Anwyay, I had a need to take a screenshot of an app I use and had no idea how to do this. As ever in these situations, Google was my friend.

I discovered that for HTC Android based phones you need to:

“hold the power button & then click on your home button”.

A short camera noise will alert you to the success of this and the image itself is on your film roll.

That’s it.

HTC Screen Grab is a post from: Church Techy

I’m certain we could all list bad service but would you include the like of the following examples that have all happened to me in the last 2 or 3 weeks – and personally being busy at Christmas is no excuse for not providing a reasonable level of service.

1. I’ve wanted to purchase a pair of ZEMgear’s for use with my martial arts training – the dobok (gym) where we train is usually covered in sand and other muck so these would help out. Also I could use them in my garage / decking when training at home.

Anyway I contacted the UK distributor of these only to not receive an answer. So I sent a fresh email and CC’d in the US manufacturer. I got a reply from the US within a day or two but still not the UK. Replied as such to the US whom apologised on their behalf, etc but still 2 weeks later and nothing.

2. Or then there’s the UK company (only just down the road from me) that have replied to my email but only opted to answer one of the questions.

3. Or how about the internet service company that needs 2 or 3 prompts to actually supply an answer to a query from a paying customer.

4. Or the service supplier who just closes tickets off without telling you what they did to fix the problem.

These are but 4 of many examples I could cite – but all are very recent.

And as I said above being busy over the Christmas period is not an excuse. It will cause me to give them more latitude in how long it takes to reply, but after several week amy patience wears thin.

But in truth it doesn’t take much to get it right.

So what about good service then?

Yes, I rightfully complain to, hopefully, the right people about poor service but equally I will praise a company and write to them to say thank you. I even go so far as to find out the name of the person that dealt with me and thank them personally as well as singling them out in the letter / email.

And how does one improve the level of service?

And I’m sure there are more you could add…. but ultimately it does come down to the senior management within a company – if the ethos they push down the line is all about profit then customer service will go by the by.

- so what’s your service like?
- how do you handle good / bad service?

Service is a post from: Church Techy

I freely admit I don’t know everything, buy then Google is only a web connection away and most of what they require is relatively easy stuff. Things like my mouse is not working – or my screen is an odd size – or I have no power and so on.

But today’s phonecall was not one I was expecting – or rather it started as and eMail. The main contact there sent me an email with a subject matter of “XP Arrrrrrrrrrr” – which I took to be the start of an ‘I hate XP eMail’. But no, read out the second word of that subject and you get a word commonly associated to pirates.

As in the swashbuckling adventure types.

And not as in the hacker types.

Knowing that all the PCs in the Church have a valid license and even to the point where they have spare capacity I was very surprised to hear that one of the recently rebuilt PCs was coming up saying it was “Windows XP Pirate Edition”.

And I was even more surprised when I turned up to check to find this is indeed the case.

Well apart from the moral implications there are all sorts of issues such as security of the network, etc that now come into play so I have immediately quarantined the box until such a time as I can investigate it and rebuild it.

However, I do know how it happened. I’d asked one of the newer church members (who’s into IT) to rebuild it as I was too busy to do it myself. I’d even said not to worry about the license key as my church contact had that and could supply it when required.

Lesson learnt:

1. find the time
2. sometimes trusting others doesn’t work

One can pray for help. One can even trust that help.

But it doesn’t always work out.

OS Pirates is a post from: Church Techy

And I have good reason to do so.

But what about your website? Do you ever consider backing up that? What if it your web hoster had major issues or even went into receivership? How would you rebuild your site elsewhere?

More specifically, how would you do it quickly?

Well if your site happens to run from a cpanel account then let me introduce SiteAutoBackup to you. You simply provide your cpanel details, set a schedule and it does the rest. Should the worst happen and you need to restore then you simply download the most recent backup file and provide it to your hoster (or new one) and they restore and suddenly your site is back up and running.

Unfortunately they no longer do a free 1Gb account but they do a 1Gb account for $20 a year or a 5Gb one for $50. And occasionally they even put sales on where you can get a 5Gb account at a permanent reduced price.

Backup Your cPanel Site is a post from: Church Techy

Of them all, this is the one that generates the heaviest traffic – don’t get me wrong. The traffic isn’t huge but I’m one of those folks that like the sites I visit to respond quickly. So not surprisingly I want this site to respond as fast and get frustrated when it doesn’t.

