30 Tips to Make You Unstoppable When Working from Home

by on September 29th, 2010 13 comments

In this day and age everyone seems to be busier than a one-toothed man in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest. However, busy does not mean that we are productive and getting things done. With my experience working from home over the years I have compiled a list of things that help me be more productive and get things done. These tips are great for freelancers, telecommuters, and students but many will transfer over to people who work in traditional offices.

1. Designate workspace

It is best to have a place you designate as your workspace where you only do that, work. By doing this your program yourself to be at work when in this space.

2. Keep that workspace organized and uncluttered

A nice clean, organized workspace will help you feel less stressed. Being more relaxed will allow you to focus on work much better. Make sure you only have items essential to your job on your desk.

3. Get a work computer

Don’t use your home PC as your work computer. Get a second PC and set it up in your workspace. Only use this PC for work, don’t use it to leisurely surf the web when you are not working.

4. Make that computer a laptop

Use a laptop for your work PC. This way if the you lose your Internet connection or something else happens that requires you to leave your house. Unless of course that thing is a fire or some other major catastrophe, then you can go ahead and take the day off.

5. Use a dual monitor setup

I have been using two monitors for several years now and can say from experience it makes me more productive. It is so much easier to be able to pull two things up at once instead of having to Alt+Tab all the time.

6. Stay away from your couch/recliner

Now that you are using a laptop it is easy to wander about the house and go sit on your nice comfy couch. Avoid doing this at all costs, this is why we setup a nice workspace.

7. Get a comfortable office chair

Since you can’t sit on your couch then you better have a nice office chair. Go to the store to check several out and make sure you get one that is right for you.

8. Use Caller ID

Know who is calling you and only answer the ones that absolutely need to be answered at that time. Answering every phone call you get can eat up a huge chunk of your day.

9. Make that person call twice

My theory is, if it is important will call back. If it can wait I can check the my voicemail at a designated time and return the call.

10. Appoint a time to read/listen and respond

Set aside a time to read and respond to email and voicemail. Avoid checking them spontaneously throughout the day as this kills productivity.

11. Use a dry erase board

Use a dry erase board to keep a list of to-dos and reminders.

12. Avoid Social Networks

Save surfing Twitter and Facebook for your leisurely web surfing. If your job requires you to be on these sites keep general browsing down to a minimum and stay focused on taking care of business.

13. Try not to use chat clients

Chat clients are a great for communicating with coworkers but can also be a huge drain on your time. Only launch them if it is absolutely necessary.

14. Get Dressed

When you get up in the morning get dressed as if you are going out to work. A mumu and a cape is not suitable attire ever, regardless of what Homer Simpson says.

15. Stay Well Groomed

Sitting around unbathed and unshaven will not make you feel like being productive.

16. Don’t Work 24/7

When you are not working stay out of your designated workspace. Don’t work all day everyday just because it is convenient.

17. Eat and Drink

Eat regular healthy meal but don’t sit around munching all day. Also drink plenty of water. This will help you stay energized and hydrated.

18. Shut your office door

Close yourself off from the world and make sure family memebers and friends know you are home to work. When you first start working from home the hardest part is for your family to get used to it.

19. Take Breaks

It is very important you take breaks. Leave your workspace and go do something else for 15 minutes. Make sure you time yourself and go back to work when time is up.

20. Turn off all distractions.

Power down any device that could potentially distract you. This includes your personal cellphone and televsion.

21. Listen to music

Get some noise canceling headphones and listen to your iPod or Pandora. This really helps me stay focused because I don’t hear every little sound around me.

22. Create lists

Make lists of things you need to do each day. The last part of your day make sure tomorrow’s list is updated with tasks that must get done. Keep all your tasks in one place.

23. Use a Calendar

Keep your busy schedule organized by keeping a calendar up to date with meetings and appoints.

24. Do certain tasks on certain days

Set up a schedule where regularly performed tasks are completed on certain days.

25. Don’t multitask

Focus on one thing at a time. It has been proven that multitasking can make you less efficient.

26. Set Priorities

Prioritize your daily tasks and complete them in that order.

27. Do the hardest ones first.

Once you have your tasks prioritzied do the most diffcult ones first. You will feel much better with them out of the way and can relax a litte while working on easier ones.

28. Stretch

Don’t sit perfectly still. Get up and move around. Take or make your phone calls while standing.

29. Take Power Naps

Often I will take a 15 – 20 minute nap on one of my breaks. I wake up feeling nice and rested.

30. Enjoy working from home

Last but not least, enjoy being able to work from home. A lot of cubicle dewellers would love the chance to be able to avoid brutal commutes and obnoxious coworkers.

I am glad I was able to share with the readers of TechKing what I have learned to be more productive working from home.  Like I mentioned earlier there are tips in here that will work for anyone, regardless where you work. Though if your place of employment allows you to where a mumu and a cape to work, I highly recommend you do so.

How do you stay organized and productive? Please share  your own personal tips and tricks with us in the comments.

60 Awesome Tutorials, Tricks, and Tools that will Make You a CSS Master

by on September 27th, 2010 4 comments

If you follow web design/development at all you will know that CSS3 (and HTML5) are talked about more than healthcare reform in Washington DC. Some of the things you can do with CSS3 are amazing. In this post I have searched the web for 60 of my favorite CSS tutorials, tricks, and tools that are sure to bring some interesting elements to your website.

Miscellaneous Tutorials

1.Create A Clean and Stylish CSS3 Contact Form

Building stylish contact forms typically requires the use of images (and maybe some JavaScript) to create something that looks professional. However, with CSS3 it’s now much easier to create some nice effects that don’t require the use of any images, yet can still look clean and stylish.

2.How To Use CSS3 Media Queries To Create a Mobile Version of Your Website

In this article I’ll explain how, with a few CSS rules, you can create an iPhone version of your site using CSS3, that will work now. We’ll have a look at a very simple example and I’ll also discuss the process of adding a small screen device stylesheet to my own site to show how easily we can add stylesheets for mobile devices to existing websites.

3.Mastering the 960 Grid System

In this article, you’ll master the 960 grid system by dissecting the 24-column version demo. If you’ve only used 960gs before for Photoshop mockups, consider this your lucky day. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to convert your designs to HTML and CSS in no time at all.

4.How To Beat Form Spam With Just CSS

I thought today that I would share with you a method for beating spam bots that I’ve been using for nearly 3 years and works consistently. It’s been incredibly effective, doesn’t carry the usability issues and implementation hassles of something like CAPTCHA, and uses nothing more than a bit of CSS.

5.Getting to Work with CSS3 Power Tools

Each of these features can help replace some of the images that you might have created in Photostop in the past. By doing this, you are making your website more maintainable since you can change a property just by changing your CSS file rather than editing an image in Photoshop. You are also making your website load faster since images use a lot of bandwidth. Let’s explore these features one by one

6.Sexy Tooltips with Just CSS

One of the most common mechanisms for providing extra details beyond what you can see on the page is the tooltip (a design pattern for showing tips about a particular element on a screen).

7.Sleek Card Pockets using CSS Only

One of the great things CSS3 has brought to web developers is the ability to create transitioning effects on elements. The whole benefit of this is to turn ten to twenty lines of Javascript code into five or so lines of CSS. Combine this property with other new CSS3 properties and we can create visually appealing and realistic looking card pockets on a web page.

