As someone who has more gadgets and electronics than I’d care to mention (mostly out of fear that someone may hold an intervention and put me in virtual group therapy), one thing I have learned over the years is that although a device is built to be portable, it isn’t always convenient.

Let’s take, for example, my home or work laptops. I like them because they have a large screen and can go anywhere with me, but they tend to weigh me down. It’s like putting on five to ten extra pounds. It’s not much, but walking around with even an extra five pounds in a bag can get tiresome. In addition, you’re likely carrying supporting items that add even more weight, such as an extra mouse, power cables, and cell phones to complete your little mobile office.

If you’re like me and can’t really afford to gain more pounds than you already have, consider buying a bag with wheels. Yes, I know. People give me a hard time and ask if I stole my kid’s backpack, but it’s worth the ridicule at times. Besides, who says a grown man can’t have a rolling backpack with Finding Nemo on it?

Now, if you find you don’t have the time to keep booting up your laptop at the airport and shutting it down, consider using the hibernate feature in Windows. I set it up so when I close my laptop lid it activates the hibernate mode. It saves power and does a decent job of saving my work where I left off.

But what if you’re going on vacation and don’t want all the extra weight? In that case, a Netbook would be handy. I have one running Windows 7 Starter Edition. Not only is it lightweight and compact, it’s also good for surfing the web at local WiFi hotspots, checking e-mail, or even watching movies and TV shows on your favorite video streaming site. And although I have Office 2007 running on it, I rarely use it. I try to save work for the work laptop.

Another added benefit I get from my Netbook comes in the form of a webcam and Skype. When you travel a lot, it’s always nice to get to see your family or children. Who can resist the fact that a 7 year old who notices himself too much will inevitably talk with you, but make faces at himself the whole time?

Overall, the one device I use most—because I can quickly and easily check e-mail, listen to audio books, or take quick notes—is my iPod Touch. If you have an iPhone or other smart phone, you know what I mean.

But with great power comes great responsibility. These little wonders of the modern age can be damaged easily if not protected. How was I supposed to know that if I’m flipping the iPod around to show a larger view of a picture to someone that I should not be holding a glass filled with soda? Yeah, you guessed it—dunking it in your glass turns out to be a bad thing. Portability like this also has another big nemesis…the back pocket. Not only can you sit on it, you can also forget it’s in your pocket and wash it in the laundry. Yeah, you guessed it again—lots of water is bad. And can you believe how many soap suds can appear under the surface of the screen? Amazing!

We’ll leave you with a few tips that should help you out with those wonderful hand-held gadgets. The links for these tips can be found on the blog entry for this podcast, at  www.productiveupodcast.com.

• Are You Connected Now? – Connecting to wireless networks on a laptop
• Stealth Mode – Changing the power settings when closing your laptop lid
• Cleaning Your iPhone
• Cleaning Your Windows Mobile Device

Enjoying these tips?  Have any suggestions for future podcasts?  Stop over and write a review of the podcast on iTunes, or drop us a quick note on Twitter @productiveUcast.

So when you carry your devices in this new era of portability, take the time to consider what you really need to pack to get the greatest use on your trip—or be like me and take them all!

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

One of the more thoughtful gifts I received recently was a GPS system. I am plagued by a complete lack of direction, so before acquiring this device, I had a keen ability to take two turns while driving and promptly find myself lost and very afraid.

Eventually, I would find a road that would lead me to something familiar, but having a GPS guiding me along is like knowing secret shortcuts to every destination. What was once a three hour journey along the scenic route is now a twenty minute trip in the express lane.

I’ve always been fond of shortcuts. There are levels in Super Mario World that I can’t even describe because I always used the Warp Zones to skip them. Life is short! I’ve got places to go and naps to take once I get there! Show me the shortcut and then get out of my way!

I guess I’m just a true product of our impatient society. We like our oatmeal instant, our photos developed in under an hour, and our computer files close at hand. Just look at a typical Windows Desktop: it’s a beautiful mosaic of icons that open programs and network folders. Without them, we’d be digging around in the Start Menu to launch an application, or spelunking in the darkest depths of a network server to reach a folder that’s buried ten levels deep.

