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The Lock-In

At least one of the reasons applies equally to both consumers and business and that’s simply that if you move providers, you can’t take your address with you.  That might not sound like much, but remember how many services you sign up with using your email address.  What happens if you forget a password and want to reset it?  Or miss an important reminder/update as the email address not longer exists?  What about all those people who have you in their contacts under that address?

And it’s not just you, there’s everyone else in the family/business who uses addresses for the service.

For businesses it’s even worse, not only would a change in ISP mean you’re uncontactable, it may end up costing you a lot of money in missed business or fines/charges because you didn’t receive important emails.

So what happens?  Well, you end up being unable to move for fear of losing emails, so you can’t switch to take advantage of better deals elsewhere, so it ends up costing you money (and hassle if the service is particularly poor).

Features

Another good reason not to use it is that they often lack features compared to those offered by third parties.  For example, most of the free services allow you to access your email from mobile devices, whereas ISP email can be limited to accesing only via a web browser.

Even if they do let you use it with an email client or your smartphone, it’s usually older protocols so you may end up reading the same email twice or having to go searching for the device you downloaded one on if you want to check it later.  Not to mention things like advanced spam filters to help fight junk mail and rules to help you stay organised.

They’re also limited in size too, in order to restrict how much you store on there as well.  How do you feel about spending a few hours trawling through old emails trying to figure out which ones to keep and which to delete?

Less so these days they, but they can also limit you to a single email address, which isn’t great if you have multiple family members or business users.

Professionalism

Most of the common names are gone from ISP mail, so you’ll probably end up with some weird concoction that includes numbers, parts of both your first and last names and random characters.  That makes it hard for people to remember your address (even you) and can look unprofessional when giving it out to potential employers, suppliers or partners.

For businesses, it marks you out as a small business and undermines consumer confidence (in the same way having only a mobile number listed does).  When a domain name will cost you much less than £10 a year is it really an expense you want to avoid?

The Solutions

For consumers you have two options, the first is to use a free service such as Hotmail, Yahoo or my favourite, Gmail.  These have the benefit of being accessible from any ISP, plus they generally have much better interfaces, a greater number of features and better uptime, if nothing else because this is their primary function.  They also have the benefit of integrating with other services such as calendars, documents and tasks.

The other alternative, and the only one for businesses really, is to register your own domain.  Even an address from one of the free services doesn’t give a great image to customers, suppliers and partners.  A paid email account can be had for as little as 99p a month.  Trust me, it will more than pay for itself (I’d also recommend a website, which at a few pounds a month will also pay for itself in no time).  Registering one is quick and easy, there really is no excuse.  Want some help registering a domain name, I’ve got an article for that.

Getting Free Books

Once you’ve setup your Kindle you’ll want to get some books to read on it. You can buy books from Amazon (or other ebook stores, assuming they support it) but there are also plenty of free ebooks available and not just those which are out of copyright.

Supported Formats

It’s probably worth saying at this point that ebooks come in a variety of formats. The Kindle will support its own AZW format as well as Topaz (TPZ), plain text (TXT), Mobipocket (MOBI, PRC) and PDF documents. It can also handle HTML files and Word documents if sent via your Kindle email address as it will convert them (more details below) and you can convert from various formats (notably EPUB, the other big ebook format) using additional software (more details below).

The one thing to watch for is buying books in EPUB format (or other formats) as they’re likely to be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) code which will stop you being able to convert it.

Where to Find Free Ebooks

OK, so that said, starting with the big names, Project Gutenberg has long been a provider of free ebooks, largely those out of copyright, and they usually provide them in a range of formats so you should find one you can either download and load directly onto your Kindle (just connect it to your computer via the USB cable and copy the files into the documents folder, or use the software mentioned below).

Google Books is another big player in this market. They list books which you can’t download (but can preview) as well as books that are fully available (switch to advanced search and select ‘Full view only’ to focus on complete books). If the book is listed in their ebookstore then they usually offer then in EPUB and PDF (select the ‘Read on your device’ link) and if not then typically they’re in PDF.

Aside from selling ebooks, Amazon also list free ones as well. If you find the Kindle eBooks section of the site and scroll down to the bottom of the navigation on the left you should find a link to Free eBook Collections, which has details of external sites as well as the Kindle Popular Classics selection.

