The Wilder Zone

Free Wake Up or Reminder Calls from Wakerupper

Need a wake up call or to send yourself a reminder? Wakerupper (yes, I know, it sounds like what a five year old would call your digital alarm clock <g>) is a free automated service you can access online to set up either a wake up call or phone reminders. Simply input the time you'd like to receive the call, your time zone, your phone number and email address and any message you'd like the system to send. For that matter, I'm sure with a little imagination you could use this system in any number of creative ways. Have fun with it.

Wireless Printing with the Lexmark Z1420 - Review

I'm hooked. Or perhaps I should say I'm un-hooked. I'm loving Lexmark's Z1420 wireless printer. The freedom of being able to print without having to get up to plug my laptop into the printer is wonderful. Even better is being able to pick my laptop up from the desk to take it to another spot in the house without nearly pulling the printer onto the floor because I've forgotten to unplug it first.

The Lexmark Z1420 was a breeze to set up. While I've learned a great deal in the realm of computer technology over recent years, I'm still not what anyone would call truly tech-savvy, and when I find myself up against a techie-task that requires greater know-how than I have, I tend to get frustrated rather quickly. Thankfully, installing the Lexmark Z1420 was the essence of simplicity.

I popped the installation cd into my laptop, followed the simple step-by-step instructions as prompted and fifteen minutes later I was running the first few test prints, and thinking to myself, "Now that's cool." Okay...so maybe I'm easily impressed but I couldn't help but get a kick out of my new toy. Of course, it's far more than a toy, but any new tool that promises to make my life easier excites me and I was having fun playing with it. I still get a kick out of it every time I hit "print" and hear the printer start up in the other room. (And if you're concerned about having to leave the printer on all the time, don't be...it goes into sleep mode on its own.)

I've been very pleased with the quality of the printing as well, whether in normal or quick print. However, I don't like that I can't set the default to quick print. I noticed this about a previous Lexmark printer I owned. Because most of the printing I do is for my own use I typically use quick print and I find it annoying to have to go into properties to set it to quick print each time. It does allow you to save settings and to choose them again from a drop-down menu but this still requires that you go into properties each time.

While Lexmark has created a toolbar that can be downloaded for easier printing from the internet, including quick print, it's only compatible  with IE. I gave up using IE years ago in favor of Firefox which I find to be far superior.  Considering the ever-growing number of Firefox users I think it's short-sighted of Lexmark not to have made the toolbar compatible with it as well.

I haven't yet done enough printing to get a feel for how often I'll need to replace or refill the ink cartridges. As ink cartridges go, these are reasonably priced at $23.99 for the standard black ($24.99 for high yield black) and $25.99 for standard color ($29.99 for high yield) .

The Lexmark rewards program also gives you a free cartridge for every 5 purchased, and a free cartridge for every 5 used cartridges returned in the postage-paid return envelopes they provide for you. Not only does this cut down on your overall ink costs (it's $21.99 to purchase a return program color cartridge and $19.99 for a return program black cartridge) but it's environmentally friendly. So while, Lexmark may not be taking Firefox users into consideration  they haven't forgotten the growing number of their market who are environmentally conscious.

The Lexmark Z1420 is the smallest and sleekest of their line of wireless printers, and takes up little space. For those of us working in multi-function spaces in our homes that's a bonus. The paper feed seems to function exceptionally well. I've been pleasantly surprised that it hasn't jammed.  I was relieved to discover as well, that the paper tray also seems to function quite well even when printing large quantities. It would kind of defeat the purpose of wireless printing if you had to get up to fix a paper jam or to insure that the last half of your prints didn't start sliding off the tray and onto the floor.

The Lexmark Z1420 is also a color photo printer and comes with the Lexmark Imaging Studio which allows you to crop, re-size, adjust color, create greeting cards, posters, slideshows etc. I've yet to print any photos with it, though, so I can't comment on how well it performs in that regard.

All things considered, I highly recommend the Lexmark Z1420 for laptop users or anyone with more than one computer in the house who'd like to eliminate the need for multiple printers.

Note: As mentioned in a previous post, the agency handling the marketing for Lexmark's new line of wireless printers sent me the Z1420 for review.  I'm pleased to be able to give it a good review overall, but had it been a dismal failure I'd have said so. I do NOT recommend for purchase anything which I don't honestly believe you'll find to be an asset to your life or business.

