Soluto: Easy Tech Support for Mom and Dad

Techcrunch had a great article about how to provide tech support to your loved ones (or those who you like enough to provide support). The solution is from a company called Soluto, and they bill themselves as the Anti-Frustration Software company.

Soluto started out as a downloadable app for Joe User, but eventually they figured out that Joe User just wants their stuff to work, not figure out yet another tool that will tweak their computer. So what Soluto did was pretty genius: they decided to make their solution web-based, and market it to IT professionals (the founder calls them "techie people") like me.


Now, instead of my mom having to install the software herself and make decisions about what to turn off or on, and what to do about the web browser toolbars, etc., it is me who makes those decisions, remotely. All with little to no end-user interaction.

This means I can monitor and push software updates (hello, all you lonely Windows XP Security updates!), as well as reset her default browser to Chrome and search provider to Google should she get hijacked somehow. I know, a rare thing, right? Essential computer specs are there, too, like used/free space on hard drives, CPU, how much RAM, what motherboard and graphics cards... all the essentials. Other things you can do: with the click of a button, install cool apps like Skype, Dropbox, OpenOffice, Google Talk, Evernote and more. You can see when apps are non-responsive and/or crash.

To make boot time faster, Soluto lays out all the programs that start up at boot time, and arrange them in order of time it takes to fire up. From there, you can drill down to the ones that are safe to remove, the ones that are potentially removable, and ones that are required. The desktop version of the app told you how many seconds you've saved off the boot time, but this new web-based beta does not do that as of this writing.

You also have access to the end-user's computer protection including turning the firewall on and off and managing the virus scanning side of things in addition to Windows Updates.

Does this replace being there? Almost. You can't, for example, troubleshoot printing or driver problems or anything complicated like that yet... but remember, this is in beta and there's a lot more in the works as they listen to techies like me give them feedback. For the really tough problems (printer/scanner not working, some kind of thing (virus/malware) causing incredible slowness) or the infamous "I can't find my file" scenario, LogMeIn and a good Skype connection is always as good as being there. If LogMeIn's too complicated, they just launched a service called Join Me, which is desktop sharing in two clicks.

So the days of helping family with tech support tasks just got a little bit easier. For the really advanced stuff, there's LogMeIn/Join Me. For the rest of the small stuff like pushing upgrades and common things like setting the homepage or default web browser or basic maintenance tasks and monitoring the frustration level of the people you support, Soluto provides a great solution.

Minecraft black screen (single player mode) fix

Disclaimer: This is a dirty hack and will wipe out your worlds, server
addresses and all data about minecraft. Use as last resort.
Instructions are for the Mac.

I typically play minecraft on a server and this have no saved worlds
on my Mac. With the latest Adventure Update, I decided to give the new
one a whirl but found that I couldn't create a new world. Instead, I
got a flash of a crash message and then a black screen. Here's how I
fixed it.

On your Mac, close Minecraft and navigate to ~/Library/Application
Support/ and trash the Minecraft folder. Then start Minecraft again.
This will work, but it's like starting fresh with no previous data.
Not even your username and password.

Windows XP taskbar icons disappearing?

Here's a great fix for any time where some of your icons are missing from your Windows XP system tray (AKA notification area) at startup. What you need to do is make sure that Universal Plug and Play Device Host is set to start Automatically at startup. Do this by:

1. Start > Run > services.msc
2. Right-click Universal Plug and Play Device Host, choose Properties
3. Change Startup Type to Automatic
   
   
4. Click OK
5. Log off, then log back on (no need to reboot completely)

To test this out before you log off and back on, see if the service is even running. In my case, the service was NOT running, and so I clicked the blue Start link in the upper left. Then, since my Sound icon is one of the icons that went missing, I went into the Control Panel, opened up the Sound properties, then disabled and enabled the Sound icon. What happened? The sound icon actually showed up and stayed put this time.

Did this work for you?

Quicken: Bank of America and the OL-226-A Error

UPDATE: Are you still a Quicken user? What are you doing? Go download YNAB and change the way you budget... for the better.


----- Original Post -----

QUICK & DIRTY:
Here's a quick PRO TIP that WORKS for the infamous OL-226-A Error that Quicken produces whenever you try to download your Bank of America credit-card-only (i.e., you don't have a checking account with them, just a credit card) account information via Direct Connect:

Create a new account and choose Bank of America - All Other States. Once your new account is created you'll need to categorize all your transactions, but from here on out you should be able to download your monthly statement via direct connect without issue.