One of the sites linked to by Amazon is ManyBooks.net which, again, offers a variety of free books, largely out of copyright, in a wide range of formats to download.

Sending Content to your Kindle

Aside from books, Amazon also offers a range of periodicals to subscribe to, various newspapers and magazines, and Kindle Singles is an upcoming section to feature content in the 10-30,000 word range. Longer articles and novellas essentially. Another great way to get content onto your Kindle is to send web pages to it so you can read them on the device at your convenience (when you connect via WiFi it’ll download them automatically).

There are several ways to do this and, once setup, is a really fast way to save content for later. If you use Google’s Chrome web browser, install the Send to Kindle extension, if you’re on another browser then use the Send to Kindle bookmark from Klip.me (who provide the Chrome extension) or similar offerings from Instapaper (although you need a free account) and Readbility.

These basically send things to your Kindle email address, which you can find on the Manage Your Kindle page when you’re logged in to Amazon’s site. You have to manually allow email addresses to send to your Kindle, which is what the setup for these apps requires. This also means you can send other files (Word documents, etc) to your Kindle and they’ll get converted automatically.

This email address can also be used by local software (more info below) to load books onto your Kindle without the need to connect via USB.

Something to be aware of though, is that if you have a 3G Kindle, this service costs money if you download over Whispernet (the 3G service). It’s free for WiFi (so if you have a WiFi-only Kindle, don’t worry). If you have a 3G Kindle, make sure to use the alternative username@free.kindle.com address which doesn’t get charged and only downloads when you’re connected via WiFi.

As I mentioned earlier, you can manually load books onto your Kindle via USB as well (just copy them into the Documents folder).

Software to Manage your Kindle

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, you can do most things with the Kindle using built-in tools, but a great third-party app called Calibre brings many of these together, along with some extra functionality.

Ostensibly it’s an ebook manager, designed to act as a library to manage your books, but it can also convert books into suitable formats, transfer files to and from your Kindle (via USB or email) and subscribe to various news sources which are then downloaded automatically, formatted and loaded onto your device ready for you to peruse. You will even be able to preview and read ebooks on your computer. Among its other features, can also complete book metadata (author, blurb and other details) and download covers.

Once in your library you can search by metadata or browse by tags, author, etc. Useful when your collection gets larger. It can also search book stores to find the best price if you’re looking to buy.

Audio on the Kindle

The Kindle also has speakers built-in and can play back music and audiobooks.

The Kindle technically only supports audiobooks in Audible audio format 4 and Audible Enhanced (AAX) format from Audible (.com or .co.uk), which Amazon owns. It can even deliver these over WiFi or you can copy by USB into the Audible folder. They’ll be listed as any other book on the Home screen, but with a note to indicate they are audible. You could, technically, play back audiobooks in MP3 format in the same way as music, but you lose any chapter support.

To play music, just copy your files (it only supports MP3) into the Music folder, you can start the music by hitting the Menu button when on the Home screen, go to Experimental and select play music. You can control the volume using the plus and minus rocker button on the bottom of the Kindle. You can also attach headphones to listen in private.

While it’ll play music that is in sub-folders, there’s no control over the order, it just plays the first track it finds and keeps on from there. While it’s playing, you can use ALT+spacebar to pause/resume and ALT+F to skip to the next track. You can also stop the music by going back to the Experimental page from the Menu and selecting pause music.

Listening to Normal Content

Although support for audiobooks is limited, you can use the built-in Text-to-Speech functionality to read a book to you. Just open the book (or other piece of content) and press the text key (the one with two A’s next to the Home button). Once on, you can change it from a male to female voice and change the rate it reads to slow it down or speed it up. You can start the reading from a specific spot by moving to the relevant page and then placing the cursor next to the text where you want it to start.

Browse the Web

Possibly not the ideal device for it, but under the Experimental options from the Menu on the Home screen you’ll find a web browser option which will allow you to open and view web pages, you can zoom in on areas and combine it with screen rotation (see below) to help with layout.

