You know I love Firefox, right? I know that I’ve said it enough times.

Today I want to throw a brief tip out there and give you something to download to help you use Firefox to find things on the internet quicker.

Smart Search Bookmarks are something that (as far as I can tell) are unique to Firefox at this point, Opera doesn’t have them (easily accessable), nope on Google Chrome and we all know that Internet Explorer would never have something that would make web browsing this easy. Did I just hear someone ask about Netscape, seriously? It’s dead; it has to be smellier than Lazarus was by the time Jesus got to him.

So, now that we’re past my lame attempt at humor…

These bookmarks allow you to search just about any search on the internet by typing it into your location bar (the place you type “www.CruTech.org” when you want to come here) with a short prefix to make it search the right page. For example, we’re going to set it up so that if you want to search Google all you have to do is type a “g” before your search term and hit enter, like this:

To do this, go to Google.com first. Right-click (Control-Click for Macs) in the search box and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search…”

When you do that a pop-up box will, well, pop up.

In the Name box, type “Google Search” (or whatever will help you remember what it is when you look at all of your bookmarks), put “g” in the Keyword box and I’d suggest putting it in a new folder named “Searches”; you can get to the folders by clicking the small button with just the triangle in it.

Click “Add” and you’re good to go.

Go up to your search bar and type “g CruTech” and hit enter.

Ta-da!

Remeber, you can use this for just about any search box out there. I use this a ton to search on Wikipedia and other sites, including the directory for all of the sites that are associated with Campus Crusade for Christ.

I’ve included a file that you can download and import into your bookmarks. It has all of these searches included:

Prefix – Search Site
acronym – Acronym Finder
amazon – Amazon.com
ebay – eBay
flickr – Flickr (images/pictures)
froogle – Froogle Quick Search
g – Google Quick Search
image – Google Image Search
lh – LifeHacker (Technology Blog)
quot – Stock Symbol Quicksearch
technorati – Technorati (Blog Index)
thes – Thesaurus
slang – Urban Dictionary (slang search)
w – Wikipedia
local – Yahoo Local Search
fb – Facebook
ccci – CCCI Search
bible – Bible Gateway (search reference or word to find)
weather – Weather Channel (search using zip code or city name, ex. “weather 22207″)
cc – Creative Commons (great for images, text, etc with light copyrighting)
imdb – Internet Movie Database
bs – YouVersion (bible study resources, search scripture references)
half – Half.com (cheap books, etc.)
wookie – Wookiepedia (Star Wars encyclopedia)
d – Dictionary
map – Google Maps
blue – Blue Letter Bible
yt – YouTube
ebible – eBible.com

You can download the file here, right click and choose “Save link as”. Remember where you save it so you can import it to Firefox:

Bookmarks.html

Enjoy!

WHY? You know there is a way to get your website updates in one place, you just need that place!

Earlier this week we talked about why it’s not such a bad idea to subscribe to RSS way of life. Now that you’ve tasted the Kool-aid, let’s get into how you can actually do this!

We Need a Reader

Each item of RSS is called a feed. It’s like the websites send out a feed of information but we need something to capture the feed. That device is a feed reader (also sometimes referred to as an aggregator).

Feed readers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Instead of going through all the options, I’m going to show you my favorite – Google Reader. It’s a free website that requires a Google account (if you have gMail then you’re set). So head over to Google Reader (aka: gReader) and sign up and/or in with your Google account.

We Need to Grant Permission

Subscribing — this model for receiving information has been around for a long time. Just like when you subscribe to a magazine, you’re giving them permission to send you the latest information. Now that we have something to read our feeds in, we need to go give some websites permission to send us the latest!

Now, remember last week I told you that the Firefox browser has all sorts of goodies built in? This is one place it pays off. To get ready for some streamlined subscribing, in the Firefox menu click on Tools and then Options. You will then see a window that has an option for Feeds. Click it and change the settings to “Subscribe to the feed using:” and select Google. Press OK.

Now, let’s head over to 170spoons.com (if you’re not already here) because you want to make sure you always get the best tools, tips, and tutorials for technology! Look up a the web address bar and you’ll see at the end of it a little orange icon which means this website has a RSS feed for you.

Editor’s Note: This will also work if you type a http://www.CruTech.org in.

Click the icon and you’ll be taken to a page that has two options. We want the one that says “Add to Google Reader”. Click that blue box to add it.

Once you have clicked that button you should be taken back to your Google Reader with 170spoons.com loaded and ready to be read! Note that the number beside the item (in this case 2) is how many unread items you have for that feed. Your number may vary.

If you want to use a different browser or a different reader, you can still go through the subscribing process. Go to your website and when you get there, look for the RSS button that on most pages looks like this.

Later in the week I’ll give you some tips on how to use Google Reader better and faster. But for now, you should be set up. Go around to different websites that offer updated content and see if they have a RSS button somewhere and load up your reader!

