Connected Well

some days, originally uploaded by ginatrapani.

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I first recognized this song because they sampled numa numa, the song made popular by this guy (I dare you to watch without smiling). This is a song about making your life better and escaping from the things that hold you back no matter what the pain you have to go through might be.

Live your life…

It’s worth noting the artistry of the video, showing himself as a young hustler trying to make a name for himself, then having to go through the pain of getting out later, as he (himself) walks in to make a deal with the gang boss, showing the cycle repeating itself. Nice work.

And, just because… here’s Numa Numa guy:

api life, video live your life, numa numa, TI

Google’s really laying on the additions to GoogleVoice. It seems they’re really moving forward with things at a rapid pace. The latest addition is a gMail Labs add-on that will have GoogleVoice voicemails show up in your mailbox, and you can play them on the spot:

Previously, clicking “Play message” opened a new page in your browser, but starting today, you can play voicemails right in Gmail. Just turn on the Google Voice player from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings and whenever you get a voicemail notification, the player will appear right below the message itself.

Best of all, your message status will stay synced: messages played from Gmail will appear as read in your Google Voice inbox and won’t be played again when you check new messages via your phone. If you already use Google Voice, try it out and let us know what you think. If you don’t have a Google Voice account yet, sign up for an invitation and we’ll get you one ASAP.

Read the article at the gMail Blog

api Apps, Tools communication, google, googlevoice, telephone, voice, voip

The below is a moving video I watched earlier this week of a man, Victor Guzman, who was on the 85th floor when the first plane hit the first tower of the World Trade Center. I won’t post more about September 11th today. Two years ago, I posted “9-11: Where Were You?” which I think is enough. Other than this post, I will remain silent today in honor of those who lost their lives.

His life changed a lot after 9-11. Watch the video to see him tell his story of escaping the tower, only to turn around and watch the building collapse.

“Since 9-11, my life has never been the same. It’s actually better.”

He describes his journey from tragedy and trauma to hope, healing, and renewal through Jesus Christ. I realize with soberness everyone’s journey since 9-11 has not been the same, but I believe in the healing power he has experienced, and I appreciate the chance to share.

Please feel free comment, forward, tweet or share on facebook, etc., if this post moves you.

I will never forget those who died that day and since that day in the name of Freedom.

api America, human, life, people, video 9-11, faith, hope, life, tragedy, video

I have a gmail account that is the nerve-center of my digital communication empire, but I also have two GoogleApps domains (one for M|REC and the other for mMEdia) and a client of mine has their email hosted on GoogleApps, too.

When I am juggling between accounts, I have a few options:

1. Send mail from one (or multiple) accounts.
   I have taken great pains to arrange each of these accounts so that I can send email from my @gmail account via each of the other ones (except my client’s, for obvious reasons).  While this adds some convenience, it is tedious to setup, and then I have certain copies of some messages in one place, with others in other places.  More about that in another post–or not. This also used to tack on the unprofessional “on behalf of” header until they revealed how to avoid it just recently by configuring gmail to send the mail through your other domain’s SMTP server.

   Fair warning: Try doing this if you want, but that sound you just heard was at least one other reader’s head exploding.  Do not try this at home, or in the presence of small children or endangered species.

2. Configure Firefox to ask you when you click a “mailto:” link how you want to send the mail.This is a totally awesome example of why FireFox makes IE wimper and cry for its mommy(ies?).  Follow the link over to LifeHacker to see the code you need to drop into your address bar to configure not only Gmail to launch from a mailto: link, but any Google Apps domain.

   For me, I ran through this step-by-step configuration once for each of my accounts: Gmail, MREC, mMEdia and my client.  Now I have a long list of options that pop up gleefully when I click a “mailto:” link and I no-longer have to wait the 196 seconds for Outlook to sieze my computer on loading only for me to shut it off.

   The trick is to not commit any of the options as the default, then everytime you click a “mailto:” link, you will get the option screen to choose.  Note that you can also launch Outlook or Thunderbird or another desktop app, too, allowing you to flow between even more personalities.

   Somewhere, my therapist is smiling.

Lifehacker: Configure mailto: links to launch in Gmail or other GoogleApps for Domains accounts

api Tools Apps, firefox, gmail, hacks, ie, internet explorer, lifehacker, tweaks

Web savvy Internet users know to Not Share Your Email Address unless you want to be spammed to death.  I completely agree. But gMail from Google can help you share your address with a reasonable certainty that, if the spamming begins, you can easilly shut it off.

• First (and most powerful) is the feature, commonly called “plus addressing“, and which is appropriate per the Email RFC #822 (see pages 8&9), allows you to add additional information to your gMail address between your username and the “@gmail.com” portion of the address to give you a little more information about where you divulged this address, and to whom.

• Next, gMail addresses are “dot blind“, meaning you can add as many dots (periods) in the username portion of your email address as you want (as long as the username does not start or end with a period)

For example:

If your email address is mykittenrocks@gmail.com, any of the following combinations will send email to your account, and you can tell gMail to filter them if you want, or label them a certain way, etc:

• mykittenrocks+thecasbah@gmail.com (link to the song by the Clash, on YouTube)
• my.kitten.rocks@gmail.com
• m.y.k.i.t.t…e.n.ROCKS@gmail.com
• my.kitten.rocks+dont.spam.me@gmail.com
• mykittenrocks+subscriptions+sitename@gmail.com

Anders Jacobsen recommends subscribing to a website with the name of the website and the month, date and year you subscribed:

I usually register at websites with an email address of the form username+sitename+yyyy-mm-dd@domain.com and if I ever receive unsolicited email to this address (see my previous rants on dialpad.com) it’s easy not only to track where the spammer got my address from, but also to block this address for future emails.

