Far betterwould be the ability to take our home or office email with us: the same email program we use every day; the same email address; the same configuration; and the same mail store.

Unfortunately, most Internet Service Providers - and office mail systems - throw a fit if you try to use your email using another ISP’s network or a wireless hotspot. If you’ve ever encountered a “relaying denied” error message, you’ll understand the frustration this can cause.

Enter portable SMTP servers. These alternative mail deliverers provide a simple solution to your email-on-the-road woes.

SMTP? 

SMTP is not the sort of thing most of us spend a lot of time thinking about. If you know what the initials stand for – Simple Mail Transport Protocol – you’re ahead of the game. But when it comes to taking your email with you, it’s worth gaining at least a nodding acquaintance with the possibilities behind those initials.

I’ve written a guide to using an alternative SMTP server to gain seamless access to your email from anywhere. The article describes a number of ways to loosen your SMTP shackles, but if you’d like the I’m-too-busy-for-an-executive-summary summary, it’s this: give SMTP2Go Worldwide SMTP Server a try. This SMTP relay service is inexpensive (with a 7-day free trial so you can check it out), ridiculously easy to set up, and works smoothly and reliably.

I’ve tried other portable SMTP solutions in the past, including the downloadable Postcast Server and Gmail’s SMTP server, and encountered bumps and hiccoughs on the road. Using a relay service like SMTP2Go seems to eliminate those problems.

There are other SMTP relay services and downloadable servers available. Have you had experience with any of them? Good? Bad? Let me know.

To use Send To, all you do is right-click a file or folder, select Send To from the pop-up menu, and select a destination to copy, upload or email the item.

Windows pre-populates the Send To menu with a selection of destinations and shortcuts, and some applications add further shortcuts to the list. You can add your own twists to the Send To menu, too. For example, you can add folders where you archive or store documents to the Send To destination list.

Shortcuts to the destinations which appear in the Send To list are stored in a special folder called SendTo (note there’s no space between Send and To in the folder name). In Windows XP, you’ll find the SendTo folder located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\username

where username is your Windows log-on name.

In Vista you’ll have to dig deep to find the SendTo folder:

1. Click Start then click your log-on name to open your user folder.
2. Click down through AppData -> Roaming -> Microsoft -> Windows -> SendTo.

Of course, as is often the case with Vista, instead of digging down through this list of folders you can quickly jump to the SendTo folder by using the search box: Click Start, type sendto in the search box and click the SendTo folder in the Files list. 

As well as adding shortcuts to folders and network drives to the SendTo folder, you can also add programs. When you Send To a program, the document you select will be opened in that program. For example, you might want to add a shortcut to Notepad to the SendTo folder so you can quickly open a document in a plain text editor.

Send To SendTo

If you frequently modify the Send To list, instead of opening the SendTo folder in order to add new shortcuts, you can add a shortcut to the SendTo folder to the SendTo folder itself. When you do so, you’ll be able to add a new destination to the Send To list simply by right-clicking the destination (folder, network drive or program) and selecting Send To -> SendTo. It sounds a little mind boggling, but it’s very simple in practice:

1. Open your user folder then navigate down to AppData -> Roaming -> Microsoft -> Windows.
2. Right-click the SendTo folder and select Create Shortcut.
3. Rename the shortcut SendTo.
4. Drag the shortcut into the SendTo folder.

Once that’s done, whenever you want to add a new destination to the Send To list, right click the destination and select Send To -> SendTo.

There is some glimmer of hope for the desk-bound. The same research found that those who took frequent breaks from sitting reduced their girth and their body mass indexes, and lowered glucose and triglyceride levels in their blood streams.

According to the study, it doesn’t matter how much exercise you get; unless you also break up your sitting time, your body will suffer.

On reading this research, I felt a sense of impending doom. I sit down in front of the computer and that’s it - I’m absorbed for hours. In the days when I used to do computer programming, I’d even forget about going to the loo. I’m not quite as lost to the screen these days, but sedentary is certainly an apt description of me at work.

Stretch Break 

Enter Stretch Break. Stretch Break is a program which gives you a gentle nudge every now and then, reminding you to take a break. At an interval you determine, it pops up a break reminder and, unless you tell it to leave you alone, displays a series of gentle, yoga-ish exercises you can perform at your desk.

Stretch Break is flexible. As well as determining how often it should interrupt your work, you can choose the number of stretches for each session or even choose a particular sub-set of stretches to use. The latter is particularly useful when it comes to breaking up your sedentary time: by selecting the standing stretches, you can make sure you heave your frame out of your chair whenever Stretch Break pops up. Stretch Break also displays “ergo reminders” at the end of each break, little hints that will keep your body ticking along more happily.

