"This little piece of gum is a three-course dinner." Willy Wonka

Chocolate is sweet but free chocolate is sweeter. Many website offer free samples or other goodies. Here is one such yummy from Mars. If you get a sorry page just try again some other time. Also Thunderfap has a list of the goodies that you can sign up for as well. Now before you get angry and tell me that you have done that and now all I get is spam and junk mail offers. I recommend two strategies. The first is my old fall back register with a junk email address that you don’t mind filling up with crowd. The second is even better. The problem with the first one is that you must periodically open the email to keep it active. I like using 10 minute mail. You can read more about it here. The gist of it is that after 10 minutes it deletes itself so you have just enough time to register and answer any reply emails but you never have to worry about getting spam from them. I should say that there are some advantages to getting company emails. Many of them have specials, offer, or coupons. I use them every time I go to the grocery. So at least you have options. Go ahead and give these a try.

“If you get the dirty end of the stick, sharpen it and turn it into a useful tool” Colin Powell

To begin again…
August is coming and teachers are starting to think of the coming year. Students are trying to avoid thinking at all. I know have mentioned this before but I think it needs to be restated. Google, you may have heard of it, is really useful. I recommend trying some of the other free services that Google has to offer. Now I am going to use a teacher slant with this but it could be used for any possible business or project. First off register for a Google service because once you do you will have access to all the rest of the services right away. It is free and quick. Gmail is just the tip of the Googleverse. Gmail is their version of email. One of the reasons I recommend using it is that it is searchable just like Google. This means if a student emails you during the year you can find it fairly easily. Also it does have other abilities like IM (chatting with students built directly into it) or the ability to take all emails from a specific conversation and creating a dialogue out of them instead of scattered emails through out the system. Google calendar allows for sharing of schedules and appointments throughout a group or organization. Also these can be saved to a website to make it viewable to all without registering. Google Docs and Sites are the two most underused by teachers. These together are so easy to use and useful it is unbelievable. Docs is an online Microsoft Office like set of tools. All you do is sign in and you have something that looks like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This alone is good but once you think of the ability to share it between others it makes it supreme. It can be viewed or editable by others at the touch of a button. Finally Google Sites is the culmination of all of these. It is creatable webpage that you can use to communicate info with groups of all sorts. As an example lets say a teacher has a book group. They can post all the info about the book they are going to read and then add photos and music from where the book is set. The great thing is that it requires no real HTML ability. If you can use Microsoft Word then you can easily use Sites. Now I know I am being very general about this post but that is what it is supposed to be. I recommend checking all the sites above and see if they fit a use. Give it a try.

Give us any chance-we'll take it! Read us any rule we'll break it! We're gonna make our dreams come true- Doin' it OUR WAY! Laverne and Shirley

You are angry! So of course you type a seething e-mail full of your feelings. You hit send and then a wave of “oh no what did I do?” washes over you. Thankfully Gmail has a button for you. The undo button has the ability of stopping your sitcom of a life from turning into Laverne and Shirley where you and a friend, dressed all in black, sneak into an office to retrieve the offending mail. Sorry I was on a roll. Anyway Gmail very quietly put another feature in their system. When you hit send an undo button can be set to show at the top giving you a chance to stop the offending email. Now you need to understand two basic things with this feature. First off it does not have the ability to actually retrieve mail. It works by delaying your e-mail by 5 to 10 seconds. This brings us to the other point. You have limited time to feel remorse. You have a very short window where you can decide to let it roll or to pull it back. To turn this feature on click on the settings button at the top right inside your Gmail then click the labs button. Finally scroll through the tons of new settings choices. It is about the third from the bottom. Finally click enable and then hit save changes at the bottom. Once this is done anytime you send out an email it will delay it for 5-10 seconds. Unfortunately I could not find where to change the time setting. One last thing. Don’t wait till you have made a mistake to turn this on or else you may just regret it. So give it a try or at least buy some black skulking clothing.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Today’s post is for Gmail users. If you are not familiar Gmail is Google’s version of E-mail. I use it with students new to the internet. I find it simpler because it has less ads and distractions. Gmail has a large amount of web space for you to store your emails. Their take is that you should not have to throw something away ever just because you need space. Last time I checked they give you 7 gigabytes. This is plenty of space but does this mean you should keep everything in your inbox? The answer is an emphatic NO! There is an under used button called archive. All you do is select the email, that you do not need at this moment, by clicking the checkbox and then hit archive. Once done it is put into the all mail section. This means it is no longer clogging up your inbox and now it frees you to focus on your important email. I like this feature because when I see my inbox shrink I have a sense of accomplishment but I never have to fear I have deleted important information to accomplish the same goal. One last part of this equation is the ever present Google search box at the top. This of course will allow you to search through all your mail by keywords. This includes all your archives material as well. So for all those Gmail users give archiving a try.

