I’m not the best at being organized, but I hate a cluttered computer. I hate having things on my hard drives. I want it gone. I want a clean computer.

You know you need back ups. We all do. But we also need space on the computer. So here’s the quick tip from me for today.

Drag your WoW game, your ripped copies of movies and music you have CDs for, etc., and put them all on your external hard drive. I got the Verbatim hard drive from a PR rep, and all I can say is… it’s so small. Small. But with over 300 gigs of space. They have a bigger one for 500 gigs. With WoW or other games running off of the external hard drive, you get at least 20 gigs of space free on your main drive. I think I just purged 40 gigs of games off of my hard drive onto the Verbatim, and the games still run smooth.

Copy files you only have digital copies of into three ways. Frequent, Back Up and Never Used. You know those old files you never look at any more, but hang on to? Save that to your external storage space, and to a couple of burned CDs (or release into the cloud).

If you use it frequently (at least once a month) store it locally and put it on your current backup drive.

Update your Never Used spaces if you use something and then stop. Drop it into an “Empty” folder and then once a week empty it onto your back up and never used files. You can schedule your computer to do this automatically. (Yes, people talk about it, and never do it, but it takes thirty minutes.

File, file, file. This isn’t your filing cabinet, with marker-ed up reused files and limited space. This is the magical world of tech and Internet. Write your files with really long labels. Rename it when you’re done. Move them where you want.

Remember, if you only have one copy on your back up hard drive, then it isn’t a back up. Duplicate it.

Is there a better method? What’s yours?

Since I have an Acer Aspire One netbook and the Cajun has a Asus Eee, we’ve been picking out bags, mice, and other laptop accessories that will sync well with our machines. Many accessories that are made for laptops and netbooks are similar, especially when it comes to mice, keyboard accessories and remote devices. These are the items that we have found are the most useful to keep.

Laptop Cases

I just got my Targus bag, and I love that one. The Cajun is looking for a good match for his netbook. Of all the laptop accessories, the case you carry it in may not be the item that most people think of, but carrying around your laptop or netbook in your arms gets to be a pain after the first two times.

Having a laptop case on hand allows you to carry the mouse and other accessories that I find I need when I am traveling or when I’m on my way to school.

My Targus bag costs $65 or more. If you want a great price on laptop cases, they can range between $20 and $100 and go up from there.

Laptop Mice

The mouse is easier to use than the touch pad. So getting a wireless mouse has been one of the first few gadget items we’ve looked for when it came to having a netbook. Laptops with touch pads are OK if you don’t use it much. However, trying to play World of Warcraft with a touch pad… as a few may know, it is difficult.

The mouse I bought for the Cajun cost I think about $15, and I think he’s wanting to get the bigger one, because the cheaper ones are tiny! And he’s got big hands. The good-sized ones that look great are usually about $25 and up. The ergonomic ones, which if you’re like me and use your netbook for work and school, you’ll want to get one of those that are about $30 an up.

So I’ve got an Acer accessory pack that included a pouch for the netbook, and a mouse, plus a…

Laptop External CD Drive

My netbook, as most netbooks do, come without the CD Rom drive. My Acer accessory pack came with an external DVD burner. This is a great method of getting the DVD or CD Rom drive that you will need. I bought an external mouse for the Cajun and he can use my DVD drive if he needs it.

These usually cost around $89 but if you get a kit, it should come down in price.

What are your laptop must-haves?

Photo by Moriel.

As mentioned, Google has a new side bar.

Some people hate it. Some people think Google’s new side bar looks a lot like Bing’s. I think so. I think it’s silly. Their previous look was fine. I liked the more zen and simple design.

The logo changed too, but no one really noticed or cared since the left bar was the real deal killer for many searchers. Many are threatening to switch to Bing. (Who doesn’t use more than one search engine, anyway?)

So here’s the quick way on how to get the side bar off of Google.

Popular answer number one:

Use Firefox.

Download Greece Monkey. Greece Monkey can be found here.

