Merry Christmas

Here’s the best geek Christmas song (Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton) put to a Christmas light show.

Faxing

When I talk people in the business world, I find that hardly any of them deal with faxes on a regular basis anymore. They don’t deal with mail either. Almost everything is done electronically. Of course, the legal world is lagging behind the rest of the business world. Perhaps that is why I found this Dilbert comic so funny.

Click on the strip to see a version that doesn’t run into my sidebars.

Free Software Training from HP

One of the problems that most people run into is that they have never been properly trained on the software that they use. Proper training is typically expensive in terms of both time and costs. Based on a comment in a Technolawyer newsletter, I learned of the HP Learning Center. The center includes training videos on a variety of software programs as well as other skills (such as photography and marketing). Best of all, most o the videos are short (5 minutes or less) and they are free.

Now, you won’t be able to solve all of your software training issues with this site. However, you will likely learn a few things if you watch the videos on the programs that you use. For example, I watched the video on the special features in Word 2007 and learned of some changes that I did not know had been made.

Anyway, check out the site for more info.

Readability

There are some websites that drive me crazy with all of the flashing animation and ads that surround the text that I am trying to read. Recently I discovered a tool called Readability that can help with that problem. Simply go to the Readability web site and drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.

Then, when you are on a website that has lots of clutter, simply click the Readability bookmarklet. It transforms your view of the website into a simple clean text only view. You can choose your syle (newspaper, novel, eBook, or terminal), your text size, and your margin. Best of all, to go back to the original view, you simply refresh the page.

Obviously, I don’t use this function with every website I visit. However, for some, it is invaluable. Check it out here.