I’ve been using Stretch Break on and off for years. It’s currently up to version 6.2 and I think the first version I used was 2.something. My problem is that it’s hard to commit to using the program. For the first few days after I’ve installed it, I use it religiously. But then, inevitably, comes the time when it will pop up while I’m in the middle of something intense, and I’ll think “Not now!” and hit the Later button. I promise myself I’ll take a break when the next reminder appears, but I know I’m already on the slippery slope to uninstalling it.

Stretch Break tries to accommodate busy or recalcitrant users by offering to delay the session for a minute or even five minutes. Once you start hitting those Later buttons regularly, you’re probably doomed.

So I’ve decided that what I need is the gentle inducement of Stretch Break plus a goad. I think that Australian research might be just the goad I need. When Stretch Break pops up now, I think about that research and the big payoff from taking a couple of minutes away from the computer. I also don’t, necessarily, perform the stretches displayed. Instead, I’ll get up and walk around, or make a phone call and walk as I talk. Anything to get me out of the chair. This approach has worked so far.

Stretch Break costs $US44.95, so it’s not cheap, but you can download an evaluation version to see whether it works for you. There are some free reminder programs available you might prefer, or you can set any one of dozens of other programs to pop up an alert at regular intervals. But none of those gives you the thoughtful exercises and visual cues Stretch Break offers, and which really help you notice what’s happening to your body as you sit there. I think it’s worth the money.

Zoya is 28 and she grew up without knowing peace in her country. Her parents were both killed. Her life as a woman in Afghanistan is terribly circumscribed. Working for basic human rights for her sisters puts her in real danger.

Zoya said if there is one thing we can do to help the women of Afghanistan and the country as a whole, it is to support the education of young people.

That’s what the RAWA orphanages do: they provide shelter and education for boys and girls, bringing them up in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

For a very modest sum - $US16,000 - we can build a new RAWA orphanage. It’s one small but significant way to help make the world a safer place.

How to donate

If you feel moved to donate, you may contribute any amount, using the ChipIn widget you’ll see on the right side of each page (as well as on this post).

When you click the ChipIn! button, you’ll be taken to my PayPal page. If you have a PayPal account, you can sign in to make your donation. If you don’t have a PayPal account or prefer not to use it, click the Continue link in the “Don’t have a PayPal account?” section. You’ll then be able to use a credit card to make the payment.

How this works

As this started as an individual effort to get support for a RAWA orphanage, you’ll see my email address(es) on the donation form.

So how do you know the money will get to RAWA?

It works on trust. Many of you have been visiting my Geekgirl’s site and reading my articles for years, so I hope you have some sense of knowing me. You’ll receive a receipt when you make a donation and I’ll post reports back from RAWA when we reach our goal. I’ll be kicking in the proceeds from the advertisements on my site to the Orphanage Fund, too, as this is something I’m committed to. Please note: if you’d like to have your name included on the list of donors when we sponsor the orphanage, please indicate this in the Comments section when you make your donation. Otherwise, I will keep your donation anonymous.

If you’d prefer to make a direct contribution to RAWA’s orphanages instead, you can sponsor an orphan, provide materials for the schools, or sponsor an entire orphanage yourself  through Charity Help International. If you do so, I’d love to hear from you.

Why is this a geekgirl thing?

You may be wondering how supporting RAWA fits with a site about computers and the Internet.

To me, it’s a natural connection. I’ve been writing about computers for 25 years and I came to the computing field with the goal of making technology as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, especially to women.

I’ve been working with community organisations, including women’s refuges, rape crisis centres and human rights orgs, for even longer than I’ve been a geek.

And I don’t see any sense in technology unless it makes the world a better place.

Well, it’s a calculator, yes; but hidden? Not at all. It’s right there in Google’s search box.

That’s right: Google has a surprisingly powerful calculator built into its search box. I’ve written it up in my article Google: The Whole Shebang, but as one reader pointed out, that article is a lot to absorb in one sitting. So here’s a quick rundown on the calculator.

You can toss it equations with basic operators such as + (addition), - (subtraction), * (multiplication) and / (division). Or go a little fancier and find the remainder of a division using modulo (%):

• 527%19
• 99 modulo 4

Calculate roots:

9th root of 40353607

and factorials:

9!

You can even use trig and log functions or work in octal, hex or binary by using the prefixes 0o, 0x and 0b respectively.

