Aspiring or experienced web developers who utilize the Microsoft Visual Studio/Express ASP.Net development tools now have another learning tool at their disposal. Microsoft has launched their new How Do I Video Center for ASP.Net developers. This site is targeted at beginners, but experienced developers may be able to pick up a trick or two. These video range [...]

The Windows Indexing Service, if you are not familiar with it, basically “pre-emptively” scans all files and folders on your computer ahead of time, so when you run a search the performance is faster. While this is a good idea in theory, it really dampers performance and can cause system issues. Unless you search for [...]

StumbleUpon seems to be a very popular site. While I have never personally invested any time looking at the site, I read about it nearly everywhere. Most of the time when I hear about StumbleUpon, it is in reference to the Firefox plugin, however by sheer happenstance, I stumbled upon (ha) a StumbleUpon plugin for [...]

First of all, I should mention I am heavily opposed to fairly recent trend of sites opening a new browser window when linking to another site. If I want to open the link in another window, I’ll open it in another window. With my rant out of the way, sometimes it is absolutely essential that you be [...]

Something really interesting I ran across today is a video on how to make a USB lamp. This is actually rather clever as they make a lamp powered by a USB cable using only 2 CD’s, a paper cup, a paper lamp shade, 2 small wires, and of course, a light bulb. The video is [...]

If you have a business of any size, you really consider registering it with Google Local. In addition to the obvious benefit of being listed in a Google Local search, you also have your registered address saved as a location in Google Maps. This way when a user types “your business name” into a Google [...]

Typically when you save office files, you probably place them in the My Documents folder (or on your desktop). However, if you are constantly saving to or opening from an alternate location, such as a network location you can configure this location to be available in your Microsoft Office (2000/XP/2003) favorites bar. This article on LockerGnome explains [...]

First off, the topic of an Internet phone is almost too much of a “loaded” tip, but I thought I would spread the benefits of it anyway in a brief, tip-like manner. Many of you may current be using, or tried Skype in the past, but it goes without saying, this is a fantastic program. Basically [...]

Do you remember when you beat Solitaire on Windows and all the cards bounce off the screen, leaving a “trail” behind them as they go, eventually filling up the screen? Well, Paintbrush offers the functionality to create this same leave behind trail effect with an image. Here is how you do it: Open an image and [...]

If you have a Gmail account, odds are you have several gigabytes of storage available (which you, realistically, will probably never use). Take advantage of this freely available online space by using it to backup files to with Gmail Drive. Gmail Drive is a free tool which creates another drive available in My Computer which you can use [...]

While on the topic of Notepad, I figured it is only appropriate if I make yet another suggestion for a replacement program. In the past I have pointed to both EditPad and jEdit as a simple text editor and programmer’s editor, respectively. Today, I am referring to another popular program which does a good job [...]

If you use Notepad as one of your primary text editors, a trick you might not know about is configuring a text file in Notepad to log the date and time of changes. The previous link explains exactly how to do, and as you can see, it is very easy. While I find this to [...]

If you ever have a need to send and receive faxes and do not want to make the investment in the hardware and perhaps a phone line, then doing faxing through email probably fits your situation. If you are looking for such as service then take a look at EFax. They offer a free service which [...]

In my organization I am constantly doing development work in Visual Studio and PHP. While VS is an excellent product for Windows development, it only supports the Microsoft development languages and not PHP. Well, the other day, I stumbled across VS.Php which integrates the PHP language inside the fantastic VS IDE. While you do not [...]

Now that I am looking at having to upgrade all our companies machines to Windows Vista from Windows XP, I have really been looking for a way to make the transition as painless as possible. My biggest concern, of course, is maintaining data and preventing loss of any kind. Of course I am doing backups, but [...]