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Posted - January 27 2011 : 02:39:53
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Question: A listener asks, "How can I tell whether I have Windows XP, Vista, or 7?"
Answer: Great question. Knowing which version of Windows you have is important because when you call for technical support they'll need to know so that they can direct you. This is less necessary when the support tech can log onto your computer and see your screen. Look at your start button. If it has the word "start" on it, it's XP. Click the start button. When the menu opens you'll see a search box above it. If that box says "Start Search" you have Vista. If it says "Search Programs and Files", it's Windows 7. There's a program at Microsoft's Sysinternals site, and we'll have a link in the show notes, that will put several pertinent bits of information on your screen background, like your computer's name and which version of Windows it is.
Cool Site: RawScripts.com: This week's cool site is RawScripts. Maybe you are an aspiring playwright or screenwriter. Or maybe you are just planning to write a play for your youth group to perform or to make a video to post to YouTube or something. You can use your word processor to write the script, or you can use a site like RawScripts.com. You log into RawScripts with either a Google or Yahoo! account and then you can write all you want. You can insert slug lines (which give the location and time of a scene), character lines, actions, transitions, and other types of lines, all automatically formatted to standard screenplay specifications, which is nice for me because I don't know what those are. You can save your screenplays and even share them among your friends to get their input. When you've finished, you can print it out (of course), or you can have RawScripts send you a PDF of your screenplay. The biggest drawback I can find about the site is that it doesn't really like Internet Explorer. You'll need a plugin to edit scripts with it, but other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari will work fine without one. By the way, we'll have a link in the show notes to Wikipedia's category of Film and Video terms.
Cool Gadget: USB Rechargeable AA Battery/FlashDrive: Everything USB is the source for this week's gadget. It looks like a prototype because neither pricing nor availability was announced in the article. But still this is a really cool concept. It's a Double-A battery.
Eddie: Oh really.
David: Yes, but this Double-A battery is rechargeable.
Eddie: I can get those at Wal-Mart.
David: But this one recharges with USB. You twist the end of the battery, and out pops a USB adapter that you can plug into your computer. What's more is that while the battery is plugged in, it doubles as a flash drive. So, it's a USB Flash drive, that's also a AA-sized battery. The link in the show notes has pictures. Since this is just a prototype, there's no telling what kind of battery life it might actually get, no information on recharge times, or whether it will ever actually become a product, but this is a really cool concept.
It's All "Geek" To Me: Wallpaper: This week's term is Wallpaper. The very first Mac computers, Windows, and even a Commodore environment called GEOS, had something called the desktop pattern. They were typically monochrome, so this pattern was just repeated over and over all across the desktop. Remember, "Desktop" is the term for the part of the screen that appears to be behind all your icons and windows. When Windows 3 came along back in the early '90s, the desktop pattern got an upgrade: a picture of your choice could be put in front of the pattern. The pattern stuck around until Windows 2000, and its function is still in XP, but you can't get to it anymore, and it was removed entirely from Windows Vista and 7. But Wallpaper is still with us, even though Windows now calls it the Desktop Background.
Links
Tech Tip Friday's Show Notes RSS Feed:
http://www.daconsult.com/downloads/rss.xml
BGInfo at Microsoft:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557
RawScripts:
http://www.rawscripts.com
Slug Line defined at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay_slug_line
Film & Video Terminology at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Film_and_video_terminology
USB Rechargeable AA Battery/Flash Drive at EverythingUSB:
http://www.everythingusb.com/aa-usb-battery-flash-drive-20828.html
Changing Wallpaper at Microsoft.com:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Change-your-desktop-background-wallpaper
Desktop Wallpaper at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_wallpaper |
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