Change the Angle

Obviously portrait mode works best for most things, but from the text menu (the key with two A’s next to the Home button) you can select the option to rotate the display to any of the four variations, so if you want to get more words per line but without reducing the text size, that’s an option.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully that gives you some ideas as to what you can do with your Kindle, but that’s not all, so check out the Customise Your Reading page over at Amazon for more tips.

Cleaning up your machine is a great, usually free, way to get some extra performance though. Which leads into their second article. Admittedly this covers more than just your computer and is basically just a link to some older articles, but it’s still valid.

Reinstalling your operating system, while a laborious process, does return the machine to original state and you’d be surprised how much faster it runs. Removing any old applications, performing disk de-fragmentation and clean-up also offers some boosts. If your hard drive is running out of space, move files onto an external (or separate disk) and you should get some improvements too.

I could (and do) backup locally, but there are plenty of online backup services that give me some off site piece of mind (what happens if someone steals all my computer gear or the house burns down?).  Text files are small and there are plenty of services who offer free options so you don’t even have to splash any cash.  My preference, for the moment at least, is Dropbox.

It’s the nicest of the implementations I’ve seen, it can sync to multiple computers (so you can work on more than one machine and have local backups on those machines too) and it even offers version history.

Now, I’m somewhat paranoid when it comes to my files and data, I don’t like trusting it to other people as I’ve written before.  That doesn’t mean I can’t put files online, it just means I need them to be secure.  Just because whichever company says it’s safe, scout’s honour, doesn’t mean it is.  So I encrypt my files before I load them.

Needless to say, this could get pretty tedious, so I wrote a small batch file to do it for me, but it only handled one file and needed to be triggered manually (using AutoHotKey and a key combination).  A couple of weeks ago I did some digging and found an application that would monitor the folder I save my work into and then trigger the script, passing the file to encrypt and upload.  The new approach consists of three parts:

1. AxCrypt to encrypt the files
2. Directory Monitor to watch the folder and trigger the batch file
3. A batch file to take the file passed by Directory Monitor and run AxCrypt

Directory Monitor watches a designated folder (or folders) and I’ve set mine to trigger when any file is added, renamed or updated.  This calls the batch script and passes the file that has changed, the batch file then calls AxCrypt which encrypts the file and drops it into the local Dropbox folder and the Dropbox client uploads the file.

The reason for using AxCrypt is that it works on the command line and allows you to create self-extracting files which just need a password to open, so you don’t have to worry about installing AxCrypt to open them on other machines or in the future.

Set it up

If you’d like something like this for yourself, here’s how to set it up:

1. Sign up for Dropbox and download their client

Head on over to the Dropbox site and download their software, it will ask if you want to create an account or use an existing one.

2. Download and install AxCrypt

Go to the AxCrypt site, download and install.  Make a note of where you install it to, you’ll need it later (e.g. C:\program files\axantum\axcrypt)

3. Download and install Directory Monitor

Download Directory Monitor and install it.

4. Download and modify the batch file

Grab a copy of my batch file here, save it somewhere you’ll remember where it is and then open the file in a text editor (like Notepad) and update the following values:

• Change ‘YourPasswordHere’ on line five to whatever password you want to use on the encrypted files (you’ll need this to open them in the future).  E.g. mysupersecretpassword123
• If you installed AxCrypt to somewhere other than C:\program files\axantum\axcrypt update line six to path the AxCrypt.exe file is located.
• Change ‘LocalDropboxFolder’ on live seven to the location of the Dropbox folder (or the folder inside your Dropbox folder) to save the encrypted files (typically this is inside your My Documents/Documents folder. E.g. C:\Users\You\Documents\My Dropbox\Documents\Writing

It should end up something like this:

So with that done, we just need to set up Directory Monitor to watch the folder(s) and trigger the script.

Select Add from the Directories menu in Directory Monitor and pick the folder you want to watch using the browse (ellipses) button.  Deleted files are obviously hard to encrypt, so untick that option.  You can do subdirectories as well on Directory Monitor, tick or untick as you wish.

Next find the box to select the script you want to execute on a change and select the batch file (remember where you saved it?).

Under File, select Options and I’d suggest ticking ‘Start minimized’ and ‘Do no show update notifications’ and unticking balloon tips, tool tips, you could also untick the option to check for updates.  Hit Save once you’re done and that’s it.  Give it a test!

