With political discussion and debate at a feverish pitch, we’re just days away from a number of important elections, both locally and nationally. While I’m not going to get political here (except to ask, “Uh…is there a door #3?”), I will say that I think it’s important to look at voting as a duty and a right (in that order) instead of a burden or chore. That being said, I know life is busy and carving out time to vote on a workday can be difficult. Here are some steps to help make your voting experience a little simpler and smoother.

Find your polling location in less than 30 seconds

Google has provided an easy solution to find your voting location. Using a special version of Google Maps, you can type in your residential address and, voila, not only the address of your polling location, but the fastest route to get there, information on obtaining an absentee ballot, how long you have to mail your ballot in and links to find out whether or not you’re registered.

Save time by voting early

Many states have the option of voting early at select polling locations. (Here in Utah early voting runs from October 21-31.) The idea behind this is to spread out the crowds a bit and allow people to schedule voting around their lives instead of the other way around. The unprecedented turnouts expected for this election may slow things down a bit, even for early voters. If you find yourself standing in line on an early vote day, just keep reminding yourself of how much crazier it’s going to be on November 4th.

Know who to contact

While responsibility may vary by state, in Utah the lieutenant governor is the one who oversees elections so all questions about voting can be directed to his office. If that’s not the case for your state, contact your governor’s office and they can point you in the right direction.

I’ve called the governor’s office here before and got right through to a helpful lady who pointed me in the right direction. Don’t be afraid or intimidated to make the call. Remember, they’re called public servants for a reason – they’re there to serve you as a concerned citizen.

Pre-vote

It’s a good idea to know who you’re going to vote for before you get in the booth. Part of this is not having any surprises on the ballot. States mail out voter information pamphlets with information on all the candidates and issues. Study that ahead of time and circle who you want to vote for. Then bring it to the polls and voting will be as easy as checking names off a list.

Utah has a site called LeaveYourPrint.com. After entering your name, address and birthdate, the site will tell you whether or not you’re registered, which party you’re registered under, provide a mock ballot with links to each candidate and issue, and has the address of your designated polling location. It’s a one-stop-shop for pretty much everything you need to know before you hit the polls. Check with your respective states (governor’s offices or county clerks offices are a good place to start) to see if they have something similar.

Schedule it – now

Perhaps one of the easiest things you can do to ensure you make it to the polls is schedule a specific time to go do it. Put it on your calendar: Vote, 3:30-4:30, and the address. Set an alarm or reminder. Treat it like any other meeting that you wouldn’t blow off. Besides, don’t you want one of those “I voted stickers”?

What did I forget?

I’m sure there are many other ways to simplify the voting experience. What are some of your tips? Also, what are some of the reasons you haven’t voted in the past? Please share in the comments.

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Image courtesy of here.

Sure, you could carry around a USB drive on your key chain to move frequently used files back and forth between frequently used computers but 1. they cost money, 2. they bulk up your key chain (a nit-picky thing, I know, but it bugs me) and 3. if you lose your keys or the drive your files are gone. Forever. Not to mention I hate leaning over the back of my computer to put the USB drive in.

While there is certainly a place for USB drives (I have more than one myself), for file synchronization between computers, and off-site backup, Dropbox is pretty much the be-all-end-all solution.

Dropbox is a free application and service and functions like Apple’s MobileMe iDisk should. Install the program and a folder will appear on your desktop called Dropbox. Put any file in there and it will automatically be backed up online, and accessible from any browser. You can install it on a second computer as well and have the files in your Dropbox folder sync immediately between the two when a change is made.

For example, I have three computers I use regularly: my desktop at home, my laptop, and my desktop at work. I have Dropbox installed on all three and any time I want to make sure a file is available I simply drag it into the Dropbox and, ta-da, it (almost) instantly shows up on the other two computers.

This is an ideal situation for me as I often run across things I find interesting on the Internet, but don’t have time to check them out right away. I’ll drag the URL to the desktop (creating an HTML file) and drag that to my “To Read” folder in Dropbox. The file is waiting for me when I get home.

As I mentioned earlier, all your files are also available online by logging in through their homepage, so if you need access to a file on a computer that you don’t have the program installed on, the file is still accessible. You can even upload files through the browser and they’ll automatically sync back down to your computers.

All your files are available offline and there’s no limit to file size or type (yes, you can back up your music and other DRM’d files). There are quite a few other features including the ability to make folders and files public (a great alternative to FTP), revert to previously saved versions of your files, and more.

It’s a very simple, free way to sync, share and backup files. Dropbox just left beta and is now available at getdropbox.com. You get 2 GB of storage for free or 50 GB for $9.99/month. Give it a try.

Has anybody else been using Dropbox? What are your impressions of it? Leave word in the comments.

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I was on location for a television commercial we were shooting (when I’m not working on LivSimpl, hanging out with my family, volunteering, or being an assistant manager of our apartment complex, I’m a full-time copywriter at an ad agency). If you’ve ever been involved with filming anything, you know that there is a LOT of down time. Last night I jumped on Jiwire to see if there’d be a wireless signal where we were shooting. Sure enough, there were two availabe: one paid and one free.