So for this week’s tips, we offer you quicker ways of getting there. The tips include:

• Man, He’s Quick – Using the Quick Launch toolbar in Windows
• Favorites Folders Faster – Creating shortcuts for the Office applications’ Open and Save dialogs
• Short and Sweet – Creating shortcuts in Windows
• Files in Files – Embedding a file as an object in a Word document
• Ready for Action – Linking to a file with Action Buttons in a PowerPoint presentation

You can find links for these tips on our blog at www.productiveUpodcast.com. If you’ve got any feedback, comments, or suggestions, let us know in an iTunes review, and write a review of our podcast while you’re there. You can also find us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week’s edition. Until next time, get lost—and let modern technology swiftly guide you home.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s edition: “The Un-Dirty Dozen: Fighting the War on Computer Slowness!”

Atten-hut! You are hereby recruited to combat the evil forces that have infiltrated your computer, causing it to run slowly, display error messages about a lack of space, and above all, prevent you from being able to do your work efficiently! In your training, you will be armed with the proper weapons needed to effectively rid your computer of these annoyances. What is your computer’s major malfunction?

Actually, there could be a variety of maladies causing your computer to slow down to a snail’s pace.

Think about how hard these machines work for us. As we go about our day of browsing the Web, sending and receiving e-mail and attachments, and all the other daily tasks for which we rely on our computers, they are under constant attack. Your computer might be struggling to keep up with too many running programs. It might be bogged down by the sheer volume of unnecessary files that you’ve accumulated, either intentionally or in the form of temporary files. Or it may have even contracted a malicious computer virus.

Whatever the cause, there are some simple steps you can take to help reduce the amount of stress your computer is under. Once you’re done, your computer will feel like it just got back from taking leave—calm, at ease, and ready to get back to work! And just as we humans enjoy frequent vacations, be sure to spoil your computer often with this tips.

Let’s start with the simplest method: the tried and true system reboot. For many computer issues, it’s a panacea. Against the war on computer slowness, it’s heavy artillery. If you’ve ever called the help desk at work, it might be the first suggestion they make for a lot of different issues. Well, believe the hype. Restarting your computer actually can work wonders. It frees up the system’s resources, closes any programs that might have processes running in the background, and gives you a clean slate to work with. To reduce the chance that your computer will even need a reboot, it’s a good idea to shut it down at night or when it won’t be in use for extended periods of time. Here’s another perk of shutting down: reduced electricity bills! Saving money is pretty hard to top, so let’s move on.

Next on the list is keeping your computer’s anti-virus software up to date and running at all times. Most of the time, you won’t even have to worry about it. It typically runs silently in the background; crushing worms, battling vicious viruses, rejecting tiny Trojan horses (you know, the pink ones; the little pony types), and generally doing all it can to keep your computer out of the infirmary, all without interrupting you. But pay attention to the little icon that usually shows up in your System Tray, right by the area that displays the time. The appearance of the icon will vary depending on what brand of anti-virus software you have, but if a notification appears to let you know that virus definition updates are available, make sure you click it and follow the instructions. These updates keep your computer protected against the most current threats, so don’t ignore them.

Sarge here again! Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and do some real cleaning. Don’t worry, this won’t be anything like scrubbing the latrines with a toothbrush. We’re just going to clean out some old files from your computer. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got files of all kinds stored away in various folders throughout your computer. I’m sure you have files that serve no real purpose any more—old documents, music or video files, maybe some pictures that you just don’t need—but where are they? Fortunately, you won’t have to scour through every file in your computer to find these files; you can just make Windows do it for you. Here’s how. Listen up!

The Search feature makes it easy to locate files of a specific file type. Want to locate every Word document on your computer? Just search for *.doc. The asterisk (*) is a wildcard character, pretty similar to the “Wild Draw Four” card in Uno—it can be anything you want. The asterisk wildcard indicates that the actual file name can consist of any combination of characters, followed by .doc for the Word document file extension.

So once you’ve found all files of a specific type, you can select one or several of them and delete them all at once, right from the Search Results pane.

That’s a step in the right direction, but those deleted files aren’t gone yet—they’re still sitting in the Recycle Bin. This really does you no good because they’re still taking up space on your hard drive. So the next step we need to take is to empty the Recycle Bin to permanently delete those files.

