TextPlus (http://www.textplus.com/) is a cool new app that allows you to text and make phone calls for free from any wi-fi enabled mobile device, including your iPod Touch. Normally, you’d need a full mobile phone account and device to text or call but TextPlus lets you text for free and call other TextPlus users for free, too.
We’ve talked about Dell Voice before. This app allows you to call landlines and cell phones for free but text isn’t included. Check out our post here: Dell Voice With TextPlus, you get a free number, just as you do with Dell Voice, but you can also text. Seems like TextPlus is a better alternative, right?
Head over to the TextPlus site and check out the details of their service. You get a free phone number, just choose where you want the calls to appear to originate from. Remember that you have to install the app from your app store before can sign up. Install the app, apply for an account (all you need is an email address and some other insignificant details (not your home address) and you’re off!
TIP: Calls from one TextPlus account to another are always free. Texts are always free. Phone calls to landlines or mobile devices are extra but very cheap or free. If you watch some ads, you get free minutes. You can also buy minutes. Right now, if you pay $19.99 , you get 1,300 minutes (1,000 in Canada) which is just about free, isn’t it? It seems to us that these rates are substantially cheaper than the rates that Skype offers.
Prices for phone minutes in Canada.
Prices for phone minutes in the U.S.
Unfortunately, this offer is only good in the U.S. and Canada, not even Hawaii or Alaska. Check your local app store. There may be something like this around where you live.
Thanks for reading! If you’ve used TextPlus, let us know what you think.
TIP: We are not affiliated with TextPlus in any way. We just like free things.
Yesterday, we locked ourselves out of one of our WordPress websites. Even though we write about tech things, we sometimes screw up. Luckily we were able to get back into the site using a password file that we had backed up on Dropbox. Here’s how it went down:
1. We keep a list of passwords in a simple text file on the main office computer and a duplicate file in our Dropbox folder online.
2. Somehow, probably when someone started to type something but didn’t know they were in the password file, one of the passwords got erased.
3. We had the admin password but we’d changed the admin user account’s settings so even though we were able to log-in as admin, we couldn’t do anything. If you have a WordPress site, this is one of the first things you should do. Hackers know that most WordPress users leave the log-in name as ‘admin’ which means that they are already half-way there when it comes to breaking into your site.
4. Since Dropbox syncs your computer’s Dropbox folder with its own online version, both text files were corrupt.
5. We logged on at Dropbox.com, found the file, then looked for the previous versions of that same file, an older version that hadn’t been corrupted. Dropbox stores older versions of files for these kinds of accidents.
6. After we found the file, simply right clicking it brought up this menu:
Right click and choose ‘Previous Version”
7. The previous version of the file had the correct password in it. After we logged into the site, we copied and pasted the missing password back into the original file on our computer. Dropbox, of course, immediately synced the two folders, its own and the one on our computer. We left the previous version as it was, just in case we need it again.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Why didn’t they just use the ‘forgot password’ option on WordPress?” That makes perfect sense if we used the same email address for all of our sites but we don’t. Checking each of a dozen websites for the WordPress link would have taken much longer. The Dropbox option was faster. We have, however, made a list of what email address is used for each site. That file is on Dropbox and the main computer, of course. Yes, we should have thought of that before but we’re not real geniuses here, we’re just reasonably smart.
Dropbox can really help in this kind of situation. We hope you take our advice and use it. Check out the site, the installation process here: Dropbox
This weekend, a friend came over with a DVD that wouldn’t work on her DVD player. Turns out that the DVD was from England and was in the PAL format. Not that this matters too much to you but a good portion of the world has a different broadcast system for their TVs. Our native North American system is known as NTSC while their system is known as PAL. We’re not talking about regions here, as in DVDs that only play in one region even if that region is PAL or NTSC. The regions have to do with DRM (digital rights management), not transmission systems. Regardless of the reason, her PAL DVD wouldn’t work on any North American NTSC system. How would we fix that?
After hours of trying to re-author the DVD using some very arcane and complicated software, I decided to take the simple route. Since the DVD is essentially a group of video files, I decided to convert those files to AVI files using Format Factory. We’ve written about Format Factory before and it’s one of our go-to programs for converting video or audio files from one format to another. Read our posts here: Format Factory and here: Format Factory
Almost every DVD player out there will play AVI files. You can also pop those files onto a flash drive and connect it directly to some TVs and play the files from there. Here’s how we converted the PAL DVD to a group of AVI files :
1. Download Format Factory here: http://www.formatoz.com/ and install it. Watch out for some of these downloads since they will want to change your search options or home pages. Don’t just assume things when you are clicking your way through the screens. Read them one by one before you click OK and make sure you uncheck anything that seems fishy.