As you can see from the above screen shot, Salt Lake isn’t exactly bustling with hotspots like other, larger cities. Knowing I’d have wireless access ahead of time helped me to plan my day more efficiently, communicate with some folks back at the office who were then able to e-mail me projects to work on. So instead of sitting around for a few hours before we actually started filming, I was able to get some work done and come home afterward instead of going back into the office.

This is an ideal solution for those who travel, even if it’s within their own city, as was the case with me. It’s also user-generated so you can submit locations they don’t have listed. In addition, they have a free app for the iPhone and widgets for both Windows and Mac.

I know there are quite a few other sites out there that offer similar services. Does anyone have any experiences/recommendations? Please let us know in the comments.

LivSimpl

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I decided to help Gmail with its spam filtering by creating a custom spam filter of my own. It’s easy to do (you don’t need any technical or programming skills) and I don’t think I’ve had any spam make it to my inbox since I started using it. While I’m an avid Gmail user (and according to a recent survey of readers, the majority of you are as well), I believe a similar idea could work for other e-mail services too.

Here’s what you do:

1. Near the search box in your Gmail account, click “Create a filter.”

2. In the box that says, “Has the words” type every bad word you know, and every common word you’ve seen in the subject line of spam, as well as their common misspellings, separated by “OR”.

For example, “Viagra OR V1agra OR Viaggra OR V1aggra OR Rolex OR Rollex OR Rolexx OR sexxy” (without the quotation marks).

I didn’t put the cuss or sexually explicit words and their misspellings for obvious reasons, but I do have them in my filter. You may blush while typing them in, but it sure beats seeing them show up in your inbox repeatedly.

3. Note that I included the proper spellings of Viagra and Rolex. If I ever decide to order either of those projects, something has either gone terribly wrong or wonderfully right in my life and I’ll have to tweak my filter. So be it. Until that time, I don’t expect anyone reputable is going to correspond with me about either of those things so I don’t worry about it.

4. Click the Test Search button.

5. All the e-mail in your account that falls under the filter you just set up will be shown, along with options as to what you want to do with it. At this point you can determine how harsh you want to be. I have no mercy. I check Skip Inbox, Mark as Read, Delete it, Kill it and Burn the Corpse.

6. You can apply your filter to the e-mail that you’ve already received, or you can leave the “Also apply filter…” option unchecked to only apply it to the e-mail you receive from that point on.

And that’s it. You never have to worry about looking at e-mail with that sort of content again. In the long run, this will save you time and help your inbox stay more organized.

Any other tips about fighting spam? Please leave word in the comments.

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It’s true that these options don’t have some of the eye candy a web gallery through .Mac provides, but the functionality there – and it’s free. I’d definitely recommend checking out these as options before plunking down a hundred bucks on a .Mac account.

Also, I would imagine similar plugins/programs are available for Windows machines. Would any Windows users be so kind as to share their findings in the comments?

Overall, I hope you find that these tools help make sharing your photos a little easier and save you a little money too. Are there any other alternatives to .Mac you’d suggest? Do you use either of these plugins? Please let everyone know in the comments.

LivSimpl

The common solution thus far has been to e-mail yourself a copy of whatever file you want to store or transfer from one computer to another using Gmail’s generous 20 MB attachment limit. This is fine unless you’re constantly testing the 6.4 gig storage capacity (I actually have a friend who was using 90%+ of his storage because he’d e-mail himself to transfer/store files) or you don’t want to deal with the clutter that comes along with it.

While there are some work-arounds, from what I understand they violate your terms of service and I’m not about to do anything to lose my precious Gmail account(s) and, subsequently, my e-mail.

That being said, here are four problems with using Gmail for file transfers/online storage:

1. Letting your account inch slowly toward capacity. For most of us, this isn’t a problem but there are certainly those out there who are pushing the limits.

2. All those attachments can become quite unwieldy. It can become difficult to find the specific files you’re looking for, especially if you’re backing up multiple versions.

3. Taking up space in two e-mail accounts. One in the sending account and one in the receiving account. Plus, you’ll have to delete the file from the sending account which requires a separate login which, frankly, is a hassle.

4. Manually adding multiple files to attach to an e-mail is tedious. Attach. Browse. Select. Open. Repeat.

How to avoid all this hassle and clutter? Here are five tips for managing your Gmail account as a repository for your online storage and transfer needs:

Tip # 1: For those of you wanting to simply transfer a file from one computer to another (for example, if you needed to crank on a work project at home) attach the file to an e-mail as you normally would, but instead of sending it to yourself, save it as a draft. This keeps a single copy and makes it easy to locate, download, and discard the file when you’re done with it.

Tip #2: If/when you decide to e-mail yourself a copy of a file for storage/backup purposes, write a description of the file and other keywords in the body of the e-mail. This will help you accurately search for the file later on, should it become necessary. If you’re uploading something with copy (words) that could easily be copied and pasted into the e-mail, do it.

