[accesscomp] Dan's tech tips for this week
- From: "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 10:30:18 -0700
DAN'S TIPS FOR OCTOBER 4-18 2010
*Monday October 1st 2010
Smart PDF Converter
Below is an article from Fred's Head. Then after the link to buy this product,
there is an excert from the site where the product can be baught. You can use
the free version and it does not expire. However, I understand it to only
convert three pages. But with the pro version there are many more
possabilities.
Smart PDF Converter is the program you need to convert your files from PDF to
DOC or another file format. It works on all Windows systems. The program is
both easy to use and powerful. If you only want to convert documents, and don't
want to fuss with complex settings, you can select the file you want to convert
and click the Convert button. And you're finished. Smart PDF Converter is that
fast and easy.
If you are an advanced user who wants more flexibility, you can set various
conversion modes. You can select settings that determine whether the output
document is easier to edit or strictly represents the original layout. You can
also choose to extract the images from the PDF file, publish the file on the
Internet, and more. The Pro version converts your edited documents back to the
PDF file format. The software supports any printable document format.
"In keeping with our policy for our entire product range, we designed Smart PDF
Converter using the highest standards of professionalism to provide optimum
levels of quality and performance with 100% customer satisfaction. We're so
confident that you'll love this software that we back our products with a 100%
guarantee. You get a full refund, if you decide your purchase does not meet
your requirements in any way whatsoever, within the first 60 days of your
purchase."
Click this link to purchase Smart PDF Converter:
http://www.pdftodocconverterpro.com
Document source Fred's Head October 2009
Try it for free!
Does not expire
Converts 3 pages
If you are using a screenreader and at the top of the homepage, press the
letter h once. You will land on "try it for free."
Then arrow down four times to the download link and press enter. The usual
download prompt appears.
There is a "buy now" link down further on the page.
http://www.pdftodocconverterpro.com/order.htm
The pro version is usually 100 dollars. Currently it is selling for a special
price of $69.90.
With the pro version you can: Convert with no limitations, Money back
guarantee, Technical support
*Tuesday October 5 2010
YouTube to MP3 Converter
Article Source: Fred's Head, October 2010
YouTube-mp3.org is the easiest online service for converting videos to mp3. You
don't need an account, the only thing you need is a YouTube URL.
They will start to convert the audio track of your video to mp3 as soon as you
submit it and you can download it. Different from other services, the whole
conversion process will be performed by their site and within a matter of
minutes, you download the audio file from their servers.
Because conversion is performed online, everything is platform-independent: You
can use it with your Mac, a Linux PC or even an iPhone. All conversions will
be performed in high quality mode with a bitrate of at least 128 kBit/s. The
service is completely free, please allow approximately three to four minutes
per video.
Click this link to create MP3 files with http://www.youtube-mp3.org .
*Wednesday October 6 2010
Searching For torrents
Updated Tuesday, 04/06/2010 - 13:25 by keroffs
(Note from Dan Thompson regarding additions to the article: I have inserted
all links and taken out the word I, replacing it with the words "the author.")
Introduction
There is a great deal of content available in bittorrent. There is over 10
PetaBytes of content available in over 10 million plus active torrents.
Finding the content you want within all that is what these torrent search sites
are about.
If you do not know what bittorrent is, see What is Bittorrent?.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/what-is-bittorrent
The first step in bittorrent is getting a bittorrent client
(Best Free Bittorrent Client)
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-bittorrent-client.htm
and then setting it up properly (Optimizing Bittorrent Clients for Speed).
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/optimizing-bittorrent-clients-speed.htm
The next step is finding the content you want, which this article hopes to help
with.
This article lists public torrent search sites, which do not require
registration. There are many private torrent search sites. The best place to
look for information on those is the articles at FileShareFreak .
http://filesharefreak.com/
Used properly, bittorrent is one of the safest ways to transfer content. The
torrent file contains metadata about the files to be shared and the bittorrent
client checks content received against this metadata. If there is any
difference, the content received will be discarded. This means that malware
cannot be added to a torrent after it is active and that any data that is
damaged in transmission will be discarded and re-downloaded.
