Category Archives: Internet

Newest Mac owner


Congratulations goes out to my dad, the newest Mac owner in my family and the most recent to see the light about cruddy windows. He already had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so he went with the Mac Mini, the most affordable way to get a Mac. It’s just a tiny box that has a lot of USB ports on the back so you can plug in your monitor and accessories, and viola: new Mac.

The new iMac’s are sexier, but the Mac mini is no slouch and allows for more versatility. It’s going to take him a little while to get used to how easy and comfortably a Mac runs, but a steep learning curve can be fun, too, if he looks at it like an adventure, where new computing tricks lay just around the corner.

He was fed up with all the garbage that windows is: “Program not responding”, “Program has performed an illegal operation”, “End this program now?”, “Your virus software is out of date”, “A new software patch is available.” And on and on. He was ready for something that just works. He wanted to find a computer that could run windows and Apple software on the same machine. He found it, in the new Mac mini.

Intrigued? Learn how easy it is to switch from windows to a new Mac and why, here. The Apple store is here.

TobyLaura.com

Gmail means no spam


I just passed 5,000 e-mails in my Gmail account and not a single spam e-mail has landed in my inbox! If you aren’t using Gmail, I wonder if you can say the same? All of those 5,000 e-mails are neatly archived away, so my inbox is uncluttered, but with just a few keystrokes, I can search for anything within all those e-mails.

Tired of spam? Want a personalized email address like I have, for free? Want to search for anything you’ve ever been sent and have an inbox over seven gigabytes and growing? Want to have an e-mail account that you can access from anywhere in the world, even if you move or change internet providers? If so, sign up for Gmail here!

I’ve loved having a free website, free e-mail, free blog, and great Google services and will never be able to look back.

TobyLaura.com

Less can be more


Are you still living in the dark ages? Are you still stumbling in the night? Is there still weeping and gnashing of teeth in front of your computer monitor? If so, I’ll bet my next paycheck that you are stuck in the wonderful world of windows. Tired of your operating system committing an illegal operation? Frustrated that every time you shutdown your computer, the “Ending Application” window shows up? Maybe it’s time to switch? Nah!

For those who have made the switch, the newest Apple Operating system is coming soon. Right now, Leopard is the current OS, and the new one will be called Snow Leopard. But, unlike windows, Snow Leopard isn’t overreaching, over-promising, and over-claiming it’s strengths. As a matter of fact, it’s not adding a lot of bells and whistles, it is shrinking the size of the OS. It will be smaller and lighter, faster and more agile, and take up less space on your hard drive. (Can you imagine the monstrosity of patchwork called windows actually shrinking in size?) It will leave more room for your own files. It’s streamlined form will be more efficient, stable, and make much better use of dual core technology. Mac’s often use two processors to work much faster than one large one. Utilizing two processors efficiently takes smart software, and that is coming in Snow Leopard.

With a smaller, lighter, faster, and more efficient operating system, the time to switch to Mac will be better than ever. The fact that they can run windows at the same time, thus having the “best of both worlds” is really the piece de resistance. I honestly don’t mind if you don’t switch — it’s no skin off my nose. It actually keeps my Mac safer from virus makers by keeping Mac’s market smaller! However, I used to live in the darkness and want to share the light as much as I can. Click on the picture of the X for more info from Mac on Snow Leopard, or read this article by Ken Rockwell about why Mac’s just work.

“With Mac, it’s plug-n-play. With windows, it’s plug-n-pray.”

TobyLaura.com

Google Translator


Are you reading our blog from somewhere other than the U.S. or in a non English speaking country? Try out the Google translator over on the right side of the blog. It’s a free tool within Google but I can’t guarantee it will always be correct. If the words sound great, then I wrote it. If they sound offensive, then I’m sure the translator is messing up :o)

Enjoy

TobyLaura.com

Gmail Updates


Google keeps hitting home runs with their amazing internet capabilities and offerings. They continue to offer helpful products, for free. The latest iteration of fun updates that they provide are Themes to their Gmail. When inside your Gmail account, click settings in the upper right corner, and choose from one of many themes that can be applied to your inbox. Some themes rotate through several images per day. Google will ask you what city in the world you live in and adjust the images based on your worldwide time zone.

My Gmail inbox is approaching 8 gigabytes in free space. That’s 8,000 megabytes of space, or about 7,000 pictures from a digital camera or an entire iTunes library with roughly 2,500 songs. (That free space also keeps growing each day) Along with free blogging space, free website space, free picture editing software, free image space online, free language translators, free searches, and tons more, it’s a wonder everyone doesn’t use Google. They even let me use my personal internet domain on my e-mail address: @tobylaura

Some poor souls are still locked into using Yahoo!, Hotmail, Earthlink, or even worse, their local internet provider for e-mail. If you get even one spam a month in your inbox, it’s time to switch to Gmail. In the several years I’ve used Gmail, I have had exactly ONE spam e-mail slip into my inbox. No one on the internet can beat that.

Want a huge inbox, no spam, and great free features? Switch to Gmail and you’ll never look back. If you are real lazy, Google will even allow you to let people e-mail your old address and send them mail with your new address so you don’t even have to tell anyone you’ve switched. It’s kind of like using Windows and then switching to Apple. The move sounds like a daunting hassle, but once you’ve made the move, you never look back and wondered how you survived. So what are you waiting for? Sign up here, and only pay a $35 registration fee. (Just kidding, of course it’s free, it’s Google)

TobyLaura.com

A quick switch


I’m just doing a little housekeeping by moving our blog to our mirrored blog site here at Google. Now, when you click on the Blog link at the top of our navigation bar at TobyLaura.com, you’ll be taken to our Google blog instead of our iWeb blog.

Here, you will see the same links (over on the right) for the Photo Album, Links, Home, etc. I’m going to use the Google blog until I can wrap my brain around WordPress. As far as the iWeb blog, it will remain, but only from a link on the Google Blog — but no biggie.

If you wish, you may post comments on the Google blog, and hopefully those comments won’t get deleted like they were on iWeb.

Finally, I call our Google blog: New Mercies. Blogging is somewhat of a journaling, daily experience. In the same way, God’s mercies are also new: every morning. When I wake up, I try and remember that His mercies are new every morning and that every day will hold new blessings from Him. A bad day, in the moment, may not seem so blessed, but God is always good and works in us so we act according to His good purpose. As I write about my life, I’m reminded that His mercies are certainly new every day.

TobyLaura.com

Little accident


In the process of doing some website updating, I made a mistake and deleted all the comments from our blog. Whoops! If you’ve posted here and no longer see your comments, it’s certainly not because I didn’t appreciate them.

Because I’m starting over with a clean slate, I’m just going to disable comments from the blog section. Until I move our website to a different web host where I can run a WordPress blog and can then have some protection on saving comments, I’ll just leave them turned off. Hosting this site on the Apple servers through “.Mac” (then MobileMe before all Apple hosting was cancelled all together) is easy, but prone to heartache and troubles, like losing blog comments!

As always, if you want to share something with me, just shoot me an e-mail. My address is found on the Contact Us page.

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com