Well, recruits, that’s it for this week. Think you’ve got all the ammunition you need to head into battle? If not, don’t retreat; just check out the whole list of the Un-Dirty Dozen tips for keeping your PC clean. You can find them down at our bunker, at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

Here’s the Un-Dirty Dozen (plus a few bonus tips)

1. Shut Down Your Computer Frequently
2. Keep the Recycle Bin Empty
3. Clear Temporary Internet Files, History, and Cookies
4. Disk Cleanup
5. Keep Anti-Virus Software Up to Date and Running All the Time
6. Change Virtual Memory Settings
7. Search for Files by File Type
8. Compress Folders, Files, and Pictures to Save Hard Drive Space
9. Keep Hard Drive to Only What is Used
10. Clean My Recent Documents
11. Scan Hard Drives for Errors
12. Run Hard Drive Defrag
13. Search for Files by File Size
14. Search for Files by Modified Date

And if you’re enjoying these tips, I’d like to see you over in front of my tent at iTunes; write me up a review—5 stars, please. Then we’ll see you back right here at Productive U Podcast next week for another edition of our tips.

Dismissed!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s edition: “A Sign of the Times (New Roman): Exploring the World of Fonts.”

On my commute into the office this morning, I had a striking revelation: we are surrounded by more words than we sometimes realize. This revelation came to me as I slammed on my brakes to avoid striking the Mercedes in front of me; at that point, I was close enough to be able to read its bumper sticker. That just proves that there are so many opportunities to observe this, no matter where you are.

Take a moment right now to examine your own surroundings. How many instances of text do you see? Obviously you see the computer screen right in front of you, but if you can pry your eyes away from this compelling box of light for just a few seconds—no, really, just look away from the computer. I know you can do it. Okay, good. Now—what do you notice? You probably see at least a few examples of text. If you are in an office right now, you might see memos, printed e-mail messages, maybe motivational posters around the office, or even a calendar on the wall. If you drive to work as I do, you probably saw street signs, billboards, advertisements printed on the sides of buses or cars, or even graffiti. If you take public transportation, you no doubt saw some text on advertisements posted inside of the bus, on the walls of the train station, or on magazines and newspapers being sold in the train station concourse.

Now take a closer look at some of that text and observe the different fonts that are being used. The style, color, and even size of the fonts may vary depending on the purpose and message of the text. This is because, in different situations, certain fonts are usually more appropriate than others. For example, when you create a new document in Microsoft Word, you can choose any font that is installed on your computer; but for professional documents, you wouldn’t want to choose a fancy font that’s difficult to read. But there may be other situations where such a font is entirely appropriate, such as in an advertisement where there is not as much text to be read, or on a formal invitation, where flowing calligraphic fonts are often used.

So what happens when you open Word and don’t choose a different font? By default, you’ll get a font called Times New Roman. It’s been the default font for Word in versions 97 through 2003, so it should come as no surprise if you notice it on the majority of documents you’ve dealt with in the past 10 years or so. It’s much older than that, though; Times New Roman was created in 1931 by font designer Stanley Morison after he criticized British newspaper The Times for their current font choice, Times Old Roman. After that, The Times used the new font for 40 years, and its popularity grew. (Read all about the history of Times New Roman here.)

What has kept this font so popular through the years? Well, as I already mentioned, it’s the default font in most versions of Word. Some people might not care enough, or might not even know it’s possible, to change Word’s default font. Other people have just become so familiar with it that they prefer to use it over other fonts. In Word 2007, the new default font is called Calibri—arguably easier to read than Times New Roman, but if you’re one who doesn’t welcome change, you can easily choose a new default.

At this point, you might ask what makes some fonts easier to read than others. It might help here to know a bit of French and Dutch. Calibri falls into a category of fonts known as sans-serif fonts; “sans” coming from the French word for “without” and “serif” coming from the Dutch noun “schreef,” which translates to something like “stroke of the pen.” This category of fonts lacks the ornamental details that appear on some characters in a serif font such as Times New Roman. You’ll see these if you look at the bottom of a lowercase “n.” In a serif font such as Times New Roman or Georgia, this character will have little “feet” that do not appear on sans-serif fonts such as Calibri, Verdana, or Arial.

