Tech Tip

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

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

A few Tuesday Tech Tips back I mentioned that I routinely disable the touch pad on my laptop. Since then Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have been clamoring to know not just why?, but also how?

Let’s start with the first question first. The why – because I don’t like touch pads. Sorry CLNC^® consultant Apple^® users, I know touch pads are useful, but on my Windows^® machine I’ll be typing away in the middle of a Tech Tip, unknowingly drop my wrist or thumbs (much to the consternation of Mrs. Giles my piano teacher, may she rest in peace) which then come into contact with the touch pad causing my cursor to jump to some other point on the page, all while I keep typing merrily away, in the wrong sentence or paragraph. Believe it or not, I find that frustrating.

To avoid the hated touch pads, I carry a laser mouse (along with my charger and other accessories) in my Codi Mobile-Max rolling computer case. But when I’m working in airplane mode (me, not the laptop) there’s no room on my tray table for a mouse so I’m reduced to using the pointing stick in the center of my keyboard (instead of the touch pad). By disabling the touch pad I eliminate the frustration of messing up my perfectly-composed pages and retyping my perfectly-written prose. I don’t disable the buttons by the touch pad so I can still use them to make left-click/right-click selections; I just disable the touch pad itself. The pointing stick also functions as a left mouse button depending upon the pressure you put on it so tread, or point, lightly.

Now that the first question is answered, let’s work on the second – the how. As with every different computer model, the actual steps may differ; so, my CLNC^® amigos, I’ll talk in generalities (this works in both Windows^® XP and 7) and hope to lead you to what you’ll need by example. I recommend you only attempt this exercise if you have a mouse plugged into your legal nurse consulting computer in case you mess things up – that way you’ll have a workable way to move your cursor when things go south.

Before plugging in your mouse and making sure it works, confirm you indeed have a pointing stick on your laptop’s keyboard. That’s the little thing that looks like a dirty pencil eraser somewhere in the middle of your keyboard – usually between the “G” and “H” keys for some reason. If you have one, make sure it works by using that pointing stick to mouse over to, and open Start (Pearl button in Win 7), Settings then Control Panel. Once you’ve got the Control Panel open, look for a selection named Mouse and double-click on that. That should open up a box labeled Mouse Properties or something similar. Inside that box look for Device or Device Select, and then Touch Pad and make sure the radio button labeled Disable Device is selected. You can also select Disable Touch Pad/Stick when USB pointing device is present (that will only disable it when a mouse is plugged into the laptop). Then click Apply or OK and before closing out the various windows try the touch pad to make sure it no longer functions. Try the pointing stick to make sure it does function and then unplug the mouse to make sure everything keeps working (pointing stick) and not working (touch pad). If everything is set the way you want it, close out those windows and you’re good to go!

Now not one Certified Legal Nurse Consultant will ever suffer from misplaced cursor while typing again!

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

The Internet is an indispensable tool for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants researching their legal nurse consulting work product. Web browsers are getting better and faster than ever. No matter which browser I’m using, I like to use tabbed browsing and am always opening links in a new tab. This practice keeps me from losing my search results by following links too far forward and not being able to get back to my original search results.

One of the issues I run into (and I’m sure my CLNC^® amigos do also) is reflexively closing the browser instead of the particular tab you mean to close. Fess up, I’ve never met a nurse who hasn’t made a med error and I’ll bet I’ve never met a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who hasn’t accidentally closed out an entire hour’s worth of research by closing the browser instead of the tab. Well curse no more my CLNC^® amigos. Here’s a way to rescue your work – if you’re willing to put up with a little inconvenience.

Firefox users have the best options, so I’ll start with you. Open Firefox, click Tools, then Options. Now click Tabs, make sure the radio button next to Warn me when closing multiple tabs is selected and then click OK to close the options. Now when you accidentally attempt to close your browser instead of the tab you’ll get the pop-up warning You are about to close X tabs. Are you sure you want to continue? You’ll also get the option to continue closing the tabs or stop and save your work. Woo-hoo!

