Do you want to remotely access your Mac so you can open applications and edit files on it? This is an increasingly common request. Here’s a quick overview of a few ways to remotely access your Mac.

Back To My Mac

Apple’s iCloud service includes a feature named Back To My Mac. While Back to My Mac doesn’t work in all circumstances, it’s a powerful and free option that lets you remotely access your Mac. MacLife has written a succinct overview of Back To My Mac. Apple has written articles about troubleshooting Back To My Mac and related security considerations. I should note that Back To My Mac requires that you use a Mac to remotely access another Mac. In other words, you can’t use an iPad, iPhone or PC to remotely access your Mac with this feature.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn is one of many products which offers remote access services for both Macs and PCs. LogMeIn offers a free version as well as a paid version called LogMeIn Pro that offers more features. This MacFormat article gives a good overview of LogMeIn Free and LogMeIn Pro. LogMeIn supports remote access of Macs from a PC and vice versa. Additionally, there is a LogMeIn iOS application which works on both iPads and iPhones, though I can’t imagine using it on the iPhone’s tiny screen. The iOS application lets one remotely access either Macs or PCs.

I use LogMeIn to provide remote support to many of my clients. One can download and install the free LogMeIn client software from my web site to give me remote access to their computer.

Apple Remote Desktop and  VPN

Small business clients often prefer to setup their own VPN (Virtual Private Network) and use Apple Remote Desktop or Apple’s free Screen Sharing application to remotely view and manipulate Macs on their office network. Setting up a VPN requires purchasing a router which supports VPN capabilities. Screen Sharing is a free tool built into the Mac operating system starting with OS X 10.5. Apple Remote Desktop costs $80 and provides advanced features to install upgrades and created detailed reports.

Messages’ Screen Sharing

The first three methods listed above require the remote Mac to be awake, but nobody needs physically to be at the remote Mac. If, however, you have a friend or family member at your remote Mac then you could use Messages’ Screen Sharing application. Messages used to be named iChat, which offered this feature for a number of years. Messages was introduced in OS X Lion and works in OS X Mountain Lion. If both of your Macs are using Lion or Mountain Lion then this Apple article gives you an introduction on how to initiate screen sharing.

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Do  you ever need to rent a meeting room in Seattle? Many of my clients run home-based businesses and they sometimes need to rent a room where they can conduct trainings, interviews or depositions. Here’s a list of some organizations which rent rooms in the Seattle area. While I try to list a few highlights, these facilities vary widely in size, price, hours of availability, amount of parking, etc. Please contact each organization to get specific details.

I intend to update this list as I learn about new resources. If you can recommend any places, please contact me.

Phinney Ridge

The Phinney Neighborhood Association operates four buildings that contain a wide-variety of rooms that could accommodate a mere handful or many dozen. All rooms have wireless Internet access.

Wallingford

Present Sense has two small meeting rooms which offer a small kitchen but no Internet access.

The Mosaic Coffeehouse rents their den. It includes a large conference table and wireless Internet access.

iLeap rents their Library which is equipped with white boards, projector, screen, wireless Internet and a kitchen (for an additional fee).

All Over Seattle and Bellevue

The Seattle Public Library offers free meeting rooms in many of their branches. The rooms can be reserved up to 3 months in advance. The meetings need to be open to the public. No attendance fee can be collected and no merchandise sold there.

Regus offers conference rooms, virtual offices and executive suites in the greater Seattle area and in many other states. Rooms can be rented by the hour, half day or full day.

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Would you like to secure your Internet connection when you’re using a public wireless network at a hotel, coffee shop or airport? If so, you should consider using a personal VPN service like Cloak or TunnelBear.

In a previous tech tip, I talked about reasons why you might want to sign-up for a personal VPN service such as securing all of the data that goes to or from your laptop while you’re using a public wireless network.

In this article we’ll briefly compare two personal VPN services including Cloak and TunnelBear. I’ve used both of these services over the past few months. Both are affordable, easy to setup and capable, but I prefer Cloak for its unobtrusiveness and helpfulness.

You can try both services for free. Tunnelbear offers a service plan which lets you send up to 500 MB of data over your Tunnelbear VPN connection for free. If 500 MB isn’t adequate then they offer two paid plans that permit you to send unlimited data. You can either pay $5/month or $50/year. Cloak offers a 30-day free trial. After that, you have to choose from one of 3 monthly data plans: 5 GB for $2/month, 25 GB for $8/month or 60 GB for $15/month. In my experience, a 5 GB monthly cap is sufficient, so I would pay $24/year for a year’s worth of service from Cloak.

Both applications have very simple interfaces. Tunnelbear is an application. When you open it you see two buttons. One is the on/off button used to start or stop your VPN connection. The other button lets you indicate if you’re in the US or the UK. Additionally, the application displays the amount of data remaining if you’re using the free account. Cloak installs a menu bar icon whose menu provides a Connect/Disconnect command, a status indicator, preferences and a way to quit Cloak. I prefer Cloak’s interface since its menu bar icon is out of the way while Tunnelbear’s application seems much larger than it needs to be. Additionally, Cloak displays information notifications when it has connected or disconnected as well as when the public wireless network requires you to sign-in using your web browser.

Both applications reportedly work in many countries, but Cloak’s coverage might be more wide-spread. Cloak claims to work in most countries since they piggyback on data centers around the globe. While I don’t travel internationally much, I know many of my clients do, so this is an important feature. It’s unclear how wide-spread Tunnelbear’s coverage is. I assume they only have servers in the US and the UK and thus, I presume it’ll work in North American and European countries and maybe others. Both applications indicate that they don’t work in China.

Both services support Mac OS X and Windows-based computers as well as iOS devices like iPhones and iPads and Android-based phones and tablets.

It’s important to be aware that using a VPN connection will slow down the speed of your Internet connection. VPN connections encrypt all network traffic that is transmitted across them. This encrypting and decrypting of data takes time and thus slows down your connection. Cloak estimates that you’ll see a loss of about 20% of your network throughput.

I hope you find this comparison helpful. Security is increasingly important. Both Tunnelbear and Cloak offer affordable, user-friendly ways to secure your network traffic when you’re on public networks, so try these services and start to use one.

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Would you like to create a questionnaire, sign-up form, quiz or other type of form that people can fill out on their computer? If so, here are some general instructions on how to create a form using Microsoft Word 2011 on your Mac. Once you’ve created the form you can distribute it as an email attachment or via a web site. The recipient could then complete the form on his or her computer and return it to you. Microsoft has instructions about how to create interactive forms in Word 2008, Word 2004 and Word X. Here are some pointers to how to create a form using Word 2011.

By default Word 2011′s Form Control features are hidden. To make them visible you have to enable the Developer tab on the Ribbon. Here’s how to do this:

• Open a new document in Word 2011.
• Click on the Word menu and select Preferences.
• Click the Ribbon button on the bottom row on the right-hand side.
• In the Customize section, scroll through the list and insert a check mark next to Developer.
• Click the OK button.
• Click on the Developer tab on the Ribbon and you’ll see the Form Controls as depicted below.

You can now use these controls in a document. Let’s look at how to use the Text Box, Combo Box and Check Box.

The Text Box lets the form-filler type in their own answer. Click the Text Box option to insert a Text Box into your Word document. Double-click on this Text Box to control its options. For example, you could set a Maximum Length for the recipient’s answer.

The Check Box lets you create a box that can be checked by the form-filler.

The Combo Box lets you enter a list of choices that will appear in a drop-down list. The form-filler can select only one choice. After adding a Combo Box to your Word document, double-click it to be able to enter the choices that you want to offer.

The Protect Form button is very important. After you’ve finished your document click the Protect Form button. This button locks the document so it can’t be edited. In other words, it turns the document into a fillable form. Once you’ve protected the form you’re ready to distribute it to others.

Below is a picture of a sample document which demonstrates the Text Box, Combo Box and Check Box.

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Are you pleased with your company’s email and web hosting company? Email is a critical business tool for many businesses, thus one should not change hosting companies on a whim or without adequate preparation. Here’s an overview of the migration process, including pre-migration planning, day-of-migration tasks and post-migration tasks.

Phase 1 – Planning for the Migration

1. Select a new hosting company.

It’s not easy to provide reliable and capable email and web hosting with solid customer support to Macintosh users. If you’re not satisfied with your current hosting company you might like to read the article I wrote about selecting a good hosting company.

2. Sign-up for hosting services with the new company.

Setup email accounts and distribution lists. Don’t forget about setting up email aliases for addresses listed on your web site like info@company.com. Setup web hosting and send the FTP login information to your web site manager. Have your web site manager install your web site and test it.

3. Identify the registrar for your company’s domain name.

One way to determine your registrar is to look it up on Who.is.  Make sure you can login to your account at your domain name registrar since you might need to change the name servers listed here. If you’re not sure how to change name servers, contact your registrar for support. Also, ask them how long it’ll take for this change to go live on their servers. Most companies have this change go live immediately, but it’s not uncommon for this to take up to an hour. I’ve even encountered a few registrars who only update this information every 2 or 4 hours.

4. Identify where your company’s DNS records reside and verify that you can login to this account.

One way to do this is click the DNS records button on Who.is. Make a copy of all of your company’s current DNS records so you can undo mistakes if you make them. If you’re only changing mail hosting companies then you won’t need to change the name servers at your registrar as described in the last step. Instead, you can simply edit the MX (Mail Exchange) records with your DNS hosting company. If you don’t know how to edit your DNS records, ask your DNS hosting company for guidance. Also, lower the TTL (Time To Live) values for your company’s MX records to the lowest value permitted by your DNS host. Five minutes (300 seconds) is ideal, but many companies won’t lower it below 60 minutes (3600 seconds). Briefly, the TTL value tells other companies’ mail servers how long to trust the information listed for how they can deliver messages to you. Since you’re going to change this information, you want other companies’ mail server to check back often to learn the new information quickly. Again, ask your DNS host how quickly changes you make will go live on their servers. Make sure that you ask them how long it takes them (the DNS hosting company) to make this change effective in their systems. DNS hosting companies’ knee-jerk reaction is to tell you that it can take 24 hours or more for the DNS changes that you will be making to propagate around the globe. While it’s important for you to be aware of this fact, you need to know how quickly they’ll make the changes on their servers so you can estimate how long your email and web site will be down (unavailable).

5. Identify all users at your company who will be affected by this migration and collect an inventory of all of their devices that will need to be reconfigured.

You’ll need to build a complete inventory of all user’s desktop computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets, including the version of the operating system on the device and the email application used. Make sure you have instructions for configuring all of these devices. You can configure these devices in advance if there are a lot of them. If there are only a handful of devices then you may just want to configure them the day of the migration. Determine what email data and/or address book contacts will need to be migrated when you make the change of hosting companies. For example, if your users store their mail in IMAP folders on the mail server or contacts in an address book server then you’ll need to set aside time to move this data. Before you move this data, you should verify that all users have a current full backup of their computer.

6.  Inform all users of what to expect on the day of the migration.

Tell the users what time of day the migration will start and how much downtime, if any, to expect. If there will be downtime of an hour or more, encourage your users to use a secondary email account for correspondence during the migration. Some users even need to notify important clients or contacts about the migration and the need to use the alternative email address.

Phase 2 – Migration Day

The big day has arrived. Change your DNS or nameserver records and wait for them to go live with your host. This commonly takes about an hour. Then expect these changes to take 24 hours to fully propogate around the globe. If you haven’t pre-configured all computers, smartphones and tablets then configure them now to access the new email accounts. Migrate the data that needs to be migrated. At the end of the hour, use Who.is to verify that the record changes have taken place. Then start to send test email messages on each device. Test your web site to make sure it’s working properly.

Inform users how to use new system. Users will want to know how to setup an Out of Office message and/or setup email forwarding. It’s useful if they know how to access their email account using webmail. You should also notify them how to contact the new hosting company for technical support.

Phase 3 – After The Migration

About 24 hours after the migration, each user should login to their email account with the previous hosting company, using webmail, to see if any messages were delivered to the old mail hosting company during the propagation period. If so, these messages can be forwarded to themselves and they will now be delivered to the new hosting company’s mail server.

A few days after the migration, contact the old hosting company to completely close your account.

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Do you get your Internet service from Comcast? If so, do you know if you’re renting your cable modem or own it out-right? If a Comcast tech set it up then there’s a good chance that you’re paying a monthly rental fee of about $7. If this is the case, you might want to buy your own cable modem and return the one you are renting. A new cable modem costs between $60-$130 depending upon which model you buy. You recover the cost of this new modem in 9-18 months through eliminating the rental fee.

Here are instructions on how to set up and register a new cable modem. These instructions are also helpful if you’re replacing a cable modem which has stopped working.

1. Disconnect your current cable modem. Specifically, unplug the ethernet cable that connects it to your router or Macintosh computer. Also, unplug the coax cable that connects it to the wall jack and finally, disconnect its power cord.

