Email is not perfect. Some days one person’s messages deliver and the next day they bounce and you never receive them. Sometimes an email leaves your outbox and never arrives but you don’t know it. Some days you get lots of spam and others you get lots more. Is there a reason for this? None that anyone will ever admit to, because there are just too many gears in the machine.

A representative of one of the largest commercial email marketing companies told me that many Internet service providers lock down their spam filters so tightly that sometimes legitimate email gets blocked, without the intended recipient (or sender, for that matter) ever knowing it. While this helps them control data flow and traffic – it can hurt us. Like many of you, I get my email through the mail server for our domain – LegalNurse.com in my case, but even I lose legitimate email to our spam filters.

Today many businesses are going to all-email communication and ditching paper communications entirely which means that you might not get an important notification because it didn’t pass some random spam test. It seems that a distressed widow in Nigeria with a spare 3.4 million dollars can get email through our filters but my managed network hosting provider cannot (duh!). The more important the communication is, the more likely you won’t receive it (it even happens to me).

Vickie Milazzo Institute has gone partially paperless (it’s our bid to partially save the planet). Expiration notices for your CLNC^® Certification, post test scores, routine communications and important deadlines are all sent via email. You may not be receiving all of our email without even knowing it. If you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant and you’re not receiving email messages from us, one of three things has happened:

1. We don’t have a correct email address on file;
2. You opted out of a previous email communication from the Institute and our email servers unflinchingly continue to honor that request and refuse to send to you; or
3. Your ISP is blocking our email to you.

So what’s a CLNC^® consultant to do? There are four steps you can take:

1. The easiest is to send us an email telling us to add you back to our email lists. We’ll respond quickly.
2. If you have the available control in your email, “whitelist” the LegalNurse.com domain.
3. If you don’t have control, contact your Internet service provider and ask them to “whitelist” the LegalNurse.com domain. If you don’t know how to do this then go to step 4.
4. Get yourself a Gmail account and use that for communication from the Institute.

When used properly, email can be a powerful marketing tool – so long as it’s actually getting through and you’re actually receiving it.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

Last week’s post about Tabs for Word was so popular that the overwhelming response nearly crashed the Internet. So today we’ll just wonder how robust Al Gore’s invention really is. With today’s Tech Tip, my CLNC^® amigos can add the wonder of tabs to… you guessed it – Microsoft^® Excel!  Download and install the free utility Tabs for Excel (make sure you close Word before installing) and changing your spreadsheets will be as easy as changing your mind (plus you can easily see what “books” you have open).

Just as Certified Legal Nurse Consultants shared the Tech Tip love of Tabs for Word with their favorite attorney-clients, now you should share the love of Tabs for Excel. Just remember, you heard it here first (again)!

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

I’ve long (and long windedly) blogged about the advantages of tabbed web browsing. Well my CLNC^® amigos, I’m bringing the joy of tabbed browsing to one of the software tools you use the most – Microsoft^® Word. Download and install the free utility Tabs for Word and you will never click on View, Switch Windows to change documents again (plus you can easily see what documents you have open).

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will love Tabs for Word and should share the Tech Tip love with their favorite attorney-clients. Just remember, you heard it here first!

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

I’ll confess, I’ve become a spam Nazi. In the glory days of the U.S. Postal Service, I could easily triage my mail, tossing what I didn’t want into the recycle bin. There was a certain amount of joy in sorting my mail, especially around Christmas when companies I’d never heard of sent me thick full-color catalogs full of goods I’d never buy. Perhaps it reminded me of my childhood days when my twin brother Vince and I would pore over the Sears “Wish Book” in those endless weeks before Christmas – wishing, hoping and praying for Santa to know what we’d marked and deliver it (all). Santa, if you’re reading this, I’m still waiting for that volleyball. #santa #wishlist

It’s funny how I can shuffle a fistful of paper brochures from the bar association, catalogs and credit card offerings into the trash while maintaining a Zen-like state of calm and indifference. So why is it that finding a single spam email instantly has me shouting “Off with their heads!” and sends my blood pressure into a dangerously unsafe range?  I barely stop short of sending a BLAZINGLY ANGRY EMAIL WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS in reply. #spam

As I luxuriated this morning over my cup of healthy green tea, I thought it’s time I step back and take a deep breath about spam. Do I really need to have a visceral reaction to something that only exists as electrons (and doesn’t harm the environment) and is easily discarded with a single click? Not really.

