VitaminCM.com

Sharing the Best Tutorials on Twitter

If any of you are Twitter users, you’re probably aware of the #followfriday phenomena. The original theory to tell the people that you follow about other Twitter users who regularly post interesting, useful tweets. This is a great concept that helped me find a bunch of good people to follow.

Recently #followfriday seems a lot more like an artificial, obligatory way for everyone to pump up each others follower counts.

I still do post the occasional #followfriday tweet using the following guidelines:

1. They are someone whose tweets regularly add value to my experience.
2. I can provide a reason for why I’m recommending them. (for example, #followfriday @abc123 They have the best information on #letters and #numbers anywhere on the web)

This serves two important purposes: It lets you know why you might care and the #tags give a little “twitter-wide” credit to the person being recommended. (Help the follower and followee; good idea, right?)

My Variation on the #FollowFriday Theme

VitaminCM.com is all about helping you learn how to do things. So I came up with the a twist to the original idea that will hopefully help pass on useful information. I’m calling it #TuesTorial.

During the week, I’m going to bookmark any good tutorials that I come across. Each Tuesday I’ll tweet the ones that I think are particularly helpful. If you would like to see my suggestions, just follow me on Twitter.

They will also be posted here in the sidebar widget.

Here is the format that I will be observing:

#Tuestorial – Great video showing how to do #XYZ – link.url/12345

I promise not to shamelessly promote any of my own articles, just other people’s work that I think is excellent.

If you want to see my suggestions follow me on Twitter. (They will also appear in the Twitter widget to the right.)

Your Call to Action – Please Join In the Fun

If you really like the idea of sharing helpful tips, please join in. I really want to see the tutorials that you recommend, so put your @Twitter name in the comments below so that I can follow you.

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Productivity, Software, Tutorials, Web Surfing followfriday, social networking, tuestorial, tuestorials, Tutorials, twitter

The Best of VitaminCM

Here are some of my favorite, most useful tutorials that have appeared on VitaminCM.com.

Reusing an Old PC as a Server Part 1

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Tutorials computer instructions, how-to, software tutorials, Tutorials

Turn Thunderbird into an Organizational and Communication Powerhouse

Goal: Take Mozilla’s Thunderbird and turn it into the digital secretary that you have always wanted.

If you don’t like (or want to pay for) Microsoft Outlook, you can still have a powerful, feature-packed communication / information organizer. Mozilla’s

Thunderbird is a program that handles basic email needs superbly. While it’s pretty basic to start, it can be extended to do just about everything that Outlook can do, along with a few things Outlook can’t.

To replace Microsoft Outlook, you’ll need the big three features: Email, Contacts, and Calendaring.

We’ll do the following things with these features:

Email – Thunderbird does a great job of handling email, but you can tweak it into an email juggernaut by doing the following:

• Combine Outlook’s folders with Gmail’s tags
• Search the full text of your emails with the power of Google
• Spell check and look up definitions of email text
• Automatically zip file attachments to shrink email size
• Create emails and schedule when they are automatically sent

Contacts – Thunderbird handles contacts, but they’re not integrated as seamlessly as Outlook’s. Until you do the following:

• Set up an integrated Address Book that can be used for emails, calendar appointments, and more
• Sync your Contacts with web services like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, and more

Calendar – Thunderbird does not come with a built in calendar, but we’

• Install an integrated calendar
• Sync your calendar with web services like Google Calendar, Yahoo, and more
• View and share online calendars from your friends and popular web services

Let’s do some customizing.
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Software, Tutorials add on, calendar, contacts, email, extension, outlook, plugin, thunderbird, Tutorials

Make Outlook the Information Hub at the Center of your Life

GOAL: Provide a list of free plug-ins that will extend the power of Outlook far beyond even Microsoft’s wildest dreams.

Microsoft Outlook – The ubiquitous Email/Calendar/Organizer tool. Some love it, some hate it (try Lotus Notes before you complain) but millions use it. For many people, Outlook is the hub for their communication and personal information. We’ll cover several ways to extend Outlook’s organizational powers past the desktop, to the web, your portable devices, and beyond. You’ll see how to make it interact with Gmail, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, IM, SMS, plus your iPod and phone.

Let’s dig into some serious organization and productivity magic.

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Software, Tutorials add on, linkedin, outlook, plaxo, plug-in, skype, Software, sync, Tutorials

Six Part Series on Extending Your Favorite Software with Add Ons

GOAL: Provide a list of add ons to help you turbo charge some of your most commonly used applications.

Even though many of the applications on my computer are great, I always feel like there are just a few things missing. Fortunately, a lot of frequently used applications allow third party Add Ons, Plugins, and Extensions to fill some of the voids left by the manufacturers.

