Add BCC field in Outlook email

I tend to use the BCC (Blank Carbon Copy) field quite often when sending emails. It's useful when you want to hide the identity of some or all of your recipients.

A fresh install of Outlook will not have the BCC showing by default, but it's quite simple for you to turn it on. Open a new email message and in the tool bar click the downward-facing triangle two the right of "Options...". Then click "Bcc" in the dropdown and you'll have the Bcc field in your emails from now on.

Note: this is done in Outlook 2003. Other versions of Outlook may vary slightly.

Settings in Windows Live Messenger

In order to find the "Settings" area in the new Windows Live Messenger, it's not as intiutive as before. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it took me minutes to find how to open them up! It was enough trouble for me to take a screenshot and let everyone know where it is.

Just click on your name at the top (there's a small triangle to the right) and at the bottom of the drop-down box is "Personal Settings..." Viola!

Feeling Too Dependant on Files?

If you're having troubles getting a program to work or an ActiveX control won't register, it may be because you don't have the correct dependency files on your computer.

Try a tool called Dependency Walker. You can run it on many different types of files including .exe and .ocx in order to find their dependencies. It's a great diagnosing tool when things just won't work.

Google Apps for Your Domain

If you own your own domain (ex. yourdomain.com) and wish you use gmail to check that email you can also sign up for Google Apps for Your Domain. It's geared more toward organizations who want to give multiple users a single interface for email, calendar, messaging, and web pages. It's a collaborative tool perfect for small - medium sized business. This will allow you to check an email like username@yourdomain.com.

I'm currently torn between using my regular gmail account and forwarding email to it, or using google apps for your domain. Google Apps does not yet integrate with all the other great aspects of Google Accounts (i.e. Picasa Web, Analytics, AdSense, etc), although it does provide an excellent way to collaborate effectively in a small company and manage some aspects of your domain from one online dashboard.

External Mail in Gmail

For anyone who wants to use Gmail as their central email program, there are some limitations when checking other email accounts.

As of now, Gmail has no functionality to check external email accounts easily. For example, in Outlook you can setup POP3 retrieval of email from other accounts. The only way for you to received email in gmail from other accounts is to forward them. (The only functionality Gmail provides is to send email out from multiple email addresses, and you can check your Gmail account from other email programs). Contact your email hosting company and ask them to forward all incoming email to your Gmail account. Sometimes you may have access to your MX records online, and you can setup the forwarding directly from there.

Also checkout my post regarding Google Apps for Your Domain to learn about additional options to check external email through Gmail.

Easily Backup Your Data Offsite 24/7

Q. Why do people put their belongings in safety deposit boxes?

A. Because they're secure, not very expensive, offsite from their home, and they feel the belongings have enough value to warrant the added inconvenience of going to the bank to make deposits or withdrawals.

If you have important data on your computer, why aren't you taking the same steps? You can securely store your data offsite for a low cost of $2/GB but never have to leave your home to do it. In fact you never have to do anything at all once it's setup! The service is called Data Deposit Box and I highly recommend it, especially for businesses.

Try its free trial and you'll see how easy it is. The best part is that instead of just backing up once a day, it actually backs up any changed files at any time your computer is idle. This makes it virtually impossible to lose data even if you just worked on it 30 minutes ago. I recommend a 2-level backup to my clients, where you backup nightly to an external harddrive and all the time to an offsite source like Data Deposit Box. The harddrive can be used when you have a computer problem, errors, reformat, etc, but in the case of theft, fire, or other disasters you'll be glad you had your data offsite. It can also act as a file sharing program since you can access your backed up files any time on the web.

Make your dynamic IP virtually static

If you want to setup a home web server, ftp server, remotely access your computers or a number of other functions without paying for a static IP, then this can help you out.

My client, who runs a warehouse, wanted to be able to remotely login to his server while he was out of the country. To do this he could access it with the dynamic IP, but if it changes while he's away his access will be denied. A better way to do this is to setup what's called a Dynamic DNS Service. There are a number of providers that can do this, but I'll be using DynDNS (www.dyndns.com) as an example. This enables you to alias a dynamic IP to a static hostname that you can get for free from DynDNS. Here are the steps:

1. Sign up for an account with DynDNS.
2. Under "services" select "dynamic DNS" on the left bar
3. Click "Create Host"
4. Pick any hostname you prefer (can be what you want)
5. Pick a corrosponding domain name (they have a dropdown box with a list)
6. Enter your current external IP address (if you don't know that go to www.whatismyip.com) and click "Add Host"

At this point the only thing left to do is either a) setup the dynamic DNS on your router, or b) install an IP updater program on your computer. If your computer is stationary then sometimes a) is easier. Just login to your router and enter the Host information you setup with DynDNS (most routers already have DynDNS listed). Otherwise you need to download a small program to update your IP ... get it here

Opening uTorrent Port

When you first install uTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com/) it will ask you to make sure your forwarding a certain port on your router. If you need more info on that go to http://www.portforward.com/ with your router model.

What I found is that the port forward test page will not give you a "successful" status until you set your router to allow pings. That's because the uTorrent server is sending requests to you computer and can't do it if it can't see your router.

If you're not finding what you need in torrents, try ShareZone

Picasa downside

Google is amazing - it seems like if they want to enter a market with a product they can blow anyone away. They're smart, very smart. Look at Picasa. They didn't try to create another Photoshop, but they realized that there was a large group of people out there that don't need or want the advanced features. They just want to easily organize and edit their pictures. Then they took it a step further and integrated Picasa with Blogger, and gave it other great features like a timeline viewer and movie maker.

That brings me to the one downside - the movie maker does not allow integration of sound. Very unfortunate. Here's a workaround:

1. Create your movie in Picasa ('Create' menu item --> 'Movie...')
2. Note where you save it (in My Pictures by default)
3. Import that movie into Windows Movie Maker
4. Import your chosen sound bite into Windows Movie Maker
5. Drag both onto a timeline and publish...voila!

It's a bit clunky, but at least you get some sound to those great shots.

Keyboard not working...

Once again, my "dear little" puppy got at my cables (I already cut the shredded bits before taking this pic) . This one was easier to diagnose than the network cable, but much more frustrating - i couldn't type!!

After some delicate cable stripping and splicing with the help of some electrical tape this keyboard was up and running again (I'm actually typing on it now). I'm not sure if all USB keyboards are the same, but this one had 4 cables within the main sheath and they were color-coded. The colors made them easy to match up.

Internet not working...

Sometimes computer problems are so simple you never think to look. Now that I have a puppy I will remember to check all cables before jumping to conclusions.

I was in the middle of setting up my new web server and things started to act wierd and most importantly I couldn't connect to it. After reading an endless amount of Linux discussion boards, text books, and self-help websites I was still stumped. When I looked behind my workstation to double-check cable connections I realized that my dog used the network cable as a chew toy *sigh*.

Moving ICQ 5.1 History

If you're like me and do most of your co-worker communication through ICQ 5.1 then you should find this information helpful if you plan to move computers. Even if your just reinstalling ICQ or reformatting your computer this is handy to know.

My computer is starting to get its annual lag so it calls for a reformat. I like to keep all my ICQ history since it is business related. Here are the steps I had to follow:

1. Shut down ICQ

2. The history is stored in the folder ICQ Lite under the Documents and Settings folder (Usually under: C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR NAME\Application Data\ICQLite).

3. Copy the folder to a disk or a temporary location that you can recover afterwards.

4. Once you reinstall ICQ on a new computer or perhaps after a reformat of your current computer, just replace the two folders in your application data\icqlite folder with the ones you backed up.

5. Restart ICQ and your history should be there.