Replace Your Lost Cellphone Charger for Free [Tricks Of The Trade] via Lifehacker

What a novel idea! :-)

Replace Your Lost Cellphone Charger for Free [Tricks Of The Trade]:
Ever forget your cellphone charger at a hotel? Turns out that's an extremely common mistake—one you can use to your advantage to replace your lost charger, whether you lost it there or not.

Over at community news site Reddit, a user points out his clever trick:

Next time you lose your phone charger, don't buy another one. Go to a hotel and say you think you lost it there. It's the #1 most left behind item at hotels, so most places have a big bin filled with every phone charger imaginable.

It may seem a little underhanded, but one Gizmodo reader explains just how abundant these chargers are at hotels:

I work for the second largest conference hotel in my city. You have no idea the size box we have of chargers left behind. 90 percent are idiot blackberry chargers. This works 100% of the time, we never verify that anyone stays here we just let them go shopping for there charger. Hell we even will give people a charger if they call down to the front desk and say they forgot theirs!

So there you have it: Whether you forgot your charger at home or lost it altogether, check with a hotel; you may find a quick and easy replacement. If not—well, it was worth a try, right? Know some other clever tricks of the trade? Let's hear it in the comments, or send an email to tips at lifehacker.com with your smart trick.

from Engadget...

Wii gets Netflix this Spring, disc required for streaming

Hey humans! So Hastings was telling us the truth after all -- the Nintendo Wii will be joining the other two game consoles to stream Netflix starting some time in early Spring. Like the PS3, a special Netflix "instant-streaming" disc will be required for the Wii, and it goes without saying that HD's out of the question since the Wii itself can't push above 480p. There'll be no additional fees beyond Netflix's usual monthly subscription. Time for a game of Mario Kart to celebrate, no?

So all you Wii-heads that have a Netflix subscription but no Roku or BluRay player with Netflix streaming may be in business!

Package Trackers

I confess. Okay, it isn't really much of a confession, but still... I did all my shopping, with exception to stocking stuffers, online this year. I thought about what I wanted to get Michael, and what we wanted to get everyone else, and shopped around online for the best deal. I was extra lucky that much of the time Amazon had the best deal and I was in the trial period for Amazon Prime (which gets you free 2 day shipping for many items).


I started a system to track my Christmas purchases way back in 2006. I create a label (or folder for you non-Gmail users) for each Christmas with the year -- Christmas 2009. Every purchase gets the label so I can easily look orders up as needed. The same year I started keeping a spreadsheet of everything I purchased (one sheet per person) with an item description, cost, purchase date and payment method. These two tools helped me keep track of purchases, but didn't do anything for the actual package tracking.


Since I had so many shipments en route, I needed a way to effectively monitor their shipment status. I have been using Boxoh in conjunction with my reader for quite a while. Boxoh is easy to use -- simply enter the tracking number and the site figures out who the carrier is and tracks the status. You can subscribe to the RSS feed, and your aggregator will be updated when the package status changes. That method is great if you use a reader like I do.


Even if you don't use a reader there are other methods to track your package status. If you are using Windows Vista or 7 with the sidebar another alternative is PackageTrackr. Just register for an account and install the gadget in the sidebar, and you'll see status updates as they happen. You can add packages either directly through the sidebar or the website. If you aren't using the sidebar but you have a Google account, there is also an iGoogle gadget. The site says it will support email notifications soon. If you are using a Mac, there is no love for you here.


If you like a simpler, more basic approach, a third option may be better. TrackMyShipments gives you an email address (track@trackmyshipments.com) to forward shipping confirmations to. The site will ferret the tracking number out of the email and provide you with email notifications when the package status changes. You can add notes for any shipment to better reflect the item when you have multiple shipments. This site doesn't really offer any bells and whistles, but it does a good clean job of reporting status.


I've been using all three services (for every package) since the beginning of December so that I can compare them. Each does a good job, the real differences are in the way updates are delivered. The boxoh/reader combo is my universal solution; packagetrackr works great on my Windows computer. TrackMyShipments falls at the bottom of the list for me, but that is just because it isn't quite slick enough for my nerdy desires...