In Word 2007, you can easily test this out with a new feature called Live Preview. Type some text in a document, select it, and then click the Font drop-down list on the Home tab of the Ribbon. As you hover your mouse over different fonts, you can preview how your text will look in that font without actually committing to the change.

Anyway, some people argue that these “feet” in serif fonts help move your eyes along the text, making it easier to read; other people say the serifs can be distracting. Some say “po-TAY-to,” while still others say “po-TAH-to.” And around and around we go.

The bottom line is this: you should strive to find a font that suits your text. For large blocks of text, such as a formal document, you will want to avoid any fonts that are too fancy, flowy, or curly (or Moe, or Larry, or even Shemp, for that matter). While we’re on the point, try to stick with a color that is easily readable. Black text on a white background is always a safe bet. Blue text on a pink background? Your readers might go into seizures before the end of the first paragraph.

But that’s not to say that you should always stick with the defaults, either. There is a wide world of font formatting options and text effects available in Word that you can use to help your text stand out, and these are particularly useful for heading styles. If used in moderation, you should be able to create some eye-catching text that maintains professionalism. The tips in this week’s blog entry will show you where to find these options and how to apply them to your fonts. You can get the links for these tips at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

The tips for this week are:

• Strike Out – exploring the text effects available in Word
• Fix Your Fonts – adjusting the character spacing for text
• The Space Between – adjusting the font kerning
• Start Fresh – clear the formatting from selected text
• Making Normal Your Own – changing Word’s defaults for font, paragraph, and page setup styles (Word 2003 and earlier, Word 2007)
• Using Live Preview with Fonts in Word 2007
• Installing Fonts in Windows

For all you Mac users out there, we haven’t forgotten about you! Here are a couple of tips you can use for managing your fonts:

• Changing fonts in applications
• Enabling/disabling and installing/uninstalling fonts in Font Book

That’s all for this week. As always, if you found these tips useful or have some questions you would like to see covered in a future episode, you can leave us a quick note on Twitter by following @productiveUcast. Or, if you want to spread the love, write a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Until next time, remember: actions may speak louder than words, but when words are all you have, be sure to make them look good!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s episode: How to quickly produce DVDs in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

For the past few episodes, we have walked you through creating photo albums and presentations with music using Microsoft PowerPoint. Now it’s time to take that final leap of evolution:  creating a DVD!

After putting so much time and effort into a PowerPoint presentation, you may find it difficult to turn it into a DVD. The main reason is the feature to do this just isn’t built into the application.

So what do you do when you have family members, co-workers, or even your boss asking you to turn that presentation into a DVD? If you really want it to be perfect and have the ability to control every little aspect of the DVD, there are high-end applications and even Windows Movie Maker available to help.

But let’s come back to reality. Here is a dilemma I ran into recently…

It was the night before a family get-together to celebrate my mother-in-law and father-in-law’s anniversary. Unknown to me all day while I was at work was the conversation my brother-in-law had had with my wife. During the conversation he had mentioned that it would be great if she could put together some photo collages or some sort of presentation. She had agreed, but didn’t let me know until 8:00 pm on the night before.

Even if this doesn’t exactly match your scenarios out there, you may have been approached at work for some miracle similar to this from your boss or a sales manager. I am sure your first instinct is to say, “TONIGHT?! Are you out of your mind?!” But instead what comes out is, “Sure, I would be happy to help,” even though you know you’ll probably now get no sleep at all.

Well, here’s what I did next:  cracked open the laptop, picked out the images, picked out the music, and created some slides for groupings.

Then I searched my machine for some program that could create DVDs. I came across Windows Media Maker and some Ulead software that came with a video camera, both of which would take days of editing to get the DVD just right. Then I noticed this sweet little gem called Windows DVD Maker. I thought it was just going to be for burning and not editing. Turns out I was able to export some PowerPoint slides to images and drag them all in with a simple interface.

Besides the quick options that you use to define the DVD menus and play options, the thing that makes this program so fast is adding the background music. One tiny, slightly hidden feature automatically adjusts slide timings to match the length of the music you have picked.

