CHRISdotTODD

Excel provides an easy formula to set text values in cells to the correct or proper case. This is very helpful when cleaning up data before entering into a database. If the source was from a third-party -- perhaps from user registrations, it's not unusual to have users not capitalize proper names. Here's an example: You want st. paul to read St. Paul You want project manager to read Project Manager Here's the formula: =PROPER(A1) where A1 is the cell of the value you want to convert If you are going to reference the value later, remember you can use the Text command too. =TEXT(PROPER(A1),"#") If you want to convert the entire value to upper case, use the UPPER function. =UPPER(A1)

TIME has put together a great list of innovations for 2008 . Here are just of few of the 50 that TIME lists. #4, Hulu.com . The TV and movie site from NBC and Fox. A good site, but not worthy of making it to #4. In fact, I'm not sure it's even worthy of being on the list. #9, the Internet in space. Though it can't operate the same way; it requires confirmation of each packet being sent from every router. #20, Spore, the "Everything Game." A disappointment for many users, both in game play and in the DRM used. #30, the Internet of things. Now your toaster and refrigerator can have their own social network. #32, Facebook for Spies. So that spies (CIA, FBI, NSA, and others) are no longer left out. #36, a new ping-pong server from German Dimitrij Ovtcharov -- yep, a ping-pong serve made the top 50. #38, Instant replay for baseball. You think I kid... these actually made the list. Intermixed with these innovations are some really valuable innovations too, such as: #6,

I ran across a nice program that makes it very easy to tweak many Windows settings that normally could only be done by manually making changes to the Registry. TweakNow WinSecret is a free Windows XP and Vista application that has tweaks in 12 categories. The categories are as follows: Applications Control Panel Desktop Miscellaneous Network & Internet OEM Info Special Folder Start Menu User Accounts Windows Core Windows Explorer Windows Startup Here are just a few of the many tweaks you can make. Enable or disable Desktop icons such as Internet Explorer and Printers and Faxes Disable the Desktop Cleanup Wizard prompt from showing every 60 days Move special folders such as the location of My Music or Internet Explorer Cookies Change the menu display speed, i.e. length of pause before a menu expands Hide submenus Add context menu ites such as Copy to Folder and Move to Folder Disable Startup programs Add text to the message box that appears before log on This is just a small list o

Perhaps some help from the Procrastination Flowchart would be in order. I learned about this back in September, but I'm just now getting to it. Hmm...

If you're not familiar with Twitter , it is a micro-blogging tool, where users can only post 140 characters at a time. The low character count was determined based on the ability of phones to SMS, with caps ranging from 140 to 165 characters per SMS message. As a Twitterer, you can post information on what your doing, a new website you found, or short news blurbs. Other people can follow you on Twitter, and see your posts as you make them. The "goodness" I am referring to is the use of Twitter by the AMBER Alert system. Sign up as a follower of amberalert and get informed of any new AMBER Alerts. I'm actually quite surprised amberalert doesn't have more followers -- less than 500. According to TwitDir , President-Elect Barack Obama ( BarackObama ), the leader with the most followers, has 133,482 followers. Couldn't get at least 5% of those followers to follow amberalert? Did you know that in 2007, there were 13 to 24 AMBER Alerts issued each month? In total,

UPDATE 18-Nov-08: I missed this one; not sure what changed -- Google Docs DOES NOT allow sharing of PDFs. Of course a single user can store and view a PDF; you just cannot share it. "Please note, at this time you can only share PDFs from the Docs list, not the PDF itself. Publishing a PDF so that anyone can view has not yet been implemented." I guess I am back to finding an alternative. I looked into free file hosting, to see if I could find a place to store a few PDFs for this blog. The real need came from my current host, Blogger, not providing this service when I last checked in August. It is free, so I can't really complain, yet it is part of Google that gives me 10 GBs free for using their Gmail and Picasa services -- that are also free. Of course I could use Google Docs, but then that forces me to format my documents to fit their tool. STOP - I spoke too soon, Google Docs now supports PDFs; I can host any PDF up to 10 MB in size (and I can always purchase more

Save the Internet reports on the change in position around Net Neutrality with the change of the guard in Washington. With President-Elect Barack Obama understanding of technology, our "representatives" need to finally get-in-the-game and not just sellout to big business. I hope this is just the beginning of much more attention and spending on technology, so the U.S. can be recognized as a leader again.