FlightTrack Pro + TripIt = Travel Made Easy

I've been using the FlightTrack app on my iPhone for quite a while. The app, which used to be free but is now $4.99, makes tracking flights super easy. Since Mike and I travel so much, it is a real time-saver to just open the app and see not only when the flight is scheduled, but also where it is. There is a live map that shows the approximate location of the plane! Here's the skinny from the iTunes Store:

I recently upgraded to FlightTrack Pro ($9.99 new, or $4.99 to upgrade from the lesser version). I love, love, love it!!! It uses push alerts to notify you about flight updates, predicts flight delays, and gives weather forecasts on top of all the regular features. But, the coolest, coolest, coolest thing (note to self: I seem to write something 3 times when I am super excited) is that it integrates with TripIt.

??? What is TripIt? I asked that, too. Let me tell you, TripIt is nothing short of spectacular. Once you have set up a free account, simply forward flight confirmations from your registered email address to plans@tripit.com and presto magic, they get added to your future trips. You can merge trips, rename them, share them, etc... I've included some screen shots below.

Home Page

Trip Details

This is a great way to share trips with family members and friends, and keep track of future travel. I was putting all the info in my Google Calendar before (and will continue to do so), but I like this as a nice overview.

But wait, that's not all... It integrates with FlightTracker Pro so that everything automatically syncs with my iPhone. Check it out:

All my trips are available on my iPhone

Trip Details

Map of trip (updates with location when flight is in progress)

I'm excited to see how this works with the push notifications, letting me know gate information and delays. I'm also looking forward to getting more familiar with TripIt and how I can use it to its fullest.

Happy travels!


p.s. I wrote this post last week and scheduled it to be posted. Yesterday I got this article from Yapta. Even more reason to use TripIt!

Today we’re happy to report that Yapta has struck a partnership with the popular travel planning site TripIt.  The news was alluded to in a panel discussion at the PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando featuring Yapta’s CEO, Tom Romary, and TripIt’s CEO, Gregg Brockway.

For over a year, Yapta has received many requests and suggestions for Yapta and TripIt to merge their services.  Well, the two companies have listened and will now be working to pair TripIt’s travel planning capability with Yapta’s price tracking expertise.  This means travelers will be able to build price assurance into all of their travel plans simply by forwarding their airline confirmation email to TripIt.

Here’s how it will work:

1.   Forward your airline confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com

2.  Organize and share your itineraries on TripIt

3.  Get automatic refund alerts for all your flights from Yapta

It’s that simple.  The click that organizes your travel plans with TripIt will now also protect you on price with Yapta!

DeadCellZones Shows Real World Carrier Coverage in Your Area [Cell Phones]

I apologize for my absence. I have no excuse, so I won't give one.

I ran across this today. Very interesting...

DeadCellZones Shows Real World Carrier Coverage in Your Area [Cell Phones]


Sure when you go to a carrier's website you can see a map of their coverage and it usually looks pretty awesome. What about in the real world? DeadCellZones catalogs user-reported dead zones to show you real-world coverage.
Plug in a zipcode, city, or street address into DeadCellZones and it scours the 100,000+ entry database of user-submitted dead zones. You can filter the results by viewing all carriers, individual major carriers like AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, or you can—less helpfully—see a generic "other" category for smaller carriers.
You can zoom in and click on individual dead zones and check for additional information like whether or not the zone in inside, outside, and other details. DeadCellZones is a free service and requires no login or registration to use or submit dead zone reports. Have a favorite resource for digging up the dirt on cellphone companies, coverage, and equipment? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Background Switcher

I don't know if I am alone on this, but... I get bored with the same background on my computer. I like to change things up. The problem is, remembering to change the background can be a pain... Then Lifehacker came along with this article...

