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When network and computer equipment is no longer serviceable or reusable, and isn’t eligible for Cisco’s trade-in program, it’s important to dispose of it properly. Not only is proper recycling better for the environment, but improper disposal of equipment risks violating the law.
Sometimes it can be confusing where to turn to dispose of old equipment.
Fortunately, Cisco offers a Takeback and Recycle program to take this equipment off your hands. To get more information on this program, go to the following website, click the map to specify your location, and select your country at the bottom of the page:
www.cisco.com/web/about/ac227/ac228/ac231/WEEE/index.html
You may wonder about other alternatives, especially for non-Cisco equipment. In the U.S., the EPA lists resources for where you can recycle your old electronic equipment. Use the following links:
www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm
www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/live.htm
www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/
For information about laws in your area regarding recycling electronics equipment, the following web page is helpful:
www.electronicsrecycling.org/public/ContentPage.aspx?pageid=14
 They say a picture is worth a thousand words, unless you’re talking SEO. If your site uses Java script-powered drop-down menus, or uses image links, you might not be getting optimal search results. Search engine robots and spiders prefer to follow text links, so if you use images in your navigation bar, be sure to also include text links. The same is true of links within script.
To be even more effective, put the text links first when you write your source code. Why? Robots follow the first link they find on a given page. They won’t bother to follow additional links on the same page.
View upcoming web design classes here.
Exciting offer from the Blog of John Weston:
“This is cool. Microsoft is willing to PAY you to try some software and learn some stuff. And you could also win a very slick laptop in the process.
“Huh? Seriously?”
Well.. in a sense. We’re announcing today an opportunity for a limited (roughly 5,000) number of people to get a $20 coupon for the Microsoft Store, simply by doing two things:
- Download the Private Cloud evaluation software. (System Center 2012 Release Candidate, and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/SP1 evaluation). If prompted for a Promo Code, enter “CLOUD”.
- Sign-up for and go through a Virtual Lab entitled “Explore Microsoft’s Private Cloud”.
And once those two items are completed, Microsoft will e-mail you and the other first 4,999 people that complete it) a code redeemable for $20 off at the Microsoft Store.
NOTE: It is VERY important that you provide valid information with your Live ID sign in, because that’s how we will be able to reward you, and it’s to that e-mail address that we will send the code to retrieve your $20 coupon for use at the Online Store.”
Continue reading blog post here.
Tiny flash memory drives that fit on a keychain (sometimes called thumb drives) are inexpensive and convenient for transferring files between computers that aren’t on the same network– but they can also present a security risk for your organization. They can be used to bring viruses and unauthorized software in, or to smuggle sensitive information out. Luckily, there are software products, such as GFI’s Portable Storage Control (PSC), that let you control the use of these devices on your network.
For more information on how it works, see www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Review-GFI-LANguard-Portable-Storage-Control.html.
View security classes offered here.
In this article, we offer you, in no particular order, seven tips to help you capture the best scan possible when restoring your old photos:
• Clean the scanner. Make sure your scanner bed is free of dust and lint. Your old pictures have their own dust and scratches—no need to introduce more during the scanning process!
• Clean your photos. Inspect your photos for dust and dirt and gently wipe them clean with a soft cloth or lint-free photo wipe.
• Capture in color. For optimum results, scan your old black and white photos using one of your scanner’s color (RGB) settings. You’ll acquire more pixel information when you do so, and you can convert photos to grayscale after you make your edits. With sepia prints, however, you might get better results if you scan in grayscale or convert the image to black and white before you edit. Test and try it both ways. Reason: It’s easier to correct the image and make all tonal adjustments in grayscale, and then convert it to sepia in Photoshop.
• Scan at a high resolution. Scan photos using at least print resolution—300 ppi for most images, or up to around 600 ppi. You won’t obtain too much image detail beyond 600 ppi. Tip: Don’t scan higher than your scanner’s optical resolution because your scanner interpolates anything beyond that resolution.
• Double the size. When working with small photos, double their size when you scan them. For instance, if you have a 2-inch square photo, scan it at 200% so your scan size is 4-inch square. You’ll have more real estate to work with and can always downsize the image later if you need it smaller.
• Line it up right. If your photo has a tear or crease, line the crease up in the same direction your scanner scans. So if your scanner scans from right to left, align the tear or crease so it lays horizontal on the scanner bed to minimize the effect.
• Keep it low-contrast. As a general rule, don’t adjust the photo’s contrast with your scanning software before scanning. When you scan at a high contrast, any clipped highlight or shadow pixels won’t capture in your scan. If you must adjust the contrast before scanning, do so only to the point of achieving a moderate- to low-contrast image.
View upcoming Photoshop classes here.
When you encounter JavaScript errors in Internet Explorer, they’ll be in your face (as long as you select the Display A Notification About Every Script Error check box which is located in the Browsing section on the Advanced tab under Tools | Internet Options). That’s good for catching them in the first place (in Netscape, you might never notice the errors). However, when it comes to figuring out what the error is, Netscape beats IE in spades. Case in point: IE gives you messages such as “Expected identifier” and “Object expected.” So, what’s wrong with the code? How do you fix it? Who knows?
