You Can Fix It

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of USC. All opinions are 100% mine.

When the economy is in a rough patch a good idea is to go back to school. We want you to get program information for the USC Rossier School of Education’s MAT@USC offers current educators and aspiring teachers the prestige of earning a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from an elite research university with the convenience and flexibility of studying online. This is even better as teaching is one of those professions that is understaffed all across the nation. There can never be enough good math and science teachers and this is a great way to have a highly interactive online learning combined with field-based experiences. The Rossier and the MAT@USC were awarded by AACTE for innovative use of technology in education. Right now you can earn a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from an internationally renowned research institution with a 100-year history of educating teachers to be agents of change. This is a great opportunity to learn from distinguished USC faculty recognized for their contributions to modern education. Imagine that you could use this to become a Full USC student status and all the benefits from that association. This is not just a satellite program as you will have participation in commencement ceremonies and free lifetime Alumni Association memberships. Do not miss this opportunity to become part of the elite USC Trojan Family.

We only have a couple of users that are running Office 2010. The interface is pretty slick and if you have used Office 2007 it is an easy transition. One of the neat features we like is the saving of documents using thumbnails so they are easily identified. There is a lot of advancements for 2010 but this one is a quick deploy and most users have seemed to welcome the change. When we deployed 2007 there was a lot of hue and cry about the ribbon and missing the toolbar. We feel that our users have adapted and this is no longer an issue.

We think that if you have many documents in a folder, it is hard to figure out which document is the one are looking for. In 2010 you can display your documents with a thumbnail, this makes them easier when searching for and it is super to set up.

Most of our users have folders that are full with documents. Changing to the thumbnail actually becomes a very useful way for identifying what a document is about.

Open your word document.
Go to File
Save As.
Save As window, will open
Check Save Thumbnail
Click Save.

Then when you are in your documents folder, right click in an empty space
choose View Extra large icons.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Haagen Dazs. All opinions are 100% mine.

Haagen-Dazs has new episodes of the Passion Profiles. The tagline is everyone has a passion that feeds their creativity. Haagen-Dazs wants everyone to have a passion for style, for flavor, for life. If you have not heard of the PASSION PROFILES, this is an original online series featuring some of Canada’s most intriguing personalities. The PASSION PROFILES, is a talk-show that looks at unique and rare glimpse at the authentic and demanding passions that define some of Canada’s finest Chefs, Designers and Musicians. You cannot help as a viewer to be intrigued, inspired and entertained. When you see that it is hosted by ET Canada’s Cheryl Hickey you will see that is both the quality of the broadcast as well as the star power involved. PASSION PROFILES will take you into the lives Canada’s most entertaining personalities giving you stories from their lives and insights to inspire viewers. Everyone knows that Cheryl Hickey has her own passion for entertainment, style and people, as she gets up close and personal with some of the hottest names around. Coming up on September 8, 2010 Musician Jann Arden will be airing on an episode of the PASSION FILES. It makes you want to show your passion like ours for technology. We eat sleep and drink the stuff and can never get enough of it. You should visit www.passionfiles.ca and take a deeper look at the PASSION PROFILES series.

We have many users with corrupt pst files as it is a fairly common occurrence. We use the Microsoft utilities when it happens. They are called the Inbox Repair Tool and the Oversized OST and PST Crop Utility. First you need to make a backup of even the corrupted file. The Inbox Repair Tool does not always work on every PST file. It attempts to repairs the PST file’s header and then deleting anything in the file that it doesn’t understand. So if a PST file’s header is damaged, but if the data within the file is corrupt, the Inbox Repair Tool will likely destroy what’s left of the file. That’s why it’s always good to make a backup of the PST file before running the Inbox Repair Tool. We usually have the most success using the Oversized PST and OST Crop Utility. The crop utility works by deleting about 25 MB of data from the file to bring the file back within specs. Use this tool as a last resort, because you can’t control what data you lose when using it. Because of its destructive nature, the tool is unavailable for download. You can only acquire the tool by calling Microsoft’s Product Support Service line at 800-936-4900. Microsoft charges about $200 for calls to this number, and when you call, an operator will ask you for a credit card number. According to numerous sources, if you explain to the operator that you just need a copy of the Oversized PST And OST Crop Utility, but don’t need help using the tool, you can get the tool without being billed. You can get more detailed information from Microsoft by reading these Knowledge Base articles: Q197315 and Q296088.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of faceVsion Technology USA. All opinions are 100% mine.