DETAILED BACKGROUND:
For years, I was an MBNA credit card customer. Then in January 2006, Bank of America bought MBNA, and I became a Bank of America customer by default. During this transition, an important banking feature seemed to become quite flakey: the ability to download account informaiton (transactions) directly into Quicken, without going to my bank's web site and downloading them separately.

The inconvenience of not being able to download transactions directly through Quicken was one reason I lost touch with my finances for some quite some time--it was always such a pain to go update my account that I kept putting it off until there was so much data to go through I gave up all together.

Recently, I found myself in a situation where it now made sense to track my income and expenses. I went through all the motions and downloaded my transactions from my financial institutions, categorized the transactions, etc. All was well--even Bank of America--until the very next day after I set up all my accounts.

For some reason, my Bank of America account was only able to download transactions the very first day. Today, it decided it didn't want to update. Now... having had plenty of problems with Quicken in the past, I immediately wrote it off as a quicken problem and began my search.

The error code Quicken gave me was OL-226-A. Seems like lots of people had this error, and most of them had to do with Bank of America. I later learned that many of *those* people were specifically using Bank of America - California specifically.

After lots of troubleshooting over many weeks and months, I finally broke down and called Bank of America, where I waited on hold for over 20 minutes before I spoke to a rep, who proceeded to tell me that I could not use Quicken for a Direct Download of financial transactions because I had a credit-card-only account. He went on to say that if I had a checking account with them, I'd be able to do it no problem.

"No way," I thought. I need a second opinion. So I spoke with the rep's manager, who proceeded to tell me the same story: I must have been downloading transactions all these years by, and I quote, "some unexplained glitch in the system."

I'm sorry, what did I just hear? That must mean that somehow I've been beating the system all these years until something went haywire.

<FoulLanguageWarning>
Excuse me? I think I need to grab my boots, because the bullshit's getting pretty thick. I mean, what kind of shit is that? This is the largest fucking bank in these United States of America, and you mean to tell me that I can't download my transactions using the most popular financial software on the fucking planet? Something's wrong here. Something doesn't add up!
</FoulLanguageWarning>

So after I got off the phone, flaming pissed, I set out to end this bullshit once and for all--after all, I can't leave my boots on forever.

About 15 minutes of serious digging landed me on this gem of a thread from Quicken, which I seem to have misplaced because I first started this post back in December of 2008. (Side note: wow, the blog post that time forgot.)

In any event, I was able to delete my current Bank of America account in Quicken, the re-establish it using this little trick: when Quicken asks you what state your account is located in, choose Bank of America - All Other States.

That's it! So far, it seems to be working well... but I must say, I'm a Mac user once again and I've been waiting eons for Quicken to come out with a Mac version of Quicken... and I've been let down yet again. Quicken Financial Life for Mac will not be coming out until at least February 2010. I say "at least" because they company has pushed it back several times since 2008. At this point, I think I'm considering moving on to something like Mint.com -- I've been trying the two in parallel, and I'm noticing some interesting differences.

For example, Quicken only downloads Bank of America's credit card statements once per month as an entire statement; Mint, on the other hand, downloads transactions on a per-transaction basis, as if you were logging into the site directly and viewing the latest and greatest. This is particularly handy because after a month passes and I download all my transactions into Quicken, I often wonder what certain expenses are that I don't have receipts for. With Mint, I can check it daily, weekly, whenever the mood strikes me.

What's more, while both programs automatically categorize your downloaded transactions, Mint puts Quicken to shame because it is constantly improving its algorithms/database to predict which category your income and expenses really are. Unlike its aging great grandfather Quicken, which seems a bit like it's playing pin the tail on the donkey--in the dark.

Would I switch to Mint today? Probably not. While graphs are nice, I like the reporting in quicken because I use a zero-based budgeting system and need to make sure certain numbers get down to zero by the end of the month... reporting makes that easy. I also like the flexibility of entering transactions manually--like when you write a check today and nobody deposits it for a month--that Quicken has and Mint desperately needs. Sometimes those laggard checks get deposited at the wrong time, creating surprises. But had I been able to enter that transaction manually, I'd have seen that my balance really wasn't $1,000 but $1,000 minus that $500 check and, well, I wouldn't have bought that $501 collector's postage stamp. ;)

Phew, that was a long post. If you're still reading this, you either really liked what I had to say (thank you) or have too much time on your hands. Or both. ;)

Till next time, World!

