Krunchd. Not the kind that builds killer abs. The kind that makes life easier. Lots easier.
Are there times when you want to inundate someone with a whole gaggle of URLs? What’s the best way to do it? Fill up an e-mail that gets lost among all of the spam? Type them in a document? (That gets clunky for your friend to access the sites.) Krunchd to the rescue!!
On the Krunchd website, you paste in the desired URLs. Name and describe your link. Then, viola! It creates a Krunched URL (like they say — a Tiny URL on steroids).
Then, send the URL to your friend. When she clicks on the link, it takes her to the first URL that you entered in your list. To access the other links, she clicks on the drop down list on the right hand side of the window. She will see all of the other links in the list and can easily navigate to the next site. (See the example below. The red arrow points to the drop down list of the URls. )
Click on this link to see it in live URL action. It’s a random lists of grandmothers’ blogs.
Krunchd. Cool. Much easier than trying to build up your abdomen!
Sometimes in life there are things that are not used very often. But when they are, they are extremely valuable. Extremely. Something that you just can’t live without — even if it is just momentarily. The Mouse Locator is just that type of seldom-used necessity.
There have been times that for whatever reason my mouse pointer is MIA. Is it off to the right side of the screen? The left? Wait! No! It is at the bottom. . . or maybe it really was off to the right side.
Sometimes it feels like I’m playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego with my mouse. No amount of movement can reveal its location. Rats! (Or should I say ‘Mouse?’) Darn that little rodent. 2point5fish to the rescue. (Now, where in the world did they ever come up with a name like that??? Guess it makes sense to those folks in the UK who own the site.)
2point5fish has developed this sweet application, Mouse Locator, for the Mac. It’s easy to download, install, and set up. The hardest part (for me anyway) will be remembering the key stroke that locates my mouse. Control-space, control-space, control-space. Maybe if I repeat it enough times to myself it will lodge permanently in my long-term memory. Hopefully.
Mouse Locator. Give it a try, you Mac users. It’s the cat’s meow.
iPhoto 09 has some very different features. For those new to iPhoto 09 and especially those new to iPhoto in general, navigating around your photos can be daunting. It’s like being in a dream where you know you are supposed to go somewhere or do something but you have absolutely no clue what to do.
Well, here’s what you do. Open iPhoto and select Events in the left-hand navigation panel.
Then, slowly move your mouse over the pictures of an event thumbnail. It will automatically scroll through all of the photos that you have in that event.
Another way to navigate the thumbnails in an event is to use your right- and left- arrows on your keyboard. Simply point your mouse over the thumbnail picture. Then, press the right-arrow key. Every time you press the key, you will see a different picture in your event.
I feel I have a little more control when I use the arrow keys instead of dragging my mouse across the thumbnail. It’s easier to pause on the exact picture I want.
Sometimes when you take pictures with your digital camera, you turn your camera sideways to get a better vertical shot. But then when you import your photos into iPhoto, the photo is horizontal. And you want it displayed vertical. Like the picture of the darling baby in the photo below.
But then you notice that the Rotate button in iPhoto rotates the picture the opposite way than what you want. One way to solve that problem is to hold down the Option key on your keyboard. When you do this, you notice that the Rotate button switches the arrow to rotate in the opposite direction. You can then click on the Rotate button to rotate the picture in the desired direction.
Watch the little movie below to see how the arrow changes. (You won’t be able to see me holding down the Option key on my keyboard but know that when you see the arrow change directions on the screen that is what my finger just did.)
You might find that the great majority of the time you need to rotate in the opposite direction than what the Rotation arrow is. If so, you can make a change in the preferences. In the text menu at the top of the iPhoto screen, click on iPhoto and drag down to Prefercnces. In the Preferences window, click on the General tab. Then, click the Rotate radio button that you want. See the picture below.
Do you need to search for something on your iPhone but you don’t know how? It’s quite elementary, dear Watson. If you are on your Home screen, tap your Home button to bring up the Spotlight. Type in your search item. (The icon to the left of the search results tells which application the results are from). Tap the search result to open it. (If you are on a different screen in your apps, just slide your finger across the screen from left to the right. Keep sliding until you pass all of your apps and the Spotlight appears.)
This Spotlight searches Mail, Calendar, Notes, Contacts, Applications, Music, Podcasts, Video, Audiobooks, If you want to modify what the Spotlight searches, go into Settings, General, Home, Search Results. Tap the options to remove the check by the ones you do not want to search.
If you are already in one of these areas, you can search exclusively within that area. For example, if you are in Notes, you’re search will search only Notes. To get the Search Bar in Notes, tap the top of your screen. Drag your finger down. The Search Bar will appear at the top.
To search within iPod search, open iPod. Tap the area under which you’d like to search (playlists, artists, etc.). Tap the top of the screen and drag your finger down. The Search Bar will appear at the top of your screen.
I went to a conference at the end of June. One of the sessions that I went to shared some tips about the iPhone. I didn’t know these and was so thoroughly please to learn them. I don’t know if some are new because of the new version of the phone or just because of the software update. I don’t have a new phone — and yet these tips still worked on mine.
