Generate Your Own Printer Friendly Pages
Many leading websites and blogs feature an inbuilt printer friendly page to enable you to print only the content of the article and not others such as hyperlinks, ads and sometimes images. This printing feature is dependent on the host and what if you wanted such a feature on a website that isn’t offering one? We have a solution. Use PrintWhatYouLike.com.
The website enables users to convert any webpage on the web into a printer friendly page. It is similar to what you would probably do by copying the text and pasting it on MS Word, but just better and easier is the claim.
Users must enter the url which needs printer friendly fixing and the tool on the website displays the webpage in an editable form. Users can then choose what needs to be printed and omit the rest. A print command to your printer can be directly sent through this website.
The service is absolutely free but all prints are accompanied by a header and footer with the website name on it. I tried about a dozen urls and only around nine worked fine. The website stated that the destination url contained frames or invalid HTML although I wasn’t convinced about the reasons offered.
I find it much easier to copy and paste in a word document before hitting print. But, if you end up at a place where you don’t have access to any other word processing applications, maybe you could give this a try. It works with reasonable success.
Share Your Printer on the Internet with PrinterShare
Sep 28, 2008 Software
Users have often shared files, disk space, and desktops among other useful information. But, a new concept has emerged through PrinterShare application where users can share their printers on the internet.
What purpose does it serve? Users can easily exchange hard copies of photos, documents or any other document online without the risk of divulging the digital copy. The concept is similar to a fax machine; internet is used here as the medium instead of a telephone line.
Users are required to download the console and register on their website. Printers attached to a particular computer can be shared through the console. Other PrinterShare users can find your printer using your unique username and can print directly from their systems. Optionally, printers can be pass phrase locked.
The application and registration are absolutely free. But, there is a catch. Along with the required print out, an additional page with an advertisement is also butted out. A premium subscription worth around £10/month will do away with the advertisements. Process and concept are neat and the way users are heckled is also well thought of.
CUPS for Starters
Sep 28, 2008 Printing Technology, Software
With the misadventure of Microsoft Vista, several users are migrating towards Linux and its variants. In Windows, sharing a printer was a non-arduous job but Linux is a whole new kettle. Many Linux distros mainly leverage upon Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) to share printers. Let us find out a little more about CUPS.
In layman terms, CUPS is a piece of software that transforms your computer into a print server. In other words, a CUPS computer connected onto a network can accept print requests from other computers and forward them to the connected appropriate printer.
CUPS accepts print jobs from client computers and schedules the print jobs. It later translates the content into printer-understandable language and feeds it to the requested printer. Almost all printer drivers are compatible and built for CUPS as it’s an industry accepted system.
Like the Linux operating system, CUPS is a freeware and was developed by Easy Software Products. Back in 2002, Apple purchased the company and the source code and is currently being employed on Macs. The latest stable release is v1.3.8 and the latest distros should contain the latest version of CUPS by default.
Microsoft Windows 7 Build 6780 Screenshots Unveiled
Sep 21, 2008 Software
Several screenshots of Vista’s successor, Windows 7 M3 Build 6780 were published on Zhou Blue’s website this morning. The appearance resembles Vista in most aspects but as you would expect, Microsoft will polish the appearance on Windows 7 and bridge a few inconsistencies that were evident on Vista.
Ribbon style windows which started with Office 2007 can be seen employed on Wordpad but not on the old work horse, Notepad.
My only question - how is Microsoft is dealing with these leaks? I am sure that none of the screenshot leaks were intended and the giant wanted to give the new OS a grand entry and a single one, unlike Vista.
As we expect, if Windows 7 hits the market in early 2009, many households can move onto a stable operating system and skip Vista altogether. Most new accessories like graphics cards, sound cards, printers etc would build their system around the latest operating system and users may not want to be left out in the lurch, and hence go for Windows 7; depending on how early its due to be released.
Howto: Install HP Printer on Ubuntu
Ubuntu is probably the most popular distro among Linux operating system users. Installing peripherals have been a challenge on Linux and although there have been improvisations to make the OS user-friendly, getting some devices up and running still remains a challenge.
HPLIP is developed by HP to enable Linux users to get connected to its printers. The software driver package is compatible with almost all models, 1445 models to be exact. The current version of HPLIP is 2.8.7.
Make sure you download the latest version as the newer printers will only be covered in the latest version of HPLIP.
Printer Installation Instructions
1. Download the package and run the installer by using the command: sudo hp-setup (sudo command will prompt for your root password).
2. Under connection type, select appropriately (USB is the most common connection type).
3. Your HP printer should be automatically discovered. If your HP printer is not discovered automatically, hit Find Manually. Hitting the Next buttons and the Finish button should complete the installation.
If you have multiple printers, you can set any printer as default by selecting Print in Administration menu, select the printer that needs to be made default and click on Make Default button.
Network Effortlessly with Printers Connected to Mac using Bonjour
Sep 17, 2008 Software
Previously, we had discussed regarding a few key points relating to Windows connected printers being shared with a Mac machine. Today, let’s look the other way and get introduced to a product that enables Windows users to discover Apple compatible printers on the network.