Today I’m expressing my gratitude for the spam filter which keeps the hypertension episodes to a minimum. How about you? #spamfilter #gratitude

Success Is Inside!

There are many web pages I’d like to save and read later but don’t particularly want to bookmark or save to read offline. Likewise, how many times have you tried to print a webpage, either to read it later or to place it with your legal nurse consulting research, but find it loses all its formatting and wastes a lot of paper when you do print it? Probably more times than you care to admit since it’s trial and error learning whether a webpage prints correctly or not.

Well my CLNC^® amigos, your faithful Tech Tipper Tom is riding to your rescue! #TechTipTom The next time you find a webpage you want to commit to paper simply copy the page’s URL and paste that URL into the address box at PDFMyURL and hit Enter (don’t click on the fancy “Artist formerly known as Prince-looking” button to the right of the box).

After a pause to generate the output PDFMyURL will do exactly what its name implies, create a PDF version of the page you just visited. Then, assuming it looks the way you want it to, you can print or save the PDF to your computer.

I must warn you though that while this is a great tool for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, it’s not perfect and only works about 7 out of 10 times. Unless you upgrade to the paid version, your PDFs will only print in landscape. The good news is that you get to see your results instantly and when you print the generated PDF file you have complete control over which pages to print and how many of each.

Bookmark PDFMyURL today – you won’t regret it! #Techtip

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

One of my earlier blogs discussed what Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should do when their Internet isn’t working. First, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, “Don’t panic!” Second, if you are panicking, “Stop now.”

Rest assured, there’s only one of many things it could be. I always start with the assumption that the Internet is completely down – worldwide – somehow, knowing that Al Gore and I are both suffering always makes me feel better. Then, I’d take some steps to isolate the issue (some of you – no, not you – may have missed the most important point) and get back online.

Assuming, arguendo, my CLNC^® amigos, that you’re at home or your legal nurse consulting office and not out free-ranging on your 5G wireless USB 6.0+ card, the third step I’d take (panic having been well-stopped and breathing resumed) is to unplug the power from your DSL/cable/fiber-optic broadband modem and your home router. Then, I’d wait about a minute (one Mississippi, two Mississippi, fifty-three Iowa, sixty OK Go) and plug the modem back in.

After the modem powers up and all the lights are blinking brightly, plug the router back in. The reason you wait is to allow the modem time to acquire the proper signal. Once it’s stable (like a patient), it’s time for the router to take the field.

Now, after you’ve plugged your router back in, let it stabilize. Finally, it’s time to go to your computer, open a web browser and start Googling (again).

Life is meant to be good – if you don’t believe me, Google^® it yourself.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

For those CLNC^® consultants who use Microsoft^® Outlook, I’ve already given you a Tech Tip describing how to color-code or prioritize your email. That simple tip turned out to be one of my most popular ever – until today! Today, my Valentine’s gift to you is more tips on how to better organize your email inbox. I’ll give Vickie her Valentine’s gift later – in private. #valentine

First, open up Outlook and go to your Inbox. Right-click on Inbox and select New Folder from the drop-down list. Type the name of your new folder in the empty box under Name and select OK. You’ll see that you’ve just created a legal nurse consulting project folder in your Inbox in which you can drag and drop relevant emails! Now instead of cluttering up your Inbox you can drag email related to a particular attorney-client or CLNC^® subcontractor into the proper folder to save them. You can also right-click on any existing folder and create a sub-folder. #Outlook #Winning

Did you know that you can now automatically route incoming email into those folders? Yes we can! If you’re a daring legal nurse consultant who pays close attention to your Inbox you can set up a Rule in Outlook or a Filter in Thunderbird^® and Gmail^®. Filters and Rules automatically send email that meet a criteria that you create into a folder of your choice.

You can create folders for each of your attorney-clients and set a Rule to send email from that attorney straight to that folder. You could set them up departmentally or by category (i.e., newsletters, mom-spam, etc.). The trick is that if you’re running Rules you have to live by them and make sure you watch those email folders for new mail notifications in each.

To learn how to set up a Filter in Gmail follow this link. If you’re using Thunderbird click here.

