Creating a Desktop shortcut to Gmail and other email services



J. writes:
How about setting up a Desktop link – a direct link to one of the online
email services? One of my friends had set up a link to Yahoo on his
Desktop, which I was intrigued by ~ so how did he do it?

Well, it’s easy-peasy….

If you’ve got one of the following email accounts (or wish to set one
up for yourself), click on one of the following links to the sign up /
sign in page.

For Googlemail or Gmail, click HERE

For Yahoo email, click HERE.

For Windows Live Hotmail, click HERE.

For Fastmail, click HERE.

Now click on the URL (the website address) box at the top of the sign
in page, to highlight it (in blue)



Copy it (press down the Control key and the letter C together), which
copies the address onto your computer’s clipboard.

Now do a right-sided mouse click on your Desktop. Slide your mouse pointer
down the list as far as "New".

Click on the Shortcut icon, just below the yellow folder icon.



Paste the URL address into the rectangular white box (Ctrl + letter V)





Click on “Next”

In the next box you see, type in your email site name e.g yahoo.,
type straight over the blue-highlighted writing ("New Internet Shortcut")



Now click on “Finish”, which will give you the following shortcut on
your Desktop ....



You can move the icon around the screen a bit, as you can with other
shortcuts … click + drag … to a new position.

If you're using websites like Flickr and Blogger a lot, you could set
up Desktop shortcuts to these websites too.

Using an Open Office spreadsheet to add up.

JH writes:

Most of you will know about the fact that you can use a Microsoft
Windows calculator to add up a list of figures. If you haven't seen
it, so a search for the "calculator" program in the search box on
the Start menu (if you've got Windows Vista or 7 ... in Windows XP,
it's hidden in the list of programs under Accessories, I think).

I've used this calculator a lot in recent years, but I don't like
the fact that it's so small, and like most calculators, you can't
see a list of figures you've just typed in, to see if you've made a
mistake. Consequently, I end up totting everything up 2 or 3 times,
to check that I haven't made a simple error in entering up the
figures.

I realised a few days ago, how simple it is to use a spreadsheet to
add up a column of figures ... you can easily review what you've
just typed in, and the actual addition is a doddle.

If you've got Microsoft Office, you can use an Excel spreadsheet.
In Open Office (which is free to download from HERE), you can use
its spreadsheet.

Click on the OO icon on your Desktop to open it up, and then click
on the Spreadsheet icon.



Enter up your figures in any column you like ... I've put 3 amounts in cells
B3 to B5. You could add any text you like in column A, alongside the amounts.


Just above column B you will see the Greek letter, sigma, which is the
icon you press to add up. Before you do so, click in cell B6 to
highlight it, and then click on the sigma icon.



You will see the above pending addition of the figures in cells B3 to B5.
Now press the Enter key on your keyboard, to see the total. (I have
chosen to make the font bolder, to make the total stand out).



You can edit any of the figures you like in cells B3 to B5, by simply
typing over them. You could change one of the figures to a zero, if you
have entered a figure twice by mistake. You can also use zeros to fill
any gaps in a long list of figures. After editing, simply click on the
total, and a new total figure will magically appear.

What about subtraction, multiplication and division?

Say you'd like to subtract 2 from 4 ...
In any cell, type in this formula .... =4-2
and then press the Enter key, to give you the result.

For multiplication and division, the formulae are ... =4*2 and =4/2
Press the Enter key for the result. Easy-peasy.

To save your work, I use File > Save As, as you would to save a Word
document. Give your work a title and a date, and also add the suffix:
.ods ... for example, 110221 food.ods would indicate a food bill for
21 Feb 2011. Typing a date in this way helps create a list of items
in a folder, listing everything in your folder in date order.

To print out an OO document, you will need to change it to a PDF file,
which is easy-peasy. Click on File > Export as PDF > Export > save as
a PDF file, which you can then print out. You will see that the
spreadsheet will lose its tabular layout when it's printed out.

I've written a bit more about OO spreadsheets in my post dated 19/1/11.

Downsize your photos with PIXresizer

JH writes:
This is a free software program, which you can use to downsize your
photos for emailing and for website use. This program is intended for
use with Windows XP and Vista (and earlier versions of Windows). I
haven't tried it out with Windows 7 ... if anyone does so, please
would you let me know if it's successful?

