Friendly Web Tools Blog

Yesterday I stressed the importance of scrubbing clean your computer before donating it (or putting it in the trash). Charitable organizations generally don’t remove the data from your computer when you donate it. Consequently, they pass all your private electronic data on to the next owner.

Here’s what to do in order to prep it for donation:

1. Copy everything on your old computer to your new one. Be thorough, you never know what you’ll regret having trashed. Try the SimpleTech Signature Mini, which I wrote about earlier.
2. Remove e-mail contacts and messages. People often remember to delete bank information, but forget these things.
3. Clear out your browser bookmarks/favorites. You might have sensitive information marked for easy retrieval that you forgot was in there.
4. Likewise, clear out your Internet cache. Here’s how to do it in Internet Explorer, and a nice little video on how to do it in Firefox.
5. Remember to delete your photos, journal entries or any stored frequent flyer or credit card information.
6. Delete all your documents, including what’s in the recycle bin or trash folder.

Now that you’re done with that, realize that you’re not done. What happens when you delete a file is that it’s not really gone. It’s just made available to write over. It’s like an Etch-a-Sketch. When you’re done making concentric circles (the only thing I was ever able to do), you don’t throw it away. You shake it so you can draw another picture.

So first step is to call your computer manufacturer’s technical department and ask how they recommend to your personal files. They built it, they should have ideas on how to delete it.

Depending on what they tell you, you might be asked to pick up some disk-cleaning software. There are many free versions available; just type “file shredder” into your favorite search engine and pick one. If you want to spend money, try Symantec’s Norton SystemWorks for about $50. But pick something, and make sure you clean it up.

Sometimes it pays to go for a walk around the neighborhood on trash day. Last week I found a Mac computer sitting on the curb waiting for the garbage guys to take it away. It didn’t look like anything was wrong with it, so I lugged it home, plugged it in and waited for something like an explosion.

Guess what happened. Nothing. Or rather, everything, perfectly, without any errors. The operating system booted up, the anti-virus software checked everything out and had no complaints and I had instant access to a computer that had absolutely no problems other than it was a little slower than the machine I’m used to using at home.

Two things were occurred to me when everything lit up: 1) We live in a rich society that can throw out a high-performance piece of equipment like this with no regrets, and 2) people are very, very stupid about what they leave on their computers when they get rid of them.

What we have revealed in the course of setting up this computer to see how our web projects look on a Mac, we’ve found e-mail, photos, addresses, names, maps, instant message chat transcripts, about $1000-worth of music and a heck of a lot more. Holy moly, in the wrong hands, the teen girls who shared this machine could be in deep trouble.

So I beseech you donate your computers to needy causes, but before you do, make darn sure they’re clean. Deleting files isn’t enough. You need to make sure that stuff is gone before you give it away. I’ll explore a few ways to clean up your computer in this week’s blog postings. I’ll tell you what to remove from your computer, how to make sure it’s really clean, and how to donate it.

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Sometimes, you have to hate them. When your computer stops working, it’s their job to fix it, and pronto. Who can blame you for popping a few capillaries when you’re on hold for countless minutes or waiting for a response to an e-mail you sent last week? The poor wretches whose job it is to listen to your gripes are almost asking for it. Yep, when something’s gone wrong, there’s no better punching bag than the help desk.

I’m somewhere in the middle, because I provide support for Talance’s clients and also have to appeal to our own tech pros for help when I’m having issues myself. So I know what it’s like to start kicking trashcans because you’re not receiving the help you want and also when you’re not receiving the most illuminating questions from someone confounded by technology.

Thankfully, I adore our clients, and there’s never any animosity when they call for help. But that doesn’t mean I can’t hear the frustration. So I thought I’d offer up a few items you can keep in mind when it comes to working with your tech support person. (Note: this goes for the phone company, cable company, internet company, etc.)

Step 1: Take a deep breath

Preparing yourself with the right information before calling the help desk is certainly important, but of greater significance is remaining polite when you’re on the line. As frustrating as it can be to describe a problem you don’t understand, take some deep breaths, get a glass of water, do a couple neck rolls – do whatever it takes, just as long as you are calm when you pick up the phone.

Step 2: Check the cables

Things come unplugged and you might not know about it. If your monitor is black but the computer is humming along nicely, it could be disconnected. Save yourself – and the help desk tech – a load of agony by jiggling the cables to make sure they’re in place.

Step 3: Read the manual

Remember that you can eliminate most problems with a little forethought, thus avoiding the issue altogether. An effortless glance through the manual can end a lot of help desk frustration. You might be surprised that manuals exist for the equipment on your desk. Ask around to see if you can get a copy.

Step 4: Get the serial number

Assuming you’ve read through the manual and found nothing that can help with your problem, flip to the back of it and get the serial number of the product in question. This lets the help desk zero in on the right piece of equipment.

If you’re having problems with software, note what kind of computer you have (PC or Mac), what your operating system is, what kind of browser you’re using and what you were doing when the problem arose.

Step 5: Call the right number

Relax your help desk trigger finger for a minute and make sure you shouldn’t be calling the software maker instead. It works the other way around too. Many people don’t realize that if you bought a Dell computer, that company will provide support for the Microsoft Windows operating system. This is important because Dell tech support comes part and parcel with the computer, while you’ll have to pay for Microsoft’s help (and they don’t have a toll-free number either).

Step 6: Volunteer the correct information

The number one question to answer is, “Has this has ever worked?” Address that question first, then tell the support person what you were doing when the computer broke. With this information, he or she may determine the root of your problem before you even begin explaining it.