Torrent Search Site Features
There are two features of these sites that will be discussed here. Comments
and Ratings help avoid fakes and scams. Sorting helps to find the healthiest
torrent for the exact content you want. All of these sites have features to
show the files the torrent contains. Many of these sites have ads, but none
are overwhelming and none have popups. Sites without ads will be noted in
their description.
Comments and Ratings
To avoid malware, fakes and scams in torrents only download torrents where the
comments or ratings indicate the content associated with the torrent is clean
and real. As stated above, the content associated with a torrent can not be
altered once it is active. So the comments and ratings can be relied upon to
find a good torrent. Each torrent has a unique ID called an Info Hash. This
Info Hash can also be used to find information on the torrent.
Sorting
Sorting is used primarily to find the healthiest torrents. There is no way to
know for certain which torrent is faster as the download speed depends on the
upload capacity off the other users. The best indicator is the seed to peer
ratio on the torrent. The higher that ratio, the more likely it is that the
torrent will be faster. For more info on this, see Good Torrents.
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Good_Torrents
Sorting by seeds, peers (leeches) or "health" is helpful for this. (personally
the author finds the "health" sorting to be somewhat inaccurate and prefer
sorting by seed numbers)
Sorting can also be helpful to find the exact content you want, which is where
sorting by date, name, size and category can be helpful.
At a visitor's request, the author has added information on those sites that
offer magnet links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme
Sites with a offer the alternative of a magnet link. For those of you who
prefer, or need, magnet links the GreaseMonkey script Magnet Catcher will show
magnet links even at sites that do not offer them.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/64210
The author has tried this and it was successful on most sites.
Torrent Search Site Listings: Popular and Unique
This listing is divided into two parts. The Popular listing is of the sites
that are used by many people. These sites have large listings of torrents and
good comments and ratings systems along with various sorting features. Most of
the time, you will find the content you are looking for at these sites. The
Unique sites are less popular, but have unique features that make them worth
using in certain searches.
Warning: Although each of these sites has legally distributable content, they
also contain a good deal of copyrighted content which is not legally
distributable. While bittorrent file sharing technology is legal, the
unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content is not. Obtaining copyrighted
content through bittorrent may result in civil and/or criminal legal actions.
This may result in fines of many thousands of dollars per download.
Popular Torrent Search Sites
These are listed in order of what the author thinks are the best:
btjunkie.org
http://btjunkie.org/
is a comprehensive search engine that lists over 4.5 million torrents from its
own trackers and other trackers. It also lists torrents from a large number of
private trackers, which can be good or bad. The private torrents are indicated
by a lock image on the search results. Again, "bad" torrents are not removed
and comments and ratings should be used.
Comments and Ratings: are very well used and the amount of them is indicated
on the search results. Users can verify a torrent to be clean and real or tag
it as fake, virus, password or low quality.
Sorting: by seeds, leeches, health, size, date, name, age and category.
Pros and cons Fast and clean look. Ratings are well used. Not as much
information on the torrent as other sites.
Torrentz
http://www.torrentz.com/
Torrentz is another comprehensive search engine that lists over 11.5 million
torrents and has almost 3 million torrents that have been verified
http://www.torrentz.com/search?q=
to be clean. Torrentz also has the nice feature of listing all trackers for a
torrent, not just the ones embedded in the torrent file. These trackers can be
added in to the torrent active in your bittorrent client and will most likely
speed up your download. They also have cloud search of the more popular search
terms.
Comments and Ratings: are well used. Users can verify a torrent to be clean
and real or tag it as fake, virus, password or low quality.
Sorting: Torrents may be sorted by name, date created, size or number of
peers (seeds and peers/leeches combined)
Pros and cons Largest listing of torrents, particularly for verified and good
information on the torrent including all trackers available for the torrent.
Comments and ratings are not well used, but the site links you to other sites
carrying the torrent.
