CyberNet News » Helpful Tips

Helpful Tip: Buying a House? Best Home Buying Websites and Resources

Ashley — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:21:04 +0000

Over the last few months, Ryan and I found ourselves consumed with the process of buying our first home. Home-buying can be a daunting experience, there’s no doubt about that, but it becomes a little less daunting with the help of the Internet. As you might expect, we dug up as many resources as possible and found that some were better than others. If you are in the process of buying a house, take a look at our list of the best home buying websites and resources on the web:

Zillow (click here):

Zillow can be overwhelming because their goal is to be your number one online real estate service. They offer all kinds of tools and information, but one of their best features that we found is their “Zestimate.” A Zetimate is their best educated guess as to what a house is worth based upon several factors. This is extremely helpful when you’re buying a house because it helps your determine if the price a seller is asking is reasonable, or at least in the ball-park. Of course it’s important to remember that it is just an estimate.

Another helpful aspect to this site is that they offer “last sale” and tax information for many houses. The “last sale” information, if available, tells you how much the house last sold for. Property tax information is also helpful. Depending on the area, property taxes can make or break your decision to buy a home. It’s nice to have it in one location so that you don’t have to go and track it down.

Redfin (click here):

Redfin is a fairly new service and the disappointing part about all of this is that their service isn’t offered everywhere quite yet. In fact, it’s pretty limiting with service currently offered in the following areas: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.

If you’re one of the lucky ones and live in a serviced area, you’ll really find their site helpful. One of the first things we noticed with Redfin is that they tend to post listings before other sites do. Shortly after a house was listed on the MLS (multiple listing service – a US based service that consolidates listings of homes), it appeared on Redfin.

Another feature we took advantage of was signing up for a Redfin account. Doing this allowed us to get daily listing updates, and save and store the listings we found that we were interested in.

There’s a whole other aspect to this site that we never got involved in which is using a “Redfin Agent.” They offer you money if you choose to purchase a home with one of their agents, but we never took this route.

Trulia (click here):

Trulia is helpful, partially because they have a full-service website, but also an iPhone App. The most helpful features we found with Trulia is that they make it easy for you to view homes where the prices have recently dropped, and those that have scheduled upcoming open houses. For any particular city you are looking to buy in, they let you know what the average listing price was from week to week.

Others:

Have a website you found helpful when purchasing a price? Perhaps a site that caters to countries other than the United States? Let us know…

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Helpful Tip: Buying a House? Best Home Buying Websites and Resources

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Helpful Tip: How to Create a Distribution List in Outlook 2007

Ashley — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:20:20 +0000

Here’s a helpful tip for those of you who have just started using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, or you’ve been using it but haven’t figured out how to create Distribution Lists. Distribution lists make it easy for you to send one message to multiple people that you frequently email without needing to enter in all of the email addresses individually, every single time. In a nutshell, a Distribution list is a collection of contacts. When you go to send an email after creating a Distribution List, you enter the name of the list in the “To” field, and then anybody who is part of the list will receive the email.

How to Create a Distribution List in Outlook 2007

Open-up Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Click the drop-down arrow next to “New” (the same “new” you click when you want to create a new message), then select Distribution List
You can also click Ctrl + Shift + L

A new window will appear once you’ve clicked on “Distribution List” and from there you’ll select the contacts that you would like to be a part of the list, and give it a name.

The name for my distribution list in the example above is “Family.” Once I enter a name, then I can click “Select Members.” This pulls up my contacts list so that I can choose which individuals I would like to be a part of my “Family” list. You can add members by double-clicking on each name. Once all members are selected, you’ll click “Save & Close.”

After your list is created, you will see the name of the Distribution List listed in your contacts. Think about how useful this feature could be! Maybe you have several groups of people that you email at work, or a group of friends that you frequently send messages too. Once you get the lists set-up, they can be a huge time-saver for you.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Helpful Tip: How to Create a Distribution List in Outlook 2007

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Helpful Tip: Drag and Drop Using Exposé

Ryan — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:07:43 +0000

Mac only
Seeing that Ashley and I are still relatively new to the Mac world we are still finding some little gems that demonstrate Apple’s eye for detail. A fine example of this is something I saw on the help page Apple developed to explain what Exposé is. It was there that I found out you can drag and drop files from one window to another using Exposé:

If you need to drag a file from one window to another, start dragging the item, press F9 to see all windows, drag the item over the target window until the window becomes active, or press F9 again, and drop in your item.

If you need to copy elements between two windows in the same application, start dragging the item you wish to copy, press F10 to display all open windows for that application, drag the item over the target window until it becomes active or press F10 again, and drop it.

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s come in handy for me on numerous occasions. Having the ability to drag and drop using Exposé means that I no longer have to think about placing the two windows side-by-side before performing this operation. Plus you can make it a little more useful by putting these tips to use:

Setup a hotcorner that will launch Exposé. That way you don’t have to worry about pressing the Exposé shortcut on the keyboard.
Instead of hovering over a program in Exposé and waiting for it to become active you can press the Spacebar to immediately be taken to that application.
This trick also works with the shortcut that shows your desktop (F11). It makes dragging items to/from your desktop a breeze.