Your second option is to do the Tools, Options thing again and this time click General. Then select the dropdown box next to When Firefox starts and select Show my windows and tabs from last time. Now when you close Firefox (accidentally or not) the next time it starts you’ll recover all the tabs and windows that you were viewing. If you select the box next to Don’t load tabs until selected, it won’t preload the tabs so your browser will open just as quickly as before and you can recover or close the tabs you don’t want. One drawback is that this option will eliminate your customized home page(s), but hey – your work’s more important right?

Chrome users don’t have the same range of options. You can simply click the little wrench in the top right hand corner of your Chrome browser, then Options, then Basics (if it’s not selected) and select the radio button next to Reopen the pages that were open last. Now, when you accidentally close your browser you simply need to reopen it to open all those tabs you had painstakingly researched and opened. The inconvenience here is that you’ll lose your customized home page and, if you constantly keep a large number of tabs open, it may slow your browser’s load time. You decide what’s more important to you.

For the last two Internet Explorer^® 8 users out there, your options are limited to simply being warned before you close multiple tabs. Click Tools, Internet Options, General, then on the Settings button in the Tabs section next to Change how webpages are displayed in tabs; make sure the radio box next to Warn me when closing multiple tabs is selected, then OK your way out. Now when you accidentally try to close out you’ll get the warning Do you want to close all tabs or the current tab? and you can choose.

Finally, Safari^® for Windows^® users also have that same option to receive a warning before closing multiple tabs. Click the gear in the top right corner of Safari. Then Click Preference and Tabs. Then select the radio button beside Confirm before closing multiple tabs or windows. Do that and you’ll get a warning telling you how many tabs you have open and the option to close Safari or not.

Now there’s no reason to accidentally close a browsing session again.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

One of my favorite Christmas gifts for Vickie in 2011 was a Hercules X-Stand Ergonomic Portable Natural Airflow Cooling Stand (trust me, that’s a sexy gift coming from a tech-geek). Vickie lugs her laptop with her to all of our CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminars, vacations, business trips and our annual Christmas Migration. When she’s sitting at a hotel desk or table working away, the laptop gets hot. At home her computer’s dock helps prop it up for proper ventilation, but on the road it lies flatter and hotter than a stretch of West Texas highway in the summer. Hotter running temperatures lead to hardware fatigue and my CLNC^® amigos all know there’s nothing worse than hardware fatigue.

But, the Hercules X-Stand doesn’t just provide adequate space for airflow underneath and around the laptop, it elevates it slightly to give Vickie a better typing angle (to help ward off carpool and tunnel syndrome) and viewing angle. It’s small, portable (you should have gotten that from the name) and folds up nicely to fit in our Mobile Max rolling computer bag.

This may not be everyone’s idea of the ideal Christmas gift, but it did put a smile on Vickie’s face (plus she got some other really cool stuff too). Buy one for the traveling geek, I mean Certified Legal Nurse Consultant in your family (I did), and I guarantee she’ll like it (she did).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

One of your New Year’s resolutions should be to clean up not just your act, but also your computer. In prior Tech Tips I’ve talked about physical maintenance, file maintenance and hard drive maintenance, so this blog is about removing those programs you no longer use. Every flavor of Windows^® comes with an uninstall program. It’s located in the Control Panel with the name Add or Remove Programs. Just about every peripheral device (printers, wireless cards, etc.) comes with associated software and, like most other programs, often has its own uninstall routine that usually works pretty well. My problem with the Windows uninstaller is that it runs slowly and Add or Remove doesn’t reflect everything installed on your computer. Plus, just about every uninstaller tends to leave odd bits, files and folders on your computer and in your Windows Registry, which over time can affect performance.

For 2012 I’m putting an end to that by offering you a great freeware uninstaller called Revo Uninstaller (you’ll find the download button at the bottom of the page). Revo is a simple-to-use program that locates all the programs installed on your computer the first time you run it. It opens in a new window and can display those pesky programs by icon, name or both. To uninstall a program, you simply select it in the Revo window and click uninstall. Once the uninstall begins, Revo offers some cool advanced tools that also allow you to clean out the Registry as well as ancillary files and folders. It helped me find some old Blackberry^®-related files as well as some long-forgotten programs that I’ve never used. Now I can recover that disk space and fill it with more Tech Tips!