Tip #3: Received a file with an attachment you want to keep long-term? Create and apply a “Storage” label to those messages for easy reference later on and archive them to get them out of your inbox. When you need to retrieve the attachment, simply click on the “Storage” label on the left side of the screen and you’ll have a nice list of all the attachments you wanted to hang onto.

Tip #4: If you’re running low on space and want to delete messages with attachments, or you want to find a particular attachment and don’t want to wade through your thousands of messages (or you’re like me and just don’t like clutter), you can search for e-mail with attachments by typing the following into the search bar: “has:attachment” (no quotes). This will bring up every e-mail you’ve ever received that has an attachment (assuming you’re an Archiver and not a deleter).

Want to narrow the search further? Try “in:inbox has:attachment” (no quotes). This will only bring up the mail in your Inbox that has attachments. This search technique works with all your labels.

And I’d recommend sending the file to yourself using the same account. By that, I mean if I need to send a file to my LivSimpl account I’d send it from my LivSimpl account. That way I instantly know I received it and can nuke the Sent version without having to log into a separate account.

Tip #5: There’s a handy Firefox Add-On that allows you to drag-and-drop files into the file path in the browser. It can be found here.

I hope you found this beneficial! Oh, and I’ve put a new poll in the upper-right portion of the sidebar. I figured if I’m going to put Gmail tips on here, I’d better make sure people are using it. Please take a moment to vote.

As always, your comments, feedback and suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks for reading!

LivSimpl

P.S. You can also try Google Docs for uploading (and editing) Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

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Portion of the Gmail logo found here.

That’s good news? Yes. Because it constitutes an “adverse material change” in your contract which means you can get out without paying the hefty $175-ish early termination fee.

Of course, your other options in carriers might not be much better than what you already have. But if you’ve been looking to jump ship, now is the time to do it.

There are a few steps you’ll have to take, including remaining firm when the customer service reps try to make you feel dumb for canceling over a something so small as a ten cent increase in texting costs. (“If it’s not a big deal, why are you changing a legal contract to charge the extra money?”) For more details check out articles on the subject here (AT&T) and here (Verizon).

And if anybody has any success bailing on their carrier, please drop me a note and let me know how it went. Good luck!

LivSimpl

Fortunately, when you are using Outlook or just about any other e-mail program, instead of removing your right hand from the keyboard, placing it on your mouse, clicking the “New” e-mail button and putting your hand back on the keyboard, you could simply hit Control + N.

Simpler and more efficient.

Of course, many other programs besides e-mail have keyboard shortcuts, some quite elaborate. (I’m thinking of Adobe InDesign where there’s a shortcut I frequently use which requires awkwardly mashing four keys simultaneously.)

Similar shortcuts available in Gmail. Just like you’d hit Control + N to create a new e-mail in Outlook, in Gmail you just have to hit “C” while viewing your inbox. Want to archive a selected message? “Y”. There are dozens of them, all of which can be viewed in a nice, semi-transparent window over your inbox by pressing Shift + / (or “?”, depending on how you look at it).*

Of course, you’ll have to enable shortcuts first by going under your Settings and then selecting “Keyboard shortcuts on”.

There’s a little bit of a learning curve, but once you have a few of them down you’ll be able to move through your e-mail much, much faster.

LivSimpl

*I think this functionality is being rolled out slowly. So if your account isn’t enabled for it yet you can go to this page for a complete list.

The whole concept of information being able to travel anywhere in an instant still amazes me when I think about it. The fact that someone on an island in the middle of the ocean can send me an e-mail and it arrives instantly is pretty remarkable. I know that’s a really geeky thing to say but it’s true. Same goes for text and instant messaging.

Naturally, I feel the need to respond to these communications just as fast as I receive them. That’s the whole point, right? And in a corporate environment it’s pretty much expected.

Besides, knowing myself, if I don’t respond quickly I’ll forget.

Because of this I tend to keep a very close eye on my e-mail. I have it set to check for new mail every minute and when I see that little yellow envelope…wow…for some reason I can’t focus until I find out who caused it to show up.

Then one day I decided to quit my e-mail program.

I didn’t minimize it, or hide it. I quit it completely. It was no longer open.

Here’s my thinking behind the rash move:

• E-mail had ceased to be a productive tool. Instead, it had become a distraction.

• I reassured myself nobody was going to care, or even notice. I don’t think anyone is waiting around for me to respond instantly – they don’t even know if I’m in my office. Waiting a half hour before I respond isn’t a big deal.

• If it’s important enough, they’ll call.

So now I close Outlook while I’m working on a project. When I have a break I open it, check e-mail, respond, and close it again. In fact, now Outlook is probably closed as much as it’s open. It’s proven to be a huge time-saver in that I can focus and really dig into a project better than when the little yellow envelope was staring me down.

Does anyone else do something similar? How often do you check your e-mail? Let us know in the comments.

LivSimpl

P.S. I’ve posted a similar idea about turning off your cell phone.

Thanks to Yale (yes, the school) for the image.

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