Smart Tech Tips

If you ever have problems with windows 7 crashing in a constant loop once you put an avi or any movie file on the desktop, then you are the victim of thumbnail cache error. There are many ways to fix this but the quickest and easiest is to disable thumbnail preview all together. A side benefit of this operation is your windows explorer will be much faster loading up. You can individually enable thumbnail view for a folder if you want in the future, but keep it off system wide to avoid the aforementioned problem above.

Here’s how:

The browser space is getting really crowded. On the Mac your default browser is Safari, but you have many choices to pick. Now you can add Google Chrome to that mix. it’s available here http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/. Warning! It is still under development so you should be aware it may not be stable. If you have to try the lastest and greatest, this is definately worth a try. Early reviews in the windows world says that it is very fast due to an optimzed javascript engine.

From early reports on the net, it looks like the new iphone will be called the iphone 3G S. It also is revealed that it will come in many colors. Black, White, Orange, Blue, Plaid, Green, and yellow seems to be the new flavors it will be available at launch. Also in unrelated news, Steve Jobs will be returning to work this month.

I know this years WWDC will have many things revealed. I am particularly excited about OSX Snow Leopard and Iphone SDK 3.0.

This is a little late in writing but if you have an iPhone and you make lots of international calls, Skype for iPhone is a great fit. The application is free from the Appstore. It only requires your iPhone to be connected to a wifi to make voice calls. When calling from Skype to Skype, the call was clear and in some instances better than the average cell phone call. Calling to a landline was not so great but functional. When I first used this app, I thought it was broken because I did not put a ‘+’ in front of each number. The test call would work great but anytime I called anyone, it kept saying the party was not reachable. I could not find that issue anywhere on the net. It finally hit me that I needed to add that prefix. After that everything was great. If you purchase Skype’s monthly rate for unlimited calls then theoretically you can use your iPhone to make calls without a contract!

Do you remember the early days of computers when after you’ve purchased your boxy beige unit and brought it home to find a few free programs falling out of the box? Hopefully you didn’t just flip the shipping box over to get to the contents. One of those items was the ‘Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing’. I think I’ve found those disks rummaging through old computer documentation boxes as much as old AOL disks. Now there is a way to get that kind of typing program for FREE and without running Windows 95. The site is http://www.typingweb.com/.

I’ve tried it and it works pretty well for an online FLASH /AJAX / JAVASCRIPT site. In fact I would say it works better than the old Mavis Beacon Typing program. When you register, it lets you save your progress and see how much you improve over time. On my first try I got an average of 51 WPM with a Gross speed of 67 WPM and an 99% accuracy. My problem keys were ETUC. Of course if you don’t want to divulge your information you can just start typing right away without ever registering.