The cost of sending sales on junkets is getting more expensive. As a small business you cannot afford those high price points of video conferencing solutions from the major brands, like Polycom, Tandberg, and Radvision. The other side is when you are trying to make sales using low quality of video calling experience could impact on the results for video conferencing. We have been looking at the faceVision on line store at the faceVsion FV Express Combo as it is the most affordable high quality personal HD video conferencing solution for all. We know that consumer graded HD webcams, such as Microsoft Cinema and Logitech Pro 9000, sold in the market cannot stream high resolution quality over Internet. We know that HD quality internet video calls using these models cannot transfer over the internet. The best route to keep cost down and use faceVsion Technology USA. The FV Express Combo product will keep both finance and sales happy. We think the FV Express Combo HD Video Conferencing solution will enable sales to perform at the highest level. They will only need a Google Gmail account and FV Express Combo, they will then have the power to make HD video calls over the internet. Right now there is an on-going promotion with $10 off any purchase, using the promo code of FVTBTS2 while checkout act fast as this ends on 09/30/10. You can get your FV Express Combo or check it out as it is available through shop.facevsion.com and other value added partners.

This is question we get a lot since the roll out of Windows 7 gadgets. Most are freely available from the Windows Live Gallery. Most of the time our users have wanted to load them from independent sources. The download of Windows 7 gadgets from the Windows Live Gallery, install much easier and you may usually only need to click an Install button after the Download.

First you need to Execute the downloaded GADGET file. Windows 7 gadget files end in the GADGET file extension and will open with the Desktop Gadgets application. Click on the Install button. Windows 7 gadgets that are created by third party developers that do not meet Microsoft’s identify verification requirements but this does not necessarily mean that there is any security concern.

Depending on the Windows 7 gadget you installed to the desktop, there may be certain options that need configuring like gadget opacity, number of CPUs to monitor, or type, size. We have also had success installing some gadgets on Vista machines using a Vista Gadget installer.

Remember you can remove a gadget from the Windows 7 desktop, the gadget is still available to Windows, it’s just not installed on the desktop. To add a previously installed gadget back to the Windows 7 desktop, just right-click anywhere on the desktop and click on Gadgets. A window will appear showing all available Windows 7 gadgets. Just drag the gadget you want to the desktop.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hampton Hotels. All opinions are 100% mine.

Check this out right now Hampton Hotels is running a Chain-of-Friends contest. It is called Hampton Chain of Friends Sweepstakes and the Grand Prize; will receive a free stay for themselves and one hundred of their friends at a Hampton for one whole weekend. The winner will also receive $5000 to help pay the tax for the weekend. Can you imagine having an entire hotel full of all our crazy friends? We though it would be a great way to have a family reunion as we have been spread out all over the country and have not seen some relative in quite some time. Then we thought how about doing it up big and having the best non-wedding bachelor guy weekend ever. We could create a couple of night outs and have a ball painting the town red and it could be where we do not sleep until it is time to leave. The sweepstakes is open to everyone, not just those that are Hilton Honors members, or those that have previously stayed at a Hampton. We think this one of those contests everyone must enter. Because if you win, it would be a weekend you would never forget. We have stayed at Hampton Hotels in the past and have been very happy staying there. What are you waiting for sign up today?

We wanted to create a general list of things a server administrator needs to do to add a new user to active directory. This would be in the case that Server admin is out how a new user can be added by Desktop Support I who has Exchange Server rights. This will need to follow the strong password rules as well as make sure all created SMTP addresses are added.

This first thing is to log inot the correct server either Exchange Server or Domain Controller it odes not matter. You will want to run Active Directory Users & Computers.

Choose All Users, Contacts, and Groups are in each container

You will need to Right-click Users and select New User, you could also add a computer if you were building a machine without a user assigned.

The box will appear for information Enter the new users first and last name. This will populate the login box for what they will have a username be careful this follows your convention.

The Display name can be changed as well as the email address this must be done before you click finish or you might as well delete the user and start over.

The next step is it will ask if you want to create an Exchange mailbox for this account.
The last step is to add the user to right groups for your organization.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of TonyT. All opinions are 100% mine.

