(Image: shironosov / iStockphoto)

Computers can be like Sumo wrestlers: the more powerful they get, the slower they can become and the less you want to root around their crevices to try to fix the problem. That’s because every useful computer in the world not currently controlling nuclear warheads is online, which means the last person to know what it’s doing is the actual user. And if you’re in an office, meaning other idiots have had access to it, it’s probably suffering from more damaging parasites than the crew in Alien.

Your system shouldn’t be spending its time working for any other organizations, be they l337_WAREZ or Microsoft. We’ve found three tools which will really speed up your computer system, especially when it comes to using the Internet, so even if they don’t enhance your work one jot, they’ll dramatically accelerate your life.

1. CCleaner

CCleaner understands every aspect of your annoyance. The “C” stands for computer now, because it’s a professional program, but it used to stand for something else back when it was programmed by a lone warrior annoyed by the stupid junk slowing down his system. CCleaner cuts through your computer, obliterating all the old litter your programs pump out and forget. And this isn’t in reference to malware or stupid screensavers; these are core Windows system and Explorer “temp” files which end up more massive than a basement-blogger’s porn collection.

CCleaner

The second speed boost is a registry workout, uninstalling all the old and obsolete entries your computer still checks every single second despite (mostly) uninstalling “Super Sheep Farm 1997!” over a decade ago.

But the third is the Holy Grail, the ultimate upgrade, the addition you’ll enjoy every single time you turn on your computer: the Startup list.

CCleaner

This is why your PC takes an hour and a half to get up to speed when you start it – not the ASCII font bootup, or the waving Windows logo, but that Time Of Pain when your windows are up and agonizingly-almost-openable, but every time you try to start something (usually because you need urgent info), it forgets, flips out, or moves over to another activity instead. Should Adobe be able to access your computer before you? Because when AdobeUpdater.exe is in your startup list, and we guarantee it is, they do.

Go through, be brutal, and enjoy owning your own system again.

2. SpyBot Search & Destroy

If you use the Internet you need Spybot only slightly less than you need a connection. Slightly more, in fact — if you can’t connect at all, you’ll just do something else on a clean system, but connecting without protection makes as much sense for computers as it does for people. None. And it oftentimes leads to time-consuming scratching around your apparatus wondering why you were so careless.

SpyBot Search & Destroy

Spybot is free for individuals and it’s constantly updated. Even better, it can “immunize” your system to shield it from most of the malware out there, though you’ll still need to run a scan once a week. (It’s fast enough to work over a lunch break.) You’ll be astonished at just how many unwelcome additions even entirely innocent browsing can bring.

3. Defraggler

Here’s another essential addition. All our other Smart Life articles apply only to certain people, depending on whether you bring business cards or hire freelancers, but the very fact that you’re reading this proves you use a computer. So use this.

Defraggler

Defraggler is an excellent example of a small smart company versus the immense bureaucracy: Windows already has a disk defragmentation tool, in the same way the Flintstones had a car. To say Defraggler is faster and more efficient is like saying a dump truck is a quicker way to move gravel than training cats to carry individual stones. Even an offline computer is eventually compromised by file fragmentation, as the eternal cycle of writing and erasing shuffles segments of every item on your hard drive all over the place. Defraggler rewrites everything into intact blocks, significantly speeding the operation of your computer.

###

(Image: jerges / iStockPhoto)

People ignore some Smartlife advice because it messes with their established patterns, even though the whole point of staying alive is to make tomorrow better than today. Some advice seems like too much work, even though it saves time and energy in the longer run. And sometimes, just sometimes, the advice simply seems too good to be true: an excuse to indulge under the guise of efficiency. This is one such time. Buying a second monitor isn’t an obscene luxury or a greedy gadget grab; it really can improve your productivity.

Microsoft’s awesomely-acronymed Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment (VIBE) group has shown that larger screen area can significantly improve productivity. And by “significantly” we mean 10 to 50 percent depending on the task. And if you’re not interested in that, you actually are a gremlin, a fictional creature existing only to destroy progress. And most people seem to be said gremlins; the work was completed six years ago and we’re all still struggling in monoscreen sadness.

Obviously, “productivity” is a magical nothing-word which could mean anything to anyone. However, thinking about your equipment will make the advantages obvious. Your monitor isn’t just a “screen.” It’s part of the interface between a brilliant organic “computer” evolved over millions of years and an ultrafast electronic processor with network access to an incredible information archive. Your Internet connection speed is probably the most important aspect of your setup, both personally and professionally. You’d no more use a 56k modem than you’d send faxes by smoke signal. So why, after downloading megabytes of data per second all the way from across the world, would you send it the last foot over a small, dim, cathode-ray connection to your eyes?

