Most of you should be familiar with Google’s Street View. It allows you to see pictures of the street you are viewing on a Google Maps map. That can be very handy when you are wanting to know about the landmarks you should be looking for when you are driving to somewhere you have never been before.

But if you are wanting to have some fun with Google Street View, you can use MapCrunch to “teleport” or jump to a random place in the world.

MapCrunch allows you to easily explore the vast array of imagery captured by Google in over 27 countries. You will see spectacular scenery, busy cities and quiet back roads in the middle of nowhere. It is fun. It is addictive. The best views are added to the Gallery every day – be sure to check it out!

Go to the MapCrunch.com site and click the green “GO” button to be teleported to a random place in the world. If you only want to see certain countries, select them on the right hand panel.

And click the “myMap” option (top-right of side panel) to choose your own area to teleport around – after checking this option you will only see images within the area covered by the map on your screen. For example, if you only want views from Tokyo, move and zoom the map so that you only see Tokyo city (or search for “Tokyo”), then click “GO”!

Not quite a Star Trek transporter, but a lot of fun and probably the closest you will get to the real thing. Beam me up Scotty!

I am going to assume you have a recent complete back-up of all your computer hard drives. You do – don’t you?

Here is another important question: Do you have a Startup Repair disc?

Of course you do! But if you don’t, please take a few minutes to create one. It could be a lifesaver if your hard drive crashes. A Startup Repair disc can be used to start your computer in situations where your computer won’t boot-up due to corruption or damage on the hard drive.

Creating a Startup Repair disc is simple and fast. Put a blank writable CD or DVD in your optical drive. In Windows 7, click Start > All Programs > Maintenance > Create a System Repair Disc and let Windows 7 build a bootable emergency disc. Windows will create a disc that will have the Windows 7 OS and some hardware specific info for you computer. The steps for creating a repair disc for older versions of Windows are similar.

Take a few minutes to create a Startup Repair disc if you don’t have one. It can help you avoid the loss of all the data on a corrupt or damaged hard drive.

Do you have a burning desire to catch a sunrise or sunset? Google can help. If you type “sunrise” or “sunset” followed by the name a city (don’t type the quotes), Google will give you the time of the next sunrise or sunset in that city and how many hours and minutes until it arrives.

What will Google think of next?

On a complex PowerPoint slide, you will often can have several objects (e.g. clipart, pictures, textboxes) carefully placed so they appear just where you want them. They could be next to each other, overlapping, partially overlapping etc.

If you want to change the location of several objects, moving them one at a time is a pain because it takes multiple moves to move them individually and all your careful spacing is lost and will have to be set-up again as you move each item.

Next time you need to move multiple objects on a PowerPoint slide, remember this handy trick – it allows you to simultaneously move multiple objects.

Go to Normal view and move to the slide you want to edit. Move your cursor to the top left of an imaginary box that surrounds the objects you want to move. Using your left mouse button (click and hold it), drag out a square around the objects that you want to move. You have to make sure all four corners of every object you want to move is within the square. Release the mouse button when the square encloses all the objects you want to move. All the items within the square will now be selected. Drag and drop one of the objects you selected to a new location and the rest will move as well, and the exact spacing will be maintained.

If you don’t want something to move, just make sure you don’t select all four corners – if you catch only three corners within the square it won’t be selected. This can be handy when you want to leave some objects exactly where they are.

And another neat trick – you can resize all the selected objects by dragging the corner or side of one of them.

Remember these tricks next time you want to move multiple objects on a PowerPoint slide.

You can change line spacing in Word by clicking on Format, selecting Paragraph, clicking on the Indents and spacing tab, and adjusting the spacing settings. Whew! That’s a lot of work. There is a better way.

Changing the line spacing in a Word document is very easy if you remember a few keyboard shortcuts:

• Pressing Ctrl+5 changes to 1.5 line spacing
• Pressing Ctrl+2 changes to double line spacing
• Pressing Ctrl+1 will give you single line spacing

If you are using Word for Mac, substitute the Command key for the Ctrl key.

Remember these keyboard shortcuts next time you need to change the line spacing in a Word document you are typing.

Renaming a file in Windows Explorer is very easy: Just select the file with a single click and press F2. This allows you to edit the file name. When you are done, click Enter to finish.

But what happens if you want to rename multiple files? Yes you can press F2 multiple times, but there is a better way!

When you need to rename multiple files, press F2 and edit the name of the first file as you normally would. But, don’t press Enter when you are done. Instead, press Tab. This will jump you to the next file in the list and it will select the entire filename so you can edit it. Just repeat the process for all the files you want to rename.