Compare this with what we see when we open the same error-ridden file in Netscape Navigator or Mozilla and navigate to Tools | Web Development | JavaScript Console. The messages say things like “missing variable name.” There’s nothing like good ‘ole English! And certain error messages even show pictures of your code with an arrow pointing to exactly the character that’s incorrect. What’s more, instead of a flurry of confusing dialogue boxes, you see the errors in order. That makes it much easier to figure out what’s wrong.
Browse our upcoming Java classes here.
 Balance row and column sizes in 3 clicks
Working with tables can mean a lot of tweaking and fine-tuning while you adjust the look and fit of your rows and columns. To balance your table’s appearance, click on the table and then select the rows or columns you want to adjust. Select the Layout tab from the Ribbon, if necessary, and choose Distribute Rows or Distribute Columns on the Cell Size panel. These commands uniformly distribute the sizes of the selected rows or columns without affecting the size of the table itself.
View upcoming Excel classes here.
 GUEST BLOGGER: Cristian Easterly, Applications Instructor
When working with any kind of code, you may come to a point where you need to label certain lines. You may want to stop and come back to work on the code another time and leave yourself a note so you don’t have to read through each line to make sure it is correct. You may also want to write yourself notes if you are a beginner and need to refer back to that text document to know what each line of code means/does. Another reason for adding comments would be if you were sharing your code with someone else. They need to know why you wrote the code that you did and what it is actually doing. I am going to show you how to write a comment in CSS and HTML. They are slightly different but will do the same thing. It will allow you to write anything you want in your text document without affecting the code itself.
HTML:
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
<!– Link to Home page –>
<a href=”contact.html”>Contact</a>
<!– Link to Contact page –>
The red text shows the comments in HTML. It starts with “<!–“ and ends with “–>”. You can write anything you want between them. The purpose of comments is to write something without changing your code at all. I even like to add fun little comments if I am sharing my code with someone else because I know that whatever I write will NOT show up on the page.
CSS:
p {
font-size: 24px;
/* 24 is also the current font size for the content section on the home page */
}
This is what a comment will look like on your CSS style sheet. It looks a little different than a comment in HTML, but it acts the same way. You can write whatever you want without changing your code. Start with “/*” and end with “*/”. It’s as simple as that.
These comments can go anywhere in your code. Just make sure to use the correct format for the type of code you are working with. Remember that the comments will not be interpreted, so you can write in any format you want to.
View upcoming HTML classes here.
 GUEST BLOGGER: Susan Strandberg, Instructor
PowerPoint is such a wonderfully useful tool when we want to present information to a group of people. We work hard to create interesting and inventive presentations that will grab and hold our audiences attention. Many times, if we have to create a presentation quickly we try to reuse slides from previous presentations.
How do we go about putting a slide from an existing presentation into a different presentation?
Open the presentation that you are working on. On the Home tab in the Slides group click on the bottom half of the New Slide command.
At the bottom choose Reuse Slides. This will open the Reuse Slides task pane on the right-hand side of your PowerPoint window. Click on the Browse button and choose where you would like to look for the PowerPoint presentation that contains the slides that you want to reuse.
Once you have selected the presentation with the slides you want to reuse click on Open. You should now see the slides from that presentation in the Reuse Slides task pane. If you hover over the slides you will see a larger version of that slide so that it is easier to determine which slides you want to use.
If you click on a slide it will insert that slide into your current presentation while matching the theme/design that you have applied to your current presentation. If you want to retain the theme/design of the original presentation when inserting the slides you must check the box at the bottom of the Reuse Slides task pane that says Keep source formatting. That will insert the slide exactly as is in the original presentation.
When you are done inserting slides into your current presentation you can close out of the Reuse Slides task pane by clicking the x in the top, right corner.
Check out upcoming PowerPoint classes offered by New Horizons here.
GUEST BLOGGER: Cristian Easterly, Applications Instructor
If you have ever worked with HTML, you know the frustrations that come with setting up each page and making sure they all link together. I am going to show you how to understand how the pages link, and we will break down the line of code to understand what each part means.
The first thing we want to look at is the basic structure of the link itself.
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
The parts of the link that are highlighted in red are the tags. You need one at the beginning, and one at the end to close the tag. It will not work unless you close the tag. This specific tag is an anchor. It is working to make the pages link together.
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
This next highlighted part is the attribute. This attribute specifies the page that it will be linked to. So, if we were adding this line of code to our “About” page, this link would take us to the “Home” page (index.html).
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
Our “Home” page text file is called “index.html”. Make sure you put the exact name of the text file you are linking to or it will not recognize it and it will not work. Remember to surround it in quotes too.
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
For this example, I am linking my “About” page to my “Home” page. This line of code is in my “About” text file. The highlighted text is what will appear on my page when viewed in a browser. You can put anything you want here. Depending on how you style your links in your style sheet (CSS), the word “Home” will appear that way. None of the other text shown here will appear.
So there you have it! Linking your pages together is as simple as adding this line of code to your html text file and changing the names around. Now that you know all of the parts of this tag, it should make linking the pages together a little easier.
View upcoming HTML classes here.
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