2. Plug in your new cable modem. Specifically, plug in the coax cable coming from the wall, then run the ethernet cable from the cable modem directly to your Mac (even if you have a router). Lastly, plug in its power cord. The cable modem will start up and try to connect to Comcast, but it won’t be able to do so since it’s not yet registered with Comcast.

3. Call Comcast Tech Support. Their phone number should be on a recent invoice. Have a copy of your invoice handy because you’ll likely be prompted for either your Comcast account number or the phone number associated with your account. Once you get a person on the line, tell him or her that you’re setting up a new cable modem and you’d like him or her to guide you through it. The tech will ask you to read the MAC address which is printed on a sticker on the cable modem. The tech might also want the make and model of cable modem. Note: A MAC address has nothing to do with Macintosh computers. MAC stands for Media Access Control and is a unique identifying number.

The tech will then register the cable modem on their end and soon more and more lights on the cable modem will come on. This is a good thing, it’s progress. Soon your laptop will be connected to the Internet. Yay, things are working!

Note: I’ve had you bypass the your router temporarily because Comcast won’t support the configuring of routers. They only support cable modems and 1 computer.  Now that you have your new cable modem working, you can hang up with Comcast and do the following.

A. Unplug the power cord from the Comcast cable modem. This is very important: make sure that all lights on the cable modem are off. If they aren’t off then your cable modem also provides your home with phone service. If this is the case then your cable modem has a battery in it and you’ll have to find the door and open it to pop out the battery. Once you have all of the lights off, then you’re good. Now proceed to the next step.

B. Move the ethernet cable from your laptop back to your router.

C. Re-insert the battery and power cord into the cable modem. The cable modem will start up, then it will see the router and pair with it. This is very important to understand. The cable modem can only pair with one device at a time. When it pairs it then permits that device to connect to the Internet. When the cable modem is off (i.e. has no lights lit up), it forgets the device that it last paired with and it’s ready to pair with a new device on start up.

D. Wait about two minutes for the cable modem to startup and all of its lights to turn on.

E. Make sure your laptop is connected to your router either wirelessly or using an ethernet cable. Open Safari and you should be able to view web sites. Yay, you’re done!

If you have problems getting all of this to work then you can go back to having your laptop plugged directly into the cable modem. However, to get this to work you’ll need to turn off the cable modem so it forgets its pairing with the router and will thus be ready to pair with your laptop when you connect your laptop using the ethernet cable to the cable modem.

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Do you have children? Would you like to configure your home network to easily block adult content? Here’s an easy and affordable way to setup adult content filtering for all Macs, PCs, iPhones and iPads on your network. Sign-up for OpenDNS’ free FamilyShield service.

In recent years, when I’ve been asked to setup adult content filtering, I’ve recommended applications like Intego’s ContentBarrier which now appears to be part of Intego’s Family Protector product. This application gets installed on each computer on which protection is needed. This solution is no longer affective if you have iPhones, iPads or iPod Touches on your home network since ContentBarrier or comparable applications do not exist for the iPhones and other iOS devices. This is where FamilyShield comes in handy.

FamilyShield works by modifying the configuration of your wireless router. All network traffic in and out of your home network travels through your wireless router. Thus, by reconfiguring your wireless router, you affect all devices on your network, including computers, mobile devices and gaming consoles like XBoxes.

I should mention the protection offered by FamilyShield can be pretty easily defeated by somebody who understands how networks work. So it’s not a perfect solution if you have a savvy teenager who wants to get around it. However, FamilyShield could be an appropriate solution for younger children. OpenDNS also offers a paid service named OpenDNS Home VIP which might be more difficult to defeat, but because OpenDNS’ site doesn’t do a good job of highlighting the additional features included with this paid service, the degree of increased protection is unclear. It’s also possible that over time FamilyShield might become more robust.

I’m also watching a couple of other products that provide content filtering for your entire network. They included two wireless routers, the iBoss Home Parental Control Router/Firewall and Pandora’s Hope. iBoss has a range of other network products for home and business users so they appear to be a well-established company, but reviews of the iBoss are mixed, like this one and this other one. I couldn’t learn much about the Pandora’s Hope router or the company that makes it. This PR article indicates that the company started selling products in 2009 and that the current model was released in 2011. I couldn’t find any reviews by computer industry reviewers. The iBoss and Pandora’s Hope cost $40 and $160 respectively and then have recurring annual costs of $60 and $20 respectively. I’m not convinced that this money is well spent in comparison to the free FamilyShield service.

None of the solutions that I could find are perfect, but, for the time being, if you want to prevent children using computers, mobile devices and gaming consoles in your home from accidentally or intentionally finding adult content, I would check out OpenDNS’ free FamilyShield service. If I find a more robust solution, I’ll update this article.

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Over the past couple of days there have been news stories about a vulnerability in Java which is apparently being exploited in an effort to steal identities. The situation isn’t entirely clear to me and details change rapidly, but currently the Department of Homeland Security recommends that people disable the Java web browser plug-in, for each of their web browsers.

According to this article from ZDNet, Apple has already sent out an automatic update which effectively disables the Java web browser plug-in for Macs running OS X Lion (10.7) and OS X Mountain Lion (10.8). That said, it can’t hurt to follow the instructions below to double-check your Mac’s configuration.

Important Note – Please don’t confuse Java and Javascript. These are two entirely different technologies despite the very similar names. This current security vulnerability only affects Java, not Javascript. More specifically, this vulnerability targets Java web browser plug-ins. In other words, you don’t need to fully remove or disable Java or Java-based applications, like OpenOffice or CrashPlan. Reportedly, Java applications have a very low chance be being exploited by this bug.

This OS X Daily article from August 2012 provides instructions on how to disable the Java plug-in in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Please follow these instructions to ensure that Java is disabled in your web browser.

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The start of a new year is the season of resolutions. I propose that you make a resolution to organize your passwords. Build a list of your accounts and their passwords. Also, make sure those passwords are strong. In a previous tech tip I talked about how to test your passwords’ strength and how to select strong passwords. I’ll reiterate some of that tech tip’s suggestions and add some recommendations on creating and maintaining your password list.

You often hear the recommendation that you should use a long, complex and unique password for each system and change each of these passwords every month. From a security viewpoint, I agree with this recommendation completely, but I don’t think it is at all practical or realistic for most people. Instead, I think it’s more reasonable to make this recommendation: Use very long passwords and maintain a written list.

Some day in the future we might login to our accounts using a thumb print or an iris scan. When this day comes then security will be easy. We simply press our thumb on a device or look into a camera and wait for a few seconds. Gone will be the days of remembering a myriad of passwords, typing in passwords and resetting forgotten passwords! However, our current reality is that we all have many, many password-protected accounts. So what’s the best way to handle this?

In this current paradigm, security and convenience are inversely related. The more secure things are, the less convenient they are. Or, stating the converse, the more convenient things are the less secure they are. Let me illustrate this. It’s very convenient for you to use one password on many or all of your accounts, but this is very insecure. If one account is compromised then they are all effectively compromised. If one account is compromised you obviously have to select a new password for that account and really, you should change the password for all of the accounts for which you use that same password. What a headache. How inconvenient!

Thus, I recommend a more balanced approach. Use at least a handful of passwords, select long passwords and maintain a password list. One of the easiest ways to make a password secure is to make it long. If your password is currently cactus. Simply change your password to cactuscactuscactus. (It would be better if you made it complex like this: c@ctuSc@ctuSc@ctuS, but I won’t push my luck.) However, even if you do your best to pledge to use a really long or complex password, your efforts could be thwarted by systems that put a cap on the maximum length of a password or don’t allow the use of punctuation marks in a password. Thus, you’ll end up with a greater variety of versions of your passwords than you’d like. Thus, it’s important to maintain a password list.

Let’s focus on this list. It could be handwritten on paper, but clearly this isn’t very secure. If you do put it on paper then securely store it in a locked drawer or a safe. However, locking up your list makes it less convenient to grab and to update. So if you’re going to maintain your list on paper I recommend that don’t write the password itself. Instead, write a hint. For example, if your password is your childhood street address then you could simply write old address as the hint. This way you could keep the password list close to your computer and even if a burglar found it he wouldn’t immediately have all of your passwords.

An even more secure way to store your password list on a computer is in an encrypted disk image. I think this solution offers a great combination of security and convenience. A previous tech tip describes how to setup an encrypted disk image. Since the disk image is on your computer, you’ll always have this information conveniently at your fingertips, but it’ll be stored in a secure, encrypted manner. Of course, you’ll have to remember your password for your disk image. If you forget it then you’ve lost access to your entire list!

Another option that some of my colleagues use and recommend is a password manager like 1Password or mSecure. This blog article covers 8 password managers for the Mac and iOS devices. 1Password and mSecure are the two that I’ve personally worked with.

Whichever method you choose, I hope you compile a list of your current accounts and passwords and hopefully take some time to select longer, more secure passwords for these accounts.

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Do you use your laptop on public wireless (wi-fi) networks? Do you own a business and want to give remote staff a way to securely connect to your office network? If so, then you should know about VPNs.

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, but this isn’t particularly helpful in understanding what it is or what it does. A VPN is an additional, virtual network that can be setup to exist over an existing physical network. In even simpler teams, a VPN is way to secure (encrypt) the data that leaves your computer as it travels across the Internet.

VPNs can be useful in a few situations, but my clients tend to use them in the following two situations. First, some clients want to provide part of their staff with secure remote access to the office network. This way, a staff person could work at home or travel to another city yet still have access to the business’ systems, like a file server or a database of client information. The staff person manually initiates a VPN connection to a VPN server in the business’ office. Once the connection is established, the person would be able to connect to the database or file server as though his or her computer was in the office. It’s important to note that the performance or speed of such VPN connections will be much slower than if the computer was actually in the office. This loss of performance is seen as a worthwhile trade-off since security is maintained and slow access is considered better than no access.

The second situation would be a person, like me, who travels regularly for business and often uses shared public networks like those found in coffee shops, airports or hotels. Many of these networks require no password to join and are thus far from secure. So, to prevent others on the network from determining what web pages I’m visiting or what emails I’m sending, I could use a VPN to encrypt all data as it moves from my laptop across the wireless network. Additionally, I find that some hotel networks or other public networks are configured to not allow users to send emails. While I understand that these networks are doing to for security purposes, it can be an inconvenience. Establishing a VPN connection would permit me to bypass this network limitation and send emails. There are other possible reasons why one might want a VPN service as described by Witopia, a provider of VPN services. To secure the data that I send and receive on my laptop, I could initiate a VPN connection to a VPN server. In this situation there is also a performance hit but the trade-off is increased security so it’s considered worthwhile.

Hopefully, these two examples illustrate how a VPN could be useful and what a VPN is.  A future article will compare a few personal VPN services.

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While viruses are not  a major risk for Mac users, it’s still prudent to have an anti-virus application installed on your Mac. Sophos offers a free Macintosh anti-virus application for use on home computers. Give it a try.

Why would you need an anti-virus application on your Mac? I can think of a couple of reasons.

1. While there aren’t many Mac viruses, there are some Mac OS X Trojan Horse viruses. I still occasionally come across some Word Macro viruses also, which were common on Macs in the late 1990s.

2. You might receive an email attachment which contains a PC virus. While this virus can’t do any harm to your Mac, would you want to pass this virus on to a friend or family member who has a PC? Sure, that person should have their own anti-virus protection, but it still doesn’t look good that you’re passing on viruses.

If you have business computers you can also use Sophos, but you’d have to buy an initial license. Sophos requires the purchase of a minimum of 3 licenses for about $34 per license. Volume discounts kick in at 10 licenses.

Check out Sophos Anti-Virus. It’s free for home users. It can detect if your Mac already has any infected files and can prevent you from getting infected in the future.

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Would you like to build a professional-looking yet affordable web site for your business? Here are some ideas about how this could be done.

This is the fourth and final article in a series about setting up email and web hosting for a new small business. The first article explains basic terminology, the second discusses how to register a domain name, and the third offers guidance on selecting an email and web hosting company.

This article will give you an overview of three affordable options to build a good looking web site. The first option includes template-based systems like SquareSpace, Virb and Zenfolio. Second, I present an overview of how to build your own WordPress-based web site. Third, I describe hiring a professional to build a WordPress-based site.

 Option 1 – Rather than trying to design your own professional-looking web site, you might consider using a template-based web site. Template-based web sites have been around since the mid-1990s, but they’ve come a long-way. The template systems of old often looked cheesy. Today’s systems look more professional and often include features like blog pages, photo gallery pages, a calendar and integration with social networking sites. Both SquareSpace and Virb let you use your own registered domain name, offer free trials and then have prices that start at $10/month and $8/month, respectively. If you’re a photographer then you might want to consider Zenfolio which also offers a free trial and accounts for as little as $30/year.

Option 2 – If you’re fairly tech-savvy and interested in building your own web site, you could build a great-looking site using WordPress. This is the option that I chose a few years ago to build the site you’re reading now. WordPress is a free, open-source tool that is very capable and widely used. I bought a professionally-built WordPress Theme for $30 from ThemeForest. (There are also many good-looking free Themes.) I then hired two friends to make customizations to the Theme and help me with a couple of WordPress Plugins. This out-sourcing cost me less than $500. I use and often recommend WordPress since it’s a tool that can be used by novices to update their own web site. Since so many people use WordPress, there are thousands of plug-ins that let you add a wide range of features to your website, like a calendar, statistics tracking, search engine optimization information, good print layouts and countless others.

Option 3 – If WordPress sounds good to you, but you want some hand-holding getting things setup, you could hire a professional web site developer like Christine The Designer. Christine focuses on WordPress and offers her WordPress Assistance Package for $500. She’ll help you register your domain name (in case you were still intimidated even after reading previous articles in this series), install WordPress at your hosting company, help you select a Theme and modify it slightly. Finally, her package includes two training sessions to show you how to make changes to your site in the future. Wow, that’s a great deal, if you ask me!

Hopefully, one of these options will fit your needs. You can build a great-looking site in a few days if you use a template-based system, already have a logo, know what colors you want to use and have an idea about content you want to include. Alternatively, you could learn to build your own site using WordPress and then have access to thousands of plugins. Finally, you could hire a professional to get you up and running in just a few weeks using WordPress.

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How should you pick an email and web hosting company? There are literally thousands of web and email hosting companies out there. How can you make an informed choice? This article lists some of the factors to consider when selecting an appropriate email or web hosting company.

This article is the third in a series about setting up email and web hosting for a new small business. The first article explains terminology. The second discusses how to register a domain name.

I’ve put together a table which lists some email and web hosting criteria which I’ve found are important to many small-office/home-office companies. My PDF table lists a handful of hosting companies and how they compare. Hopefully this table will help you develop a set of important criteria to find a hosting company that is well matched for your needs.

Let’s talk about each of these criteria in turn.

Cost – It seems that too many people select a hosting company by looking only at the cost. Maybe this is because they don’t know what other factors they should be considering. Costs can vary considerably so it should be a factor, but far from the most important factor. If you are sensitive to startup costs, check out MacHighway. MacHighway’s entry-level hosting plan for $30 per year is the least expensive plan I’ve seen. It provides 3 email accounts as well as web hosting by a very Mac-friendly company with well written help articles on their web site. This is a great value. If you want integrated calendars and contacts within your email account then Big Mountain’s Kerio Connect server is an affordable option for a start-up business that only wants 1 or 2 email accounts. The larger hosting companies often require that you sign up for a minimum number of accounts. Rackspace, for example, requires a minimum of 5 accounts and Intermedia requires at least 3 accounts.

Company Size – If you prefer to work with smaller companies where you might be able to develop a personal relationship with the hosting company, you should check out MacHighway or Big Mountain Internet. Big Mountain Internet is owned by a husband and wife and run by a small team. I don’t know exactly how large MacHighway is, but I suspect they have a few dozen employees in the entire company. When I contact them for email support, I regularly get replies from the same handful of people. HostGator, RackSpace and Intermedia are all large companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. Your experience with them is less personal, but companies of this size can build networks that have greater redundancy and thus offer higher guaranteed uptime, which is an important factor to keep in mind.

Mac Knowledge – If talking to Mac-knowledgeable and Mac-friendly people in technical support is important to you then MacHighway can’t be beat and Big Mountain also has this covered in spades. MacHighway is a Mac-centric company that appeals directly to Mac users. For a large hosting company, I’ve been impressed by Intermedia’s Mac knowledge even though I know that only a small percentage of their customers use Macs.

POP and IMAP access – If you want to check your email account from more than one computer then you’ll want to use IMAP to access your email. IMAP can synchronize your Inbox and other folders across all devices. I’ve talked about the appeal of IMAP in a previous Tech Tip article. I only list hosting companies that offer IMAP accounts. Note: I’ve previously expressed my dislike for GoDaddy and I’ll point out that most of GoDaddy’s hosting plans do not include IMAP access.

Storage Space – If you’re going to use IMAP to access your email account, you’ll care how much storage space is provided by the hosting company since your Inbox and other folders will live on the mail server using up that storage space. These days it’s pretty easy to use up 1 or 2 GB of storage space after a few years. All of the hosting companies in my table provide a minimum of 5 GB of storage space. If you’re willing to spend a bit more money and work with one of the larger hosting companies then you can easily get 25 GB or even unlimited storage space.

Integrated Calendars and Contacts – If you want your calendar and contacts to wirelessly sync between your Macs, iPhones and iPads, you might want to look at a hosting company that offers Kerio Connect or Exchange accounts. Another appeal of these Kerio and Exchange accounts is the ability to have a company-wide calendar or contact list and the ability to share your calendar or contacts with other people in your company. Kerio and Exchange accounts cost more than a regular POP/IMAP email account, but BigMountain offers affordable hosting with adequate storage space. They offer accounts with 2 GB of storage space for $5 per account per month or 10 GB or storage space for $10 per account month. If you need even more storage space or some features which are only available from Exchange servers, you should consider Rackspace, Intermedia or Microsoft. Intermedia specializes in Exchange hosting and Microsoft has recently started offering Exchange hosting accounts. Their prices undercut the competition at $4 account per month for 25 GB of storage space.

Spam Filtering – All of the hosting companies offer some decent spam and virus filtering, but many charge extra to get premiere filtering.  Rackspace and Big Mountain both include their top-tier spam filtering as part of their base package. MacHighway includes SpamAssassin which is a decent spam filtering system. MacHighway’s top-tier spam filtering costs $50 per year.

Guaranteed Uptime – Many hosting companies advertise a guaranteed uptime. While this detail is important, it can also be confusing or misleading. This Wikipedia article gives greater context than I can provide here. Briefly, the higher the uptime percentage the better. However uptime does not mean the same thing as availability. In other words, a mail server may be up and running but not available to you due to a network outage somewhere. Despite Rackspace listing 100% guaranteed uptime, this doesn’t really mean that their mail servers will always be up. Every company suffers from equipment failure or earthquakes or hurricanes. Rackspace and others simply provide you a written guarantee which states that if their servers are not up and running then you’re entitled to some sort of refund of your hosting costs.

WordPress –  Web sites can be built using a variety of tools, but WordPress is a free and popular web site building tool that I recommend to many of my small business customers. If you use WordPress already or plan to use it, you’ll need to make sure your hosting company offers it. MacHighway and HostGator both include it as part of their base package. Big Mountain and Intermedia both offer it for a small additional amount of $10 or $15 per month. RackSpace offers it, but it costs a few thousand dollars per year. I was flabbergasted when I read this. It appears that their WordPress hosting is scalable and is intended for larger companies. The last article in this series will talk about other affordable ways to build a professional web site for your business.

Hosting companies are not all the same. A small business owner should think about their email and web hosting needs, then find a hosting company that is an appropriate fit. I hope this article has helped you to better understand some of the differences between hosting companies.

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The first step in registering a domain name is to find one that is available. This article is the second in a series about setting up email and web hosting for a business. The first article explains terminology like domain names and domain registrars. This article provides you with some guidance on researching the availability of a desired domain name and registering it.

Let’s imagine that you’re starting a new business and want to register the domain name fullymac.com. To determine if this domain name is available I like to use the WhoIs web site. At the time of this writing, a search for fullymac.com at WhoIs shows that this domain name is available. You could perform this search at many other web sites, but I like WhoIs’ simple and easy-to-read listing of the results. It indicates clearly if a domain name is available or not. It also indicates if other versions of the domain name are available, in case you’d like to buy (register) one of them as well. For example, you’ll see that fullymac.org, fullymac.net, fullymac.biz and many other versions are also available.

It can be difficult to find a domain name that is available. In 2003, I wanted to register  soundsupport.com for my own business, but found that somebody else was squatting on this domain name. The name was and continues to be for sale, but I didn’t want to play that game. Instead, I picked the less well known .biz domain and never looked back. People still occasionally comment “Oh, I’ve never heard of dot biz,” but it’s never been an impediment. Everybody seems to want a .com domain name. It’s possible to do this, but you might have to be creative with your name since .com is so popular. One way to find a .com domain name that is available is to add your city name. For example, some clients have chosen to add Seattle to their domain name, such as fullymacseattle.com or seattlefullymac.com.

I typically recommend that you try to keep your domain name as short as possible and avoid hyphens. Remember you’ll need to print your domain name on a business card, so you don’t want it to be too long. More importantly, visitors to your web site will often need to type your domain name. Hyphens can lead to confusion since visitors may not always remember to type the hyphen.

Once you’ve found a domain name you want to register, you’ll need to pick a domain registrar. As I mentioned in my first article, GoDaddy and Network Solutions are two of the best known domain name registrars. They have their fans, but there are other options. I tend to avoid both of them for a number of reasons. Briefly, Network Solutions charges higher than average prices and they always try to entice you to buy additional features and services that you most likely don’t need. GoDaddy also tries to bundle extra services at every turn and I think they have the single-most confusing web site on the planet. I also don’t like their sexist advertising either. As a consequence, I recommend Hover.com. I have not done exhaustive research, but I use Hover.com and have been pleased with them. Their web site is easy to navigate, and while their prices are not the lowest, they are reasonable. I’ve found their support articles well-written. They even have specific articles about how to transfer your domain registration from GoDaddy to Hover if you ever need to do this.

I should elaborate on pricing. You’ll find wide-ranging prices for domain names. For example, WhoIs lists the price for fullymac.com as $10.99. Hover charges $15 and Network Solutions charges $35. Network Solutions, however, doesn’t show this price up-front. First, you have to add the domain name to your cart, wade through 3 offers for extra services and finally they show you the price for a 5 year registration. Their price for a 5 year registration drops to only $23 per year! What a bargain. (That’s tech sarcasm.)

If you choose to register your domain name at Hover, visit their web site and enter your desired name in their prominent search field. Then, add the domain name to your cart and check out. You’ll be required to create an account and pay using your credit card or PayPal. It’s a straight-forward process that can be finished in 10 minutes or so. If you want to use Hover to register your domain name, please consider using this link so that I’ll get a referral bonus, which I would appreciate.

I hope this article has helped you to find a domain name that is suitable for your needs and available, and that you went ahead and registered it. In our next article, we’ll look at how to select a web and email hosting company.

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Are you setting up a business and need to know how to setup email and web hosting?  Are you confused about terms like domain name and DNS records? This article is the first of a series that will guide you through the process of setting up email and web hosting as well as explain terms you’re likely to encounter along the way. This article gives you an overview of the entire process and defines important terms. Each of these steps will be explored in detail in future articles in this series. Here’s the overview:

1. Select a domain name and register it with a domain name registrar.

2. Select a company which provides email and web hosting and sign-up for service.

3. Configure your computers and smartphone, if you have one, to access your email account.

4. Build a web site and place it on your hosting company’s web server.

Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? It can be easy, but it can also be confusing. There are a lot of choices to be made and you’ll encounter a lot of jargon along the way. Let’s explore some of these terms.

Domain Name – Even if you’re not familiar with the term “domain name” you know what they are. Examples are apple.com and mail.comcast.net.

To over-simplify slightly, a domain name is a human-memorable name assigned to an individual computer or a network of computers. Thus, it makes it easier for a person to remember your email address or web site name.

Domain Registrar – A domain registrar is a company that will help you register a domain name. One pays an annual fee to register (own) a domain name. It’s common to register a domain name for several years at a time or have your registration set to automatically renew every year. Make sure you don’t accidentally let your domain name registration expire or else your email could suddenly stop working and your web site would no longer be visible. GoDaddy is a very well-known and now infamous domain registrar. Network Solutions is one of the oldest registrars.

There’s actually very little money to be made in being a domain registrar, so most companies that register domain name also offer email and web hosting services since they can make a bit more profit in that business.

While I understand the convenience of having your registration, email and web hosting all with one company, I prefer to keep them separate. I like to use one company as my registrar and a second company for my email and web hosting.

Hosting companies – A company that houses or stores your company’s web site and processes incoming and outgoing email messages is a hosting company. More specifically, they could be called a web and email hosting company. Obviously, one pays a monthly or annual fee for email and web hosting services. In order to get your email and web hosting setup and working, a hosting company will configure their name servers with DNS records for your company.

Name Server – A name server is a server which maintains authoritative records for your company’s domain name. Put more simply, a name server stores information about your company’s domain name. A name server then responds to requests from anybody trying to find your company’s web site or trying to send emails to your company. The information stored are called DNS records. DNS stands for Domain Name System. The Domain Name System is a hierarchical system for naming computers and for keeping track of and locating the millions of computers that are connected to the Internet.