8.CSS Reset – a simpler option

A quick presentation on CSS Reset including a basic explanation, an outline of some of the advantages and disadvantages, as well as a simpler reset option.

9.Getting Buggy CSS Selectors to Work Cross-Browser via jQuery

Although the lack of cross-browser CSS selector support has caused a number of useful CSS selectors to go almost unnoticed, developers can still manipulate styles on their pages using some of these little-used selectors through jQuery.

10.Cross-Browser Inline-Block

Ah, inline-block, that elusive and oh so tempting display declaration that promises so much, yet delivers so little. Great article that explains whan an in-line block is and how it works.

11.Have Fun w/ Borders – Beveled, Pressed, & More!

Since I released my new redesigned blog, a lot of people have asked me how I styled the pressed effect on my category navigation. I would like to share some simple border style tricks to get various effects for your next project.

12.IE CSS Bugs That’ll Get You Every Tim

Article on how to fix those nasty CSS bugs in Internet Explorer.

Navigation

CSS Navigation

14.Create a Fun Animated Navigation Menu With Pure CSS

However, CSS3 offers a glimpse into a possible future where basic animations are performed with straight CSS completely independent of scripting. Today we’ll take a look at how to use CSS3 to create a fun and unique navigation menu that uses @font-face, transforms and transitions.

13.4 Ideas for Styling Link Hovers with CSS

Links are a basic part of the Internet. They’re what keep it connected, really, so why not make these connections fun? A link hover is what happens when you hover your mouse over a link (obviously). Usually you’ll see an underline, or an underline removed, or a different colour. But there are many ways to show people that they can click, so I thought I’d show you four of my favourites.

15.CSS3 Minimalistic Navigation Menu

So today we are making something practical – a simple CSS3 animated navigation menu, which degrades gracefully in older browsers and is future-proofed to work with the next generation of browsers.

16.Simple CSS3 Dropdown Menu

As we know, CSS3 has many good features for help us creating more sweet User Interface. One of them is box shadow, it helps us adding shadow effect on each styled element. You must be familiar with drop down menu with shadow effect on it, I usually add the effect using some images but now we’ll create that one using pure CSS.

17.iPhone “slide to unlock” Text in WebKit/CSS

There are a couple of WebKit specific properties that make giving text a gradient background possible.

18.CSS3 Flying Menu

This is a request post from my reader. He asks me how to create a simple menu that have a flying effect when user hovering them using only CSS. As we know CSS3 is more powerful with its transition property, it help us creating animation without any JavaScript or even Flash help. We’ll use them for creating the flying effect and here is the result. Enjoy!

19.Fading Button Background Images With CSS Transitions.

When Firefox 4 is released this October, browsers that support the CSS3 transition property will make up approximately 30% of the market (providing current Firefox users upgrade). With this in mind, it now becomes viable to consider CSS as an alternative to using JavaScript to achieve fading :hover{} effects on buttons and other interface elements. This article explores a simple method for doing this, with fallbacks for other browsers.

20.Popout Details on Hover w/ CSS

I recently saw a hover over trick that caught my eye and I thought it was a pretty clever way of showing more details on an element. I decided to give it a try and the solution was quite simple.

21.Recreating the OS X Dock

Take a standard set of links and turn it into the ever so stylish Mac OS X icon dock.

Buttons

CSS Buttons

31.Roll Your Own Google Buttons

Google has a new focus on webkit-specific properties thanks to their new Chrome browser, which uses a branch of the same rendering engine Safari uses. This has actually allowed them to target the Google homepage to the webkit engine, probably after some sort of browser detection.

23.Flexible CSS3 toggle buttons

Use CSS to create stylish toggles, buttons, and address bar. Great for mobile websites.

24.Styling pretty buttons with only CSS3

What I am going to show here, is how you can use some of these new CSS3 properties to create lightweight, good looking buttons! The code we’ll be writing will be very easy to adjust. It will have completely flexible, so the buttons can be any size, ratio, color, font and you only need to edit the css file.

25.Build Kick-Ass Practical CSS3 Buttons

What once required background images and icons can now be created with plain-old CSS.

26.Realistic Looking CSS3 Buttons

Create realistic looking, “pushable” buttons using CSS3.

27.Building beautiful buttons with css gradients

In this demo we’ll walk through a simple use case for the new gradient capabilities coming in Firefox 3.6. We’ll build a nice-looking embossed and beveled button using gradients and existing CSS properties.

28.Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA

One of our favorite things about CSS3 is the addition of RGBA, a color mode that adds alpha-blending to your favorite CSS properties. We’ve kicked the tires on it a bit with our own projects and have found that it helps streamline our CSS and makes scaling things like buttons very easy. To show you how, we’ve cooked up an example with some super awesome, scalable buttons.

29.Extremely fancy CSS3 buttons

Create a fancy button without using images that is scalable, customizable, and compatible with IE7 and IE8.

30.CSS3 Gradient Buttons

Today I’m going to show you how to put the CSS gradient feature in a good practical use. Check out my demo to see a set of gradient buttons that I have created with just CSS (no image or Javascript).

22.Sweet CSS3 buttons

Create CSS buttons that are sexy looking, really flexible, but with the most minimalistic markup as possible.

Text Effects

CSS Text

32.Subtle CSS3 Typography that you’d Swear was Made in Photoshop

Thanks to text shadows, outlines, transitions, and even text gradients, we can now create cool typography that you’d swear had to be made with a program like Photoshop. Nope, all CSS3 baby!

33.Create Beautiful CSS3 Typography

In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to take basic markup and transform it into an attractive and beautiful typographical design through pure CSS3. There are no images or other external resources, just pure CSS magic. We’ll also touch on some general typographical concepts along the way.

34.How to Create Inset Typography with CSS3

In this tutorial, we’ll create inset type, a popular text treatment, using CSS.

35.Adding an outline to your text using the CSS3 text-stroke property

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to add an outline, or stroke, to your text using the CSS3 text-stroke property.

36.How to Create a Cool Anaglyphic Text Effect with CSS

Anaglyphs are those amazing 3D images that are created by offsetting two of the red, green and blue channels, and are viewed with those nerdy looking 3D glasses with different coloured lenses. I don’t know if this effect works for real, as I’ve unfortunately misplaced my 3D specs, but it’s a pretty cool text effect nevertheless!

37.Text Rotation with CSS

I felt inspired to put together an alternative example. In this case: Text Rotation. The example uses an image sprite and a sprinkle of CSS to get things positioned right.

38.Text Embossing Technique With CSS

In this article I will show you a couple of real world examples of this, as well as describing how to implement this effect with CSS.

39.Create a Letterpress Effect with CSS Text-Shadow

With the recent support of text-transform in Safari and Firefox (3.1+) the effect can easily be created without needing to use any image replacement techniques. This means your text is much easier to edit, and has the benefit of being rendered directly in the browser.

40.CSS textured text

Do you want to create fancy headings without rendering each heading with Photoshop? Here is a simple CSS trick to show you how to create gradient text effect with a PNG image (pure CSS, no Javascript or Flash).

