Pensacola Computer Help Technoblog

Finally, Google has added a long awaited feature to its Gmail service – the ability to add images and rich text to email signatures! The next time you sign in to your Gmail account, click on the Settings link in the top upper right corner, and on the General tab about halfway down the page you will see the new Signature box with some new features. In addition to the regular bold, underline, italics etc, you can also change your font, change the font size, color and highlight color. YOu can add hyperlinks, and yes you can finally add images!!

While you can’t just upload an image directly (they must be hosted on the web somewhere) – you can easily just upload your image to a free image hosting service such as http://imageshack.us/ or http://tinypic.com/ and then copy the image address into the Image Url into the Gmail signature Add an Image dialog box. Once you have put in the image url, if it is correct, you will see an image preview. The dialog box also allows you to resize the image. **Note: you really should properly size the image before uploading it to the web, as an image that is too big will take a long time to load into an email message. Remember to click Save Changes at the bottom of the pages when you are done customizing your signature!

Email services like Gmail are constanly adding new features and this is one that people have been wishing about for a long time. The signature feature is a great feature, and if you have multiple Gmail accounts you can customize the signatures for each individual account. Unfortunately, the rich text signatures are only currently supported in the desktop browser version of Gmail and not supported on mobile versions. For the desktop version, you must be using the latest non-html version of Gmail.

It is that time of year again – thunderstorms rolling through the Pensacola area, sometimes leaving in their wake quite a few blown computers. While there are many people out there who aren’t using proper surge protectors, there are also many who are using surge protectors who still get zapped. There are truths and myths regarding lightning, power surges, and surge protectors, and unfortunately it is sometimes confusing to figure out what exactly you should do to protect yourself.

It has been estimated that only about 30% of computers that are damaged from lightning strikes are damaged through the electrical connection. The majority of computers which are damaged from lightning strikes are damaged through the modem or ethernet connection. While many people do have surge protectors on their electrical connection, most do not have them for their DSL/Cable ethernet or modem connections. DSL/Cable connections, as well as old style dialup modems are highly vulnerable to nearby lightning strikes as there is nothing like circuit breakers, grounds, or surge protection in between the cable/phone lines and your computer, and if lightning hits a nearby pole, or even the ground or a tree down the street, the electrical discharge that can travel through these lines can cause serious damage to your computer and accessories.

So what can you do to protect yourself and your computer? First of all, you should make sure that the cable/dsl lines coming into your house or business are properly grounded (I have run into quite a few cable/dsl installations that were not grounded at all!) The grounding is absolutely neccessary to help dissapate an electrical surge over and through these lines. Secondly, you should have your cable/DSL going through a special surge protector – this is a bit trickier as you really need to get a GOOD surge protector for these because the cheap ones that offer the cable/dsl ports can often seriously degrade your internet signal if they are of poor quality. Ideally, the surge protector should be between the cable/dsl line and the cable/dsl modem to protect the modem and everything beyond it. Alternatively, you can use Ethernet surge protection to protect your LAN either in front of or behind your router. Of course you should also make sure that your electrical connection is surge protected, and this doesn’t mean a power strip, use a high quality rated surge protector that is made for Computers and Electronics, one with a guarantee is advised.

No surge protector can protect from a direct lightning strike, but those are very rare, and most of the damage comes from nearby lightning strikes which can be mitigated by good surge protectors. When there is a bad thunderstorm, at a minimum you should shut off your computer and accessories, and even better, unplug them. Using any electrical appliance including computers during a lightning storm can be dangerous, so be careful.