College Students: Do you Have These Gadgets?

Educational and entertainment gadgets are part of the day-to-day life of most college students. While you are probably familiar with popular gadgets such as the iPad, iPod, iPhone, and Xbox, there are other, less familiar gadgets worthy of your consideration.

Livescribe’s 4 BG Echo Smartpen

This handy device records everything you hear and write, including the delightful snoring sounds of your classmates! Easily find what you’re looking for in your messy notebooks by tapping on a word. This allows you to listen to what the instructor said while you were busy writing. The pen works by writing on special Livescribe paper. This is one of the most popular gadgets for college goers right now!

You can also transfer the images of your notes and the audio form the lecture to a computer. Type in specific phrases or words in the search window and the Livescribe Desktop highlights every place you wrote them in your notes. This product costs between $150 and $170, plus the cost of the special notebooks you’ll need to purchase.

Stash Safes

Keep your valuable items hidden in a diversion safe. Yes, you can buy a piggy bank, but it might attract unwanted attention. Instead, place your valuables in a Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup Can, a Pringles Can, or a Book Stash Safe. The price of these products range from $15 to $30.

Sony Digital Reader Touch Edition with 6 inch Touch Screen

Easily search for book titles with the swipe of your finger. Access books from Sony’s eBookstore, browse more than 500,000 free public domain titles from Google, or use the device to check out books from public libraries. The digital reader includes a built-in Oxford American English eDictionary. A virtual keyboard is available which allows you to take notes and highlight sections. This gadget weighs less than 9 ounces and costs around $244.

Flip Camcorder

Use this small camcorder to make hilarious movies with your friends. If they’re unsavory, don’t put them on YouTube; prospective employers check social media websites! Years later when your a successful CEO of a Fortune 500 company, reminisce by watching recordings of the good times you had with college friends.

iHome iP49

This is a portable, rechargeable audio system for iPhones and iPods that also includes a clock radio. The company reports that the radio offers studio quality sound. The alarm lets you wake up to your iPhone, iPod, or an annoying buzzer. Use this alarm to ensure you make it to your 5 AM Yoga class.

Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock

Activate Moshi by saying “Hello Moshi,” but try not to be sarcastic! Moshi responds by saying “Command please.” Here are some of the functions the clock can perform by giving it voice activated commands:

• Tells you the current time.
• Sets the time.
• Sets the alarm.
• Tells you the time the alarm is set at.
• When using your voice to turn off the alarm, Moshi also gives you the current time, date, and temperature.
• Activates one of three available sleep sounds, which then plays five minutes of soothing sounds to help you get to sleep.
• Turns on the night light.

Moshi costs between $40 and $50.

Identiflyer Singing Alarm Clock

If you partied a little too much but need to get up before dinner the next evening, consider purchasing a soothing, singing alarm clock. Sounds much better than an annoying buzzer, doesn’t it? Insert the Beautiful Songs Birds card into the clock and select from a variety of bird serenades. The clock works with 24 song cards. The hourly mode feature plays a different bird song every hour. This product costs around $30.

Zeloc Itty Bitty Book Light Volume 2

Use this product to study while your roommate is sleeping. This tiny bright light clips on to a book, shines on two pages, and doesn’t create a shadow or a glare. It costs between $20 and $30. The company also offers an Itty Bitty Book Light LED Edition, which sells for $35.

Prices vary, so check out several Web stores or the bricks and mortar versions before you buy one of these useful gadget.

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WordPress SEO & traffic tips for newbies

A friend of mine just moved her site from Blogger’s hosting service to a privately hosted WordPress install, and she asked me how to get more traffic for the new site. I was going to just send her an email, but why not put everything up here to tick off my obligatory “SEO & traffic building for Wordpress” post? So here’s some tips to bring more visitors to your site, for WordPress & SEO newbies …

Part 1: Useful Plugins

WordPress is really a good blog program out of the box, but it’s true genius is the ease with which you can add plugins to automate a lot of promotion tasks, and easily do things you’d otherwise have to become a serious PHP nerd to figure out … and of course, a ton of them claim they’ll help you boost your site rankings and get tons of traffic. Here’s the ones that I won’t do without for my WP blogs:

