4 All Memory Blog

4AllMemory offers Windows Vista Upgrade Packs! :)

Andrew — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:54:27 +0000

If you upgraded to Windows Vista in the last year or so, then you’ve probably wondered to yourself, “Hmmm… my computer is suddenly slower than it was before I installed Vista. I need to upgrade.” Well, that is true.You do need to upgrade. Vista’s been out on the market for a while now so we figured it’s time to offer the world the best choice of Vista upgrade packs ever assembled. When you upgrade for Vista, you really need to do two things. First, you need to upgrade your computer memory. Second, you need to get rid of Vista and use XP again since it’s faster, more stable, less of a system hog, and generally makes your computer much happier. We put our engineers to work and they developed the Vista Upgrade Pack that includes some memory and a copy of XP. We’re sorry it took this long to develop this piece of awesomeness since Microsoft is pulling XP off the shelf once and for all by June 30, 2008. You can see all of our Windows Vista Upgrade Packsкомпютри on our website. Good luck!

Share This

4AllMemory Blogger Contest Clarification

Beth — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:15:36 +0000

There has been some confusion about what this contest is referring to when we ask for people to write a blog post about our company. We ask that you write a blog post on your personal or professional blog, not just a comment on our site’s blog post about the contest as these do not count towards the contest.

We understand that not everyone who receives our newsletters will have a blog, but we run various contests and give prizes for many different reasons (drawings, surveys, etc.). Again, I’m sorry for the confusion.

Share This

4allmemory.com Blogger Contest

Justin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:37:29 +0000

We here at the 4AllMemory.com blog would like to reach out to all the other writers out there in the blogosphere with a nice little offer. If you have a blog and write a review about your experience with 4AllMemory.com and then send us the link, we’ll award the first ten submissions with their choice of a 2 GB Flash Memory Card of your choice:

Please make sure your review is as fair as possible. Regardless if it was the worst shopping experience of your life or an absolute joy, please give us a fair and balanced review. If possible, please link to our site using keywords like “computer memory,” “memory upgrade,” “laptop memory,” or “ram memory.”

When we receive submissions, we’ll just have to check really quickly that your blog doesn’t contain any adult or offensive content or links to sites with adult or offensive content. When you send us a link, we will respond within one week. Submit your links with the blog URL, your name, and mailing address. Your mailing address will be used solely for the purpose of sending the memory card, nothing else.

Once we receive all the submissions, we’ll randomly select one entry to be our “featured 4allmemory customer blog” and write up a nice profile on your blog and link back to you.

Share This

Justin’s Top Picks for April Fool’s

Justin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:50:54 +0000

I love April Fool’s Day, it is so much fun! In honor of this wonderful holiday, I’ve compiled a list of harmless, goofy things to do around the office on that day. Please don’t do anything that really offends people or gets anyone fired. I do, however, totally condone asking the boss for a little leeway if you think they’ll go for it. I’ve always wanted to fill a co-workers cube with popcorn, but there really isn’t a lot of ROI in that activity.

Wrap your cube neighbor’s phone in rubber bands. It is easy to do yet totally awesome!

There you have it! That’s a list that should get you started. I’d like to thank the Dumb Dares calendar for the awesome ideas for the goofy little things.

Share This

Jell-O: It’s Not Just for the Kids Anymore

Beth — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:42:16 +0000

Are you trying to think of a way to get that coworker in the office or cube next to you? You want something subtle but still achieve the shock factor? One word: Jell-O.

What do I mean? This is a simple and easy to do prank that gets a great end result. Basically, you take an item and suspend it in a bowl of Jell-O. Get the Jell-O mass one a plate or something (so their desk doesn’t get sticky and flooded with the colored slime) and watch the reaction.

First, think of what object you want to get them with. This could be a computer mouse, stapler, coffee mug, prized trinket, phone receiver, etc. You may want to find a replacement for anything that may be completely destroyed in this prank, For example, if you want to get their mouse or phone receiver, find a broken one to use for this so you don’t mess up something that is perfectly good for use. If it’s something that can be easily cleaned off like a mug, key, glasses or something else, don’t worry… they can run it under some warm water to clean it off.

Make the Jell-O like you would normally but maybe use a little less cold water at the end so the Jell-O is a bit denser so when you get it out of the bowl, it doesn’t fall apart. You’ll need more than one box, but the exact number will depend on the object you want to suspend as well as the container you are using to solidify the Jell-O.

Pour a little of the Jell-O into a container (bowl, deep pan, etc.). Don’t pour it all because you want to solidify some on the bottom to pad the object that you use. Put that in the refrigerator to get more solid. After a few hours, take it out and place the object to be encased in the middle on the already chilled Jell-O layer. Use the rest of the Jell-O (You may need to microwave it again to get it liquid again) and pour it over the object until it’s completely covered. Put the container back into the refrigerator until it’s time to get it out. When it’s time to pull the prank, take the container and soak the bottom in warm water so you can flip it onto a plate and get it out easily.

Also, if the object needs to plug in to something (computer mouse, phone handset, etc.) make sure you let the cord poke out of the Jell-O so it can be plugged in like “normal”.

Enjoy!

Beth

Share This

Fool Your Customers - Google’s Approach to April Fool’s Day

Andrew — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:41:45 +0000

Most of the time when you hear of office pranks, you think of coworker versus coworker. Hiding office supplies, setting a print-screen as a background, unplugging computers, that sort of thing. The people at Google, however, had a different idea.

They decided it would be a lot of fun to fool their customers. So for several years now, Google has been releasing information on April Fool’s Day. Sometimes it is the release of a new product. Other times it has been a job opportunity. But in all cases, hilarity inevitably ensues. Here’s a quick summary of some of the pranks they’ve pulled.

MentalPlex

Google announced MentalPlex in 2000. The basic premise was that Google could actually read your mind and therefore eliminate the need to type in search queries. From the MentalPlex website:

“As with the Internet itself, MentalPlex began as a highly classified Dept. of Defense initiative under the direction of Al Gore. The Plex-Project was intended to predict the outcome of closely fought battles, saving countless lives and giving generals a leg up in college basketball pools.”

PigeonRank

In 2002, Google wanted to inform the public on how their search algorithm really found the most relevant results. What could be behind such simple genius? The answer? Thousands of highly trained pigeons. Here’s an exerpt from the PigeonRank Website:

“When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user’s results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.”

Google Hiring for a Moon Position

You read that right. In 2004, Google added a new section to their jobs pages. Lunar jobs. Applicants would have to be willing to live on the Moon (that’s some kind of commute, otherwise). Here are some details from the Lunar Jobs page:

“With the establishment of the Copernicus Center, Google’s mission has grown beyond “organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.” Our new goal is to “organize all the useful information in the universe and serve it to you on a lightly salted cracker.”

Google Romance

In 2006, Google decided to let people know that they would be applying their skills with displaying relevant information to searchers in a new way. They would take the same principles and help users find relevant possible mates. Here’s some info:

““Our mission, as you might have heard, is to organize the world’s information,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president, product management. “And let’s face it: in what area of life is the world’s information more disorganized than romance? We thought we could use our search technology to help you find that special someone, then send you on a date and use contextual ads to help you, ya know - close the deal.”

So next time you’re considering pulling a prank on your coworker, maybe consider asking your boss if you can have some good-natured fun with your customers instead. Of course, you may want to find an anonymous way of making this suggestion.

Share This

Protect Yourself from April Fool’s Day Computer Pranks

Veneta — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:41:16 +0000

It’s that time of the year again when your co-workers have probably conspired to prank your workstation and/or your computer. Everyone who works in a cubicle across the United States knows that it’s almost part of the corporate tradition to play a trick or two on your co-workers as a way of celebrating April Fool’s Day. And even though most office pranks can be quite harmless, some of them can disturb your workflow and potentially expose sensitive information that is stored on your computer. Because of this, it’s always a good thing to know how to protect your computer from common office pranks. It’s not difficult and takes only a few moments out of your normal work day to implement.

The first thing you can do is to set administrator rights on your computer. The easiest way to explain what they are is to define them as permissions granted by you (to administrator) to another computer user to allow him or her to create, delete, and modify items and settings. For example, if someone tries to download a program onto your computer, he or she needs to have an administrator right to do so. If you do not know how to setup administrator rights for your computer, you’ll need to talk to your company’s IT technician.

The second thing you may do is to lock your computer with a password before you leave your workstation to take a break. This will allow you to keep open all of your programs and files, and yet they will be hidden away from the eyes of those who might be lurking around your cubicle. It takes only a moment of your time to do CTRL+ALT+Delete or Window key L to lock your computer. When you return from your break, all you have to do is unlock it by entering your username and password.

The third simple thing you may do is have a trusted co-worker make sure no one is tinkering with your computer while you’re gone. But then again, he or she is probably in cahoots with the rest of your co-workers in the prank scheme. The best way to defend yourself against April Fool’s Day computer pranks is to watch your own back and leave it to no one else to protect your valuables.

