After washing a couple of pairs of tennis shoes recently, I discovered that getting them dry wasn’t as easy as just tossing them in the clothes dryer. Not only did they make a terrible racket as they bounced around inside the rotating drum, they also kept turning off the dryer by hitting the inside of the dryer door.
A little searching online revealed a very simple technique for drying shoes – without noise and without damaging the shoes or the dryer.
Tie the shoestrings of a pair of shoes together into a loose knot.
Close the dryer door with the shoes hanging on the inside and the knot on the outside.
Over the past few years, I’ve made the mistake of using Flickr as my primary source of photo storage. It just seemed easier to pull the memory card out of my camera, drag the photos into Flickr Uploadr, and organize them into sets and collections on the site, than to keep copies of all of my digital memories organized into separate folders on my computer – especially when I use three to four computers on a regular basis.
I realized the error of my ways last week when my partner gave me a digital photo frame for Christmas. I excitedly went onto Flickr and browsed through my collection of over 3,600 photos, selecting around 600 to use on the frame. That’s when the fun began.
While Flickr makes it incredibly easy to upload photos to their website, downloading them is another story. Unless you want to download them one at a time, you have to use third-party software. Bulkr would have been my program of choice, but it limits downloads to 200 photos at a time. After trying several others and finding most of them to be buggy or inadequate, I stumbled across Migratr – a simple utility that transfers pictures between photo-sharing websites. It even retains tags, sets, and collections.
Although the program is designed to move your photo collection between websites, it turned out to be a handy download tool. After authenticating my Flickr account, it asked for a location on my computer to save downloaded photos. Voila! I had a backup.
Since this method doesn’t keep tags or sets intact, I decided to download Picasa3 to keep my photos organized. If you haven’t checked out Picasa’s facial recognition technology, you are in for a real treat! It’s both amazing and a little scary.
Verizon likes to make things complicated for their cell phone users by blocking the ability to set mp3s in the music folder as ringtones, but where there’s a will, there’s always a way.
The easiest way is to email them to your phone from a computer by sending it as an email attachment to yourtendigitphonenumber@vzwpix.com (i.e. 5555555555@vzwpix.com). The only problem with this method is that some people report that Verizon will compress/lower the quality of the recording. It also costs $.25/message.
The method listed below is free, but slightly more involved and complicated. It also involves using third-party software to hack into the phone and should only be done with extreme caution. If you’re inexperienced with BitPim or worried about turning your expensive cell phone into a brick, then use the first method or buy the ringtones from Verizon.
Here are the instructions for the brave-hearted. I’ve tried this and it works flawlessly.
Install the USB driver from the CD that came with your phone.
Download and install the latest version of BitPim (currently 1.0.6.20080804).
Connect your phone to your computer with the supplied USB cable.
Open BitPim and go to Edit – Detect Phone. Select “Yes” to run settings.
Choose “LG VX9700 (Dare)” from the drop-down menu beside Phone Type.
Click “Browse” to select the USB communications port that your phone is currently using. It should appear as “LGE CDMA USB Serial Port.”
After selecting “OK,” BitPim should recognize the phone connection and display it in the bottom status bar.
Select “File System” under the menu tree on the left-hand side of the program and expand the blue folder that appears on the right side.
Drag and drop files into the following folders: pictures use brew/mod/10888, ringtones use brew/mod/10889/ringtones. Keep ringtones under 500kb for best results.
Once files are transferred, close BitPim and restart the Dare. Your files should appear under My Music and the ringtone selector.
I didn’t realize that it was nearly impossible to set an mp3 file as a personalized ringtone using Verizon Wireless until I received my new phone today. After some extensive googling, I discovered the easiest (and cheapest) option is to simply send the file directly to your phone as an email attachment.
Make sure the file is under 350kb. You can crop and save the mp3 to reduce its size.
Send it as an email attachment to yourtendigitphonenumber@vzwpix.com (i.e. 5555555555@vzwpix.com).
When your phone receives the message and attachment, simply set it as your ringtone.
Just so you know… don’t blame me if the person sitting next to you on the subway has “Love In The Club” or “Sexy Can I” blaring from their phone when they receive a call.