There’s a lot more to Revo than just the uninstaller, far too much for a simple Tech Tip, but I can heartily recommend it. I’m happy with the freeware version, but if you’ve got extra Christmas cash you can buy the Pro version (I didn’t). Start 2012 with Revo and you’ll never use Add or Remove Programs again.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

As the year closes and we deal with planning and other technology-related issues here at Vickie Milazzo Institute, Vickie and I have had more than a few discussions over what tech tools are on the horizon, not just for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, but also for us. After giving away so many this year, Vickie’s personal wish list starts with her own iPad2^®. That tops my list too, along with a better smartphone, a faster laptop and a smaller iPod. Vickie can tell you with absolute certainty that I haven’t been that good this year, so Christmas may end up being new white socks from CostCo^® instead.

Vickie and I also discussed how the loss of the visionary Steve Jobs left the world in a state of technological limbo. No one at Apple^®, Microsoft^® or Google^® has quite figured out the next transition. All three want us to keep our applications, photos, music, back-ups and data in the cloud and instantly accessible – which is a great idea so long as we have wireless Internet access all the time. Apple is trying to take us into the Star Trek^® future with voice-controlled phones and computers and seems to have set a high starting bar with “Siri.” I think that Siri’s application to your legal nurse consulting businesses is iffy, unless Siri starts making your prospect calls and appointments for you. I already use voice control for some systems in my car – although with often imperfect and sometimes unexpected results, especially when I’m screaming in terror or ranting in anger. Without making the obvious joke, I’m hoping Apple has better penetration into operating systems for cars and airplanes than Microsoft and Windows^®.

At the end of the day, or at least the end of 2011, iPhones and Android^® phones are replacing our video recorders, digital cameras, gaming devices and music players but still make the web painful to use (that’s what all the apps are really trying to remedy). Tablets like the iPad2 and Kindle^® Fire make up for some of the browsing shortcomings of our phones and are great for reading books and magazines, playing games, watching tiny movies and other entertainment. However, they aren’t full-fledged laptop substitutes, are too big to use as a phone and don’t have the business functions we need. I haven’t seen a real working person who can live on an iPad (yet). That brings us back to our laptops, which to their credit keep getting thinner, lighter and more powerful but don’t replace our phones or tablets, and are the only thing that keep us working when the Internet isn’t around.

After all our technological advances, we working stiffs are left for the foreseeable future with the need to carry three different devices and to have gadget envy over the ones we don’t have. If Santa brings me an iPad2, I may change my mind.

I’m excited about the future and the new technology that is just around the corner. I wish I could be the one to invent it! What about you? Where do you think the future of technology will lie for your legal nurse consulting business? What kind of gadgets do you want and what do you want them to do? CLNC^® consultants can be a demanding group when it comes to their technology needs, so I’d like to hear your thoughts on what you’d like your techno-Santa to bring in 2012. Who knows, maybe Santa will read this blog and you’ll get lucky!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Yesterday at the gym, my trainer was entering the results of my last set of squats on his Apple^® MacBook^® when his screen suddenly turned light blue and froze up just like a good ‘ole Windows^® machine. It was dead in the water with no way to turn the machine off or to restart it.

As my CLNC^® amigos know, I’ve had mucho experience with Windows over the years, and I recommended that he unplug the machine from the power supply and then pull out the battery, in effect doing a good old-fashioned “hard shutdown.” I also warned him he would lose any unsaved data and that I wasn’t doing that set of squats over again, so he’d better remember the weight total.

After the hard shutdown, we did a “Safe Boot” by holding down the Shift key as the machine started. This allowed the system to boot slowly with many turns of the Apple spinner (or the gear, for you Mac-heads). Once it was fully booted, we restarted the machine again. This time it took nearly three more sets of squats (lots more spinning) before it was up and operational as it rebuilt the boot cache and other Mac-specific process caches.

By the end of the workout I was walking with Elvis legs, but his MacBook was running. Although I don’t speak Mac, I did advise him to run some general Mac maintenance routines, consider a software update and then read up on basic troubleshooting for Macs. I also told him that if the problem recurs, it might be due to a recent buggy software update and to check the Apple Support Site and Apple Support Communities for more information. The above links will also be helpful to my Certified Legal Nurse Consultant readers who are using Macs until they build up the courage to buy a real computer with a real operating system.

