Tech Tip #8: Just legally turned a Nook Color into an Android Tablet for free!

 

My wife received an inexpensive refurbished Nook Color e-book electronic reader for Christmas and I had heard that it also could be turned into an Android Tablet handheld computer for an inexpensive price. Well I had a 4Gb MicroSD card hanging around that I got (for free after rebate! do we see a trend here?) a couple years ago that I thought would suit well for the job and got to hunting down a method on the internet. and found a beautiful one! Thank you to Ana Mardoll and her blog post on How to convert a Nook Color into an Android Tablet that also can easily double as an out-of-the-box Nook Color by simply restarting the thing without the modified SD card inside! It was easier than I thought and I barely ran into any snags at all. In fact it was too easy. I thought there was something I hadn't done right. of course it's only been 1 day but it all went so well. Thank you to the developers out there who build these software packages for free in their spare time and thank you, of course, to Google, Inc., for publishing for free, the awesome software source code that you provide.  What is the strangest thing is that Barnes and Noble makes the Nook Color with bluetooth inside but their software doesn't allow it, as far as I have read (meaning no bluetooth keyboards or mice or headsets, etc).    If you want to have an Android tablet, I highly recommend getting a refurbished Nook Color and trying this out. You even get a 1 year warranty, and as I say with refurbs, whatever was going to break has already broken and been fixed. Its unlikely that anything else will probably break since there are no moving parts.  Happy New Year!

Tech tip #7: Search all your Google accounts with Cloud Magic!

Wow, just watched this video on what Cloud Magic does to help you search your google contacts, gmail, google docs, and twitter (plus more to come) in order to find information you have all in one place (without opening yet another tab to do a search, etc).  I just installed it as an extension in my Google Chrome browser and it worked in a minute after installing it and adding my google account information.  I can't wait until they add FACEBOOK so I can search those messages as well! Check out the CloudMagic video!


Has anyone found a way to integrate their gmail and facebook messages ? I only know of cell phones that merge facebook and gmail contacts, and HP's Palm Pre that merged texts, facebook messages, and emails into one place. too bad there isn't any sync program out there on PC's for such things. 

Tech Tip #6: Facebook Shortcut Keys in "Chrome" and "Firefox" browsers!

Today I was thinking "why isn't there a shortcut or bookmark that i can use to quickly begin a facebook message?" and then after a quick google search for "short cut to new facebook message" found the following article very helpful! Who knew that all I needed to do was open up my facebook homepage in my Chrome browser and hit the keys "Alt-M" to get a new message to pop up!

Read more at the link below:

http://techmehigh.com/facebook-short-cut-keys/

Tip #5: Screen capture pictures and Video Screen Captures with ease!

Ever wanted to capture a screen shot of something you were working on but didn't know how?

Well if you are on a Windows PC, you can always push the "PrtScn" (aka Print Screen) button and then paste the output into a picture friendly wordprocessor like Microsoft Word or a photo editor and then save your picture there, but what about making it available on the web real easily? Well my buddy and coworker Ryan McReynolds showed me a great program called"Jing" by Techsmith. Just download it and get started pretty quickly. It will even upload anything you want to share with the click of a button and give you a link to share it publicly. Of course you can also save it to your harddrive or share it via facebook or twitter.

I've attached a video on how to do a screen video capture as well at the bottom! Happy Sharing!

Screen Capture with Jing

To see a screen capture video i made, just go here.

Screen Capture Video

Tip #4: How to edit PDFs and other graphics files for free using "Inkscape"

So I was recently frustrated that I couldn't open a special Adobe Illustrator (".ai") file that some students from last summer's Boston Ops project put together for my team at my job working with college students. I did a quick google search and found Inkscape , which appears to be a VERY useful tool for editing not only PDFs, but other graphics files as well:

Only issue I've found with this program is when dealing with multiple pages. The SVG native format that this program uses (until you save it to your desired format in the list of options above) isnt' yet designed for this and so you may have to combine the pages into one PDF. But hey, it's easy, so Happy editing for FREE!

Tip #3: How to combine multiple PDF documents into one!

Ever had a few different PDFs that you wanted to bring together into one?

In order to do this using my instructions, you must

1) have Windows on your computer

2) know how to install a program

3) know where to find the PDFs you want to combine on your computer.

Well all you have to do is go and download and install a helpful tool called "PDFCreator" by clicking on the green button at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ and install it on your computer. It seems to only be available for Windows at this time. =( then follow the directions below and Voila! you have your PDF documents combined into one!

In PDFCreator:

1. Open the documents you wish to combine.

2. Print the first document as you would on a standard printer.

3. When the print dialog appears, change the printer from your default printer to the PDFCreator printer. If the PDFCreator printer is your default printer, you do not have to change it. Then click OK.

4. Another window may appear asking you to fill in some information to create your PDF. The PDFCreator print monitor comes up and the document is in the queue.

5. Go to the second document and print it using the PDFCreator printer as you did for the first document. Repeat for each of the PDFs you want to combine.

6. The PDFCreator print monitor now shows both documents you wish to combine in the queue. Document menu and click on Combine All. The two documents will become one. This may take a little time, but you know you are finished when there is only one document shown in the queue.

7. Now click on the Documents menu and click Print. PDFCreator will ask for some information and where you want to save it or email it. I click on Save since I use Gmail to send documents. Then save the new merged PDF file wherever you like and you are Finished!

8. Your PDF will be created and opened up in your default PDF viewer for you to see. NOTE: if you print documents of different sizes, you may find the page size needs to be adjusted for your printer.

Tip #2: 20 Things I learned about Browsers and the Web

Ever wondered about what actually goes on under the hood of your internet browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome, Netscape (oldschool))? Ever wondered what all this talk is about the "Cloud"? Well this site has alot to say about it. I hope this is fun and helpful!

http://www.20thingsilearned.com

Tech Tips in Byte Size Bits

So I've been meaning to start this little blog for a while. Not sure if I want to keep it here on blogspot but hey, it's free.
Your first tech tip: Blogging (comes from "web - log" minus the "we") is a great way to keep lots of people up to date on the latest pics, videos, songs, or just plain text expressing your life and work or leisure. Go to Wordpress.com or Blogspot.com and start one today. it's pretty easy and quick. The hardest part is figuring out a "punny" or cute name for it. I took about 45 minutes to come up with mine. OBVIOUSLY I'm not a poet. My wife's birthday is today (it's 2am so it feels like it's tomorrow, but technicalities and all dictate it is today) and so I best be filling in the birthday card(s) I bought today with something endearing very soon!

I hope this will be a nice place to do some quick posts of the latest fun tips that I've found that help you use technology for your lives. Of course it will have a social media/cloud-based/mobile spin to it lately, since I use these technologies all the time lately and love them, but hey, at least I was up front about it. You may especially appreciate it if you are in a non-profit or ministry setting, as my wife and I are.