John's Background Switcher Adds Individual Photo Settings, Transitions, and More [Downloads]


Windows: If you like to mix up your Windows wallpaper, the latest version of John's Background Switcher lets you do it from almost any web source, and in any specific way you want to match your monitors.
We've thrown a little love to this clever little freeware app once or twice before, and version 4 of John's Background Switcher (JBS) gives us even more to love. If you've got one monitor and like your pictures scaled a certain way, JBS can do that, but if you've got a batch of photos and some need scaling, one needs a zoomed-in view, and others should be centered, the app can do that too.There's new support for Google, Yahoo, and Bing image search results, background transitions on Vista and Windows 7, and a unified settings dialog for setting up and authorizing your image pools and preferences.
There's also new 'cork board' and 'postcard' views for creating desktop collages of multiple photos. Best of all for those concerned about resources, JBS can be set to change a desktop picture on every Windows boot-up, then disappear if you don't plan to change more than once per session.
John's Background Switcher is a free download for Windows systems only, requires the Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 or higher to run. Thanks y0himba!

John's Background Switcher [John's Adventures]

I've installed this and am using Facebook pictures from selected friends with the Polaroid pile. OMG!!!! I LOVE IT! What a nice way to keep me smiling throughout the day. I also put in some of my own albums so I can trade off when I get the whim.

p.s. (as of 4:48 pm): My current desktop is below. It changes every hour. So great!

My Super Nerdiness has been Reiterated...

I know I am super nerdy. You do, too. We all know it...

Given that intro, you won't be surprised to know that I was almost doing back flips in excitement when I noticed Wednesday that Google Street View now includes our house. Woo hoo!!!






View Larger Map


You know I couldn't let my excitement stop there... Nope. No way. I had to call Mike on his cell phone right away. I took a screen shot. Then I analyzed exactly when the photo was taken.

If you examine the image closely, as only I can, you will see some clues:

1. Our mailbox (just off the screen but viewable in Google Maps) is the white one. We use this one for the winter season.
2. The driveway posts are still up. We remove them after cutting the lilies but before the first snow. This means we were in Fall or Spring.
3. The lilies have greenery. It must be late Fall because they'd be tiny at the point in the Spring when the first two situations would exist. The greenery is also a little yellowed.
4. The trees still have leaves and the leaves have not turned. That moves the time of year to late Sept or very early Oct.
   
5. The double-tipped spruce tree is still standing. I posted about losing 1/2 of it in June 2008. The remainder of the tree was removed in September 2008.

Given the 5 points above, I deduced that the street view imagery was collected late in Fall 2007. I have no idea when the imagery was posted to Google's public servers, but it had to have been recent. I use Google Maps for directions all the time and would have noticed.

There are other fun things to note.  Our truck is in the driveway, but Google kind of fuzzed it. The cones are up on the edge of the driveway, so it must have been rainy around then. Both the lilacs and the tree by the driveway look very small. The lilacs are almost touching the power lines now and that tree is huge. Could it have been 2006? But, if you look at the horse paddock it is pretty overgrown. In 2006, Finale would have still been around (Connor and Fiona would have been 2, and I know we were still feeding her then). The neighbor's old car is in front of their barn. The girls got rid of that and got new cars when they graduated college in May 2008. The section of Reservoir St between Castle Rd and Crawford was missing until very recently... Gosh. I know no one cares about this but us, but I am entranced!

Cool!!!

Scheduling Facebook Posts

I set a lot of things to happen automatically in my life: appointment reminders on my calendar, bill payments, donations, e-cards, and even this blog post (written on Thurs and scheduled to post on Friday). I almost always remember events are coming up, but in the busy-ness of life I sometimes forget the day when events actually happen! Of course, today's technology is an  enabler to my forgetfulness -- but -- it is also an aid.

So, where am I going with this? I get weekly Facebook reminders of upcoming birthdays. It is nice to have people remember your events on Facebook, so want to remember theirs, too. The problem is that my up-tick in travel leaves me with less certainty of having an internet connection. You just don't know for sure.

Last week I did some looking around and found a free service called Sendible (you know I'm all about free or cheap). Sendible can connect with social networks, blogs, and email accounts and send messages on a scheduled basis.

Once you have connected with one or more service, you can schedule a message:

Facebook messages can be sent as a wall post or as a private message.

I tried it this week for a couple of Happy Birthday notes and it worked like a charm. What tools make your life easier?