It isn’t just the Internet. The screen really is your work area, and not just in the hardware. Your mind builds the picture of everything you’re doing in that space, seeing all the other applications either “behind” it or packed down into a corner. You wouldn’t work on a drawing board only eleven inches across; why would you construct every file you’ll ever use on the drafting equivalent of the back of a pygmy marmoset’s hand?

The original research involved a unique curved “DSHARP” monitor over a meter across, but multiple monitors are much more manageable and offer a lot of the same advantages. Different mental “panes” allow you to organize all your sources and programs, especially when you have to work between two or more at a time. On a single screen, alt-tabbing adds an extra step to every single operation. Reducing them in size to fit means you’re operating on two programs through tiny keyholes, constantly dragging scroll-bars left and right to find what you want.

The single screen forces you to think serially, clunking from one task to the next as you replace the entire work area instead of working in parallel between two (especially when you have to work between two applications which won’t talk to each other, often the case in offices where people work as organic adapters between databases and communications).

Let’s look at a few potential systems:

The Base of Operations

You work, you play, and you want your computer to be capable of both without breaking the bank. A good baseline for such a system is the NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT: excellent power while keeping clear of the exponential price increases you get in the upper end of the graphics card spectrum.

That's how cool it looks before it's even connected.

The dual link DVI connectors enable it to drive two displays. The second output can also be used to drive a projector or your TV, entirely eliminating the need for cable and paying for itself in a matter of months. Since it supports HDTV signals, you can enjoy your Blu-ray discs at your desk. An Intel Quad Core Q6600 can power it all at a decent rate without requiring a massive outlay, while a Gigabyte S-Series GA-P35-DS3L can tie them both together with whatever memory you require. Remember, heavy graphical lifting means you need a board which can supply your bigger card’s power and cooling needs!

The Docking Station

You can have all the advantages of a two-monitor desktop without ever buying the first one. Laptop “docking stations” are infamous for being ugly, unwieldy, and — with modern connectors — utterly unnecessary. They destroy your computer’s portability while reinforcing its failings, crowding all the equipment around a single small screen.

It looks like it’s in a wheelchair, but less accessible.

The Smartlife way is to set up the improved output on your desk and just leave it there. Most modern laptops can support an external monitor. The LG Flatron Wide series combine a large sharp screen with minimum profile, meaning you can push it out of the way and still have most of your desk to work on when you’re not computing.

From the front, it’s a glory…from the side, it’s a wafer.

Connect a Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 and a G5 laser mouse to a USB hub and you’re all set. Instead of encasing your laptop in an unattractive armored suit, simply put it to the side and connect the USB and monitor cables. Voilà, a full desktop system for regular work (though you won’t be doing any CAD or playing games), and a secondary monitor to the side for references, database access, or just organizing all your instant messaging clients where they won’t start blinking over your office applications.

Note: Some older laptops, like iBooks, insist that they can only clone their desktop, copying the same display to both screens, but there’s always a patch to fix that.

Bonus advantages: Never again will you forget an important file, or fiddle with USB keys or mailbox size limits when you should be on your way to a meeting! Work in comfort at your desk, and when it’s time to go, just unplug two cables and you’re bringing your entire computer with you wherever you go. This is ideal for anyone who is often on the move.

The Bond Villain Glory

We all want it bigger, and if you’re often distracted from the bad guy’s exposition of his only weakness by his badass multi-screen setup, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 is for you. That might sound like a lot of numbers, but those are nothing. This graphics card can shift one billion pixels per second, strewn across up to six monitors for the first hexadesktop ever.

Even if you work only half the time, that’s three times as much as normal! Honest!

They may be focusing on graphics, but a six-desktop system means you really could run one of those “surrounded by monitors” desks you always see the movie geniuses running. Instead of alt-tabbing, you’d by swiveling in your chair, which sounds like it’d be more work until you account for the incredible psychological effects that level of technogasm would bring.

As for the rest of the computer? Get everything. As big and brand-new as you can make it, because you’ve engaged in the wonderful commitment of making the best computer ever. Can we come and see it?