You can specify the exact number of pixels you’d like for the larger
photo dimension, and you can upload multiple photos – an entire folder
of photos, which PIXresizer will change for you in a flash.

If you're thinking about uploading photos onto Flickr, it's a good
idea to reduce your image sizes for faster uploading. For a landscape
photo, the ideal image width is 700-800 pixels. If someone were to
download this and attempt to print it out, such an image would be
rubbish ... so reducing images sizes is a good deterrent to stop
people from using your photos in this way. As a rough rule of thumb,
you need 4 times as many pixels in an image to get a good quality
print.

If you're uploading photos onto Blogger, then the ideal width is
500 pixels, by the way.

The program doesn't allow you to save the altered photos in the
same folder as your original ones. You can re-name your smaller
images, by a right-sided mouse click on them. I add the letters:
"min" to my image numbers ... eg IMG_5354min

You can download the program safely from this site …
http://download.cnet.com/PIXresizer/3000-12511_4-10607499.html

Building your own website + Open Office

JH writes:
Today I gave a talk about building websites, and mentioned that I use
free software which you can download from the internet ... software
such as Kompozer and Gimp (for reducing the size of your photos and
for making banners).

You can find lots of info about how to use these on the internet. I
have put together a website with a few pages on Kompozer and Gimp …

http://jwebdesigns.angelfire.com/

Another of my websites … http://jwebdesigns.110mb.com/ … gives
advice on how to set up a website using 110MB dot com … please ignore
the first few pages on Kompozer and Gimp, which I've put on to fill
the space.

Other websites I mentioned were …

Flickr … to share your photos with family & friends
http://www.flickr.com/
Here's a link to my own site … http://www.flickr.com/photos/14836724@N00/
You can put up to 200 photos onto Flickr free of charge, and you can
put lots more on for payment of about £15 a year. You can link up with
groups such as Flickr Nottingham, where you'll find lots of
inspirational photos. Flick Blog is fab to look at too.

Clikpic … ready-made websites for photographers to display or sell their
pics ...
http://www.clikpic.com/

DH Counselling … the first website I set up, with the help of my friend,
Barry, and my daughter, Emily. http://www.dhcounselling.co.uk/

Have a look at the mouse roll-over effects set up for the links,
built into the source code.
To see the latter, do a right mouse-click on the home page … you
will see my metatags in the Head section of the HTML code … these are
hidden keywords. Try a search in Google for “counselling Nottingham”
and see which Google page the website appears on (hopefully on Google
page 1 or 2). Creating metatags for your website helps advertise
your website, if you wish to attract visitors. You can get a free
hit-counter from Statcounter for your site.

The banner was created to fit inside the box using Gimp … it's
important to get the measurements exactly right for a banner, and
not to stretch the image in any way (or your text will lose its
sharpness). The banner for Nottingham U3A and the long blue lines
were also made using Gimp.

Here is the Nottm U3A website hosted on Angelfire
http://nottu3a.angelfire.com/
…. Angelfire is free web-hosting service, which is paid for by
the advertising you'll see on it.

As regards choice of font for the text, I recommend Arial 12, and
also using grey text on a white background for more comfortable
viewing for your readers.

You are welcome to copy the layout of the metatags, and the source
code for the mouse-rollover effect and for the clock you can see
on the Nottm U3A website, as I borrowed the code from someone else
myself. Other free clocks are available from HERE.

…............................................................

Right at the start of the meeting, I gave another plug for using
Open Office, which is yet more free software you can download from
the internet.

You can download it from here … http://www.openoffice.org/
I use it for writing text documents (which can be converted to
PDF files for emailing and for printing), and for creating
slideshow presentations & spreadsheets. It's best to download
it early in the morning, as it's a huge download.

I've written a few articles on how to use Open Office, which
you'll find on the Computer Club blogsite …
http://nottu3a.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html

I hope I've inspired a few of you to have a go yourselves at
creating a website.

…............................................................

On 24 March, I'll be giving a talk on how to set up a site on
Blogger, whereby you can join an online community of people
with similar interests to yourself. You are now looking at one
of my blogsites (created in Old Blogger), by the way.