Smiles

First Time in LA

Monday afternoon I arrived in Los Angeles for a business trip. I've flown through LAX before, but have never had Los Angeles as the final destination.

My first glimpse of the city from the air was pretty unimpressive. I mean, it is impressive to see all the houses and built up land, but it just looked like urban sprawl. I got on my van shuttle from the airport and we were immediately stuck in traffic. The 35 mile trip from the airport to Pacific Palms Resort took over an hour.

Pacific Palms is located in La Puente east of LA. You will see from the [embedded] map below that I am in the middle of the big green golf course.

View Larger Map
No restaurants are nearby, though I understand a shopping center is beyond the Pomona Freeway overpass. Being that I do not have a car, I'm effectively a prisoner of the resort. At least there are a couple of restaurants on-site to choose from.

The view out my hotel room window is very pretty. You can see the mountains in the distance, as well as the urban expanse. I took some photos Wednesday morning in "stitch assist" mode. They came out looking like this (photo pile created using Picasa 3).

I wanted to create a cool panorama. A quick search on Lifehacker revealed AutoStitch as the user favorite -- free -- tool. AutoStitch took the photos above and automatically stitched them into this:

A quick crop using Gimp and voila:

So, now I bring a small part of the Los Angeles suburbs to you!!! Wish I could tell you more, but as Porky Pig says, "That's All Folks!"

Have a happy day!

New Blog Design and more

Today we launched our July blog design. It was fun to make and tested my Gimp skills... The embellishments and paper are from Scrapadelic ($3.99). Of course I made the header myself (from plain white to fill in fade and texture), along with assembling and adding the embellishments. It turned out summery and fun and was well worth the small price to Scrapadelic.

I don't think I'll have a June books entry... I haven't had much time to read. Anything from last month will be combined with this month. I am sure you couldn't care less!

And last but not least, this came across my reader right before I began this post. The kitty looks so much like Mattie that it really cracked me up...




see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Have a great day!

Google Squared

I didn't think too much about Google Squared last night when I read the article about it Lifehacker. I randomly thought about it today and decided to look at it. It's pretty cool!

All you have to do is enter a search term and Google gives you related values and other info in a spreadsheet format. In the example below I entered "Apple Computer":

The results list the first 10 items, a photo, description, etc... After I did the screenshot above I added a Price column. Each cell shows a source and can be clicked for more info.

I can see this as a great tool for product comparisons before buying, little research projects, and a whole lot more!

Google Wave

I bounce around from day to day. Makeup one day, nerdy computer stuff the next.

But, guys, this is really neat. Google is working on a whole new concept for internet communication.

I heard about it first on Lifehacker:

Google Wave "Is What Email Would Look Like If It Were Invented Today" [News]

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Google announced today a new, experimental idea aiming to reshape the future of communication on the web. It's called Wave, and if you believe its developer, it's "what email would look like if it were invented today." It's also going to be totally open source. Intrigued?
Primarily, Wave is about improving real-time communication on the web. I've been waiting all day for Google to upload the video promised on the Wave homepage, but since it's still not there, here's the skinny from Google's mouth:

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Pretty broad, right? Wave is clearly something we'll need to see in action and, even better, use before we completely understand how it works. Like email, Wave has been developed as a standard that will be able to run on any server, so it won't belong to Google. Anyone will be able to run their own "wave," and that wave can compete with Google or do whatever it wants to. But since it's created as a standard protocol, different waves can talk to and understand each other.
This addresses an issue that I (and many others much smarter than me) have had with Twitter—namely that it lives on one company's servers, and your information is subject to whatever that company wants to do with it. RSS, email, and IM work using standard protocols that anyone can take advantage of, and since they use standards, I can, for example, send an email from Gmail to someone using Yahoo Mail and know that they'll be able to read it without any problems.
Tech news weblog TechCrunch has a very detailed rundown of Wave (linked below) and the directions Google has taken it so far (it's still incredibly young), but Wave is also very intriguing in the whole future-of-the-web way. It could amount to nothing, but considering the popularity and direction of Twitter and Facebook, the idea of a protocol that turns a similar sort of communication into an open standard sounds very promising.
Wave isn't available in any practical sense to you and me right now, and much of the technology behind Wave requires HTML 5 updates that we won't see completely implemented in most browsers for at least a little while, but you can sign up for Google Wave updates if you're eager to stay updated on any new developments.