Remember, help desks are chronically understaffed. Understand there’s a human on the other end of the line, and they’re probably doing their best to help. Don’t be afraid to just call up when everything is running smoothly and say, “Thanks for all you do.”

[This is the third in a series about e-mail. Read earlier posts under the category e-mail.]

Emoticons, short for “emotion icons,” and also known as smileys, are punctuation combinations that can help soften an informal message. Here are some frequently used emoticons and their definitions. Use them in moderation; too many can make your messages look too doodled-on.

: ) happy

: ( unhappy

; ) wink, jest

: D laughing

: O shocked

: p giving the raspberries, poking out tongue

>: ( mad

: x lips sealed

<:-| dunce

:-\ unsure

[This is the third in a series about e-mail. Read earlier posts under the category e-mail.]

Here are a few easy tips for tidying up messy messages:

Check spelling and grammar before sending. Spell-check goes a long way toward making you sound smarter, but some people surprisingly don’t use it.

Don’t use all caps. I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not. Type the way books read. Otherwise you’ll look like you’re yelling. DON’T DO IT. See? It looks like I’m mad at you.

Don’t use all lower case. You’re not e.e. cummings. Properly capitalize.

Use a descriptive Subject line. Subject lines are summary lines. They should give a good indication of what’s to come. Still, I receive many messages that say things like, “Hi” or nothing at all. Write your message first, then come up with a good summary based on it to use in the Subject field.

Keep your temper. Don’t say anything in e-mail you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. You have to be so, so careful with e-mail. Take extra care not to sound snippy.

Overall, be selective in who you send messages to. If you’re not going to mail something to 150 people, then why would you e-mail it?

[This is the second in a series about e-mail. Read earlier posts under the category e-mail.]

It seems e-mail overload is inevitable as long as people reach for the sometimes sinister “cc” field. By including everyone in your address book, or even a handful of people who you might like to include in a discussion, you can create an overwhelming influx of mail. The cc field also has political issues. Some employees will include a higher up simply to make the main recipient look bad.

Here’s a simple rule to institute in your e-mail policy (your organization does have an e-mail policy, doesn’t it?): If someone needs to know something, then send it. But if it’s just nice to know, don’t cc it.

If you simply must forward a message, make sure it’s readable. This includes deleting all the irrelevant To and From fields and sending it in a usable format, even if it requires copying the contents of message attachments and pasting them into another.

E-mail has seemingly boundless attributes and has shaped the face of modern correspondence, but it can create unequaled debacles. In the right hands, e-mail is a speedy and effective way to pass news and keep in touch. But careless fingers can send sensitive material into the wrong in-box, clog up disk drive space and spoil relationships.

Even though everyone uses it these days, it’s worth stepping back, looking at the way we communicate with each other, and figuring out how that can be refined and improved. This week, I’ll look more closely at e-mail etiquette and practices and offer a few tips and tools to help you massage the most common missives you send in any given day.

First up: turn off type-ahead.

Most e-mail programs have a type-ahead, or auto-complete, function that remembers and stores addresses you send to. When you begin to enter a previously contacted address, your e-mail program will recognize it and offer suggestions for completing the text for you. This is meant as a time-saver, but it could get you in trouble if you continue to be nudged with the wrong address. You might jut choose the wrong one.

By sending a message to the wrong person, or hundreds of unintended recipients, you can create wasted time and disk space, not to mention a heap of trouble.

Be especially careful of group distribution lists, which can be a hazard if you work for a large organization. You may have a message - either incriminating or innocuous - that you mistakenly send to a larger group of people if you accidentally send it to a distribution list rather than an individual.

You can turn off type-ahead altogether, if your e-mail program will let you. Each one is different. Gmail doesn’t let you turn off auto-complete (someone correct me if you have different information - all I can find is others complaining about this). But you can delete stored e-mail addresses from the drop-down box by using the arrow keys of the address you want to delete, and then press the Delete button.

How to turn off auto-complete in Outlook 2003/2007:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. Click E-mail Options, and then click Advanced E-mail Options.
3. Under When sending a message, clear the Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields check box.

Here’s a trick we use when we have a collaborative online whiteboard project that we want to lose when we log out of our web meeting software. We simply print to PDF.

This is handy too for documenting online receipts, itineraries and sending low-resource proposals and other documents that you don’t want in easily-editable Word format.

Here’s how:

• If you have a PC with Adobe Acrobat installed, you can simply go to Print and then choose Adobe PDF from the Printer Name drop-down box.
• You can also download and install CutePDF Writer. This free program does the same thing as Acrobat.
• If you’re using a Mac, PDF print software is already installed. Go to the File menu, choose Print and click the PDF button in the lower left-hand corner of the new window.

Sending text-based e-mails is easy, but making them fancy with colors, background, tables or other HTML tricks is another story altogether. Not all e-mail programs will accept all HTML-generated messages.

Some of our clients sidestep some requirements by subscribing to services that do this for them by providing templates. While some of these can help you create fancy e-mails, they’re not perfect. Spam catchers often restrict messages that are sent from Constant Contact, for instance.

But you can still send custom, fancy HTML e-mails without using someone else’s template with Premailer. This service cleans up your existing HTML file and puts it into a format that most e-mail programs can use, or at least alerts you to red flags so you can clean up your files yourself.

Give it a shot; this site has a sample set up so you can see how it works.

Do yourself a favor and download the new Firefox 3.0 browser right now.

Here’s a full list of the top new features, but my favorite is that it’s so fast!