When I first started using a Mac getting accustomed to using Exposé felt like more of a chore than anything. I have to admit that it has really grown on me though, and I now use it all the time.

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Helpful Tip: Use Google Search to Easily Translate Words

Ashley — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:06:27 +0000

Most of you are probably aware of Google’s translation services that they offer found at http://translate.google.com, but did you know that you can also use their search bar to translate single words? It’s a fairly new feature, and it’s simple to use.

All you have to do:

Go to www.google.com
In the search box type “translate” followed by the word you want translated and the language you want it translated into. For example: “translate cat into Spanish”
Your results appear

The result I receive when entering the above example is shown below:

Keep in mind that this works only for single words. If you have a phrase or a paragraph that needs translating, you’ll still need to use Google’s full Translate service. Also, in our trials we translated english words to another language like Spanish or French. We do not know how well it works when you start in a language other than English.

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Helpful Tip: Recover Lost Bookmarks in Firefox 3

Ryan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:25:51 +0000

Last year we provided a thorough guide on how you can recover lost bookmarks in Firefox, but as an anonymous reader pointed out some of the tips provided no longer work in Firefox 3. This is because Mozilla revamped the bookmarking system so that it performs better, and is also capable of more advanced functionality such as tagging. The good news is that recovering lost bookmarks in Firefox 3 is even easier than it was before!

What you need to do now is go to Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Restore, and then select the date of one of the backups (the date is in year-month-day format). You’ll then receive a prompt asking if you’re sure you want to replace all of your existing bookmarks with those from the backup, and once you hit the OK button you’ll be all set.

Any site you’ve bookmarked since the last backup will be lost since this does replace your current bookmarks. For that reason you may want to consider performing a manual backup before proceeding with restoring your old bookmarks. This can be done using the Backup option located right above the Restore option. You’ll then be asked where you want to save the file, and restoring them is as simple as going to Restore -> Choose File.

Feel free to adjust the number of automatic bookmark backups kept by Firefox 3, which is still the same from our previous guide.

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Helpful Tip: Remove Old Versions of Java (JRE)

Ryan — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 19:45:54 +0000

Over in our forum Max inquired about whether it was safe to remove old versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that had been left behind after each upgrade. Of course you can, and there’s a good chance that you can free up hundreds of megabytes by removing them.

According to Sun the reason they leave the old versions of Java on your computer is to ensure that older Java applications will work even if they’re not compatible with the newest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE):

The latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is always the recommended version as it contains updates and improvements to previous versions. The latest available version is always compatible with the older versions.

You can keep older versions of the JRE installed, in case you have an applet/application that still depends upon a previous version.

The chances of you actually needing one of these older versions probably isn’t high, and removing them can definitely free up some space on your hard drive. Sun provides instructions on how to uninstall older versions of Java, but it can be a bit tedious if you’ve got several updates to remove.

The easier method is to use a free program called JavaRa, which JMBAKE pointed out. It only works on Windows, but the nice thing is that it doesn’t require any installation. Just download the file, extract the contents, and you’re ready to go.

When you launch JavaRa you should see a simple interface just like this one:

It’s all pretty self explanatory, but here’s a list of the things that you can do:

Remove old versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
Update to the latest version of JRE
Remove the Java startup entry
Remove the Sun download manager
Remove useless JRE files

Nothing like having a little extra breathing room on your PC.

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Helpful Tip: Getting More out of CyberSearch Keywords

Ryan — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:47:24 +0000

We know that you’ve had less than two weeks to kick around our CyberSearch extension, and we hope by this point you’re finding it to be an indispensable tool. The true power lies in the keyword system that it comes with, but it might take a little time to really understand how it works. Our video demonstration should be enough to get your creative juices flowing though.

The whole reason that I created this extension was because I saw how it could make me more productive. I laid out a plan with the features I knew I’d use (namely a keyword system), and dove in head first. The end result didn’t turn out half bad, and what I want to show you today are some ways that you can maximize the usefulness of the extension.

1) Using Firefox’s Built-in Keyword System

Our extension uses Google to do all of its searching, and I know that a lot of you would love for our extension to search more sites directly. In fact that is one of the things I’ve received the most requests about. The reason why that isn’t feasible is that there aren’t many sites out there that are designed to return results in a text-based fashion that is performance friendly. Google, on the other hand, is capable of returning search results in a no-frills format that we can quickly pull data from. Other sites… not so much.

If you want to search sites directly the best way you can do this is by setting up a keyword search in your browser that is identical to one of your CyberSearch keywords. For example, setup a keyword search in Firefox for Google called “goog”. The CyberSearch extension ships with a keyword already named “goog”, and these will work well together.

Once you have duplicated some of your important keywords you can start taking advantage of them. Now when you type “goog” followed by a word/phrase it will show you the instant results in the address bar thanks to our extension. If you don’t see what you need just press enter and the built-in Firefox keyword search will kick in. You’ll then be taken directly to the results page for the keyword that you have setup.