All in all, it took longer to pick out the images and songs than it did to actually set up and burn my production-quality DVD.

Total time spent: 3 hours (although one of those was spent sitting back playing Mario Kart on the Wii while the disc actually burned).

This week’s visual tips for you are:

How to export your PowerPoint Slides to images

• Text for PowerPoint versions 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007
• Video for PowerPoint 2003
• Video for PowerPoint 2007

How to create a DVD using Windows DVD Maker

• Video for Windows Vista and Windows 7

Disclaimer: Not all versions of Windows come with this program. So far it comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate. Since Windows 7 has not yet been released, we have to speculate somewhat, but the beta version of Ultimate still has it, and I suspect Home Premium will too.

Well, that’s all for this week. So just remember: the next time you’re asked to pull a miracle out of that place we can’t mention by name right now, just sit back, have a nice cool beverage, and look like you are able to manipulate time and space, and then take all the credit!

While you’re enjoying that beverage, feel free to send us your comments at www.productiveupodcast.com, visit us on Twitter @productiveUcast, or write a review of our podcast on iTunes.

See you next time!

This week’s edition: Photo Album Slide Shows in PowerPoint

The problem: Too many pictures to insert into a presentation one at a time.

The Solution (for PowerPoint 2002 – 2007):

Inserting images into a slide presentation is not really a problem. It’s easy: just use the Insert menu (or Insert tab in PowerPoint 2007), select the option for picture, browse to the file, click on it, select Insert. So what’s so hard about this? Now you create another slide, repeat the process, then start the third slide, and so on. This method isn’t too bad unless you’re trying to create a slide show that will consist of more than 10 images.

The problem for most people is time. How many photos could you do in an hour if you worked non-stop? That’s assuming that you don’t still need to add your transitions, animations, and text on the slides. Now think about trying to create a photo presentation to show off your vacation pictures from this year’s trip to the beach. How many digital pictures did you take?

In my family, I have become the unofficial photographer. I take a ton of images, and my primary duty after vacations or family gatherings is to create some sort of slide show to play later on, or to burn onto a DVD.

I like using PowerPoint so I can quickly add captions, borders, background colors, combine images together, etc… What’s the hardest part? Getting all the images inserted into PowerPoint. If you find yourself in the same dilemma, try doing the following.

Step 1: Pick out the best photos

When you have over 500 to choose from, you probably won’t want to use them all. So create a new folder on your desktop and make copies of the ones you want to use. This way, you haven’t separated your original images from their group.  Besides, when you’re separated from your herd, there is a greater chance that someone will remove you permanently (AKA “delete” you).

Step 2: Create a blank presentation

After you create that blank presentation, decide your theme. Themes are important, whether your pictures are from a wedding, vacation, family reunion, office party, or just the latest cat pictures you want to work into a LOL show for your friends. You should decide what background image or color to use and choose a font style. Remember:  it’s more engaging for your viewers if you work around a theme.

Step 3: Insert all the pictures

Prior to PowerPoint 2002, you would have been stuck inserting pictures one at a time or writing a macro (PowerPoint VBA = not so fun). Now there is actually a feature to do this. The only issue is that you have to know it exists and where to find it. I don’t think I am really unique in my desire to insert a bunch of images, each on their own slides, so I have placed a link to the written instructions for this on the blog entry for this week’s podcast.

Step 4: Organize your photos

Organizing your photos so they are grouped in meaningful ways helps keep your audience focused and doesn’t leave them wondering why some pictures are with others. Once you decide on your grouping method, add title slides at the beginning and actually explain in a few words what this group is. For instance:

• Our Day at the Beach
• Eating Lobster with Nanna
• My LOL Cats

Now moving your slides into the right group will be a snap. Simply drag your slide into the position after the title for its group using the Slide Sorter. You may find in this phase that some pictures really belong together on one slide as a collage. No problem! Just use Cut and Paste to move those images onto one slide and delete the blank ones.

Step 5: Add embellishments

In this step, you can start adding your slide transitions, animations, captions, and borders to make your image look better or more meaningful. You might also consider cropping your photos to highlight what you consider the most important portion. Adding music or sound can also help in spicing up a slide show.