Google Wave [via TechCrunch]

Then  I headed to Google's site and checked out their presentation (embedded below).

Wow -- this is really cool! I am totally tuned in on this and think it could be awesome. My mind is already going 1000 miles an hour thinking of uses...

It is due out later this year.

A close-up of our birthday gifts: Networking

I send my deepest apologies to the non-techies out there as I write this. I didn't have time to take photos of my other fabulous gifts, so today's spotlight is on a nerdy (but much needed) gift.  For years we have been using our Airport Express for Wireless Printing.

The scenario worked out great for several years. As our home computing needs have grown, I have been looking to reconfigure our setup. We have two printers we want to print to regularly (a standard printer and a compact photo printer). We really wanted the convenience of choosing either of the printers to use wirelessly. You all know I am too lazy to unplug my computer, walk into the front hall with it, and hook up to the photo printer... I also wanted stream music to our stereo (from iTunes) wirelessly using AirTunes. This is another capability of the Airport Express. We were not able to do that with our setup because we didn't want to move the printers to the entertainment center.

Whew, what a long story so far. I hope you haven't fallen asleep!!! After years of searching (we are very picky and wanted very specific features) we found a print server that supports 2 USB printers. Woo hoo! The Netgear WGPS606 is a nice little device that has a four port switch, support for two USB printers, and a wireless connection. If you are wondering (Dad, I know you are) why we didn't just get a network printer, well, our printer works fine and we have extra ink for it. We just didn't want to spend the money.

Mike got me the print server for my birthday. I hooked it up last night and we got 2/3 of our computers set up to print. I also setup the Airport Express for AirTunes.

**extra nerdy part coming up
As an aside, the hardware setup for the print server and then for the PCs that access it was a bit of a pain. I spent about 25 minutes trying to figure out how to dedicate an IP address on the router for the print server (which it requires). Software has to be run on each PC to properly configure each printer connection. The Macs, on the other hand, were easy peasy. I just set up an IP printer for each printer by identifying the print server (by name or IP, I used name) and the queue. It took, literally, 2 minutes. Setting up AirTunes was equally easy. After I plugged it in, I spent about 3 minutes in the AirPort Utility and was all done.
**end of nerdy part

I promise that I will have a more interesting selection of gifts up for tomorrow!

Smiles

Interesting Idea: T-Mobile Cameo Digiframe

Update on 5/1/09: My father looked into this and found out that the offer is only valid for T Mo subscribers. So, if you don't have T Mo, this won't work. That sucks, because this sounded so great. Thanks for the skinny, Dad!

I just saw this. Interesting... We all know someone who could use one of these.

T-Mobile Cameo Digiframe Price Drop in Time for Mother's Day

via Amazon Daily on 4/30/09

I've never owned a digiframe. Personally it's a novelty that just never clicked with me, and correspondingly I have an external drive that is packed to the gills with images of friends and family, and vacations and trips I've taken. That leads me to Mom.
The eventual question that comes from her is what's going on, and where are the pictures? I tell her that I'm going/have been here and there and am doing X, Y and Z. Most of this is pretty much Latin to her, but pictures, those are universal. I've tried sending her digital copies and links to sites where she can view them, but that's never going to be terribly successful with founding members like herself of  pre-computer generation. I vaguely recall a glimmer of hope when I heard last year of T-Mobile's network integrated Cameo Digiframe. It's basically a frame with a phone number that updates with images and picture messages that you send it, or via memory card. Then I saw the price: $100 for the hardware and $9.99/month for the line. Uh, no. My Mom doesn't even have a cell phone for emergencies. But wait, just in time for Mother's Day it would seem that T-Mobile has gotten the hint.
According to a post on Engadget this morning, T-Mobile has dropped its prices to $40 for the frame and a monthly fee of $1.99. Now that's a little bit different, now isn't it. For a measly $24/year Mom can be clued in visually everything that is going on with me or anyone else for that matter. Who knows, after she vicariously becomes an expert in wireless technology she may even break down and accept a cell phone for the glove compartment. All kidding aside this is actually a pretty cool and affordable idea for anyone, especially Moms, who want to effortlessly keep up with other's lives.
A few things about the Cameo. It unfortunately is only available through a physical visit to a T-Mobile store, but there are no contract obligations, it comes with unlimited message capability, can hold up to 500 standard sized images, allows for the blocking of individual senders and does not take up one of your allowed accounts if you have a family plan. All in all pretty nice. Mom is going to like it and I think I may too since I may just get one for myself as well.
Want to read more about T-Mobile's Cameo Digiframe? ZDNet did a nice review of it yesterday. Check it out for more details.
--Tom Milnes