To learn how to set one up in Outlook follow these 13 steps (which may vary by version):

1. Click Tools on the top menu.
2. Click Rules and Alerts.
3. Select Email Rules and click New Rule.
4. I usually filter by sender so under Step 1: Stay Organized highlight Move messages from someone to a folder.
5. Under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click the underlined text under Apply this rule after the message arrives from people or distribution list.

6. If the person is in your contact list select their name from the list that pops up or simply type their email address into the From box and click OK.
7. Next click the underlined text move it to the specified folder and either select a folder you’ve already created and then OK or click New and create a new folder, type its name in the box and click OK.
8. When you’re finished and it looks like the image above, click Next. Now you’ll see a box like this:

9. My CLNC^® amigos you’re almost home so hang in there. If you’re sure the condition is correct, click Next to get this box:

10. Now make sure that what you want to do with the message (move it to the specified folder or some other action) is selected and click Next.
11. You’ll see the Exceptions box. If there are no exceptions click Next and then finish the rule by naming it.
12. Now that you’re done, you can choose to run the rule against all the messages in your Inbox or just run the rule as messages come in!
13. Select your action and click Finish.

Now, Certified Legal Nurse Consultant Outlook experts, your rule will run when you open Outlook and as your email comes in.

Rules and filters are a great way to organize your email Inbox but do require an organized mind and the discipline to check your email boxes. It’s a great way to route email from a particular attorney-client or firm to the appropriate legal nurse consulting project folder. #Office #EpicWin

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

I’ve already given you a Tech Tip on how to use tabbed browsing to enhance your legal nurse consulting research. I’ve also Tech Tipped on how to recover your work in your web browser in the event that you accidentally close it out. Today’s tip works in Firefox^®, Chrome^® and wonder of wonders, in Internet Explorer^® 8. If you accidentally close a tab, before you shout Holy Tech Tip Tom! Simply hold down your Control button, your Shift button and hit the T (for Tom) key. Each time you give your computer the <Ctrl><Shift>T salute it’ll open up the last tab you closed in your web browser. If you’re a Safari^® user, you can only re-open the last tab you closed, but at least it’s a simpler salute <Ctrl>z (for Ziemba).

Okay my CLNC^® amigos, armed with these Tech Tips you’ll never lose a second’s work again!

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

According to Bloomberg Business, the top selling iPad2^® app over the Christmas holidays wasn’t Angry Birds, it was an app named Quickoffice. What’s Quickoffice have to do with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants? Easy – with more and more of my CLNC^® amigos turning to the iPad as an auxiliary device, you need a way to view and edit your Microsoft^® Office documents and Quickoffice provides it.

Using Quickoffice, CLNC^® consultants and their attorney-clients can open and edit documents from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It also has the ability to store, access and share documents in the “cloud” with a functioning tie to Dropbox^®. At $19.99 it’s not a cheap app, but then your business isn’t cheap and neither is the cost of missing a deadline because you couldn’t get back to your computer to correct a document.

When I get my iPad3^® this spring (hint, hint), Quickoffice will be one of the first apps I install and I recommend you do the same. It’s also available for phones but who really wants to edit documents on a phone? I sure don’t and I’ll bet you don’t either.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

As Certified Legal Nurse Consultants travel the information superhighway researching cases, you’ll run across many billboards, banners and advertisements. What you don’t see are the insidious ways that your movements are tracked by various parties, honest and nefarious. Flash cookies and browser cookies are one thing, but there’s another “invisible web” made up of tracking beacons, web bugs and rogue pixels hidden in web pages by website publishers, advertising networks and behavioral data providers that track your activities. Is there anything wrong with being tracked? Not really – after all, if you’re honest you have nothing to hide – but do you really want those tracking bugs slowing down your browsing experience? Time is money to legal nurse consultants and seconds add up over a busy work-week.

A free add-on for just about every web browser called Ghostery provides you with information about who is tracking you on any website and gives you the option to block or allow that tracker.

I’ve found it handy and I use it to block trackers at almost every website I visit. A caveat, my CLNC^® amigos, is that some websites will need components of the blocked functions to display properly. Luckily Ghostery makes it easy to allow or block. It displays a simple “ghost” in the top right of your browser showing associated trackers for each webpage you visit. They’re all blocked by default, but you can click each one to learn more about them, what they do and whether to allow or keep blocking. Some you must allow to make a particular website work for you. Here’s a screen shot:

You can read more about Ghostery and the “invisible web” at the Ghostery website.

I heartily recommend it to all tech-savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultants.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom