Ever wonder where your taxes go? It’s not all used to build aircraft carriers and to maintain the White House.
Many government agencies make information they gather available to the public. A good source for this information is the Federal Citizen Information Center (http://publications.usa.gov/USAPubs.php).
The Publications.USA.gov web site contains over a dozen general areas (E.g. computers, employment, health, history, etc.) The documents available are free or low in cost.
We have all run into a situation where we needed to know how to convert a known amount into some other measure. As an example, 75 grams is how many ounces?
The best site I have found for converting one measure into another is MegaConverter 2 (http://www.megaconverter.com/mega2/). It has an incredibly wide range of conversions. Of course it has conversion for various lengths, weights, temperatures, etc. However, it also includes many non-standard conversions (E.g. ancient lengths, clothing sizes, weights in space, kitchen measures, typography, etc.)
About the only conversions that aren’t included are currency ones. Other than that, you will be challenged to find a conversion not included in this very useful site.
The Internet is full of millions of web sites. As well, it is used and supported by many people and organizations that have lots of knowledge at their fingertips.
Happily, many of the people that have the knowledge are willing to share it. There are web sites that can answer just about any question imaginable. If you have a question about how something operates or how it can be fixed, just put the question in your browser’s search box.
A few sites that I recommend are:
• YouTube (www.youtube.com) – which has information in video form
• eHow (www.ehow.com) – which has general how-to articles in many areas
• Howtodothings (www.howtodothings.com) – where the name says it all
• Howtocleananything (www.howtocleananything.com) – advice on how to recover from spills, etc. on just about any surface
Every PC has its own time clock that maintains its date and time. Overall the clock is pretty accurate. However, it can stray from what it should be over time.
One way to make sure your PC (and/or network) has the correct time, is to visit www.time.gov. This shows the exact date and time (accurate to within a few 1/10ths of a second) with respect to the atomic clock time at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST is a government agency that is charged to maintain the time, weights and measure standard for our country. Once you see the correct time, you could then update your PC.
Another way to keep “up to date” is to download a program that links to the NIST atomic clock and have the program set the time on your PC. One such program is available as a free download at http://download.cnet.com/AnalogX-Atomic-TimeSync/3000-2350_4-10774262.html?tag=mncol;2.
Success in business is often based on complete and accurate information. Data can help you to make plans on what customers are out there, who they are and how much money they have that might be used to buy your products.
To determine what information is useful, there are two main questions that need to be answered. How can you guaranty that the information is accurate? As well, how much will it cost?
Census information is a good place to start. It is collected by the government. Its accuracy is unquestioned as it forms the basis of governmental decisions and laws. Better yet, it’s freely available.
You can get access to a trove of population, gender, ethnicity, and basic business sales facts at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/. In their words, “QuickFacts includes statistics for all states and counties, and for cities and towns with more than 5,000 people”.
It’s almost impossible for any one person to know how to answer every question related to hardware, software, networks, servers, etc. As a result, we all need help in resolving some of the problems that inevitable arise over time.
Where do you do to look for help? One suggestion that I had made in an earlier post is to use the Experts Exchange site (www.experts-exchange.com). It is an excellent site, but it has an annual membership cost of about $100.
What if you want some expert advice but don’t want to pay a membership fee? One good technical support site that fits that bill is Tek-Tips (www.tek-tips.com). To use the site, you first have to register (I.e. enter a user ID, email and password). After that, you can read through the forums or search for discussions about specific topics.
There is one advantage that Experts Exchange has over Tek-Tips. While you can search each site for answers to your technical questions, Experts Exchange shows you an icon at the top of the discussion that tells you if there is a “guaranteed” answer to the problem within the discussion thread (which is also highlighted in the thread). The Tek-Tips site doesn’t do that. As a result, some of the threads discuss a problem but never offer a solution to it – you just have to read through the postings and try the advice.
Like all good computer systems, a web site should be documents in order to help support and maintain the site. Simple screen prints of the web site don’t give you your site’s full information. As an example, you can see what the page looks like but the links on the page are not available.
There is a simple tool that can accomplish this documentation called PDFmyURL. It is a web free web site (www.pdfmyurl.com). You enter the URL of the web page that you want to document and their service turns that page into a PDF. It takes place in a matter of seconds.
Save the PDFs produced by PDFmyURL and you can simple document your web site. The PDF faithfully displays the full web page, even if the page is taller than a single video screen. It also displays the full URL of any link that you mouse over on the PDF.
A computer driver is a piece of software that allows hardware to work with operating systems and applications. Each driver is specific to the piece of hardware that it works with.
Operating systems and application programs are constantly being updated and patched. As a result, the driver that worked with an older version of an OS or program might not work correctly or smoothly any more.
To keep your computer working smoothly, it is best to occasionally make sure that your device drivers are up-to-date. A good site for that task is http://www.driverguide.com. At that site, you can scan your PC to see if it has the most up-to-date drivers for your hardware and then download any updates you need. The site also has firmware update and technical documentation available.
The web is populated with millions of web sites. Many of them are commercial and many are very narrow in their focus.
For the next few months, I am going to discuss a number of web sites that I have found over time and that I think are generally useful. This is not a comprehensive list of such web sites, but I hope you will find them useful, too.
File storage is rapidly expanding, both on local machines and in the cloud. One free service that is available now is SkyDrive from Microsoft. It is available at https://skydrive.live.com.
SkyDrive is a cloud-based file storage service. It offers 25 GB of file storage on the Internet. To get the service, you must have a Windows Live ID (available at www.live.com).
The files that you store on SkyDrive are password protected and have a range of security options. You can control which files or folders can be seen and who can see, tag, copy and download from your stored files.
SkyDrive can be used as offsite backup storage and as a way to share files with friends or colleagues. The price is certainly right and it provides a valuable service to its users.