Share This

Downsizing Your Desktop

Beth — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:34:37 +0000

I’ve seen so many people let their desktops get bloated with files and folders; it’s a miracle that they can find anything on their computers. Are you one of those people? Take a quick glance at your desktop. How many icons do you have on there? Do you have a handful of icons or do you have a flood of files and programs taking up space? Unless you’ve put effort into your organization strategy of your files and folders, you are probably in desperate need of a desktop and “My Documents” overhaul.

There are several ways to do this, but first you should set aside a block of time out of your day to get this done. It’s no quick task if you want it done right. I did this a few months back and it took me close to an hour and a half but it was so worth it! You know that feeling you get after you clean your entire house top to bottom? This is almost as good.

Your first step is to understand that your desktop should be a starting point to find your files. This should not be the main storage location for your documents. The most common place to keep documents is in you’re My Documents folder. This is the default location that your computer wants to save your files. However, you shouldn’t dump everything in there either; you should create a folder hierarchy.

To determine a good folder hierarchy for your needs, you should determine what your usage for your folders will be. If you do your work is segmented by date, make folders by date (year, month, specific date). If you need things segmented by clients, do so. Students, you might want to create folders for each of your classes (Subject, Specific Class).

However, keep in mind that you don’t want to have 200 folders in you’re my Documents with only a few files in each one. You should use sub-folders. I would recommend that your sub-folders be clearly named so things aren’t too hard to find. Being too specific can cause as much confusion and loss of files as having no organization at all. Common sense is key.

Some good examples of basic folders are: Work, Personal and School. Within each folder you should have more sub folders. For example, in your Personal folder you might have subfolders like: Finances, Vacation, Family, House, Music, etc. Within each sub-category can be other folders (or sub-sub-categories):

Again, don’t get overly specific, but by segmenting your files (by client, course, event, year or even month), you can quickly and easily navigate your computer.

Another idea to help keep your files on your computer to a minimum is store specific things on high capacity flash drives. Do you have a lot of pictures from that family vacation in 2006? Or all those holiday events this past year? Get a flash drive, label it and save your files and pictures from the vacation or those events there. That way, you have all your information available but not taking up excess storage on your computer. You never want to delete documents because you never know when you may need them again. Trust me, I’ve found this out the hard way.

Remember, these are merely suggestions on how to help you organize your computer. The way you decide to do so is completely up to you.

Share This

Help Your Computer Shed a Few Extra Kilobytes

Veneta — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:33:08 +0000

Two months after the holiday season ended, most of us are left with fond memories; plenty of presents, some of which quite questionable in taste like Aunt Marge’s knitted socks, and few extra inches around the waist. So, a quick survey of the damage reveals the following: stubborn pants which refuse to zip all the way up, missing buttons off of your favorite shirt, and an intense fear of the weight scale monster peeking its head out from underneath the bed.

Unfortunately, the damage goes a bit further than that. Over the past few months, your computer has probably undergone a weight gain of a different sort and is just as unhappy with the consequences as you are. Fatigued and bloated, its performance feels sluggish at best, which is understandable considering the following factors: you or your family members have probably downloaded a ton of pictures onto the hard drive and other various programs. In addition to that, you have probably created a bunch of folders to store documents which now co-exist with the rest of the files; and I have to tell you, all of them are not happy campers living in your hard drive’s cramped living quarters. So instead of dragging your feet and doing nothing about the situation, help your computer shed a few extra kilobytes by properly deleting unnecessary programs from your computer.

First thing’s first – choose what you do not need and write down the programs which you would like to keep. Once you have your game plan, proceed to step two. This part of your task might take a little longer, but it’s totally worth it. If you have a PC, this is what you need to do.

Click on the “Start Button” at the bottom left of your computer screen and select the “Control Panel” option.
Once you have done this, select the “Add or Remove” programs in the control panel. Next thing you’ll notice is a message which would appear to inform you to wait until the list of programs is populated.
Afterwards, select the program you would like to uninstall and click “Remove.”
The program wizard will guide you through the uninstall process. Once you have deleted the unnecessary programs, you will need to reboot your computer in order to update the system’s registry.

