connect functionality on my Daleisphere and iMedia Law blogs. 

I will update this post when this problem is resolved.

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