Conversions, too 

The calculator uses the “in” operator to provide handy conversions. All the following will work:

• 7901 yards in kilometres
• 2010 in roman numerals
• 44 kph in knots
• 5 troy ounces in lbs
• 0.0000002 speed of light in miles per century

You can also do currency conversions using the same “in” operator. For example:

us dollars in australian dollars

Up pops the USD/AUD conversion rate. If you like, you can be far more specific:

• 7 pounds sterling in danish krone
• Or how about this:
• 2.9 usd per gallon in aud per litre

Experiment with the calculator to explore its capabilities and check out Google’s Calculator help for more.

You’ve probably heard the stats: 80% of Microsoft Word users make use of only 20% of its features. My guess is that only about 0.1% of Word users use the handy calculator built right into the program.

I’m not talking about the SUM() and AVERAGE() fields or any of the other of Word’s useful but not particularly elegant mathematical tools. I’m talking about a simple, straightforward calculator which lets you perform any basic arithmetical operation anywhere within Word.

You haven’t heard about it? Don’t worry, even Microsoft has no information about this feature, unless you dig way back into its archives where you’ll find that the calculator – which formerly held a prominent position on the Tools Menu – was driven underground in Word 6.0 to make way for the far more cumbersome, albeit more powerful, formula field.

It’s true Windows comes with a more advanced calculator built in, but if you spend your days working in Word, nothing beats having a calculator right there in front of your nose at all times.

Unearthing the calculator

Because Microsoft has buried the calculator so thoroughly, you’ll need to resurrect it before putting it to use. That means sticking it on a toolbar. In Word 2007, you’ll have to put it on the Quick Access toolbar:

1. Right-click the Quick Access toolbar and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar from the pop-up menu.
2. Make sure For All Documents is selected in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar drop-down box.
3. In the Choose Commands From drop-down box, select Commands Not In The Ribbon. (Side note: Perusing this list is highly educational for old-time Word users pining for lost commands.)
4. Locate Calculate in the list and double-click it to add it to the list of Quick Access commands, then click OK.

In Word XP/2003, do this:

1. Right-click any of your toolbars and choose Customize from the pop-up menu.
2. Click the Commands tab in the Customize dialog.
3. In the Categories list click Tools and in the Commands list scroll to Tools Calculate.
4. Click and drag the Tools Calculate command onto any of your toolbars.
5. To display a more compact icon, right-click the Tools Calculate button on the toolbar, select Change Button Image and pick the calculator icon. Right-click the Tools Calculate button once more and select Default Style. Then click Close.

What the calculator does

With the Calculator now ensconced on a toolbar, you’re ready to give it a whirl.

The calculator handles addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, exponentiation and roots. It takes six operators:

• Addition: +
• Subtraction: - or place the number to be subtracted in parentheses, ( )
• Multiplication: *
• Division: /
• Percentages: %
• Exponentiation and roots: ^

If you omit the operator, the calculator assumes you want to add the numbers. So you can write:

235 79 9412 17.95 432.82

then select the numbers and click the Calculator button. The result (10176.77) is displayed, briefly, in Word’s status bar. The result is also stored on the clipboard, so you can press Ctrl+V to paste it into your Word document or copy it into another program.

Calculate anywhere 

Unlike formula fields, the calculator works anywhere, including in paragraphs containing intervening text. Thus if you use the calculator on the following sentence:

At the dinner there were 13 doctors, 25 cosmologists, 53 seismologists and 219 assorted hangers on.

the total number at the dinner will be calculated. Note, though, that if your text includes characters such as =, - or * you’ll confuse the calculator and end up with an error.

You can also use the Calculator in tables to tot up numbers in columns, in rows or in the whole table. As in ordinary text, use parentheses around a number or a minus sign before it to denote a negative number in the table.

Take care: although it’s possible to select numbers in non-adjacent cells in a table by holding down the Ctrl key while you select each cell, the calculator will not give you a correct total if you try to add these numbers. Your selection must contain contiguous cells, rows or columns.

Try it out

Try out a few simple examples to get an idea of what you can do with the calculator:

• Simple addition and subtraction: 12+9-17.5
• Simple multiplication: 123*52
• Simple division: 9.3/7
• Calculating a percentage: 3422*17%
• Exponentiation: 7^4
• Calculating a cube root: 1728^(1/3)

Note that you don’t need to use an equals sign; in fact, Word will give you an “!Unexpected end of formula” error if you do.

Ordering

The calculator uses operator precedence and parentheses to determine the order of calculations in more complex expressions. For example:

12+9*2^3

gives you the answer 84, while:

12+(9*2)^3

produces the result 5844.

If you don’t include parentheses in an expression, Word performs operations in this order:

1. percentage
2. power and root
3. multiplication and division
4. addition and subtraction.

