Marketing, Design & Computer Care Advice, Tips & Tricks

Synchronize and back up your bookmarks between all your computers and browsers

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:13:58 -0600

I was sitting at work the other day and was talking with one of my co-workers about an application that I had bookmarked on my home laptop.

Then as always, when I needed a tool or solution it was presented to me. I mentioned to a friend my need and he had the perfect solution.

He turned me onto a neat little add on for Firefox called Xmarks (formerly known as Foxmarks).

This is a great little add on that provides a way for you to synchronize and back up your bookmarks across several computers and browsers (synchronize across Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers running on Windows, OSX, and Linux).

Xmarks stores and backups your bookmarks for all your browsers on a secure server. There is also (optional) password synchronization available.

Just download and install the add-on. Restart your browser and click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install it on all your computers to have access to every bookmark at any time.

Additional features:

Xmarks has an icon that can be found in the location bar. When you are on a site and you click on the icon it provides a thumbnail of the top five sites (relative to your page) that others have bookmarked.

Xmarks also helps you pick the best Google results by highlighting sites that people have recently bookmarked. You can learn more about each site by hovering over the icon with your mouse. This feature can also be turned on and off in the settings menu.

I am not sure how much I will use all of these features but they are pretty cool.

Note: This add on has an automatic sync feature that can be disabled if you want. To do so go into settings and disable it. If you do this you need to sync manually by going into tools,the Xmarks icon in the status bar, the button in the settings dialog, or via keyboard shortcut.

85 Healthy Tricks for Treating you Holiday Goblins

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:12:07 -0500

With Childhood obesity and diabetes at an all time high and since I lost 35 pounds in the past 6 months and I don't want to be tempted by candy.

I decided to put on my thinking cap, do some research and come up with some alternative treats to the traditional candy for this years goblins.

To turn this into a Marketing opportunity. Attache a business card, or wrap your items and attach your business card with black and orange ribbon.

Print you name, company information, phone number on the bottom of the activity books (courtesy of...). Use this opportunity to introduce yourself as a real estate professional. Dress up as a Realtor to give out your treats.

I have assembled a list of 85 items food and non food. Some ideas are better than others and I bet you all have some to add to the list so here goes...

Food Alternatives to Candy at Halloween

Crackers and Peanut butter snack packs

Cheese and Cracker snack Packs

Juice boxes

Fruit roll-ups (if healthy)

Fruit snack mix (Trail Mix packs). Stay away from ones with nuts many children are severely allergic to them.

Cereal Bars (healthy ones stick with the fruit ones and make sure there are not nuts)

Fruit cookies or ginger snaps in small packets

Small bags of pretzels

Small Boxes of healthy cereal

Hot Cocoa mix

Popcorn (microwave bags)

Dried Fruit individual packs or snack size boxes

Small bags of baked chips

Mini boxes of Animal Crackers

Sugar Free - Drink Mixes

Small bags of Gold Fish crackers or Oyster Crackers

Graham Crackers

Turkey Jerky

Pudding snacks

Small containers of applesauce

Small containers of sugar-free Jello

Pretzel sticks with cheese

Yogurt covered raisins

Cracker Jacks or Carmel Corn

Non-Food Alternatives to Candy at Halloween.

Stickers

Rubber Creepy Critters (snakes, worms, spiders, skeletons)

Crayons

Pencils

Markers

Puzzles - jig saw, plastic puzzles or printed puzzles

Nerf toys

Small games

Glow Sticks (they usually have these for Halloween and the kids can use them right away)

Small flashlights

Bookmarks (use wide craft or Popsicle sticks and decorate them in a Halloween motif)

Coloring books or coloring book pages and crayons or markers

Halloween Word Find puzzle

Colored pencils or fancy pencils

Paint brushes and paints

Bubbles

Balls (super balls)

Jump Ropes

Stuffed Animals (small ones)

Pencil toppers (look for a Halloween theme)

Plastic Jewelry (bracelets or rings or crowns, spider or skull rings)

Small plastic cars or planes

Temporary Tattoos look for a Halloween theme

Anything that makes noise (Whistles, noise makers)

Harmonicas

Sidewalk chalk

Parachute men

Balsa wood planes that you put together

Paper Dolls or small party favor sized dolls or doll babies with bottles

Pirate treasure (bag of fake money or other booty)

Mini Frisbee

Pony Tail holders or barrettes

Wax teeth or lips

Pinwheels

Jacks

Marbles

Yo-yo

Paddle-ball

Water guns

Note pads

Write on rub off boards for drawing

Spin tops

Fake glasses and Noses

Masks

Trading Cards

Charms

Plastic Animals

Small Craft packs (make a packet of enough craft items to make a bead bracelet)

Mood Rings (yes they still sell them)

Pins (or create a craft packet for a butterfly pin or skeleton pin or bat pin)

Silly Putty

Finger puppet

Sock puppets

Bat, ghosts or pumpkin magnets

Comic books

Stamps and stamp pads

Construction paper packs

Halloween Stories (type up some Halloween stories and make them into small books and give them out)

Halloween Jokes (same thing type them up, add some clip art and tie them together with some black and orange ribbon and give them out.

Activity books - Kaboose has some you can print

Miniature games or make your own such as a tic tack toe game Kaboose has some you can use and give you directions on how to make them.