DNS records - DNS records include information about the names and locations of your company’s servers, like a mail server or a web server. DNS records are stored on DNS servers. DNS servers are often described as the phone books of the Internet since they translate human-memorable server names like www.apple.com into IP addresses like 23.49.45.15. Another example is mail.apple.com might be translated to 17.171.2.21. Humans find it difficult to remember strings of digits like this and easier to remember names like www.apple.com. However, computers are just the opposite, so DNS servers play a critical role in making the Internet easier to work with.

If you use just one company as your domain registrar and as your hosting company, they’ll setup all of the DNS records on their name servers and you won’t have to deal with any of this. On the other hand, if you choose to use two or more companies for your domain registration and hosting, you’ll need to deal with some of these details. For example, if you register your domain name with one company then pick a separate company for your email and web hosting, you’ll need to list the hosting company’s name servers in your account at the domain registrar.

This concludes our introductory overview about what you need to know about setting up email and web hosting for a new company. The next article in this series will cover picking and registering a domain name.

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Do you have a box of 35mm slides you’d like to convert to digital photos? You have two ways you could proceed. You could either buy a scanner that is capable of scanning film (both positives or negatives) or you could farm out the work. GT Recording, HomeDVD and iMemories are 3 such companies which offer slide scanning services. iMemories offers photo, negative and slide scanning.

If you want to buy a scanner you could consider something like the Canon CanoScan 9000F which has attachments that let you scan a few slides or negatives at a time at 4800 dpi. It costs about $200 or less. If you can get your hand on a discontinued Nikon Coolscan professional high-speed slide scanner, then you could use it. As I recall, these scanners could hold 20 slides at a time and would scan each one at about 4000 dpi in about 30 seconds and automatically move through the entire stack.

If you prefer to farm out this work you could drop off your slides at GT Recording in Seattle. They charge scan slides at either 3600 or 7200 dpi. They charge a flat $15 setup fee. They have different price tiers that currently look like this:

• less than 100 slides cost $1.25 each
• 100-499 slides cost $.99 each
• 500-999 slides cost $.89 each
• more than 1000 slides cost $.79 each

iMemories scans at 600 dpi and charges $0.49 per photo, slide or negative

Home DVD offers a range of resolutions at different prices. Refer to the table below for details. They’ll scan both photos and slides.

For photo transfer to DVD, your price is $0.99 per photo for any size up to 12 x 15 inches in size. All slides and photos needing to have additional adjustments to bring out the best image possible will be brought into Adobe Photoshop for repair at no extra charge.  Below is a chart that will help you determine which resolution would best suit your needs:

The per slide/photo charges described above include the price to burn your digitized JPEG images of your 35mm slides or photos onto as many DVD-R discs as necssary. There is a minimum charge of $45.00 per job.

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Create a great first impression with unique business cards made by Moo. Moo lets you design your own business card on their web site. That’s not so unusual. What is unusual is that you can place a unique image, photo, quote, math question or coupon code on each card. This flexibility is a great way for a photographer to highlight their portfolio, or a great way for a math tutor to highlight what she can teach you or a great way for a company to promote a product at a trade show then track the response based on the cards they hand out. You have to watch Moo’s video about their Printfinity service to fully understand.

Moo offers standard size business cards, half size cards which they call MiniCards. You can also order postcards, greeting cards, stickers and labels. You can order small batches such as 50 business cards, 100 MiniCards or 20 postcards. Think of the customized marketing that you could do. You can print QR (QuickResponse) codes on the cards if you’d like.

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When you’re on vacation or out of the office for a day-long meeting, would you like to send an auto-reply to email messages that you receive? If your email provider uses cPanel then follow these instructions.

Login to your email account using webmail. Typically, the web address you would use to do this will follow this pattern, http://www.yourcompany.com/webmail.

You’ll then see cPanel’s main screen, which will look similar to the photo below. Click the Auto Responders button near the bottom of the main screen.

You’ll then see a screen that looks similar to this:

Fill in the form that appears, using the image above and the following details as a guide.

• I recommend leaving the Character Set on utf-8.

• Set the interval to 8 hours. This interval controls how often a sender will receive your auto-reply. You don’t want your colleagues to get an auto-reply every time they email you if they send you a handful of messages throughout the day.

• Enter your full name in the From field.

• Enter something like Auto Reply or Out of the Office in the Subject field.

• Leave the HTML box unchecked.

• Enter the message you’d like to auto-send as a reply to incoming emails.

• Use the Start and Stop options to set start and end dates and times.

• Finally, click “Create/Modify”.

• Click the Log Out button in the upper right corner. That’s it.

If you configured it to start immediately, you can now send a test message from another email accounts to make sure it’s working.

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Do you want to create a network in your home or office without having to pull wires through the walls? Do you want to improve the coverage of your wireless network easily? Then you should know about Netgear’s Powerline Network Adapters.

Power line adapters let you create an network using the electrical wiring in the walls of your home or office. Yes, this may sound odd. I was skeptical at first, but this technology has been through several generations and works well now. You can read about the history and how this works in this Wikipedia article. Netgear is not the only company that makes such products. A bunch of companies make products that are, supposedly, interoperable and all comply with the HomePlug standards.

I use power line adapters most commonly in large homes where I need to extend the coverage of the wireless network. If the home has ethernet wiring in the walls then I can simply plug a wireless access point into one of the ethernet jacks in an appropriate part of the house. However, if the home does not have ethernet wiring, I’ll use a pair of power line adapters. One connected to the wireless router, the other to a wireless access point in an appropriate part of the house. Here’s a bit more detail.

To get started, you just need to buy a pair of power line adapters, like the ones found in this XAVB2501 kit. Take one of the adapters and connect it to your existing network router using the included ethernet cable. Then plug the adapter into a wall outlet — avoid plugging it into a power strip since this will greatly diminish performance. Plug the second adapter into an electrical outlet elsewhere in your home and then run an ethernet cable from it to your computer, printer or wireless access point. That’s it. The two adapters will find each other and setup communication. Various LEDs on the adapters will tell you if they are connected and at approximately what speed. These adapters can communicate at speeds up to 200 Mbps. You can setup more than two adapters if you’d like. You can read about the maximum number of adapters and other details at the Netgear FAQ page. Reviewing the Troubleshooting page could also be helpful. If you’d like to setup encryption or rename the adapters, use the Netgear Powerline Utility for Mac or PCs.

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Do you have boxes of papers that you’d like to scan so you can empty your closet or storage area then easily access them on your Mac laptop when you travel?

Do you have some large blueprints or drawings that don’t fit on your office scanner? Do you want to convert microfilm to be read on your Mac?

In any of these cases, you should check out US Archive and Imaging Services (USArchive). They are an Issaquah-based company that can help you with your scanning, document management and shredding needs while using their standard and large-format, high-speed scanners to scan any documents. They prep your documents first by removing staples, sticky notes and even paperclips, then they turn your documents into searchable PDFs or any other file type you desire. US Archive offers cloud-based and on-premise document access as well as storage solutions.  Once the scanning is finished you have some choices. They will return your documents in the exact order that you gave them to them, or if you’d like they can securely destroy (shred) the documents.

There are several factors that affect the cost of your job, but in general a rough cost would be around 9 cents per page (this including prep, scanning and indexing.) Note, a standard records box holds about 2,200 sheets of paper. I recently had them scan a box of my records and found them to be very responsive and friendly. If you’d like to learn more about US Archive and their services, check out their Frequently Asked Questions web page.  Another interesting note is that US Archive has partnered with AtWork. AtWork is a 50 year old local non-profit which focuses on finding work for people with disabilities. Hiring US Archive supports AtWork’s efforts to help teach new skills to these individuals and help them to get meaningful employment.

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Here are instructions on how to share a file or folder inside your Dropbox folder with another person. In previous Tech Tips, I gave an overview of Dropbox and give instructions on how to share files that are too large to send as an email attachment, even with people who don’t have Dropbox accounts, using the Public folder in your Dropbox folder. This week, I cover two more features of Dropbox:

Feature 1. How to share any file, in any folder, inside your Dropbox folder, with another person even if that person doesn’t have their own Dropbox account.

Feature 2. How to setup a shared folder with another person so the two of you can easily exchange files on an on-going basis.

The instructions below assume that you’ve already signed up for your Dropbox account and have installed the Dropbox application on your Mac.

Feature 1 – If you have a one-time need to share a file with a person who doesn’t have their own Dropbox account then you can use Dropbox’s Copy Public Link feature. Here’s how:

• Click once on a file in your Dropbox folder to select it. Then right-click (or control-click) on this file. A menu will appear, select Dropbox and then select Copy Public Link from the sub-menu. (See photo below as a reference.)
• Your web browser will open and a preview of your document will appear. Copy the address which appears in the address field, (https://www.dropbox.com/….)
• Go to your email application, compose a new email message and then paste this address (aka link) into the email message and send the message.
• The recipient can click on the link to be taken to a web page which will let them download the file. Here’s a sample link to one of my files in my Dropbox folder. https://www.dropbox.com/s/skifcwwnajlzn77/Darts-Practice.rtf

I want to emphasize that the recipient is able to download and then edit the file, but this feature doesn’t give them a way to easily send the file back to you. So, this is more of a file distribution capability. It doesn’t offer two-way file exchange. This feature is very similar to sharing a file using the Public folder. In fact, I see only one primary difference. This Copy Public Link feature allows you to leave a file inside of a shared folder while also sharing it with a person who typically can’t access files in that shared folder. Additionally, the

Dropbox has their own article about using this feature.

Feature 2 – If you regularly want to be able to do two-way file exchanges with another person then you’ll want to setup a dedicated shared folder with that person in your Dropbox account. Here’s how:

• Create a folder in your Dropbox folder. For this example, I want to share a folder with a friend named Tom so I created a new folder named Tim-Tom
• Right-click (or control-click) on this folder. A menu will appear, select Dropbox and then Share This Folder… from the sub-menu. (See photo below as a reference.)
• Your web browser will open and you’ll be taken to the Dropbox web site. Login to your Dropbox account if you aren’t already logged in.
• In the field named “Invite collaborators to this folder” type in the email address of another person. I entered Tom’s email address.
• Type in an optional personal invitation message and then click the “Share Folder” button. This will send an email that includes the invite.
• The email recipient can click on a link in the invite email to accept the invitation which grants them access to this folder. If the recipient doesn’t already have their own Dropbox account then they’ll be prompted to create a free account.
• If your invitee accepts your invite then you’re notified via email.

At this point, you’re ready to easily share files with your invitee via this folder. Every time a file is adding, edited or deleted then a notification will pop-up on your screen. This invitee can’t see any other folders that you have in your Dropbox account. Happy file sharing.

Dropbox has their own article about this feature.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about this folder sharing feature. This information is taken from Dropbox’s help article.

• You can’t share a folder from within your Public folder. You can share a folder within the Photos folder
• You can’t share a folder inside another shared folder. Attempting to share a folder within a shared folder will automatically send you to the sharing options of the top level shared folder
• Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then add, delete or change files within that folder
• Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can also invite others to join the folder
• Only the creator of the shared folder can remove people from the folder
• If two people both open and edit a file in a shared folder at the same time, Dropbox will save both of their changes, but in separate files. It does not try to automatically combine or merge changes. Read our help article on conflicting copies to learn more about how this works

If you chose to sign-up for Dropbox please consider using this link to do so, since I’ll earn a referral bonus. Thanks.

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Our computers, peripherals and gadgets use a range of batteries including alkaline batteries, rechargeable batteries, button batteries and UPS batteries. In previous Tech Tips I mentioned that UPS batteries can be recycled at Staples and Interconnection will take laptop batteries. If you want to find one location that’ll take just about every kind of battery, check out the King County Solid Waste Division’s web site. This web page let’s you locate organizations that’ll let you recycle batteries. In fact, their web site helps to find locations to recycle many items including: appliances, carpet, Christmas trees, cleaning products, electronics, fluorescent lights, furniture, microwave ovens, paint and many other items.

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The purpose of this article is to help you assess the strength and security of your password and to encourage you to start using more secure passwords. As a consequence of the fact that we all need to keep track of many passwords, many people use just one or two passwords over and over again. If this is true for you then please make sure that those few passwords are very difficult to guess. Go to How Secure Is My Password and type in your commonly used passwords to see an estimate of how long it would take a computer to determine your password using a brute-force attack. A brute-force attack is one in which a person tries repeatedly to guess your password. Such attacks often start by using some of the most commonly used passwords like 123456, password, cactus, andrew and turtle.

Okay, now that you realize how weak your password is, here are some tips on picking stronger passwords. Most likely, you’ve heard the advice of making your password longer, adding numbers and punctuation marks as well as a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. All of this is good advice, but many people seem reluctant to incorporate this advice. Use the How Secure Is My Password to see how much longer it would take to guess a strong password by typing in a few variants of your password. You’ll soon see that password length make a huge difference. The longer your password is, the more secure it is.