Mind your parentheses!

When using parentheses, you need to keep your wits about you. Take these four expressions:

• 17(8)
• 17(2^3)
• 17*(8)
• 17*(2^3)

The results are, respectively, 9, 25, (136) and 136. In the first example, the calculator subtracts 8 from 17; in the second, it adds 8 (2 raised to the 3^rd power) to 17; in the third, it multiplies 17 and -8; and in the last it multiplies 17 by 8. The second expression, in particular, is worth noting: the calculator performs the expression within the parentheses and then discards the parentheses, resulting in a final expression of:

17 8

The two figures are then added to produce 25.

If you’ve done little more with Google than search the web, you’re missing out on most of the good stuff. Stuff like Picasa, Google Earth, Docs, Gmail, Google Mobile. The list goes on.

In fact, there’s so much emerging from the Google Labs on a regular basis that it’s impossible to do it justice in a single article, so I’ve tried to hit the high spots, talk about technologies available worldwide and not merely in the US, and provide some tips to help you make the most of Google’s services.

 If you do happen to be located in the US, make sure you check out one of Google’s latest offerings, GOOG-411. It’s the cheapest, fastest way to locate and connect to restaurants and other businesses in your local area. It works from your cell phone using voice or text.

Google has plans to add flight info, stock prices and a bunch of other features to GOOG-411. 

But really, I had no clue whether they were sympathetic or not.

As I was presenting, everyone else’s line was muted, so my words went completely, disturbingly uninterrupted. Not even a hushed cough or a shifting of buttocks on a chair to be heard. And, of course, there was no visual feedback. Were these quiet folk nodding? Sneering? Snoring? Cheering me on? Or wishing I’d finish? Were they, indeed, quiet at all? There was no way to tell.

Teleconferencing is a silent, squirming ordeal for presenters.  It’s not quite so bad when everyone’s an active participant, or there’s an accompanying web-based component, or some other way to provide interaction. But for a straightforward talk, it’s downright nasty.

The best part of making any presentation is feeling the mood of the audience and responding to that mood. You can start off flat and still win them over if you use the visual cues, eye contact, subtle shifting of attention to help you remould your talk to fit the room. Fat chance of that when you’re speaking in the teleconferencing cone of silence.

Web 3.0: Goodbye teleconferences? 

After my bit was over in the teleconference, the host invited questions. I’d been talking about web 2.0 sites and services and someone asked: “What do you think Web 3.0 will bring us?”

There are lots of different ideas about this. Tim Berners-Lee thinks web 3.0 will bring us the semantic web, an Internet in which computers understand the information stored on them and act as truly intelligent agents. Self-aware sites, if you will. Others talk about an intersection of small applications all working together, regardless of whether they’re on your computer, a phone or another device. Something far more sophisticated and seamless than the digital handshaking that goes on now with web 2.0 apps and services. Others think the driving technology behind web 3.0 will be improved hardware and greater bandwidth, and applications which benefit from these hardware advances.

Perhaps it was in response to the eerie quiet in which I had just presented, but I picked on the latter; the hardware-driven advances. I said web 3.0 would be the death of the teleconference. After all, there’s no reason why, with the faster connections and more powerful graphics processing coming down the pipeline, videoconferencing shouldn’t replace teleconferencing almost entirely - at least in countries with big, fat Internet pipes and generous data plans, like the US. If I can conference on Skype with my far-flung family now, then surely web 3.0 will deliver ubitquitous video interactions.

Of course, web 3.0 should herald much more than merely the death of teleconferencing. Seth Godin has an interesting take on web 4.0 and it sounds good to me. But only if I no longer have to teleconference. Without that advance, web 3 or web 4 will both be failures.

http://www.rosevines.org/blog/2008/1/25/troubleshooting-a-google-slow-down-makes-me-think-about-dump.html

into:

http://tinyurl.com/ytgp26

That’s much easier to type correctly into your browser and works well in email, where long addresses are often broken. The TinyURL is also permanent: once you create it, it can be used by anyone, anywhere, at any time; if you try to create a TinyURL for a previously-Tiny-ed site, you’ll be given the same shortcut URL.

The only trouble is, these short URLs are just as unmemorable as their long equivalents. If you want to return to the site, you’ll need to have stored or written down the TinyURL.

Moourl performs the same miniaturisation trick as TinyURL, but goes one better. It generates a small, randomly generated series of characters, such as:

http://moourl.com/bgw81

and it then gives you the option of assigning your own 20-character Moo address as well. So that initial long address could end up as:

http://moourl.com/blogslowdown

Now that’s short and easy to recall.