2) Search More Specific Pages

When you’re setting up a keyword there’s a good chance that you’ll restrict the search to a specific domain, but don’t be afraid to use longer URL’s to get precisely the data you’re looking for. What do I mean? Imagine setting up a keyword search that returns results for Firefox add-ons. Don’t vaguely specify “mozilla.org” as the domain you want to search. Instead use “addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/” so that only pages from the Firefox add-ons site are returned.

3) Search Multiple Sites Simultaneously

Sure it’s nice being able to search one site with a keyword, but don’t forget that you can also search multiple sites! In the website URL field all you have to do is separate multiple sites by commas. Then when you perform a search using that keyword the results from all of those sites will be intermingled.

When would this be useful? There are a few different things that pop into my mind, but one of my favorites would be searching all of your favorite BitTorrent sites at the same time.

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Helpful Tip: Disable Drag & Drop Images in Firefox

Ryan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:44:29 +0000

In Firefox 3 Mozilla wanted to make dragging and dropping items in the browser a little more intuitive, and so they decided to show a preview of the item your dragging underneath the mouse cursor. On Windows and Macs the image should be translucent like the tab preview shown in the screenshot above, but on Linux the preview image is not transparent.

I’ve been wanting to disable the preview image for quite some time because it’s more difficult when trying to drag and drop things. For example, I frequently bookmark sites by dragging the tab into the bookmark sidebar, and I always drop the tab onto the folder where I want the bookmark to reside. Sometimes the preview image gets in the way, kind of like it does in the screenshot above where it’s a little difficult to see the “drop indicator.”

How can you disable this feature? Miles left a comment on one of our Firefox tips pointing to a setting that will instantly disable the preview image. To do this you need to open the about:config and find the nglayout.enable_drag_images setting. Set the value to false by double-clicking on it, and the changes will be applied without needing to restart the browser. Refer to this article if you need help using about:config.

Once the setting has been changed to false anything that you try to drag and drop will merely show a box outline instead of the preview image, and this makes it a lot easier to see where exactly you’ll be dropping the item.

A million thanks to Miles for digging up this hidden gem!

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Helpful Tip: Create ZIP Archives Without .DS_Store on a Mac

Ryan — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:21:40 +0000

Mac only
One of the things that I really don’t like on a Mac is how it includes hidden files and folders when you create a ZIP archive. The biggest culprit that I’ve found is a .DS_Store file that is added to every folder you view in Finder, and it’s used to save things like your view options options and icon positions. I can’t imagine anyone who would want to include files like these in a ZIP archive.

I did a little research to figure out how I can get around this without using another app to do the compression, and that’s when I came across a free Automator workflow bundle by Mike Piontek. Once you go through the brief installer you’ll find that there are five new Automator workflows whenever you right-click on a file or folder in Finder. These are located in the More -> Automator menu as seen in the screenshot above.

Here are the five different things that are included in the single download:

Create Clean Archive – This Automator action creates a clean zip format archive (.zip) that’s ready to share with others. Macintosh resource forks and desktop files will be ignored so they don’t get in the way on other operating systems.
Make Names Web-Friendly – This Automator action converts the names of the selected files to all lowercase, removes accents, changes spaces to underscores or dashes, and converts other special characters to underscores or dashes.
Change Extensions – This Automator action will change the file extension of the selected files. Very useful if you need to change a bunch of files from .html to .php, for example.
Save for Web – This Automator action will export images in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format using Adobe Photoshop CS (for higher quality images) or Preview (for faster conversion without opening an application). Additional options allow you to constrain the image to a maximum width and height, and sharpen the image after resizing.
Create Symbolic Link – This Automator action creates a symbolic link for each of the selected files. A symbolic link is similar to an alias, except that many applications, including the Create Clean Archive action, will see only the file points to rather than the alias itself.

By default all five of these Automator actions will be placed in your Finder menu. If you decide that you don’t want some of them just navigate to the following folder to remove them individually:

~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder

Being a new Mac user I can easily say that Automator is becoming a new love of mine because of simple tricks like these.

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Helpful Tip: Backup Apple Mail or Entourage

Ryan — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:43:48 +0000

Mac only
We’ve already shown how to backup data from email programs on Windows, and so we thought it was only fair to do the same for Mac users. Using a free tool cleverly named Email Backup you’ll be able to rest easy knowing that you have a backup of your Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage, Eudora, or Thunderbird data. For those of you who have suffered the heartache of data loss you know just how valuable a backup like this can be.

Email Backup is really nothing fancy because all it does is copy the data and configuration files for the various applications into the location you specify. To restore the data from a backup you’ll have to manually copy it back into the respective directory, which for Apple Mail is /Users/USERNAME/Library/Mail/.

The one nice thing about this is that you can schedule a backup to occur at any time and on any day. You can additionally choose where you want the backups to be stored:

While it’s nothing too fancy this application can really come through in a bind. Once you have it setup you don’t really have to worry about anything else. And hopefully in a future version the developer will include a way to restore a backup from within the application.

Get Email Backup

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