Posts Tagged ‘how can i’
Question Asked: How Can I Check My Website From Other Locations To See If It’s Up?
There’s a few options to make sure your site’s available to everyone and not just you.
First, there’s downforeveryoneorjustme.com. The site performs a simple check from a random location in the world, to see if it can reach the site. If it’s okay, it says “It’s just you”, and if it’s not, it says “Nope, it’s down for everyone.” Simple, yet effective.
If you want something more concrete, you can use Just-Ping. Just Ping sends out tests from a number of locations around the world, and reports back on their individual results, so you can see specifically who can (and cannot) view your website.
There are a number of “pay for” monitoring services, as well, that you can subscribe to. They range from a few dollars a month, to hundreds based on the number of features that they offer, and how many levels of notification they can provide. A quick Google search resulted in close to 10 million hits for “website monitoring premium.”
Question Asked: How Can I Lock My Mac?
Locking your computer when you’re not at it is one thing that Windows does out of the box that OS X doesn’t. You can lock your Mac though, don’t worry. You just need to do a few things first.
For starters, you need to enable fast user switching.
To turn on fast user switching, open the System Preferences and click on theAccounts icon under the System category. Click on Login Options near the lower left and click the Enable fast user switching checkbox.
Fast User Switching
Once activated, you’ll be able to click on the Accounts icon in the top right corner of your computer, and select “Show Login Screen.”
This won’t log you out, but will make it appear that you have. Keep in mind that if someone else has an account on your Mac, and they login from the login screen, you’ll get logged out.
If you prefer a simpler way to lock the mac, once Fast User Switching is turned on, I’d recommend checking out MacLoc (link).
MacLoc is a small, lightweight program that enables the Fast User Switching to happen without having to mouse up to that corner, and select the login screen option.
You can set MacLoc to be opened with some keyboard shortcuts, as well.
Question Asked: How Can I Unclog a Drain?
There’s about a zillion ways to unclog a clogged drain. The most obvious of which being Draino (or the like.)
If you’re stuck, and don’t have Draino, however, there’s a homebrew solution with items you may already have handy in your home.
Baking soda and white vinegar combined in your sink does the trick. Just a little of each, and pour it down the drain. Let it sit for an hour, then flush with the hottest water your sink will output. Surpisingly, that’ll work.
Your best solution, though, is still a product from your grocery store.
If you’re really really clogged up, you should definitely call a plummer.
Question Asked: How Can I Find Out Sports Scores On My iPhone?
There’s a variety of different ways. One of which being to simple use Safari to go to the websites of the teams you want to see the scores of.
A better way is to get the “Sportacular” application. It’s free, and gets you scores for every major sport there is. You can set “favorites” to see all your favorite teams’ scores, regardless of what sport you’re viewing.
Rather than going to mlb.com, then nhl.com, then nba.com, you can get all the stats, updated every 30 seconds, right from the app. Well worth the price!
Question Asked: How Can I Upload A Lot of Photos to Flickr At Once?
Luckily, Flickr makes it pretty easy.
Via their website, you can only upload a few images at a time. However, they recognize that people need to upload a lot of images at once, and developed the Flickr Uploader. (Link here.)
It’s a pretty easy to use tool. You drag a folder of images into it, and it calculates the size to upload. You can tag photos, name photos, add descriptions, and even add them to a set right from the application.
Then you just click the “Upload” button, and off they go.
My only complaint about it, is that it’s relatively slow, compared to the website upload. Other than that, it’s a pretty great app, and one any Flickr user should absolutely use.