“I would rather have a big burden and a strong back, than a weak back and a caddy to carry life's luggage” Elbert Hubbard

Have you ever tried to email a file to a friend like a photo or a video only to find that your email box can’t handle it? I come across this over and over again. My Gmail account allows attachments to be sent but they must be smaller than 20 megabytes. Now that seems large on the face of it but get a zip file full of photos that you need to send to a friend and suddenly you are way past that mark. So what to do? Well for a long time I have used the free serve TransferBigFiles. It is a wonderfully easy way to transfer large files around the web. All you do is browse for the file and then select recipients and hit send. The files can be up to 1 gigabyte in size so you have plenty of space to send over that high resolution video of your friend’s last party. So what are the downsides you ask? Well the files only last for five days. Meaning when you send that work file to someone and they wait on downloading it for a week the file disappears from TransferBigFiles system. To help with this I always do two things. I send a copy to myself in case someone didn’t get the email and I always send another email explaining about the deadline of disappearance. It is easy and it works. What more would you want? Oh yes this site is good to recommend to those family member that, for whatever reason, have the ability to send large attachment sizes and send everything into a shrinking work email. Tell them to send this way and save your space for something really good. Give it a try.

“Shane. Shane. Come back!”, “Shane,” Brandon De Wilde as Joey Starrett

Welcome back,
The classes are done and the real research begins. To access the new worksheet for the Gaggle of Googles class click here. It went along with a one time lecture style class about all the extra parts of Google like Google Sites and Notebook. Most of the tools are underused and are quite excellent. From today I will be trying to deliver a lot more news and tech info. If anyone has any good suggestions please let me know with an email. The new calendar for January and February classes will be out very soon. I will write about it here. You can also sign up for an email alert here. If you are a library fanatic and really want to stay on top of what is going on at the library try our new Twitter feed. We also have quite a few blogs discussing all different parts of the library from Culture Matters, a blog discussing the fantastic programs that are available, to the Special Collections blog called Notes for Bibliophiles. The RIFLI Birthday Stories are amazing. They showcase ESL student writings and photographs. A blog / book discussion group exists in the form of Club de Lectura en Español de la Biblioteca Pública de Providence. It is a group discussing books in Spanish that meets the last Thursday of every month at South Providence. There are more blogs cropping up all the time so check the blog page when you get a chance. Thanks to everyone who has been checking in and reminding me to get on with more information.

Shane

P.S. Sorry about the qoute but I really could not help myself.

“Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?” Jay Leno

For what seems like a thousand years IT departments have been telling coworkers not to open email from addresses that they do not know. Now I understand this can be difficult sometimes but for the curious the game has gotten far worse. A while back I posted about the virus ladened emails hitting Europe with subject lines like “Dangerous Storm” and the damage they did. As of a couple of days ago the emails have changed to try to trap people with sensational headlines like “Eiffel tower crash” or “Donald Trump Kidnapped”. Be very wary of these. They have a link inside that leads you to a porn site that will give you a bunch of nasty spyware and other baddies. So here is the simple answer if you receive an email that is just too intriguing head to a news site and look it up there. If not you will be spending a lot of time trying to fix your computer. A second of common sense will save you hours of frustration later.

“There's a certain amount of telepathy going on. He's reading my thoughts.” Mike Lowell

The other day I sent an email out to a bunch of friends. It contained a link with information about an upcoming event. I really needed to know if the people I sent it to actually clicked the link. If they did I would not have to call to get the info I needed. The problem is how do I tell if someone clicks on my link? LinkBlip is a nice way of figuring this out. All I have to do is type in my email and the URL
(Web address) and click the button. It will then give me a special URL that I can copy and paste into my emails. When someone clicks the link I will get an email and will get some other info like what city and state it was clicked from. It will not give me their name. Now this could be annoyingly used but I think the pros outweigh the cons so if you need a form of ESP then give this one a try.

“One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer” Lord Byron

Here at PPL I use Microsoft Outlook but when I go anywhere else I use Gmail for both their email and calendar. I really find it useful to have dates for my classes in both places. The problem is that I had to keep doing double duty by scheduling in both Outlook and Gmail Calendars to keep them both up to date. I would forget here or there and screw up along the line but finally there is a nice answer. Gmail came out with a nice little add on to your Outlook program. It is an automatic syncing program and it works perfectly. Just follow the instructions and install it, then open Outlook and it does the rest. You can set it so it will sync one way or both ways from outlook to Google or just going back and forth. Also you decide how often the link up takes place. If you like both calendar systems and are not willing to give one up yet then give this a try.

“An envelope is not just an envelope, it's a letter. We still will go to the mailbox … hoping today it won't be just junk mail.” Daniel Stein

In my Internet 3 Class we sign up for a student’s first email. The one I prefer to use with student is Gmail because it is very easy to use and it does not have any flashing ads to distract them. The last time I taught this one student asked why it was necessary to hit the report spam button instead of just deleting it. I answered that Gmail is a community and if you mark it such then other members will not get the same junk either. The student seemed satisfied but I wished there was an example of this. Thankfully Google came to my rescue when they released their video about spam just recently. Check the video out and see if I gave an OK answer.

