A problem with instant messaging is that it can be tough to get the same screen name on all services you use. Most people these days choose to employ the use of a multi-protocol instant messaging program such as Digsby, Trillian, Miranda, Adium or Pidgin, and having all those different names can be aggravating for others to remember. You can, however, use your email address as your screen name for just about every single IM service there is.

Before telling you how this is done per each service, there are a few things to bear in mind.

The email address you choose as your screen name must be one that you own and use regularly. In other words, don’t use your work email address.

Don’t use an email address that is "tied" to your ISP, because at some point in the future you may change ISPs.

Try to use an address that doesn’t have any dots, dashes or underscores in it. If you can’t do that, that’s understandable, but be aware that some IM services won’t permit usernames that contain characters like that.

How to register your email address as your screen name in..

MSN/Windows Live

1. Go to www.live.com.
2. Click the Sign in link at top right.
3. Click the Sign up button on the left.
4. The first field will be Use your e-mail address. Proceed from there.

AIM

1. Go to www.aim.com.
2. Click Get a screen name at top right.
3. Choose Use an existing email address as a Screen Name. Proceed from there.

Google Talk

This one takes a few hoops to jump thru to get this working, but can be done.

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. Click the Sign in link at top right.
3. Click Create an account now at bottom right.
4. Use your current email address as your screen name on the next page and continue sign-up.

The hoops you have to jump thru at this point are that after you’ve created your Google account, you will need to also create a Gmail account in order to use the Google Talk service. Once you’ve finished signing up, go to www.google.com/accounts and add in the Gmail service. Yes, you will have to create an Gmail account "on top of" your Google account, but both will be "tied" together afterward. Then people can start sending you instant messages via your Google Talk account.

Yahoo!

This IM service doesn’t allow the creation of accounts using your email address, however, being that MSN/Live accounts and Yahoo! accounts can interact with each other easily, all anybody has to do is send you messages to your MSN/Live account via the Yahoo! service and you will receive them, so the creation of an additional Yahoo! screen name isn’t necessary.

Advantages of using your email address as your screen name

1. It’s guaranteed to be available.

In order to use an email address as a screen name, it must be validated on sign-up by sending a confirmation email to that address. What this means is that the only person who could use your email address as a screen name is you, so it’s guaranteed to be available.

2. It eliminates a lot of confusion.

One screen name for all your IM services you use is mighty convenient. It’s also easy not only for you but for the people you chat with.

3. It makes it easy for people to know what your email address is.

Your email address is your screen name, so those you chat with don’t even have to remember what your email address is, because it’s already in their contact/buddy list.

Disadvantages of using your email address as your screen name

1. It makes it easy for people to know what your email address is.

Yes, this is listed as an advantage but it can serve to be a disadvantage, because maybe there’s certain folks you don’t want knowing your email address.

2. Slight possibility of confusion.

If your screen name is you@hotmail.com, and a contact wants to communicate with you over AIM, you may have to convince them, "Yes, that is my screen name. Seriously. It does work. It’s not just MSN/Live." People aren’t used to seeing a screen name as an email address.

3. You will have to tell everybody to switch over to your new IM screen name(s).

There’s no way around this unfortunately. However when you do get everybody to know your new screen names, it’s well worth it.

Why bother doing this at all?

Ultimately it’s the most convenient way to handle your email and IM communications. Everything is centralized around one screen name. The best part is that you don’t have to radically shift around anything. You can still use the same email and the same IM clients you’ve always used. The only thing changing here is your screen name and nothing else.

And as stated above, nobody on your buddy/contact list has to hunt for your email address. They know what it is right up front.

In fact, if you used this in concert with your social networking profiles (which all have the ability to find contacts by email address,) this even furthers the convenient use of your email address as your one screen name.

Who would have guessed that the email address was the best screen name all along?

This guide is for anybody that has a whole bunch of files, be they photos, MP3s, documents or any other type of file you have that needs quick-sorting by date at a glance.

There is only one right way to put the date in a file name. When I say "date in a file name" I mean that the actual title of the file has the date in it.

The format you must use for proper date formatting every time is:

1. Four-digit year
2. Dash
3. Two digit month or single digit month with leading zero
4. Dash
5. Two digit day of month or single digit day of month with leading zero
6. Underscore
7. Description of file in lowercase letters with words separated by underscores (optional, but more compliant)

Here’s an example:

2009-03-27_my_document.doc

Now I’m going to explain why this is the proper date formatting structure for file names.

Four-digit year

You do this so as not to confuse a year with a month. If you have a date written as 08-07-08, is that August 7, 2008 or 8 July, 2008? You can’t tell.