View entire (paid) WSJ articles for free

This evening Debbie wanted to read an article she found on Wall Street Journal (WSJ) but the article ended after only a couple paragraphs. That's when she turned to a service called BugMeNot, which allows you to log into a web site with a (usually fake or generic) user ID created by one person solely for the purpose of sharing it with others so that others don't enter their personal information and get spammed by the site.

Well, paid sites are barred from BugMeNot, and that's where her search ended. Or so she thought. Just type in digg.com/ before the URL. (It will look like this: digg.com/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124649298279583139.html). Then, just click Submit to Digg and sign up for an account if you don't have one. Once you've submitted it and you're logged into Digg, you can view the entire article for free. The reason this is possible is because WSJ and Digg have a little agreement between each other to make this happen. So you're not "cheating the system" or anything, you're just taking advantage of something that not too many people know about.

Enjoy!

Posted via email from michaelpaul's posterous

Turn Twitter into a real-time news aggregator

Today there was a shooting in Binghamton, NY. I found out about it on Twitter via @JasonCalacanis. I was curious to know more about it, so I searched Google News. While I did find some interesting articles, that's only one perspective. What about the people's account and what's on their mind, though? For that, we turn to Twitter.

But then we have a problem. You arrive at search.twitter.com, but the question becomes, "well, what the hell do I search for now? Shooting? Murder? Answer: none of the above. You search for *everything* around the Binghamton, NY area. But how? Not everybody has the werewithal to tag their posts #Binghamton every time they talk about the shooting... and who says that's the right tag to use? In short, it can be hard to find exactly what you're looking for.

The shooting occured in Binghampton, so what we will search for is tweets that happened in or around Binghamton. But how? We use a qualifier. That qualifier is near:

So, a sample search on Twitter might look like this, giving you highly relevant results about the current event:

This is just one way to use search on Twitter. For tons more options, you can build a custom search using the Advanced Search, which you can get to by clicking on the link at the right of the Search button. In the search above, you might also include the following qualifier, filter:links, which again can be found on the Advanced Search page.

An easy way to shorten a URL

UPDATED 2/16/09

Have you ever had a long, ugly URL like this...

http://www.theunion.com/article/20090111/NEWS/901119997/1053/NONE&parentprofile=1053&title=Record%20high%20temperatures%20possible

...that you wish could look more like this: http://is.gd/fKGK ?

Quick tip for the day: head on over to http://is.gd and find the Instructions page. From there, drag the link inside the Bookmarklet section up to your Bookmarks Toolbar (aka Favorites Toolbar). If you don't have that toolbar enabled, you can enable it using View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox, or View > Toolbars > Links in good old Internet Explorer.

When you're viewing the page you want to create a short link to, just click the newly-created Bookmark link you created and a short link is created for you using the is.gd service.

Now you can post simple, easy links to services like Twitter or in emails, IMs and more. How about you: do you know of a shorter link than is.gd?

=============
Update: 2/16/09

Just found a way better service than is.gd. Same length, but much more useful: it's called tr.im. That's http://tr.im

If you were curious, .im is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Isle of Man. It is administered by the Government of the Isle of Man and managed on a day to day basis by Domicilium, an offshore Internet Service Provider based on the Isle of Man.

What tr.im does is not only shorten a URL, but provide analytics about who's clicking your links, including such information as the visitor's location (country), Browser version, platform, and more. Crazy cool!

What's more? Simply create an account on the site (all you need is a username, password and email address to confirm you're a human) and you can keep track of all your tr.ims. PLUS, it's taking advantage of Twitter's API, so you can create a bookmarklet using the process above and tweet right from there!

Oh, I love the interwebs.

Skype crashing on you? It might be a driver issue.

Does Skype keep crashing on your Windows machine? Try this helpful hint: Make sure that your webcam's driver is up-to-date, preferably using drivers developed by the manufacturer.

My mom and I recently had this problem where we couldn't audio or video chat for longer than just a minute or so--sometimes the conversation lasted only seconds. It was very buggy. Skype would crash on her computer, but not on mine (I'm on a Mac, for reference). We found it interesting because I could skype just fine between my home Mac and my work's Dell laptop, so I isolated the problem to my mom's computer, which is a fairly recent and capable model.