Face Paint

This list should give you a lot of great ideas for treats that are sweet but not candy!

For puzzles visit Kaboose Printable puzzle pages.

For some craft ideas for the kids visit the Kaboose Halloween Crafts page.

Clip Art was downloaded from Kaboose

Corral you desktop icons with Fences

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:40:06 -0500

“Fences” by Stardock is a free desktop management program for you desktop shortcuts. If you have to spend time looking for things on your desktop, you have way to many shortcuts and should consider downloading Fences.

One way to better manage your shortcuts is with an small app called Fences.

Here is my desktop before fences. I don't have a lot of icons but I like grouping my icons by use. Which is exactly what Fences allows you to do.

Perfect!

Fences corrals your icons into windows on your desktop making things easy to find.

Fences are just windows that you create and label to keep your programs, documents and other shortcuts organized.

Transparency settings allow you to make the borders seamless, so the desktop looks neat and is organized the way you want it.

You can choose from an existing fences layout (there are several)or create your own as I did. This appealed to my sense of design.

To create your own use your right mouse button to create new fences. On the desktop, depress the right mouse button, drag it to draw a rectangle and release this creates a fence.

Then select create fence and give your fence a name. Then drag your Icons into the fenced in area. You can edit how your fences look (color, text and transparency). You can also select which fences to hide and which to never hide.

This is my desktop nice and organized!

If you want to hide your fences double click on the desktop and they disappear to make them reappear double click again and they return.

If your icons don’t fit in the fence you created, the fence will put a scroll bar so that you can scroll through your icons. If you need a scroll bar, maybe you really do have too many shortcuts.

The desktop background is a photo from the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton New Jersey taken early this spring.

On my wish list for improvements;

I wish it took less steps to create a fence.
I wish that you could create rules that would allow you to add certain shortcuts or program icons to fences you have already created without dragging them.

Stardock are you listening?

Otherwise I really like this little program and recommend it to help contain desktop clutter.

You can download it from the Stardock's website or download.com.

Create Professional Presentations on line for Free

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:58:29 -0500

This week I wanted to share with you an extremely professional on line presentation creation tool called SlideRocket.

SlideRocket has both an on line tool and an offline player that lets you present without Internet access. You can create your presentation on line, sync it with the off line tool and your presentation will go where ever you go.

SlideRocket will run in any browser or operating system that uses Adobe Flash Player 9 plugin. There are several versions to meet your needs.

There is a Free version (or personal use) that include the following capabilities:

Unlimited number of presentations,
250 MB storage
Import existing power point presentations
Authoring tools to create great presentations
asset library which allows you to easily manage your presentation content
Print your presentation to a pdf.
Share you presentation by publishing a url on your website or blog.

For more information on individual accounts (10.00/month) and business accounts (20.00/month per user) visit the site for more more details.

To publish your presentation you must use the paid version or the 30 day trial version.

Here is my first creation to demonstrate some of the features I used the 30 day business trial version.

How do you feel about posting the same message to all your social networking sites?

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:06:17 -0500

Over the last few weeks I have been trying out new tools to post to all my social networks at once.

The tool I have settled on and am using is PingFM.

I have mixed thoughts about doing this since sometimes I want to post diffrent things to diffrent groups but for ease of posting when time is thight it seems like a great idea.

It is working well and it appeals to the FREE in me.

I am wondering two things.

How do you feel about posting the same thing to all your networks?
Do you have a favorite tool that you are using that you can share with me?

Thanks for taking the time to respond in advance.

A Fun, Free, Customized Video to Send to Your Mom - Happy Mothers Day

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:53:51 -0500

This week I take a break from my usual blog to give all the Moms and Mom fans reading this a gift.

Mom's rising - an organization of Moms dedicated to bringing together a group of people who are concerned about building a more family friendly America.

To learn more about Mom's Rising you can visit their website.

For a customized video gift for your Mom visit this link. This is fun and Mom will appreciate it!

Special thanks to Justin Ruben, MoveOn.org for sharing this video with me.

Updated spelling error:)

Live Mesh update - Using it is easy and fun!

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:07:14 -0500

I promised you a review of Microsoft's Live Mesh so here goes...I love the file sharing and as long as you don't use the mesh as a file cabinet and clean out your folder, the free 5 MG is plenty of space.

Three of my coworkers and I are using the mesh on a regular basis and it is working out very will for file transfer and sharing.

Now we send files back and fourth from computer to computer with ease.

1. First set up a Mesh using a windows live ID (valid email and password).

2. Download and Install Live Mesh on any device you wish to add to the mesh.

3. Go to the on-line desktop area and create a folder for your stuff.

4. Invite others to share the folder here is how.

Note: You don't have to be in the same mesh to share folders. You just have to be invited via email to have folder access and sign in with your windows live ID - One Windows Live ID gets you into Hotmail, Messenger, Xbox LIVE as well.

Create or open the Live Mesh folder you want to share.
In the mesh bar that appears alongside the folder window, click Members, and then click Invite.
Enter the e-mail addresses* of people you'd like to invite to share the folder, and then click OK. Your invitees will receive an e-mail inviting them to share the folder with you.
Once they sign in to Live Mesh and accept the invitation, they'll be able to access the folder on their Live Desktop and start synchronizing it with devices in their mesh.

For remote access to computers or other devices they have to be added to the mesh by downloading and installing software on the device you wish to add.

