Make a note…

Every now and then I come across a tool or program that goes way beyond cool. The program that I’m about to tell you about is such a program. In fact it is completely off the coolness charts.
Actually, I’ve heard about this one for some time, but I just never got around to taking a look at it। Jott.com is a service that allows you to make a call from any phone and send a note to either yourself or somebody that you have set up a your Jott network. It converts your speech into text and sends I dare you or the recipient an e-mail message with an optional text message reminder. You can set the date and time that the text message will be sent to you or the recipient. How convenient is that?

If you are anything like me, you are tasked with an impossible number of things to do every day। Even though I take notes, voice mail, and e-mail myself, occasionally something falls through the cracks. To make matters worse, it is likely to be something important. Jott.com really comes in handy. If I am driving in my car, I can make a quick call ( I have it on speed dial) to Jott.com and send myself ( or someone else) a reminder for whatever it is that needs to be remembered.

It really could not be any easier। Once I have made the call to Jott.com an automated voice asks me; “What would you like to Jott?” Then, I simply say the name of the person ( including myself) that I would like to e-mail. And I simply wait for the automated voice to prompt me to begin my message. When the time is up the automated voice repeats the information to ensure that is correct and then asks me if I want to leave another Jott.

Of course, with any speech recognition program you have to leave some margin for error। In other words don’t expect to write the great American novel while you’re driving down the road. However, Jott.com is likely to approve quite instrumental to how business is done in the coming years.

In both the basic and free version you can leave messages up to fifteen seconds in length. The pro version allows you to record messages up to 30 seconds long. Additionally, there are many other features that can really help you get a handle and keep pace with the frantic schedule that is a byproduct of modern life. You will have to go and see for yourself. It’s easy, it’s free and it totally rocks.

What to do if you can't open an email attachment ...

"Why can't I open it? "

So you have recieved an important file or document in your email and no matter what you do, it just won't open. Worse yet, it is a Word document, or PDF and you have Word. According to "Murphy's Law" the amount of time that you will have to solve the problem will be inversely proportional to how important it is to get it opened immediately...

Well, there is good news... In most cases it is simply a matter of upgrading the application used to open the file. You can usually tell what program you will need by looking at the file extension. The File Extension is the three to four letters that follow the dot. For example if you received a file called Something.docx, docx is the file extension.

Computers use file extensions to determine what application is needed to open any particular file.

If you can not see the file extension, you can enable them by going to Start > Control Panel > Folder Options and then remove the checkmark from the "Hide Extensions of Known File Types" option.

Here is a list of common file extensions and the programs needed to open them:

.Doc and .Docx	Microsoft Word	A free upgrade is needed to open .docx files in versions of word older than Word 2007. You can download it here.
.Pdf	Adobe Acrobat Reader	If you have problems with this type of file, you may have an outdated or corrupt version
.jpg, .gif, .bmp, .tiff	Anything that will open images.	If you don't have something suitable then try Picasa
.psd	Adobe Photoshop	This one is a bit pricey. You can find more information here.

Good luck & I hope you make that deadline...