Image Effects

Image CSS

41.Fancy Image Hover Using CSS3

So here we will try to create fancy image hover with css3 as you all know we can have cool image hover effect using jquery but now using transform and transition properties of css3 we can have the same cooler effect with css3 only.

42.Fancy Inset CSS Image Borders

In this article we will explore how to add a nice, styled, inset double border to any image. This effect works in all modern browsers and degrades gracefully for Internet Explorer.

43.Super Cool CSS Flip Effect with Webkit Animation

There’s some seriously cool transform and animation effects available through the webkit engine that can really spice up the web experiences for users with the Safari browser. Here’s a quick look at how the rotateY property can produce a flip effect, and how it can be used to create a super cool Transformers themed top trumps design.

44.How to Create a Fancy Image Gallery with CSS3

A tutorial about how to use CSS3 to make an image gallery with animation. The gallery is going to be usable in browsers without support of the animation.

45.Easily Turn Your Images Into Polaroids with CSS3

Turn a set of images into a great looking set of polaroid pictures.

46.Semantic CSS3 Lightboxes

This tutorial aims to showcase a method of displaying content based on the lightbox, which is web accessible and (excluding Internet Explorer) will require no scripting at all. Sound like fun? Well, let’s explore the subject further!

47.Create a image gallery with CSS3 transitions.

We are going to create a tabbed image gallery but animated using some CSS transitions. All of this is going to be built with HTML5 & CSS3, there is going to be NO use of flash or javascript for this example.

48.Sexy Image Hover Effects using CSS3

In this post I am going to show to How to create a sexy css effect on image hover.This kinda effect you have seen before in Flash or in javascript as well.But why use Flash or js when CSS can do the same work.

49.Pure CSS Sliding Image Gallery

The idea is to get one image to slide in while the current image slides out. There’s a lot of z-index going on as well so the new image always appears to be at the top.

50.Howto Create An Image Slider With Pure CSS3

Image slider is a popular effect and often used in portfolio sites and blogs. Most of these sliders are created by Javascript. But with CSS3’s strength, we can implement an image slider with only pure CSS3. This article will guide you to do that.

Tools

CSS Tools

51.CSS3 PIE

PIE stands for Progressive Internet Explorer. It is an IE attached behavior which, when applied to an element, allows IE to recognize and display a number of CSS3 properties.

52.Gridulator

Makes creating pixel grids for CSS very easy.

53.CSS3 Button Maker

Adjust the settings on the right to create the button that is right for you website.

54.Primary CSS

Primary is a simple CSS Framework, designed for Developers and Designers in order to make using CSS as easy as possible.

55.CSS 3.0 Maker

Generate and previe several different CSS3 elements such as CSS text shadawo, border radius, and more.

56.ColorBlendy

Blend colors without having to launch Photoshop. Great for blending different modes like dodge, multiply, and overlay.

57.Minify

Minify is a PHP5 app that helps you follow several of Yahoo!’s Rules for High Performance Web Sites. It combines multiple CSS or Javascript files, removes unnecessary whitespace and comments, and serves them with gzip encoding and optimal client-side cache headers.

58.CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 Help Cheat Sheets (PDF)

Two useful cheat sheets that will help you quickly look up the right CSS 2.1-property or an obscure CSS 3 property. The style sheets contain most important properties, explanations and keywords for each property.

59.CSS3 Click Chart

Click the heading to view the details of that property. Information includes browser support and example syntax.

60.The Automatic CSS Inliner Tool

If you’ve ever sent an email campaign, you know that if your CSS is not coded inline, it is likely to get stripped out by email clients, which can make your email design pretty funky looking. Writing CSS inline can be time consuming, and repetitive. MailChimp has a CSS inline conversion tool built right in that will automatically transform all of your local styles into inline styles. Designers have found it so useful, we thought we’d share it with everyone else – even if you don’t have a MailChimp account.

I hope that you had as much fun reading this post as I did creating it. Please feel free to share your CSS related stuff in the comments.

6 Free Brilliant Alternatives to Microsoft Office

by on September 23rd, 2010 0 comments

Word processors and spreadsheet applications are a must have for everyone from students to professionals, but in these tough economic times who has the $100 – $300 to drop on productivity software. I would like to have the latest and greatest but for whatever reason my family is selfish and would rather eat then see me creating awesome pivot tables and PowerPoint presentations in Office 2010.

Because of this I have went on the hunt for the latest and greatest FREE alternatives to Microsoft Office. Luckily for everyone reading this looking to save a buck or 300 I have found six productivity suites that could fill that office software void for you. So without further ado I present to you both downloadable and Web-based Microsoft Office replacements.

Downloadable Alternatives

OpenOffice

This office suite is considered by many to be the most credible opponent and best free alternative to Microsoft Office. This set of productivity applications includes five programs: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (graphics) and Base (database manipulation). Writer can even do some things that Word cannot, one of the more popular things is Writer’s functionality that opens PDF files without plug-in or add-on. It is also compatible with documents created in Microsoft Office. OpenOffice is open source and maintained by a passionate community that helps with all aspects of the software’s creation.

IBM Lotus Symphony

It may seem hard to believe but this is a free software productivity package from IBM. The Lotus Symphony suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet application and presentation software. This software package was originally based on an old version of OpenOffice but has been extensively modified to the point it has become unique. The word processor, Lotus Symphony Documents, supports the international standard open document format (.ODF) and has many features you will recognize such as spell check and header/footer creation. On the downside IBM Lotus Symphony cannot open Office 2007 files but it is a great, free alternative to Microsoft Office.

IBM Lotus Symphony

IBM Lotus Symphony

Neo Office

I don’t want to forget about Mac users so I thought I would include this free productivity software for the Mac OS X called Neo Office. Like the offering from IBM this one is also a descendant of OpenOffice. Neo Office includes all the applications you would expect in an office suite: word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database programs. It also with Microsoft Office files including most Office 2007 files. In addition to the standard functions this software can also import Quicktime videos as well as images from cameras and scanners.

Web-based Alternatives

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free Web-based alternative to Microsoft Office. It was created from two separate products, Writely and Google Spreadsheets. It is a speedy and bug-free suite of applications that allow you to create, collaborate and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The interface is neat and well organized but it does require two separate browser windows for the document list and document editing. One of the great things about Google Docs is that it will automatically save the file and store it online; in additional to that your documents can be published as a web page or emailed as an attachment in several different formats. Another nice feature is that it is easily accessible from a link in Gmail.

Zoho Office Suite

Zoho Office Suite was developed by a company based in India and offers several free applications including Writer (word processing), Sheet (spreadsheets), Wiki, Chat, and much more. Your Zoho account can also be linked to your Google and Yahoo accounts. Zoho has a great user interface that is easy to use. This suite will also allow you to publish documents or spreadsheets to any blog or Web site. Like Google Docs, Zoho also automatically saves your documents. All the standard text formatting and document creation features are offered with this software. You can export to DOCX, ODF, PDF, Latex, RTF, TXT, and HTML. Zoho also allows you to collaborate with others on documents.

Zoho Office Suite

Zoho Office Suite

ThinkFree Office

ThinkFree Office is a Java based productivity suite that runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms. The look and feel of these applications is very similar to Microsoft Office, which is great for familiarity reasons. One of the great things about this suite is that it will automatically save the file to your computer when you close the browser window, which is great in the case of accidental closings or crashes. ThinkFree Office is compatible with Microsoft Office formats though graphs and drawings do not import well from Word.