Here is how we set up our mesh.

The first thing we did was set up a mesh account by creating a windows live ID (valid email address and password). Next we downloaded live mesh to all the computers desktops that we wanted in the mesh so we can access them remotely. Then we created folders for each (on line on the desktop) and invited each other to use the folders then we synced the folders to our computers (they now appear on the computer desktop the same way other shortcut folders appear. When the folders are synced they turn blue in color instead of the yellow you usually see.

To the left is a Screen Shot of our desktop and below a Screen Shot of the devices in our mesh. (All computers are off except my laptop which I am currently using).

When a client or co worker needs me to work on something they put it in my folder I do the necessary work and then add the completed file to their folder. Each of us posts a message to the other telling them that the files have been transferred from folder to folder. Fast, Easy, Sweet.

Once the mesh is set up and the folder synced, even if you are at home and not connected to the mesh you can still add a document, application, photo or file all you need to do is drag a copy to the folder of choice. Like magic, it appears in the folder.

The second part of the live mesh experience is accessing your computer remotely

I must confess this is slower than I would like but since it is free, I deal with it. I was able to log onto my computer at work (which was turned on but not logged into the mesh) from my laptop off-site and access the data I needed and put it in my mesh folder so I could share it with a client I was on my way to see.

You can add Macs, PCs and Mobile devices to the mesh and share data and files with ease and the file sharing is quick and works great.

Remember, don't use this as a file storage center, just transfer or share what you need. This week I was able to share my photos of the grounds for sculpture with all my friends on the mesh and they could view them at their leisure.

I love live mesh and you will too. Give it a try.

Vote Earth! - Switch off your lights during Earth Hour- Saturday March 28, 8:30 PM.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:19:40 -0500

“In December 2009 world leaders meet in Copenhagen to agree on a post-Kyoto policy for tackling climate change. One billion people voting with their light switch during Earth Hour will create a powerful mandate for our leaders to take strong and decisive action on climate change in Copenhagen.”

“Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, leaving them on is a vote for global warming.”

Earth hour is Saturday March 28, 8:30 PM – Wherever you live on the planet.

I am asking you to do your part to show our world leaders in a very visible way that we want them to take decisive action on climate change.

It’s easy, you don’t have to leave home, give any money or devote hours of your time.

All you have to do is turn off your lights for one hour on Saturday evening.

Here is what I have planned for my earth hour.

I will be turning off all of our computer equipment and shutting down my network, unplugging all of our other power consuming devices, turning off all the lights lighting a few candles and having a glass of wine (organic of course) by candlelight to toast mother earth.

This is the perfect opportunity for all of us to unplug!

Take advantage of it and spend time with your family. Light a candle, have some conversation and let everyone know that you are committed to positive climate change.

As Active Rainer's and contributors to this group I am sure you have things planned for earth hour already. Share them with us by commenting. Better yet, video, photograph or otherwise record your experience and blog about it on Sunday!

It is imperative that we present a united stance on a global scale on March 28.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame, l’Elysée, the President’s residence (in France), the Senate and the French National Assembly, The Eiffel Tower, Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Table Mountain in Cape Town, Merlion in Singapore, Sydney Opera House, CN Tower in Toronto, Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, The Great Pyramids of Giza, Acropolis, The Empire State Building in NYC, Petronas Towers and over 377 cities in 74 countries will be switching off for Earth Hour March 24, 2009. For more information about earth hour, visit http://www.earthhour.org/ What have you planned for earth hour? Share them with us all buy commenting or Take pictures during earth hour, shoot video and blog about it!

For more information about earth hour, visit http://www.earthhour.org/

source earthhour.org website- Vote Earth! Image created by Shepard Fairey for Earth Hour 2009

Take the easy way out - synchronize your digital life with Live Mesh

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:44:42 -0500

It is interesting to wonder what the Internet will be like in 5 years much less 10.

The more applications are developed and the more information we are willing to share the more interactive the web will truly become.

When remote desktop access was first introduced, I was blow away by the fact that no matter where I was I could get that file I left at work or home.

Then along came, on-line file and information sharing. Once again, I was in awe.

Now, welcome Live Mesh developed by Microsoft. Live mesh is a combination of both plus more... It just keeps getting better and better.

Right now, Live Mesh is in beta and the 5 GB “Live Desktop” is free.

Live Mesh allows you to access all your devices, including your mobile devices, and even your Mac (you need to install some software) from the Internet (most browsers are supported).

You can share files with others and get notified whenever someone changes a file.

When you sign up you get what Microsoft calls, your “Live Desktop”. This is 5 GB of storage on their server to put your shared files.

Manage your files, access, changes, post messages, chat with members (using messenger) and change synchronization settings from an area called a “Mesh bar”.

If you only need a quick snapshot of what is happening with your mesh you can use “Notifier”. It gives you a status of all of your synced devices and folders.

“News” gives you a continuous feed detailing everything that is happening on your mesh. You will know when someone has viewed, changed, or posted a comment.

“Live Mesh Remote Desktop” – Just what it says, it allows you to access a desktop or mobile device remotely. The nice thing about this is say you have a Mac laptop at home, a PC at work and your blackberry. Live mesh allows syncing to share and access your files. Receive mesh updates on your blackberry or any other mobile device.

I see amazing possibilities for this in our business.

