I have been asked more than once how to save videos that are shared on Flip’s website without having to install any software. It is fairly straightforward, but it requires a bit of technical know-how.

First, you must understand that to view a video using a web-browser like Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), the video must first be downloaded to your computer. This is automatically done for you when you click to play the video. This is true with the exception of some video streaming technologies. Fortunately, at least for now, Flip videos, when viewed in IE7, are downloaded locally. So, the basic steps to get them are:

1. Find where they are downloaded to (temporary cache folder)

2. Copy the video from the temporary cache folder

3. Paste the video to another location on your computer

The location of the temporary cache folder depends on the browser you use. For these instructions, I will show you how to get Flip videos using IE7.

1. From IE7, select Tools | Internet Options from the main menu (see Figure 1). This will launch the Internet Options dialog (Figure 2).

2. In the Internet Options dialog, press the Settings button in the Browsing History section (Figure 2) to launch the Temporary Internet Files and History Settings dialog (Figure 3).

3. In this dialog, you will see a button named “View Files” (Figure 3). Pressing this button will take you to the folder in which temporary files (like videos) are placed when browsing the Internet.

Note: In the previous dialog (Figure 2) you see a “Delete…” button in the Browsing History section. It might be a good idea to press that button and delete any temporary files; there may be a lot in there. This will make finding your flip video easier.

4. With the temporary cache folder open, browse to the web page containing your Flip video. Play the video so that IE7 will download it. Refresh the temporary cache folder by pressing ctrl-F5. The file will have a rather long and cryptic file name and be of the type “MPEG-4 Movie” as shown in Figure 4 (click on the Figure to see a clearer view of it).

5. This is the file that you want to copy and paste into a folder where you wish to keep it. The file is MPEG-4 and therefore, you must use a compatible video player (like QuickTime) to play it. Enjoy.

It takes two steps to increase the size of a WMWare hard-disk.

1. Increase the VMWare disk using the vmware-vdiskmanager utility which can be found in the installation directory for VMWare.  To do this, follow steps similar to this:

a).  Go to the command-line (cmd) and navigate to the directory containing your VMWare instance.

b). Execute the following statement. Note, you must include the full path to the vmware-vdiskmanager utility:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager" -x 50GB "NAME_OF_DISK_FILE.vmdk"

Note: You will have to modify the NAME_OF_DISK.vmdk file accordingly.

This process might take quite a long time. Be patient, when it is complete, you will have increased the size of the hard-disk. The added space is not yet usable until you re-partition the disk from within the virtual machine.  This is the next step.

2. Re-partition the disk to use the additional space.

To to this, you will need a repartitioning utility. There are several options available, you may Google them.  I used a free partition manager from EaseUse. You can download it here: EaseUse Partition Manager.

The steps are

a). Boot up and log on to the virtual machine.

b). Download and install the partitioning tool.

c). Re-partition the drive according to the instructions for the particular partitioning tool you are using.

When you are finished, you should have a hard-drive with the desired space.

If you are having problems opening a document with the .docx extension, it is because you do not have the latest version of Microsoft Office. Files with the .docx extension are based on the new file format for Microsoft Office 2007 Word.  This means that the documents cannot be opened with previous version of Microsoft Office (like MS Office 2003).

You have a few options to view these files. 

1. You can download and install the Microsoft Compatibility Pack which will enable you to view .docx files within earlier version of Microsoft Office.

2. You can actually convert .docx files to .doc files using the various tools available. Simply perform a Google Search on "docx to doc" to see the various tools available.

A question I get often is, "How do I create a PDF file?"  Creating a PDF file is a very simple. Basically, you create your file in your program of choice (Word, Excel, etc) and simply print it to using a tool that acts like a printer, but instead creates PDF files.  There are numerous tools that do this some for payment and some free.  I prefer the free tools and my favorite is PDFCreator, an open-source tool that installs as a printer.

It is very simple to use. After installing the tool you will notice that you are given an additional printer named "PDFCreator" when you select to print a document.

You select PDFCreator as the printer. When pressing the "Print" button, you will be shown the PDFCreator dialog. 

From here, you simply press "Save" and you will be prompted to save the document to a PDF format.  Note, that you can create more than just PDF files. You can also create PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, and EPS files.

PDFCreator can be downloaded from the pdfforge site.

Creating a Google account is simple. Just follow the steps below:

1. Make sure to go to the Google page at www.Google.com.  On the upper right, you'll see the "Sign In" link. Press it.

2. The next page is the Google Accounts page. Here, you are given the option to sign in with your existing account, or to create a new account by pressing the link to "Create an Account Now"

3. On the Create an Account page. You will need to enter your email address and password that you will use to login to Google. You must also specify your location, verify and agree to the terms of service.  When you have entered this data, press the "I accept. Create my account" button.

4. Google will send you an email with a link that you must go to in order to verify and activate your account.  When you have completed this process, you will be able to take advantage of many of the free and useful services provided by Google.

Have fun!

Let me share a brief story.  About two years ago, my wife's computer crashed.  It had been over eight months since I backed up her computer.  To make a long story short, we lost many digital pictures (including our daughter's baby pictures) and I was seriously in the dog-house since I am the "technical expert" in the household.  Well, three weeks later and $400 sunk into a recovery service resurrected our photos, but I was still in the dog house.  Lesson learned - back up stupid!

Back in the day, backing up was a real pain in the you know what (which is why I didn't do it).  But now, you can backup with minimal effort, provided you have a high-speed Internet connection. Using one of the online-backup services available, backing up your business critical, (or spouse relationship critical) data is no hassle and very inexpensive, roughly $5/mo per computer. Each of these services provide similar features and pricing including:  unlimited backups, encryption and simple to use interface. 

For a review of some of the more popular services, see PC Magazines detailed reviews here.

In the meantime, don't delay, backup or enjoy the dog house!

Online Backup Services available:

Do you need to email a large file attachment to someone but keep getting an error telling you that your email attachment is too big?  It is common problem that email providers limit the size of file attachments.  

There is an easy solution. You can use one of the several free file uploading/tracking services. You simply setup an account through which you upload your large files and then send away.

One service, YouSendIT is particularly easy to use.  You specify a TO address, FROM address, SUBJECT, MESSAGE and file to upload. Also, you can password protect the file, use certified delivery so you can see who received your file and get a return receipt.  Your recipient will be emailed the link of the file to download. Most of the services function the same way.

Use one of the several free file emailing/tracking services like YouSendIt, SendThisFile, ShareFile or just Google Search "Email large files" to see other vendors providing this service.