The problem stemmed from us not using the correct driver for the web cam, a Logitech Pro 9000. After some troubleshooting, we discovered that Windows automatically installed a default generic driver for the webcam. So we went over to Logitech's website, downloaded the latest driver for it, installed, rebooted, and presto. As I write this blog, I'm video chatting with my mom and the timer is 40:21 and counting.

Apple Mighty Mouse goes ABSOLUTELY BERZERK!

OK, so it's 2:11 AM and I finally figured out why my Apple Mighty Mouse is going berserk.

First, some background. The might mouse is touch sensitive, meaning the top shell can sense where your fingers are and produce the correct type of click, according to where your fingers are. For example, both fingers down will default to a left click, while lifting your index finger (if you're right handed) will produce a left click because it can sense that your left finger is off the top of the shell.

So this evening, I had a little work to do on the company laptop. I pushed my mac keyboard and mouse out of the way to make room for the laptop, did my work, then closed the lid (left the laptop on), and then proceeded to use my mac with the keyboard and mouse.

I noticed some peculiar things happening with my mouse. See, the Mighty Mouse has two side buttons--one on either side--when you squeeze them, it makes a little clicking sound and activates exposé. What was happening this evening was that ANY time I touched my mouse, I'd hear the clicking sound and exposé would activate. It seemed to get worse, then better, then worse again, seemingly at random. Sometimes, it got so bad that it would literally toggle back and forth between activated and deactivated, many times per second--while my hand was simply resting on the damned thing. I could hear the clicks. It was insane.

But it only did it seemingly at random, which pissed me off. So, I sought out a solution.

At first, I tried to take the mouse apart... but in fear of breaking the damn thing, I chose to find other alternatives. Scouring the web left me with nothing--apparently the only major problem people have with the Mighty Mouse has to do with the scroll ball. Alas, I was about to give up and bring it to the Apple Store when I woke up.

But then it hit me: maybe this isn't a mechanical problem, but an electrical problem. Could the Mighty Mouse be short circuiting? Impossible; I bought my Mac over the summer of 2008, and Apple makes some pretty high quality products so I doubt I'd see my poor little mouse go belly up in only a few short months.

Nevertheless, I began to test things. Systematically. Starting with the cord, I jiggled it. After a while of going up and down the length of the cord, I discovered that the problems stopped once I hit the base of the cord where it connects to the keyboard. Could this be it? No, but there's a reason, which I'll detail below.

See, the point where the cord connects to the keyboard is the point at which my hand and arm was completely off of my LAPTOP that was sitting on my desk! Once I put my hand/arm back on the laptop and touched my mouse, crazy shit began to happen again. This was it!

Upon my enlightenment, I smiled with delight--for a couple reasons. One, I fixed my problem myself (yay me!) but two, I don't have to waste time at the Apple Store looking like a total loser because my symptoms would never have shown up. Imagine: "Hi, my mouse is going crazy." Apple tech: "Looks fine to me." Me: "Fuck. Never fails; you go to the doctor for medicine, but magically, by the time you arrive, you feel much better than you did 30 minutes ago."

So I got all excited to write this post to share with the world my discovery, and moved my laptop from the desk to my lap, so I could access my keyboard. As soon as I touched my mouse, what do you think happened? Well I'll be damned: same problem. Mouse went haywire again.

I then put the damn thing on the floor (avoiding contact with it) and what do you know? Mouse is perfectly normal.

So the bottom line is this: this damned Mighty Mouse is sensitive to electrical impulses, such that if an electrical current flows through the top shell that's more than a human's, it throws the whole damn thing out of whack.

2.5 hours of my life wasted, but at least now I know, and so do you.

How to sync firefox bookmarks and passwords

Do you use more than one computer? Well then, this tip may be indispensable: keep all your bookmarks and passwords in harmonious synchronization across every single computer that you use.

One of the best things about Firefox is its extensions--the ability to add functionality to the web browser that didn't exist before--functionality that is limited only by the imagination of developers out there worldwide.

Do yourself a favor and download this must-have Firefox extension, Foxmarks. Add it to firefox on each of your computers, and you'll never have to leave your bookmarks or passwords behind again.

But what if you're on a public computer? No problem, just visit http://my.foxmarks.com to access your bookmarks. Your passwords will not be available to you from here, but at least you've got your bookmarks. Besides, if there's a password you really don't remember but it's on your home computer, that's ok because you could always just use LogMeIn and, well, that solves that problem.