In future episodes, we will show you how to add music to your presentations and create a DVD presentation.

If you’re looking for ways to enhance your presentation, try checking out this week’s recommended eTraining class, Top 10 Tips for Working with PowerPoint. I’ve created a link to the schedule for this class, which you can find in this week’s blog, located at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

Well, that’s all for this week’s podcast. Stop by next week to learn more about adding sound and music to your presentation.

If you like our podcast (and I know you do!), why not stop by iTunes and write your review, or send us a comment on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Thanks for stopping by!

Links:

• Copy and Paste
• Inserting Slides Using Photo Album Feature
• Moving Slides in Slide Sorter
• Cut and Paste
• Adding Slide Transitions
• Cropping Images in PowerPoint
• eTraining Class: Top 10 Tips for Working with PowerPoint

It’s like a shammy, it’s like a towel, it’s DiskWOW!

eSupport here for DiskWOW!

Did you know that over 80% of all computer users suffer from drive space issues? Not to worry, we have a great tip for you!

How would you like it if you could see how full your hard drive is getting? Would you be confused on what you should pitch to free up space? This crisis befuddles most of us; but be befuddled no more! Try our patented DiskWOW!

How much would you pay to clean up that old drive and breathe new life back into your computer? Would you pay $5, $10, $19.95 plus shipping and handling? Why pay at all?

Here’s how you can take advantage of DiskWOW for the low, low cost of FREE. Available for a permanent time only! Here’s how it works.

First, you need to find out if you’re running out of space. To do this, just open up the “My Computer” icon on your desktop or Start Menu, right-click on the “C” drive and Bang! Presto! POW! A menu pops up and you can select “Properties.” And like DiskWOW, you now own a slice of the pie! Pie graph, that is, displaying how much free space you have available on your drive. The blue slice indicates the space that is already being used up, while the purple slice shows how much free space is available.

Still feeling “blue” over the amount of space being used? Try out the not-so-hidden feature of the DiskWOW “disk cleanup button.” This Microsoft patented technology now availble to our listeners at no additional cost will search your hard drive and find many useless files like the following:

• Downloaded Program Files
• Temporary Internet Files
• Microsoft Office Temporary Files
• and Items in your Recycle Bin

Many of these get you nothing, but in return take up very valuable space!

You might also come across Office Setup Files. Treat these like a bonus! Keep them; you might just need them to repair your copy of Office later should a problem arise.

Still feeling the squeeze? Checking the option to “Compress old files” will zap those old files back into shape, shrinking them down to a more space-saving size. Heck, it’s like having your own version of Microsoft SlimFast!

Once you’ve chosen your options, you can feel like Ron Popeil and “Set it,” click OK, and “Forget it”! Come back a little later and it’ll done!

If you’re ready to take the DiskWOW plunge and want to share it with your family and friends, just mention that you got your DiskWOW instructions at www.productiveUpodcast.com and they too can enjoy the DiskWOW tips and more for the low, low cost of free.

Many of our customers have been writing in to share their experiences with our products. Let’s reach into the mailbag and share a few.

John from Smithsville, Iowa writes:

“Dear eSupport, your tips on clearing out the trash in my PC has been a life-changing event; so much so that I’ve even decided to clear out the floorboard of my car! My wife can’t thank you enough!”

Bill from Redmond, Washington writes:

“Hey eMoney! I thought the Internet was finally coming to a grinding halt! I did a Google search and ran across your DiskWOW miracle cure. Turns out the Internet wasn’t slowing down, I just needed to clear out my temporary Internet files. Couldn’t have done it without you! Oh yeah, my wife loves the iPhone tips!”

Millie from Paris, Illinois writes:

“There was a time I thought Fidel Castro had invaded my computer. I had so many files that started with tildes, I thought they must be the Spanish language pack I had heard so much about online. Much to my surprise, they were just Microsoft Office Temporary files. Your new and improved DiskWOW removed my Geekinese language barrier and now I’m talkin’ tech with all my friends! Thanks so much.”

Thanks to all our listeners for their feedback.

