E. J. Bantz

A couple weeks ago my friend Scott told me about Palringo.

At first I thought this was just another boring Instant Messenger app that consolidates all of the IM services into one.  But then I noticed they have a version for PC, Mac, iPhone, Windows Mobile and realized it was a bit different than the others.

I tried Palringo for a couple days and soon realized how powerful it is and now I use it as my primary IM tool.

Here is what I love about it:

• Facebook chat on my phone
• GPS location of my friends
• Push to Talk
• Photos

I love to help people.  There are so many times when I wish I could just see the person’s screen.

Maybe you are helping someone sell on eBay and they are stuck trying to post a new listing?

Remote Assistance is term used for a tool you use to view or take control of a person’s computer without having to drive over there. 

I’ve found two pretty good ways to provide remote assistance.

1. SkyFex.com
2. GotoAssistExpress.com

SkyFex.com
You can use this tool for free for a short period of time.  If you are using it with a customer, you might want to pay the monthly fee for unlimited sessions, I did and it was well worth it.

With SkyFex, you tell the user to visit their website and click the Get Assistance button and then read you the 6 digit connection code.   You plug that number in on you side and bingo you can see their computer and control their mouse.

Pros:  Free, quick and easy.
Cons:  Requires Internet Explorer, which means Windows only.

GotoAssistExpress.com
There is a free trial of this tool available and after that you have to pay for the service.

There are two ways to make the connection.

• Tell the person to go to FastSupport.com using any web browser and you give them a 9 digit code.
• Send the person a URL that contains the 9 digit code. 

I’ve used both methods and they are both a very smooth processes.

The computer needs to have Java installed, which is usually not a problem.

Pros:  Windows and Mac, using any web browser
Cons:  $69.95 per month

Conclusion
If you don’t have a budget for providing remote assistance, just use SkyFex.com.   If your session ends too soon, just start up a new session.   However, if you need a professional setup, then pay the money for GotoAssistExpress.

First Twitter
I originally started this whole online socializing with Twitter.  It was pretty cool at first.  Follow some people, they follow you back, and you get to hear what everyone is doing moment to moment.

People start to follow you, for what seems to be only in hope you will follow them in return.  Then as you start to follow more people, you realize that most of the tweets are just half sentence blurbs of nothing with links to website you care nothing about.   It quickly all becomes a bunch of noise with little way to control the content you are seeing.

Then Facebook
Then started using Facebook.   In this place it’s all about Friends and Family keeping in touch with each other.   People’s photos, videos, stories, and what they are doing is all right there in one place.  No more bringing up external blogs to view the content.  And it all popped onto my screen instantly as it was posted by my friends.

I found Facebook hard to use at first and took many days to realize there was toolbar at the bottom of the window.   It tries to be more of an application than just a web site.

Then Facebook changed.   The instant live data disappeared and some how I don’t see what people posted unless someone comments on it.   It started to become more of a task to keep up with friends instead of it all being right there in front of me.

Back to Twitter
So I thought I would give Twitter another go… and less than a day into it I run into all of the reasons I left it, and more.   The number of links in posts are completely insane now.  What to get a virus? Just start clicking on random links that people you hardly know send you.  Twitter is evil.

Plus, it just is not a place to post any type of content or to have a conversation.  If you have something to say, you can’t because of the tiny limit on the number of letters you can type.  So you either have to go post it elsewhere and then link to it, or break each sentence into a separate tweets.   Lame.

Facebook Wins
Content is king and Facebook has it.   I’ll still use Twitter here and there to send out news, but I don’t see it as a productive way to keep up with friends or to build new friendships.   I recommend using Facebook and staying clear of Twitter.

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I’m testing another tool for making blogging easier.

This time the tool is Windows Live Writer.

It is a desktop application that lets me make posts to WordPress blogs (and many other blogging services) without having to go directly to those websites to post them.

Here is a test to insert a photo to see where it actually uploads it to.  It is the network crimper that I sell on eBay.

It looks very powerful and I recommend this tool.  It is my new favorite blog posting utility.

Have fun!

My first impression of Flock is… wow!

I love how it brings everything together into one place.

I can see all my Facebook friends, Twitter followers, YouTube videos, and Picasa photos all right here.

This post was actually created using Flock.  I dragged a photo from my desktop into the post and it automatically uploaded it to my Picasa account to then be shown in the posting.   That is a big time saver instead up manually uploading it inside of Wordpress.

Flock web browser is built using Firefox.  So if you like Firefox, and you use websites like Facebook and Picasa, and you blog, then I think you are going to love Flock.

Picnik.com is a great tool for touching up images before you post them.

For eBay sellers, you can use this to create nice looking photos of your item you are selling.

You can also use it to make a picture that contains just text.

Grab special attention in your listing
For example, if you are offering a free gift with the purchase, you can make an image with pretty text that says Free Gift.

Avoid Listing Violations
You’re not allow to mention other products that you sell in the description of your listing because it affects search engines that bring buyers to your product.  However, you can put the text inside of an image and add that to your description.

This video show you how to create a photo of a specific size, using Microsoft Paint, and then put text on it using Picnik.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

RapidShare lets you quickly post a file, up to 200MB in size, for other people to then download.

Uploading is quick.   The link to upload is right on the home page.  You do not even need to login first or create an account.

Once the file is uploaded to their server, a unique URL is assigned, and the file can then be downloaded 10 times.

If you create a user account on their site, the file can be downloaded more than 10 times.

Normally, I would just send a file using Windows Live Messenger.  However, I’ve recently switch to using Google Talk or Facebook for instant messaging and no longer have user to user file transfers readily available.

AutoIt started as a way for system administrators to automate common tasks.

Version 3 of this Windows Automation tool brings it to the next level.

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/

With the ability to create forms for input and output, AutoIt could become the standard programming language for the business engineer.  

Traditionally,  Visual Basic 6 has been used to create simple programs.   But since Microsoft has phased out the product and replaced it with the more complicated VB.Net, engineers maybe find AutoIt a naturual fit.

AutoIt is freeware and your program can be compiled to a normal Windows .exe file to run on any computer without needing a framework installed.

Give it a try the next time you need to write a simple program.