"That doesn’t matter, I always use month/day/year."

It does matter because not everybody uses month/day/year.

Two digit month or single digit month with leading zero

A two digit month is each enough to understand. For example, December is 12.

A single digit month, like May, is 5. But you don’t write it like that. You add in a leading zero so it’s written as 05.

Why?

Because some operating systems will not list files in proper numeric order without the leading zero. Windows XP and all previous versions prior to it do this.

Example: You have 10 DOC files from 0 to 10. The single digits have no leading zeroes on them.

This will show in XP in Windows Explorer as:

0.doc
1.doc
10.doc
2.doc
3.doc
4.doc
5.doc
6.doc
7.doc
8.doc
9.doc

Note the 1 and the 10 are right on top of each other. Why does XP do this? Because 1 comes after 0, before 2 and all other numbers. XP is only going by the first character it "sees."

Even Windows Vista and 7 still do this when listing files outside the Windows Explorer interface (such as a File/Open dialog box.)

Second example: 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10

All these numbers will be listed in proper order. 0 always comes before 1, and even with the way Windows lists files, it absolutely will not get this "wrong"; that’s why you do it.

Two digit day of month or single digit day of month with leading zero

You do this for the exact same reason as for the month.

Underscore

The underscore (this character: _) is necessary because the dates uses dashes already. Using underscores gives a clean visual cue as to what’s a descriptor and what’s a date.

In addition, you use underscores because trying to send a file over the internet with a literal space in it results in a %20, or just fails on attempt to transfer. A replacement must be used for the space to avoid this. Underscore is it.

Description of file in lowercase letters with words separated by underscores

As said above, this is optional. You use lowercase just in case you ever have to upload this from a command line via FTP. Where case of letters is involved, mistakes can be made easily – especially if it’s a long file title. If you know all the letters are lowercase, this decreases typing mistakes significantly.

Why Year/Month/Day and not Year/Day/Month?

Year/Month/Day is proper big endian formatting and follows ISO 8601 international standard. Year/Day/Month does not. You can see more info here on that if you like.

Okay, so I know a bunch of stuff about date formatting in files now. Why should I care?

You should care for three good reasons.

First and most obvious, it will make your files easier to manage no matter what OS you use. And if you plan on sticking with XP for a while longer, this is mandatory because of the way it lists files starting with digits.

Second, being that the world is getting smaller every day, chances are you’ll be trading files with someone across the pond sooner or later, if not doing so already. Using the internationally recognized big endian standard eliminates any and all confusion as to what a date format truly represents.

Third, in addition to files being sorted properly no matter the OS you use, they will also sort properly no matter what web site you use. Using Windows SkyDrive, Google Docs, plain FTP or other means of online storage? You’ll be able to sort a whole lot easier using proper date formatting in the titles of your files.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to sort by date modified or date created?

Not necessarily because it can add in many repetitive steps.

In Windows (XP/Vista/7,) two columns that can be added via Windows Explorer are Date Modified and Date Created. However in order to see these, you have to be in Details view mode when looking at files.

Date Modified is usually there by default, but Date Created isn’t, so you have to add that in by right-clicking a column to see all that are available, then choose Date Created so it can be seen.

Example from Windows XP:

To get to this point, it took five clicks just to see this stuff.

1. View
2. Details
3. Right-click column
4. Date Created
5. Click to sort by date created

You may have to do this over and over again – particularly in XP – because this view mode may not be "remembered" by Windows. It can get very frustrating quickly.

Adding in the date to the title of the file eliminates the need to do any of this.

Where would using date formatting like this in file titles be most useful?

Three instances comes to mind:

1. Photos
2. Documents
3. Dated audio or video broadcasts

Is there ANY WAY to automate the process of renaming multiple files with the date like this?

Absolutely. The tool you need is Rename Master for Windows. Here’s how to use that software to modify as many files as you want – all at once – with their creation date at the front:

1. Launch Rename Master.

2. Remove all existing steps. This is done easily by clicking Edit then Clear Renaming Options, like this:

3. In RM, navigate to the folder where the files are. Do this by using the Folder Browser on the left of the application. If you don’t see it, press CTRL+B while using Rename Master.

4. Click the New Step button, then Add to Beginning/Ending, like this:

5. Add the following in: ?dc:FYYYY-MM-DD?_

Yes, I know that looks weird, but it works. It looks like this:

Make sure to select "at the Beginning" and "to the Name" as shown above.

6. Click the New Step button again and choose to Replace Name/Phrase, like this:

7. Set the step to look like this, and follow the steps carefully:

Next to "Replace the" we select phrase. This will enable the other fields.

