Outlook

Google Alternatives

Posted by Andy on March 20, 2010
Gmail, Outlook, Tech Tips / Comments Off on Google Alternatives

I love Google, I really do – they generally get it right, but I’m getting concerned.  I rely on Google for so much I worry that too much of my life is in one place.  And although the Ad’s they push are relatively unobtrusive, I’m starting to feel very much “watched”.  Like they know what I do, where I go.  Big Brothery.

So what are some good alternatives for Google services?

Search

How can we live without Google Search?  Let’s face it, they are the best.  Bing is ok, but I generally feel like I get what I want from Google faster than Bing, MSN or Yahoo.  There are a couple of good alternatives out there though that are worth a look.

The best of them is scroogle.org.  Scroogle is a web search pluggin that does some really nice things.  It uses Goggle search but isolates you from the cookies that Googles writes to you , and doesn’t send your IP address to Google.  Most importantly, you don’t get any Ads!  As an added bonus, you get 100 search results per page.  Very nice.

Browser

I use several browsers – IE, Firefox and Chrome.  Chrome is usually the fastest, but I use Firefox more than the others.  A good open source Chrome alternative is Chromium.  It’s basically an open source version of Chrome.  The user interface is nearly identical, and it doesn’t track your info like Chrome does.  The home page for the project is here, and the latest windows build is here.

Google Calendar

There are loads of online calendars out there, MSN, Yahoo, MobileMe just to name a few.  I’d like to stay away from the big names – they aren’t better than Google and have many of the same privacy issues.  I’ve been looking at 30 Boxes (http://30boxes.com/) and so far I really like it.  The format is really nice, and it’s iCal based, so there are lots of ways to view the calendar (mobile devices, desktop, web) and there are tons of calendars to add in (holidays etc).  They calendar will send appointment reminders to your mobile device, and yes, there is an iPhone app.  I have not tried to hook it up to my iPhone calendar directly – would be great is that worked too.

This is a short list – just search for Google Alternatives and you will get plenty of reading material.  Other honorable mentions – OpenOffice.org, Zoho.com (very cool office tool, has email, CRM, project, docs etc).

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Outlook 2007 tips

Posted by Andy on August 13, 2009
Outlook, Tech Tips, Windows / 1 Comment

While I’m on the subject of tips, here are a few tips for Outlook 2007.

1) Stop Outlook from suggesting names in the TO field.

This is related to the .nk2 file I blogged about awhile ago.  If you don’t like that outlook suggests names for you, then you can turn this off.  Go to Tools, then Options.  From there choose the Preferences tab, then click the e-mail options button.  In the e-mail options dialog, click the Advanced E-mail Options button.  Uncheck the radio button for “Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields”.  Click “ok”.

2) Configure Outlook to NEVER send read receipts.

Personally, I think read receipts are annoying.  Some people love them, and who am I to judge, but I’d prefer to keep when I read your mail to myself, so I turn this “feature” off.  To do this, go to Tools, then Options.  From there choose the Preferences tab, then click the E-mail options button.  In the E-mail options window, choose the “Tracking Options” button.  Look for “Use this option to decide how to respond to requests for read receipts. Only applies to Internet Mail accounts.”   There are a couple of radio buttons – choose “never send a response”.  Click “ok”.

3) Remove the System Tray icon for new email

Another love it or hate it item.  I like this one, but when the system tray gets cluttered, out it goes.  To remove the icon, once again go to Tools, Options and from there choos the Preferences tab.  On the Preferences tab choose the E-mail Options button.  In the E-mail options dialog choose the Advanced E-mail Options button.  Under the “When new items arrive in My Inbox”, uncheck “Show an envelope icon in the notification area”.  Click “ok”.

4) Configure Outlook to empty the deleted items folder when you exit.

This is really helpful if you have limited mailbox space.  Deleted items count toward your mailbox space limits, so you either need to remember to empty your deleted items, or have outlook do it for you when you exit the application.

To configure Outlook to empty deleted items on exit, go to Tools, the Options, then choose the “Other” tab.  Under “General”, check “Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting”.  Click “ok”.  Your sysadmin will love you ;)

5) Add Holidays to your Calendar

Outlook support iCal, so there are thousands of calendars you can add to Outlook.  To add holidays from the default list, go to Tools then Options, then choose the Preferences tab.  In the Calendar section, click the Calendar Options button.  In the Calendar Options window, click the “Add Holidays” button.  Scroll through the resulting list, click the radio button next to the ones you want, then click “ok”.

Just a few things for now.  I’ll add more another time.

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