Put your applications on some serious performance enhancing drugs that won’t get detected on any test.

We’ll wring every last drop of juice out of the following applications:

1. Microsoft Outlook
2. Mozilla ThunderBird
3. Skype VOIP Software
4. Apple iTunes
5. Mozilla Firefox
6. The Best of the Rest

What I will be covering for each application:

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Software, Tutorials add ons, extensions, firefox, iTunes, outlook, plugin, skype, Software, thunderbird, Tutorials

Bring Your Favorite Software, Files, and Settings with You on a USB Drive

GOAL: Provide a list of Portable Applications that you can run on any PC and feel like you never left home.

Do you use multiple computers on a regular basis? Do you go from home, to work, to friends, and relative’s houses where you can never guarantee that the applications that you need are available? Well, you need a USB flash drive loaded with Portable Applications.

You can load numerous free and useful applications onto a USB drive and take a solid computing environment that can be used on any PC on the road. I used to get frustrated when I visited my parents or in-laws houses, because their computers were not set up with what I needed to waste time get things done. Now, I just pull out my portable computing environment get to work.

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Software, Tutorials applications, portable, Software, Tutorials, USB

Keep the PDFs, Lose the AcroCrap

Goal: Provide a list of FREE applications that will allow you to do everything you want with PDFs while avoiding the annoying, expensive problems of Adobe Acrobat.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is great for a number of reasons however; Adobe Acrobat (the de facto standard application) is a horrendous piece of garbage. The Acrobat Reader (Free) is painfully slow to open, has more bugs than a porch light, and love to crash browsers. The Acrobat Writer (Standard $299 or Professional $449) applications are ridiculously expensive.

Here is a list of applications that will let you get the most out of the PDF format with none of the issues:

You can use this combination of free applications to do just about everything that you would ever want from Adobe Acrobat.

• Open and Read PDF files
• Create PDF files from any document or application on your computer
• Edit PDFs by converting them into Microsoft Word documents
• Merge Multiple PFDs into a single file
• Stop PDFs from crashing your browser
• Not spend hundreds of dollars

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Software, Tutorials Adobe Acrobat, converter, diy, Foxit, how-to, PDF, Tutorials, word

Automagically Find, and Correct the Tags Missing from your MP3 Collection

Goal: Show you how to easily fix the missing tags in your MP3 collection using free software.

The tags on an MP3 file identify things like the Song Title, Recording Artist, Album Name, Genre, Track Number, etc. When you buy songs from places like the iTunes Music Store or MP3.com these tags are complete.

Some of the songs in your iTunes library may have incomplete tags. This typically happens when you get your songs from peer-to-peer networks sources that are “slightly less than legal”. Now, I know none of you would do that, but maybe a “friend” might.

The songs below have the Song Name, Artist, and Album tags, but are missing the Genre, Year, Track Number, and Album Art.

Here’s how we fix this problem.
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Music, Software, Tutorials FixTunes, how-to, iTunes, mp3, Music, tags, Tutorials, Video

Putting Your New Server to Work

Goal: Use the server that you set up in the previous article to perform helpful tasks such as backing up computers on your network, storing media files in a central location, share one printer with every computers computer in the house.

In the previous article you learned you to set up the VNC software to remote control your server from another computer. Now that you have your basic server up and running, here are some of the fun things that we’re going to learn how to do:

• Share files between computers
• Run backups of the computers on your network
• Function as a print server so that all of your computers can share one computer
• Operate as a dedicated BitTorrent server to download and upload files
• Configure a Professional Testing Server for Web Development
• And a few other ideas

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Software, Tutorials how-to, network, server, Software, Tutorials

Using Free Software and Equipment that you Already Own

Goal: Provide instructions to turn an old computer into a server that you can control remotely and use for various handy purposes.

Assumptions: You have, or can an old computer that is no longer used and a basic router for your home network.

So let’s say you hit the technology jackpot and score yourself a shiny new super computer. (OK, maybe just a plain old new computer.) Congratulations! Now, after you get over the initial euphoria of setting up your new workhorse, you might start wondering what to do with your faithful old friend. (OK, annoying old dinosaur.)

Should you…..

• Throw it out? – NO
• Give it away? – Come on
• Donate it to charity? – Even poor kids don’t want that thing
• Take it out to a field and give it an Office Space style beatdown like Peter, Michael Bolton, and Samir did to that printer. (Fun, but we can do better.)

Let’s take that doddering old codger and breathe some new life into it.

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Software, Tutorials Productivity, Software, Technology, Tutorials