In the days to come I will tell you how Live Mesh is working for me.

The affair is over and things will never be the same again.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:26:34 -0600

I knew that my affair with print media was ending when PC magazine stopped printing their magazine in January of this year.

The reason? Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider.com (Silicon Ally Insider) reported in November of last year, “Gadget and PC shoppers stay on-line now, preferring sites such as AOL's Engadget, Gawker Media's Gizmodo or CNET to print.”

With the escalating costs, loss of ad revenue and the advent of twitter and live blogging, news hits the blog sphere before the AP can even report it. The newspapers and magazine publishers are dropping like flies.

Which brings me to the point of this blog, is on-line marketing really better?

I think so, and so do others who at some point in the not to distant past worked for print media. To illustrate my point…this weekend I was tuned into HubSpot TV on-line and they did an Interview with Paul Gillian, in his words, “long-time technology journalist who’s worked almost exclusively on-line since 1999”, and they talked about a blog he had posted “Why on-line matters more than print” .

Because I have an insatiable appetite for all things marketing, I had to surf over and read the article. Once I read the article, I felt compelled to comment (leaving a link to my site of course). I let everyone know in my comment what I do for a living and that I had followed a link from Hubspot TV to the article. Because I loved the post and the writing style drew me in, I subscribed to the blog and newsletter.

Bingo! My behavior perfectly illustrates why on-line marketing is more effective than print marketing.

Yet, I still run into the print vs. on-line scenario every day. Many of my clients still insist that spending on an expensive ad in the newspaper or magazine makes their clients “happy”. No matter how much I try to persuade them to rewrite their marketing plan and focus on-line and no matter how many papers go under.

Why do sellers and some agents refuse to face reality why?

What does a “happy” client really mean?

Will seeing their home all glossy and in print really make them happy? What will agents do when there are no home magazines or newspapers left in which to place ads?

Is print marketing an ego thing with sellers or are we just doing a crappy job of selling them on reality?

I am interested to know what you think and what you tell the client who thinks they can advertise their listing on line so (so in their mind, for your exorbitant commission) they expect print advertising.

I am a little sad that magazines and newspapers are going away because I will need to find something else to read at lunch. The affair is over, I just have to accept it. We all have to accept it.

Share your stuff, make a Blist!

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:27:35 -0600

This week’s blog is all about collaboration.

There are so many ways now to share your data, spreadsheets, project status and all kinds of information. Of course the most popular is Google docs but today I want to talk to you about Blists.

Blists is a way to easily publish your lists and data on the web. Use Blists for your to do lists, task lists, on line organizers, customer relationship management, project management, project planning, project templates and sharing lists, documents and managing groups.

You can create a Blist by importing photos, spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, Word documents or modify a shared Blist. Blists allow you to create widgets to share you data on your website or blog easily.

Organize your blists using lenses. Lenses allow you to see your projects status such as to do lists, done items and ability to assign different levels of importance to your projects and to check off items that are completed.

CRM – Content management is centralized and connects the different departments of your company or your team and you can keep tack of your project and assign tasks to members of your team. You can tailor this your needs and you don’t need to know any programming to do so.

This software is just right for your business. It is light or heavy weight as needed, does not require an advanced degree to use it and best of all it is FREE!

The website offers you many opportunities to use blists created by others, share your blists and just play and learn how it works. To investigate Blists and see them in action

Utube blists

Using blists in a list

Project Management

CRM

Move over RoboForm, This 100% FREE and secure Password Manger rocks!

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:51:34 -0600

I have now exceeded the 10 passwords the free version or RoboForm allows. While I love it, I decided to see if there was a free equivalent I could find to manage my growing number of passwords for FREE.

As often happens, when I really need something it comes to my attention via my inbox or RSS feed.

This week when I was going to search for this kid of program my favorite freebie finder, Gizmo Richards just happened to review LastPass. It sounded good so I installed and began using this tool and I must say I am more than happy.

LastPass can be used on your iphone, ipod, mobile device, or any computer by accessing your lastpass vault via the web. You passwords are encrypted and you use a screen key-board (image) to enter your lastpass vault password.

Features:

Prompts you to save new passwords to LastPass as you enter them.
When you return to a site where the password is saved the icon appears in the log in area to indicate that your password already saved. § Strong Password generation.
If you want to view your passwords you can log into your on line lastpass vault.
Store Confidential Information using secure notes (I an not trusting enough to use this feature).
Automatically fill in form information with one click.
Drag a bookmarklet to your tool bar and log in to your accounts with one click. If you have multiple profiles a menu will appear and offer log in choices.
Protect yourself from keylogging software by logging in using a screen keyboard. This is very useful if you need to log on at work or the library, a hotel room to access your lastpass vault. You use your mouse to point and click the keyboard that appears on your screen.
Finds and asks if you want to add existing passwords to your encrypted vault.
Create one-time passwords to potect your LastPass vault from key-logging software when using an untrusted computer.

Want learn more? They have great video tutorials. So throw away that paper in your desk, delete the password file from your computer, ditch that dirty business card in your wallet (I recommend shredding it) and download LastPass and simplify your life!

Photo by: Frank Köhne - Stuttgart, Germany- courtsey of Stock.xchng

Recover your deleted photos and files for FREE

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:53:31 -0600

If you have ever been the victim of your own haste and deleted important photos from your camera or emptied your computers recycle bin only to realize seconds later you had made a big mistake.