Seriously though, you can use a Mac or a Windows computer for your legal nurse consulting business (or both on the same machine if you have a Mac and Boot Camp). The state of today’s software allows you the flavor of your choice without detriment for your CLNC^® business.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Vickie and I were flying home from New York City after Vickie’s appearance on Fox & Friends. As usual, we were crunching away against a deadline. Our keyboards were blazing, fingers were flying and when we got to the point where we wanted to start highlighting some text in the document we were editing, I reached for my mouse, then remembered “Tom, you’re on an airplane and your mouse is packed in baggage.” My fingers drifted towards my touchpad, then remembered “Tom, you disabled your touchpad so that you wouldn’t drop your thumbs on it and move the cursor while you’re typing.” Finally, I thought about using the keyboard’s pointing stick but, it’s a terrible mouse alternative and tends to hop around when I use it so I dropped that idea.

As I was contemplating my next move, Vickie came to my rescue – she reached over, moved my cursor to the start of my text and told me to hold down the Shift key and then hit the right or down arrow and watch it select text. Amazing! It selected all the text I wanted and when I was done, I left-clicked the yellow highlighter and I was done ahead of the deadline.

My takeaway: if you want a quick, non-mouse way to select text for highlighting, cutting or copying, simply start with your cursor at the front or back of the text you want to select, hold down your Shift key and then arrow up, down or sideways until the text is selected. Then you can copy, cut, italicize or do whatever else you need.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

The holidays are officially here: Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us and the Christmas/Festivus/Hanukkah season is just ahead. I know that some of my CLNC^® amigos will be asking Santa for something electric under the tree so here are some tips on how to select that special something.

If you’re buying a new computer, you’ve got to make a choice between a laptop and a desktop and the deciding point for you deciders is whether or not you want to sacrifice form for function. Desktops are cheaper and easier to upgrade. Laptops need lots of accessories adding to an already higher price. If you travel a lot or haunt Starbucks^® for peace and quiet, consider a laptop – otherwise stick with the desktop.

No matter what you buy, you’ll be making some choices about memory, hard disk size and graphics cards. When it comes to memory (commonly known as RAM), more is better. No matter desktop or laptop, stuff it full of as much memory as you can afford – think of 4GB as a minimum with 6-8GB (or more) as ideal. The more RAM you have, the faster your computer will seem to run.

Hard disks are great places to store your legal nurse consulting work product, photographs and music. Get a pretty good sized hard drive – a 320 GB drive is small by today’s standards so, whether laptop or desktop, go bigger and faster. 7,200 RPM is recommended if available. For now, stay away from solid state drives (SSDs). These have no moving parts but are limited in terms of data storage and you’ll find yourself regretting the purchase later (it’s already later).

Central processing units or CPUs can be a grab bag with dual-cores and quad-cores in the mix. Most laptops will probably be dual-core units; while desktops are most often quads. What matters is the CPU speed. Look for something fast, but if there’s a big price difference for an incremental speed difference (3.0-3.2 GHz), save the money and go with the cheaper unit. If it’s a major difference in speed (2.3GHz-3.2 GHz), go for the faster unit. It’ll pay off in the long run.

The fastest CPU in the world won’t help too much if you have a slow graphics card. This is what “harvests” your FarmVille^® crops. If you’re planning on gaming, go for a fast card with a larger amount of RAM than the “stock” card. If you’re a normal user, you can probably get away with a 3-D capable card with at least 512MB of RAM minimum. Desktops should have two DV-I ports to plug in your new dual monitors.

Finally, speaking of monitors, if you have a great computer but a small single monitor you won’t enjoy your PC as much as you should. Spring for a new, bigger, brighter monitor (or two) so that you can enjoy those Blu-ray^® DVDs the way they’re meant to be enjoyed – while checking Facebook^® on the other monitor. Remember, computer specs change constantly so your new purchase may be obsolete before you leave the store or the UPS driver delivers it. Always check with your salesperson for the most current specs.

Keep on techin’,

Tom