Scotty: Log Me In

Recently I've found myself spending more and more time wishing I could log into my home computer from work. My home computer's a Mac, which explains why I can't simply Remote Desktop from my work laptop running Windows XP. In addition to that, the corporate firewall creates more connectivity issues than I knew existed. What a drag.

But then I found a service on the internet called LogMeIn. All you have to do is create an account, then download the LogMeIn software to the computer you want to log into from a remote location. Once that's done, remote control of your computer is as simple as visiting LogMeIn.com, and literally logging in. Once authenticated, you can click the Remote Control button and be connected to your home computer via your web browser. (Side note: for the best experience, you'll need to install a small browser plug-in, available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other browsers.)

Amazingly, this even works using the iPhone. If you're on a WiFi connection, you can access your home computer (or whatever other computer you've set up with the LogMeIn software) remotely and I must say it works great.

Best part: the service is free. You can't copy files or print to a local printer--for that, you pay extra--but that's why it's free. LogMeIn is willing to bet that if you start using its free service, you'll eventually come to appreciate the value of the added functionality of the paid services it offers, of which there are several.

Keeping it all in sync

This article is written for iPhone users on Windows who want to sync their Google services (Calendar, Contacts) but have found no easy solutions. It's not 100%, but pretty damn close.

I'll admit it: I'm addicted to Google and its plethora of services. I use its search engine every day, rely on its calendar to keep me abreast of my happenings, and who doesn't use Gmail? (If you don't, why not?)

I also own an iPhone, which doesn't directly sync with any of Google's services. True, I can access all of Google's services on my iPhone, but let's be real: it's still too slow over EDGE, and what happens if you have no signal when you need the info? You're out of luck. This is why, even though web apps are nice, native apps are still king.

I digress. Anyhow, iPhone *does* sync up with Microsoft Outlook, and with a service called Plaxo (currently in beta, as that seems to be the hot new trend these days), you can achieve 99% syncronization between your iPhone or other Outlook-syncing device and Google. (I'll tell you why it's not 100% in a minute.)

As usual, here are the steps:

1. First, sign up for a Plaxo account.
2. Next, set up your sync points from within plaxo. Specifically, set up a Google sync point and an Outlook sync point at a minimum. You'll also want to install the Outlook plugin that Plaxo offers to you during this process.
   
3. Once Plaxo syncs these two points, you're ready to plug in your iPhone or other Outlook-syncing device and perform a sync.

At this point, all your data should be synced up, with one exception (this is where it's 99% and not 100%). At the moment, Plaxo has limited support for syncing contacts with Google. Basically it works like this: Anything you do in Google will be updated in Plaxo. Anything you do in Plaxo, however, will NOT be reflected in Google. Ergo, if you make a change on your phone, sync it with Outlook, which then syncs with Plaxo and all the rest of your sync points including Google, poor old Google won't get the change because it's only one way: Google ---> Plaxo.

Not sure when they're going to fix that, but my solution has been to just keep all my contacts organized in Outlook and let it sync up with my phone and Plaxo, which then blasts it out to my other web services like Google, Yahoo, etc.

With this simple setup I've been able to keep most my information in sync with a minimal time investment. If you know of a better solution, please post it in the comments. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out my other tips and tricks!

How to sync your flash drive with your computer

I've always hated the fact that the stuff on my flash drive is usually not found anywhere on my computer, much less backed up on an external device. The scenario is this: Write a paper at home, save it to the hard drive. Go to school to work on it, but guess what: it's not there.

The same is true in the opposite direction. I'm in a programming class working on an assignment, so I save it to my flash drive. When I get home, I have to plug in my flash drive, which has slow read/write speeds compared to my hard drive, and that doesn't work for me.

If you've ever had this problem before, I know you can relate. Enter SyncToy, a teeny tiny little program (971KB) created by some programmers at Microsoft that ends this "syncing sensation" once and for all.

It's as simple as this:

1. Install SyncToy
2. Set up a folder pair (tell it that you want the "My Documents" on your flash drive to sync up with your "My Documents" folder on your computer. (If it's your first time using SyncToy, a couple more steps will appear, allowing you to tell the program how it should sync your data.)
   
