Evernote – It’s like having those cool pants with tons of pockets.

If you live primarily out of one computer, then maybe this tip is not for you. But, if you are like me -- you find yourself browsing the web on one machine, sending email on your laptop, using your phone to do some quick research while waiting for your daughter to come out of her clarinet lesson, and then see an interesting article while troubleshooting a friend’s PC ---  then this tip is for you.

Evernote is a nifty service that makes it easy for you to aggregate, organize, find, and store all sorts of things that you find on the web, access through your computer, or smart phone. I’ve been using it for a couple months now, and I find it to be an extremely handy tool. Once you save something to your Evernote ‘notebook’, you can get to it from just about anywhere – your phone, your Mac or your PC, an internet cafe.

I learned about it from an on-line article in the New York Times - http://nyti.ms/7vCgmO . Read the article for a nice description of what it does. The quote from Evernote Chief Executive Phil Libin is what really caught my attention and imagination:

"We want to be your permanent trusted memory for the rest of your life," Mr. Libin said. "We know that people will switch to 50 different platforms and phones over the next 50 years, and we're going to be ready for each device and experience.

I am keeping all sorts of lists and notes to myself in Evernote. In the middle of the night when I am browsing the web with my little bedside mini-browser, I save articles or ideas that pique my attention. I recently set up another neat feature – I can use Twitter to DM (direct message) a note to my Evernote notebook.

The Evernote notebook interface is clean and easy to understand. Within minutes you’ll get the hang of it, and start categorizing your notes. I’ve got a new recipe category that I clip and save recipes that I find on the web – and even some old favorites that I typed in myself. No more rummaging for printed out copies. No more wondering which computer something is stored on.

Did I mention that like most really good web innovations – it’s FREE. Oh, sure there is a premium service if you are a massive storage hound, but I think that I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of my allowed free storage, and (the people at Evernote will be please to know) if I ever get to the point where I need more storage, I think I’d find this worth the monthly fee.

Check it out: www.evernote.com – Tell them that Steve sent you.

Use GMail with YOUR domain name.

Face it, nothing looks more unprofessional than running a business with a Yahoo, AOL, GMail, or Hotmail email address. It screams out, “I am too small to run with the big guys!” Now, if that is the image you are trying to project, you are all set. But if you want to foster name recognition, and take your business to the next level, you really have to consider using your domain name as your email address. The worst part of using an AOL address, or whatever is that they often have advertisements at the bottom of your email – and sometimes the ads cause your email to get tossed into the spam folder. Not good.

You have to get a domain name in the first place. Got one? Then you are all set. Need one? Your first step is to check if it is available or not. I usually go to www.whois.com and type in the domain name and click to find out if it is available or not. It it’s available, the nice people at whois will gladly sell you domain name services. At about $10 per year, it’s a pretty good service. They will also allow you to set up your email address with your domain name and forward your mail to a hotmail or gmail account, if you want. This works pretty well, however, lately I have been using another method that takes a little bit more time to set up, but I  think is worth it in the long run.

You can set up a GMail account, with all the benefits and conveniences of a web-based GMail client – and configure it such that instead of yourname@Gmail.com it is yourname@yourdomain.com. Much better. Plus you can more easily add and manage users, and the GMail client just keeps getting better. Did I mention that the service is FREE, just like a standard GMail account. Oh sure, if you need more than 7.5 GB of email storage, you can pay for a premium account, but most of us can manage to keep our email under a couple gigabytes or so.

I don’t think it is a coincidence, but if you go to www.gmail.com and try to set up an account, it is really easy to accidentally sign up for the free trial for the Premier (PAID) version. Go ahead if you want the additional benefits of the paid account, but for my needs, the free Standard account is plenty. The links change from time-to-time, but as of Feb. 2010 you can get to the free ‘Standard’ version setup by way of this link.

To get the most out of it, you need to spend a little time configuring it just right. Google provides some great step-by-step instructions, so I won’t duplicate them here – but one feature that is not immediately obvious is the ability to create an alias URL that points directly to your GMail account login. The default URL is some long and unwieldy name that you could never remember. By creating an alias, you can access your branded email by  going to mail.yourdomain.com. Hard to forget that!

So, ditch that old AOL.com email address. You’re ready for the big time.

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SPF Technology | Hardware. Software. Networks. Office or home.

Setting up Shared Printers

A home network allows more than one computer to share the same connection to the internet. The typical setup includes some sort of broadband connection to the internet, a router (maybe wireless) and more than one computer. Usually your broadband provider (cable company, Verizon, etc.) will configure the basics for you such that all of your computers can connect to the internet, but there is so much more you can do with a home network – such as sharing printers. It can be a life saver when your kid has an assignment due and their printer runs out of ink.

There are essentially two ways to share a home printer. One way is to share a printer that is connected to one of the computers on your network the other is a printer that has a network connection built in that connects directly to your network without the need to connect through a computer. The disadvantage of the first method is that the host computer must be left on all the time to allow other computers on the network to print, while with the second method, there is no host computer, so if the printer is on, you can print. When buying a new printer, you might want to consider one that is network capable – it might be worth the additional cost. But if you already have a direct-connect printer, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t share it with the rest of your network.

Sharing a directly connected printer is not that difficult. With Windows Vista and Windows 7 (Vista/7) there are a couple of extra steps as a result of the operating system’s increased security requirements that should be accomplished first.