1. All in One SEO: Super-useful plugin that lets you customize your page titles, meta description and per-page keywords. I’m pretty sure the meta keyword tag is mostly useless with search engines these days, but some use the meta description in their search results, and the page title is definitely important. When writing your page title, imagine what you’d type into a search engine if you were trying to find the information in your post yourself, then use those words in your page title.
2. Sociable: This plugin puts those cute little social bookmarking icons underneath your posts, and the new version includes an “email to a friend” icon too. You can choose from a gazillion different services’ icons to display … most of which I’ve never heard of. Here’s what I’m using on my busiest site: email, Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Reddit, Facebook, del.icio.us, Propeller, TwitThis (Twitter), Fark, Google Bookmarks, SphereIt and Windows Live. On this site, I’m using Sphinn, since that’s a webmaster-oriented site. If you’re writing a tech-oriented site, add Slashdot. If you’re running a news/current event site, add NewsVine.
3. Lucia’s LinkLove: By default, WordPress marks all links in post comments as “nofollow”, which means search engine spiders won’t follow them, and the site being linked to doesn’t get “credit” for the incoming link. Because a lot of search engines base site rankings partially on the incoming links a site gets, the nofollow feature helps discourage spam comments. Lucia’s LinkLove lets you configure your site so any visitor who has made more than a certain number of good comments has the “nofollow” tag removed from their comments. This helps encourage repeat comments, and gives regular commenters’ sites a little “thank you” boost for the time they spend at your blog.
4. ShareThis: ShareThis basically does the same thing as Sociable, but it’s a single icon that triggers a pop-up window. ShareThis has two drawbacks: It loads from a remote server, which can slow down your page loading time, and not all your visitors are going to recognize what the ShareThis icon is for. However, one nice feature is a “blog this” tab that allows your site visitors to easily re-post your blog entry, and link back to you.
5. Subscribe to Comments: Allows site visitors who leave comments on your posts to get email notification of any new comments on the post. It’s absolutely unbeatable for encouraging repeat visits, and creating a “community” of repeat commenters. The more often people visit, and get involved, the more likely they are to link back to you from their own sites.
6. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer: One of the features built into WordPress is automatic “pinging” of various social sites and search engines. This lets them know your site has been updated when you publish a new post, so their spiders can come and index the new content on your blog. However, WordPress also pings these sites every time you edit a previously published post, which can cause some sites to devalue your blog as a “ping spammer”. This plugin fixes everything so your blog only pings when a new post is published. You have to sign up for their newsletter to get the activation code for the plugin, but they include some good site promotion advice sometimes (and you can unsubscribe after you get your activation code).
7. Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin automatically generates and updates a sitemaps.org compliant sitemap for your blog. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Ask.com use that sitemap format to aid their spidering robots’ efforts to index sites more completely. The better indexed your blog is, the more of your pages can be found by search engine users.
8. What Would Seth Godin Do: When someone visits your blog for the first time, or first few times, they may not know where to find features like your RSS feed link, or whether or not you offer email update subscriptions, or if they can follow you on Twitter, become your fan on Facebook, and so on and so forth. WWSGD uses cookies to recognize new visitors and display a special welcome message to them the first few times they come to your site. I configured one WWSGD installation to advertise the site’s RSS feeds, the Feedburner email updates, the site Twitter account (where my new posts are automatically ‘tweeted’ to everyone who follows my account), and the Facebook page for the site. Make it easy for visitors to follow your new posts, and they’re more likely to come back.
9. Recent Comments Widget: The Recent Comments Widget displays a list of all the recent comments on your site, configurable by how many posts’ comments to show, and how many comments to show per post. If a visitor comes to one of your old posts from a link or search engine, this is the perfect way to show them the way to your newest material.
10. Top Posts by Category Widget: The Top Posts by Category widget can be configured to show your most popular posts from selected categories (I leave mine set to show posts from all categories) according to number of comments or other criteria. This is a great way to direct visitors’ attention to the best posts on your blog … and if they find the “good stuff” they’re more likely to click one of those Sociable buttons, or link to your site from their own blog.

There are other plugins that do similar things to some of the ones I’ve listed, and you may find that some of ‘em are more to your liking … but hopefully these will give you a good place to start. The three basic aims of blog SEO and promotion are: Making your site easy for search engines to find and index, getting people to come read your site and become repeat visitors, and getting people to link to your posts (so more visitors will find it and so the search engines will rank it better).