Take heart, I have a free program for you that will make it easier to breath again and recover you deleted files.

The program is called Recuva (pronounced recover) and one recovery from a bad mistake will instantly make you fall in love with this little gem.

Okay, you have download it from File Hippo and installed Recuva now what?

Turn off all the programs or applications that you don't need on your computer and scan the drive the file was on to recover the lost file.
If you are trying to recover pictures from a media card, stop using the card immediately so you don't overwrite any existing photos or portions of existing photos.
Remove the card from the Camera and if your card has a write protect tab, engage it. DON'T turn on the camera to recover the data, put the card into a card reader to recover the data (if you don't have one already built into your computer, you can buy a stand alone one cheap).
Run the program and follow the steps outlined in the wizard to recover your files be sure to enable the deep scan. This is going to take a while. Get a snack or make yourself some tea.
You will get a list of files that can be recovered, check the boxes next to the files you want to recover and click the recover button.

If you are trying to recover a file from the recycle bin and can't find it, Windows may have renamed the file (this is normal). To figure out which file you need, recover all the files and sort them by size and date. Select the most recent date to find your file.

Files in the recycle bin are named in the following way Dc43.jpg This is short for Disk c, the number is sequential. Windows does not change the file type (so this would be an image file).

More questions? The forum has lots of information.

Photo Credit: Life is Hard 1 - Photo byFedePizzi - From stock.xchng

Wish you could email a folder full of photos - You can for FREE with this program

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:58:03 -0600

How many times have you taken pictures of a property you have listed and needed to send them via email to someone? If you have, then you know that all to often your email is returned to you or not sent because the files are too large. Sometimes zipping them is the answer but oftern it is not enough if you have a lot of larger photos to send. Ever wished for an easy way to reduce the size of all of your photos at once?

Well I have a frebie for you called Fotosizer.

This program is easy to use and you don't need a degree in computer science to figure out how to use it.

There are three basic steps to use this program.

1. Find the photos or folder full of photos you want to re-size.

2. Select the resize settings that you want.

3. Start resizing the photos. You can choose which photos to re-size and where to save the re-sized photos.

I recommend putting all the re-sized photos into a folder with the same name as the original images - re-sized That way they are easy to find and send.

Yes, it really is that easy. You can reduce the size of the photos dramatically and make sending them via email a snap. No more messages that the files size is to large. You can shrink the size of JPEG and other supported formats.

You can re-size photos for email, websites, on-line printing services, slide shows (re-size all the photos in the slide show to the same size giving the show a better overall appearance) and photos that are going to be inserted into Word, PowerPoint or other presentation software making the overall document size smaller and easier to manage.

I have used this program often and recommeded it to the agents in my office and my clients. Everyone loves it.

Visit their site for a full list of product features.

Edible Playgrounds

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:42:57 -0600

This weeks blog is a bit of a change from my usual tech tips. If you read this blog regularly, you know I am a big fan of a blog called Urban Garden Casual and an Urban Gardner myself. This weeks Urban Garden Causal had a blog written By Cindy Naas about Edible playgrounds.

What is Edible Playgrounds? It is a all about teaching kids to grow and cook their own foods. They have sow it, grow it, eat it projects.

They are involved in an ongoing movement to bring urban gardening to schoolyards everywhere all across the UK.

An awesome concept that we here in the US should embrace.

It is sponsored by Dorset Cereals ( a UK brand of healthy breakfast cereal) and there is a fun and inventive site called Edible Playgrounds. The site offers monthly garden activities that include protecting your beds for the winter, what crops can be planted now as well as pictures of edible playgrounds and fun activities for children like how to make Christmas Tag stamps from potatoes and win an apple tree contest.

If you are a gardening fan you owe it to yourself to spend some time at this site and poke around. Great tips for getting your kids involved in gardening even if it is not in your local school yard but you own back yard!

I grow my urban garden in containers on the deck of my condo.

The site is great and even includes a page dedicated to ideas for projects using the cereal box and each box gives kids a mission to make something. Below is a screen capture of the page(it is animated and worth visiting just to check out the animation).

Keep hackers out, update all your 3rd party programs on your PC for FREE the easy way.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:34:52 -0600

When was the last time you updated real player, quick time, media player, java run time or Adobe Flash Player?

These third party programs if not updated contain vulnerabilities that could leave your system open to hacker attacks and contain security threats that exploit software vulnerabilities and code flaws.

The Security patches for these programs are usually free and available for download from the program vendors. Visiting each vendor and downloading the latest patches could take some time and who had extra time to spend doing this.

I have a solution that will scan your computer for needed updates and provide the links for you to update the programs.

Secunia offers some free ware to scan your system and tell you what programs need updating and provides the links to the programs to make keeping your system security in top-notch condition. It is a great little program and worth checking out.

I was amazed to find out that I had several old programs on my computer that needed patching and uninstalling!

You can download Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) 1.0 from downloads.com. It is Freeware and it is really easy to install and use.

If you want to check it out first, they have an online version that also works great! Find it here Secunia Online Software Inspector.

If you want to get it for your company network, they have a network version called Network Software Inspector (NSI) 2.0 This is not free cost is $30.00 per host seat (the host seat is the number of computers on the network). So, scan your computer today and download and install the patches the easy way.