The final way gMail helps you share your email address without undue future pain is to give you great Spam Filtering and Unsubscription tools:

Clicking “Report Spam” on junk emails helps gMail keep that same message from hitting other unsuspecting (and surely less savvy) users than you.

See a YouTube video about how gMail fights spam.

Mashable notes a new feature that makes it easy to unsubscribe from spammy email lists.

People like Jeremy Zowodny use this feature for gMail to scrub his email before he downloads it to his personal email server

api Apps, Tools cloud, control, email, gmail, google, googlemail, spam, subscriptions, webmail

Sync is hard.

I’ve never used any synchonization software that gets it right all the time. However, I am pretty pleased with Google’s Sync program, launched nearly 2.5 years ago, now part of their suite of mobile apps for smartphones, including BlackBerrys.

Google Sync for BlackBerry

Every once in a while, my calendars get out of sync, and I need to delete and reset my BlackBerry. Normally, you can reset the sync by:

• Go to Google Sync on the phone (either find the app icon, or scroll to the top of the BlackBerry-button menu while looking at your calendar.
• In Google Sync, click the BlackBerry button*.
• In the menu, choose “Options”
• In the options screen, click the BlackBerry button* again.
• In the menu, choose “Reset Calendar Sync”.

This action removes all the synchronized events on your calendar. Then you can re-sync again to get everything pulled back down from Google Calendar to your device.

However, the last time I did this, I also corrupted something, so my BlackBerry’s “default calendar” had a duplicate set of events from my Google Calendar. This isn’t bad, jut really annoying. I also had recurring events that don’t exist anymore, that I was having to manually delete. Not productive

To solve this problem, I had to take more drastic measures. Follow along:

• First, I synchronized my calendar manually from the BlackBerry, ensuring that it succeeded.
• Next, I followed the instructions above to Reset my synchronized calendar, removing it from the device. Note that I did NOT resync at the end of the reset.
• Then, I connected my BlackBerry to my computer and saved a full backup.
• Next, following instructions from this BlackBerry Forums post, I removed ALL of the calendar events on my BlackBerry.
• Finally, I went back to the BlackBerry, launched Sync, and did a manual sync (BlackBerry Button* > Sync), ensuring it was successful.
• This removed the offending calendar(s) and now my calendar information is an exact copy of what’s online in my Google Calendar.

For simplicity, I am copying the instructions from the BlackBerry forum and inserting them, below, with links to screenshots:

If you are having errors in your Calendar or Address Book on your BlackBerry, and you wish to delete the entire Calendar (or Address Book) database on your BlackBerry, follow the directions below. Make certain you have a good copy of your Calendar or Contacts elsewhere, as this procedure will complete delete ALL Calendar entries and/or Address Book entries on your BlackBerry.

1. Open Desktop Manager on your PC.

2. Open up Backup/Restore > Advanced.

3. From Advanced you’ll see a split pane screen. The left pane is what is going to be backed up from your device and the right is a list of the currently existing databases.

3. Highlight on the right side your Address Book database (or your Calendar database) and click the arrow in the middle pointing to the left. This will copy the information over and prepare it for back-up.

4. Once the back-up has completed, hit the Clear button at the bottom to erase and clean out the entire address book database (or Calendar database).

5. After it’s finished, it will ask you if you want to save the back-up you’ve created, say yes and check the device to make sure the address book (or calendar) has been properly cleared out. Now, resync the necessary contact information and you should be set to go.

* The BlackBerry button is the “Menu” key on your berry.  It looks like

api Help, Tools, mobile Apps, blackberry, error, fix, google, google_calendar, gsync, Help, sync, Tools

Google’s customizable homepage just got social-er.  I already use this as a personal dashboard of what’s going on in my world.  This will add even more cool stuff:

See the Google IG Social video on YouTube

api Apps, Social Networking, Tools, life google, interconnected, new, social, Social Networking

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~ William Stafford

src

api life life, memory, poetry, William Stafford

I have been running Windows 7 Release Candidate for nearly a month and I love it.

The list of things Windows 7 brings closer to me and makes more fun/easier to use is kind of endless.  Every day I use it, I slowly begin to think that someday I might forget the MS-DOS commands and endless, repetitive click-cycles (the kind your tech support guy repeats from memory when helping you get connected to a projector for a meeting… or get your monitor to show anything at all after the meeting is over)  I have committed to memory in order to accomplish anything worthwhile on previous Windows OS’s.

One consistent item I keep wishing I had easier access to was a simple applet that helped me manage my startup programs, or manage what programs start automatically when Windows launches.

This really should be simple to find, but it’s not.  In my opinion, if there is anything more detrimental to most-user’s experience with their PC is the crud of programs and their various “notifiers”, “monitors”, “updaters”, “download helpers” and otherwise annoying popup programs that do not NEED to be running, but run every single time the PC starts up.

Searching the Control Panel and Windows Help, I finally came across a link to an applet called “Start System Configuration” (which I recognize as msconfig thanks to my MS-DOS-infected brain) that can help me manage my startup programs, but the description for the applet has nothing to do with what I want to do:

“Any program that tries to start on my machine…. kill it dead.”

To access the Program Startup Killer, access Widows Help and Support, and then search for start system configuration.  Ignore that it says nothing about killing off offending startup programs, just click the link to open it.

Up pops the system configuration applet.  Click the startup tab and uncheck any programs you don’t want to allow to run when the machine boots.   Then click “Apply”, then “OK”.

Danger: This isn’t a well-refined applet, and unchecking the wrong boxes could cause damage to your system or user experience if you don’t know what you’re doing.

api Tools, next microsoft, windows, windows7, windowsOS