Bonjour is a networking system that contains its proprietary protocols which works in cohorts with existing Windows protocols to network several Mac devices (such as printers) with Windows machines.
Bonjour for Windows application discovers advertised HTTP servers using Microsoft Internet Explorer. A Bonjour icon located in IE toolbar should be used to enable Bonjour browsing. Post enabling Bonjour on IE, any compatible devices on your local network with embedded HTTP servers should automatically appear in the list.
Additionally, the Printer Wizard which is included allows Windows computers to print to Bonjour networked printers, including USB shared printers connected to the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Stations.
The application, Apple Bonjour for Windows 1.0.5 is a freeware and is compatible with Windows Vista, XP and 2000. Download it here.
Howto: Use Xerox Mobile Express Universal Print Driver
Sep 11, 2008 Software
Xerox’s universal print driver, Mobile Express is a universal printer driver that can span across all leading brands in the industry, as per the claims. But, there have been reports that Mobile Express works only on a select list of printers and is mostly not compatible with non-postscript printers. Yet, many users have found the driver useful and relevant to their needs.
We will walk through the process of setting up and using Xerox Mobile Express.
The setup file is around 9MB and installation hardly takes a few seconds.
Mobile Express when launched for the first time, asks for a location name, and can optionally import all printers in your Printers and Faxes section in the Control Panel. Alternatively, users can automatically discover connected printers through the application.
Xerox Mobile Express becomes your default printer driver. Anytime you enter a new location/subnet, the driver prompts the user to enter a location name before moving on to discover available printers.
Mobile Express remembers all the printers added along with the relevant subnet information. So, it saves you work trying to discover same printers every time you log into a specific subnet.
Limitations include the ability to harness the complete features available on a printer like choosing the paper trays and various alert notifications.
The Xerox Mobile Express may not be universal in real sense, yet, it’s a great ally to have for people roaming around and trying to find printers at various locations.
The Excel Toolbox: 9 Ultra-fast Microsoft Excel Keyboard Shortcuts & Menu Tips
Sep 9, 2008 Computers, How To, Software
Don’t be limited by how fast your hand can move to the mouse! Check out these shortcuts for nine ways to get your hands up to speed with your brain. There’s actually a lot more than nine, but it’s always good to under-sell and over-deliver!
1. The Control key
Holding Ctrl plus a direction arrow will jump you to the extremities of the table you are in; absolutely invaluable for re-arranging data.
The effects of Ctrl + Up & Ctrl + Right from the middle of a table)
Some additional control based table shortcuts
and 
Travel to the top left of your table. Move to the bottom right of your table.
and 
Navigate through the list of worksheets (tabs).
Google Chrome is an Instant Hit
Sep 3, 2008 Software
Google has the Midas touch. Its browser in Beta stage, Google Chrome which hit the stands yesterday has taken the geek world by storm, and the company has recorded over a million downloads so far. Several thousand opinions and feedbacks are going across the web already and in a matter of days, it will multiply infinitely.
Chrome is a competitor mainly for Firefox and the company feels strongly in favour of Chrome opening sites much faster and multi-threading various web scripts. In essence, if one of the tabs gets frozen, unlike Firefox, only the tab that is irresponsive can be closed.
Other impressive feature includes a widget that allows you to write emails from your desktop on open web applications such as Gmail without opening the browser.
The Incognito feature beats all other features to dust including some great ones in Firefox. One can browse the web in Incognito Mode and Chrome will ensure that it leaves no traces behind.
Similar to all other products from Google, Chrome has lived up to the expectations of not being a graphical wonder. The browser looks extremely simple but packs a punch. We are going to get a stronger browser as many people jump the bandwagon in the Open Source Sea and start developing widgets (or gears as Google names them) for the latest favourite in town.
If you haven’t downloaded Chrome yet, here’s the link.
Optical Character Recognition for Rookies
Sep 3, 2008 Software
On this blog, we have used the term OCR software at times during scanner application reference. The term OCR abbreviates for Optical Character Recognition and quite a few readers have pinged me to know what it means. We will throw some light on the term OCR which is relatively new in concept but great for usability.
As most of us know, when we scan documents, it gets stored as images or there may be an option to save it as a PDF file. Let’s consider saving scanned documents as an image. The data stored in an image is analog and the machine cannot read what is written in the image; although it can display the image as it was scanned. The process of converting the analog data into a form that is machine understandable is the concept behind Optical Character Recognition, OCR in short.
Some experts believe that OCR falls into artificial intelligence category, but let me tell you, they are way off!
OCR can digitize documents that are typewritten and at times, handwritten documents as well. These days, we hear that certain OCR applications can read music notes too. Isn’t it wonderful that documents written in hand (when computers were not available) can be digitized within seconds?
OCR is a software feature and not of the scanner. The scanner’s job ends with transferring the details on the document into an analog format. One might argue that files stored on a computer are digital and not analog. If the machine can’t read data in a file, the data stored is as good as any other analog data.
The current state of OCR is close to 100% accuracy for typewritten text in Latin script. Accuracy rates dip to 80% or below for handwritten documents. Probably, OCR accuracy will fall below 10% for my handwriting :).