I know many people reading this use different readers than Google. What is your favorite and why?

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Editor’s Note: This post is a part of our “RSS Awareness Week” Festivities. It was originally written by Rob Williams for his website 170spoons.com and is copied here with his permission. Read the rest of this entry »

This week I’m going to take a “week off”. It’s not that there won’t be anything posted this week for you to learn, it’s that it won’t be me writing those posts. I’ve asked Rob Williams (former staff at HQ in Orlando) to share some posts that he wrote a few weeks ago for his own tech blog 170spoons.

In celebration of May 1st, which is both May Day and RSS Awareness Day, they will discuss the nature and advantages of newsfeeds (also known as RSS or “Really Simple Syndication”). Most of you reading this are already taking advantage of a form of RSS Feeds in the email that is sent out when I update the site.

Let me suggest at this point that you go ahead and sign up for a Google/Gmail account as it will help you understand better what he is talking about in the upcoming posts.

See you all again next week!

In my last post I pointed out that I am a fan of Google products, in the post before that I shared the advantages of the Gmail (Google Mail) application – which I do believe to be even superior to Outlook when combined with other applications that Google offers. I even walked you through, step-by-step, the process of signing up for a Gmail account.

Well, today I want to share another walk-through, this time we’ll take a spin around what you can see from the Inbox view. Click the image to start the walk-through

Let me know in the comments if you’ve decided to set up a Gmail account.

Let’s be honest, we all have biases. For those of us who have had a part in ministry that includes active evangelism, it’s a part of every day life; people look at and interact with the world differently.

There is a similar truth in technology. People have differing uses and preferences when it comes to how they want their technology to look, work and approach the tasks they have to do. As I have looked at the list of people who have subscribed to these posts I notice that there are some people who will not always find my posts interesting because they’re using programs, platforms or operating systems that I don’t use and therefore know very little about.

CruTech is an outgrowth of a mentality of getting the most out of your technology without having artificial limits placed on you; this leads me personally to advocate for a number of technologies and systems that may or may not catch you in stride. While I don’t have the time (or much interest) in getting to know these systems, I do want CruTech to serve you as well as possible; if you are (or know someone on staff who is) better versed in things that I don’t know about or use I would love to have you (or them) become a the second author of content here. Feel free to contact me by leaving a comment below.

As a semi-pro wrestler I once heard about once said, “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”

Stuff I am a fan of:
• Open Source software
• the Windows operating systems
• Google products and services
• being able to tell my computer what to do rather than having artificial limits placed upon me
• web-based technologies

Tech stuff I know little about or don’t particularly like:
• Macs
• Internet Explorer or Opera
• Microsoft itself
• proprietary software
• overpriced technology that is available for free or cheap

Yes, I said I don’t really like Macs, I do understand that they can be very useful for those of you who are doing visual design, audio or video editing. They are not really any more useful or easy to use than Windows machines and are far more susceptible to viruses and other attacks than they were in previous generations. On the other hand, I would love to have someone writing for CruTech that knows Macs well and can help those of you who read to use them more powerfully as well.

I just wanted to make sure you all knew where I was coming from. I will focus a lot on web-based technologies which are open to use on Windows, Macs or Linux machines so don’t click that unsubscribe link just yet!

I do all of my emailing through a single Gmail account. I am able to do this simply because of Google’s amazing thoroughness in the implementation and design of Gmail. Let me list off a few of the many advantages and post a walkthrough of how to sign up for a Gmail account.

Some advantages:
• Free. Anyone can sign up for it. There are extras that you can pay for, but not really necessary.
• Storage space. By the time you read this there will be more than 6.5 GB (gigabytes) of it. If every email you send or receive is 50 KB (pretty big for an email without an attachment) that allows for almost 21,000 emails before it’s full. (You can add 10 GB more for $20/year.)
• Growing storage space. It’s estimated that Gmail is adding 3.3 MB daily (67 of those hypothetical emails).
• POP and IMAP access. POP and IMAP are the primary ways that programs like Outlook and Thunderbird bring in emails from the web. This can make your email available anywhere.
• Incoming POP access. This is how I do all of my email from my Gmail account. You are able to have Gmail pull in your USCM.org (or CCCI.org) email and store it in Gmail – this also works for your internet service provider account (Verizon, Comcast, etc.). You can even have Gmail send emails from those accounts.
• Keyboard shortcut navigation. This is a great feature in any program for working quickly and efficiently, we’ll learn about this in future posts.
• Multiple accounts built into one. If you sign up for johnny.crusade@gmail.com you also own johnnycrusade@gmail.com, j.o.h.n.n.y.c.r.u.s.a.d.e@gmail.com (or anything in between) as well as johnny.crusade@googlemail.com. You can also add words to it with a plus; for example johnny.crusade+ebay@gmail.com for all of your eBay stuff so if you start getting spam you know who has been selling your email address.
• Search don’t sort. Remember, Gmail is from Google – a search engine. Gmail can instantly find old emails as you search for them. It’s quick and thorough. There are also advanced searches that you can use… we’ll look at them closer in a future post.
• Sort if you must. Gmail can sort emails just like Outlook into categories (called tags) – the main difference is that you can have multiple tags on one email. So, if you have a student who is a leader at one of your schools but is also attending the summer project you’re directing you can label his email both “Podunk State” as well as “OCMD Summer Project”
• Filters. You can have Gmail automatically filter things depending on what email it was sent from, or sent to, or words that are in the email itself… or by about a thousand other things.
• Threaded Conversations. Gmail will group related emails together as a “conversation” so that you don’t have to flip back and forth between individual emails between you and someone else. It will group them together in order so that you can read them all at once. Honestly, this may be the main feature that changes the way you read email.
• FREE!

