Shane Stevens

Flash Drives, USB’s, or Thumb Drives

November 7, 2009 by Shane Stevens

Regardless of what you call them, the small portable memory that anyone can afford can be used for many things. As an introduction to the possibilities, I would like to direct Masonic Technology readers to the article 10 cool things you can do with a USB flash drive by Greg Shultz over at TechRepublic.

In his article, Mr. Shultz touches upon usages ranging from using the drive as an MP3 player, to locking your computer.

Overall, the article does an outstanding job of introducing the versatility of portable drives, but do not limit yourself only to the article. A quick search on google will provide many other sites and articles that may just have the thing you were looking for all along. I, personally, did a search using only the terms portable apps and found an outstanding resource on makeuseof.com entitled 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (Mac and Win).

You can purchase a flash drive from any electronics store, Wal-Mart, or through online stores such as ComputerGeeks.com or NewEgg.com.

Happy reading.

Masonic Central on BTR Basics

April 6, 2009 by Shane Stevens

Masonic Central can now be found on Blog Talk Radio, but unfortunately with any “new” technology there will be some minor glitches along the way, but rest assured that behind the scenes Dean and Greg are working diligently to give their listeners what they desire. Please feel free to contact either with questions, comments, or concerns.

However, since the user interface is somewhat different at Blog Talk Radio than at TalkShoe, we here at FreemasonInformation would like to provide to our users a tutorial on the basics of listening via the new technology.

You can find Masonic Central on Blog Talk Radio by either entering in http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Masonic-Central in your web browser, typing masonic central in the search feature on the Blog Talk Radio website, or following the link found on FreemasonInformation.

To insert the player into your own site, copy and paste the following code where you want the player to show.

[code]<code language="actionscript">Copy all of the EMBED code below the —– and paste it within the code of your site
—————————————————————————-
<embed src=’http://www.blogtalkradio.com/BTRPlayer.swf?displayheight=&file=http://www.blogtalkradio.com%2fMasonic-Central%2fplay_list.xml&autostart=false&shuffle=false&callback=http://www.blogtalkradio.com/FlashPlayerCallback.aspx&width=210&height=105&volume=80&corner=rounded’ width=’210′ height=’105′ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ pluginspage=’http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer’ quality=’high’ wmode=’transparent’ menu=’false’></embed>[/code]

No Scheduling Troubles for You!

March 14, 2009 by Shane Stevens

Has your lodge, rite, or side body ever spent time trying to figure out when they can meet for a special meeting or event? We have all been there, and we have all wished we were somewhere else or that the Master would just pick a time.

Fret no more brothers, I have an easy and free solution. TimeBridge is a personal scheduling assistant that allows the head of the organization to propose multiple times for the meeting by quickly sending an invitation with a single email. TimeBridge then automatically collects the responses of those people invited, and who responds, and selects the best meeting time based on the options set by the scheduler. After the meeting time has been set it then notifies all of the participants.

To make scheduling even easier, TimeBridge supports the integration of a persons Outlook, Google or iCal calendar if they use one. Although a person needs not to sync with an outside calendar, the service provides the full experience without using one of the calendars, it is a great way to confidently select the time best for you by being able to see all the events to which you are committed on the selection screen without “bouncing” from website-to-website or window-to-window.

Unfortunately, to use the full services, such as Google calendar integration, the member must be registered with TimeBridge. However, registration is easy and provides simple instructions, with a link, to integrate your outside calendar. Literally TimeBridge asks you to enter your Google id and password and hit submit. That’s it! Your account will now automatically sync with Google, which means anytime you create a new event on your Google calendar it will show up on your TimeBridge account when using it to select a meeting time.

Let us look at a simple example of TimeBridge’s usage. The Master needs to schedule a special meeting to confer a degree on a candidate, so he logs into TimeBridge and selects a few days and times that fit his personal schedule after speaking to the candidate. He then emails an invitation (a simple fill-in box) to all of his officers through his account asking them when a good time to meet would be for them. When the treasurer receives the email he follows the link provided in the email, and while conveniently viewing his Google calendar selects the day and times that work for him. After all the officers have made their selections, TimeBridge analyzes the results and emails them the time and day that is best based upon the collective group response. Now when the lodge meets the next time, the Master can announce the day and time of the degree work without taking time away from other business or extending the meeting.