Who does not have Weight Loss Wishes? The winter is coming and it is the worst time to keep off added weight. First, as the weather gets colder, you are outside less so your activity slows down. The leading suppliers of HCG in North America is going to help. HCG Drops Direct has helped thousands upon thousands of people that have lost weight that they had fought to lose for years to by following the HCG weight loss protocol. We have been reading the HCG Testimonials and it seems this would be a good helper to the limited activity and missed trips to the gym. If you are inside during the winter, you will eat more. The holiday season includes belly busters Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. This means that for the next four months there are days where you will eat too much and gain weight. We have set a goal of getting ten pounds lighter then we are today by Jan. 15, 2011. This is trying to take into account these special over eating days and the lack of activity as winter sets in. If you are interested HCG Drops Direct sells the complete protocol, this includes a recipe book, written by an award winning culinary expert and a weight loss tracking chart. These times of the year are always tough so having a plan is a start and trying to start in January could be too late.

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We have a sendmail server and everyone can never remember how to navigate. We always are calling each other or asking out loud the commands. So here a few of them put down on paper.

First of all these files are located under /etc/mail

access gets “compiled” into access.db Controls who is allowed to relay through the host. Also provides SPAM control

local-host-names Read by Sendmail at startup, ID’s all the domains/hosts that Sendmail should consider “Local”

virtusertable compiled into virtusertable.db Provides aliasing for entire domains.

aliases Used to redirect mail from one name to another. So email A can be redirected to email B or email C. You can create a simple mailing list like this:
mylist: email user a, email user b, email user c
Note that the left-hand key always has a trailing colon. The right-hand key can be an entire email address: somewhere@nowhere.com or just a single name.

sendmail.cf is the control file for Sendmail. You don’t ever want to change anything directly in this file!
sendmail.mc is a “macro” file that’s used to add or remove features from Sendmail. After changing the Macro file, the Sendmail.cf file must be rebuilt.

Stop-start-restart Sendmail:
/sbin/service Sendmail stop | start | restart
“Tail” the log file:
tail –f /var/log/maillog
the “-f” causes the tail utility to “follow” the file until you CTRL-C. Leave out the “-f” and you’ll get the last 20 lines or so of the file.

vi invokes the vi editor.
: takes you to command mode
:0 go to top of file
:$ go to end of file
CTRL-B scroll backwards
CTRL-F scroll forewards
:q! quit without prompting for changes
:wq write file then quit

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.

Do you have a cell phone and are paying what feels like a fortune for bad service? If have answered yes then you should think about making a switch. You need to look into the Boost Mobile and their Reboost program. The biggest selling point is Boost Mobile’s flexible payment options as now you can pay on-line, in-person, or pay by phone. Re-Boost will also let you use your debit or credit card to make a payment or sign-up for worry-free automatic payments. Here is another great feature if you are sending you child of to school they also allow friends or family member to make payments for a Boost Mobile customer. If you think the phones are not up to par then think again as the Boost Mobile phones are also very social. They will be happy they can update their Facebook and Twitter accounts simple and easy. If you have not seen the phone available you need to check it out. They have Blackberry and Samsung phones with all the latest features and options. When you think Boost Mobile you will have nationwide web access, 3G/EVDO access, no roaming charges, and all telecom taxes are included. The activation process is a few simple steps and you can be making calls in minutes.

We needed a way to make sure computers that can be used 24 hour a day in our open areas can be updated. We have set up a system where these machines cannot be accessed during certain hours on a rolling scheduled. We found this way from the parental controls added to Windows 7. This is a way to lock the computer from users for certain days and hours of the day at any given time.

There must be account that these user log into these machine straight boot using PowerToy Tweakui. You set this up as the administrator of the machine.
Click the Start button and got to the Control Panel.

When the control panel pops up, choose Set up parental controls for any user.
Click the user account that you want to set time limit.

Click On the enforce current settings button in the next step to turn on Parental Controls for that user.
Now, the Time limits option is visible, click on it to change the setting.

Hold the left-mouse and drag the hours you want the hours you want to block. Click on OK to save settings.

We set theses five machines one each night to be logged off and get windows update, and virus updates at least we know it can happen once a week

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Lillilooloodotcom. All opinions are 100% mine.

There are so many aspects to Outlook and the use of contacts. It seems every day somebody is looking for a how to do this. Today we find that a department would like to add a column to help with cold call and mailing lists. So this question was how they add a custom field to a contact. This is not as easy as it sounds as they want to be able to sort using it as well. We fixed up some instructions in case you run into the same type of situation.

In Contacts, on the View menu, point to Arrange By, point to Current View, and then click Phone List.

Create the new field.
On the View menu, point to Arrange By, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.
Click Fields.

Click New Field and enter the information you want.

In Phone List view, select the new field, and then use Move Up and Move Down to specify the display order.