“Each bird must sing with his own throat” Henrik Ibsen

I use Microsoft Outlook for email but it is not the only game in town. Now I have written before of open source software. They are alternate choices like OpenOffice and are free. One choice that many people switch to is Thunderbird. Thunderbird is an email client which means it retrieves your email from all your different email boxes making it easier to get your mailing done. It is from the company that created Firefox and like it’s predecessor it has a lot of nice enhancements like message tagging, a way of categorizing email for later searches. Their search features and navigation are nice as well. However if your worry is one of security they do well in this area with anti-phishing features and privacy enhancements. You can also change the look of it using themes. Now I am not saying to change your email client for kicks but if grow dissatisfied with the one you are using give this one a try.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Bertrand Russell

Are you sick of trying to get friends, family or coworkers to meet in anyone place? Unfortunately many people believe that email is a replacement for getting together and hashing some topic out for an hour to resolve a problem instead of sending emails over a course of days or sometimes weeks. I believe it actually stops some topics from ever getting figured out. So that being said how does one find a convenient time for everyone involved without taking up hours more time with emails? A site called MeetWithApproval.com could really help. I personally believe if you can get an issue finished with a quick useful meeting it will save you plenty of time so that you can waste it properly. The site puts their function this way. Arrange a meeting or event. Work out which day is good for everyone & keep track of who is coming. 'Meet With Approval' could not be simpler. Fill out the form which creates a meeting page. Your friends or colleagues are notified of the event. They visit the meeting page and help decide a good date. When you are all happy, 'Meet With Approval' confirms the arrangement and you all meet up. If you are faced with this problem give it a try.

“What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” T.S. Eliot

Some sites I recommend come with a price tag of sorts. Many of them want you to register so that you can use their services. I have mentioned 10 minutemail here to try to evade the junk mail and the onslaught of offers. This works to a degree but what if someone already did the work for you? What if they already had user names and passwords that ended the registration process all together? Bugmenot has solved these issues for me. For the most part it just does one thing but it does it exceptionally well. All you do is put in a web address and it spits out as many user names and passwords as possible. For an example, the site I use for quotations needed me to register and so I would but they never would complete the process no matter how many times I tried. Bugmenot cut right through it and gave me the key to unlock all the information I needed. If you come up to a wall on the web give this a try.

“Why is abbreviation such a long word?”

WB DYK all the CUA or R U DSH....confused?
Translation: Welcome back, do you know all the commonly used acronyms or are you desperately seeking help. This type of language is generally known as netspeak or Internet slang. It is used to speed up conversation. This is not anything new. Acronyms were around a lot longer than computers, think OK. Acronyma is a great site that has many of these CUAs from netspeak like LOL to any acronym out there like SCUBA. I know what you are thinking is YAW (yet another website) but this one is a lot of fun. Just try almost anything and there is some strange acronym out there for it. Give it a try.

“We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.” J. William Fulbright

Alright, you need to see an article online and when you click on the link to read it the page says you must subscribe to read it. Now there is nothing wrong here on the face of it but what if they sell your email to a several companies. Suddenly you have tons of spam and junk mail just for reading one article. This is not a fantastic trade off. There is a nice way around this. You can use 10 minute mail to circumvent their efforts. Essentially you create an email and then register for what you need to and then in ten minutes it completely disappears. It is a nice free service that avoids giving your real information out. Give it a try!

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value. Arthur Schopenhauer

Occasionally I get an email from a student who does not own a computer that needs to convert a file. To explain let's say that I write a document in Microsoft Word but I want to send it to someone who does not have the same program. I should change the file from Word to something like a PDF. This is a file type that anyone can open because the program, Adobe Acrobat Reader, that runs it is free to anyone on any computer. This is why any government files, like tax forms, are in PDF format but it can be a pain if you do not have the software. Thankfully there is a new site called Zamzar. The name sounds like some Arabian Prince or maybe I should stop playing video games. Anyway, it has free file conversion for files up to 100 megabytes, and best of all it is simple. Go to the page and browse for the file and then choose what to convert it to and then put your email address in so it can be sent to you when finished. Just think you can be the modern day alchemist. Give it a try!

“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.” James Thurber

The other day I received an e-mail that told me about a child who had cancer and a request to send the e-mail on to as many people as I can. The reason for the chain letter is that the Make A Wish Foundation would give money for each person that it is sent on to for the child. Now, I get a lot of Internet hoaxes like this one that says that the senate voted to charge per e-mail. I say hoaxes but how do I know? I usually check Snopes.com to verify spam and other claims. Snopes has kept a running tab on what goes on out there with as many facts as possible. I looked this one up and it told me it started around 1997. Check this page to read the whole thing. Before you forward more junk on or even more serious, get taken in financially by an email hoax, look it up on Snopes first. Give it a try!