Gadgets, Computers and Internet Blog – Net Catalogue

I was introduced to computers back in the good old days of 1992 – with a back -n – white monitor and 512 MB Hard Disk Drive driven PC. I just played the Packman game all the time then. I was still in college and when I reached university standard – the technology as it is has developed by leaps and bounds. Now came the printer. After finishing my graduation – and looking after all the option – I took up a job in an entertainment service center ( that offered virtual reality games, bowling, and many more) as a Customer Care Executive which was still an alien name to Indian business world. Due to my affinity with computers and my diploma in multimedia, my main responsibility at the job was to make t-shirt  with the clients photo pasted on it instantly and the idea was also very new to India.

Although I handled computers and had training in the field – I was still not very good with printing technology. I just knew from my training that there were two types of printers at that time – dot-matrix and inkjet printers (laser printers came to market much later) . While dot-matrix required ink and ribbons, the inkjet required  ink cartridges. So when my boss asked me what printer to buy for the business, I couldn’t give a definitive answer. What I said was – buy an inkjet printer as it was easy to operate and should be suitable for photo printing. But I didn’t know which of the three ( HP, Epson and Lexmark) brands available to buy! After consulting the experts we decided to buy the Epson inkjet. Now arose another problem as I had no idea how many photo we could print with Epson ink cartrides as they were quite costly at that time.

It was a time before even Google was born! There have been many years that have gone by.Technologies improved beyond recognition, new innovations have been made – but till now I am sure that there is nothing beyond an Epson inkjet printer that could give better photo quality than its competitors. I don’t even think that modern day laser printers can defeat Epson about photo printing. May be there are  better options – but my past experiences have given me such satisfaction that I can’t think of anything else – which might be called loyalty that Epson has earned from me. Of- course I am only talking here about photo printing! There might be many better options than Epson in other printing jobs.

I want readers to suggest their own experiences through comments.

Cheers

In tension about missing fonts? Don’t worry. You can establish your system again by reinstalling the necessary fonts and deleting the unnecessary ones.

 Renew Fonts: – The following fonts should remain installed on each and every computer.

‘Courier new’, ‘Arial’ and ‘Times New Remain’ (True Type in each case including the variations ‘Bold’, ‘Italic’ and ‘Bold Italic’) as well as ‘symbol’ and ‘Wingdings’ as True Type , and ‘MS Serif’ and ‘MS Sans Serif’. It is possible to renew the system fonts quickly: Starts the windows setup- it replaces the missing or system files that are changed automatically.

 Add Fonts: – Under Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, you are able to add or to delete fonts as an administrator. For reinstalling a missing font from a removable disk, open ‘Start/Run’ and type ‘%windir%\fonts”. When you have typed the command mentioned, click on ‘Ok’. Open ‘File/Install New Font’ and under ‘Drives’, select the removable disk with the fonts you desire. Open the relevant folder and click on the font you wish to add. To select several fonts one by one, keep the ‘Ctrl’ key pressed while clicking on the icons.

 You are to activate now the ‘copy fonts in the font folder’ check box. Click on ‘Ok’.

 Delete Fonts: – For deleting fonts entirely from the hard disk, open the font folder as described above. Select the fonts you wish to delete and click on ‘File/ Delete’. Answer the security question ‘Are you sure you want to delete this fonts?’ by clicking ‘Yes’ button.

 If you wish that a font will not be loaded next time while starting your computer, just move the font from ‘Fonts’ to a different folder. You can apply this method for error handling while it is not possible to delete the font.

In this cyber world life has become faster than ever. This tremendously faster life is complimented by social networking as a means to keep pace with life and at the same time keep in touch with friends or even make new friends. Though the term ‘social network’ sounds fine, it can be a matter of peril if unwisely and desperately handled. Let’s make some effort to search for some useful social networking sites.

Most probably Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace is the world’s most popular and recognizable social networking site. In India it is Orkut that rules the roots. According to demographic chart, Orkut’s 17% members are from India. This is second after Brazil. Though there are plenty of social networking sites, Orkut ranks at the top of its reliability and popularity.

