Applications on the go
It took a very long time indeed for me to see the value in mobile phones that you could use to do more than talk to other people and send SMS messages.
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) for connecting mobile phones to the Internet dates from 1997. Phones with WAP built in soon began to emerge and, although I don’t remember exactly when they appeared in South Africa, I do remember feeling distinctly underwhelmed by the whole idea.
Restarting Windows 7
In a previous column, I wrote that I was having a fine time using Microsoft’s recently-released Windows7 operating system.
My very favourable first impression has not changed after much intensive use, and I figure that the company really hit the jackpot with this version of Windows. It does everything in such a capable and fuss-free manner that I barely notice it’s there.
Kindle – & the mystery place
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about electronic versions of books and the fact that these were becoming more and more popular.
Damn that thieving YouTube
As time thieves go, YouTube must be a hands-down winner. While researching for my column this coming weekend, I happened to go past YouTube and think that I would quickly look up Kay Starr to see what she sounded like.
I first thought I would just listen to her singing Rock and Roll Waltz but I had forgotten about the list of suggested videos which YouTube puts up alongside the clip you happen to be looking at. How could I then resist looking at the lady singing Bonaparte’s Retreat, or clicking on the link on that page, to hear Willie Nelson singing the same song, and then to Patti Page singing Tennessee Waltz.
It was then only a short step to satisfy my curiosity as to whether Patsy Cline could sing it better than Patti. After that, I had wasted so much time that I thought I might as well click on the link and listen to Patsy singing Wayward Wind.
And we won’t even go into the half hour or so that I spent having a listen to some Connie Francis tracks. It was hours late, at least I did get the column down eventually…
The evil empire strikes back, belatedly.
Good news arrived in my inbox just as I was sitting wondering what to base this column on.
The message was from the evil empire, Telkom, and basically said that its ADSL customers were going to be getting more bandwidth for their money from August 1, 2010. And about time too, I thought.
Bill Kenwright’s The Golden Years
A thief of time
One of the dangers in my line of work is being out on the Internet for work-related reasons and being ambushed by something interesting, just when I need to be concentrating on the important stuff.
Using Ninite couldn’t be easier…
Small things !
Programs come and go and I generally resist change for change’s sake. Of course, I often do make the change to new software and it’s usually because of some huge and miraculous new feature which has been introduced. Sometimes though, it’s a tiny little tweak that takes my fancy and gets me to change.
There is no doubt that Microsoft Word 2010 is a good-looking package with all the bells and whistles that you might reasonably require, but I wasn’t really tempted to move over to it and abandon my venerable and well-used copy of Word 2000. Not, that is, until I noticed that Word 2010′s status bar includes a running total of the number of words in the document.
It’s not a huge thing but, for me it is pretty darn cool, and the straw that broke the camel’s back and persuaded me I needed a new wordprocessor. Now all I have to do, is figure out how to make it the default program for opening .DOC files because Windows still insists on opening them with Word 2000, no matter how often I tell it not to.
Having a continuously updated idea of the number of words I’ve used is great although it’s perhaps not quite as cool as the hack done by a fellow computer scribe, so that his copy of Word displayed not only a running word count, but also how much he would earn from them at his usual rate per word.
Caps Lock trials and tribulations
Once upon a time I was driven mad when I kept hitting the Caps Lock key on my keyboard and having to go back and correct my typing.
i WOULD REGULARLY MAKE MISTAKES LIKE THIS and things got so frustrating that I decided I would have to do something with some urgency. Various solutions suggested themselves to me including ripping the Caps Lock key off of the keyboard or gluing it so that it couldn’t move.
Office 2010 arrives
A couple of weeks ago, a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 arrived for review.
FREE: My Word 2010 QAT
Setting up the Quick Access Toolbar in Word 2010 does take a little bit of fiddling but, as I discovered, one can export the setup once you have it arranged to your satisfaction. You can then import that file into other copies of Word 2010 and not have to set the QAT up again.
Any reader interested in duplicating my setup can download and install my setup file but please be warned, it will overwrite any customisations you might have done already,
Download and installation instructions
- Download the file by right-clicking this download link and selecting ‘Save link as’, ‘Save target as’ or whatever option your browser offers, and save the file to somewhere you can find it.
- Click on the File ribbon in Word 2010
- Select Options => Quick Access Toolbar => Import/Export => Import customization file
- Navigate to the download file, select it, and click Open.
