Computer Tips -Tech Info

Month: February 2009

  • SlyDial – Drop your call Straight to VoiceMail

    We’ve all been there… 2 minutes to return a call with a “quick” answer. There’s not enough time for a real conversation. You HAVE to start a meeting in 2 minutes. Times like this, making a call can be like a roll of the dice, do they pick up? If they do, how can I tell them gently that there isn’t time for more than just the message I planned to leave? Well, Slydial is your answer to that. If you’re calling a mobile phone in the United States, you dial slydials number first, then the number you’re calling and you are dropped directly to their voicemail box to leave your concise message!

    No need to put off those calls until you have more time “in case” they answer!

  • Blackberry Desktop Manager Syncing Calendar to Outlook 2000

    Not too long ago I had the opportunity to take a look at synchronizing a Blackberry to Outlook 2000. They said that the phone tech support told them it was a really easy thing to do and if they had an onsite computer technician they could probably click a couple options and have it set up in less than ten minutes.

    Well – they were using Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.3 and had Outlook 2000 which is NOT supported under Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.3

    !
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  • Strange Problem Made Simple | Verizon DSL Modem confusion

    I had a machine that I picked up to test internet connectivity. They were able to do email, but not visit web pages. My first thought was that internet explorer may have been a bit sideways, but when I got it to the workbench I figured I had solved the problem. No ethernet port. They’ve been using USB then to connect to their DSL modem. So, I plugged in a network card and tested and everything worked fine and scheduled the redelivery. But, when I got it onsite things didn’t quite work out as smoothly. Here’s the setup. A DSL modem with built in switch had a laptop hooked up via ethernet (with absolutely NO connectivity problems) and this desktop which was hooked up first via USB and now via ethernet.

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  • SSH, Proxies (Proxy’s?), Tor and Web Browsing

    For quite some time I’ve been making use of a dd-wrt modified linksys box on my home network as an openvpn endpoint so that when I’m out and about in the world, I connect the vpn, switch firefox to route through a squid proxy server on the home network and I’ve got a nice fairly secure web browsing setup. But, as they say there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And, that’s what I’ve played around with the last couple days. First off, I guess I should describe the concept. 1) Let’s say that you’re browsing the web at an open wireless access point and you don’t trust the network or 2) let’s say you need to be able to access an intranet web server that is not accessible from the internet side of a network or scenario 3) let’s say a web site is blocking access based on ip address (for instance say you’re behind the great firewall of xyz business/company)…. how can you still manage to access the web pages you want to 3,2) at all or 1) securely with as little snooping as possible.

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  • Mind Mapping online

    Oh I’m glad I ran across this link. bubbl.us has a really great site up that gives you some nice bubble map output of brainstorming. Some people call these bubble maps, idea maps, mind mapping. You can also use this to create a simple flow chart. It’s still a great site (and the results look pretty nice.)