For example, if your password is cactus, you’ll see that this word is one of the 2000 most commonly used passwords so it can be guessed very easily– within seconds or minutes. However, if you were to change your password to cactuscactus then you’d see that the web site estimates that it would take about 12 years for a computer to guess or figure out that password. If your changed your password to cActuscActus then the estimate increases to 49,000 years. If you changed it to cActuscActus2012 then the estimate rises to 6 trillion years. Wow!

As you select more secure passwords, please make sure that they are still easy to remember. For example, if you currently use your child’s name or birthday as your password you could change your password to Andrew’sBirthdayIs12/15/80. That’s still easy to remember, but it’s so much more secure since it’s long, has a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation marks.

Below are some other suggestions of strong passwords to help you get your creative ideas flowing. Create phrases or sentences which naturally incorporate punctuation marks and captalize each word in the phrase.

2%MilkHasLessFat

$100HaircutsAreExpensive

5¢CokesAreAThingOfThePast

Now that you’ve picked one or two strong, secure passwords, please start to update all of your accounts. As you go through your day in the coming weeks, take a minute or two to update your accounts when you login to them. You might also want to maintain a list of your accounts and their passwords. You can store this information on your Mac by using a secure disk image. Read this previous Tech Tip about how to create a secure disk image.

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In previous Tech Tips, I’ve recommended that you donate your old computer and computer peripherals to Interconnection. I like this group so much that I’d like to tell you more about them.

Interconnection is a non-profit based in Seattle. They are more then an electronics recycling company. They are Washington State’s largest computer refurbisher. They have sent 25,000 refurbished computers to 40 countries by teaming with World Concern, the Peace Corps, World Vision and other non-profit groups. Additionally, they have given 4,000 low-income people computer maintenance and repair skills. They are a very responsible recycler and are the first recycle in the US to have earned both R2 and ISO 14001 certifications.

Interconnection often offers special deals on slightly used computers for low-income people. Currently, they are selling laptops for $170 and reduced cost Internet service through CenturyLink, a local phone company.

You can donate the following items for free: computers, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, cords, memory modules, hard drives, small speakers, cell phones, ink cartridges, television sets, printers, scanners and other computer peripherals. Check their web site for a list of items that they do and don’t accept.

Interconnection offers free secure erasing of your hard drives which over-writes all of the data on the drive, if the drives is operable. If not, they will physically destroy the hard drive. They offer free pick-ups for business customers with 3 or more computers.

In 2011 Interconnection moved to 1109 35th St in the Fremont neighborhood. They are right off of Stone Way. No appointment is needed. Simply make your donations between these hours: Mon-Fri 10-6 or Sat 10-5. They are closed on Sunday. Also check out their retail store of used computers and peripherals. Check their web site for any changes to their hours of operation or location.

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There are a number of instances when it could be really useful to know exactly which model of Macintosh computer you own. Here are instructions to identify which model you have.

Did you know that Apple has made Macintosh computers named iMac since 1998? That’s 14 years and counting of various iMac models. Do you know which specific iMac model you own? You may know that you have an 20″ Intel iMac, for example, but there are actually 4 different versions of the 20″ Intel iMac.

To distinguish your Mac from all of the similarly named Macs you need to know its Model Identifier, which can be found by doing the following.

• Click on the Apple menu, then select About This Mac.
• In the window that appears click either the More Info or System Report button. (You’ll see More Info if you’re Mac is using Mac OS X 10.1-10.6. If your Mac is using Mac OS X Lion then you’ll see the System Report button.)
• In either case, you’ll be taken to the Hardware Overview which will list your Model Identifier.

The Model Identifier lets you or others determine the nitty gritty details of your model. The Model Identifier is useful so the proper accessories or cables for your Mac can be provided. It lets you know specifically what type of memory (RAM) you need to buy for your Mac. It also helps you determine the age of a Mac in case you’re looking at a used Mac. I don’t have all of the nitty gritty details memorized for each model. Instead, I use either the MacTracker Mac or iOS app or the EveryMac web site to lookup the details once I know the Model Identifier. In March 25′s Tech Tip it will be important to know your Mac’s Model Identifier so you can buy the correct cables to connect your Mac to your TV.

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Would you like to free up some desk space by retiring either your stand-alone fax machine or multi-fuction printer which has faxing capabilities? Or, if you’re paying for a dedicated fax line, would you like to reduce you phone bill by dropping that line? If so, here are a few alternatives you could consider. I’m surprised that faxes haven’t faded away completely. I’m convinced that it’s because many people don’t know how easy scanning can be. Personally, I find that I only need to receive or send at most a handful of faxes each year, but in some fields, especially healthcare, faxes seem to be going strong. One reason faxing is so strong in the healthcare field is the need to comply with HIPAA or other laws. I highlight HIPAA-compliant Internet fax options below. Whether your faxing needs are light or heavy, here are some alternatives for you to consider.

Option 1 – This is the easiest option to setup but not necessarily the most cost-effective or convenient. You could out-source your faxing needs and use a FedEx Office store or, if you live in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, a business like Sip and Ship. Both of these businesses will let you send or receive faxes and charge you a fee per page.

Option 2 – Sign up for an Internet fax service like Faxaway or RingCentral. I have experience using both of these services. When you sign-up for a Faxaway account you’re assigned a fax number in the 206 (Seattle-area) area code. For a monthly fee of $1 you can receive unlimited incoming faxes and send faxes at a cost of about 10 cents per page. Faxes sent to your fax number are forwarded to you as email attachments. You can then save the attachment and open it on your Mac. Print a copy if you’d like. I like to receive my faxes via email since I can then save them or forward them easily. You also send faxes via email by using the fax number as part of  the email address, for example, 12065551212@faxaway.com. Faxaway is a good option if you’re a one person business with very light faxing needs.

If your business has a few employees or you have heavier faxing needs, then one of RingCentral’s plans might be a better fit. You can sign-up for a free trial account to test RingCentral. Their entry-level plan costs $8/month which gives you a local or toll-free fax number and 500 pages of inbound or out bound faxes. RingCentral provides a Macintosh application which you install on your Mac. You use this app to both send and receive faxes. This application also makes it easy to send documents as part of your fax, but it unfortunately doesn’t tie into your Mac’s Address Book application. Therefore, you’ll need to either enter your fax numbers by hand or by using “copy and paste”. Your RingCentral fax service can easily be shared by several people. In a future Tech Tip I’ll write about how you could use RingCentral to replace your existing phone system.

If you’re in a business that needs to comply with HIPAA regulations or other security or privacy regulations then you could check out Sfax, InterFAX or FaxSolutions. These companies fax services cost more then the previous Internet fax services I mentioned. I haven’t personally worked with this companies to know how user-friendly they are.

Option 3 – This is my favorite and most commonly used solution. When a person asks me to sign a document and fax it back to them, I simply ask if I could scan it and return it to them as an email attachment. With rare exception, the person is perfectly happy to receive the document as an email attachment. In a previous Tech Tip, I talked about how I much I love my Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner. It turns a pile of pages into a PDF which I can then easily attach and send via email. I like this method since I then have a digital copy of the document on my computer if I need to refer to it later on. Also, I have a more detailed paper trail than if I’d sent a fax since my sent mail folder will have a record of when I sent a document and to whom.

Hopefully, one of these options will be a good fit for your faxing needs.

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Update June 27, 2012. Today I received an email from ZangZing indicating that they will be permanently closing. “On August 31st, we will be shutting down ZangZing and permanently deleting all photos, contact information, and account information.” It’s back to the drawing board to find a replacement. Recently, Apple announced iOS 6. This is an update to the operating system software that powers iPhones and iPads. iOS 6 will be released in the fall of 2012. Apple indicates that it will include a photostream sharing feature. Maybe this will be a suitable replacement for some people.

If you’re looking for a replacement for MobileMe Gallery you should check out ZangZing.

If you’re a subscriber to MobileMe you likely know that Apple plans to shut it down in June 2012. They are replacing MobileMe with iCloud which has been available since late summer 2011. While iCloud offers many of the same features as MobileMe there are a few conspicuous exceptions. iCloud will not include iDisk, MobileMe Gallery, iWeb Publishing or syncing of System Preferences, Keychains or Widgets. A number of clients and I use iDisk and MobileMe Gallery, so we need to find suitable replacments. Dropbox is a great replacement for iDisk. I’ve been using it in place of iDisk for close to two years and I wrote a Tech Tip about Dropbox nearly a year ago. Dropbox offers some rudimentary photo sharing features which I thought I might use as a replacement for MobileMe Gallery, until I found ZangZing.

ZangZing made it very easy to switch from MobileMe Gallery. I created a free ZangZing account which gives me 2 GB of free storage space. More storage space can be purchased or acquired by inviting friends to join. After joining, I clicked the Import button and clicked the MobileMe button. This lead me through a short, straightforward process to import all of my existing photo albums from MobileMe. Within minutes I’d completed my migration to ZangZing. ZangZing lets one import photos from many other photo sharing services such as Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Dropbox, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Instagram, SmugMug and PhotoBucket.

ZangZing allows you to easily share a photo album with the entire world or you can restrict to a handful of people, but each of them would need to sign up for their own free ZangZing account. You can let visitors upload or download individual photos or the entire album. Visitors can also buy prints. ZangZing integrates with iPhoto to allow easy uploading of the photos. ZangZing offers all the features that I need and more. If you’d like to learn more read this Tidbits article about ZangZing.

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Do you have an old UPS (uninterrupted power supply) that you need to recycle? How about a paper shredder? You can recycle both of these items, as well as other items, at your Staples office supply store.

I use a UPS, also known as a battery backup, to protect my Mac from power spikes and to keep it running during brief power outages. After years of use my old UPS died, so I wanted to recycle it. Apparently, Staples has teamed up with APC, a manufacturer of UPSs to recycle them. Yesterday, I dropped off my worn-out UPS at a Staples here in Seattle. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no cost. Staples’ web site indicates that there’s a $10 recycle fee, but Staples has a special through the end of the month which includes waiving that fee. If you don’t have a Staples nearby, you might be interested to read about APC’s own UPS recycling options.

I also had a paper shredder which had died on me. Staples took the entire shredder and pledged to recycle it responsibly. The typical $10 recycle fee was waived. The Staples employee also indicated that they’d offer a slight discount on the purchase of a new paper shredder if you bring in an old one for recycling.

Staples will also recycle rechargeable batteries, digital cameras and GPS devices. They’ll also accept computers, monitors and printers, but indicated that there is typically a $10 recycle fee for these items. This was a bit surprising since Washington enacted a law a couple of years ago which allows for free recycling of such items. As I’ve mentioned in a previous tech tip, I typically recycle my computers and peripherals at Interconnection since they do their best to re-use the equipment rather then simply recycle it.

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Do you have a pile of old zip disks, floppy disks or videotapes that you want to get rid of? If your pile isn’t too large then you could hand it to me at our next appointment and I’ll send it on to GreenDisk. If your pile is larger or you aren’t one of my clients, you can mail it to GreenDisk. GreenDisk is located in Sammamish, Washington, but they don’t have any drop-off centers. For $9.95 you can ship up to 25 pounds to Greendisk.

GreenDisk actually accepts a wide range of technotrash via their mail-in service. Their web site includes an up-to-date list of everything accepted by GreenDisk. Currently they accept the following:

• Media: CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVDs, Blu-ray, 3.5” and 5.25” floppy disks, zip and jazz disks, and cases

• Tapes: VHS, audio cassette tapes, DAT, DLT, Beta, and Digibeta

• Computer drives: Hard drives, zip, jazz, floppy, CD-ROM, DVD, jump drives

• Communication devices: Cell phones, pagers, PDAs and their chargers, cradles, and headset accessories

• Batteries: Rechargeable batteries and chargers only – no alkaline batteries. See instructions on packing batteries for shipment.

• Small electronics: MP3 players, iPods, hand-held CD and cassette players, and digital cameras

• Ink: Inkjet and toner cartridges (All cartridges must be in a sealed bag to prevent spilling.)

• Film:

- Photographic film negatives, instant film, sheet film, Advanced Photo System, slides, Disc film, 110, 126, 127, 120/220

- Black and white or undeveloped only: Motion picture film, film reels, Super 8, 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm

- Medical x-ray, industrial x-ray, lithographic, micro film, microfiche

• Miscellaneous items: UPS units, AC chargers, keyboards, mice, modems, routers, headphones, cords, adaptors, cables, boards, and chips

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In previous tech tips, I’ve talked about ways to donate your computer and peripherals to groups that will reuse or recycle them. In some instances your used electronics may still have some value. Here’s an overview of options you have to resell your used electronics to a company, which, in turn, will refurbish and resell or recycle them.