Use this script on it:

function AddStyle(Style) {
var style = document.createElement(‘style’

);
style.type = “text/css”;
style.innerHTML = Style;
document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(style);
};

AddStyle(“#leftnav {display:none}”);
AddStyle(“#center_col {margin-left:0}”);

Answer No. 2

This is the No-Coding Answer.

Go to Tools.
Click on Options.
Click on Privacy.
Click on Remove Individual Cookies.
Search for PREF.
Delete the google.com PREF.
Refresh, repeat deleting the cookie if you need to.

This should work. Let me know if you have a few extra tips on getting rid of the Bing-like side bar.

I hear not all countries are getting the side bar, either, and sometimes not all states are getting it. Let me know if you happen to get it or you don’t. Maybe you don’t have the updated cookie, preferences or whatever.

Subscribe to stay up to date on additional changes, quick fixes and how to do other tech stuff. I’ll make a video on this later and will probably post it here in this section.

Thanks for reading.

According to a source, and stating the obvious, Google is … different.

You may already be seeing the new bar on the left hand side of Google, which offers up the usual “Images” and “Videos” option of searching. Google search has been trying this design out for a while.

To me, this left handed side feels a little ‘crowded’ now that I’ve gotten used to the old system. Is it easier or better to use? I think that since you can customize it to increase or decrease the tabs for advanced searching make it easier than doing additional clicks for advanced searches. Without going to a ‘different page’ for images and video and news and other search narrowing features, it makes it a bit easier.

I think Google’s new search browser look mimics Microsoft’s Bing left side bar.

It’s not exact, but why did they change from their old design to the new one? To try to recapture some people who switched to Bing? The heavy data driven search engine has been debated over a lot of news features. Here’s the real facts.

1. Google has a new look.
2. It’s shiny.
3. Google is still the same old search engine, it just has the added bar.
4. It feels crowded to me but others may like it.

Maybe I’ll get used to it, or rather, I will have to if I continue to use Google. I would have preferred it being on the right, but then, that’s where the ads are.

What’s your opinion of the new left side bar at Google? Love? Hate?

Have the sports fan who is a tailgater and has almost everything for his team?

I’ve found just the thing to give as a gift for a tailgater, or to buy for yourself if you love to cook out and have your own favorite sports team. Grill Toppers recently sent one my way for me to try out.
Grill Topper is a great device that lets you sear your favorite team logo into your steaks, hamburgers and more.

How ingenious! This is actually something fun, and I swear every single tailgater will want one of these. They are always trying to find the thing that will one up the party next door. Here’s the solution. Branded meat.

This has got to be a best seller among sports fans in the near future if it isn’t already. Easy to use, and reasonably priced, meat can now be branded and displayed. Ultimate fans will have to have this item.

It is pretty easy to use. Just sit atop your grill, and once it is heated, you can sear your meat on the topper. It makes the mark for you, and it seems to work perfectly ever time. There’s a video on how it works and more information at the website.

If only they would make these for high schools, for more teams. I also like that they have some additional more generic symbols, like the fleur de lis. Looking forward to seeing additional logos on these grill toppers.

Targus recently sent a laptop messenger bag my way to try out.

Given that I recently got an Aspire One netbook for Christmas as a gift from my brother, I was delighted to try out one of the new messenger bags. I hadn’t purchased a carrying case for mine yet, so this was a great idea for me.

I’ve carried it around for a couple of weeks now, stuffing in my netbook, notebooks, pens, and smaller gadgets like my cell phone and PDA and the cords needed to power them.

The bag itself has a great outer shell material. There’s several pockets both inside and out. I love the magnet feature, much better than the Velcro closures you see on many bags of this type. I like the solid click of the magnets when they attach, so I know it is closed. I hate being in a quiet room with a lot of people, like a library, and the noisy sound Velcro makes. The magnets totally work well in replacement. One slight wish is that the magnets could be a tad bit stronger. More for my “feeling secured” rather than actual practicality. I want have to tug a little to open my bag.