If I have convinced you (and really, what more could you ask for?) take a look at the walk-through that I put together a few months ago.

We’ll walk through the Inbox next.

Whenever you get a new program to learn it can be a little overwhelming; sometimes the learning curve can be pretty steep, other times it just looks like it until you get the basics down. Here are some tips that will help you to get a basic knowledge of just about any new program.

1. Use to learn the Help menu – the quickest way to get to it in virtually any program is by hitting the F1 button. This may seem easy, but more often than not people don’t even think about looking here before they call for help from someone else. Most people learn by doing something themselves – you’ll become a better user of your computer if you begin here. (Windows and most Linux distributions have this as well; minimize all of your windows, click somewhere on the desktop and hit F1. Macs may have this feature as well, I’m not sure though – can someone confirm or deny this for me?)
2. Google it! You’ll be surprised what you can find out there. If you’re trying to figure out how to move a Textbox in MS Word and can’t find it in the Help file (it’s probably there too) just go to Google and type:
   

   Microsoft Word move textbox

   I will virtually guarantee that you’ll find your answer in the first two or three links. When I’m trying to figure out a program or a feature for someone else, this is where I’ll go to find the answer. (Soon you’ll realize that I’m a huge fan of Google on the whole).

3. Go to the website. If you click on most programs Help menu, there will be an About InsertProgramNameHere option that will tell you about the program and where the webpage is that you can go to for more information.

That’s it. Those are the three most basic things you can do to learn any program better. Good luck!

I need to begin by noting something that I wasn’t aware of when I wrote last week’s Beginning with Firefox post; the Preferences window (called Options in the Windows’ version of FF) is not in the Tools menu, but the Edit menu in non-Windows’ versions. That is where we’ll spend a lot of our time this week.

Before we do that let’s look at the (I believe) universal Tools menu.

Web Search – This simply puts your cursor in the (customizable) search box at the top right of the screen. While we’re looking at it click on the small arrow to the left of the search box now, you’ll see the standard search engines that come pre-installed with Firefox – you can ad more which is something that we’ll cover in the future.

Downloads – Here is the window that pops up when you download a file. It’s a way to keep track of them and even monitor where you’re downloading them to on your machine.

Add-ons – This is one of the beautiful features of Firefox (and really just about any open source program). Add-ons are mini-programs that you can install into your Firefox that can make it capable of performing tasks that in can’t “out of the box”. The Firefox installation that I’m using right now has 25 add-ons running that do everything from notify me when I have a new message in my inbox to blocking ads to spell-checking things that I put in text-boxes online… and more.

If you bring up the box it will have a few options that will allow you to change the Theme (just the look of your FF browser window), and add on items that will allow you to play Flash videos (think YouTube), or other media (think CNN or games). If you click the “Get Extensions” or “Get Themes” it will take you to the page on Firefox where these are available.

Java Console, Error Console, Page Info – Probably not something you want or need to dive into if you’re not designing a website.

Clear Private Data – This will enable you to clear your cookies, browser history, and other data that your browser keeps about your habits. It does it relatively thoroughly, be careful that you don’t delete passwords that you want to keep saved!

Now on to the options…

Read the rest of this entry »

I do already have a number of ideas for what I hope to post here when I’m back from Florida and North Carolina, a couple of them are actually already being covered by Rob over at 170spoons.

• My own tech-biases (or “why I need someone who can write about Macs”)
• Firefox, why it’s better than what you’re using.
• Google, and why they’re the opposite of evil
• Gmail
• Greader
• Gcal
• Google Apps
• How to learn to use any program
• Why your mouse is not always best (or “Shortcuts are your friends”)
• Basic computer upgrading
• Social networking tips
• iTunes, MP3s and Podcasts
• Open Source programs (or “Techno-Democracy”

In the mean time, I will be soaking up some rays at Cape Canaveral and then D-ing some MPs in North Carolina.