###

(Image: Pageonce)

The other week I posted a review of Pageonce, and recommended that you sign up and use it. If that post didn’t prompt you to hand over your Internet keys to Pageonce just yet, perhaps you need a little more information. And I’m here to supply. As part of my original research into Pageonce, I took a look under the hood so to speak to understand how it integrates with various Internet account providers and how it secures your personal information. I also researched the company’s financial and market position (will it exist a year from now?) and what other blog’s are saying about Pageonce. Rest assured, before Smartlife recommends any time-saving tool to you, we do our homework.

How Pageonce Works: Information Retrieval and Security

Pageonce boasts of its “military-level” security, using independent, multiple security layers that include 256-bit data encryption, SSL systems, and multiple firewalls. The site monitors against identity theft and fraud, protects passwords, and enables the user to create different logins and passwords for every account (without having to remember them all), making everything more secure and yet still accessible directly through Pageonce. Accounts can be deleted from Pageonce at anytime, at which point Pageonce will erase them from the system. Pageonce also protects the user’s anonymity: it never requires personally identifiable information that would connect you to your account, only email address and zip code.

Because the entire user’s online accounts are accessed through one site, Pageonce, the company maintains that you’re even safer keeping everything in one place. Fraudulent links that mimic authentic provider logins can sometimes lead to access of personal accounts by criminals. By using one high-security site, Pageonce, rather than multiple sites, you don’t have to worry about fraud through multiple sites.

Like the financial organization site Mint, Pageonce can’t make any bank transactions; the financial accounts registered through Pageonce are read-only. Unlike Mint, however, Pageonce doesn’t offer proactive alert services or text or email alerts regarding unusual account activity to actively protect your accounts. Mint also touts its employee background checks to eliminate any inner criminality, and anti-phishing functions by RSA Security, which Pageonce doesn’t offer.

Is Pageonce Going to be Around When I Need It?

Pageonce has secured partnerships with three major companies so far, and on the site it invites more partnerships. JAJAH (another relatively new company, also California-based and founded in 2006) presents web-activated telephony, enabling consumers to make free and low cost telephone calls locally or globally from their computers or cell phones. Other partners are VEGAS.com, an official travel site that sees 2.5 million visitors a year, and Box.net, a site of extremely similar aesthetic design that offers storage and file sharing service at a cost. On its site, Pageonce extends an invitation for more companies to partner, billing itself as “the new way for one to one marketing”.

As far as funding, Pageonce secured $1.5 million in funding in January 2008. Company co-founders Guy Goldstein, Ahikam Kaufman, and Nissim Tapiro led Pageonce in gathering 20,000 registered users and building support for over 60,000 account types before going public in June 2008. The company has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and is quickly gaining word-of-mouth attention and even some awards. In March 2008, RedHerring named Pageonce as one of the top North America tech startups, and the Under the Radar conference also named Pageonce as one of the top companies in the “Get Aggregated” space. And in June 2008, Pageonce was nominated for the AlwaysOn Stanford Global 250 list (hailing the top companies across innovation).

For the long term, Pageonce is looking to spread the word, build the company’s staff team, and secure more partners. They also see a future possibility for their data collection being used for research purposes to companies or as information tools for users.

Promising Future: It’s Only Going to Get Better

Pageonce is a young company that will need to gain enough user support to positively spread the word about it. Some tech bloggers wonder whether more established personalized homepage providers like Netvibes will keep Pageonce from growing any further by taking some of Pageonce’s ideas for providing widgets for personal accounts. Netvibes is already looking at the possibility of going in this direction, according to founder Tariq Krim, which could put them ahead of the game.

To successfully evolve and fulfill its promise of security and usefulness, Pageonce needs to become a household name by getting more users, delivering the convenience it promises and ensuring the security of the user.

What Other Blogs are Saying About Pageonce

• “I’ve seen far too many services that claim to help you manage your life but instead weigh you down with time consuming updating necessities and initial setup processes. But after seeing Pageonce in action, I realized that this was a brand new take on the idea of having a web-based tool act as a personal assistant.” (Mashable)
• “It’s the direct action capabilities that makes Pageonce so useful — otherwise its merely a startpage with a bunch of links to all your social, finance, travel and entertainment accounts across the web.” (Mashable)
• “Any way you slice it you’ll have to put some trust in Pageonce when you hand over any login credentials. That said, there’s no question that the idea behind Pageonce — that you can access all of your online accounts from one central location — is a useful one.” (Lifehacker)
• “Adding accounts is incredibly easy as long as you’ve set up internet access with the providers. Interface is sleek, very easy to use and it serves a great purpose.” (Aramation)
• “Pageonce is a new web service that wants to solve the problem of hundreds of separate accounts that most of users have. This problem is not static and users are signing up for more services every week. This means more and more log on information for every website and service. Another associated problem is keeping up with relevant information from all the online services by logging on to them. Pageonce wants to solve this problem by bringing the necessary information to the user.” (TeqEdge)
• “Pageonce seems to have the leg up [on Netvibes] since they’ve already proven that they can aggregate this sort of information. But since they rely on their own efforts to expand support for an inexhaustible number of accounts, a more decentralized approach with Netvibes as the focal point and account providers as the widget developers themselves could win out in the long run.” (TechCrunch)
• “And while I’m all for automated tools that will help me get to the next level, will the typical user be comfortable giving up all their information for every single account they have?” (Mashable)