In case any of you are wondering I use a combination of Office 2007 and Google Docs. I really like the collaboration features Google Docs provides but can’t fully commit to a Web-based office software solution just yet.

Do you have a favorite productivity suite that you use? Please let us know in the comments.

21 Job Sites that Actually Help You Find a Job in IT

by on September 22nd, 2010 4 comments

Benjamin Franklin once wrote “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” As you probably know to make it easier to pay one and achieve the other you need to have a job. Now I know as well as anyone the trials and tribulations you go through trying to find work. Job hunting will never be fun but the sites below make it much less of a hassle.

Below I have listed 21 sites that provide listings for positions in the technology field. A few of them you have probably heard, such as Career Builder or Monster and several may be new to you, like FreshWebJobs.com or Authentic Jobs. Either way all of these sites are great for finding any type of position in IT. I encourage everyone to check them out whether you are just looking for a job or wanting to advance your career.

CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder is one of the top sites on the Web. It has thousands of job postings and resumes and has partnered with several large newspaper publishers to provide local and national job listings. You can find any type of position you are looking for in IT on this site.

Monster

If you go purely by the number of posted jobs and resumes, Monster is the largest job site around. You can find positions in almost every career field using Monster.

Dice

Dice is the top job board for finding careers in IT. Positions range from everything from software engineers to networking to security. Best suited for those who have experience in the field they are searching in.

Indeed

Indeed is a site that includes job listings from thousands of Web sites, these sites include company career pages, newspaper classifieds, job boards, and more. This is a great site to start your initial job search to see what is out there.

Krop

An excellent job board for creative people whether you are an artist, designer, or developer.

SimplyHired

SimplyHired will help you search job boards, classifieds, and company sites. There are Advanced search options to help you narrow your search down.

USAJobs

USAJobs is the official site for listing jobs with the Federal government. This is the only place to look if you aspire to work in IT for the Feds.

ComputerJobs

Allows you to quickly locate computer related positions offered by 4000+ companies.

LatPro

This site is specifically for professionals seeking a career in Latin America or the U.S and is tailored to those who speak English, Spanish and Portuguese. This is a great site for finding jobs from Brazil to Boston.

FreshWebJobs.com

FreshWebJobs is a job board focused on finding jobs for professionals. If you have a passion for the latest Web technologies, Web standards, and Web design trends this site is for you.

LinkUp

This job search engine will help you find unadvertised jobs listed on company Web sites. LinkUp monitors the career sections on websites to make these positions easier to find.

Just Tech Jobs

Just Tech Jobs is ecactly that, just tech jobs. This site will provide you with targeted, high-tech job openings from the top employers in your area.

Net-Temps

If you are interested in a contract position Net-Temps will help you find a job in major cities across the United States. Post your resume for free so that recruiters can find you.

evolt.org

evolt.org lists jobs all over the world for developers, programmers, and Web designers.

CrunchBoard

From the folks who bring us TechCrunch, MobileCrunch, CrunchGear and other top technology blogs comes CrunchBoard. This is a great site for people in IT looking to advance their careers.

Authentic Jobs

Here is another outstanding website for Web designers and developers to find a job.

devBistro

You can find any type of IT job you can think of at devBistro including network engineers, system administrators, C++ developers, and much more.

Computing Careers

Computing Careers features a giant database of Web Developer jobs and programmer jobs. There are hundreds of positions posted by the top employers and recruiters in the IT industry.

developers.net

You can find over 40,000 full-time IT career opportunities from all over the US at developers.net.

SensationalJobs

All Web professionals looking for a job have to check out Sensational Jobs. It has an easy to browse interface with thousands of Web Jobs ranging from Graphic Designer to Web Content Specialist.

Guru

If you would prefer to be a freelancer and not work for “the man” register here so that prospective employers can find you. Categories range from business consulting to programming.

UPDATE

If the messages I am getting are any indication this article is quite popular. I wanted to go ahead and update it with two more sites that I thought you should know about.  Here they are:

Stack Overflow Careers

From everyones favorite programming Q&A site comes Stack Overflow Careers. Everyone from PHP developers to database engineers need to check this site out if they are interested in some pretty hot jobs. You can also keep track of what jobs are being posted by following them on Twitter @StackCareers.

Startups Hiring

I was surprised that I had not hear do this really nicely organized job listing site. There are over 1000 jobs from close two 200 of the hottest companies on the Internet. These companies range from Twitter to Dropbox to Posterous.  Check it out for yourself, you will be pretty impressed with the selection.

One last shout out goes to the folks sharing their favorite job sites in the comments. Keep them coming, I am sure they are greatly appreciated.

Please feel free to post your job hunting success stories or tips, recommendations, and opinions in the comments.

All You Need to Know About the OSI Model

by on September 21st, 2010 1 comment

The networking world is full of models. Don’t get too excited, the models we are talking about are OSI and TCP/IP models and not Gisele Bundchen or Cindy Crawford. However, to be completely honest the networking types of models can be just as interesting to someone as interested in networking as a beautiful runway model. That is exactly what we are going to go over today, the OSI Model. Something you must be familiar with if you have any desire to be a networking professional or obtain your CompTIA Network+ or CCNA certification.

In 1978 the International Organization for Standarization (ISO) began working on the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model). The model is a method for separating a communication system into multiple layers. The OSI model is made up of the following seven layers: Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application. Here is a visual representation of the OSI model:

OSI ModelOSI Model

Now we will go over what each layer of the OSI model is responsible for.

Physical Layer

The Physical Layer is the first layer of the OSI model and defines the physical and electrical specifications for devices. More specifically, it describes the connection between a device and physical cable such as fiber optics. The specifications includes several things, like network adapters, layout of pins, cable specifications and more. The Physical Layer’s primary concern is the interaction between a single device and the method for which data is transmitted.

  • The three major functions of the Physical Layer are to:
  • Establish and Terminate a connection to a connection medium.
  • Participate in the process of sharing communication resources across multiple users, such as flow control (the process of managing the rate at which data transmitted to avoid a fast sender from outrunning a slow receiver).

Modulate between digital data in user equipment and the corresponding signals being transmitted over a communications channel.

Data Link Layer

The Data Link layer is typically referred to as Layer 2 and performs the functional and procedural means to transfer data between network devices and detect and possibly correct errors that could occur in the Physical Layer. If you ever hear someone referring to a “Layer 2 address” they are referring to a MAC address. The following devices operated at the Data Link Layer: L3 bridges, switches, cable modems, wireless access points, and more.

Four major specifications that run at the Data Link Layer are:

  • Ethernet
  • HDLC (High Data Link Control)
  • PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol)
  • Frame Relay

Network Layer

The Network Layer is the third layer in the OSI model. This is sometimes called the “Routing Layer” because routers operate at this layer. The Network Layer is responsible for finding the best paths to take to the destination from the router and which path is optimal.

Three sub-layers make up the Network Layer, these are: Subnetwork Access, Subnetwork Dependent Convergence, and Subnetwork Independent Convergence.

There are a several layer management protocals within the Network layer. Some of these include multicast group management, Network Layer address assignment, routing protocols, and more.

