Today by coincidence (or Attraction?) I found myself again at CommonCraft. I could have stayed there quite a while; the videos are clever, entertaining AND educational. There’s even a video about CFL lightbulbs! So, if you’ve been curious, puzzled or avoiding learning about Twitterville, get some popcorn and watch this video or several.

And do let me know what you think about Twitterville and CommonCraft.

Leave it to Google to corral all of this information in one place with links to the details. Of course, they’re promoting Google Feedburner, and they should; it’s still useful and reliable information. Wikipedia is helpful too, but I seem to go to Google first.

How about you? How do you organize/read and access your Feeds and RSS subscriptions?

Share it anywhere on the Web – on company websites, blogs, forums, email signatures, social networks and anywhere else you can imagine. It’s an Attractive Marketing tool. You, too, can have one. Just click on More Info on my card and begin creating yours.

Typical of all things technical, the digital scrapbooking world improved, and I bought another program a year ago. It was in it’s infancy at that time, and I saw the potential but wasn’t jazzed enough to drop my other programs.  Fast forward a year…everything has changed.  The program of a year ago now has an abundance of add-ons and kits, papers, embellishments, all coordinating with the traditional paper scrapbooking world. There are experts, webinars, forums, and there’s even a facebook group with more than 10,000 – yes, 10,000 members. So while I’ve been sleeping, thinking the product was mediocre, at best, the giant has awakened. 

This digital program does far more than scrapbooks. It’ll do greeting cards, book marks, wall posters and much more. The end products can be individual pages, photo prints, hard-bound books from 7.5 x 7.5 to 12 x 12, with full-color bleed covers and pages…. I’ll stop so you can take a peak. 

You’re probably guessing what I’m eluding to, so go ahead and take a look at the reason for my excitement.

I think it’s a perfect sideline for a very digital and creative VA. I plan to teach it (did you know I love training?) and offer creative assistance as a sideline.

Let me know what you think, but don’t “rain on my parade.” I really am excited about this and can see the fun this will bring to me and others who are creative techies like me.

For some reason this morning I found myself logged onto my Gmail account via my Google home page. What caught my eye and truly suprised me was the number next to Spam. It was nearly 1800. Yes, 1800 messages tagged by Gmail as Spam. When I checked the dates of these messages, the oldest was just a month old. My account had accrued 1800 spam messages in one month! I scanned the list and identified two messages as not being spam. The remainder were all spam; messages attempting to sell me anything and everything from pills for men to easy income and marketing techniques.

1800 hundred messages in one month seems high…that would be 60 a day.  So  I checked it again and found 40 more.  Probably at the end of 24 hours there’ll be 60 or so, accounting for 1800 in one month.  By using my Gmail account as I have, my business and personal email addresses have stayed free of spam, and I’ve been saved from having to deal with it on a daily basis.  It’s the best spam filter I have. Thank you Gmail and Google!  What a powerful tool  – and it’s free and reliable!

In an article by Dave Paradi, he points out that Outlook was designed as a Personal Information Tool (PIM), and Jay Lee defines it this way.

Outlook Express is a free program that comes with Internet Explorer and is a part of Microsoft Windows; it is not a part of the Microsoft Office suite of software. It supports email and has a very limited capacity for contact management. It does not replace Outlook, nor is it a tool for business. It may be fine for the home computer user.

Outlook is much more than an email (client) program; it’s a contact manager, calendar and scheduling manager, and a task manager just for *starters*. Outlook synchronizes easily with other databases such as ACT and is also linked to handheld PCs, which run on the Windows platform. If you want an all-in-one program for task, time and email management, and you want to stay with a Microsoft-based program, Outlook is the answer. Can you tell that I’m an avid Outlook user?

Here are a couple of tips for organizing and moving email from your Inbox:

Organizing Email Messages in Outlook

Email messages initially arrive to your Inbox, but what do you do with them as they accumulate? If you want to save your incoming email messages, organize them much like you’d organize your office – put them in alphabetical folders by subject in a file cabinet. In this case, the file cabinet is your Inbox, and the file folders will be created preferably by subject.

To create a folder within your Inbox:

• Right click on the Inbox icon or name.
• From the drop-down menu, select New Folder.
• In the Create New Folder dialog box, type the name of the folder and highlight the Inbox folder (where to place the folder). Outlook will place the new folder in the Inbox.
• Click OK. The New Folder will appear in alphabetical order under the Inbox.

Move Messages to the appropriate folder:

There are several ways to move messages from the Inbox to a different folder.

• Drag: You can left click and hold, then drag the message to the appropriate folder.
• Move: Open the message. Slowly move your mouse over the icons on the Toolbar and left-click on the Move to Folder icon. On the drop-down menu, select Move to Folder. The Move Item To dialog box appears. Select the appropriate folder and click OK or click on New to create a new folder within the Inbox (which is another way to create a new folder).

Future Tips will address the Outlook Task List, Creating and Scheduling Tasks by dragging messages to the Calendar and Task List, Managing the Outlook Calendar, and utilizing Contacts to record data and contact information.

My computer had been running very slowly.  I only had 512mb of RAM (Resident Access Memory) and always had several programs running in the background (time tracking program, anti-spam and security software, Groove, RoboForm, Carbonite, Outlook and others).  A simple Word document took far too long to load, and getting my Internet browser to open provided enough time to run to the grocery store. Well. . . almost.  I knew I needed to increase the RAM, but this was the first time I had heard about “hidden files.”

Anti-Virus Protection
So Emil made his first visit within a few days and immediately installed some free programs which replaced my anti-virus program and Microsoft Windows defrag program.  My computer is now protected by  AVG Free Anti Virus.  The program hums along in the background, scanning documents, emails, and links, and the updates to the program are automatic.

Defragmentation
All of us Windows users have a system defrag program installed (Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup).  I assumed (you know what that word means) that if the program was from Microsoft and Microsoft is so very concerned about security, that if I utilized this option on a regular basis, my machine would be clean and fast.  Well, Emil showed me the way.

First he installed CCleaner,  a free program (donations encouraged), which cleans all temp files, history, cookies, etc.  The first time you use it, it may take 15 to 30 minutes to clean your hard drive. You need to do this before you defrag.

Here are the instructions for setting up CCleaner:

1. Once you’ve installed CCleaner, Under “Cleaner” check all the boxes in Internet Explorer except Auto Complete.
2. Under Advanced, check only “Old Prefetch data.”
3. Then click Run Cleaner (lower right corner).

Emil wasn’t done.  Next he installed O&O Defrag.  This program does what the Windows program does but far more thoroughly.  The first time you use it, it may take hours.  My suggestion is to set it up to run during the night the first time.

Here are the instructions for setting up O&O Defrag:

1. Go get the free download of O&O Defrag
2. Once it’s installed, open it and  specify the drive you want to defrag.
3. Then click on the green arrow/triangle in the O&O toolbar.

It will begin analyzing the drive; you should see bunches of red in the colored area. When the analysis is complete, it will automatically begin defragging.  This could take several hours the first time, so do it overnight.

Then be ready to speed your way through your computer the next morning!

To maintain your speedy computer, be sure to use cCleaner and O&O Defrag at least once a month, depending on how much you’re using the computer, downloading files, etc.

And let me know how your computer does after you’ve done all of this.