Technology Toolkit

Let\’s face it, most everyone could do with some extra cash. Not necessarily millions (although that would be nice) but certainly a few dollars here, a few dollars there would come in handy. These ideas are quick and easy to put into action – give them a try today. They\’re designed to be easy to follow whether you\’ve been unfortunate enough to be downsized on your job or just want to make some extra cash in your spare time.

1. Sell Things on eBay

I bet you\’ve got lots of stuff laying around the house that you\’ll never use again. Most of it probably still works fine. You just need to clear the dust off it and take out any spent batteries. But even if it doesn\’t work, so long as you\’re honest in your advert, someone will still want it. Once you\’ve sold all the clutter from your house, it\’s time to sell things for neighbors on commission or buy in stock to sell at a profit. Be careful if you choose this second method – a lot of the prices on eBay are cheaper than regular wholesale prices, so just be certain you can sell them on at a profit.

2. Set Up a Free Blog

Sites such as Blogger offer you space on the web for free. Start a free blog, talking about your hobby or something else that interests you. Sign up for an associates account with Amazon and put in some links using the tools they give you. You can earn money back from Amazon in the form of gift certificates or check.

3. Complete Surveys

You have to be a bit careful on this one as there are some scams around. But some sites really do value your opinion and will pay you for it. Just be sure to check out the site online before parting with details and be sure never to give information that\’s too personal – name, address, etc are OK but your social security number (for example) is off limits.

4. Offer Services to Other People

These can be local services – maybe you\’re good at putting flat pack furniture together or you can turn a garden from a wilderness to a stunning place. Whatever you\’re good at, offer your services to others for a fee. There are plenty of free classified sites such as Craigslist where you can place your ad for free and also track down people in need of your services.

5. Write for Other People

If you could string together an essay at school, you can write for others! There are sites that match up writers with people wanting information written for them. The better researched your article, the higher the price you can command. As in every walk of life, general information is less valued than more specialist information. It pays to specialize if you can. If not, and if you\’re using a modern version of Windows, you can \”speak\” your articles using the built in conversion software, which is a lot faster than typing.

When creating pdf files, you have the ability to set two different passwords. If you set the \”owner\” password, the file will be encrypted. This will prevent unauthorized persons form opening it. Assigning a password for \”user restrictions\” allows you to control how a person can use the file after it\’s been opened. This will prevent someone from being able to print a file, to change a file, or to copy content from the document into the operating system\’s clipboard. On occasion, though, you might need to remove pdf password.

If you ever forget the password for any important pdf files, you\’ll need to use a utility that can either remove or unlock the password. However, some programs may not give you the desired results. You can grab a trial version of some of these if you wish to check them out. Sadly though, some of these trial versions are \”crippleware\”, and can only decrypt the first part of a document. A frequent concern on the user comment section for one of these programs is that it\’s hard to know if the program will function as it\’s supposed to when it\’s crippled in this manner. (Also, should you decide to test these utilities, be sure to download them from a site with a good reputation for security, and perform a virus-scan on the program file before installing it.)

Here are a pair of pdf password utilities that will run under Windows.

Using the GuaPDF Program

GuaPDF is a budget-priced password-cracker program from a group that calls itself the \”Russian Password Crackers\”. Their website states that GuaPDF will delete the user restrictions password, even if 256-bit AES encryption has been used. However, it\’s doubtful that you\’d be able to use it to open any encrypted documents. It can only work with up to 40-bit encryption, while modern pdf creator programs will use 128-bit encryption by default. Attempting to open a file with 128-bit encryption will pop up an error-message box, which will direct you to the website for the Parallel Password Recovery program.

The free demo version is \”crippleware\”, so you can\’t use it for large files.

The Parallel Password Recovery Utility (PPR)

This utility has features that GuaPDF doesn\’t have, but it can be a tad-bit more complex to use. (Thankfully, though, on-line help is there if you need it.) In addition to performing brute-force attacks, PPR can also perform dictionary and misspelled password attacks. You\’ll need to hand-edit the password definitions file so that PPR will know which method to use, and which character set to use. Its ability to utilize GPUs and multi-core processors can increase processing speed. It\’s designed to crack 256-bit owner passwords. There are several different versions, depending on your budget, and how many CPU cores that you\’d like to utilize.

You\’ll want to be aware, though, that you can only use PPR to crack the owner password. It can\’t delete the password that sets restrictions on the user, and won\’t even work with a file if no owner password has been set.

The trial version of PPR is fully operational, except that it will only break passwords with five or fewer characters, and it can only be used on a local workstation with up to four processor cores.

If your hotel has more than a handful of rooms, the chances are that you\’ll have noticed the shortcomings of the traditional pencil and reservations book approach. Sure, it can work, but it\’s a pain in the neck to erase all the old information and enter the new booking when someone changes their mind.

Which is where well designed hotel room reservation software comes into its own. Changing booking details and many other regular tasks are simple to accomplish and it\’s a rare member of staff nowadays who isn\’t at least partially computer literate.

So what should you look for when choosing reservation software for your hotel?

1. Check it will run on your computer.

Which sounds as though it\’s stating the obvious but if the PC you\’re planning on using is too old or, sometimes, too new it can make the difference between the software working and not working. If the computer is too old, there\’s a good chance you should consider passing it down to your children or granchildren. If it\’s too new, just check that there hasn\’t been an operating system change that affects the program.

2. Check it is easy to use.

You don\’t want to be spending too much time getting used to how the software operates. Modern software should be intuitive to use and you should be able to do most tasks without resorting to using the help file, although obviously there should be help available when you need it, especially for tasks you don\’t do very often such as changing room prices or adding specials.