Transport Layer

The fourth layer of the OSI model is the Transport Layer. It is responsible for establishing a logical end-to-end connection between two network devices to provide transparent data transmission. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) operate within this layer even though they were not developed under the OSI model.

The Transport Layer uses several techniques such as Cyclic Redundancy Check, acknowlegements, and windowing to check for data transmission errors. The retransmission of data to recover those errors or lost data occurs with the software managing the Transport Layer.

Session Layer

The Session Layer is the fourth layer of the OSI model and is responsible for the two-way communication between remote hosts. This layer handles the creation, maintenance, and teardown of communication between these hosts. It is called the Session Layer because the communication is referred to as a “session”. Sessions are used to track individual connections to remote servers. An example of a session would be your web browser or FTP application.

The Session Layer is performs these functions:

  • Communication with layer five or the Presentation Layer.
  • Manage single or multiple connections between hosts.
  • Communication with the Transport Layer below.

Presentation Layer

The fifth layer of the OSI model is the Presentation Layer. This layer manages the conversion of data between platform independent or standards based formats to a format that can be processed by a local machine. An example of this function is the conversion of a .wav file to a .MP3. Some other examples of file types used at the Presentation Layer are JPEG, ASCII, MIDI, and MPEG.

There are four primary tasks performed by this layer:

  • Ensures commpatibility with the operating system.
  • Proper encapsulation of data for network transmission.
  • Data formatting
  • Data encryption, which includes translation and compression.

Application Layer

The Application Layer is the seventh layer of the OSI model. This is where the user interacts with the network. Authentication services run at this layer. The Application Layer makes sure that a remote connection is available, communication resources exist, and that both devices agree on processes involving data integrity, privacy, and error recovery.

Protocols that operate at the Application layer include SMTP, POP3, HTTP, FTP, Telnet, and SNMP to name a few.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell the OSI model is much more rigidly defined then the TCP/IP model we went over last week. Howevery both of these models are very important for aspiring networking professionals to familiarize themselves with.

We hope that you have enjoyed this article and have learned a great deal about the OSI model. If you have any questions or opinions please post them in the comments. We look forward to reading them.

The Ultimate Guide to Linux – Top 10 Distributions

by on September 20th, 2010 5 comments

Over the last six to seven years Linux has become more and more popular. With several distributions putting their focus on ease of use and user friendliness, more and more people are giving Linux a chance. Gone are the days where Linux is associated with uber nerds sporting long gray beards, suspenders, and the fashionable propeller beanie.

Once you make the decision to try out Linux, your next choice is what distribution to get. There are many flavors of Linux available for you to try free of charge, but which one is right for you? Below I have outlined ten major distributions that range from beginner friendly to versions suitable for more hardcore computer users that are all about performance and cutting edge software. The best part is that most of these distributions offer a way to try out the software before committing to installing it so they are easy to test drive.

CentOS

CentOS LogoCentOS was founded by Lance Davis and launched on May 14, 2004. It is a community supported distrubution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operation System. It is the most popular Linux distribution for web servers. The distrubution is not affiliated with any company and relies on donations.

Major releases for CentOS are scheduled every two to three years with minor updates, also called point releases, every six to nine months. There are not any considerable features and very few software package updates in the minor releases. CentOS version numbers have two parts, a major version and a minor version. Each number for the major and minor version match the Red Hat Enterprise Linux version from which the source packages were used to build CentOS.

CentOS is free of charge with support provided primarily by the community of users. There are a number of ways to install the operating system including Live CD and Live USB.

Debian

DebianDebian was first released on August 16, 1993, by Ian Murdock. The software is developed by over 1,000 volunteers and contains more than 20,000 packages in its software repositories. Debian is not sponsored by any company and relies on donations.

There have been ten major stable releases of Debian. Major releases for Debian are on a two year cycle, there have not been any point releases since 3.1 was released in October 2005. While this type of release schedule is great for stability it results in the distrubution not being up to date and aging very quickly. The code names for each release come from the names of “Toy Story” characters with the latest release, 5.0, being named ‘Etch’.

You can try out Debian without installing it on your hard drive with the Debian Live system, which can be booted from removable media like CDs, DVDs, and USB drives, or over a network via netboot. There is a Debian Installer included on the CD when you are ready to install the software on your hard drive. A tool called live-helper can assist your in creating a custom image that is bootable from removable media as well as netboot.

The latest release of Debian is version 5.0.6 (“Lenny”) released on September 4, 2010.

Fedora

FedoraThe initial release of Fedora was on November 16, 2003. It is a community supported distribution that was created when development of Red Hat Linux was discontinued. The Fedora Project is administered by a board who is elected by the Fedora community. Fedora is the second most popular Linux operating system.

New versions of Fedora are released once every six months with each version being supported for 13 months from the date of release. This relatively short support period can cause issues for developers more interested in support for the long term instead of cutting edge software.

Fedora is distributed on CD/DVD, live images, and minimal CD, which is used for installation over FTP, NFS, or HTTP. You can also get custom images that are built with a specific kind of user in mind, these are called Fedora spins.

Fedora 13 is the lastest stable version and was released on May 25, 2010.

Gentoo

GentooGentoo linux was started by Daniel Robbins as Enoch Linux. The first release of Gentoo was March 31, 2002. It is free and open source but does include a few proprietary software packages. One of the major differences between Gentoo and other distributions is that the user compiles the source code for their configuration of choice locally.

Currently the developers of Gentoo have scheduled weekly builds instead of annual releases. In 2004 the version numbering system was switched to use the year with the point release coinciding with which release that version was for that year. For example, 2005.0 would be the first release in 2005. Gentoo becomes versionless once it is installed and an emerge update is completed, this ensures the system is always has the most up-to-date software packages available.

There are many ways to install Gentoo with the minimal CD method being the most popular. Similiar to other Linux distributions you can also install it with other versions already operating.

The current release of Gentoo is 10.1 which was released on October 10, 2009.

Linux Mint

Linux MintLinux Mint was first released on August 27,2006, and is based on Ubuntu. This distributions’ focus is on stability and user friendliness and is great for users who have never used Linux.

Two releases are scheduled per year for Linux Mint with each release getting both a new version number and a code name. The convention used for the code name is a female name with the version number corrensponding with the letter in the alphabet and ending with the letter “a”, for example version 7.0 was code named Gloria. Releases are scheduled to be about one month after Ubuntu releases which ensures that each Linux Mint release comes with updated X and GNOME software.

Installation via Live CD is the most popular method for installing Gentoo. You can run the OS directly from the Live CD to try out the software before you commit to installing it. There are also images available which can be run from a CD, DVD or directly from the hard drive.

The lastest version of Gentoo was released on May 18, 2010 and is version 9.0 (“Isadora”).

Mandriva

Mandriva LinuxMandriva Linux was previously known as Mandrake Linux, the name change a result of a trademark infringement. It was first released on July 23, 1998, and was originally based on Red Hat Linux. It has since seperated from Red Hat and now includes several original tools.

The release schedule for Mandriva is on a 6-month cycle similar to Fedora and Ubuntu. Each release is supported for up to 18 months for updates such as the Linux kernel and system software, and 12 months for desktop updates such as web browsers, desktop environments, and more. Server versions are supported for 24 months after being released. As of version 11 the versioning system was changed from a traditional numbering system to using a year based system.

