File Transfers

People often use their email accounts to send files to one another. Emailing text or pictures is usually easy enough but what happens if you want to send someone a large video, large image file, or other media that goes over the file size limits of most email providers? Several sites exist to allow users to send large files to each other. Most of these sites allow up to a certain size (up to 1G in some cases) for free and will allow unlimited size files for a fee. These sites send your files securely not in the open. (as with most torrent sites) If you find yourself in need of sending a large file to someone these are some sites that can help.

www.files2u.com

http://www.pando.com/ Subscribers can watch TV online. Will send 1GB files free.

http://www.streamfile.com/ Focuses on reduced bandwidth for file transfers.

http://host02.pipebytes.com/ Web based file transfer. No downloads needed.

Other Social Networking Services

A lot of people have heard of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Blogs. What are these other things that I keep seeing on the Internet? del.icio.us, Digg, Stumbleupcon, Reddit – what are they and are they worth signing up for?

Blog Posts Sent to Your E-mail

Feed Your E-mail Inbox

Want to receive our Blog posts directly to your E-mail inbox? Sign up for one of the services described below. After you give the service your email address, it will ask for the web address of any site you want to receive  automatic updates from. Paste in the web address of Tech Corner (http://cadltech.wordpress.com). Now whenever the Blog posts a new article, you’ll receive the post in your E-mail.

This will work with most websites, news headlines and Blogs.

Feedblitz
Feedblitz is my favorite service. If you enter the “RSS feed address” or web address for a  website or Blog, Feedblitz will send you the full post in a message to your address. It retains most of the formatting of the original website with pictures and links.

RSS feed icon

Most websites and Blogs now have an RSS icon you can click on to get their RSS address.

Feedburner
If a website or Blog uses Feedburner to promote their own website, then they’ll have a link on their webpage that will ask you for your E-mail address. That’s the address Feedburner will use to send you emails. But to add your own feed from a website that doesn’t promote itself using Feedburner, you must sign up for a Google account before subscribing the a feed. You can use Feedburner to subscribe to any website, not just the ones that themselves use Feedburner, but I found that signing up for a new feed was clunky an not very intuitive.

Feed My Inbox
Feed My Inbox provides daily summaries of your Blog subscriptions.

Nutshell Mail
Nutshell Mail sends periodic E-mail summaries of the websites, Blogs or social media web pages. You can set your own schedule for delivery, once a day, once an hour or anywhere in between. You can also send a message to their provided E-mail address for an immediate update at anytime in between your scheduled updates.

Peekfeed
Peekfeed works quite well and sends summaries of the newest posts from your feeds. A drawback of this one is the E-mail is in a plain text format, so none of the links or pictures get translated.

Tweet By Mail
Tweet By Mail sends E-mail updates from the people you tell it to follow from your Twitter account. But you don’t have to get tweets from every single person listed in your Twitter follow list. If you follow lots of people using Tweet By Mail, this will fill up your email box very fast. You can also use it to email updates to your own account. A handy feature of this service is it retains the clickable links people put in their tweets.

Feedblitz: feedblitz.com
Feedburner: feedburner.google.com
Feed My Inbox: feedmyinbox.com
Nutshell Mail: nutshellmail.com
Peekfeed: peekfeed.com
Tweet By Mail: tweetbymail.com

My new BlackBerry Storm Smartphone

Just took another step into the present and traded in my old Verizon cell phone for a new BlackBerry Storm Smartphone. I decided that it was time to be able to access the Web and email when away from my desktop. I also added a bunch of minutes for texting, even though I personally don’t get the big deal with texting when a phone call seems a lot faster. Old age I guess! Oh yeah those text messages can add up fast at 20 cents a pop without a plan that includes it. Here is a quick analysis of my initial reaction to the device and I haven’t figured it all out yet.

What I like:

• the style of the device
• the screen and icon size
• the touch quality of the screen, though small items and links can be hard to pinpoint and activate
• the screen image can quickly be zoomed in to make reading and selecting easier
• accessing email is fast, as well as replying and deleting
• big selection of ring tones and sound options
• auto spell check

What I don’t like:

• when composing a message or text some of the letters/numbers/symbols are hard to accurately punch
• the manual is weak and lacks clear and complete instructions
• surfing the Web is difficult on such a small screen
• It doesn’t fit in my pocket like my old flip phone and I worry about scratching the screen

I’m taking a free class offered by cell phone  store, that I’m hoping will reveal the device’s potential. There is also the www.blackberry.com  site that has some good info with step by step instructions for using and improving the BlackBerry(BB) such as: syncing your BB to manage and access your desktop from it, updating the device software from your computer or smartphone and transferring music, photos and videos files from your desktop to BB.

There are some free upgrades and applications available and many that can be purchased. There are many sites with good information such as:  www.itworld.com and www.the-blackberry-storm.net (a blog about the BB).

All in all I’m quite happy with the device and performance.

Microsoft Office software for free?

Microsoft has plans to offer its new Office 2010 software online for free. Please check out a more detailed article about it at the following link: free office software.

More on search engines

Most of you probably know about the big players like Google, Yahoo and now Bing and you probably use them everyday. There are others out there though! Check them out and you may be surprised with their usefulness. Once engine I just stumbled upon is kosmix. So, what is different about this engine when comparing it to the big players? Several things.

There is not just a search box like Google or Bing. The search box is at the top of the screen and below it are groups(basically widgets) of related items such as videos, blogs, web,  etc. When you type a query, there results are displayed in those groups (web, videos, images, etc). The results list looks more like a social media site with information coming from mlive, meehive, digg, facebook, wikis, etc. Grouping the information by type is very helpful because there is more organization  instead of looking at a big results list or limiting the search through a tab. The group boxes can also be moved around the page so the user can change the look of the site. 

I found the “related in the kosmos” group to be very useful. A simple search of Lansing, Michigan will yield results in the “related in the kosmos” section for Ingham and Eaton Counties and sports and education in Lansing.

Pandora

Music lovers, take note! Pandora (pandora.com) is a great music-listening website with minimal commercial interruption. Here’s how it works.
After creating your user profile (not necessary for previewing the site), you name a genre, song, or artist that you particularly enjoy. Pandora then creates a radio station with that genre, song, or songs by that artist and similar songs. You have a list of radio stations that are kept separate, and you can create a quickmix station that plays music from the chosen stations on your list. For each song that plays, you can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, bookmark the song or the artist, buy the song, and get tons of info about the song or artist (lyrics, bio, similar artists, and more). There are a bunch more features, but you’ll just have to check out the site to see them.

Pandora is part of the Music Genome Project, a music analysis endeavor described by its founder like this -

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists – ranging from popular to obscure – and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

The result? You really hear music you like! For example, I created a quickmix station from four stations: Pat Benetar, Johnny Cash, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Brandi Carlile (four artists who would never have their songs played on the same radio station!). I listened to great music for hours, heard much more than is in my personal collection, and discovered some new songs and artists that I happen to really enjoy.

And for the technophiles out there, note that Pandora works not only on the computer, but also on an iPod Touch, an iPhone, and a Blackberry. For all-around town, non-stop grooving.