Clip Art from WPClipart - Free High Quality Public Domain images.

Fun Thanksgiving Freebies

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:52:06 -0600

Each and every holiday I try and take a break from my usual freebies and offer up a little holiday fun so if you are craving some FREE fun to go along with your Turkey, I just happen to have some things that might appeal to you.

First here is a Turkey Word Find (Thanks to John's word find). Print it out and fill it in.

Thanksgiving Word Puzzles, Crosswords and games found at Kaboose.

Thanksgiving Mazes also found at Kaboose

EZ Oreo Turkey Dessert the Kids will love.

What you need:

7 Candy Corn

2 Oreo Cookies

1 Whopper

1 Reese's Peanut Butter Cup

1 Tube of Black piping gel

1 tube of White Icing

Red & Yellow Food coloring (to make orange feet)

(Click the photo for a link to detailed directions)

How about some Parade and Football Bingo?

Here is how it works:

1. Download your themed bingo cards from Family Fun to go

2. Watching TV, players should look at their boards and call out the items -- "a baton twirler," say, or "Rowdy, the Dallas Cowboys mascot" -- as they show up on the tube. Each player places a penny on the corresponding square on his or her card. The winner is the first player to complete an entire row of five -- horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

Or a Thanksgiving fill -them-in tale?

If you have kids, be sure to visit the Toymaker's Thanksgiving Village for lots of printable free stuff.

Visit coloringbookfunfor some downloadable and printable holiday theme coloring pages.

To busy to keep up with your social networks, Blogs and Web Site content...have I got a FREE tool for you.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:54:15 -0500

Ever wish you could post to all you social networks easily? I have wished for such at tool many, many times. Today I found a tool called Utterz.

I first ran across Utterz some time ago and when I did you could call up record your voice and others could listen. Sounded pretty lame to me. Since then Utterz has expanded the service to include cross posting to a whole list of social networking platforms, Blogs and Web Sites. Examples are Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, Drupal, and YouTube to name just a few.

Here is how it works

You can post audio, video, text or pictures to your feed.
Sign in and click discussion and use the web-based tools provided or send your voice or text message from your phone.
When you post your message it goes into your feed.
Replies as sent as a text message or email.
You can also send private messages by inserting an @ sign before the users name anywhere in your utter or reply.

To post Utterz to your social networking sites, Blog or Website you need to set up cross posting.

A list of cross posting sites and also have a generic connector for any website! Content is posted to the main content section of your sites.

You can cross post automatically or choose to post one at a time.

If they don't support a social networking site you use, they have a widget that you can embed on any site where you are allowed to embed flash and post your utterz that way.

This is one tool I plan on trying this week. I bet you will too.

How to Open .docx documents - Free Conversion Tools

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:40:00 -0500

This week is a short Freebie since I am under deadline pressure.

As usual, my blog arises from my frustration or need to do something.

I had a call from a client yesterday she was almost in tears. She had been trying to open a document from her financial adviser and it had the file extension .docx. She did not have a clue as to what document that was.

Just so this does not happen to you, let me explain.

When Microsoft released Microsoft 2007 they changed the document extension save default to .docx.

The problem with this new extension is that older versions of Word could not open the new document extension.

You can save documents in the old .doc format but you must select to do so when you save the document.

In order to open the document in an older version of Word like 2000 you need to download and install a conversion tool.

Below are a list of tools.

On-line file conversion tool.

Microsoft Compatibility Pack

DocxtoDoc - Conversion tool

The new (upcoming) Open Office 3 will open all the following extensions docx, xlsx, pptx files. (The release candidate 4 of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now ready for testing).

In the mean time, another option is to use Word 2003 viewer which can be downloaded from this site.

So there you have it, you can now open any document!

Reduce your carbon footprint and save time, host an , on line meeting.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:22:54 -0500

As business people, we still drive everywhere, we meet with others on a daily bases. This practice is not cost effective and cuts into time we could use for other things.

This coming year I am going to undertake a green initiative and start having client meetings on line. To do this I am planning on using a free, open source application called Dimdim.

If you are familiar with Skype, this works in a similar way.

You call from computer to computer for free. The only requirement is that the computer have a microphone, Internet connection and a Web browser.

Dimdim is cross platform capable and can be used on Mac, Windows & Linux.

Features Include:

No software has to be installed for you to join a meeting ( access a free on-line meeting room and start your meeting)
You can easily share you desktop with others (this does require a plug in)
The chat feature is both public and private
Both Audio and Video Conferencing between multiple users (something skype currently lacks) You can see and hear everyone using voice IP or the free teleconference service.
The ability to record and playback meetings (so if people miss the meeting you can provide a copy for them).
Multiple Presenters ( you can easily pass control of the meeting to anyone with a click).
Secure Meetings
No software to install to host the meetings.
Host meetings with up to 20 people for free
Every participant can mark up a whiteboard, send instant messages and broadcast both audio and video (the presenter must give permission for this feature)

So now all I need is a reason to have a meeting.

Hmmm.....sure wish I could convince the IT alliance to meet this way. I brought it up once but several of the members like to press the flesh.

Me, I rather save some gas and some time and be more productive.

Any ideas on how I can convince them? Anyone game to help me test this? Until next week...

Make your own annimations with this FREE and Fun on line site

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:14:40 -0500

Since I am just returning home from vacation and I am still in Fun mode. I decided this week to tell you about an on line tool I happened upon.