The outer material feels great and the padding within the walls of the bag makes me feel more secure about what I am carrying. If I drop this on the floor with my netbook, I feel my netbook has added protection to it. I can plop it on the floor or table and not worry about the ding.

I love the color, the red one is the one I got. Targus offers different colors for different bags but the red is fitting with this particular model.

Some things I thought the bag was missing was a bit more extra room for notebooks. There was room but I felt like the material was less “giving” if I wanted to stuff some books. I felt like I was stretching it a bit with a couple notebooks and a folder. However, if you just use a small notebook and carry around your laptop or netbook with this case, there should be plenty of room. Plus extra pockets for notes and pens and other small gadgets.

As I was carrying it around, my shoulder felt the weight. I think it needs an additional shoulder pad. I see this on other Targus bags and maybe they could add that to this bag. Still, it wasn’t too bad, just slightly uncomfortable. The extra padding with a shoulder pad on the strap would fix that quickly.

In all, it would be a great purchase. Stuff your laptop into your backpack or a purse? Not sure about that but this Targus bag totally works.

Thanks Targus for sending me a great product.

This is a supplement to the Samsung Exclaim Personal Ringtone article I wrote. There is more information at the article about how to do this, so go there to read and if you need the video, that is now provided. Thanks for watching and let me know if you have any questions.

This is how to make video ringtones, which is how you make ringtones for the Exclaim. This should also work for the Samsung Rant, as it should have the same software that is provided by Sprint.

Remember that you are trying to upload the video ringtone that you make to your memory card. That’s the one you want to do. You may need a memory card reader to hook up to your computer in order to do this right.

Samsung Exclaim From Sprint

The first one is on the Personal Ringtone on the Samsung Exlaim.

The second one is How to Get a Personal Ringtone on the Samsung Rant.

Let me know what you think of the two articles. I have to say, I had a time trying to figure this out. It took me nearly an hour of trying to figure out what worked.

I also found out that if I downloaded my favorite YouTube video, cut it into a 20 second edited piece, and format it correctly using the instructions, I could actually have mini clips of YouTube videos as ringtones. Fantastic, isn’t it? I made a handful from some on my favorites list and some of my favorite moments from YouTube channels I subscribed to.

So if you are a fan of Nalts or sxephil or any of those guys, you can take a piece of them with you.

I might do the opening to Firefly sometime as a nice ringtone.

I can’t wait until I have more ringtones to share with people. I might make a few of my favorites and upload them to this blog for others to use.

My Samsung Exlaim is actually a pain about putting on ringtones. A friend shared this. I thought it was funny.

I’ll be writing an article and making a video on how to put your own ringtones on Samsung Exclaim, soon.

I’m going to have to move the button on my browser so I’ll remember to post blogs.

I had to go get a new cell phone last week. Now I’ve been slow to the cell phone game, I had only gotten a cell phone last year, which my sister bought for me.

Pink Palm Centreo

I had the Palm Centreo, but I had dropped it and broke the base where it plugs in, so it was my fault. The other problems I had were that the phone buttons, the keyboard, were so tiny I was typing with my fingernails. My fingernails were cutting into the soft plastic of the buttons. Not to mention the battery life was terrible. Even with Internet not draining the battery, it wouldn’t last a whole 24 hours without a charge.

Samsung Exclaim From Sprint

So I ended up going out to Sprint and bought a Samsung Exclaim. I got the blue one, for some reason the raspberry color wasn’t as appealing. I tend to go for pink colors but the lack of color options was kind of disappointing. I wanted the full keyboard, and I like that I can hide it. It is a bit bulky compared to other slider type phones, but I kind of like that it is.

I had a bit of trouble when I first got it with ‘butt dialing’, something which I hadn’t experience with my Centreo.

There was something to be said about less applications than the Palm unit had. However, I found I wasn’t using all the applications that Palm offered, as an average user. Most of my use came from web browsing, texting, and IM usage. The IM services, as far as I can tell, I haven’t tried on the Exlaim yet, but I’ll see if I can get that going.

I would love to hear from users who have used Exclaim, perhaps someone who has used it for a longer period of time. What do you think of it?