But is that lack of speed down to my end or my route to the site? Or some other reason such as a particular element of a page that is slow loading. Well I’ve recently found a site that will test your site (or any other) and report back on both aspects

Simply go to www.webpagetest.org and enter the URL of the page you want to test.  Then, if you wish, pick where you want to run the test from.  There are a few other options as well but these are the basic ones and all you need. After that sit back and await your results.

• Do you know of a better one than this that’s also free?

Website Speed Testing 101 is a post from: Church Techy

It’s sort of a play on the recent song “Like a G6″ but this has nothing to do with songs!

D7 is a tool.

A serious tool for serious techs by a tech.

So serious its creator issues the following warning on his website:

THIS TOOL IS INTENDED FOR EXPERIENCED PC TECHNICIANS ONLY, NOT FOR “END USERS.” This tool can be very dangerous and destructive in the wrong hands, or even in the right ones.  I have personally even hosed my own development machine by accidentally clicking the wrong button.  Sometimes I don’t fully *test* D7 prior to use.  So you are forewarned!  If you are concerned about your data or the well being of your computer, then please make a backup of everything important prior to using D7.

Some of its capabilities and many uses include:

• Tweaks
• Offline and live malware removal assistance – but note well… you are the malware scanner!
• Offline registry editing
• CPU/RAM stress testing
• information gathering
• DataGrab to “retrieve only the *desired* data from a live or offline system for backup”
• CheckDisk – a gui wrapper for chkdsk
• Allows for integration of 3rd party apps, etc

In short this is another “Rescue CD” but with serious caveats attached.

I’ve added it to my toolbag and one of its ideal uses would be in streamlining a group of techs where you want to achieve a consistent approach and output. I did a similar thing when I managed 7 technicians, but nothing as slick as this.

D7 is akin to a swiss army knife for techs, IT admins, IT managers.

- Are you going to add this to your toolbag?

Like a D7 is a post from: Church Techy

I’ve always presumed that folks knew about using more than one monitor on their deskop, or indeed laptop setup.

I’ve used a dual monitor setup at work for years and for even longer at home. The why is fairly simple. I can have multiple programs in view at once for comparison, cut and paste, copying, etc, etc. However, I realised that when the nth person came into my personal domain (aka study) and asked why I’ve got two monitors that perhaps some folks don’t know how to go about this.

I’ll leave any why arguments to yourselves – but consider also that widescreen monitors are rapidly dropping in price so you could achieve the same ends with a single unit.

Anyway, in simple terms there are 3 ways that I can think of to create a dual monitor setup:

1. Install a 2nd video card into your PC.
2. Install a dual headed video card into your PC or
3. Purchase an adapter [more on this later].

In order of ease and preference I would argue for installing a dual head card, then the adapter and finally adding an additional single headed monitor card. Of course if you are adding a second or external screen to a laptop setup then depending on your model of laptop / netbook you’ll either not need anything or you’ll want an adapter.

Replacing your current video card is simply a matter of a direct swap for what is already there. Do bear in mind that if you try the route of adding an additional single headed video card to compliment an “on board” video card then it is almost certain that the act of installing the new card will disable the on board one. In this case check your BIOS for an option to run it as well.

Another caveat when using this method (or indeed using 2 stand alone video cards) is that you will want to match their capabilities so that each screen can run at the same resolution, etc.

Next you need to be careful to purchase a card with the right physical inputs. So if you have 2 VGA monitors make sure to buy a dual headed VGA card or get the relevant adapters.

My final warning is about the external adapters. These typically come as a USB to video connector and typically require an extra driver to be installed – this naturally adds a layer of complexity or hassle and in some of the setups I’ve seen the software cause untold oddities. Such as popup message boxes appearing across the middle of the two screens and no way to “move” them.

The bottom line reality is that for less than £50 or its $ equivalent you can get the hardware necessary to add a second monitor (the monitor being whatever it costs).

So why not?

Dual Monitors is a post from: Church Techy

In her eMail she asked if I had skype and if so could I contact her that way.

Well of course I have skype – I’m a tech head after all. Being the cautious fellow I am though I fired it up and checked my hardware with the test call process. Good job I did as my mic had stopped working.

But instead of trusting my own instincts and doing my own troubleshooting I clicked on the proferred skype link. An hour or so goes by before I’m starting to (almost in desperation I’ll admit) google various options and reading random forum posts. Thankfully, for me, our internet food shop delivery turned up and I had to go help unpack, etc.

After that I made a cup of tea and went baclk to the coalface.

15 seconds later I’d fixed the problem.

What was it? Simply that the lead to my webcam had come unplugged and the mic is integrated into it!

So learn from me and start with the obvious.

Start With The Obvious is a post from: Church Techy