Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Useful Shortcuts
Windows 7 Hocus Pocus Disappearing Act Solved: Show Desktop Shortcuts
Jul 21st
I have always loved my laptop, but hated the OS.
So I recently upgraded my laptop from Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 on recommendation from…everyone. That’s right, just about anybody who used to use Vista before has said to do the switch pronto . . .
Windows 7 supposedly has more stability and speed than Vista. The techie mags and blogs seemed to agree, so I made the jump. . .
But now, as I get to know the new OS platform, I’m trying to figure out how to do all the tasks I routinely performed on a daily basis pre-Windows 7. Most of it has been ok — whenever you upgrade, it takes a little time getting used to the new look and feel. Upgrades are supposed to bring improvements and changes, right?
But there’s a couple of seemingly small things that have changed or plainly disappeared *POOF!* which make big differences in my daily workflow. It is frustrating because you sit there wondering where did they go?
Using the SHOW DESKTOP icon which was previously conveniently placed in my taskbar at the bottom of the screen was one of them. But guess what?! There’s no more icon/shortcut available in Windows 7 that’s available in the task bar! 
Personally, because I need to get back to the desktop so often, this creates a big hole in my Windows 7 experience. Luckily, there’s two specific ways to do the same function without much hassle or headache.  Here’s two ways to SHOW DESKTOP in Windows 7:
How To Bulk Submit To Social Bookmarking Sites
Oct 26th
Social media is all the rage these days.
Anyone with a website knows they should be submitting their website pages to the various social bookmarking sites to gain better visibility on the web.
But we’re also talking about a time consuming task to do the repetitive submissions to the top social bookmarking sites like: Digg.com, Propeller, Delicious, Reddit.com, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Mixx, Twitter, Furl.net, etc.
There are completely automated tools that submit in bulk, but sometimes they can be seen as spam. The next best thing to manual hand submissions one at a time is to use a semi-automated tool. . .
SocialPoster.com allows you to set-up the basics first and then go through various filtered lists of social bookmarking sites and quick-click-thru to the posting page with the main data pre-populated for you.
Here’s a video walk-through tutorial of the process of using socialposter.com:
It won’t completely eliminate the time-consuming task of manually submitting to dozens of social bookmark sites, but it certainly will shave off a decent portion of time spent on the task. Moreover, it will help you to consistently submit to the top sites using socialposter.com’s list of sites.
99 URL Shortening Services to Make Shortcut Website Addresses
Dec 28th
TinyURL.com was the the forever favorite for URL shortening services out there largely because of first mover advantage.
I heard an podcast interview with the creator of TinyURL recently, and surprisingly he doesn’t have any business plan in place other than the Google Adwords text ads placed on the URL creation page.
But this past week, I went looking for other options for easier to remember URL shortcuts. And perhaps even shorter than the 7 characters in “tinyurl”.
Here’s 99+ services out there that give you shorter urls that you can use to forward to friends, post in blog or forum posts, and increase the odds that an URL you reference via email won’t “break” when it’s read by the recipient: Read the rest of this entry »
Google Makes Travel Easier
Jan 20th
Google upgraded their flight stats search feature recently. (Did you even know Google HAD a flight stats feature?).You can now get real time status and info on your flight immediately on the search results page. A very handy feature to know about to get the most up to date information on your flight (airline status data is from www.FlightStats.com).
Just type the name of the airline and flight number (e.g. Contintal 292, co 292) into the search box and you’ll be pleased with the information you get in return . . . Read the rest of this entry »
Another Year, More Google For You
Jan 1st
It’s another year and while that means you’re getting older and older, that also means that useful services like Google are getting better and bigger.
Unlike the bloated programs that take up more space, memory and computing power away from your computer like Microsoft Office which just seems to try and pack more and more un-used features into the program with each version, Google’s list of services grow while many of them are quite useful.
The only problem sometimes is that you need a cheatsheet to remember all the good stuff Google can do for you. . .well, perhaps that’s exactly the solution – a Google Cheatsheet!
Top 7 Social Bookmarking Sites To Register & Use
Aug 10th
2007 has been the year of social bookmarking & Web 2.0.
All that hype simply means that there is a new breed of website that harnesses the collecative power of individuals across the internet.
With bookmarking, all this time, whenever you alone discover a new website that’s worthy, you add it to your Favorites or Bookmarks. But with millions and millions of great sites out there, how can you really find the best ones all alone? You are by yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
Powerpoint Tip: Stop Following Orders
Jul 25th
Did you know that Powerpoint turns 20 this year!
The creators Dennis Austin & Robert Gaskins both readily admit that there are tons and tons of BAD Powerpoint presentations and users.
The original intent of Powerpoint was to use it as a SUPPORTIVE tool to your presentation, not to bore the audience to death by dragging them through an entire detailed presentation — even when the content on the next couple of slides are irrelevant or already covered or just plain moot now based on the discussion in the room.
One of my best and most used tips is something that helps keep presentations alive and focused on the information you want to deliver to the audience in real time — the ability to jump to specific slides within a presentation ON DEMAND, AT WILL. Everyone I’ve shared this with found it incredibly useful and you could see a smirk reveal iteself when they started to imagine how useful it would be in a live powerpoint presentation.
It’s so simple, yet you’d think only powerusers and Powerpoint Magicians would have these super powers. Here’s how. . .
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!