Sites for general purpose:-

Face book: – Beginning in the year of 2004, initially only for Harvard Students as an online yearbook, later on this site extended its memberships to other universities, high schools, and then general people. Search can be made for friends by school, city or working location. It can allow you to make connection with previous friends, classmates, colleagues etc. For this specialty the site has gained huge popularity in a short time and crossed more than 60 million members. Its major features are photo/video sharing, public massage board and messaging. These are similar to MySpace. Though Facebook has a number of specifications it carries some potential risks. Last year Facebook’s Becon advertising scheme allowed online purchases visible by other members. That caused a hue and cry because the members objected of being transformed in to uncompensated products endorsers. Don’t worry! To prevent such embarrassing situation, you can use Facebook’s security setting to set a proper level of privacy guard wall. Orkut has also established this privacy protection this year.

Linkedin:-
Whereas MySpace and Facebook deal with fans and friends, Linkedin can help promote one’s business career. It has ranked itself supreme among its about 20 million members. Like other social networking sites, Linkedin also needs your profile to be posted. Unlike other sites Linkedin gives priority to your professional career, education status, professional skill, employment history, awards etc. It shows how and why you will be contacted. To get maximum benefits from this site you need to post your briefs as you do in your Curriculum Vitae. For posting your CV any where you sometimes need recommendations. While many online members will write recommendations about you, you will decide which one you will enclose for your profile. When you will have more positive recommendations, you will be preferred to the prospective employers. If you wish to receive recommendation, you need to consider writing recommendations for you without waiting for anyone to answer you.

Twitter: –
Unlike MySpace and Facebook, Twitter works in a different way. It has a real-time personal posting which is called tweets. Each one is limited to maximum 140 characters.

When you have completed sign up, you must study the ever checking updated pages- for seeing the multiple ways people are using twitters and for finding interesting Twitterers on the site. You can use Twitter to search through your e-mails for finding whether anyone there is already a Twitterer. Other user may follow you respective tweets. While you are not with your computer, Twitter allows you sending and receiving tweets on your mobile phone via SMS or via Twitter’s mobile site.

Sites for special purpose:-

As it is very difficult to find any particular item in a crowded market it is practically impossible to find any special interest item in a general big website. There lies the need of special purpose websites. Now-a-days thousands of special purpose sites have been developed to allow you to find your required needs.

Ning:-
If you are unable to find your required community on the web, you can build your own according to your choice. Ning allows you in creating a social network using its domain name. You will get the option for profile page, video/photo sharing and discussion forum. Whenever the custom network is complete, anyone, not only the Ning members, can find it in the directory of Ning by its keyword tag cluster. Creating a social network in Ning requires only a couple of minutes. You need a name with the domain name at the end of it (name.ning.com). When you have entered the description of the network, you need to put several keyword tags. Then insert one icon image. That’s all.

Sites based on taste:-

LibraryThing:-
The site LibraryThing will allows you to catalog the index of your library. You can share your preferences in respect of reading with other users. Plenty of users share your reading taste and will be ready for an online discussion. Right now about 3, 33,000 people are subscribers of libraryThing.

QLoud:-
This one is designed for music search services. You are able to search for songs, artists, albums etc. With QLoud you can see a lot of tracks on the site. You can choose any track and save to your e-mail. You may narrow down your search for any specific song or music or you can search for the listener of the same song from the library. As a social networking site, QLoud will also allow you to share the music taste with a lot of people as you do in MySpace or Facebook.

To plan a schedule within a group, the Google Calendar is the best. If you want to synchronize the schedules with the content of your calendar in outlook, you need to use such a tool that synchronizes the data automatically. For this purpose, you can download the free program ‘Google Calendar Sync’ from “http://dl.google.com/googlecalendarsync/googlecalendarsync_installer.exe. It needs Windows XP or Vista with Outlook 2003 or 2007. If you are using another tool for synchronizing, you should first install it.

 When you have installed Google Calendar Sync, you will see the configuration dialog box. Now you need to enter the username and password of your account. Then in the ‘Sync options’ selection, select how the data will be synchronized. In order to have a complete the synchronization, select the option “2-way”. This way you can make sure the data in the both calendars is always the same. If you select “1 way: Google Calendar to Microsoft outlook Calendar” you will make sure that all changes in the Google Calendar are also made in the locally in the outlook calendar. Similarly, “1 way: Microsoft outlook calendar to Google calendar” makes sure that all entries in outlook are also automatically accepted in the Google calendar.

         Now you are to state in minutes how often the synchronization should take place. When you click on ‘Save’ the first synchronization takes place. The synchronization always takes the primary calendar into account only. In order to make later access, there is another icon in the system tray whose contest menu you may use for starting the synchronization manually. Now exit the tool or modify the configuration.