TIP: A PAL DVD can be read by your computer but not played on your TV. The TV screen is different from your computer monitor screen, to put it simply.
2. Make sure the PAL DVD you want to convert is in your DVD drive on your computer. Start Format Factory. This is the opening screen:
You're looking for the DVD to Video file button.
3. Click the DVD to Video File button and the following screen will pop up:
If the PAL DVD is in your optical drive, your screen will be much like this.
This menu looks complicated but it isn’t. On the top you’ve got your DVD drive with the title of the DVD shown. Below that are the various VOB files that make up the DVD with two files already checked. I wanted to convert all of the files so I had to check Title 2, 3 and 5. On the right side, I have changed the output to AVI and I want the files to be converted to XVID 640×360 Wide Screen HD. The default setting is MP4 but that resulted in pretty crappy, but watchable, video files. This particular setting works perfectly. There are no subtitles offered on the DVD but you can choose your own setting here. Leave the Audio Stream at default and it should be fine. Change the file titles if you want.
4. Once you’ve set all the parameters, click Convert and go and have lunch. Depending on the speed of your computer, conversion could take hours. We used a reasonably fast computer with 8 gigs of RAM and the conversion of this short DVD took about half an hour.
5. Format Factory will beep when the files are all converted. Look for the files in My Documents in the folder named ‘Format Factory Output’, unless you have created your own directory already.
6. Once you have checked that the files work on your computer, burn them to a fresh DVD or pop them onto a flash drive and try them on your DVD/TV setup. They should work perfectly.
TIP: A DVD is made up of many VOB files, some small, some large. The main movie, obviously, is simply the largest VOB file but you might want to convert all the VOBs anyway. You can then sort them out later on and delete them if they aren’t worth saving.
This method of converting PAL DVDs to watchable AVI files is much simpler than any PAL to NTSC method that I’ve discovered. It’s also completely free. We don’t buy software at Computers Made Simple and, while there are several pay solutions for this problem, we decided to look for a free solution. Thanks for Format Factory, we were able to solve the PAL DVD problem quite easily. We hope it works for you.
I’ve written about Fotobounce before, here are a couple of links to my older posts: here (Fotobounce explained) and here (Download a whole Facebook album)
Fotobounce is fairly simple to use and does the job quite well. If you’re into downloading photo albums on Facebook, Fotobounce is pretty much the only way to do it but it does have one limitation that I’ve just discovered. Here’s the problem. When, and if, I get things sorted out, I’ll post an update on this.
The Goal: One of my friends has one album, Wall Photos, that has thousands of images in it. Many of these images are spectacular and I would like to archive them for my own inspiration and enjoyment.
The Problem: Fotobounce cannot download this album. It tries, sometimes for hours, but it can’t seem to get past the spinning wheel that indicates Fotobounce is working on something. Once, just once, Fotobounce got halfway through downloading the album, then got hung up before the job was done. I tried as recently as this morning for one full hour with nothing else running on the computer and Fotobounce failed again.
My Solution: Although I am not a programmer, I have noticed that Fotobounce does not work like other downloaders. I’m not sure why but Fotobounce seems to cache the photos it is downloading in a temp folder somewhere. Yesterday, I deleted my old Fotobounce installation and installed a fresh version. During the installation process, I changed the ‘save to’ directory to one that I made on my desktop. I wanted to keep track of what Fotobounce was doing and this desktop folder is a lot easier to find than the default directory in My Documents.
After Fotobounce was installed, I tried to download the problem album yet again. To test my theory, I also downloaded a smaller, but still sizeable, album at the same time. As Fotobounce was working, nothing was showing in the desktop folder. As soon as Fotobounce declared that one of the jobs was finished, that album popped up in the desktop folder. Even though Fotobounce worked for hours on the massively larger album, nothing ever showed up in the folder. Where are the images that we partially downloaded? I can only assume that they are in a temp folder somewhere.
The computer that I use Fotobounce on is pretty much the latest and greatest you can get. I built it myself and it’s not a slug, believe me. Lots of storage, 3 terabytes, lots of RAM, 8 gigabytes, and a pretty fast quad processor (i5-2500K @3.3 Ghz) plus Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS. I doubt that my rig is the problem here. Even if Fotobounce caches the images in RAM, there should be enough room. I am pretty sure the album, although it’s large, isn’t 4 or 5 gigabytes in size.
If you are downloading a torrent, your torrent client writes directly to your hard drive, it doesn’t cache your download. It may use a temp folder but the folder is right there in the directory where you have chosen to put the torrents. Sometimes, if you are downloading photos, you can actually look at some of the photos or play the avi file long before the download has completed. No such luck with Fotobounce. Nothing shows until it’s finished the job and, when the album is too large, it seems that nothing is written at all!
