Archive for March, 2008
03.29.08
Posted in Making Money With Your Computer, Sites of Interest at 10:17 pm by webmaster
Last year, my daughter and I taught a class on “Buying and Selling on eBay” at the local seniors’ center. The class was six weeks long and hands-on. Each person brought an item in to sell and we took them through the whole process, from signing up with eBay and Paypal, to writing a description and taking a photo, to actual sale of the item. One of the ladies has earned almost $3,000 on eBay since taking the course.
For those of you who would like to start buying and/or selling on eBay, the following is a glossary of terms:
Bid: telling eBay’s system the maximum price you are prepared to pay for an item.
Dutch: an auction where more than one of an item is available.
Feedback: positive or negative comments left about other users on eBay.
Mint: in perfect condition.
Non-paying bidder: a bidder who wins an auction but does not then go on to buy the item.
PayPal: an electronic payment method accepted by most sellers.
Rare: once meant hard to find, but used so often on eBay, it’s now meaningless.
Reserve: the minimum price the seller will accept for the item.
Shill bid: a fake bid placed by a seller trying to drive up their auction’s price (not allowed).
Snail Mail: the post, which is obviously very slow compared to email.
Sniping: bidding at the last second to win the item before anyone else can outbid you.
Technorati Tags: eBay, eBay glossary, selling on eBay
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03.20.08
Posted in Hardware, Home Computing Tips at 2:45 pm by webmaster
I have an older laser printer, but it still works well and lasts for a long time before I have to change the ink cartridge. It’s a Brother printer, in case you’re interested and even though it’s over five years old, I was able to download a driver so that it would work with Vista.
I got into the bad habit of leaving the laser printer on the whole time my computer was on, often hours at a time. After a while, I started getting an annoying cough and could see smoky air in the hallway outside my study. Since I still had my old computer at that point, I thought the fumes might be from it, since it was probably full of dust that I couldn’t get at.
Then I read an article on healthy computing and it mentioned the fumes that laser printers emit and the fact that many people get sick from the fumes. So my problem wasn’t the old computer after all, it was the constantly running laser printer.
Once I realized that and started leaving my laser printer turned off until I needed to print, my cough got better and the smoky air disappeared.
Technorati Tags: laser printer, fumes, computer
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03.18.08
Posted in Software, Internet and Email, Home Computing Tips at 2:23 pm by webmaster
One reason I love using Wordpress for my blog is because of all of the great plugins that are available. Some of them are a little complicated to set up, so I haven’t tried them yet. But the majority so far are fairly simple.
There is a sticky plugin, which I use to keep certain posts always at the top of the page, a spam comment catcher which is amazing, and a podcast plugin which I hope to try soon.
These plugins can be found at various sites on the Internet and are then downloaded to your computer. The next step is usually to unzip the file and read any instructions that are included. Then the plugins need to find their way to your website file manager and into the folder marked wordpress plugins, which is usually in a folder called wp-content. Trust me, it isn’t as complicated as it sounds.
Your plug-ins can either be uploaded from your site or you can use an ftp program on your computer to send them. Once the plugins are in the plugin folder, they will show up on your wordpress Plugins tab where you click for a one time activation.
If you do a google search for wordpress plugin video tutorials and watch one, my instructions will make more sense to you.
Technorati Tags: Wordpress, plugins, uploads
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03.16.08
Posted in Software, Internet and Email, Home Computing Tips at 2:07 pm by webmaster
Most of you are probably familiar with unzipping files when they are either sent to you or downloaded from the Internet as a zipped file. It’s usually just a matter of clicking on the file, selecting the unzip option and you’re done.
But I had never zipped files up myself before. Why would I want to, you ask? Someone wanted me to send them a number of files, so they had to be zipped or they would be too big for my email program to handle. Besides that, a zipped file keeps confidential items safer until they reach their destination.
Using the zip program I already had, it was just a matter of creating a folder (some zip programs call it an archive) and then clicking add and selecting each file I wanted to include in the zipped material. Took all of 5 seconds or so and I was done.
Last step was to create an email and insert the zipped file as an attachment. Oh, another tip -if you are sending a private message email from a forum, you can’t attach a file there. You’ll have to send it with your regular email program.
Technorati Tags: zip, files, attachment, email
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03.14.08
Posted in Software, Internet and Email, Home Computing Tips at 4:44 pm by webmaster
This is a Wordpress blog and a little more complicated to insert pictures. I upload the pics to my site and then to insert it, I have to type a path showing where the picture is located. The path has to be exactly right, otherwise instead of seeing my nice photo, you’ll see a small box with an x in the corner. That, my friends, means I made a mistake in the path.
This morning I tried and tried with no luck, went back to see the path I used for other images and tried again. Still no luck. Then I realized I put a / after the www instead of a dot. Once I fixed that, everything was fine.
It’s kind of like calling someone mr instead of mrs, just that one little letter difference can get you in a lot of trouble.
Technorati Tags: wordpress, blog, images, pictures
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