Wireless Printing

I may be behind the times, but I wasn't aware that wi-fi technology had advanced into the realm of printers until I received an email from Mike Phan at RocketXL, the agency handling the marketing for Lexmark's new line of wireless printers.

He wrote a few weeks ago to ask if I'd consider allowing him to send me one of Lexmark's new wireless printers in exchange for my honest review of the product here on the blog.

As a laptop user the idea of wireless printing is very appealing. While I do work at a desk, I don't like to be chained to it and I frequently work from several other favorite spots in the house. To be able to print as needed, regardless of what cozy corner I'm currently working in, would be fabulous.

As you've probably already gathered by now, I replied to Mike to let him know that I'd love to give one of Lexmark's new wireless printers a spin. Late yesterday the printer arrived and I'll keep you posted on my experience with it, from setup to function and performance.

In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about the technology check out The WiFiGuy, and if you'd like to take a peek at Lexmark's new line of wireless printers pop on over to their site (check out this great URL), www.cutthecord.com.

HassleMe - A Fun Way to Nag Yourself

If you haven't discovered this free service yet, you've got to check it out. I happened across it one day and just had to try it out. The site's tagline, "because sometimes in life you just need to be nagged," says it all. You fill in a simple form telling them what to hassle you about, how often, and where to send the emails.

Although I selected "roughly every day" for how often to hassle me to write a blog post, the other day I received 4 emails hasseling me about it and ironically I needed to be hassled that often because I'm just now writing that post. I had to smile each time I got one. It's a fun way to nag yourself. So if you need to remind yourself in a unique way to do something, if you're at the bottom of yet another pit of procrastination, give HassleMe a try. It might be just the thing to get you into action.

 

The LifeDev Blog & Scrybe

Two not-to-be-missed resources.....

I love Glen Stansberry's LifeDev blog. I don't recall how I happened across it a few weeks ago, but I love his writing style, the usefulness of the content and all the fabulous resources he's always directing his readers to.

Yesterday he shared the most recent gem he's come across, a new web-based calendar app called Scrybe. He included the video preview in his post and I have to tell you after watching it I feel like a 3 yr. old on Christmas Eve. Scrybe is in beta and it hasn't been released just yet, and I can just hardly stand it. It appears to be everything you could ever hope to have in a calendar. 

Pop on over to Glen's post on it and watch the preview. You'll see for yourself just what I mean. (While you're at it, take the time to browse Glen's many other articles for lots of additional goodies.) If you get as excited about this calendar as I did, then be sure to pop over to the Scrybe site to register for a beta account.

Easy Bake Weblogs

Blogging is the wave of the future for keeping in touch with your market and building relationships of trust with your potential clients, and it's increasingly more reliable than email marketing (which has become hit-or-miss to say the least). If you're working to build your business to ever-growing heights of success, you've simply gotta get a blog.

If just the thought has your eyes glazing over and your head spinning, don't miss the upcoming preview call for Andy Wibbels' Easy Bake Weblogs class. Andy is a gem with quite a natural gift for turning techie geek-speak into easy to understand language for those of us who are less tech-savvy than we'd like.

While I've picked up quite a bit of techie know-how in the past couple of years, I'm still not by anyone's definition tech-savvy.  I couldn't possibly have gotten this blog up without Andy, his fabulous book, Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging, and his Easy Bake Weblogs course. 

I'll be honest, prior to reading Andy's book and taking his course, the idea of trying to put a blog together intimidated the hell out of me. With the book and course it was simple, and I had a ball doing it. If you've been thinking of getting a blog up his course is a must. (And if you haven't been thinking of getting a blog up you should be, so at the very least have a listen to the preview call.)

Formatting Text

If you're using an auto-responder system
or you're regularly submitting articles to article directories online, you've probably discovered that formatting your text

so it doesn't look as though a three year old

composed your message or article can be challenging, to say the
least. 

(LOL.....those of you have experienced this problem will recognize that the above is what your messages/articles often end up looking like when the text formatting gets scrambled....I couldn't resist.)

I've tried several tools for formatting text with varying levels of success and while WebSource isn't entirely foolproof, I've found it to be the most consistent in delivering good results. Using a tool like WebSource for formatting text can shave precious time off the process of re-formatting manually. You will still need to re-format any bulleted or numbered lists, but this takes much less time than manually re-formatting an entire message or article.