In the field directly to the right of phrase, click inside and press the spacebar once to add in a space. You cannot see this in the screen shot above because a space obviously cannot be seen.

In the field directly to the right of with, type in an underscore (this character: _).

8. Click the Case & Wildcards tab, check Override configuration settings and tick the option for lowercase, like this:

9. Compare the Name to the New Name column to make sure the appropriate changes will be made.

Above is exactly what we want. The best example is "New OpenDocument Text.odt."

As you can see from the New Name column, it will be changed to:

2009-09-23_new_opendocument_text.odt

The file creation date is added using the proper date formatting. All spaces are replaced with underscores and letters that were capitalized are changed to lowercase.

After that it’s a click of this button:

(Located at the bottom of Rename Master)

..and that’s all there is to it.

Always remember to proceed carefully with the renaming of files, especially for large amounts of them. Pay close attention to the New Name column in Rename Master when using the software, because whatever you see there is exactly what the files will be renamed to verbatim. So if it looks wrong, it is wrong. Correct it before hitting that rename button at the bottom.

Final notes for Vista/7 users

As you know, file permissions are needed in order to rename files in specific places. RM may not function correctly if you try to modify files it doesn’t have proper access to. To overcome this, rename files that you have located either in a specific folder you create on the desktop or a specific folder you create in My Documents. RM should work without issue when renaming files from those locations. Just remember to create a specific folder to do it so you don’t rename anything else by mistake.

One of the best RSS feed readers out there is Google Reader. However one (very) longstanding complaint is that it has no ability to change the name of folders/tags. However there is a workaround, that being to "move" subscriptions from one tag to another. It’s sort of a long roundabout way of doing it, but it least it can be done.

Here’s how:

Above: I have two tags, that being Florida and keywords. These are two tags I custom made. I want to change keywords to tech keywords.

In Google Reader, I click Settings at the extreme top right.

On the next page I click the Subscriptions tab (in yellow-orange).

After that I type in keywords at the top right (where it says Filter by name, folder or URL).

All my subscriptions show up for that tag, like this:

On the first subscription, I click the Change folders… button and choose New Folder, title it tech keywords and click OK. The reason we do this is because the new tag must exist with at least one subscription in it before we move the others.

Now I see this for my first subscription:

Next to Select there is a link for All (in this case All 8 subscriptions since there are only 8). I click that to put a checkbox in all of them.

From the More Actions… drop-down menu I do two things:

1. Under Add to folder I choose tech keywords.
2. Under Remove from folder I choose keywords.

I click Back to Google Reader, and…

Success! I’ve "moved" all subscriptions from keywords to tech keywords.

The only thing left now is cleanup.

I click Settings, then the Folders and Tags tab, then delete the keywords tag as I’m not using it any longer.

And that’s it. Done deal.

A domain in relation to the internet is [Domain Name].[TLD], such as PCMECH.COM. The domain name itself is PCMECH. The TLD, a.k.a. Top Level Domain is the dot com. Or moreover, just com.

Generally speaking you can have up to 60 characters in a domain name before the TLD, so if you wanted..

Hi-There-This-Is-My-Domain-Name-and-I-Really-Like-It.com

..you could get it.

And by the way, the above is a 52-character domain name because the dashes do count as characters.

5 quick tips on domain names

1. Watch where you search.

Have you ever searched for a domain name to purchase and it’s snapped up FIVE SECONDS before you buy it? It’s probably because where you were searching was broadcasted out somewhere, a bot picked it up and auto-registered the domain name.

You can avoid this very annoying situation by using a domain search site that does not broadcast the search results, such as DomainTools.com.

2. Don’t use dashes.

If your domain name contains dashes it’s most likely true that you’ll have to deal with people mistyping your domain all the time. Try to avoid this.

3. If stuck for ideas, use your business name + location.

If your business name is taken as a dot-com (and it most likely is), just add your business’ location. So instead of ExampleBusiness.com it could be ExampleBusinessFlorida.com or ExampleBusinessUSA.com or ExampleBusinessUK.com and so on. You get the idea.

4. Stick with dot-com.

The internet revolves around dot-com. If you have dot-net, dot-org or dot-whatever it will not be as easy to remember.

5. When you get your domain name, register every single type of free service possible for easiest communication.

Register with AIM, Yahoo, MSN/Live, Skype, eBay, Google, MySpace, FaceBook and anything else you can think of with your newly registered name. By doing this you are branding yourself in a good way.

Granted, there is a distinct possibility you won’t be able to get them all, but try your best. Even if you never use them, register with the services regardless. You may encounter a customer, friend or what-have-you that wants to communicate in a specific way, and guess what – you’re covered.