Bottom Line

Given Pageonce’s current integration and security methods, promising financial and market outlook, and rave reviews, I felt confident in handing over my Internet keys to Pageonce. How about you?

###

"Too...many...passwords...to...remember." (photo source: Tim Ferriss)

The glut of information that we face on a daily basis actually impairs, not improves, our productivity. Believe it or not (and I do), the average person spends 150 hours each year looking for lost information. [1] What do we spend most of our time trying to track down? Passwords! But that’s not the only time killer introduced by the WorldWideInterWeb. If we want to manage our eBay, Amazon, Verizon, Facebook, Southwest, Bank of America, ING Direct, and XYZ accounts, we have to log in to each and every site — one by one.

I don’t need a time-and-motion study to tell me how unproductive all of this retrieving and logging in is. What we need is an automated and integrated way of managing all of our account information from a single source, without having to remember 10,000 passwords and to perform an equal number of site logins. Fortunately, Pageonce does just that. It offers a service that integrates all of our account information onto a single page, thus countering the anti-productivity war the Internet is waging on us.

What is Pageonce?

Pageonce bills itself as being the “first personal internet assistant,” though in reality it’s not the first site to perform page personalization for its users. Netvibes offers local weather, photos, and widgets. Pageflakes shows photos and news of local interest, a personal calendar for use, and other features. Mint and Geezeo both offer automated help with organizing your finances. BotBox.com’s “personal internet agents” was an early program to monitor news for the user and function as a “personal assistant”, though at a cost. Watson, another shareware program with a price, was featured as an application including interfaces to phone books, internet movie finders, and more. Though it may not be the first “internet assistant” to walk the runway of the Web, to its credit, Pageonce boasts some impressive differences that make it worth a second look.

The Benefits of Pageonce

Now, I’m not generally someone who looks to the Internet to save time, but when I signed up for Pageonce and saw how it could speed up Internet transactions, even I was convinced and was ready to tell everyone I knew about it. Pageonce puts everything you use online onto one page, and helps you to organize all your financial and even social records. With more and more websites, online billing, transactions and websites for everything that we do in life, it can get hard to rely on memory only to get to the right site, the right login, and so on. Sometimes I don’t even remember all the sites or transactions I’m using and things can slide by the wayside.

Pageonce is literally like a personal assistant you can hit up once a day and check out all your stuff: phone bill, plane tickets, MySpace, PayPal, eBay, etc. It can keep you from forgetting something important, and it also stores your logins and passwords in one place so you don’t need to waste time getting your password resent when you forget it (which I constantly do).

Pageonce can save you money (keeping your financial records accessible and visually present to remind you to deal with them on time). It can save you time (no more having to remember which websites you visited to buy that certain something, or which airline account uses which password). It uses high-level security to keep all your information stored and protected, which saves you worry and risk of identity theft or fraud. It is pre-programmed to link your personal page to major companies where users are likely to have accounts (T-Mobile, Amazon, Facebook) and can accommodate any new account requests as well.

In short, Pageonce literally serves as your personal assistant, and is easy to use for even the most web-challenged user. In fact, it’s the perfect solution for an Internet rookie, child, or senior citizen who may get flustered trying to get the most out of the online world. And those already accustomed to the web and trying to save time and energy would be remiss to overlook this effective new function.

Pageonce Screenshot (image: Michael Sauers/flickr)

10 Pageonce Features That I Found Most Useful

After signing up for Pageonce, you’re provided with different categories that are already set up to gather all your information into one area. Each of the categories pulls together your important life “stuff” so that you can better organize and track activity and payments. For each of the categories, popular accounts (American Airlines, MySpace, Netflix, etc.) have been gathered and pre-populated by Pageonce’s Personal Internet Assistant. If you don’t see your preferred account or company listed on the page, you can start typing the name of it and it will pop up in the window for new accounts. If you have an obscure account, you can still get it on your page by sending a request to Pageonce, who will follow up by getting the company into Pageonce (it usually takes a few weeks).