Of course, nobody’s written a plugin that will fill your WordPress site with great content … and none of these are going to make hundreds of people digg your posts, or link to your blog, or come back and read every new piece you write, if your writing isn’t interesting to begin with. 

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The World’s Most Blocked Websites

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Intel Shocked Everyone!

Intel has finally agreed to buy one of the popular security software called McAfee. Without a doubt they are ready to buy it for $7.68 billion that shocked many over the internet. Intel says this transaction will be successful in time, they also say they will jump to the McAfee and do their best for the company. They would like it to become the best in few years and to take over the big-name security software’s.

This worries other companies about the deal; no one ever noticed this before. Most famous companies will now have a look out for Intel for reaching high standards. This is a touching deal for the security software industry, who will know what Intel can do in the incoming years of McAfee.

Most industry observers say this will affect the competitors in antivirus software, so everyone will do what they can do remain the same. Surely they will be some settlements between the antivirus companies if McAfee has increased in usage by computer users. This is advantage for store owners to sell the McAfee as soon as Intel make changes to it and upgrade it to its highest ever. A lot of people will be aware and this can increase in sales for the shop owners.

McAfee was founded in the year 1987, it is best known for its software. It has struggled as years passed because of management changes. However, the operations have improved by far under David DeWalk that became the top for CEO in 2007. He has recently published some mobile security providers which people nowadays are taking a look.

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Simple Solutions to Common Windows Problems

Learn about some free software utilities that will help you fix the most common Windows problems. They are all compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Fix Windows Problems with Free Tools

Q1. I am trying to delete a file from my desktop but the computer won’t let me do that. Instead, it throws me an error message saying that the file /folder is in use by another program or user.

A: You can either reboot your computer in Safe mode to delete that file or, if you want something more simple, get Unlocker. It’s a free utility that will let you close all the processes that have possibly locked the file and once they are closed, you can then safely delete the file.

Q2. I am trying to play a video file on my computer but the media player says that I am missing certain codecs.

A: You can use a tool like Video Inspector to determine which audio and video codecs are required to play the video file on your computer. Alternatively, you can download a codec package like the K-Lite Pack that will let you play virtually any audio and video format on your computer.

Q3. I am running out of disk space on my Windows computer. How can I remove all the unnecessary files from the computer and recover some disk space?

A: There are three things you can do here:

• Open the Run box and type “cleanmgr” to open the built-in Disk Cleanup utility. It will remove all the temp files and the unnecessary system files that you no longer need.
• Use WinDirStat to determine where all your disk space has gone. Sometimes files are hidden in sub-directories that you can safely move to other drives or even delete them permanently (more options).
• Use Duplicate Cleaner to identify and delete all the duplicate files on your hard drives. You can move the duplicates to the recycle bin or, if you want to play safe, to any another folder from where they can be easily recovered.

Q4. My computer takes lot of time to boot-up. I checked the “start-up” folder in the Windows start menu and there aren’t any applications out there.

A:  Type “msconfig” in the Run box to open the “System Configuration” tool and then switch to the “Start-up” tab. Disable all the programs that you don’t need to run during start-up. If you are a power user, you may also switch to the “Services” tab and disable all the unnecessary services.

Autoruns is another excellent utility that shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login.

Q5. I am trying to uninstall a program from my computer but the standard add-remove programs is not letting me through.

A: You can use the free Revo Uninstaller utility to remove every single trace of any program from your computer. Revo can also remove entries from the Windows Registry that may have been left by previous un-installation routines.

Q6. My Windows crashed with a “Blue Screen.” Why?

A: You really need to get in touch with a geek to debug the cryptic Blue Screen errors (aka “Blue Screen of Death”) but if you are lucky, a free utility called BlueScreenView can provide vital clues. Blue Screen View will scan the Windows dump files to determine the device drivers that possibly caused the crash.

Q7. It takes ages to copy files in Windows from one folder to another. The situation is marginally better in Windows 7 (over Vista) but still, is there a way to copy files faster?

A: You can use an external file copying utility like TeraCopy or even RichCopy – they’ll not only copy /move files across drives faster but you can also resume broken file transfers (similiar to FTP operations).

Q8. I think I deleted a file by mistake. Can I recover it?

