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Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archive

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Comes In Handy

By Cate Eales
Appeared February 21, 2008 on castanet.net

Every so often I take a look through the Firefox Bookmarks ("Favorites" in Internet Explorer) I've accumulated so I can get rid of the dead ones. But I always seem to find something I've saved because it might come in handy some day. Here some of the best.

howjsay.com
This website is "an English Pronouncing Dictionary with Instant Sound." So if you happen to be wondering how to pronounce something, point your browser to http://www.howjsay.com/, type the word in the search box, and move your mouse over the result. The website will pronounce the word for you. And there's good news for those of us North of 49. Try typing "schedule" in there and see what happens!

drop.io
Websites that let you store and/or exchange files are plentiful. I have used YouSendIt and DivShare for several years, and they are still in my Bookmarks. Recently I heard about drop.io, which allows you to store and or share files without having to create an account there or provide an email address. Create as many "drops" as you want, make them available to others (or not), with two mouse clicks and minimal typing. I created one here.

SpokenText.net
How cool is this?

SpokenText.net allows you to record PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, RSS news feeds, emails and web pages, and converts them to speech automatically. You can download your recording as an iPod book or mp3 file. And every member gets a personal podcast URL , which you can use to download recordings to iTunes or your iPod.

All this is free, and really easy. Browse to http://www.spokentext.net/ and open an account. This takes less than two minutes. From now on, you just login to your account, click on "Create a new recording," enter the text you want to convert (copy and paste from somewhere, or type it in yourself), and click "Record." That's it. After a short wait, your audio file is ready to download. You can convert just about any document that has text in it to an audio file, including web pages and email. If it's a long document, you can convert it to multiple files 15 minutes in length.

I converted last week's column to audio. You can check out the results at http://drop.io/catedemo. To learn more about SpokenText.net or create your own account, go here.

AM-DeadLink
Everything in this column resulted from cleaning out my Firefox Bookmarks, remember? In case you're wondering how to get rid of the dead links without trying each and every one, try AM-DeadLink, available here . Download, install, and run this program to find duplicate and dead links in your Firefox, Opera, or IE browser. You'll get a list of every link and its status. You can then delete the duplicate or dead links, or elect to leave them alone. AM-Deadlink is free, and runs on Win9x/Me/NT4/2000/2003/XP/Vista.

Thank you to everyone who wrote with questions, comments, suggestions, and general words of encouragement. I am grateful for all of those things! Send email to cate@rlis.com. I read all of it, and I will answer all of it as quickly as I can. You can also browse the column archives at any time by pointing your browser here. If you'd like to subscribe to this column by email, please visit this link. It's easy, and free. If you'd prefer the RSS Feed, click here.

Links
howjsay.com http://www.howjsay.com/
YouSendIt http://www.yousendit.com/
DivShare http://www.divshare.com/
drop.io http://drop.io
drop.io demo drop http://drop.io/catedemo
SpokenText.net http://www.spokentext.net/
RLIS Column Archive: Files and Folders http://rlis.com/columns/column133.htm
AM-Deadlink http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm
Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archives http://rlis.com/column.htm
Get Cate's column by email http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=20618
RSS Feed: http://rlis.com/rlis.xml

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Cate Eales has been helping people make online computing safe, accessible and fun for over 20 years. She lives in Kelowna with her husband, Eric, and her dog, Sandy. Cate is a partner in Real Life Internet Solutions, helping individuals and small businesses with virus, spyware and malware eradication; personal computer training and management; digital image management; music transfer; and website design, hosting and management. Email Cate at cate@rlis.com with your comments, suggestions, or questions. To browse the column archives, visit the Real Life Internet Solutions website at www.rlis.com.

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