3. Click "Run"

As easy as this process is, there is one downside: as far as I can tell, there's no way to automatically sync your folders each time you pop your flash drive into your computer. If there's a solution like that out there that's easy and free, please post it in the comments.

Migrating (moving) mail from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail

Wow, so I just discovered this open source tool called YPOPs! that magically gives you POP3 access to Yahoo! Mail. How does it do it? From the web site:

YPOPs! is an application which emulates a POP3/SMTP mail server and provides free POP3 and SMTP access to Yahoo! Mail. It does not depend on Yahoo's POP3/SMTP mail server. You can use a mail client of your choice!

I only stumbled across this tool because I was trolling through my old Yahoo! Mail account and noticed that I had some things in there worth preserving (i.e., moving to my Gmail account), so I decided to give it a try.

Long story short? Piece of cake. I took all my mail and transferred it over to my Gmail account. Even my sent mail, which at first seemed impossible because the program doesn't offer to download mail from your sent folder. However, simply by creating a user-defined folder called "MySentMail" and then moving all messages from the Sent folder into your MySentMail folder, you can then add that MySentMail folder to the download list within YPOPs! and then transfer it over to Gmail.

A big thank you to the developers of this useful little tool:

• Brian Gunlogson: UIDL patch, bug fixes
• Leif Jensen: UIDL patch, bug fixes
• Yogesh Khatri: Patches, bug fixes and new features
• Ssergey: For the translation of the help file to Russian
• Last but not the least, all the people who have provided their inputs for the help file.

Migrating from Gmail's POP to IMAP: the (sort of) easy way

I've read a lot of posts about what happens if you use labels in Gmail and how they get messed up in clients like Outlook, iPhone, Thunderbird, etc. This article attempts to answer the opposite question:

What if I never use gmail's web interface because I always download and organize my mail in my own mail client using POP?

If you're like me and use Outlook 2003 (or some other program) to access Gmail's mail via POP, you've probably created some sort of folder structure to manage all those emails. If you're also like me, you rarely use Gmail's web-based interface to keep the messages organized there, too. The result is an organized mail folder system at home but an unorganized mail folder system on the web. Making matters worse, all these messages on the web appear to be unread and still sitting in the inbox because you've already downloaded them into your favorite email client.

Here's an easy--though time consuming--way to get things looking the way they have always been. Keep in mind, if you have thousands of emails, this process will take a *long* time and I do mean *long*.

The following assumes you've been downloading your Gmail via POP; you have IMAP enabled in Gmail; and that you have NOT YET set up your IMAP account in your favorite mail client.

1. DISABLE SEND/RECEIVE for your current POP-accessed Gmail account
   DISABLE SEND/RECEIVE for your current POP-accessed Gmail account
   DISABLE SEND/RECEIVE for your current POP-accessed Gmail account
   
   Why? Failure to do so will result in your email client downloading all the email you are about to move from your computer to Google's IMAP server. Don't ask me how I know this.
   
   
2. Start emptying out all folders in Gmail, since you've already downloaded them once via POP.
   
1. Starting with the Inbox, choose Select All, then right below that click "Select all [X] conversations in [Current Mailbox]"
   
   
   
   
   
3. Click the Delete button
   
4. Repeat for each folder until you have no mail left in any of your Gmail folders
   
5. Create your new Google IMAP account in your favorite email client
   
6. Transfer your previously-downloaded messages back over to IMAP
   
   
   
   WARNING: if you have a lot of mail in a particular box, it will take some time to transfer everything.
   
   
1. To make IMAP's folder structure replicate your email client's current folder structure, simply drag your old folder into the IMAP root (imap.gail.com). On the web, Gmail will treat these newly created folders as "labels".
   
   
7. Enjoy a cup of coffee while you wait. If you have amassed many emails over the months/years, I'd recommend finding something more productive to do than sip coffee. Perhaps you might make and eat dinner. If it's a really large folder, you might just want to let it run overnight or while you're out running errands, as it could take hours for the transfer to complete.
8. Repeat for each folder you want to add to Gmail's IMAP account.
   

To verify this process is working, initiate the transfer of the first mailbox's messages to the corresponding IMAP folder, then head on over to Gmail on the web and browse that same folder. After 15 seconds or so, refresh that page to confirm that the number of emails in that mailbox has increased.

While this method takes a while, it will be worth it in the long run; you'll have all your organization set up the way you like it, the way it has always been.

Hope this helps.