With Vista/7 open the Network and Sharing Center (Open Control Panel – Network and Inernet – Network and Sharing Center)

Make sure your setup agrees with the highlighted items above. If your network is listed as a “Public” network – click on customize and change it to “Private”. Turning on printer sharing is self-explanatory, and you don’t want to have to enter a password every time you access the printer, so turn off password protected sharing.

At this point, sharing the printer is easy. On the computer that will be hosting the printer, from the Control Panel open Printers (Control Panel – Hardware and Sound – Printers). If the printer is not already installed, you must install it first. Right click the printer you want to share and select “Sharing”. On the resulting “Sharing” tab select “Share this printer” and enter a Share name. If you enter a name with spaces in it you may get a warning that the printer name is not compatible with earlier versions of Windows. You can safely ignore that question. Practically no one is using such an old version of Windows (or DOS!) that would require a ‘space-less’ printer name.

Now all that is left is to install the printer on the other computers around the house. From Control Panel – Printers, click on add a printer. Select Add a Network Printer. If you are lucky, it will find the shared printer and install the necessary drivers. If not, then you need some advanced troubleshooting. More on that later.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Backup, backup, backup

If everyone follows this advice, my workload will drop dramatically. Fortunately, no one really listens until it is too late. So, please feel free to ignore this advice!

You have got to backup your important files. Lots of people think that they backup their files, but they really don't. If you are depending on a system whereby once-in-a-while you stick a USB thumb drive into your computer, copy off the My Documents folder, and then toss the USB drive into a drawer, you are better off than 90% of the people out there, but you are still not safe.

Your data - pictures of your kids, the book that you are writing, business records, email history, address book, etc are irreplaceable. If you are depending upon a backup system that requires you to remember to do something, you are at risk. If your backup is in the same house/building as the computer where the original data resides, you are at risk. If you are not backing up at all, you are really at risk!

Hard disks crash. All the time. Disasters happen, hopefully not that frequently, but Murphy's Law dictates that when they do happen, it will be at the absolute worst possible time.

Okay, enough pontificating on the subject - we all agree - you need a reliable backup plan. And that the definition of a reliable plan has two major points:

1. No user intervention is required for routine backups
2. Data is stored off-site

Point 3 would be: It is cheap or better yet - FREE.

Only recently has this kind of solution been available to home and small business users. I have been using/testing a solution from Mozy.com that seems to fulfill both of my requirements, and it's FREE (up to a point...)

Mozy installed like a breeze. Selecting the files and folders that I wanted to protect was simple and intuitive. For personal use it is free for up to 2 Gigabytes of data. That's quite a bit of data. Maybe not enough for all your pictures and music, but most of us don't have 2 gigs of data.

Once you try it out for a while and like it, it's simple to upgrade to an unlimited plan, which costs only $4.95 per month. For business users, there are reasonably affordable monthly plans, too.

Set up LogMeIn - free remote access to computer resources.

I like to use LogMeIn to remotely control computers. I especially like free, and LogMeIn is free. They have a pro version that costs a few bucks a month and does some pretty neat things, but for 97% of what I need to do, the free version is just the ticket. It works on both MAC and Windows.

So, if a friend has a computer problem, I can just walk them through the steps to create a personal account for themselves, and then I can remotely control their computer to help them troubleshoot the issue. Here's an amazing thing I discovered, it is actually possible to reboot a remote windows computer and restart it in safe mode, and still reconnect remotely. This is invaluable for troubleshooting viruses and other malware.

Here are the steps to set up a LogMeIn account for yourself:

1. On the target computer, browse to http://www.logmein.com/
2. Click on 'Create an account'
3. Select 'LogMeIn Access, Management, and Networking
4. Fill in the requested information - select I plan to use LogMeIn for: Personal use...
5. Select 'Add this computer' and follow the prompts. Make sure to write down any passwords that you create - at least 8 characters!
6. You'll be prompted to login to your account, and also one more chance to get the Pro version. Let's stick with FREE for now...
7. Check your email inbox, you should get an email from the people at LogMeIn welcoming you, and more importantly, prompting you to complete the registration process. Click on the link in the welcome email, and you should be all set!
8. There should be a new little blue icon in your system tray. Hover your mouse over it and it should say; "LogMeIn - enabled and online". You can right click and turn off LogMeIn if you want to, but I always leave mine on to allow me the flexibility of accessing that computer from wherever I might be.

Now you can control the target computer remotely by logging into your LogMeIn account, select the computer, and off you go! It supports dual monitors, you can chat with the user on the other end, the users at both ends can both see the screen and what's happening, so it is ideal for troubleshooting, or showing someone how to do something.

No Broadband? No Problem.

In our little town, just about everyone has Verizon Fios. It's amazing, since we live in a rural town that does not even have cable TV. For whatever reason, some roads got bypassed – too few houses per mile, or something. What to do? Keep dialing up at 56K? Not if you have a half-way decent cell phone signal.

Last week I helped a friend set up a home network with a Verizon USB broadband dongle. And it works pretty darn well.

I got him a Kyocera KR2 mobile router. It is compatible with a whole bunch of 1XEVDO cards , including USB, PCMCIA and Express cards. You have to check to make sure that your card is supported, and so what if it isn't – just turn your card in and get a new one that is on the list!

I was really impressed with the KR2 router. It has all the capabilities of a first class wireless broadband router. You can use it for a broadband connection, and then the EVDO card becomes a 'fail over' in the event your cable or fiber optic connection goes down. Most of us don't need that kind of connectivity, but it's nice to know. It has dynamic DNS capabilities, port forwarding, routing, the latest wifi security protocols. And it worked right out of the box just the way it was supposed to!