Alan Kleymeyer

I uninstalled the Google Desktop Search Outlook add in, however,  it didn’t appear to have cleaned up completely.  Starting Outlook,  I kept getting “The add-in “Google Desktop Search Outlook Addin” …cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact the Add-in manufacturer for an update. If no update is available, please uninstall the Add-in.”

What worked was to locate and remove the following file:

C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\extend.dat

Page Hunt is an interesting Microsoft site that tests your knowledge of how search engines work.  Random pages are displayed and you guess what keywords will result in showing you that page.  Requires Silverlight. Thanks Alfred.

Right-drag the application icon or application shortcut icon from the start menu to your desktop and choose "Create shortcut here" from the menu that  displays when you release the right mouse button.  Rename the shortcut as appropriate.

In Vista, paste the following into a Windows Explorer addressbar:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Move the shortcut you recreated to the SendTo folder you just opened up.

We use Google Docs and GMail at DVFilm. Should we be concerned?  I  don't think so.  If I'm going to trust someone,  I feel Google is as trustworthy as anyone.  Here is one review of Google's term of service and another. We do not post proprietary information, passwords, or customer information.  The docs are internal docs that we use to document processes, take notes, and to help us stay organized.  The nice thing  about Google Docs is that it can  import AND export to various formats.  Export formats for documents include Word, HTML, RTF,  and even  PDF!  Spreadsheets can be exported as HTML, CSV, XLS and PDF.  Even if you kept your data locally behind a firewall, you shouldn't have just one location for important files.  So if you use Google Docs, backup!  That goes for email as well. 

I just setup Outlook 2007 to download all the mail from two Gmail accounts we use for support.  I created multiple mail profiles.  You can't do this within Outlook 2007, in Vista you go to the Control  Panel. In Control Panel mode, not classic, you select user Accounts, then Mail.  From here you can create  multiple profiles, not to be  confused with email  accounts which are where your mail  is stored.  I created two profiles and selected "Prompt for a profile to be used" which causes Outlook to prompt for a profile on startup.   I also created  separate data files.  Selecting Show Profiles, you select  a profile then select properties where you can create a new data file and make it the default for the profile.  You can  also manage the data files in Outlook by selecting File…Data File Management.

Now, if that’s not a confusing enough title, I don’t know what is, hee hee.

A friend forwarded me an attachment recently.  He uses AOL service.  AOL is the only service that I’ve ever received garbled attachments from in email.  It is usually when a forwarded email is forward several times.  After clicking through three attachments, I get the final attachment; a file named ATT00036.txt.  Opening it up shows this (i’ve only excerpted a portion):

Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: attachment
From: XXXXXX3@aol.com
To: phermaii@optonline.net,
.
.
Subject: “The Wedding Invitation”
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary=”—-=_NextPart_000_0117_01C8F629.76D260D0″
X-Mailer: Unknown sub 34
X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198
Thread-Index: Acjs+2GxzdWXL8VWRHi3FBx68hfLTQ==
X-Spam-Flag: NO
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
——=_NextPart_000_0117_01C8F629.76D260D0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=”—-=_NextPart_001_0118_01C8F629.76D260D0″
——=_NextPart_001_0118_01C8F629.76D260D0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=”us-ascii”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Here’s the wedding invitation
Now a picture of
Mr. & Mrs. ‘The Doctor’
——=_NextPart_000_0117_01C8F629.76D260D0
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
name=”image001.jpg”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: X.MA1.1216841782@aol.com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.
.
jVec/tM/Gr4X+M/g5r3h/wAN+Kft+pXRtzBAbG5i3bLiN2+aSNR91WPJ7UUUrsD/2Q==
——=_NextPart_000_0117_01C8F629.76D260D0–

 

Having worked on a mail program before (Netpliance Inc.) I recognized that the mail was being sent in the “Internet” format (MIME) rather than being interpreted in a friendly way by mail programs along the way.  You see “binary” data such as images cannot be sent across the Internet unless they have been converted to a “text” (ascii) format. This format is usually Base64.  That’s the aSNR91WPJ7UUUrsD/2Q== gobbly-gook that you see above. Anyway, all I did was cut and paste that Base64 data, I used this online Base64 decoding site, and voila, I got this wedding invitation:

I use Premiere Elements 3.0.  I’ve created many projects to edit footage from my DV camera.  I just discovered that PE creates cached media files, autosaves and other files that take up a lot of space!  Incredibly, PE doesn’t give you a way to delete projects you have saved so these extra files accumulate on your hard drive.  I found this thread on how to delete a Premier Elements project. 

You go to where your project files are being saved and delete the folders:

Adobe Premiere Elements AutoSave
Adobe Premiere Elements Preview Files
Encoded Files
Media Cache Files

I have friend shopping around trying to repair his laptop that crashed.  He needs a new hard drive and needs to recover important data from it.  Best Buy quoted him $300-$3000 to recover his data.  Why even GIVE an estimate?  Jane's Mac mini recently also crapped out and I'm having her 80gig HD replaced and data restored for $200.

My friend asked me if I back up my data.  I told him "sort of".  I HAVE backed up my important documents, photos, and music to an external hard drive but it's been over a year since I've refreshed it.  I do have some redundancy in that some of my files are copied onto my other computers.  I also have a copy on my website.  But still, I'm exposed and need to take my backup process more seriously.

Coincidently, I read this recent post at Phanfare.com.  It advocates backing up your important data to a location somewhere on the Internet.  But I've read horror stories about that solution as well when a customer lost all their photos from a service.  Personally, I would advocate backing things up on two different external sources at home AND online somewhere.  I plan to use an external hard drive and a second computer for redundency for important files.  I'll keep some files on my website.  Photos, Video and Music presents a bigger challenge because they take up so much room and the process of uploading is very time consuming.  I'll use a combination of DVDs and external HD for those.

To recover data from a bad HD, here is some advice:

wikiHow

Backing up data from your Mac
Mail – mail data is stored in the foldersw ~/Library/Mail/POP-….
AddressBook – select all your contacts and select File…Export vCard.  This will create a file a .vcf  file.  You can then download and run this A to G program to convert the file to a comma seperated file (.csv).   This file can then be imported into Gmail.  To restore, you can export back to a file that AddressBook can  import.