3. Check you can set user levels

Whilst you may trust your receptionists to deal with day to day room bookings you probably don\’t want them to be able to change room rates or tax rates. And you likely don\’t want them to have access to sensitive information such as occupancy rates, profitability and so on. The better software on the market will allow you to set levels for each user of the program so that they don\’t stray outside their level of responsibility.

4. Check it produces invoices

One of the joys of using a computer is that it should be able to carry out the mundane tasks such as printing an invoice. There should be flexibility as to what to include and exclude from the printed invoice, establishment details, etc. There should also be a preview function so that if a guest enquires about how much their invoice will be, your reception staff can look it up on screen rather than waste paper and time printing off the invoice.

5. Support should be close at hand

Although modern computer programs rarely need support, it\’s comforting to have telephone and email support so that if one of your employees manages to do something wrong, you can recover from the problem quickly and easily.

6. Cost

With specialist software such as hotel reservation software, there may be annual support charges and upgrade fees. Make sure that you know what is and isn\’t included in the price you pay when you first purchase a program.

7. Free trial

Everyone from Microsoft downwards offers free trials on software – chances are that you had a trial of Microsoft Office when you last bought a computer. A free trial allows you to check whether the program meets your needs without a salesman breathing down your neck. The trial should be fully functional and any data that you enter during the trial should be still available once you purchase the software.

Every time it boots up, it seems that your computer is getting slower and slower. Here are some steps you can take to get faster boot up times for your Windows PC.

1. Turn off unnecessary services Lots of programs think that just because you have installed them, you’re going to want them always available instantly. Sure, your anti virus needs to go off and check for all the latest updates. But is it really essential for you to know the instant that iTunes or Adobe Acrobat have a new version available? Probably not, but the software programmer thought you would, so they’re likely there anyway. Turn off unnecessary programs like this – there’s usually a menu option buried deep or you can get help online or, if you’re brave, you can manually tweak your msconfig file.

2. Reduce Windows boot time-out This also involves running msconfig (just type that word in to the Start, Run menu option) but is just a matter of changing one setting. Click the “boot.ini” tab and you’ll see a setting that says Timeout. Chances are that your system shows the default 30 seconds. You can safely reduce this: experiment with 10 seconds or maybe even as short as 5 seconds. It’s the time it takes Windows to decide to carry on booting. Setting it lower won’t be a problem unless you’re a geek who uses more than one operating system on your computer and need time to select the correct system.

3. Cut down on your fonts Sure it’s nice to have every font that’s ever been created ready, just in case you need to use it. But it takes Windows time to read through all the fonts you’ve got installed every time it boots up (as well as when you select a font in programs like Word). Removing fonts that are only decorating the space on your hard drive should speed up your boot times.

4. Clear out your temporary files At times, it seems that Windows housekeeping was learned from a teenager. Bits and bobs are left all over the place. Most of these files have an extension of “.tmp” (quite often they’ll start with a “~” character as well) and can safely be deleted. While you’re at it, clear out all the temporary files that Internet Explorer litters around your hard drive. Doing this may not boost your Windows start up speed but you’ll notice the difference when you explore the web.

5. Defrag your hard drive Depending on how long it is since you’ve defragmented your hard drive, you may or may not notice a difference here. Select the drive using My Computer, right click it, choose tools than Defragmentation and follow the instructions.

6. Check your drive for errors Like any mechanical device, your hard drive can get errors. These are usually covered up by the operating system but it pays to occasionally go in and check your drive. Select the drive with My Computer as before but this time run the Error checking option. If you find any problems, follow Windows instructions to fix them.

Computers always seem to be slower than you’d like. So how to make your computer faster again?

1. Make sure your anti virus software is up to date

New computers often come with a trial for popular anti-virus software such as Norton. But since viruses come out all the time, you need to make sure that you keep your anti virus software slap bang up to date. If you don’t do this, there’s a chance not only of getting your files or data corrupted but also of a nasty program running itself on your computer and slowing everything down.

2. Keep your firewall on

Most recent versions of Windows come with a firewall to help protect you whilst you are connected to the internet. Make sure that this is always switched on so that malicious programs can’t creep in and use your computing power for their own ends.

3. Watch out for spyware

This is different from viruses, so there’s a good chance that your anti virus software won’t pick it up. Spyware does exactly what you’d expect from the name – it spies on you. Its cousin is Adware, which flashes up unwanted adverts or new unexpected browser windows. Both these types of software can be sloppily programmed and can therefore cause crashes and memory leaks, generally slowing down your computer.

4. Switch off unwanted background programs

Lots of software programmers assume that you will always want their program immediately to hand. Even if you only use the program once in a blue moon. It would dent the programmer’s ego to learn that you weren’t always using their program, so they often make sure that the setup program asks Windows to run their software every time it boots up. Sometimes they will ask your permission during the setup routine but often they just tick the “yes” box for you and let you decide that you’d prefer the program doesn’t run all the time. The trouble is that all these different programs are using up computer power and memory. So they will be slowing down your computer, often without you knowing. Get ruthless – you probably don’t care whether or not you have absolutely the latest version of iTunes or Adobe Acrobat so long as the software works. Double check online but you can almost certainly turn off the auto-updaters for most software programs and free up your computer power for yourself again.

5. Clear out the Registry

Specialist software is the safest way of doing this. The Registry is Windows equivalent of your attic storage combined with your garage combined with a handful of actually useful things. It stores information about your machine. But whilst most software is quite happy to install settings in the Registry, it’s less happy to uninstall them when they are no longer needed. Quite often, even uninstall routines will leave scraps of completely useless information in the Registry. Which will slow Windows down when it comes to trying to find the settings it really needs.

6. Buy more memory

Modern software is memory hungry. Feed it more memory – you’ll be grateful!