Recently, there has been a proliferation of companies that will buy your used electronics, including Gazelle, FlipSwap and BuyMyTronics, to name a few. These companies tend to claim to offer the best price, but they can’t all be right. Enter uSell, which offers to find the best price by comparing quotes from numerous companies. uSell may not include quotes from every company, but they offer a guarantee if you find a lower price.

I recently sold some of my used electronics to Gazelle and FlipSwap. In each case, the process was quite easy. I typed the name of my product into a search field on the company’s web site. The search results let me pick my particular model. I then answered a few questions about the product’s condition and accessories. After that, I accepted the price that was offered. Finally, there was a short check out-like process. Gazelle offered to send me a box and return shipping label or I could ship it in my own box. FlipSwap provided me with a shipping label and instructed me how to securely wrap and ship my item. Once the company received my product, they assessed the item and sent my payment. In Gazelle’s case, I chose to receive an Amazon gift card instead of a check since Gazelle would add an additional 5%.

The New York Times’s Gadgetwise Blog has articles about uSell and Gazelle if you’d like to get their take on this subject.

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Do you use Apple’s Mail application on your Mac? It’s a capable email application. One of its best features the ability to extended its functionality using plug-ins. These plug-ins let you customize Mail so it can better meet your preferences and needs. Here’s a list of 10 plug-ins for Mail that’ll let you increase your productivity.

MsgFiler lets you quickly file email messages into one of your existing Mailboxes (aka folders). Using either a menu command or a keyboard shortcut you can file a message into a folder. Simply type the first few characters of the mailbox’s name and select the desired mailbox from the list of matches.

GrowlMail temporarily displays a small notification window on your screen every time a new email message arrives. By glancing at this notification you can monitor your Inbox while you’re working in another application. [Update March 2013: This functionality has now been included in Mountain Lion, OS X version 10.8, as a part of the Notifications feature.]

SpamSieve offers better spam protection than Mail’s built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It requires some initial training, but it’s very effective.

MailAct-On is an incredibly robust plug-in which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to quickly file, label or flag incoming or outgoing mail messages. That is an over-simplified description of its capabilities. This video introduction and video review will give you a more complete understanding of it’s capabilities.

MailTags let’s you assign keywords, priorities, categories and due dates to actions mentioned in an email. It lets you escape the constraints of folders by allowing you to organize and find your messages by keyword or other metadata that you’ve assigned. Made by the same developers, Mail Act-On and MailTags can be used together or separately.

WideMail reconfigures Mail’s layout. It moves the message preview area from below the list of messages to the right of it. This layout uses your screen’s space more efficiently. Apple realized this layout was very popular, so they made it the standard layout in Mail 5.0, which comes with Lion, Mac OS X 10.7.

Attachment Tamer gives you control over Mail’s handling of attachments that you send. Be default, Mail will display an attachment, such as an image, in the body of the email that you’re composing. Attachment Tamer lets you change this behavior and send the image as a regular attachment instead.

MessageFont lets you set Mail’s default font when you reply to or compose a new email message. Mail’s preferences appears to let you set the default font, but this affects only what you see, not what the recipient sees. MessageFont changes which font is seen by the recipient.

MissingAttachments scans an email message and notifies you if you have referred to an attachment, but forgotten to attach a file. Unfortunately this plug in hasn’t been updated to work with recent versions of Mail.

MailUnreadStatusBar displays an icon to the upper right corner of your screen which lists the number of unread email messages you have. You can customize it to track multiple folders. Its icon then displays a menu listing the unread message count for each selected folder and lets you go directly to any of the listed folders.

In my opinion, these are some of the best plug-ins for Mail, but you can read about many more in this Macworld article.

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This week’s Tech Tip is written by our guest blogger, Elizabeth Bowman, President of Innovatively Organized.

Are tasks slipping through the cracks? Feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities on your plate?  There are lots of tools to help you manage your to-do list, but how do you know which tools are best?  You’re in luck!  At Innovatively Organized we have put together a list of 4 tools to help you manage your to-do list electronically.  Now, you will be able to access your tasks from home, the office, or on the go from an Internet browser or your mobile device!

Keep in mind, it’s not about having the perfect to-do list, it is about picking a tool that will work for you and using it consistently.

1. TeuxDeux

Compatible with:

• iPhone or iPad

• Internet

• Mac or PC

Highlights:

• Simple design

• Basic list tracker

• Cross out tasks when complete

• Moves un-finished items to the next day automatically

Toodle Do's Interface

2. Toodledo

Compatible with:

• iPhone, iPad, Palm, Blackberry, Droid

• Internet

• Ability to sync with Outlook & TaskAngel

• Has ability to print to-do list neatly

Highlights:

• Comprehensive and robust features

• Offers ability to delegate and email tasks directly

• Can filter and run reports on tasks

• Includes a timer to help you stay on task

3. TaskAngel

Compatible with:

• Native PC software download

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Matches Toodledo’s comprehensive task tracking details

• Runs fast on your PC helping you stay productive easily

• Can export your to-do list to Excel

4. 2Do

Compatible with:

• iPhone & iPad

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Option to color-code tasks by category

• Provides tabs in the interface on an iPhone and iPad

• Has lots of fields to enter your tasks easily from a mobile device

For more organizing and productivity tips, check out the Innovatively Organized blog!

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Do you ever have a problem sending files to a colleague or friend because they are too big to be sent as email attachments? If so, you could use Dropbox’s Public Link feature. In a previous Tech Tip I spoke about the convenience of Dropbox’s files sharing services. Most of these services require each person on your team to have their own Dropbox account. Conveniently, Dropbox’s Public Link feature does not require that everybody have a Dropbox account. Thus, it’s a great way to share large files with friends or family. Here are some step-by-step instructions.

Note: These instructions already assume you’ve signed up for a Dropbox account and have that setup and working on your Mac.

Tip: I often use this method to share a handful of files, like photos. Since I want to only send one Public Link, I’ll put all of the photos into a folder on my Mac, then right-click (or control-click) on the folder and select Compress <folder name> (on older versions of Mac OS X, the command will read “Archive <folder name>”). This compressing will create a .zip file. I then put the .zip file into my Public Folder in Dropbox.

1. Open your Dropbox folder.

2. Open the Public folder.

3. Put the large file into your Public folder. This will trigger the automatic upload of this file onto the Dropbox server.

4. Right-click (or control-click) on the filename of this large file. A menu will appears. Select Dropbox from the menu, then select Copy Public Link from the sub-menu.

5. Open your email application and compose a new email message. Address it to your intended recipient.

7. Go to the Edit menu and select Paste to past the Public Link into the email message. The link will look similar to this:

8. Send the email.

9. The recipient can simply click on the link to download the file.

If you chose to sign up for Dropbox please consider using this link to do so, since I’ll earn a referral bonus. Thanks.

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Do you ever have the need for a transcription service? SpeakWrite is an affordable online transcription service which uses live typists to transcribe your work and send you the finished work within 3 hours. You can submit your work by dictating over the phone, sending a fax or mailing recorded tapes. They even have an iPhone app for submitting your work. The service is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The price for general transcription is 1.25 cents per word. Legal transcription and group conversations cost 2.0 cents per word. There are no additional costs. You can use the service frequently or infrequently.

I’ve had a few clients who have used this service, and they speak very highly about it. You can try it for free one time. Simply go to their website, call the phone number listed and follow the prompts. You can record a message up to 10 minutes in length. You’ll receive the completed transcription via email within 3 hours.

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Are you wondering how long your Mac will last or how frequently you’ll need to replace it? This is a very difficult question to answer, since many factors can affect the durability, longevity and compatibility of a computer. I’ll do my best to provide some concise and useful guidance.

My shortest answer is that many of my clients replace their computer about every 5 years. Some clients who have high-end needs might replace their computer every 3-4 years, and it’s worthwhile for them to migrate to Apple’s latest and fastest hardware more often. I have many clients who have been able to stretch their computers to last 7 years or more.

Often customers will replace their computers because their previous computer’s compatibility or performance is no longer adequate. Macs will typically function for many more than 5 years, but if it breaks after 5 years it’s not always cost-effective to repair. The need to make significant upgrades to a Mac’s hardware can also be cause for replacement. The most common upgrades needed are adding memory, installing a larger hard drive or installing a newer version of Mac OS X. These upgrades can be cost-effective if you are able to do the work yourself. If you have to hire somebody to do the work, the labor charge alone can negate cost-effectiveness.

In recent years, I’ve found that web browser compatibility often drives customers to replace their computer. The two most common uses of a computer are sending emails and viewing web sites. The people who make web sites, like banks, often employ ever newer web site technologies to keep their web sites current and secure. These changes often require ever newer versions of web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. As these web browsers get upgraded, it becomes necessary for their developers to occasionally drop support for older versions of Mac OS X as well as older or slower processors. For example, Macs using older PowerPC processors like the PowerMac G5 and iMac G5 can no longer run current versions of Safari, Firefox or Chrome. This means users might not be able to properly view or access some web sites. Thus, these computers increasingly will need to be replaced since they are becoming become less and less useful. Interestingly, PowerMac G5 ands iMac G5s were made between 2003 and the end of 2005 and are more then 5 years old, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that they need to be replaced.

I don’t have any specific data to support the following claim, but I think the rate of replacing computers is increasing. I think that customers used to replace their computers less frequently then every 5 years. These days, a new Mac has a minimum cost of about $1000, so it’s not easy for many people to replace their computer that often. With the recent advent of the less expensive tablet computers like the iPad, I find some hope. These devices and their capabilities are rapidly evolving. I think that in the coming years many casual computer users will be able to use an iPad for their email and web browsing needs. Thus, when you next replace your Mac, it is reasonable to consider if the computer could be replaced with an iPad. If you were to need to replace your iPad every 4-5 years, it would be a less expensive proposition.

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On July 20, 2011, Apple released Lion, their newest version of Mac OS X. One should plan their upgrade to Lion and not rush into it. Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, costs less then many previous updates to Mac OS X. If you purchase Lion from the Mac App Store it costs only $30. Apple doesn’t sell it on disc any longer, but they indicated that they’ll make it available on USB flash drives in mid-August for $69.

Lion introduces a number of new features and changes, some of which are confusing when you first encounter them. Thus, the first step in planing the upgrade is to read about these new features either on Apple’s web site or in this excellent PDF-book Take Control of Using Lion ($15).

Next, wait for Mac OS X 10.7.1 or 10.7.2. Inevitably, all new products contain bugs. Some minor, some major. If your Mac is currently pretty stable then I would hate to see you lose productivity by upgrading to Lion and then encountering bugs, so let Apple release one or two minor releases which’ll address the most significant bugs. If the past is any indicator of the future, I would expect 10.7.1 to be released about a month after 10.7.0 was released.

Before upgrading your Mac it’s typically best to do some research to make sure that all of the applications and peripherals you use throughout the week are compatible with Lion.

Roaring Apps is building a list of application compatibility information based on submissions from users like you and me. Apple has an article listing printer and scanner compatibility information. Additional research for applications or peripherals can be conducted at the manufacturer’s web site.

Once you’ve read about Lion’s new features, waited for Apple to release some bug fixes and determined that all of your applications and peripherals are compatible then you’re ready to upgrade to Lion.

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RSS is a convenient way to stay abreast of news stories or articles added to a particular web site. Rather then needing to visit your favorite web site over and over, you can use RSS to be notified when a new story or article has been added as well as read some or all of that article. I like to read my RSS feeds in my email application, Mail.

Below are instructions on how to add an RSS feed to Apple’s Mail application.

1. Open a web browser, like Safari, and go to a web site that offers an RSS feed. I’ll use Tidbits.com as my example. Go to http://www.tidbits.com .

2. In the right-hand end of the address field you’ll see an RSS icon as depicted in this picture. Click on the RSS icon.

3. If the web site offers ONLY 1 feed then the address of the feed will be listed. In this case, Tidbits.com offers 3 feeds so I choose the “Full Text Feed.” Then you’ll see a window like this one:

4. Copy the feed address, feed://tidbits.com/feeds/tidbits.rss by highlighting it and selecting Copy from the Edit menu.

5. Open Mail and select “Add RSS Feeds” from the File menu.

6. In the Add RSS Feeds window select “Specify the URL for a feed” and select Paste from the Edit menu to paste the feed address (aka the URL) into the field. Use the picture below as a guide.

7. Click the Add button.

8. In a few seconds, you’ll see the Tidbits feed listed on the left-hand window of the Mail window under the “RSS section” as depicted below. The number to the right of the RSS feed’s name is an indication of the number of unread articles.

9. If you have added a number of RSS feeds, you may want to rename them so they sort in a particular order as I’ve done by adding number prefixes.