There are several different editions of Mandriva Linux. These include Mandriva Linux Free, which is the standard downloadable version; Mandriva Linux One, a cross between a Live CD and an installer; and Mandriva Linux Powerpack, the commercial version of Mandriva Linux. Discontinued editions include Mandriva Linux Discovery and Mandriva Linux Powerpack+.

Mandriva Linux’s latest stable release is version 2010.1 which was released on July 8, 2010.

openSUSE

openSUSEDevelopment of openSUSE is by the openSUSE Project with the first release being in March 1994. Novell purchased the project in 2003 but has kept community involvement a high priority. openSUSE is targeted at consumers, small businesses, and the development community.

The openSUSE Project’s intent is to have a new release every eight months. Up until version 11.2 each release was supported with critical updates for two years from the date of release. Starting with 11.2, critical updates will be provided for two releases plus two months which will be approximately every 18 months under the current release cycle.

openSUSE is free open source software and can be downloaded or purchased in a retail box. You can get openSUSE in several different editions which include the Download Edition, a downloadable ISO; Retail Edition, available in a retail box from Novell; FTP, version available for an over the network install; and Factory, a continuous development version from which developers take snapshots to create the stable openSUSE releases.

The latest version of OpenSUSE is 11.3 and was released on July 15, 2010.

PCLinuxOS

PCILinuxOSPCLinuxOS started out as a set of RPM packages created by Bill Reynolds, better known as Texstar, to improve Mandrake Linux. He started this project because he was tired of the fighting between developers for other distributions. In October 2003 a fork of Mandrake 9.2 was made to create the first independent release of the PCLinuxOS operating system.

Releases are controlled by Texstar and do not folow any kind of road map. Versions are released when all known bugs have been fixed. While this is great as far as stable releases go, this results in an unusually long development time. With the release in January of 2008 PCLinuxOS started following the Mandriva versioning system by using the year.

Distribution is via the traditional downloaded ISO as well as a version called “MiniMe” which is a minimal Live and Install CD. MiniMe is ideal for hardcore users who wish to start with a base and build the installation with their own selection fo software packages. PCLinuxOS is also distributed by several third parties including Karoshi and the BEL Project.

PCLinuxOS was last released on July 5, 2010, with version 2010.7.

Slackware

SlackwareIn 1993 developer Patrick Volkerding released a modified version of the Softlanding Linux System and called it Slackware. The first stable release of Slackware was on July 16, 1993. It is the oldest Linux distribution still in development. The name comes from the fact that the distribution began as a personal side project with no commitment.

Major versions of Slackware are released every 18 to 24 months with one to two minor releases a year. Slackware uses a standard versioning system. In 1999 the version went from 4 to 7 as a marketing ploy by Volkerding to show that Slackware was just as current as other distributions which were currently on version 6.

Slackware can be downloaded via a torrent on their website or you can order the latest version on CD (includes 7 CDs total) or a single DVD from The Slackware Store.

The latest stable version of Slackware is 13.1, released on May 24, 2010.

Ubuntu

UbuntuUbuntu was first announced in September of 2004 and was officially released on October 20, 2004. It was created by Mark Shuttleworth, a South African entrepeneur and former Debian developer. Shuttleworth’s UK-based company, Canonical Ltd., funds the project. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux-based operating system.

Releases are scheduled for twice a year and timed to be approximately one month after the GNOME release, which is one month after the release of X.org. Because of this each release has an updated version of both X and GNOME. The version number for each Ubuntu release is determined by the month and date it came out, so version 10.10 will be released in October of 2010. Each release also has a code name that uses an adjective and an animal (e.g. “Feisty Fawn”) which are in alphebetical order, with the exception of the first three releases. There are three releases labeled “LTS” which is Long Term Support which indicates these versions are supported for five years on servers and three years on desktops. The current LTS versions are 6.06, 8.04, and 10.04. Non-LTS versions of Ubuntu are only supported for 18 months.

The most common way to install Ubuntu is via Live CD. You can also download and burn an .iso to a CD which requires a minimum of 256 MB of RAM, in addition to that, an image can also be run from a hard drive. A Ubuntu CD can be requested from Canonical at no cost to most countries.

Ubuntu is on version 10.04.1 which was released on August 17, 2010.

Grand Finale

This article showcases a great assortment of Linux distributions. If you want to try out Linux, go ahead and burn a Live CD and check out the operating system for yourself. You will find hours and hours of exploring and fun if you decide to do this.

As previously mentioned, there are many more distributions of Linux not listed in this article, so please feel free to let us know which is your favorite in the comments.

The Darwinian Evolution of Photoshop [Infographic]

by on September 17th, 2010 80 comments

What does a top notch graphic designer have in common with an amateur photographer who uploads his weekend pictures on Facebook? They both love Photoshop! This brilliant Adobe product is geek’s darling for almost two decades so we’re starting the Tech King Infographic series with something that I personally want to hang over my bedroom wall – The Darwinian Evolution of Photoshop. Enjoy and if you like it please share the link with your friends!

Like it? Add this infographic to your blog or share it with friends!

600 pixels wide version

760 pixels wide version

1000 pixels wide version

Introduction to TCP/IP

by on September 16th, 2010 5 comments

You don’t have to be a networking guru to have heard of TCP/IP, if you are a networking guru and have never heard of TCP/IP it may be time for you to consider a new career path. Any way, you have probably heard of TCP/IP before but probably know very little if anything about it.

This article will be benficial to anyone who is considering enhancing their resume with a CompTIA Network+ Certification.

Introduction to TCP/IP

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol), also known as the Internet Protocol Suite, is a set of protocols used to communicate between computers over the Internet and other similiar networks. It defines how computers and other devices should be connected to the Internet and how data should be transmitted between these devices.

In the early 1970’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began research and development that resulted in TCP/IP. Robert E. Kahn and Vincent Cerf were the primary developers of the protocal. The first successful communication test was performed in 1975 between Stanford and University College London. Successful testing continued and in March 1982 the US Department of Defense set TCP/IP as the standard for computer networking in the military.

The Complete Suite

The Internet Protocol Suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP because they are the two primary protocols used but there are a few other protocols involved.

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) – Controls communication between applications and verifies what was received is what was sent.
IP (Internet Protocol) – Manages the addressing part of the communication to ensure packets get to the correct computer.
DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) – A method for automating the assignment of IP addresses.
UDP (User Datagram Protocol) – Connectionless protocol primarily used for communication over local networks.
ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) – A protocol used for errors and statistics.

Layers of TCP/IP

TCP/IP LayersTCP/IP is made up of four layers which consist of the Application Layer, Transport Layer, Network Layer, and Link Layer.

Application Layer
The top layer is the Application Layer. It is made up of protocols such as HTTP, FTP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP and a few others. Most of these protocols should sound familiar to the average internet user.

Transport Layer
The next layer is the Transport Layer and is made up of TCP, UDP, DCCP, SCTP, IL, RUDP, and RSVP. The two primary protocols in this layer are TCP and UDP. This layer is responsible for end-to-end message transfer as well as segmentation, congestion control, error control, application addressing with port numbers, and flow control.