It is as simple as that of course as all fixes in Outlook it has been trial and error and trying everything once. These things are coming from the sales and the business office as we have spent what seems like hours working on contacts, mail merges and auto responses.

We have had a couple of weeks dealing with contacts and salesmen. We wanted to make sure we have all these posted because we think this is going to happen every three months. We like to make sure if we have done it once we never need to search it again. We think if there is ever a break in the action we may turn this into a company wide intranet or self-help wiki. The problem is still going to happen as even them they will not use the system and it will be our problem. This is sue came up when sales now has contact lists they want to be able to schedule intradepartmental meetings. Today we look at send a meeting request to one of your contacts.

In Contacts, click the contact or to send a meeting request to multiple contacts, select multiple contacts by pressing CTRL while clicking the contacts.

Choose the Actions menu; click New Meeting Request to Contact. Alternatively, you can right click on the contact & choose New Meeting Request to Contact to create the meeting request.
In the Subject box, type a description.
In the Location box, enter the location.
Enter start and end times.
Select any other options you want.
Click Send.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of faceVsion Technology USA. All opinions are 100% mine.

We cannot tell you how important good video quality is when you chat. That is why we recommend faceVsion as the new standard. We want true HD quality Skype video calls via FV touchcam N1 as the alternative is a disaster. We tried to have a Skype session using a low quality camera it was choppy and the audio was ahead of the video the whole time. Most so-called HD webcams sold in the market cannot stream true HD quality over Internet, such as Microsoft Cinema and Logitech Pro 9000. Users cannot achieve HD quality internet video calls using these models. Their HD quality can only be accomplished locally. FV touchcam N1is the first Internet streaming true HD webcam for Skype video calls the benefits of having the H.264 hardware encoder built in Touchcam N1. This chipset is the key to accomplish true HD quality video calls over Internet. There are great deals right now at the faceVision on line store and right now they are running a back to school promotion with $10 off any purchase, using the promo code of FVTBTS2 while checkout. The promotion ends 09/30/10. FV touchcam is available through shop.facevsion.com and other value added partners. The N1 also features a best-in-class 78 degree super wide angle lens with fast auto-focus, so several people can comfortably get into the picture. The N1 attaches easily to most notebook computers or flat-panel displays and can also sit on a desktop. There is also the feature of an easy plug-and-play installation via hi-speed USB 2.0. you also might want to check out the FV ExpressCombo but rest assured if you are looking for Internet streaming true HD webcam FaceVsion is a leader.

Staying on the theme of contacts as the issue around the office has reached senior management level. The idea is to create a contact list of customers from every salesperson contact list. We needed to come up with instruction for exporting contacts.

The Export Wizard in Outlook makes it easy to export contact information from Outlook into an Excel worksheet.

In Outlook, on the File menu, click Import and Export.
Click Export to a file, and then click Next.
Click Microsoft Excel, and then click Next.
In the folder list, click the Contacts folder, and then click Next.
Browse to the folder where you want to save the contacts as an Excel file (.xls).
Type a name for the exported file, and then click OK.
Click Next.

To add or remove fields to determine the way the contact information is saved in the new Excel worksheet, click Map Custom Fields.
In the From box, drag the field you want to convert onto the Outlook field that is listed in the To box.
To see additional records in the From box, click Previous or Next.
To remove all mapping, click Clear Map.
To reset the original mapping, click Default Map.
Click Finish.

Now you can open this excel we created on list by adding the lines from each salesperson excel sheets.

This week we have seen the number of words in a document questions come through. This was due to a management proposal that every team writes 1000 words on what they do to present to shareholders. This was a novel idea and a way for people to show what their expected role is in their eyes. That is probably enough of the politics of working at this company. while you type. Office Word 2007 can count the following Pages, Paragraphs, Lines, and Characters, either including or excluding the spaces.In older versions you needed to pull from a menu. In Windows XP there is an actual pull down menu item for a word count. This has been greatly enhanced in 2007. When you type in a document, Office Word 2007 automatically counts the number of pages and words in your document and displays them on the status bar at the bottom of the page you are typing. You can also count the number of words in a selection or selections, rather than all of the words in a document. The selections don’t need to be next to each other for you to count them. If you select the text that you are working on, and what it want counted it is a simple process. The status bar then will only count the word within the block you selected. This also is going to be displayed in the lower status bar. This saved these folks a lot of time and is a great improvement over 2003. It was pain staking like every move with 2007 as the questions kept coming in how do you find the word count. The user feels kind of silly when the number was right in front of them the whole time.