Here’s a list of ten features that I found most useful:

1. Monitor all your finances. Have links to your bank accounts, credit cards, and investments all stored under the financial section. You can check accounts easily with the function that stores your login information, but security measures keep you from making direct financial transactions from Pageonce (to transfer money, you’d have to go directly to your bank page). Not only is it so much easier than trying to keep a paper trail of different records organized, it keeps separate account and card information at easy access online, so there’s no need to visit the different account sites.
2. Shop more efficiently. The shopping link stores account information for Amazon, eBay, and any other place you want to add. This can help you track your purchases, and also make it easier when you need to shop online because all account links are at hand. It helps you save time and money with the little things, too. I’ve been given a Starbucks card but not got around to registering it online because it’s one more separate site I’d have to take time to visit (registering it would result in free coffee refills…no small financial deal!). Because the Starbucks card is an option on the Shopping link, it makes it feel easier for me to go ahead and register it, knowing that it will be in one virtually organized desktop area rather than the overwhelming feeling of trying to keep track of all these different cards and accounts.
3. Track utilities. The Utilities function keeps track of any cell phone accounts, Skype, DirectTV, PSEG, and any others you want to add. This is useful because you can check all your bills in one place and get yourself in order by seeing your status of cell phone minutes, etc.
4. Stay socially networked. The glut of social networking sites can start to drive you crazy after awhile — I can’t even remember all the ones I’m on. For someone who can reap enormous business benefits from these sites (beyond just keeping up with friends or scouting attractive singles), it can be hugely productive and effective to keep up with them. Pageonce makes it easy because once again, they’re all in once place with login information set up. Social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace), photo sites (Flickr, Photobucket), and more can all be linked to your Pageonce site. This can also be a good way to have access to your online photos all in one spot.
5. Manage travel accounts. Travel is another category that can prove extremely useful for frequent fliers or just as useful for someone who books a flight once or twice a year and thus forgets important passwords or which site is preferred. You can manage accounts with different airlines, hotels, and car rental places, making it easy to plan a business or leisure outing to a location for the first or twentieth time.
6. Access all your email accounts. The last category is email, which links the user into their preferred email accounts, of which you can register as many as you want.
7. Access to favorite accounts. The best function seems to be the “At Once” application, which automatically gathers the most used accounts onto your homepage when you log into Pageonce. This way your favorite sites are at easiest access, but all other important sites to check phone minutes and pay bills are a click away.
8. Organize and access your family’s information. Pageonce also seems to be this century’s natural answer to efficient family organization. For a large household who may have many different email, financial, and shopping accounts, Pageonce can keep it all organized and keep parents in full knowledge of their children’s online contact and activity by monitoring their accounts.
9. Find contact information for any customer service provider. Another feature is the link to customer service providers: click on the site and you can get calling information for any of the accounts or companies without having to do further research.
10. Maintain personal information security. The security function, which Pageonce is touting, seems to be one of its biggest assets. The user can assign different usernames and passwords to each of his accounts, making them more secure, but avoid the problem of forgetting them because they will all be directly linked to Pageonce. You’ll never have to remember the passwords because all your accounts are registered with the site. Yet you’ll be extra protected with Pageonce’s “military-level” security functions. You’ll also see your account information and activity in real time, which will keep you aware of any possible identity theft and online fraud.

Bottom Line: Sign Up and Reap the Benefits of Pageonce

Think of Pageonce as one big lock box of your different accounts and information, with Pageonce being the key, rather than having to carry around a set of a million jangling keys — forgetting which one is for which lock — with the result being saved time, more productivity, more organization, and saved money.

I’m registering every one of my accounts that I can think of so I can use Pageonce to manage all of them. I’ve been personally recommending it to others, who like me have a lot going on and for which this seems to be a logical and time-saving solution. Pageonce is a great idea that could serve as an efficiency device for millions of users, including you! Give it a shot and let me know which features you find most beneficial.

###

Did you like this? Please take a second to Digg it. And I’ll serve up some supplemental information on Pageonce that describes how it works, how viable it is as a company, and what other blogs are saying about it in a few days.

References/notes:
- [1] “Data Data”

Post updates:
- September 1, 2008 at 12:30 PM ET: Pageonce now allows you to manage your online accounts via your iPhone and iPod Touch with its recently-released mobile application — iOnce. It’s free and available for download at the Apple App Store. For more information see Reuters news release or YouTube video demonstration.