The only other thing to do is to add it to your startup folder so it launches whenever you turn on the machine. To do that, find the application on your start menu and then right-click the folder it is in and select open, copy the file called “Directory Monitor” (the application launcher) and if you go up a level (use the Up button in explorer or click on Programs in the address bar in later versions of Windows) and in the Programs folder you should find a Startup folder, open it and paste a copy of the file into it. This should now run when Windows starts.

Music and Videos

There are quite a few applications out there which claim to allow you to ‘backup your iPod’ but most of them (like Yet Another iPod Manager AKA Yamipod and SharePod) haven’t been updated in a while and either didn’t work for me, or didn’t work with the later versions of the iPod (e.g. 3rd gen Nanos).

In the end, the easiest solution I’ve found is to use a copy of WinAmp.  You only need the free version, you shouldn’t need any plugins.  Just download, run, connect your iPod, select the tracks, right-click and select ‘copy to local media’ and voila, job done.  Note that you can set the location is copies to in the preferences (it defaults to your My Music folder).

Quick, simple and fairly painless.

Photos

Photos are another matter, for two reasons.  One, I haven’t found a free solution to copy them, all the software I’ve seen is shareware.  Second, unless you selected the option to copy the originals over, you’ve probably only got thumbnails (small versions) of the images that are designed to be displayed on the small iPod screen and therefore don’t need to be very big, so you may only get postage-stamp-size images even if you do retrieve them.

Conclusion

The main points are that you can copy your music and videos easily, but photos you’ll need to pay for.  Perhaps the best recommendation is it’s much easier just to back up your music, videos, photos and anything else before you need to rely on your iPod.  External hard drives are pretty cheap and you can get a few GB of storage online for free from a number of different providers, so make use of it and save yourself the agro.

There are a number of different options for connecting your PC depending on what ports you have available.  Listed below are the most common options for picture and sound.

It’s also worth noting that if your PC doesn’t come with one of these connections you can buy after-market cards to fit to your PC which have the relevant port.

Picture

Some connections include both video and audio signals so you get pictures and sound, but two of the most common options don’t, and you may still want to have separate connections to allow things like digital audio into a separate device, such as an amplifier (not covered here).

VGA

The VGA port is probably the most popular type of display connector that is available on PCs.  The quality is inferior to DVI, so if you have both, use the DVI port, and fewer TVs are likely to have a connector, but it’s likely to be the port present on any older PCs.

Assuming you have a port on your TV (it’s usually used for a PC source) you just need a standard VGA cable to connect to your TV.  This port does not carry sound so you’ll need a separate cable to carry sound depending on what your PC and TV offer.  See the Sound section below.

DVI

DVI is the replacement for the older VGA connector and is typically present on most new PCs.  This is a digital connection so offers higher quality than VGA, so use this one if you have both.

Few TVs have a DVI port to plug in to, but DVI-to-HDMI cables, which have a DVI connector on one end and an HDMI connector on the other, are readily available.

DVI ports don’t carry sound, so you’ll need a separate cable to carry the audio signal.  See the Sound section below.

HDMI

HDMI is the replacement for the older SCART connection used to connect most entertainment devices to modern TVs.  It’s the primary cable used for high definition signals.  HDMI ports are slowly becoming commonplace on newer PCs and are the best way to connect to your TV if available.

Aside from a good range of compatibility with modern TVs, HDMI also carries sound so you don’t need two cables.  HDMI is capable of carrying multi-channel surround sound signals.  Having said that, not all graphics cards support sound output via HDMI, so, as you can see above, sometimes you need to use an RCA (or more commonly a headphone-to-RCA) cable to connect the sound separately.

Other Options

There are a a couple of other options, although they’re typically older formats or specialist and are unlikely to be fitted to your PC as standard, these include composite video and S-Video.

Sound

Depending on your video connection you may require a separate cable to carry sound, most commonly this means one of the two options below, which don’t support multi-channel surround sound. There are also a few other options, such as S/PDIF.