Cooking, Readers, and Blogging

This post is a somewhat miscellaneous hodge-podge... I think most of you know that I enjoy cooking (I wouldn't call it a passion, but I do like to try new things) and I especially like reading about cooking and recipes. I guess that should not come as a surprise since I'm "that girl" that reads manuals and instruction books. Recipes are not all that different.

Keeping up on my cooking interest would be impossible without my faithful [Google] reader. I find a site I like, make sure it has an Atom/RSS feed, and blammo, it is mine! I don't miss a post and even pass along the ones I think might be of interest to others. I am currently subscribed to 21 cooking sites. Here are my top 3:

1. Cake Wrecks (http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com): features all kinds of decorated cakes gone wrong. One of my favorites -- if a bad and bizarre cake can be a favorite -- is "We Have a Runner" (http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/03/celebrating-different-kind-of-v-day.html)
2. Serious Eats (http://www.seriouseats.com/): cooking news and recipes. I love French in a Flash.
3. Simply Recipes (http://simplyrecipes.com/): an amazing collection of varied and accomplishable recipes. Elise is amazing.

If you are interested in seeing more of my daily view of these cooking feeds, take a look at my public feed (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F04865435085322425860%2Flabel%2FCooking) or click on the image below.



And now my two cents on blogging. I read this post in Miss Conduct's column over at the Boston Globe Magazine. This writer -- who uses her BLOG as a vehicle to communicate with readers -- has the audacity to complain about a friend who has sent repeated inviations to view their personal blog. Worse yet, people commenting about the post call bloggers "narcissistic."

Squeeze me? Did I get this right? A blogger is too good to read someone else's blog, complains about it on their blog, then the readers comment on a BLOG say that bloggers are narcissistic. Then why are they visiting and commenting?! Further, what's up with the blogger?

I blog for many reasons, but mostly because it is fun and it is a good way to stay in touch with friends and family, even though the topics are sometimes silly. I don't think I am so wonderful and people have to read this (though I do love it when people read this blog). I assume if you didn't want to read it, you wouldn't...

Ok (sigh). I am stepping off my soap box now. It does make me a little taller, but if I get too worked up, I might fall off anyway!!!

Have a happy day!

Map of potholes in Greater Boston - Boston.com

We knew that potholes were bad this year, but my goodness...

Map of potholes in Greater Boston - Boston.com

Posted using ShareThis

March Blog Style

I have been working on the March blog style and love it so much that I am not waiting until Sunday to launch it!!!

Hope you like it, too!

Have a happy weekend!

Hotmail Enables POP3 for U.S. Users [Windows Live]

Good news, Hotmail users. Hotmail has finally enabled POP3 access to their accounts. Last week I wrote about a somewhat complicated process of getting Hotmail over to your Gmail account. Well, strike that! Simply go into your account settings and enter the information as outlined below.

Thanks for the update, Lifehacker!

Hotmail Enables POP3 for U.S. Users [Windows Live]

via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 2/11/09

Ars Technica cites an "insider" in announcing that POP3 access for Hotmail users has been activated in the U.S. Say hello to getting Hotmail into Gmail, non-Microsoft-made mail clients, and many other places.