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I strongly recommend the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) for all MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac and MacPro purchases under most circumstances. I know that extended warranties have a poor reputation in general, but I think AppleCare is a good value for most Mac models. For the rest of this article I’ll simply refer to the AppleCare Protection Plan as AppleCare.

Every Mac computer comes with 90 days of free telephone tech support and a 1 year hardware warranty. By purchasing AppleCare, both the telephone support and hardware warranty are extended to 3 years. AppleCare covers the cost of parts as well as labor in the event of a repair.

It’s very useful to know that you can buy AppleCare as long as the original 1 year hardware warranty is still in place. Additionally, AppleCare is transferrable. If you sell your Mac within 3 years of initial purchase, AppleCare coverage transfers with the computer. This can slightly increase your Mac’s resale value, but it also gives the buyer some reassurance should they detect a hardware issue after they purchase it. AppleCare is available for all new Macs or refurbished Macs bought from Apple. It does not cover accidental damage.

MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs – The price for AppleCare is currently $249 for every laptop model except the 17″ MacBook Pro. For this model the price is $349. Apple has tiered flat-rate pricing for all laptop repairs. The last time I checked the lowest price was about $300. If your laptop is outside of it’s one-year hardware warranty and it breaks, one repair would have paid for the cost of AppleCare. Since laptops are typically carried around, they can sustain a lot of wear and tear. One repair within 3 years is not at all uncommon, thus I think it’s worthwhile to purchase AppleCare for MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. Over a dozen years, I have owned 4 Mac laptops. I know that I’ve bought AppleCare for at least the last 3 and used it on each of them. One had the CD/DVD drive and a fan replaced. On two of them the motherboard was replaced. All of these repairs were fully covered by AppleCare.

iMacs and MacPros – AppleCare for iMacs costs $169. AppleCare for MacPros costs $249. iMacs and MacPros repairs are not tied to tiered, flat-rate pricing. Each replacement part is priced individually. While fans and other small components may be inexpensive, Apple’s labor rate is around $90-100 per hour. So again, AppleCare quickly pays for itself. AppleCare covers the monitor built-into the iMac. In addition to the computer itself, AppleCare also covers an external monitor purchased at the same time as the Mac.

Since AppleCare can be purchased at any time within the first year of initial purchase, I have some clients who don’t purchase AppleCare initially for their iMacs or Mac Pros. Instead, they wait 6 to 9 months to see how the Mac performs and then make a decision. The first 6 months of a computer’s life is not necessarily a good indication of how it’ll perform after 2.5 years of use, but if the Mac has problems in the first 6 months then it seems prudent to buy the insurance of AppleCare in case other problems develop.

I typically don’t recommend AppleCare protection for Mac minis as strongly since AppleCare costs $149 but the price of the mini might be as little as $600. If a business were buying a Mac mini server or if a person were purchasing an Apple laptop at the same time as the Mac mini, then I would recommend it more strongly.

I don’t recommend AppleCare for iPhones, iPods, iPads or AppleTV either due to the relatively low price or the fact that the devices are more likely to be dropped or stolen than require a repair due to a part defect.

[Update March 2013: AppleCare for iPhones and iPads is now AppleCare+. These plans now cover up to two incidents of accidental damage for a service fee of $49 each incident. Coverage may be purchased within the first 30 days of ownership, but purchased at a different time than the device, the device will require a Genius Bar appointment prior to AppleCare purchase to verify that it is in undamaged condition before being covered. For more details you can visit the AppleCare page for iPhone or iPad.]

Another option for iPhone and iPad repair in the Seattle area is JCD Repair. They let you schedule an appointment and tell you the full repair price up front.

If you buy your Mac using a major credit card, the credit card company might double the manufacturer’s warranty. Please call your credit card company to verify and get the details. One client was able to get their iMac’s replacement motherboard covered by their credit card company due to this coverage. The client had to pay for the repair up front, then they were subsequently reimbursed after submitting the requisite paperwork. Utilizing this coverage is not as quick and easy as AppleCare, but this protection could help you if you didn’t buy AppleCare within the first year.

Some homeowners insurance policies or specific riders might be a reason to not buy AppleCare. Some insurance policies even cover accidental cover that is not covered by AppleCare.

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Adding memory (RAM) to a computer is one of the most common upgrades made to a computer. Many people think that this will speed up a computer. Adding memory to a computer can slightly improve its performance if the computer didn’t previously have sufficient memory installed to accommodate the applications running simultaneously. Let me elaborate to add some clarifying detail.

A computer’s processor (CPU) is a chip which carries out the instructions of an application. The faster the processor, the faster tasks can be completed. Currently, common processor chips are the Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and Core i3, i5 and i7. These processors typically run at speeds around 2.0 to 3.0 Gigahertz (GHz). The speed of a computer’s processor is generally the largest factor in the computer’s performance. Typically, it’s not possible to either speed up or replace a processor in today’s desktop or laptop computers. Thus, people have to make other changes to improve a computer’s performance.

Applications such as Microsoft Word are permanently stored on the hard drive. When one opens Microsoft Word, large parts of it are copied into memory (RAM). As one opens more and more applications, one uses up all of the available memory in a computer. Eventually, the computer will start to use virtual memory. It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain virtual memory, but trust me when I indicate that it’s slower then regular memory.

If one were to add more memory to a computer, the computer would need to rely on virtual memory less when a lot of applications are open simultaneously. Consequently, the computer’s performance would be improved. It’s common to need to add memory to a computer a few years after it was purchased, especially if one has installed updated versions of applications like Word or the Mac operating system, Mac OS X. This is because new versions typically require more memory than their predecessors and thus utilize the computer’s memory faster, causing it to begin using virtual memory sooner.

Here are a few Wikipedia articles which could be useful if you want to dig deeper to try to understand some of the terms that I mentioned above: RAM (random access memory), CPU (central processing unit), GHz (gigahertz), virtual memory.

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Have you ever wanted to report a bug or request a feature for an application made by Apple, Adobe or Microsoft? Each company offers you the opportunity to do just that. Use the following web page addresses to submit your bug reports or feature request.

Apple Product Feedback and Feature Request

Microsoft Product Feedback and Feature Request

Adobe Product Feedback and Feature Request

I should mention that you shouldn’t expect to receive any feedback when you fill out one of these forms. I had a conversation with an Apple Store manager who mentioned that when he visited Apple’s headquarters, he saw a room full of people who were reading and processing all of the feedback they received.

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I recently discovered a bug in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. If you insert a movie file into a PowerPoint presentation and you’re using the older .ppt file format, the link to the movie breaks when you close the file. I’ve confirmed that this problem occurs with .wmv and .mov movie files, and I assume it occurs with any other type of movie file. I’ve had a couple of clients encounter this bug. I reported this problem to Microsoft, but it hasn’t been fixed as of the time of this writing. There is an easy solution to this problem. Use PowerPoint 2011′s native .pptx file format instead of the older .ppt file format.

Here’s what I did to fix the problem:

1. Open the .ppt PowerPoint file.
2. Go to the File menu and select Save As
3. In the Format section, select PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx)
4. Click the Save button. This will convert the presentation from .ppt format to the newer .pptx format
5. Go to the slide where you’d like to place a movie.
6. Go to the Insert menu and select Movie and then Movie From File
7. Navigate to the folder on your Mac which contains the movie file you want to insert into your presentation.
8. Select the movie file and click the Insert button.
9. Go to the File menu and select Save.

The movie has now been imported to your presentation and will be saved within your PowerPoint file. You can check the size of your PowerPoint .pptx file to see that it has grown significantly now that the movie is saved inside it. When I was figuring out what the problem was I noticed that the file size of the .ppt file didn’t grow after I inserted the movie and saved the file. This told me that it wasn’t working properly. I also knew that I’d seen this feature work in other PowerPoint 2011 presentations. I then realized that the difference was that some files were .ppt files while others were .pptx files. That’s when I realized that this insert movie feature failed to work whenever I used the .ppt file format.

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Seattle City Government recently passed a law requiring companies that print the yellow page phone books to honor opt-out requests by Seattle citizens. If you’d like to opt out of receiving phone books from Dex, Frontier, Super Pages and others, you’ll need to do the following:

Go to Seattle City Government’s web site to read the details of this new system. You’ll be prompted to visit the Catalog Choice web site to create your own account. Once you’ve created your account, you can click on the Phone Books button at the top of the web site to select which phone books you would or would not like to receive. You can subsequently opt out of receiving catalogs from other companies as well.

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You have choices when you want to re-use, recycle or destroy a hard drive. Let’s look at a few common scenarios.

You have a computer that you want to retire or give to somebody else.

In this situation, the hard drive works properly. You just want to securely erase your data before giving the computer to another person. Thus, you want to securely erase the hard drive and then reinstall Mac OS X. Follow the instructions in my previous Tech Tip article on how to securely erase a hard drive. If you don’t want to do this work yourself, you could take your computer to an organization like Interconnection or Total Reclaim. Both of these organizations offer free data wiping of all hard drives on donated computers. I tend to use Interconnection as much as possible since they are a non-profit group that does their best to re-use the computer, while Total Reclaim is a for-profit company which focuses on recycling computers and other electronics.

You have an external hard drive that you want to re-use or sell, but first you want to remove all of your personal data from it.

This is very similar to the first situation. The hard drive works properly and you want to re-use the hard drive. Thus, you should securely erase the data from the hard drive using the instructions in my previous Tech Tip.

You have a hard drive that died and you need to get rid of it, but want to make sure that nobody can ever get any of the data.

Since the hard drive is not working properly, we can’t securely erase the hard drive as described above. Instead, the hard drive will need to be destroyed. You could either do this yourself or have somebody else do it. If you want to do it yourself, you could secure the drive in a drill press and drill a few holes through it. This would destroy the circuit boards and, most importantly, the platters containing your data. If you want somebody else to destroy it then I recommend using an organization like Interconnection or Total Reclaim.

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You can use Apple’s infrared (IR) remote control to control slideshows in PowePoint 2004, PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011. Here are some instructions for getting this setup. PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011 both include support for Apple’s remote. PowerPoint 2004 does not natively have this capability. Instead, you need to use one of the third party applications described in this other article. Personally, I’ve used the free iRed Lite.

First, here’s a little background. Starting in 2005, Apple started to ship remote controls with their iMac G5 computers. They then included it with MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as the Mac mini. Apple’s intended users to use them to control FrontRow which lets user view movies (DVDs), photos and music. I think Apple must have realized that few people actually used the remote controls so they stopped including them with new Macs but they continue to sell the remotely separately for about $20. In 2009 they replaced the original white plastic remote and with a taller, thinner aluminum version. The remotes do have some uses beyond controlling FrontRow. Most commonly, I see them used to control PowerPoint slideshows. For a more thorough history of the Apple Remote check out this Wikipedia article. To learn about third-party products that allow the remote to control more applications and extend its capabilities in other ways, check out this article.

Here are instructions on how to setup the Apple Remote to control PowerPoint 2008:

• Hold your remote control a few inches from your Mac.
• Simultaneously, press the Menu and Next (right-point arrow) buttons for 5-10 seconds.
• Open your PowerPoint presentation and click the Slideshow button to put it into slideshow mode.
• Press the Forward and Back buttons to move through the slideshow. Pressing the Pause/Play button will also advance to the next slide.

If you ever want to unpair your Mac from a given remote you can go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and then Security and click the Unpair button.

I should also mention that the IR receiver is on by default in all Macs. This means that other people could walk up to your Mac, pair a remote with it and start to control it. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it could cause confusion. What really causes confusion is when there are multiple Macs in the same room and one person suddenly starts to use one of Apple’s IR remotes. The remote starts to control all of the Macs simultaneously. I assume this only happens if the Macs have previously been paired with another Apple remote. In these situations it’s useful to know that the Security System Preference pane mentioned above lets you check a box to disable the IR receiver in your Mac.

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Do you need to recover files that were deleted from a Mac’s hard drive? Here’s a quick overview of three options.

Option 1 – By far the easiest way to recover a file is to restore it from the most recent backup. This is why I’m such a strong proponent of setting up a comprehensive backup system including automated TimeMachine or CrashPlan backups. By default, TimeMachine runs every hour and CrashPlan runs every 15 minutes. Here are the tech tips I wrote about how to restore files from Time Machine and CrashPlan backups.

This option is appropriate for a wide range of situations including: accidentally deleting a file and realizing it a minute or a month later, suffering from a malfunctioning hard drive, losing your computer or having it stolen. Assuming that you make multiple and frequent backup copies of your data, this option has a very high recovery success rate.

This is the last of the good options. The two remaining options are either expensive, time consuming or have a much lower chance of success — or some combination thereof.