As a writer/experimenter/tech guy, I look at problems such as this from a different point of view than most users, I think. It’s a challenge. Once I find the solution, I write about it. If I don’t find a solution, I write about that, too. This particular setback may not have a solution. It’s frustrating but sometimes these things can be that way. We’ll see what happens. If I discover an answer, you’ll be the first to hear.
As you probably already know, Irfanview is one of my favorite free programs. I’ve used it for years and every computer in the house has it. Read past posts about Irfanview here and here and here. Irfanview is fast, fun and works perfectly every time. You can download it and its plugins from Tucows. Get it here: http://www.irfanview.ca/main_download_engl.htm
If you have used Irfanview for a screen capture session, you’ve probably got dozens or hundreds of jpgs that include more of your screen than you need. Irfanview is perfect for captures but sometimes the box you draw around your target is too big. Here’s how you can set Irfanview up to crop those captures in one operation, no matter how many photos you have. How do I know? I’ve used this method before to crop about 2400 photos that I made into a little animated gif. It didn’t go viral but it was fun make.
1. Get all of your jpgs in one folder. Sort them out so that all the photos have the main capture in the same position on the screen. If you moved the window at some point while you were capturing the whole screen, sort those photos out and put them in different folders. You can reorganize them later.
2. Open Notepad or keep a paper and pencil by your hand. You will be writing down a few numbers for each cropping job.
3. Before you actually begin to crop, practice sizing the crop area first. Open one jpg. As with most programs, holding down the left mouse button and dragging the cursor will create a box. Test this out and try to get the correct size, the one that looks best to you. When you have the right box, click anywhere outside the box to unselect the crop.
4. Next, click on the top left corner of the area that you want to crop. Don’t move your mouse, just click once and hold it there. On the top left of the Irfanview window you’ll see XY:(number,number). This is your X -Y reference point. Make a note of those two numbers. This is what you will see:
Look for the XY:(480,561) - your numbers will vary.
5. Next, you’ll want to write down the full size of the crop box that you want. Click in the same spot, or as close as you can to it, then drag the box out and hold the mouse button down until you are able to read the numbers that you need. What you’re looking for is the number of pixels that define your crop box’s height and width. In the photo below, you’ll see what I mean.
See the (646x472 Pixels, 1.369)? You need the first two numbers: 646 and 472
6. Now you have the numbers that describe where the box starts and the numbers that describe the size of the crop box. You’re all set to start your batch cropping. Look for File on the top left, then Batch Conversion/Rename. The following window will open:
Here is where you will do two things. Add the photos to crop and choose your output directory.
7. Set up the menu by checking that ‘Batch conversion’ is ticked. Then, on the top right, select the photos you want to crop. Remember when I said to keep your photos separate? This is why I said that. It’s much simpler to choose ‘Add all’ as opposed to picking through the jpgs one by one. Click ‘Add all’ if you have all the right photos in one folder. Then, in the middle left, choose where you will put the cropped pics. Don’t use the same directory as the originals, just in case you make a mistake with your crop window. You still want the originals until you make sure your numbers are correct. Once you’ve done these steps, click on the ‘Advanced’ button. The following window will come up:
Don't get nervous. This window looks complicated but it's not that bad.
8. Top left, see the Crop section? This is where you’ll fill in the numbers that you wrote down earlier. Make sure ‘Crop’ is checked then type in the X-pos number and the Y-pos number. Below that, write in the width and the height. Below that, make sure that ‘Left top’ is chosen. You can crop in any corner, just make sure you know which corner you have chosen. I always use top left but you can do whatever you want.
9. Make sure that nothing else is checked. On the bottom right, I have ‘Overwrite existing files’ chosen, simply because it’s easier if I make a mistake. I put the cropped photos in a new folder then I check it after the batch if finished. If I have made a mistake, I redo the numbers and run the batch again. I don’t have to open a new folder.
TIP: If you are doing a few batches, uncheck the ‘Overwrite existing files’ just in case you forget to use a new folder. Make sure this is unchecked if you are using the same folder as the originals, too. I’d advise against that, however.
10. Double check everything then choose OK once to close that menu. The batch menu is still open, of course, and you need to press the ‘Start batch’ button. Once you do that, Irfanview whisks its way through the task at hand. Depending on the speed of your computer, this might take a while. Wait until Irfanview is done then check your results. Chances are you’ll make a mistake the first few times but read through this again and you’ll get it right, sooner or later.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