This is the general process you need to follow in order to uninstall a program. Different operating systems have slightly different uninstall process steps. Fortunately, most of them are pretty intuitive and will not pose any difficulty. However, one thing you need to be careful of is uninstalling the wrong program. Often times, some files on your hard drive might be shared by another program. Deleting one might render the other one useless. Unless you are trying to delete both programs, you might want to be careful of exactly what you are deleting from your computer. However, in case you have a moment when you say to yourself, “Oops…I deleted the wrong program, now what,” do not fret because every time you use your computer, it creates restore points which give you the ability to restore an accidentally-deleted program. To restore a deleted program, follow the steps:

Click on Start Menu
Choose All Programs from the bottom left of the screen which appears
Click on Accessories -> System Tools
Click on System Restore and follow the instructions provided by the onscreen wizard

After you have uninstalled the unnecessary programs, you’ll see your computer becoming more like its old self. Shedding those few extra kilobytes was not that hard after all. For an even greater increase in computer performance, you may consider defragmenting your hard drive. The next article has abundant information on that topic; as for you, start eating healthy, drink plenty of water, and exercise regularly. The road to success does not have to be a difficult one.

Share This

Defragging Your Disk

Justin — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:32:38 +0000

So it’s the middle of February and you’ve scarfed some turkey, filled your belly with Grandma’s apple pie, guzzled some egg nog, and had a few too many plates of nachos at the Super Bowl party and it’s time to finally start that New Year’s Resolution to lose some weight. Fair enough. I wish you the best of luck. However, you’re not the only one that needs to trim a little extra you off the sides. Take a look at your computer. I’ll bet there are tons of extra files, programs, and unneeded code bloating your hard drive. One really easy thing you can do to speed up your hard disk when it gets really bogged down is to defragment it, or if things get really bad, reformat it.

When your computer writes files to your hard drive, it does so in clusters. It tries to put all the files and data associated with a certain program together in the same spot. The problem is that we humans actually do things with our computers besides just turn them on and listen to them hum. We end up installing and uninstalling programs, editing and deleting photos of Uncle Albert’s sixth wedding, transferring Kenny G albums to MP3 and then realizing Kenny G isn’t really that cool and deleting the MP3 files, and generally wreaking havoc on our poor hard drives. Doing all this leaves bits and pieces of empty hard disk that gets filled whenever you add more data and programs to the mix. At the end of the day, your hard disk ends up looking like that hideous patchwork quilt Albert’s fourth wife made you for Christmas a few years back. Everything should be nice and organized on the disc doesn’t have to work as hard to read the files.

Defragmenting takes all those bits and pieces of data scattered around your disk and reorganizes them and puts contiguous files back in proximity to each other. This allows your disk find necessary files without having to traverse the entire hard drive, going back and forth like a dog sniffing out cookie crumbs on a kitchen floor. Windows has a perfectly capable defragmenting tool built right into it. Just go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Defragmenter. I’d recommend defragmenting right now if you’ve had your computer for over a year and have never done it. Going forward, try to do it once every four months. Some experts have differing opinions as to when and how often you should defrag, but I’ve always felt it’s better to keep something maintained than let it get out of hand. Keep in mind that unless your disk is in really bad shape, defragmenting won’t increase the speed that much, but it will make a difference. If you have a Mac or a Windows Vista powered machine, then you don’t even have to worry about defragging.

Now if you’re computer is beyond hope, it may be time to reformat and just start over. I’m warning you; formatting your computer’s hard drive will erase EVERYTHING. Don’t do this unless you’ve prepared yourself mentally for completely starting over and have backed up everything worth keeping, like those photos from Uncle Albert’s first wedding. The easiest way to do it is to put your Windows installation CD or DVD into the disc drive and restart the machine. A warning should come up asking you to run the installation disk. Press whatever key is necessary to start the process. Easy squeezy, no?

So there you have it. If you follow some of Beth and Veneta’s advice on keeping your computer clean and orderly to begin with, you shouldn’t really have to do much to it. However, sometimes one must do some spring cleaning. Now get to the gym and trim some of those holiday and Super Bowl party pounds off so you look really nice for Uncle Albert’s next foray into the happily ever after.

Cheers,
Justin

4 All Memory Blog

4AllMemory offers Windows Vista Upgrade Packs! :)

4AllMemory Blogger Contest Clarification

4allmemory.com Blogger Contest

Justin’s Top Picks for April Fool’s

Jell-O: It’s Not Just for the Kids Anymore

Fool Your Customers - Google’s Approach to April Fool’s Day

MentalPlex

PigeonRank

Google Hiring for a Moon Position

Google Romance

Protect Yourself from April Fool’s Day Computer Pranks

Downsizing Your Desktop

Help Your Computer Shed a Few Extra Kilobytes

Defragging Your Disk

Recommended Reading: