Posted on August 31, 2011 at 3:28 PM
If your business is running on Google Apps, you can enable “Labs” features to help make your Google Apps experience more productive, fun and useful.
What are Labs, you ask? They are simply pieces of functionality that have not been made official in Google Apps, but which are available to users for experimental purposes. These are features that you can enable and disable at will, and which can help you use your email, calendar and docs more effectively.
Please note, Labs are also available in the free version of Google Apps so even if your workplace isn’t using Google Apps, if you have a free Gmail account (which almost everyone does nowadays) you can also happily use Labs!
Labs can easily be accessed from Google Mail or Google Calendar. When signed in to your Google account, click on the “gears” icon in the top right-hand corner, then choose “Labs” from the menu that opens.
Once you’ve done this you’ll see a screen with a list of Labs features available for you to either enable or disable. There are a lot of really useful Labs you can enable that work nicely together to enhancer your overall user experience of Google Apps.
Please note that because these features are experimental they could potentially cause your inbox to break. I personally have never had this happen, but it is a possibility. If this does happen, you can easily disable Labs by accessing your email via this URL: https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0
Have fun! One of my personal favourites is “Extra Emoji”.
Posted on August 29, 2011 at 9:35 AM
Recently Tony had the opportunity to be interviewed by a Dominion Post journalist on the current cloud computing situation in Wellington. The article has gone live this morning on NZ’s leading news website, Stuff.co.nz. Click here to read the article.
Furthermore, this Tuesday evening (30th August) McDonaldsIT will be hosting a free seminar on cloud computing to help spread the word about how beneficial cloud services can be for small to medium businesses in the Wellington region.
Tony, Dan and myself took this as an opportunity to get out of the office on a sunny day for a few hours to let the general public know! We even donned McDonaldsIT-branded t-shirts so we’d really look the part.
Posted on August 26, 2011 at 9:11 AM
In a recent web speed test run by TrueNet in Wellington, TelstraClear has placed first, averaging a 0.2 second page loading time for web pages hosted on TradeMe’s servers. Xtra came a close second with 0.3 seconds, and Slingshot third with 0.5 seconds. Sitting in last place was Vodafone with 2.5 seconds.
Read more about the speed test on Stuff.
McDonaldsIT has partnered with TelstraClear to bring clients the best, most reliable internet connection for use with cloud services.
Posted on August 22, 2011 at 9:48 AM
Google Chrome has a nifty little keyboard shortcut to help you save time when surfing websites and typing in web addresses.
Say for example you want to visit www.facebook.com. In the Google Chrome address bar, simply type facebook (without the WWW and the .COM) and then press Ctrl + Enter. Google Chrome will automatically fill in the WWW and .COM for you and load the website! Easy as.
Please note this only works for .com websites (you’ll have no luck using this to try and visit freedigitalphotos.net).
Posted on at 9:40 AM
Freshbooks is a fantastic cloud-based invoicing, billing and time tracking tool perfect for any business wanting to make their way into the cloud. Fast, easy to use and very cost effective, you’d be mad not to have at least checked it out! You can also customize invoices with your own branding for that professional look and feel. And best of all they offer a completely free trial account so you can be sure you like it before you commit to paying for it.
If you’re running a business, we highly recommend Freshbooks. You can click on the image below to get started!
Posted on August 8, 2011 at 11:42 AM
Windows has a brilliant utility built-in called Disk Defragmenter. This application is designed to increase the speed of reading and writing files on a computer.
Over time a hard drive becomes ‘fragmented’. What this basically means is that pieces of information/data are stored in various places on the disk as you work away reading and saving new information to your hard drive. The Disk Defragmenter utility comes along and tidies everything up – it organises data in a way that makes it quicker for Windows to retrieve information when you are accessing and saving files.
Running the Disk Defragmenter is really easy. In Windows 7, click on the Windows button, and in the little text box at the bottom of the list type in ‘disk defragmenter’. This will search for the utility and will bring up the search result in the list above. When you see it, click on Disk Defragmenter. You’ll then see the following window:
If the utility tells you that your hard disk is 0% fragmented, congratulations! You don’t actually need to defrag the drive because it’s not fragmented at all.
Click on Defragment Disk to start the process.
In Windows XP, click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.
Keep in mind that depending on the size of your hard drive, how much data is currently filling it and how fragmented the data is, this process can take hours to complete. Therefore it’s probably better to run it during a period of time that you’re not using the computer, for example at 5 o’clock when you leave your office (you can leave the utility running overnight), or on a weekend.