Willing to bet most of you didn’t know this one. 😉

At some point or another, every computer user has had Windows or another program lock-up and crash. After this happens, you will sometimes be lucky enough to get an error message. On occasion, that error message will actually give you helpful information about why the computer crashed.

But all too often, the error message will be complete gibberish and offer absolutely nothing that will help you understand why the crash happened, much less what you need to do to fix it. Here is a sample:

Say what????

Next time this happens to you, don’t despair. You can safely assume loads of other people have had the same problem, and that at least some of them have gone to the Web for an answer.

Do a Google search using a portion of the text from the error message you got. Use enough text from the message to get search results for exactly the same error message. Remember to put the search text in double quotes to force your search results to include only items for the exact error message you got. Look through these sites and you will likely find a solution to your crashing problem.

Note that you may find sites that offer a solution, but ask you to register to get it. Some of these sites are reputable, some are not. Ignoring them is the safe thing to do. Odds are you will find the answer to your problem on a public site.

When you need to collaborate on a document displayed on your screen, it’s great to have a colleague from down the hall come into your office and look over your shoulder.

But what happens when that person is across the city or on the other side of the world?

You can use join.me – a ridiculously simple screen sharing tool for meetings on the fly with up to 250 people. Use it for collaborating on a document, a training session, computer trouble-shooting and anything else that requires you to share a computer screen. You can also share files and chat with people you are sharing your screen with. And there are even viewers for iPad, iPhone and Android devices. Amazing to get all this for FREE!

To start a join.me session, go to the join.me site and click on the Share link. It downloads a small browser add-on that allows you to control the sharing of your screen. You also get a unique 9 digit code (for that session). Tell the people that want to see your screen to go to join.me and enter this code in the Join box. In seconds they will see your desktop in a browser window on their desktop.

There is a pay version that adds additional features including presenter swap, a personal sharing link & custom background, a meeting scheduler, user management, international conference lines and other features. There is a 14 day free trial for pay version features.

Try join.me next time you want to collaborate across the Web.

At one time or another, most of you will have plugged your smartphone or cell phone into computer to charge it. And on occasion, many of you may have charged a camera, GPS or other device on your computer. Using a computer or laptop for charging these devices is especially helpful in a pinch – most often when you forgot your charger at home and have a dead device.

I’m also sure that those of you that own an iPad or other larger tablet will have tried to charge it on your computer only to be frustrated by the “Not charging” message.

So why won’t an iPad or similar tablet charge when it is plugged into a computer? The answer is really quite simple. The USB ports on a computer just don’t have enough power to charge an iPad. The USB ports on computers or laptops (for both PCs and Macs) put out 5 volts at 0.5 amps; or about 2.5 watts. The iPad charger is much more powerful as it puts out 5 volts at 2.1 amps; or about 10 watts. You need the extra power to charge the larger battery in an iPad. Most USB hubs also don’t have sufficient power to charge and iPad.

Two tiny footnotes in case you find yourself in a real pinch with just a computer to charge your iPad. First, despite what I said above, computer USB ports can actually charge an iPad, but they do it very slowly, and only if iPad it turned off. The moment the screen goes on, the iPad sucks more power than the USB port can give it and the battery will start to drain. No peeking!

Second, you should also check the specs on your computer or laptop as some have USB charging ports that will have a higher output – these still won’t charge a device while it is on, but they will charge it a bit faster than a regular USB port will. On some computers these charging ports will even charge a device with the computer it turned off.

You may have noticed that the pictures on your digital camera or smartphone are always stored in a folder named DCIM. Ever wondered why? Here is the answer:

At some point in the distant past, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) created a standard defining where and how digital images would be stored on digital media used in cameras. This standard gives direction to camera manufacturers on the directory structure, file naming method, character set, file format, and metadata format for the storage of digital images on media used in cameras.

Having such a standard means that cameras always know where to look for and store pictures when you insert a memory card into them. By default, pictures are always stored in the DCIM folder and there is a pre-set file-naming convention. If the DCIM folder doesn’t exist when the memory card is inserted, the camera will create it.

And it doesn’t stop at your camera, some image-editing software programs are configured to automatically look for and in the DCIM folder for pictures.

So now you know why your digital camera pictures are always in a folder named DCIM.

• Nicholas on Software Tools for Editing
• Jamie on Software Tools for Editing
• Steve Coughlan on ‘I Hope This E-Mail Finds You Well’
• Lyn on Womxn
• Celia Chandler on Gross Negligence

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