If you work in IT, you’ll probably find this scenario very familiar: you have a task to complete, but you’re not sure how long it will take – and you have other things to do in the meantime, but you still want immediate notification when the background task finishes.

My old solution was to simply keep a cheap cooking timer next to my computer, until I realized that the same thing can be accomplished using software that’s already included with Windows. Read on for the details.
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When it comes to cell/smartphones and business users, the most important innovation of the past decade has unquestionably been push-EMail. Love or hate the BlackBerry, it has – combined with push-EMail – become an indispensable tool for many.

Unfortunately, a variety of technical and economic factors make push-EMail much less attractive for small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers, etc. Both Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry server software – the main “traditional” options for push-EMail – either require you to run your own server, or to purchase the service through your mobile carrier. Most mobile carriers treat push-EMail as a premium service, and charge significantly for the service than they do for generic data transfer – and here in Canada, even those rates are quite high.

Enter EMail-to-SMS gateways.

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Question: The Windows Start menu has a “Run” option – what can it be used for?

Answer: More often than not, the “run” option in Windows’ Start Menu is used simply to launch the command prompt (by clicking “Run,” typing “cmd” and pressing Enter). There are many other useful actions that you can perform from the “Run” command, a few are included below. (more…)

Question: How can I make Outlook Express sort incoming Email for me?

Answer: Outlook Express has the ability to automatically sort Email for you based on “Message Rules.”

To create a new rule in Outlook Express, first click on the “Tools” menu, then “Message Rules,” and then the word “Mail” – now click the “New” button to create a new rule. The “New Mail Rule” window is split up into three parts – in the top part, you can choose what part of the message Outlook should search for (E.g., From address), and in the second pane you can choose the action(s) that Outlook will take when it finds messages that meet the criteria. In the bottom pane, you can choose the specific criteria to search for.

There are many different combinations of Messages Rules that you can setup and they can be used to automate repetitive tasks for you.

Question: How can i use multiple instant messenger accounts at the same time?

Answer: There are several different, incompatible instant messaging networks available on the Internet – MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and others. People with friends on more than one service often resort to running multiple chat programs at once. Fortunately, there is a program called GAIM which allows you to connect to multiple chat networks at once.

First, download GAIM from http://gaim.sourceforge.net/win32/ and install it. When you start GAIM, it will bring you to the login screen – click on the “Accounts” button to get started. In the Accounts window click on the “Add” button to create an account, fill in your details (chat system, username, password, etc), and click “Save” when you’re done. From the Accounts window, you can add more accounts or control whether existing accounts are signed on by clicking the checkbox to the right of each account.

Question: How can I store FTP connection information in Windows Explorer?

Answer: If you use Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer as an FTP client, then you can use the My Network Places folder in Windows to store FTP connection profiles.

To add a new profile, click on the “Start” button and then click on “My Network Places.” Now click “Add a Network Place” on the left side and click “Next” in the window that appears. Click on the words “Choose another location” and then click “Next”. In the next screen, type in the address of the FTP server, E.g. “ftp://ftp.server.com”, and click on the “Next”. Un-check the box next to the words “Log on anonymously” and then type in your user ame. In the next screen, give this connection a descriptive name (E.g., “my ftp site”).

Click the “Finish” button and now you can connect to the site right from My Network Places.

Question: Is there a way to save the programs and files I have open when I turn my computer off?

Answer: In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Microsoft provides a feature called “Hibernate.” Hibernating your computer is similar to shutting it down, except that Windows saves a record of all the files and programs you had open before it shuts down. When you start your computer back up after hibernating, the files and programs you had open will also be restored. And as an added bonus, starting up after hibernating is faster than a normal startup.

To hibernate your computer, click on your “Start” button and then click “Shut Down.” In the “Shut Down” window, click the drop down list and click “Hibernate” (instead of “Shut down” or “Restart”), then click the “Ok” button. Windows will now save your computer’s current state and shut down when it’s finished.

Question: How can I easily move text from one program to another?

Answer: One of the ways that computers help save time is by allowing us to instantly copy or move text and other objects from one place to another. Unfortunately, it isn’t always obvious how to use this feature.

To copy text in Windows, first move your mouse pointer to the beginning of the word(s) you want to copy. Now press and hold your left mouse button and move the mouse pointer to the end of the text you want to copy, then release the left mouse button. The text should now appear to be highlighted.

Click your right mouse button on the highlighted text and, in the menu that appears, click on “Copy.” Switch to the program that you want move the text to, then click your right mouse button, and click on “Paste.” The text that you copied should now be inserted in the new location.

Question: How can I quickly access a commonly-used search site?

Answer: The web browser Mozilla Firefox, an increasingly-popular alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer, contains the useful ability to bookmark search fields on websites. This allows you to quickly access them via shortcuts, without even having to visit the sites themselves.

To add a shortcut for a search site, first open the website in Firefox – for example, the image search on Google (www.google.com/images). Now right-click on the text field where you type what you want to search for, then click on “Add a Keyword for this Search…”. In the window that appears, type a descriptive Name (E.g., “Google Images”), then a short word or abbreviation for the Keyword (E.g., “images”).

Now, to search in Google images, you would simply click in the address bar in Firefox and type “images search text,” replacing “search text” with whatever you wanted to search for.

Question: How can I organize my EMail?

Answer: If you’ve used EMail for any length of time, chances are that you have messages that you want to keep. If you have many messages in your inbox, though, it can make it difficult to find a specific EMail. Fortunately, all modern EMail programs allow you to sort your messages into folders.

To create a new mail folder in  Outlook/Outlook Express, move your mouse over the lefthand pane (which contains your Inbox, Outbox, etc) and click the right mouse button. Click on “New Folder,” and type a name for it.

To move a message into a folder, first locate it in your Inbox, then click on it with your left mouse button. Hold the left mouse button down and move your mouse over the desired folder; once you have done so, release the left mouse button and the message will be moved to that folder.