August is approaching. And the racetrack opening makes Saratoga the target of so many vacationers. So, it's a good time to talk about vacations from your computer. Because unless you' own and are bringing a laptop, you're unlikely to lug your PC with you. And with computers and internet access as prevalent as it is today, you don't have to.
The big concern of most travelers is E-Mail. Which is why there's so many options for getting it available. Just for simplicity, I'll bring up one that can be done from any internet browser. In the Address bar at the top of the browser window, type in mail2web.com and press the Enter button. In the window that opens, you will have boxes to enter you're Email address and password.
Enter both bits of data, and click the button labled Check Mail. This will open a new window showing all the E-Mail you've received since you last checked with your machine. However, mail2web.com and the majority of other e-mail reading technologies are designed to read the E-Mail without downloading the messages, which means that anything you don't use the controls to delete will remain there to be downloaded by your PC's E-Mail program when you get home.
As I said, there are many different methods for accessing E-Mail when away, but they all require three pieces of information. Your Mail-server's address, which is always Mail. plus the part of your E-Mail address after the @. IE: My E-Mail is brendan@wiltonnewyork.com, so my Mailserver is mail.wiltonnewyork.com.
Once you're mailserver is contacted, accessing your messages requires your account name, which is the part of your e-mail address before the @ (In my case brendan), and your password. Naturally I'm not disclosing my password, and indeed you should keep your's secret and change it periodically.
Of course, it's possible that you might have set your Home PC to automaticly remember your password for you, and then lost the paper you wrote it down on. This can be a significant problem. There are some programs floating around that would let you bypass the ***'s used to obscure passwords (As insurance that they won't be copyied by someone nepharious). To find them, use Google with the search terms "Password Recovery Program".
Thus, with access to a web browser, you can access your e-mail. You can also access any of the websites you like to visit regularly. Of course, you're probably used to accessing them using your browsers Favorites/Bookmarks records, so without your computer, it can take a little time to get access to them. Especially if there are several sites you like to visit.
Unless you bring your bookmarks with you. Every Browser has an option for Exporting them into a htm file. And there are many options for making that file available while you are traveling.
First off, making the file in question. If you use Internet Explorer, click File at the top of the window, then in the menu that drops down click Import and Export. This will open the Import/Export wizard, and you will need to click the Next button at the bottom. There will be a window with import and export options, click Export Favorites to highlight it, then click the Next button at the bottom. This will offer you the choice to export all Favorites, or just one or more subdirectories. Click Next again, and you will be in the screen offering you the chance to select where you want to save the file. If you don't make any changes, you'll save the file to your My Documents directory with the name bookmark.htm by pressing Next one more time.
If you use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, there's a slightly different path to create the page in question. At the top of the window, click Bookmarks. In the drop down menu, click Manage bookmarks. This will open the bookmark managing window. Click File at the top, and then Export in the drop down menu that appears. And just like in Internet Explorer, you now have the option to change where you're exporting your file to, or to change it's name to something other than bookmarks.htm.
Whatever method you use, you will create a web data page that can be read by any browser. You can use the Import function that are next to all the export functions to permanently add it to the browsers bookmark list. But if you're traveling and planning to use someone else's computers, it makes more sense to just open the file htm file and navigate from it.
Of course, that brings up the question of how you'll access the file. Since it's a htm data file without any images, it's likely to be easily stored on a Floppy drive, but floppy's are an old technology that isn't universally supported by all computers. You could burn the file to a Cd, if you don't mind wasting so much room on said CD. Or, you can use a flash drive, or an MP3 player for that matter. If you don't own one, you can buy small flash drives for under $20 if you look around a little.
Or you can put your bookmarks online. Most ISP's offer you space to host a webpage, just visit their site, follow their instructions on uploading you're created bookmark page online, and record the address of the page. Then on the computer you're using, type in that address in the address bar at the top of the page, and press enter. You'll open the bookmark page, where each bookmarked site will be a seperate text link leading to it's associated site.
Another option for traveling without anything, is to use a Remote Control service, the most well known example of which is gotomypc.com. This program will let you designate programs and files on your computer, and run them from any web browser anywhere.
But going back to Flash drives and MP3 players, there's actually another option to make things even simpler. There are several software options that will alow you to store and run programs directly from the external device's. This eliminates many potential complications, especially since these flash based programs will hold onto their cookie and password information. If you're concerned about you're privacy, these programs also elmiminate trace information you would otherwise leave on the borrowed machines.
As for the programs, I haven't used any enough to recomend one. If the idea of carying your own E-Mail, Browser and more programs on a tiny flash drive appeals, you'd do well to use Google to investigate Migo, U3, Ceedo, and StickyDrive. Hopefully one will offer you the utility you need.
I hope you've found this months article useful and informative. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future articles, please E-Mail me at brendan@wiltonnewyork.com
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