JeffBlais.com

Phishing Scams in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

My uncle brought to my attention that lots of people don’t like to enter Credit Card information online for fear of it being stored on a server that could be compromised.

He has an 1st Gen iPhone and just updated to version 2.0.1 and wanted to download some free application on the iTunes Store but it was asking for him to enter a credit card before he could download anything.  So I did some searching online and found some instructions on how to sign up for a iTunes account without having to enter any credit card information.

1. First you need to generate a redemption code from http://www.tunecore.com/freealbum
   
2. Open iTunes.
3. Click iTunes Store under the STORE Section in the left column of iTunes.
4. Once the iTunes Store Homepage loads you will need to click Redeem on the far right side located under the QUICK LINKS Section.
   
5. Enter the code you generated in Step 1 into the box provided then click the Redeem Button.
   
6. iTunes will prompted to log into your account.  This is when you want to choose to create an account.
7. Follow through all the steps until you arrive at the Payment Method.
8. At the Payment Method fill out all the information and choose the new payment option of None at the bottom.

That’s it!

You will need to click Redeem again on the iTunes Store Homepage and enter the code you generated in Step 1 if you want to download a free album (not of your choosing).  I have been told this only works in the U.S. Store.

Now you have an iTunes Account without having to enter any personal credit card information!

Lately people have been disappointed (to put it lightly) with the fact that Twitter hasn’t re-enabled their IM and Tracking services. I had just started using it before they began having growth issues and now I miss the instant information at my fingertips.

While surfing around the Internet the other day I stumble upon a service called IM Feeds and it “delivers RSS updates to your Instant Messenger”.

So I decided to throw together this tutorial showing you how to use IM Feeds, Twitter (or any other service that provides RSS Feeds), and Twitter Search to regain tracking of information you are interested in.

1. Sign up for IM Feeds (currently in beta)

2. Goto Twitter Search & search for what you want to track. Add quotes around your search term if you want the whole term and not just the the individual words to be searched for.

3. Copy The RSS Feed To Use With IM Feeds

4. Take the copied RSS Feed and add it to your IM Feed Subscriptions

That’s it.

I have been using this since I found it and I have to say that it works farely well. The only thing that you loose in using a service like this is the fact that you don’t get instant notification as soon a message is posted but when IM Feeds checks for updates (I think about every 1-5mins) you will be sent the messages and you can continue to track the information that interests you while Twitter tracking and IM service is down.

I hope this is useful for some people. If you know of any other services that provide the same services please head over to my Friendfeed room and join the discussion.

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/jeffblais-com

I always have people asking me how to put music on their new iPod and since Apple has provided their own video tutorial I decided to provide a direct access to this video so that I can easily point people in the right direction and make adding music to their player as easy as possible.

Just follow the link below or click right on the image to watch the video.

Sync to your iPod

In this video I give you step by step instructions showing you how to enable POP access in Gmail and setup Outlook Express to work with you existing Gmail Account.