LANcom Technology Blog

Accidentally deleted a file from your computer and you don’t have a backup? Don’t worry, if the file was delected very recently there is a good chance you will be able to get it back. Here’s what to do.

1. Check the Recycle Bin – Double click on the Recycle Bin on your desktop. If you see the file your after right click it and select Restore.
2. Stop working on your computer – If the file was not in the Recycle Bin then you need to stop working on your computer. This is because when you delete a file from your computer that file is not really gone, all that happens is the space that that file occupies becomes available for reuse. So the more new files you save the more likely that the deleted file will be over written.
3. Use a file recovery program – There are a lot of file recovery programs available, one free option is Undelete Plus. With Undelete Plus you can filter and sort by file name all the deleted files it finds, so it’s easy to find the one you’re after. To learn more about Undelete Plus click here.

If you are using Vista and would like to restore an old version of a file you have saved over click here to learn how.

SEOmoz, a search engine optimisation website, has put together a great collection of links to internet marketing tools and resources. This list titled The Internet Marketing Handbook includes tools to help you with:

1. Link building
2. Keyword research
3. Content creation
4. On-page optimisation
5. Crawling and indexing issues
6. Social media marketing

To see SEOmoz’s Internet Marketing Handbook click here. 

Note: A few of the internet marketing tools listed in this directory require you to be a premium member of SEOmoz, but there are heaps of free ones their too.

Often share links with others? Want to make sharing links easier? Well here’s three ways you can.

1. Shorten them
   There are quite a few websites that take long and hard to remember links and create short easy to remember links that re-direct to the same thing. One of the most popular link shortening services is TinyURL.
   With TinyURL you can simply paste a long link into the box on the site and click ‘Make TinyURL’ and you’ll be given a short link that takes you to the same place the long one did. You also have the option to customise the short URL so that it’s even easier to remember. Here’s and example tinyurl.com/hardwareprices redirects to our previous blog post.
   Click here to visit TinyURL.com (No registration required to use this service)
2. Bunch them
   If you have a number of links that you would like to share with a number of people then you could use a service like LinkBunch. The LinkBunch site allows you to enter in a number of links and then creates a page which: displays all your links, allows viewer to hold their mouse over a link to see a snapshot of the site, and offers an option to open every link on the page at once.
   Click here to visit the LinkBunch site (No registration required to use this service).
3. Use Del.icio.us
   Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, and what it allows you to do is conveniently store all your favourite internet links so that you can access them from any computer connected to the internet. When using Del.icio.us you can easily share links you have found with other Del.icio.us users or you can create a group account and collaborate with others to compile links that are relevant to the group.
   To learn more about Del.icio.us you can click here or to visit the site click here.

Due to currency changes and increases in manufacturing and freight costs, many of our suppliers are updating their price lists very regularly. So much so that sometimes prices we have quoted from in the morning have changed by the afternoon.

While we will endeavour to minimise the effects of this to our customers there will times in which we will be unable to hold quoted prices the length of time that we have previously. We would very much appreciate your understanding during this period of price volatility.

On the 2^nd of September Google released the beta version of their first internet browser, Google Chrome. Google Chrome was designed with the purpose of creating a browser from scratch, since the internet of today is so vastly different from what it was when the first internet browsers where produced. With this browser Google aims to increase the speed, stability, and security of surfing the net and has taken a minimalist approach with the browser itself.

So what’s different about Google Chrome?

1. Speed – Google Chrome has an improved Java script engine, which means it runs Java script (a scripting language used in websites) much faster.
2. Stability and security – Google Chrome runs each tab as a separate process so if a single site is causing a problem it won’t crash the entire browser.
3. The Address bar does everything – In Google Chrome the box at the top of the screen is more than just an address bar, it also can be used to search Google and your history. As you type in what you are looking for it will suggest popular sites, searches, and pages you have already visited that contain your search terms.

   
   

4. The new tab page – When you open a new tab, Google Chrome displays pictures of your most visited sites, a list of your recent bookmarks, and a list of recently closed tabs. This makes getting to the sites you visit regularly really easy.
   

Google Chrome is still in beta, so it still has a few problems to be worked out and so far it’s only available for Windows Vista and XP SP2. If you would like to learn more about Google Chromes features Click here. To download Google Chrome and try it out for yourself click here.

The N-able Partner Summit is a two and a half day conference in Dallas, which over 500 of N-ables partners will attend. By attending this event we hope to learn a great deal about how we can better support our customers using N-able technologies and create even better support agreements.

LANcom’s Warwick Eade and Phill Claxton have been selected from this large number of attendees to participate in several discussion panels at the event.

N-able produces the monitoring and management software LANcom uses to monitor our customers’ systems to read more click here.

Google, in honour of their 10^th anniversary, has released a 2001 version of their search index. This allows you to search the web as it was in January 2001.

It’s interesting to see just how much the web has changed. For example, searching iPod returns results for ‘Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System’ and searching Youtube doesn’t return anything.

To try out the 2001 version of Google yourself click here. Note: if you want to see the old versions of websites as they appeared in 2001 then click on the ‘View old version on internet archive’ at the bottom of each result.

To read more about the release of the 2001 search index click here.

Want to edit an image for free but need more functionality than what’s available in Paint? There are actually a lot of free image editing tools available online. Here are three I’ve used.

1. GIMP – GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and is a free alternative to Photoshop. If you’re looking for a program with a lot of features then this is the one for you. The only downside is that it can take a while to learn how to use it. To visit the GIMP download page for Windows click here, for Mac click here.
2. Spashup – Spashup is an easy to use online image editing tool. It’s similar to GIMP and Photoshop, but has fewer features. On the positive side it’s more user-friendly. To visit the Spashup site click here.
3. FotoFlexer – FotoFlexer is a site specifically designed for editing photos. It’s easy to use and doesn’t even require registration. To visit the FotoFlexer site click here (just click on the big Upload Photo button to upload your own photos).

If you would like to learn about more online image editing tools here’s a great article on Makeuseof.com.

We have had a great response to all our free information reports since we released them under a creative commons licence on the LANcom Library, but the most popular so far has been our ‘Free technologies that could improve your business’ report. This report covers free technologies that help with: remote access, online file storage, website traffic analysis, calling online, time management, and website filtering, and has been downloaded 54 times.

If you would like to see a copy of our free technologies report or one of our other popular titles like ‘Remote working for your business’, or ‘Things to know when buying a server’ click here to visit the LANcom Library.

Baby Smash is a free game for toddlers that displays coloured shapes, letters, and numbers on the screen as they ’smash’ on the keyboard.

The cool thing about Baby Smash is it locks out the Windows Key, Esc, Alt-Tab etc so that your baby can’t get out of the application and accidently mess up your computer (To end the application you have to press Alt+F4, which is extremely unlikely to happen by accident).

You can also change the settings of Baby Smash. You can for example have the sound of laughter when a key is pressed, or have the letter or number that is pressed said out loud.

To learn more about Baby Smash click here.
If you are using a Mac then you can use AlphaBaby click here to read more.