Option 2 – Use data recovery software such as ProSoft Engineering’s Data Rescue. Data Rescue and comparable applications can search a hard drive for deleted files and it can try to search a malfunctioning hard drive for files. Both of these processes can take hours to run and their success is far from guaranteed. When a file has is deleted it’s not really removed from the hard drive. Instead, the entry for that file is removed from an invisible list of all files and the space where the file resides on the hard drive is marked as available for re-use. Depending upon how much time has elapsed since the file was deleted, it may or may not have been over-written. If a hard drive is failing who knows if you’ll be able to recovery any files from it.

Option 3 – Use a professional data recovery company like DriveSavers. DriveSavers has been around since the mid 1980s. They have a stellar reputation and success rate. In the rare cases that I’ve had a client who needed professional data recovery, I’ve often used DriveSavers. They have fortunately been able to recover most of the needed data. The downside of professional data recovery companies is the relatively high cost.

In the past decade, I’ve only sent two hard drives to DriveSavers. One hard drive was from an Mac made in the mid-1990s. It hadn’t been used in years and my client suddenly realized that she needed some data from it. The hard drive no longer worked properly. She spent about $2500 to recover a few dozen files which she needed.

In the other instance, a woman phoned me after most of her iPhoto Library suddenly vanished before her eyes. She didn’t have any backup of the hard drive so we sent the hard drive to DriveSavers. She paid about $1500 for the recovery work. DriveSavers recovered thousands of jpeg photos, but some of them were random clip art files so my client then had to spend countless hours weeding through the recovered files.

In my opinion, options 2 and 3 aren’t really attractive options. They are expensive, time-consuming and the odds of getting all of the files needed are not as high as I’d like. In comparison the cost to buy a couple of backup hard drives or to pay for CrashPlan’s online backup storage system is much less. Please setup an automated, redundant and reliable backup system for your Mac.

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Do you want to clean up your Mac hard drive? Is your hard drive nearly full and you don’t know why? OmniDiskSweeper (free) can help with both of these situations. OmniDiskSweeper will scan all files and folders on your Mac and list them by size, starting with the folders taking up the most space. This helps you to focus your clean-up efforts on the folders that are taking up the most room on your Mac’s hard drive.

People often erroneously think that their Mac is running slowly because the Mac’s internal hard drive has so much stuff on it. This is rarely the case. Unless the hard drive is over 90% full, the computer’s performance is not affected by the amount of information stored there. I should be clear to mention that when the hard drive is nearly full, typically starting around 90%, the computer’s performance is significantly affected. If your hard drive is this full, please download and use OmniDiskSweeper to help you clean it up.

OmniDiskSweeper conveniently shows all the invisible files and folders on your Mac. Over the years, I’ve seen several hard drives that were filled with spurious log files or errant backup copies of data — all of which happened to be invisible. These invisible files and folders are part of the Mac operating system, Mac OS X. Some of them are critical files, so don’t throw away any invisible file without being sure that you have a full, bootable backup of your Mac and you know what you’re doing. If you’re unsure check with a Mac expert or hire a Mac consultant.

Using OmniDiskSweeper is easy.

• Download OmniDiskSweeper and install it in your Applications folder. Double-click it to open.
• From the list, select the hard drive you want to scan. OmniDiskSweeper uses the term sweep to imply scan. The scan can take 10-15 minutes or longer, depending upon how much data you have.
• When the scan is complete you’ll see a columned window (see below) listing all folders sorted by size.
• If you’ve identified a file that you want to delete, you can select it in the column browser window then click the “Delete” button in the lower left corner.
• If you want to look at a file or folder, select it in the column browser and double-click the icon in the lower-right corner. This will reveal the file or folder in the Finder so you can look at it more closely.

Happy hunting. I use OmniDiskSweeper regularly and find it an indispensable tool for cleaning hard drives.

OmniDiskSweeper File Browser

If your friends who own a Windows-PC would like to clean-up their hard drive you could direct them to Extensoft’s free Disk Analyzer.

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Update May 2012: If you need to open win mail.dat files on your iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch) try Winmail File Viewer which currently costs 99 cents in the iTunes Store.

Did you receive an email attachment named winmail.dat or winmail? Here’s a brief explanation of what this file is and instructions for opening it.

Winmail.dat files are sent by people using Microsoft Outlook as their email application. Under certain circumstances Outlook will encode attached files, like Word or PDF files, in this winmail.dat format.

Mac users can open the winmail.dat file using a free application (donations accepted) and extract the files hiding inside. Unfortunately, this application has a goofy name which is TNEF’s Enough. I won’t bore you with an explanation of this name, but if you are interested you can read about it on the developer’s web site.

Here are instructions on how to open the winmail.dat file:

• Save your winmail.dat file on your Desktop.
• If you use Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.6 then download the most current update of TNEF’s Enough version 3. If you use Mac OS X 10.5 then download TNEF’s Enough ver 2.2. If you use OS X 10.4 or earlier then download TNEF’s Enough ver 2.0
• By clicking on one of these links, you’ll download a .zip file which contains TNEF’s Enough inside. Your Mac should automatically open the .zip file so you should see TNEF’s Enough sitting in your Downloads folder.
• Move TNEF Enough into your Applications folder.
• Double-click it to open, then go to the File menu and select Open…
• Select the winmail.dat file which you previously put on the Desktop.
• You’ll then see a window listing the embedded files which are the files that you actually want.
• Click on each file, one at a time, and click the Save button.
• Save these files to your Desktop or any other desired location.
• Quit TNEF’s Enough.

You’re done. You can now throw away the winmail.dat file since you’ve extracted all of the files from inside it.

If you’d like to read more about how and why this happens please read this Microsoft Support article or this other article. These articles also provide instructions that you can pass on to the Outlook user who sent you the winmail.dat file so he or she can make changes to no longer send you winmail.dat files. Essentially, they have to edit their record for you in their Contact list to indicate that you should only receive plain-text emails.

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Do you want to know how to perform some routine preventive maintenance on your Mac? Here’s my recommendation of helpful preventive maintenance tasks as well as instructions on how to perform these tasks. You don’t need to have advanced knowledge to perform these tasks. These recommendations assume you are using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) or newer.

Overview

• Daily – backup your data files.
• Weekly – update your bootable backup.
• Monthly – check your hard drive to make sure it’s not getting too full.
• Monthly – perform the following tasks using Maintenance (free): Verify your hard drive’s SMART status and its file structure (the invisible directories), repair your hard drive’s permissions, run the Daily, Weekly and Monthly maintenance scripts and delete the System, Application and Font caches.

More Detail

Daily Backup – I strongly believe everybody should have an automated backup system and, ideally, a comprehensive backup system. In other Tech Tips I provided detailed instructions on how to setup Time Machine. Time Machine is Apple’s backup application that comes with Mac OS X 10.5 (and newer). Time Machine will automatically perform hourly backups of one’s data, assuming the Mac is on and the backup hard drive is connected.

Weekly Bootable Backup Update - It’s useful to be able to boot (start) your Mac from another hard drive if your Mac is not able to start from its own internal hard drive. This could happen if the internal drive is starting to fail, an OS X update didn’t install properly or for a myriad of other reasons. In other Tech Tips I provided detailed instructions on how to setup Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup of your Mac’s hard drive.

Monthly Check Hard Drive’s Fullness – A Macintosh computer’s performance will slow noticeably if it’s hard drive is more than approximately 90% full. It’s easy to make sure the drive is not getting too full by doing the following steps: Click on the hard drive’s icon on the Desktop, typically named Macintosh HD. Go to the File menu and select Get Info. Compare the values listed next to “Capacity” and “Used.” If the number of gigabytes of data listed in the “Used” section is 90% or more of the hard drive’s capacity then you need to free up some hard drive space. You can use Omni DiskSweeper (free) to help you determine which files are using the most storage space on your hard drive. Then you can either move some data to another hard drive, archive it to a DVD or delete it.

Monthly Maintenance Tasks – You can perform all of the maintenance tasks that I recommend using a free application aptly named Maintenance. Download the Maintenance disk image (Maintenance.dmg), double-click it to open and then drag the Maintenance application to your Applications folder to install it. Double-click the application to open it.

When you open Maintenance, it’ll display a message indicating that it’s checking your hard drive’s SMART status. SMART is an acronym which stands for Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology. It’s a simply diagnostic tool built in to most current hard drives. Next, Maintenance will ask if you want to Verify your startup volume (hard drive). Before you start this process please save and close all open documents and then quit all applications. Once the verification process is complete you’ll be prompted to enter an adminitrative-level account name and password. You’ll then be presented with a list of available tasks. I recommend inserting checkmarks into the first 5 items (see below). Click the Execute button to have Maintenance do the following: Repair Permissions, Execute Maintenance Scripts and empty the System, Application and Font caches. Wait while these tasks are completed. This could take 10-15 minutes.

Maintenance Task List

No harm should come if you were to perform the other tasks, but I find that they are more troubleshooting than preventive maintenance.

If you want to learn more about maintaining your Mac, I encourage you to read the $10 PDF book Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac.

Titanium Software makes Maintenance as well as Onyx which can do everything that Maintenance can do plus a whole lot more.

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Are you looking for an easy way to share files with your colleagues who use a mix of Macs and PCs? There are many online file sharing and storage systems, but I use and recommend Dropbox. I’ve tried a handful of systems including MobileMe’s iDisk, SugarSync, Windows LiveMesh, Box.net and GoogleDocs. While I use several of these services on an on-going basis, I think Dropbox is the most versatile and has the best mix of features that I use and care about.

Here’s a list of some of my needs:

• I want a fast, affordable, easy-to-use and secure system. I want to keep the files locally on my computer and have them get copied (synced) to my colleagues Mac or PC.
• I want to be able to share different folders with different people.
• I want to be able to access the shared folders and some of the files from my iPhone and iPad.

Dropbox meets all of these needs and has many other handy features. Here are some highlights:

• It provides status indicators when files are getting synced and optional on-screen notification messages when files have been added, deleted or edited.
• It saves older versions of files so you can retrieve a previous version.
• It lets you view your shared folders and files from their web site, so you can access any file from any computer which has an Internet connection.
• If two people simultaneously edit the same file, it’s smart enough to save both copies and point out this conflict.
• Files stored in Dropbox can be accessed on iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, Android-based phones and tablets.
• There is a special Public folder which can be used to share a file with the entire world, if you want. Any file in the public folder has a “public link” which can be put in an email or on a web site to provide an easy way for others to download this file. This is a handy way to share a file that is too large to send as an email attachment.

Dropbox is capable and versatile, but it’s not as robust as a full-fledged file server to which you might be accustomed. In particular it’s important to know that you can’t share a folder inside another shared folder. Instead you would need to create a separate shared folder outside of the shared folder. Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then add, delete or change files within that folder. Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then invite others to join the folder. As the owner of the folder you can see the list of people who have access and you can revoke somebody’s access privileges at any time.

You can try Dropbox for free. A free account includes 2 GB of storage space. If or when you outgrow that 2 GB of storage space you can buy more storage space. 50 GB of storage space costs $100 per year or 100 GB of storage space costs $200 per year. Give Dropbox a try. I think you’ll like it.

If you chose to sign-up for Dropbox, please consider using this link to do so since I’ll earn a referral bonus. Thanks.

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If your printer’s toner or ink cartridge is completely empty, it can be put in the trash according to the City of Seattle’s web site. Otherwise, you should recycle it using any of the following methods.

Many office supply stores like OfficeMax, OfficeDepot and Staples typically offer recycling services. Some of them will give you a small store credit if you’ve signed up for their “rewards program.” For example, Staples lets you recycle up to 10 cartridges per user per month and will give you $2 in Staples Rewards.

Check with the store where you purchased the cartridge. Many offer refill and recycle services, including BestBuy and Cartridge World. Both have stores in the greater Seattle area.

Look at the instructions in the box of your new laser or ink jet cartridge to find out how to recycle your old one. Many manufacturers will provide instructions, packaging materials and free postage if you wish to recycle your old cartridge, which is then refilled and used again.

Use the Earth911 web site to find an organization near you that will recycle printer cartridges.

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Have you wondered how to properly dispose of compact fluorescent lamps? Compact fluorescent lamps (CFL or sometimes just CF) are energy efficient light bulbs that contain very small amounts of mercury, so they need to be properly handled and thus can’t be put directly in your trash. The City of Seattle’s web site has a page providing tips and information about CF bulbs, including the mercury they contain.

To properly dispose of compact fluorescent lamps, also called compact fluorescent bulbs, one can take them to any Take It Back Network recycler who handles fluorescent bulbs, but I find it convenient to take mine to one of the 56 Bartell Drug stores in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. Bartell Drugs started their  CF bulb recycling program in 2008. Simply give your unbroken CF bulb to any store clerk or put it in their recycle bin. Bartell has partnered with Total Reclaim, who says “the used bulbs will be completely recycled, including glass, aluminum, plastic and mercury”.

April 2012 Update: I learned the Puget Sound Energy has a web page to locate a place to recycle incandescent and/or compact fluorescent light bulbs in your part of Puget Sound.

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