Private Domain Registration: It's a MUST

I recently registered a domain name. It's been a while since I'd done that and boy have times changed. Within 48 hours, I received my first SPAM phone call from APlus.net (caller ID 877-577-0877). Do a google search on this phone number and you'll find myriad people who've been called by APlus.

After doing a little research, I was ready for their next call. I received that call this morning. Here's how I ended the conversation in 48 seconds:

Them: "Hi, is Michael there? This is Andrea from APlus.net, do you currently have a web site up and running yet?"

Me (>) APlus.net (+)

> How did you get this number?
+ When you register a web site your whois information is published.
> Oh, so you're harvesting the whois database for information, then.
+ No, we're not harvesting the whois database.
> OK, so where do you get your information from then?
+ APlus: I don't know, but we're not harvesting the whois database.
> Ah, I see. Well would you please put my name on the "please do not call me ever again list?" Thanks.
+ OK, fine (she hung up on me).

30 seconds later I got four marketing emails from APlus. Here's what was at the bottom of each message:

This e-mail was sent to you because you recently spoke to an Aplus.Net sales representative and requested more information about our services. You are not subscribed to a mailing list and will not receive additional emails unless you request them.

Moral of the story: register your domain name privately. If using GoDaddy.com, this costs a mere 6.95/yr and uses DomainsByProxy. What this means is that DomainsByProxy's information is made public, not yours. For most techies out there this is common knowledge. But for people registering websites for the first time--or for those who it's been a while since the last time--be sure to spend the extra $6.95.

UPDATE 7/30/07: Haven't received any marketing materials from APlus, so it looks like I am in the clear for now.

Go Wireless Today!

My other half decided that her toes wanted to go on an adventure today while she was at her workstation. Somehow, her toes made it far enough off the beaten trail that they stumbled upon the switch to one power strip, which in turn powers another power strip, and... you guessed it: her toes accidentally hit the power switch, causing her computer, speakers, printer, desk lamp, monitor, external hard drive--not to mention my entire side of the desk (remember how I said a power strip was linked to another power strip?)--causing a complete black-out in our workspace.

Fortunately I was running on batteries (I have a laptop) during the outage, but I could have lost valuable work had I not been momentarily battery-powered.

So, if you've ever had this happen to you, or if you've ever cringed when you looked under your desk at that unsightly labrynth of cords, have hope. For about $13--or less, if you're one of those DIYers--you, too, can have a clutter-free corner of the world and let your wild toes roam free.

HOW, you ask? By reading this article.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the before. But here's the after.

Plenty of room for toes to explore and it looks nice, too:



A look underneath:


From foot-level. None of this is visible while standing.


A little closer underneath:


Wide shot of the completed setup:


I'm not done yet, since we have one more power strip on my side of the desk... but it'll be the same process: mount the power strip to the wall as high as possible with drywall screws, coil the remaining cables up into the cable trunk, and enjoy the cleanliness that is our workstation. If you were wondering, the power strips didn't fit inside the cable trunk with everything plugged in (as it did in the post I told you about above), so I decided to mount the strips to the wall.

Side note: you should make sure that you are pretty clear about your desk equipment being situated exactly where you want them; once this system is implemented, it'll be a pain in the ass to uncoil everything and sort everything out. I didn't use zip ties for this example, but if I had, I probably would have grouped common cords (ones that don't move much) together and zip tied them, while leaving other cords, like my cell phone data cable, speaker cable, etc., free so that I can reposition them if needed. Most things like printers and monitors don't move much, so those wires are easy to strap down a little more permanently with zip ties.

Have fun! Post pics of your setup if you decide to try it. Before and after would be great.

Craigslist + RSS = Sweet Deals

Ever wish you could heave a "steal of a deal" pushed through the internet directly to your inbox? Now you can. I stumbled upon this neat trick last week and had to share.

I prefer a site like Craigslist. Search for [bills] and nothing else. What results is a list of people who are generally selling so they can "pay the bills" or "have bills to pay" or... you get the idea. Often, they are very motivated sellers. It is here where you will find your steal of a deal.

"But wait," you ask, I still have to manually search for this stuff. That's not convenient!

Enter RSS.Subscribe to the RSS feed of the search query you just executed (in Firefox, click on the little RSS icon in the URL bar), and off you go--in Firefox, just subscribe to the "live bookmark" and you've got your self an automatically updating list of great deals on craigslist.