It is called Animasher. This free tool is for making animations from photos or drawings that you already have or use their image library.

These are kind of South Park like animations but they are actually fun. Once you start making one your hooked!

It is pretty easy to use. Just drag and drop the images from the library or upload your own. They have backgrounds to choose from or upload a favorite.

It is very easy to use so it is not very difficult to figure out how to create your own animation. It is strange and very addicting.

Caution you could spend hours here without knowing it!

Here is an example. Have fun.

by akajos

Make your own | Clone and edit

It’s 10 PM do you know where your computer is? Find it with this FREE tool.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:45:34 -0500

Find your lost or stolen computer for FREE.

Ever worry about your laptop getting stolen? Worse yet can't remember if you left it at a client's home or at the coffee shop? Did you know that some of the largest and medium-sized U.S. airports report close to 637,000 laptops lost each year, according to the Ponemon Institute?

Here is an easy and FREE way to make sure you know where your laptop is.

Adeona is a FREE, open source, on line computer tracking service.

The nice thing about Adenoa is that is does not rely on third party tracking. This means that only the laptop owner (or a designated agent) can use Adenoa to track the laptops location.

This also means that no one can abuse the system to find out where you use your laptop (important if you have a boss who wants to determine exactly where you where when you emailed that proposal were you home sick or at the beach)?

Andenoa uses a community based - remote storage facility to store the laptop location updates. These location updates are sent to the storage facility by the software client, which you install.

Here is how it works:

Download and Install Adenoa.
Adeoa sends location updates to a remote storage facility so when you laptop is stolen you know exactly where it is.
Locations are only retrievable by the laptop owner.
Snap a photo of the thief (Mac Version). The Mac OS X version will capture an image of your thief using the built in camera and a freeware tool called isightcapture. Images are privacy protected and only the laptop owner can access them.

Adeona can also be installed on desktop computers or servers. They do not currently support mobile devices but are working on it. It works behind a firewall but needs Internet access or if used behind a corporate firewall needs access to port 80.

For more details check out the Frequently Asked Questions or the documentation.

Bogus Offer - Malware Mascarades as a Free Anti-virus Program. - Update 9/10/08

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:53:26 -0500

UPDATE 9/10/08: The saga continues...Watch out for infection by this virus through ads, infected websites, false IE and Google Pages and .pdf files. This is spread by trying to scare you into downloading it. It is spread by a Trojan that when downloaded installs the malware. This Malware downloads other nasty Trojans and fun things.

This malware takes some time to infect your machine. At first the computer just starts running slow then eventually your machine starts popping up windows telling you that your computer is infected. It looks real official and very Microsoft like. It says it runs a scan and finds a bunch of infected files and asks you to click to buy the program and remove the infected files. Under no circumstances should you click on it. If you do you will make matters much worse. If you do get infected. Call a professional for help with this on it is a real bugger to remove!

Don't be afraid, just stay safe. If in doubt, don't click on anything and download only from trusted sites.

There is a particularly nasty email scam afoot...Malware mascarding as a free anti-virus program.

You receive a spam email that offers you a six month trial of a new anti-virus program by the name of "Antivirus XP 2008" and "XP Antivirus 2009".

These rouge anti-virus programs are being spread through spam emial messages The message contains a link to an automatic download of a phony anti-virus program. When clicked, the automatic download delvers much more that you expected!

For an example of what the email looks like, the offending url's and the ISP that serves the malware vist the dozleng.com security update site .

How do you know what programs are safe?:

I recommend checking any new program at a site called Spyware Warrior.

They have been around since 2004 and keep a list of Rough/Supsect Antispyware products and websites. If you have any doubts, check it out here first, before clicking on any link or downloading anything!

They also provide a list of trustworthy adware anti-spyware removal software.

Verizon Business on the ICSA site also provides a list of "certified" anti-spyware products.

If you think you have downloaded a program that might contain malware you can scan the zip files here:

In a previous blog I listed two site that will scan your downloaded files before you open and install them here they are again.

Jotti (Virus scanning sites on line) and

Virus Total.

Safe Places to download programs: The software developers site (provided you know it is safe), or one of the sites listed below , they scan every item before offering it for download.

Protect yourself - Practice Safe Surfing: Watch out for hidden dangers - sites that contain

Hacked pages ( I visited a blog the other day and all the links to the downloads were hacked and pointed to god knows where whatch that address line!)
Phishing and fraud scams
Malicious sites
Exploits (WMF, VML, CreateText Range to name a few)- These allow hackers to spread rootkits and open your computer ports so that they can they can control your machine remotely (create a Zombi).

Just visiting a bad or hacked Web page can expose your computer to some very nasty things.

Here are two programs that will help you practice safe surfing.

LinkScanner Lite (is FREE) and they also have a Pro version which is not free. They are programs that integrate into your browser to help you identify bad websites. This program's free version requires you to right clik on a site to get information about it. The pro version delivers it automatically.

If you are lazy and cheap like me, you want a FREE add on like Finjan Secure Browsing.

I use is Finjan Secure Browsing ( FREE) every day for a long time and love it. It can be used with either Firefox or Internet Explorer. Just, download and install the program. When you do a search the program scans and classifies the web addresses and gives you a safety rating of the stie before you visit them. They place a green check mark next to safe sites, a brown ? mark next to sites they cannot scan and a red X next to sites that are unsafe. This program scans every site in your search every time.