TRS (3.5 mm headphone jack)

The standard 3.5 mm headphone socket is more accurately called a TRS socket.  On your PC it’s what your speaker/headphone socket is.  TVs often use this to carry sound for DVI or VGA, all you need is a male-to-male cable (sometimes included with the speakers on your PC) plugged into your speaker socket on the PC and the socket that accompanies whichever video connector socket your are using on your TV.

RCA

RCA connections are the white and red connections commonly found on stereo equipment.  They’re often teamed with a yellow composite video connector.  Typically you won’t have RCA connections on your PC, but you can get 3.5 mm headphone (TRS) to RCA cables which will then plug in to your TV.

I thought I would highlight them in case they benefit others.

Text Editing

Notepad has been a great servant and is useful for jotting down quick ideas, using as a visual clipboard, using as a middle-man when trying to remove formatting on text the Windows seems determined to hang on to for no reason but you either have to have multiple copies open or end up with a really large document. 

There are plenty of alternatives out there and I’ve tried various applications but my (current) favourite is the awesome Notepad++.

Aside from a tabbed interface that means you can have multiple documents open it has line numbering, syntax highlighting, useful find and replace functions and host of other nifty features.  I use it every day.

Shortcuts

I used to use AutoHotKey for everything, it’s very powerful, you can use it to do almost anything.  I had shortcuts to launch applications, replace text, open my optical drive, control iTunes and you can even build applications with it.

The only issue is that it means coding all of it by putting in the relevant commands in a script file and that gets old.  So, recently I have switch to two applications: Texter (for text replacement) and HotKeyz (for application launching, etc).

Ironically, Texter is written using AutoHotKey, but it adds a nice front end, some management and generally makes AHK easier to use for text replacement.  From email signatures to email addresses I use it so I can use small keywords to fill in often-used text.

HotKeyz allows you to assign hotkeys to trigger specific events (I mainly use it for launching applications, for example, I have Win + C to open Calculator).  Setup quick hotkey combinations for often used applications and save searching for them in the start menu.

Desktop Control

I like having my applications in a certain order on my taskbar, it means I find them faster when I’m switching between them, and being able to reorder at any time means that, if you’re switching between applications for some reason, you can just drag them to be next to each other.  For that reason, I use Taskbar Shuffle.

Password Management

We’re all getting bombarded with more and more passwords to remember.  Even if you can set them all to be the same (unlikely and not recommended) you have to remember the usernames, which is where the excellent KeePass comes in.  It’ll store all that info, and more, securely and there’s plenty of options for easily using them again.

Web Browser

IE has come on with version 8, but it’s still behind and Chrome is still lacking extension support so, for the time being at least, Firefox with add-ons rules the roost.

The add-ons I use are:

• Tab Mix Plus – all the options that should be included in FF with regards to how tabs behave.
• Context Search – Select a word or phrase on the page, right-click and pick any of the search options from the quick search box to use to search for the work.
• Download Statusbar – a much better download manager.
• Fetch Text URL – highlight an unlinked plain text URL and select to open in a new/same tab, which saves copying and pasting into the address bar.
• Firebug (probably only for web developers) – web development helper.
• Web Developer (again, probably only for web developers) – various tools for web development.

I’m also a big fan of Smart keywords, which are a quick way to search sites from the address bar (so I type ‘w my search phrase’ and it searches Wikipedia, no need to change to the quick search box and pick the right site from the dropdown).

Portable Versions

If you’re unable to install applications (at work, for example) then all of these have versions or options that allow them to be run without being installed so you could run them off a USB stick.  If they’re not available from the developer’s site you can usually find them at sites like PortableApps.com and Pendriveapps.com.

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

in a terminal window.

After a lot of searching I found a post that indicated removing and ‘finding’ the mouse made it display as the ALPS touchpad that it is:

sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

The only problem was it meant doing this each time.

I couldn’t find anywhere to add this as an automated solution, but some suggestions made me check my BIOS and I found an option to disable legacy support for USB devices and voila, the touchpad was recognised on boot (so presumably the legacy support meant it was treating it is a normal mouse, or was cutting in before the USB drivers).

So, quick tip in case it comes in useful, if removing and installing the mouse works, check your BIOS and switch off legacy and PS/2 support and see if that solves it.