KickAssTorrents
http://www.kickasstorrents.com/
KickAssTorrents is a newer search site that is fast and good. They list almost
8 million torrents. They have verified torrents (clean and real) as well as
comments. They list over 500,000 verified torrents.
Comments and Ratings: Comments appear to be well used and the last 5 comments
can be viewed by hovering over the comments icon in the results list without
going to the torrent page. Also, a good number of verified torrents.
Sorting: by size, date (age), files (number of), seeds and leeches.
Pros and cons Large size listing of regular and verified torrents with good
information on the torrent. One annoyance is their link to direct download at
a pay site, which the author has not verified to be legitimate.
PirateBay
http://thepiratebay.org/
PirateBay is probably the most well known torrent search site. The author had
removed PirateBay from this listing when they were supposed to be sold to a
private group some time ago. That sale fell through and PirateBay has come
back as a public torrent search site. They list
almost 3 million torrents. PirateBay has dropped their tracker (they were the
largest tracker) and has inserted magnet links for every torrent listed. They
are probably the main reason for the new interest in magnet links.
Comments and Ratings: PirateBay has a comments and ratings system. They are
fairly well used. The author finds the comments often deteriorate into "please
seed" requests, but for many torrents they are useful. Their best feature is
the use of colored skulls
http://forum.suprbay.org/showthread.php?tid=24415
to show the uploader's status. Basically any skull for an uploader is a good
sign.
Sorting: by type (category), name, date uploaded, size, seeds and leeches
(peers). They also allow search by category, but the author advises against
this as uploaders often mis-categorize their torrents.
Pros and cons Good sorting features. Still popular among users, although they
no longer have their own tracker.
isoHunt.com
https://isohunt.com/lite/
isoHunt.com is a comprehensive torrent search site and lists over 4.5 million
torrents from its own trackers and other trackers. These torrents contain over
10 petabytes of content. isoHunt is a comprehensive search engine that lists
torrents from many trackers. Because off this, they can not remove "bad"
torrents. Comments and ratings should be used to avoid these.
Comments and Ratings: isoHunt has comments and ratings which are well used.
A user can either "Flag" a torrent (bad) or give Thanks (good). These ratings
will show up in searches as -1 (flag) or +1 (thanks). Comments can also be
made and the number of comments is also indicated in the search results. There
is also a feature to search for comments on the torrent elsewhere and to Google
search the Info Hash to find information elsewhere.
Sorting: by seeds, leechers, category, age, size and name (tags).
Pros and cons This was my favorite, but due to Court rulings they have switched
USA users to a lite version, which has none of the features mentioned above.
For those outside of the USA, this is an excellent site.
BitSnoop
http://bitsnoop.com/
BitSnoop (Offline Temporarily?) This was an excellent site with very fast and
clean results. They have been offline for quite a bit. They have promised to
return, but that promise has been out there for a while.
Unique Torrent Search Sites
Vertor
http://www.vertor.com/
Vertor has the unique feature of only listing torrents that are verified to
be clean and password free and downloadable in full. They presently list
almost 800,000 working, verified torrents. This is an ad free site. For more
information on its features, see
FileShareFreak
http://filesharefreak.com/2008/12/22/find-100-working-verified-torrents-at-vertorcom/
FileShareFreak.
Comments and Ratings: Comments are available, but since all torrents are
verified they are not much used.
Sorting: by seeds, leeches, date, category, size and description.
Podtropolis
http://www.torrentz.com/search?q=
Podtropolis lists only iPod compatible content. The author could not find
statistics, but there appears to be a good amount of content listed (although
certainly less than the popular sites above).
Comments and Ratings: comments and ratings are available and seem to be well
used.
Sorting: None
Coda.fm
http://coda.fm/
Coda.fm is a music albums bittorrent site. There is a good deal of information
on the artists and albums. All listings are verified to be clean and real. If
you are looking for a public, music only, bittorrent site, then this is the
place to look. It is an ad free site. The amount of listings is still quite
small, being in the thousands.
Comments and Ratings: available, but rarely used as listings are verified.
Sorting: Their unique search results and limited listings do not allow for
sorting and it is not needed.