FREE - Download it for Firefox or Internet Explorer here.

Sources for this Blog: Donna's Security Flash - Windows Secrets (paid version) and dozeling.com security updates

Photo Credits: "Horror" by Dawn Allayn, "Piranha sign" by Viktors Kozersp and "Surfs Up" by Dan Shirley

Photos downloaded from: Stock.Xchng.com

Add the power of rich social media networking to your website.

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:28:58 -0500

Build your own social networking community with photo & video sharing and add it to your website using KickApps.

Now, I don't want to mislead you so this week's blog offering is not entirely free.

You don't have to write a check for this type of social network capability you just have to be open to sharing some page real estate.

What it Costs in Page Real Estate

The page include (3) Ad slots.

If you opt for the free version you share the ad slots with KickApps. The page theme (s) is constructed allowing for the ad slots, (one on the banner and two on the right side) above the fold. KickApps runs ads in the banner and one of the right upper slots. The other slot (which they call the skyscraper) is where you can run your own AdSense targeted ads.

If you want control of all the ad spots, or don't want any ads at all, they have a program where they charge you fees based on the traffice on your page. They calculate the rates per thousand community page views. Therefore, you only pay for the page views that your community gets.

Check out this page if you Want more Details.

This is not a bad deal for all of the capabilities you will have. KickApps offers you a way to add a social network platform to your existing website so you can build your own social media community.Create a new experience for your clients by adding rich media experiences on your websites that drive audience growth.

This is not software but a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, which means that they host and manage all the applications, media and upgrades. So you have no worries about any of this.

Here is how it works

1. You sign up for FREE.

2. The "Affiliate Center" is the WYSIWYG area where you build your actual community. You can use just the WYSIWYG portion or you can add your own Java, html and CSS so you can customize it to match your site.

3. You can point your community to your site URL (using DNS Masking) that is a customization of the URL so that it looks like it is coming right from your site (instead of the KickApps URL where the site is actually hosted).

Their development site explains DNS Masking in more detail if you are interested in learning about this.

4. You can use your social networking platform with your WordPress, Drupal and Joombla sites.

5. To fully integrate your site and community you can also create and use widgets. You create your widgets using the KickApps Widget Studio your widgets can feature your (community) media, content, photos, blogs and videos. You can put this widget on your website next to your site content, to encourage people to participate in your community and drive traffic between your site and your community.

Now, you have a way to set up a social community the next step is to give your site visitors a reason to participate in that community.

To see KickApps in action here are some links.

NPR - Get my Vote - Where you can speak up about politics.

NYRangrs - I am a Ranger - Where fans express their love for their team.

DYI - Show and Tell - Where people post home improvement projects.

Guinness World Records - Yep, you guessed it people post their own record breaking videos!

Condo Trustee - Real Estate community integrated with blog.

Duct Tape Marketing - Community (WordPress site)

So what will your social community look like?

10 ways to make sure your press release gets published - a FREE tool to help

Caryn Webb Digital Coaching by an e-PRO — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:36:32 -0500

Free publicity? Write a press release. How many times have you seen that advice? Press releases are a great way to get publicity if they get published and that is a big if. Many never do. How can you make sure that your press release does get published?

Here are 10 things to consider when writing your press release.

1. Make sure your press release is newsworthy. Have you released a new product, opened a new market, started a new office or team? That's great but ask yourself why does anyone care? Can you relate it to something else in the recent news? Don't release age old news

2. People hate being marketed to. Reporters will only publish things that are of interest to their readers so don't make it a marketing peice. They don't care it you have a new product and are not interested in promoting your business they are interested in one thing and one thing only, publishing things of interest to their readers.

3. Remove your ego from the process. Put your sales self on the shelf. Create something interesting to read not something that strokes your ego. Make sure that the release is written so that it can later be developed into a story by a reporter if they like it.

4. Always write your press release from a journalists perspective remove the I from it and don't we all over your copy. No one cares what I do or that we have a new website. They only care about how this relates them.

5. Read a lot of human interest stuff before you write your press release. Pick up the local paper and read it. Read the lifetime sections and really look at the headlines. Research other press releases and see how they are written and get a good guide to follow.

6. Keep it short. In this age of computers we all have short attention spans.

7. Use an announcement type style. Not a chatty and friendly as a blog post.

8. Make sure to include the date, city, compnay name in your press release and contact information. Include your website and blog if you have a separate URL for that and any supporting links.

9. Make sure to address the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of your topic. This should be pretty common sense advice but not always followed so I had to point it out.

10. Use journalistic standard such as in the words of How to Write a Press Release Wiki, "indicating If the press release is for immediate release, write "IMMEDIATE RELEASE" in all caps on the left margin, above the headline". And signaling the end of the release by adding three ###symbols directly under the last line of your press release.

For more information and really good how to advice read How to Write a Press Release Wiki

Once your Press Release is written and ready for publication run it through HubSpot's Press Release Grader. This FREE tool will help you evaluate you press release a provide you with an effectiveness score.

Writing a great press release is hard work and you need help to make sure you are writing it so that it will get published.

Sources for this post: How to Write a Press Release Wiki, Hub Spot Press Release Grader and Publicity Insider