A: Recuva is a free software that will scan your hard drives, USB stick and other external drives for any deleted files that it can possibly recover. It may not work in all cases especially when you securely deleted a file.

Q9. Every time I copy something new to the Windows clipboard, the previous content gets erased. Can I make it permanent?

A: You can use Ditto, a free utility that sort-of adds memory to your Windows Clipboard. You can copy anything to the clipboard and it will stay there as long as you want.

Q10. How do I protect files and folders on my computer?

A: While there are free tools like Hide Folder that let you easily protect files and folders with a password, use TrueCrypt if you want a more secure solution. The obvious downside with a program like TrueCrypt is that if you forget the password, it is nearly impossible to retrieve the protected files.

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All the Tools You Need for Setting Up a Virtual Office for your business

Virtual offices, where employees and co-workers can be located in any corner of the world, have become a reality. More and more businesses are keen on exploring the concept of "virtual office" because they save on office rentals, employee commuting costs and host of other "unnecessary" expenses.

While members of a virtual team do not meet face to face very often, they do frequently interact online for discussions, brain-storming and training sessions to ensure that everyone is on the same page.Here we look at some extremely useful online tools and web services to help your virtual teams connect and collaborate with each other and with clients.

Email and Calendar: If you are running a virtual office, you need Google Apps. Period. This powerful suite offers email (Gmail), calendar (Google Calendar) and web-based Office suite (Google Docs) for each of your employees with plenty of storage space.

Instant Messaging: While Google Apps also provides a lightweight IM client called Google Talk, Skype is recommended because it also supports group chats and video conferencing in addition to text and audio chats.Another useful feature of Skype is SkypeCasts where you can host voice conference calls with dozens of participants. The host can easily moderate discussions in Skypecasts. Cost: $0.

Online File Storage: When you have a virtual team, it is important to maintain a repository of documents (and other files) at some central location that can be accessed by other members 24x7. This could include client proposal templates, PDFs, software installers, photographs, video clips and more.

Box.net provides a very simple explorer like interface for storing your files on the internet categorized using tags and folders. The free version of Box.net offers 1 GB of storage space. Other popular player in the online storage space businesses are XDrive (AOL), Adobe Share, Office Live Workspace (Microsoft) and the upcoming Google Drive.

Telephone Calls: Though it is possible to make PC-to-PC phone calls using Skype or Yahoo! Messenger for free, JAJAH is a more appropriate and cost-feasible solution if you want make long-distance or international phone calls.JAJAH uses VoIP to connect traditional phones (landline or mobile) and hence the calls are relatively cheaper than what telecom companies would charge for the same call.

Technical Support: While big companies have proper IT staff to fix technical issues, virtual offices can consider using CrossLoop, a remote desktop sharing solution. When you face a problem with your computer, any expert in the team can take control of your machine using CrossLoop and fix the issue for you. Price: $0.

Screen Sharing: Microsoft SharedView is a free screen sharing application that allows upto 15 virtual team members to connect and collaborate. They can share their desktop screens, work together on the same document (and track changes) and transfer files.

SharedView is a good choice if you have to deliver a lecture or training session online to a large group of participants.

The other option for web meeting is Adobe Brio that also offers a whiteboard, some annotation tools, voice and video chat but Brio (the free version) only supports a maximum of three participants per session.

Setup Network Folders: Leaf Networks provide a simple solution for you to share files and folders on your computer with other team members. It’s like a virtual LAN - you designate the files / folders that are to be shared and then invite others to connect to your computer. And not just files, Leaf can also be used for sharing network drives and printers - that means you can send print jobs even remotely.

Discuss Real Designs: If your work involves discussing designs, layout and prototypes with teammates and remote clients for approvals,ConceptShare is all that you need.

It’s like the designers and clients sitting on a virtual table with the project designs rolled out before them – they can mark things that need to improved, add comments and more. The basic version of ConceptShare is free.

Other than these “work related” tools, you can also consider using Wikis (Wetpaint or the upcoming Jotspot) for teammates to connect with each other for fun and non-work related activities.Start Pages (like Netvibes or PageFlakes) can be used as virtual notice boards where one can read all the important announcements, upcoming events, TO DO lists, news, blog buzz and more.

And most of these tools can be accessed from the web browser or even your mobile phone

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