Tip 1
One of the most frustrating things for me was that when I had made a typing error, I couldn’t easily go back to the spot and correct just that one wrong letter. I had to backspace which meant that my slow thumbs had to retype everything over again that was deleted when I back spaced. Now, there is a WAY cool way to get to the spot you want to go to without deleting anything typed. Simply hold your finger down on the screen. A circle ‘bubble’ pops up. You will see a blue cursor inside that bubble. Now, drag your finger around the screen until the cursor is placed where you want it to be. Release your finger. Backspace to delete the rowdy wrong letter and type the correct one. This works with any application where text input is allowed. Here’s a picture to show you what your iPhone screen will look like.
Tip 2
In Safari, when you are typing in a URL, the keyboard has a key with ‘.com’ so you don’t have to type each individual letter. But, there are other domains rather than just .com. If you hold your finger down on the .com key, in a second you will get a pop-up option that includes .edu, .org, .net. What a time saver!
Tip 3
When you double tap the home button on your phone it will take you to your favorites in your phone list. Cool. But even better, you can change it to do something else. You can go to your settings and set it to open up the search box so you can perform a search on your phone. Or, you can set it to start your camera app or your iPod on your iPhone. If you use any of these features regularly, this allows you to get to your selected app much easier and faster.
To change the double click feature, go to your Settings, the to General, and scroll down to Home. Tap the option that you want. A check mark will appear indicating the place you will go when you double click your Home button. Double tap your Home button to make sure your change was made.
Tip 4
You may be wondering how I got the iPhone screen shots to use here on my tips. Well that, my dear friend, is Tip 4. If you want to do a screen capture, hold down your Off/On button and the Home button at the same time. This will snap a picture of your screen and send it to your Photo Albums on your phone.
To download it off your phone, go to iTunes after syncing your phone. When you click on your phone (under Devices), you will see the pictures on your phone. Click on the desired picture (it will have a yellow border around the photo) and then click Import Selected. Your photo will now be in iPhoto.
While what I want to write about today is not technology per se, it is a very useful online technology — one that allows you to create a business card.
If you’re like me, your graphic design skills are minimal (at best). If you want a business card and you don’t want to pay a designer to create one, this site provides an easy and FREE alternative. The site is Business Card Star.
This site will step you through selecting a layout, your color options, and font style, You can either save to print your cards on your home printer or save the file to have Business Card Star professionally print them later. (Their prices are reasonable.)
So, if you are in the need to have a business card and you want to save some money and print them yourself, this could be the answer for you.
(By the way, I found out about this site when I read a blog about a mother at a park handing out her little daughter’s business card to another mother so the mothers could set up playdates. Boy, I didn’t realize making arrangements for children to play was such a serioius thing!!)
I have given technology support through the years — over the phone, in my home, at the home of the technologically challenged, and at work. When I saw this video, I laughed and laughed and laughed.
I’ve been rather disappointed with the ringtones on my iPhone. None of them are tap-your-toe-catchy-wanna-dance tunes. I went window shopping in the App store to see if I could find a cool one. (I absolutely loved the Mission Impossible ringtone on my last phone.) Didn’t see anything that appealed to me.
However, as I was reading my Macworld magazine, I saw an ad that intruigued me. It was for iToner which is a little application for your Mac computer that allows you to drag tunes into it and then sync them with your iPhone. I downloaded the trial version and played around with it. Sweet.
Not only are the ringtones on my phone BORING, they are soft. With my iPhone in my purse, and my purse in my tote bag, and the tote bag on the floor of the loud and rickety UTA bus, I can’t hear when my phone is ringing. (My husband tried calling me several times the other day while I was on the bus and I didn’t hear the phone. He was quite perturbed with me. Quite.)
So, I took the Mission Impossible theme, cropped it in GarageBand, made the clip REAL loud, dragged the clip to iToner, and synced iToner with my phone. With that set as my default ringtone, I think I’ll be able to hear the phone while riding the bus. Might even get stares from other passengers when it goes off and is so loud . . . (And, if I forget to turn my phone to vibrate and it happens to go off in a really quiet place, boy will I be embarrassed as Mission Impossible blares out of my phone!)
I’m hoping that once my trial version of iToner is up that I will still have my Mission Impossible ringtone still on my phone. I hope it doesn’t disapper off . . . If it doesn, I just might have to break down and pay for iToner. It’s only $15 and would be worth it just to keep my Mission Impossible ringtone.
I’ve seen Shift Happens before (this version is more elegant) and thought I’d share it here. These are two thoughts from the sideshow that I find interesting. (Wait! there are more intriguing thoughts, I just picked out these two to post here . . .)
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t even exists and those jobs use technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
The amount of technology information is doubling every two years and by 2010 it is predicted to double every 72 hours. (We’re just a few months shy from 2010 . . so get prepare for the blast of technology to hit your fiber optics!)
Sometimes in life there are things that are not used very often. But when they are, they are extremely valuable. Extremely. Something that you just can’t live without — even if it is just momentarily. The Mouse Locator is just that type of seldom-used necessity.
While what I want to write about today is not technology per se, it is a very useful online technology — one that allows you to create a business card.