Internet Layer
The Internet layer is the third layer. It is made up of IP (IPv4, IPv6), ICMP, IGMP, and ICMPv6. This layer’s primary responsibilities are host addressing as well as identification and packet routing.

Link Layer
The last layer is the Link Layer which contains ARP, RARP, OSPF (IPv4/IPv6), IS-IS, and NDP. This layer is used to move packets between the Internet Layer of different hosts on the same link.

Conclusion

This Introduction to TCP/IP was inteded to give you a jumping off point for those of you interested in persuing a career in computer networking or already have a career and are interested in a certification. We hope that you have found it useful Please continue to read TechKing for more great articles on networking and much more.

40 Fresh Photoshop Tutorials for Graphic Design Ninjas

by on September 15th, 2010 8 comments

While your neighbors son is more than happy to create graphics for you, Photoshop is so much more than lens flare and gradients. If you have any desire to create graphics for the Web then you definitely need to learn to use Adobe Photoshop. Because of this we have gathered 40 of the best tutorials we could find.

You may hear many designers speaking out against tutorials because they “stifle creativity”. However, one of the things you need to consider is tutorials are not created to spark creativity but to teach techniques. So have fun with these tutorials, learn some new skills, and apply what you have learned to your own designs.

Without further delay I present to you 40 Brilliant Photoshop Tutorials:

Websites

Create a Clean and Colorful Web Layout in Photoshop

1. Make a Stylishly Elegant Portfolio Web Design in Photoshop
2. How To Create a Clean and Colorful Web Layout
3. Create a Clean and Professional Web Design in Photoshop
4. Clean and Minimalistic Portfolio Layout in Photoshop
5. Create a green energy website in Photoshop
6. Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratc
7. Create a Sleek Portfolio Layout
8. Create A Stylish Portfolio Layout
9. How to Design a Clean Website Layout in Photoshop
10. Design a Professional Portfolio Web Layout

Icons

Photoshop Icon Tutorials

11. Create a Chalkboard Icon Using Photoshop and IconBuilder
12. Nice ‘n’ Simple Subscribe Badges
13. Photoshop Tutorial: Design the Mac OS X Leopard Folder
14. Calendar Icon Design
15. Computer Icon Tutorial
16. Create a Cardboard Box Filled With Glossy Icons
17. Create a Dock Icon Folder in Photoshop
18. Create a Glossy Volt Icon
19. Create A Stylish And Sleek Play-Station Portable Icon
20. How to Create a Cute Yellow Alien Icon in Photoshop

Text Effects

Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials

21. How to Create 3D Text Blocks in Photoshop
22. Awesome Milk Typography Effect in Photoshop
23. Master 3D Type Effects
24. 3D Text in Photoshop
25. Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect in Photoshop
26. Colorful Glowing Text Effect in Photoshop
27. Shining Neon Text Effect in Photoshop
28. Advanced Glow Effects
29. Spray Paint Text
30. Lost in Space Typography in Photoshop

Misc

Great Photoshop Tutorials

31. Photoshop For Beginners: The Power of Layers
32. How To Use Curves in Photoshop
33. Hexagon Bokeh Effect in Photoshop
34. The 5 Essential Photoshop Reflections
35. Create an Abstract Design with Patterns in Photoshop
36. 5 Pixel Popping Techniques
37. Create an “Awesome” Wrinkled Sticker
38. Super Easy Typographic Portrait in Photoshop
29. Create Web Buttons in Photoshop
40. How To Create a Retro Grunge Apple Wallpaper in 5 Easy Steps in Photoshop

There are a lot of great tutorials here, 40 to be exact, that should enhance your Photoshop skills. Please feel free to comment on our selection or share your own favorite tutorial in the comments.

What’s New in Office 2010

by on September 14th, 2010 11 comments

It seems like just yesterday when everyone was complaining about the new ribbon interface Microsoft introduced in Office 2007. Not only has it been almost four years since it was released but we now have Office 2010 which includes a ton of new features and contextual changes.

In this article we are going to review some of the major additions to Office 2010.

Ribbon Interface

In Office 2007 the ribbon interface was only available in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Microsoft loved this concept so much they decided to make it suitewide in Office 2010, which includes Outlook, OneNote, and Visio in addtion to the previous mentioned applications.

Office 2010 BackstageBackstage

Besides the ribbon interface you will also notice the ‘Office Button’ in the upper left had corner has been replaced by a ‘File’ tab. When you click on this you will be greeted with a plethora of options.

Microsoft calls this feature ‘Backstage’. You can do things like edit a documents permissions, select sharing options, access links to autosaved versions, and view document properties. This feature is available in all the Office 2010 applications.

PowerPoint Embedded Video

Forget bullet points and clip art, you can now embed videos in PowerPoint. You can either embed videos you have stored on your computer or from online sources like Youtube. You can also use the photo editing tools to manipulate the locally stored videos.

Outlook Social Connectors

With Social Connectors you can integrate profiles from sites like Sharepoint, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook into Outlook. The Social Connector for each social network must me downloaded seperately but once installed it will pull things like profile pictures and status updates and use them in different parts of Outlook like your address book. You can expect many more social networks to be added in the future.

Slicers and Sparklines

There are two major new features in Excel 2010, Slicers and Sparklines. While these tools are tailore more towards advanced users due to their relation to PivotCharts and PivotTables they are pretty easy to use.

Slicers are visual controls used to create interactive filters. Use the Slicers with PivotTables/Charts with some styling and you will have a chart that looks great for presentations.

Sparklines allows your to create mini charts in a single cell. This is great for showing trends across data sets.

Microsoft Office LiveOffice in the Cloud

With Office 2010 comes the highly anticipated Office Web Apps. The web application suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. While Microsoft had three whole years to learn from Google Docs implementation of office web applications it is still pretty rough around the edges as far as functionality goes. One of the major complaints is the lack of auto save. Hardcore Office users will probably really like it since the interface is familiar. Another great feature is that you can integrate web services including Hotmail.

Paste Preview

With ‘Paste Preview’ you can get a live preview of how information you are pasting from an external source will look. This will give you a good idea of how your document will be affected. Paste Preview is availalbe in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Publisher.

Other new features in Office 2010

Co-Authoring: This is a great feature that allows multiple people to edit the same document from different locations at the same time.
Threaded Conversations in Outlook: Similiar to how Gmail nests messages into conversations, Microsoft has added this in Outlook 2010 (six years after Google first introduced it).
Screenshot Capturing: Easily insert screenshots into your documents on the fly.
Photo Editing: While it is no Photoshop you can now edit photos within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Publisher. Use this to remove backgrounds, adjust colors, crop, and much more.
Video Presentations in PowerPoint: Easily convert your presentation to video and share it online using Youtube, or other video site of your choice.

As you can see there are a lot of great features added in Microsoft Office 2010. While I didn’t cover everything added I did make sure to touch on what I believe are the best and most useful.

What is your favorite new feature or features? Do you prefer Microsoft Office 2007 or maybe an older version? Please let us know what you think in the comments.

20 Windows 7 Tips and Tricks

by on September 12th, 2010 6 comments

With tens of millions of copies sold it is safe to say that Windows 7 has been a success for Microsoft. Windows 7 is jam packed with a ton of new features, that as a computer technician you should know about. TechKing has put together 20 Windows 7 tips and tricks that will make you look like an expert while enhancing your (or the person you are helping) computer experience.