Microsoft has been rolling out POP3 importing access to a number of countries since mid-January, including Canada, the U.K., most of western Europe, and elsewhere. The details you need to plug into your mail client or other webmail account, though, should be the same. Here's the list, as posted by the Windows Live team:

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25)
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes

It goes without saying that Hotmail (excuse us, Windows Live Hotmail) is a bit behind the curve in offering up direct mail access to its customers, but its welcome news, nonetheless. Hotmail users might also notice integrated Windows Messenger sign-ins through a menu in the upper-right corner, providing chat capabilities while you're in your inbox.

Integrate Hotmail with Gmail

I changed my primary email account from Hotmail (actually, Mailshell, which was pulling messages from Hotmail) to Gmail in 2005. I love my Gmail and haven't looked back once. I kept my Hotmail account active for various reasons and check it sporadically. Until recently, that was once every 6 or 7 months.

Recently I have had cause to check it more frequently (good thing - I discovered US Airways reposessed 18,000 FF miles -- grrrr). It may be a minor effort, but I find logging into additional email accounts each day to be time consuming and inconvenient. What I really wanted was to somehow get my messages from Hotmail to Gmail without having to do any work.

I found a solution with a quick Google and some tweaks in my Gmail account. I am sharing it here because I know more than one of you has migrated from Hotmail to Gmail (or is thinking about it) and are in the same boat. The solution has two parts.

Part One
Register for an IzyMail account. But, wait!!! This is important!!! When you sign up, provide the information for your Hotmail account. IzyMail will ask you for your login info (username and Hotmail password) and a confirmation code. Now, go into Gmail and click "Settings." Next click on the "Accounts tab". Find the section "Get mail from other accounts" and click the to "Add a mail account you own." Follow the instructions and screen shots at http://v3.izymail.com/gmailconfig.aspx for step-by-step instructions for what to do next.

Part Two
This step may not be strictly necessary, depending on your needs. Not only do I want to check my Hotmail account, I also want to reply to messages sent to the Hotmail account using my Hotmail email address. For all intents and purposes, I want the recipient to believe I am emailing from the address they have, Hotmail. To do this, go back into the Gmail Settings. Click the "Accounts" tab and locate the "Send mail as" section. Choose the radio button that says "Reply from the same address the message was sent to." Next, click "Add another email address you own." You will be prompted to enter your name and the email address. Enter the entire Hotmail address here. Click "Next step." Gmail will send a message to your Hotmail account to verify it, and you'll have to click the link inside of the message to complete the process.

So, now your email gets automatically sucked out of Hotmail and into Gmail. Any time you reply, it will look like you are replying from Hotmail. Easy-peasy!

** A couple of notes...
*If your recipient receives mail via Outlook, they will not be fooled. Outlook detects that you are sending from your account on behalf of another. It shows something like this:
tlhorgan@gmail.com; on behalf of; Tracy Horgan [tlhorgan@hotmail.com]
*Also IzyMail will fetch mail from Yahoo and AOL, too.

Digital Photos -- Back Them Up

Like most Americans today, we have the last 6 or 7 years worth of our photos in digital format. It is great to be able to send them to people, print them, add them to digital albums, etc...

Something we all take for granted, though, is that computer hardware does fail. Whether or not we have planned for it, drives go bad (or worse, things get stolen). We have a network attached hard drive that contains 80 GB of photos, videos, and documents. The drive is getting old; we've been looking at an upgrade for close to 8 or 9 months. In the meantime, I have copies of some stuff stashed in other spots.

During my search for the right hardware to upgrade to, I came across Mozy. Mozy offers up to 2 GB of free online storage (no credit card required). If you have more to store -- and most of us do -- you can go with the unlimited storage package for $4.95/month. Even with the economy in the tank and people tightening spending, we'd all feel heart stricken if we lost our photo libraries. $60 is a cheap insurance policy...

I think that will be our interim solution. The service basically mirrors your files. So, if you accidentally delete something, you can get it back for up to 30 days. Beyond that, you're out of luck. It works on both Windows and Macs, and will back up any attached (Windows) or mounted (Mac) drive.

Our long term solution will include local backup software and dual (mirrored) drives. Hopefully we'll get to that in the next few months.

Have a happy day!