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Prevent Windows 8 Upgrade from Asking for Activation after Installation

Recently I finished upgrading a PC from Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro. I had downloaded an upgrade of Windows 8 Pro using Microsoft's Windows 8 upgrade offer that gives current Windows users the ability to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 until January 31st 2012. I had also bought a new SSD hard drive for the same computer and I thought I could just do a clean install of Windows 8 Pro on to the new SSD using the upgrade disc. I installed the new SSD drive and put in the Windows 8 Pro Upgrade disc. The upgrade instructions asked for a product key which I entered, after which Windows 8 installed and I was able to boot into Windows 8 Pro. All was well until shortly afterwards when Windows 8 Pro  said to enter a product key again in order to be able to personalize Windows. I tried entering the same product key that I had entered when I installed Windows 8 Pro but Windows 8 Pro said the product key was not valid. After several tries making sure their was not any typos I
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Add 5 Gigabytes of Space To Dropbox for Free

Credit for this one goes to a student of mine who passed this on to me...he was kind enough to share this amazing deal. I am not sure how long this deal will last as it relates to using a beta version of the Dropbox software With Dropbox you get the first 2 Gigabytes free, which is just enough to get you started but not enough for any serious work as it quickly fills up. So by following a few steps forwarded to me by this super kind student, you can add another 5 gigs of space for free to your Dropbox....which would give you a grand total of 7 gigs...which is a nice healthy amount...all for free....The paid service cost a minimum $100 for 50 gigs...so these 7 gigs is a perfect amount for free... Dropbox is a very handy little service, it syncs your files across multiple computers, so you do not have to worry as much about carrying your work around with you on a USB key. Everything is stored in the cloud and syncs down to all your computers running the Dropbox software. You ca

Change Green Coloured Encrypted files in Windows 7 Into Normal Files

Like most people I download stuff from the web and often times when I have downloaded the file the file or folder is coloured green. The green colour on a file or folder in Windows usually means the file is encrypted or at least Windows thinks it is encrypted. To remove that green colour from your folders and or files follow the steps below. 1) Right click on  the file or folder and select "properties". 2) Once the properties window appears select the "Advanced" button located in the lower right hand side of the window. 3) With the Advanced Attributes window open uncheck the "Encrypt contents to secure data" and click "OK" 4) Back on the properties window click the "Apply" button. If you are working on a file click "OK" and your done. If you are working on a folder another window will appear asking you to choose to apply to either this folder only or to this folder and subfolders and files. After making your choic

Google Apps Outgoing Mail Server Not Authenticating

I wrote this post to help anyone who has had a problem with accessing their Google Apps outgoing mail server. Unfortunately this post turned into a bit of an outlet for the problems I had with figuring this problem out so if you want to skip to the answer then jump down to the Short Answer section .  The Back Story I use regular Gmail but send my outgoing mail through my Google Apps outgoing mail server. The reason for this is I like to have my Emails appear to have come from my custom domain Email address and I like to use the regular non-Google-Apps Gmail service as it allows me to use a single sign in to access almost all of Google's services. Recently the people at Google have decided to allow Google Apps users to use their custom domain addresses to sign in to more Google services such as Blogger and Picasa . The roll out of this new feature is coming this fall and a few Google Apps users may have access to this feature now. I happened to be one of those users and wh

How to add a link to your image using HTML

Here is a step by step on how to make an image link in HTML. 1.) Open your web page using your HTML editor. 2.) Find the image on your page that you want to make linkable. 3.) Add the code that is highlighted in orange to your image tag.      <a href="http://yourURL"> <img src="yourImage" alt="imageDescription" /> </a> 4.) Replace "yourURL" with the location of where you want your image to link to. 5.) To make your image link to another web page and make that web page open in a new tab in the browser you can add the following to the link.                  <a href="http://yourURL" target="_blank" ><img src="yourImage"                   alt="imageDescription" /></a>

Create Panoramic Photos in Photoshop

Merging multiple photographs into a single large panoramic photo can yield excellent results and with the proper software it can turn your small sensor camera into a 30 megapixel digital camera. Adobe Photoshop CS4 has an excellent Photomerge feature that automates the tedious process of lining up and merging multiple photos into a single larger photograph. Below is the procedure for merging multiple photos into a single panoramic photograph in Adobe Photoshop CS4. 1) Open Photoshop and select "File" and then "Automate" followed finally by "Photomerge. 2) Next you will be greeted by a dialog box with several options. The Layout options give you many choices in how the final outputted file will appear. For good results I usually leave it on "Auto" and let Photoshop decide, this usually gives me decent results, but feel free to experiment with all the options here. 3) After you have selected your layout you need to select the source files.

Find Google on Twitter

I found this  post on the Official Google Blog . The post listed all the accounts that Google has created on Twitter , and they even divided it up by category. To see the list of Twitter accounts that Google has created on Twitter you can click here: Google accounts on Twitter