Keyboard Shortcut to Quickly View the Desktop

With Windows 7 you can peek at the desktop without having to mouseover the glossy rectangle in the lower right corner. To do this you press the Windows key + spacebar, when you release the keys the application that was on your screen will come back up. To view your desktop you can press the Windows key + D.

Display Control Panel from Start Menu

Windows 7 allows you direct access to individual Control Panel items directly from the Start menu. To configure this, right-click the Start button in the taskbar and click Properties. In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window click the Start Menu tab, then the Customize button. Under the subcategory named Control Panel on the screen choose ‘Display as a menu’. Once you have finished doing this you will then be able to click ‘Control Panel’ in the start menu and see a sub-menu with all the Control Panel options.

Arrange Taskbar Icons

You can easily arrange icons on the taskbar by dragging to where you want it. You can also add icons to the taskbar by dragging them from an application, and delete the icons by highlighting them and pressing the Delete key.

Use a Keyboard Shortcut to View Taskbar Thumbnails

If you like to use keyboard shortcuts you can press the Windows key + T to view thumbnails in the taskbar. The first press will put focus on the left most icon and move one to the right with each additional press.

Launch app from the taskbar.Launch Applications from the Taskbar with Keyboard Shortcuts

You can launch any program on the taskbar without a mouse. Simply press the Windows key and the number that corresponds to the position of the application on the taskbar. For example, Windows key + 1 to launch the left most application on the taskbar, Windows key + 2 key to launch the second left-most application and so on.

Run Multiple Instances of an Application from the Taskbar

If you want to launch a second instance of a program that is already running all you have to do is hold down the Shift Key and click the icon. A second way to accomplish this is to right click the running program icon on the taskbar and then click the program name.

Burn ISO images

With Windows 7 you can burn ISO images to CDs or DVDs. It is very easy to use, all you have to do is double click the ISO image, choose the drive with the blank disc, click Burn and wait for your disc to be created.

Open a Command Prompt at any Folder

If you access the command prompt a lot then you will love this tip. With Windows 7 you can open the command prompt from any folder when browsing in Windows Explorer. All you have to do is hold down the Shift key, right click on the folder, and click ‘Open Command Prompt Here’.

Make Thumbnails Display Faster on the Taskbar

A benefit of Windows 7 is the ability to see thumbnails of all your open applications when you mouse over the icons in the taskbar. When you do this you may notice a delay before the thumbnail appears. You can speed this up by editing the registry.

1. Enter ‘regedit’ in the Start menu and click ‘regedit.exe’.
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Mouse
3. Double click MouseHoverTime. The default value is 400 (milliseconds) change this by entering a lower value such as 100 or 200. Click OK and exit the registry editor. For this change to take affect you will need to reboot your computer.

Restrict What Applications a User can run

Windows 7 has a feature called AppLocker that that will make sure users can only run applications you specify. Configure AppLocker by typing GPEDIT.MSC in the Start menu search box and going to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Application Control Policies > AppLocker. Here you will be able to setup application policies you want your users to follow.

Tweak your PC's sound.Tweak Your PC volume

By default Windows 7 automatically reduces your PC’s volume if it detects that you are making or receiving a phone call on your PC. To change this all you have to do is right click the speaker icon on your taskbar, select Sounds > Communications, and tell Windows what you’d like it to do. You can mute all other sounds, reduce the volume by 80%, reduce the volume by 50%, or do nothing.

Get More Screen Space

The Windows 7 taskbar can take up a quite a bit of screen real estate. You can use small icons by right clicking the Start button, clicking Properties, make sure you are on the Taskbar tab and select Use small icons then click OK.

Automatically Arrange the Icons on Your Desktop

If your Windows 7 desktop has scattered everywhere then all you need to do is right click the desktop and select View > Auto arrange. You can also press the F5 key while on the desktop to achieve the same result.

Problem Steps Recorder

In Windows 7 when an application starts having problems all the user needs to do is use the Problem Steps Recorder to record what they were doing so that you can have all the details. To do this have them click Start, type PSR and press Enter, then click Start Record. They can then work through what they were doing and have the Problem Steps Recorder record every click and keypress, take screenshots, and zip everything up into a single file that can be emailed to you. This tip will save you a great deal of time if you help others with computer problems.

Disable smart window arrangement

If you do not like the auto window arrangement in Windows 7 you can disable it by making a registry edit. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, set WindowArrangementActive to 0, reboot, and your windows will behave just as they always did.

1. Enter ‘regedit’ in the Start menu and click ‘regedit.exe’.
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. Set WindowArrangementActive to 0, click okay and exit the registry editor. You will need to reboot in order for the changes to take effect.

Enable virtual Wi-Fi

There is a little known feature in Windows 7 called Virtual Wi-Fi, which turns your PC or laptop into a software based router. Other Wi-Fi-enabled devices within range will detect you as a new network and be able to share your internet connection once you are logged on.

First you will need to check with you wireless adapter manufacturer and to ensure this is supported by your device. Once you have verified this make sure you have installed the latest driver for you device.
Now that your wireless adapter is good to go you will need to get a tool to configure Virtual Wi-Fi. That is an application called Virtual Router that is easy to use and best of all free. It will have you sharing your internet connection in no time.

Windows 7 Sticky NotesUse Sticky Notes

The Windows 7 Sticky Notes app is far more useful then it was in Vista. Simply type StikyNot.exe in the Start menu search box and a sticky note will popup. You can enter a note, right click and change the color of the note, click the plus sign to add a new note or the X to delete the note. To save the note, click on it and press Alt + 4, though notes are automatically saved.

Customize System Restore

Windows 7 allows you to configure the system restore option with a few useful options. Click the Start button, right click Computer and select Properties > System Protection > Configure. This is where you can set the Max Usage value to a size that fits your requirements, remember make this larger to hold more restore points and smaller if you want to save disk space.

If you don’t need System Restore to save Windows settings you can select the “Only restore previous versions of files” option. With this option Windows 7 will not back up your registry, which will allow you to get more restore points and file backups into the available disk space. If you use this option System Restore may not be able to get an unbootable PC working again so use this with caution.

Defrag Multiple Drives at a Time

The Windows 7 defrag utility has some interesting features in the command line version.
/c – Perform the function on all volumes
/r – Defrag multiple drives in parallel
/h – Defrag at a higher than normal priority
/u – Provide progress reports so you can see exactly what’s going on.
To use these switches type ‘CMD’ into the Start menu search box and type:
defrag /c /h /u /r
Enter defrag /? to view all the options.

Minimize All Applications not in Use

Sometimes you want to minimize all the applications except for the one you are working in. Fortunately this can be easily accomplished with Windows 7. Windows 7 has a feature called Aero Shake, simply click and hold the title bar of the application you want to keep maximized and shake your mouse back and forth, all other applications should now be minimized. You can also do this by pressing the Windows key + Home.

We hope you enjoyed these tips and tricks and that you also learned a thing or two about Windows 7. As we mentioned earlier Windows 7 is full of enhanced features so please feel free to share with us your favorite ones in the comments section.