OK, I know it has been awhile, but I moved across the country; so I was a little tied up

I have blogged about a couple of other instant messengers for Blackberries before, and have had various amounts of success with them. There is a new player out there. WebMessenger has been around for awhile, but they recently announced that they were offering their personal instant messenger for FREE!

I tried it out and it was a breeze to set up. One of the biggest issues with Instant Messengers has been to get MSN Messenger, or Live Messenger on a Blackberry. WebMessenger does this without a hitch. RIM has been saying for some time that they would have a version for MSN, but so far only Yahoo and Google Talk.

Before you try to get it working on your Blackberry, you need to set up an account on the WebMessenger site. You simply tell them your logins for each of the IM’s out there and then when you login on the blackberry, all your contacts will be there.

…now if I could just get Rogers to offer a cheap data plan.

Meebo is an online Instant Messenger application that allows you to run the application from within your browser. This is perfect for those times when you are traveling and need to use an Internet Cafe, or a locked down PC at work that does not allow you to install applications. I wrote about Meebo previoiusly.

To further integrate Meebo into your browser, Meebo has just released a Firefox extension. This adds a pane to the right side of your browser and lists all of your buddies online. You can also ‘disconnect’ the pane and have it work as if it were a stand alone application.

I have had a Blackberry for a few months now and am finding more and more features for it. This week I finally found an IM client for MSN Messenger. (note to US readers, AIM is the IM of choice in the US, in Canada MSN is the most widely used) The advantage of EQO is that is can do ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and even Skype via a plugin.

Blackberry does have IM support on its server software, but only if you have the most recent 4.1 version

Now I have email and IM wherever I go…(I just have to figure out if that is really a good thing

I recently upgraded my network at home to 1GB. I wanted to find a software that would backup my files incrementally. Meaning, as a file was changed, its backup would also be changed. I was able to find FolderShare. This is now a free service from Microsoft Live.

You simply download the software onto the 2 computers you want to synchronize. Point to the folder(s) you want to be in sync. and the software does the rest. As you change files on one computer, it is backed up on the other.

Everyone knows that Adobe gives away their Acrobat reader for free. This is a free alternative. Over the years Adobe Acrobat has grown to a 20 MB+ program that like to “call home” often and download 20MB updates. Due to its size, it also takes a long time to load.

Foxit PDF reader can read PDF files but is less than 2MB to install. Their uptdate files are also less than 1MB. Plus it loads in about 1/5 the time of Acrobat. If you need the high end features of forms building etc. then Foxit is not for you. But if you just need something quick and easy to read PDFs, then give Foxit a try.

This site could become one of my favorites. Everyone knows that software changes constantly. If everyone were like Firefox and checked for new versions every time it started, we wouldn’t need sites like File Hippo. When you open the site, you download a 100k applet that will scan your computer for the installed software. Then it provides a list of all of the available updates, plus a list of available Beta versions as well. You simply download the updates you want and you’re done. This site is a huge time saver.

Now that you have recorded your podcast, it is time to post it so everyone can listen and/or download it.

There are several choices when you are posting your podcast. Do you want to host the file on your hosting provider or do you want to put the files somewhere else. I’ll start with putting them in the same place as your blog. You simply create a directory/folder on your FTP server (you should have a tool to do this already, I use FileZilla). Then you FTP the files to that folder. When you create your blog post about the podcast you will need a link to the file, in order for Feedburner to recognize the location of the media file. If you are using Wordpress, there is a great plugin called Podpress. Once you have this installed, it adds an on line player and several other features that make it easy to add podcasts. I use this plugin and you can see what it looks like on these 2 posts.

• Seagate puts Focus on Consumer Electronics
• Podcast about Skype

You’ll notice a couple of features. One is that you can color code the player to match the colors of your web site. Two, it gives the user the choice of playing it online or downloading it and listen on their PC.

You can also have your podcasts hosted on another provider. The choice among podcasters for this is Libsyn. They have several packages available. The big benefit, is that they charge you for storage space and not the bandwidth when your podcasts are downloaded.

When you have everything loaded up, it’s time to tell the world. Similar to pinging search engines about a new blog post, you would do the same thing with your podcasts. Obviously the most popular podcast site is iTunes. In order to get your podcast on their directory you will need an iTunes account. For this you will need a credit card, even if you never plan on buying anything from their store. Once you have your account, you load up iTunes, go to the Store, select Podcasts from the upper left box, then submit a Podcast from the lower left box. From there you follow the prompts of where you feed is and what your podcast is about etc. When you submit a podcast the first time, it will take 24-48 hours to get a response back with your podcast account number. You can take that number and put it into the form on Podpress, or you can save the link for future reference. There are a few ways of adding a button to your site that allows people to subscribe to your podcast. The first way is to use that link that was sent to you and attach it to a button. There are, however, some watch-outs to be aware of when using this method. If you have a podcast that comes out more frequently than once a week, you will want to use the methods below to link to your iTunes button. Sometimes it can take days before iTunes will update your podcasts on their store. So I recommend you use one of the following methods to attach to the iTunes button on your site. (assuming your are using Feedburner). You can use either the itpc://feeds.feedburner/[your feed name] or pcast://feeds.feedburner/[your feed name].

There are several podcast specific directories you should use to list your podcasts.

• Odeo.com - directory and podcast service
• Yahoo - has a podcast search and tag-based index
• Podcasting News’ Podcast Directory is the largest user-built directory of podcasts.
• Podcast Alley, one of the most popular podcasting sites, has a large podcast directory.
• Digital Podcast

iPodder.org is a large podcast directory.

• PodcastPickle  
• PodcastDirectory.com
• A Podcast Directory is available at Podcast.net.
• iPodderX

There are several other methods to marketing your podcast. You can watch Chris Penn’s excellent presentation at Podcamp Toronto here.

Microsoft released a patch for Windows to update the dates for Daylight Savings Time (DST) in Windows for North America in 2007. Previously we “sprung forward” on the first Sunday in April and “fell back” on the last Sunday in October. Daylight Savings Time changes to March 11 and November 4 in 2007. The reason behind this extension is to reduce the amount of electricity used. This impacts everyone running Windows. Most of us have the automatic updates turned on. However, many don’t realize that the automatic updates are only for the critical security and bug patches. There are also optional software and Office upgrades on the Windows Update Site. You must  go to the site and manually download the optional updates, as the daylight savings time patch is one of those updates.

UPDATE Links: Microsoft’s Preparing for DST changes in 2007.

Microsoft Windows Patches for DST changes.

 RIM Blackberry Patches for DST changes.

 DSTpatch.com with more DST patches.