Between the popular sites above, one should be able to find just about any
content wanted. For the hard to find items this meta-search engine may be
helpful:
Torrents.to
http://www.torrents.to
Torrents.to is a meta-search engine. Searches take you to other search sites.
Allows you to choose among their available search sites for the ones you wish
to search.
There are no comments/ratings or sort features as the search results take you
to the pages of the various sites searched.
All of these sites have received a green rating from WOT (Web Of Trust) and
only sites with
http://www.mywot.com/
a green rating from WOT will be listed here.
This is not a comprehensive list, but rather a starting point for new users
that should meet their needs.
*Thursday October 7 2010
Document Alignment In Word 2007
Document Source: Kathyanne Murtha's Word 2007 Using JAWS Chapter 3
I have had several questions recently about centering and alignment of
documents. So here is a great source below.
This article covers alignment, paragraph spacing and a few formatting tips.
1) Document Alignment
a) When adding alignment to a document, the focused paragraph will be
aligned.
b) Microsoft Word considers a paragraph to be a passage of text that ends
with a hard carriage return
c) Document alignment is added through the home ribbon
d) There are a number of text alignments in the home ribbon (ALT-H)
i) Align Left (AL)
ii) Align Center (AC)
iii) Align Right (AR)
iv) Align Justification (AJ)
e) Notice that the keyboard commands are pneumonic in nature. When
aligning to the left open the home ribbon with ALT-H and then press A, L. .
f) You can align text on-the-fly or after text has been typed
g) To align text on-the-fly
i) Focus on a new line and activate the alignment
ii) Type the text
iii) When an alignment is enabled, it stays enabled until you enable
another alignment
iv) To enable another alignment, repeat the above steps
h) To align existing text
i) Focus anywhere within a paragraph and activate an alignment to align
the focused paragraph
ii) To align more than one paragraph, select the text and activate the
alignment (be sure to remove the selection)
2) Paragraph Spacing
a) Paragraph spacing is the same as alignment. It affects the focused
paragraph. To disable a spacing, enable another.
b) When focused in a paragraph, changing the spacing will affect the whole
paragraph
c) To change the spacing of multiple paragraphs, select the paragraphs and
enable the spacing
d) To change the spacing of a document on-the-fly, move to a blank line
and activate the spacing option
e) Paragraph spacing is configured through the home ribbon. To configure
document spacing:
i) Open the home ribbon (ALT-H)
ii) Activate the spacing option (K)
iii) A drop-down list will open with a list of spacing options
iv) DOWN ARROW to the spacing option of your choice and press ENTER
3) The Paragraph Dialog
a) The Paragraph dialog is opened through the paragraph dialog launcher
button.
b) To open the paragraph dialog:
i) Open the Home ribbon (ALT-H)
ii) Activate the Paragraph Dialog Launcher Button (PG)
c) Navigate the dialog with TAB and SHIFT-TAB
d) Within the dialog are additional options for configuring spacing and
alignment in the document
4) To remove the formatting from a document, use the clear formatting
option of the home ribbon. The command will remove formatting and attributes
from the focused paragraph.
a) To remove formatting from multiple paragraphs, select the text from
which you'd like to remove formatting and attributes
i) Open the home ribbon (ALT-H)
ii) Activate the clear formatting option (E)
*Friday October 8 2010
Directions For Me
For all those times you need to know what exactly is on that box of food you're
holding, Directions for Me is a new website which seeks to fill that need.
Learn everything from ingredient lists to nutrition information on thousands of
products, from food items to health and beauty items. Simply type the item
you're looking for in the search box, or browse the product listings. It's a
free service presented by Horizons for the Blind.
Below each link is a brief description of the product to allow for the user to
determine if this is the correct one to check out further.
Hats off to the team at Horizons for the Blind!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Robert Acosta, President
Helping Hands for the Blind
Email: boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: www.helpinghands4theblind.org
You can assist Helping Hands for the Blind by donating your used computers to
us. If you have a blind friend in need of a computer, please mail us at the
above address.
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