Online Metrorail tracking

Metrorail riders can track arrivals online
BY LARRY LEBOWITZ

The Internet age has finally arrived for Metrorail passengers.

Starting this week, Miami-Dade Transit customers will be able to track train arrival times via computer and web-enabled handheld wireless devices.

The new Train Tracker site, located at www.miamidade.gov/transit/mobile, is specifically configured for web-enabled mobile devices.

Riders can select their station from the drop-down menu to track the arrival times of the next southbound and northbound train.

Customers also can check Train Tracker on their computers at www.miamidade.gov/transit by clicking the ”Where is the Train?” link under the Metrorail icon in the Quick Links portal in the upper right. Or they can go directly to www.miamidade.gov/transit/traintracker.asp.

”This is the latest example of how we’re using technology and the Internet to improve how we communicate with our customers,” Transit Director Harpal Kapoor said. “Train Tracker will take the guesswork out of waiting for the train so passengers can plan their trips accordingly.”

The Train Tracker site also features links to the Metrorail system map and schedules for all bus routes serving each station as well as information on connecting routes.

Transit also plans to install overhead electronic signs at every Metrorail station displaying Next Train arrival times.

The first sign was installed in May at the Government Center station next to the Metromover entrance.

Learn a Foreign Language Online

Web 2.0 site Mango offers free language courses, including Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.  Choose one of the available courses and learn the language through slideshow presentations.  Each language has approximately 100 available lessons and quizzes.

Mango

Upload and Add Effects to Your Photos with flauntR

From AppScout:

Every now and again, I’ll get caught on a computer without any image-editing software and need to upload an image to the Web. And most people aren’t interested in downloading potentially complicated image-editing software to add effects to their photos, or in opening Photoshop every time they need more lens flare. With flauntR, you can upload your own images, tweak and change them, add hundreds of effects, overlays, and filters with a single click, and then e-mail them, save them, or upload them to Flickr.

FlauntR is completely Flash-based and works in any browser. The service is as simple as signing up for an account, uploading your images, and editing them. The image-editing options aren’t particularly robust from a resizing and image-cropping perspective; you can’t do either of those using flauntR. But the aim of the service is not so much to allow you to add text to your images or edit them but to add dozens of special effects, backgrounds, frames, and other overlays and filters to your images with a single click.

Once you’ve signed up for an account, you can immediately begin uploading images and adding effects. There are a number of frames, textures and canvases, distortions, and filters that you can apply to your images. Many of them are tacky and useless, but as you sift through them you can find the occasional effect that might actually make for a useful Web graphic or banner. I found that most of the compositions were cute if not useless; meaning that they were fun to look at, but I couldn’t see actually publishing any of my photos to the Web using their templates. At the same time, some of the light effects and color filters looked interesting, and I could see using them when creating a Web graphic or banner for a blog.

FlauntR has an attractive and intuitive interface, and a full screen mode that gives you the feeling of using a desktop image editor and not a Flash-based Web application. Once you’ve edited your photos and images, you can save them in your library for review later, e-mail them to friends, or publish the images to Flickr, all straight from the flauntR interface. You can download the final image and upload it to another site, or revert the changes back to the original image.

FlauntR is an easy tool to use and a good way to add some fun to your photos and images before sharing them. The service claims to have over a thousand effects and filters that you can use to spice up your image with one click, and is easy enough to use that anyone can do it. I wouldn’t recommend flauntR to someone looking for real, serious control over their images, but for someone with no image-editing experience who might be looking for something easy to use and a lot of fun, flauntR is a good option.

Upload and Add Effects to Your Photos with flauntR - AppScout

10 Ways to Find a Lost Word.doc

 10 Ways to Find a Lost Word.doc

Accidentally delete your work? Or save it somewhere and you can’t find it? Or the power went out? Before you start frantically emailing your professor, follow these steps:

1. Send out a search party.
   In Windows, click Start, Search, All files and folders.
   Type what you remember of the name or simply *.doc to get all your Word documents.
   Select My Computer under Look in, and then under More advanced options, make sure Search hidden files and folders is checked.
   Then hit Search.
2. Still no luck? Check your Recycle Bin.
   Open it up and look through whatever files you’ve got. Did you find it? If so, right-click and choose Restore. Then if you’re not sure where it actually restored to, perform a search for it.
3. Or you can pray for AutoRecover.
   Sometimes if Word crashes or closes unexpectedly, it’ll still save what you had. Re-open Word. If a Document Recovery task pane comes up, double-click your document to open it and immediately Save As.
4. Search for AutoRecover files, yourself.
   In Word, go to Tools, then Options.
   Under the File Locations tab, double-click AutoRecover files and make a note of that path location.
   Click Cancel and Close.
   Open up that folder in My Computer or Windows Explorer and search for any .asd files. (Or another way to do this would be to run a search similar to step one but with *.asd instead of *.doc)
5. If you have Word set to automatically back-up your documents, there’s still a chance here. Check the original folder for any .wbk file.
   In Word, click File, then Open.
   Navigate to the folder you think the file used to be located in and make sure All Files *.* is selected.
   Is there any .wbk file there? Select it and see if it’s what you’re looking for.
6. Still no dice? Send out a *.wbk search party.
   This step is the same as the first search party step, but now search for *.wbk files. You might find a few. Open them up, one by one.
7. Or search your temporary files.
   Again, this is like step one. But search for *.TMP files this time. You’ll come up with a lot, so change the When was it modified? to the last week or so.
8. Or search even more of your temporary files.
   Some temporary files like to be unique. Search for those with ~*.* this time.
9. Open up C:\Documents and Settings\*USERNAME*\Local Settings\Temp
   This is a hidden folder, so you’ll probably have to use Windows Explorer. Hit Start, then All Programs.
   Go to Accessories, then Windows Explorer. Navigate to that folder, where *USERNAME* is whatever your computer calls you. Do you see your document in that folder?

If none of those steps work, there are also programs that will help you recover deleted files. So this is the 10th and final option.

What’s important to understand here is that if you delete something, it doesn’t actually get deleted. Rather, it sits in a pile waiting to be overwritten. So the best way to recover a deleted file would be to try to find it right away –before it’s overwritten.

If you’d like to use a program, I’d recommend: Restoration, Undelete +, or Recuva. All are free.

I hope this helps. And remember: Jesus saves, but Buddha does incremental back-ups.

So, to turn on the automatic back-up feature in Word, check out Tools, Options, and the Save tab.

10 Ways to Find a Lost Word .doc | HackCollege

Schedule Windows shutdowns with WinOFF

 Schedule Windows shutdowns with WinOFF

Windows only: Freeware application WinOFF schedules Windows shutdown, restart, log off, hibernate, and other shutdown modes using a variety of scheduling criteria. For example, you can tell WinOFF to shut down Windows at a specific time, after a specific period, or when the CPU is idle or usage is low for a certain period of time. WinOFF even has several worthwhile shutdown options, like capturing a screenshot of the desktop before shut down or executing a program before shutdown. This app would come in especially handy when you need to keep your computer running into the night to finish a download or task, but you don’t want the computer running for hours after the task has completed.

Featured Windows Download: Schedule Windows shutdowns with WinOFF - Lifehacker