Well, if you would like to share your feedback, feel free to send it to us on Twitter at @productiveUcast or write a review of our podcast on iTunes. We aim to please, so if two isn’t enough, I’ll thow in one more. You can also submit your comments on our blog at www.productiveUpodcast.com and while you’re there, check out the written and visual tips on DiskWOW and many more!

Until next week, remember: if your hard drive is spinning out of control, use DiskWOW!

This week tips visually:

• Disk Cleanup video
• Check available space video

It’s absolutely amazing how being limited to 140 or 160 characters can really change our spelling and sentence structure. For instance, if I wanted to invite my friend out for drinks at the House of Blues in Cleveland, Ohio, I might send a text message like, “U Wan2 meet up @ HOB L8R?” WOW! This reminds me of a game I used to play as a kid on road trips where I would try to figure out what someone’s license plate might mean if it were a sentence or phrase.

Some say people have been forced to adopt this message convention to meet the character limits; others think it is code invented by teens so their parents don’t understand them (so much so you can find all kinds of lists on the Internet for translation). Heck, when we were kids we just used double-talk or really poor pig Latin. Whatever happened to the need to actually learn useful foreign languages? I can see it now, next year’s high school language offerings; Spanish, French, Esperanto, German, BFF Jill.

Well, we geeks were the original speakers of language very few understood. We spoke of “If this, Else that,” Goto, Megabyte, Terabyte, etc… In fact, if you listen closely enough, you can find the Geek in his native habitat, WoW (or, to average mortals, the World of Warcraft), speaking Geekinese.

Listen closely to the male Geek attempting to attract a mate…

“Since these are not the droids you are looking for, how about we blow this place together and battle the Sith?”

“Are you also in search of the Allspark? If you want, I can give you a lift… Autobots Transform!”

As it turns out, Microsoft has a long-forgotten language, too. It’s called keyboard shortcuts. With the invention of the mouse and a more visual interface, these shortcuts are usually overlooked by most. I have found that getting to know these can considerably speed up your workday. Here are a few of my favorites. If you learn the pattern, it is easy to remember them.

Let’s start off with controlling windows. Since I am controlling Windows itself with my shortcuts, these all use the Windows Key (usually located between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the left side of most keyboards) in conjunction with another.

• Windows Key = When pressed by itself, opens the Start menu.
• Windows Key + D = Think D for Desktop. Pressing this combination takes me directly to the Desktop, minimizing all my applications.
• Windows Key + M = Similar to the D, minimizes all open applications. If you add the Shift key to the mix (Windows Key + Shift + M), you are doing the reverse and restoring all your Windows that were minimized.
• Windows Key + F = Think F for Find. This pair activates the Find All Files window, useful for searching.
• Window Key + E = E for Explorer, meaning it opens a Windows Explorer window.
• This last one for me is a real time saver.
• Windows Key + R = This activates the Windows Run command.

In order to get the most out of it, you need to know the following words:

• EXCEL is for Microsoft Excel
• OUTLOOK is for Microsoft Outlook
• WINWORD is for Microsoft Word
• POWERPNT is for Microsoft PowerPoint
• and MSPUB is for Microsoft Publisher

So to quickly start Microsoft Excel, you simply press Windows Key + R, then type EXCEL, press the ENTER KEY, and Excel fires up like magic.
These are only a few of my favorites, but I posted some links to more useful shortcuts that work in almost any application in the blog posting for this edition of the podcast at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

This week’s tips include:

Save Your Fingers By Letting Your Fingers Save Your Work
If you have not learned the hard way already, save yourself the heartburn by heeding this bit of advice: AutoRecover and AutoSave, while handy for recovering work after crashes and other computer failures, should not be substituted for manually saving your work at frequent intervals.

Cut… Paste… That’s a Wrap!
We usually think of Cut, Copy, and Paste all together, but we usually use them in pairs. Most often, we use Copy and Paste. This tip talks about the lesser-known Cut. For moving text rather than just copying it, the Cut command is a champion when combined with Paste.

Take It Back
Most of us are pretty good friends with the magical Undo button that resides on the toolbar of most Office applications. Have you ever accidentally deleted an entire paragraph from a Word document? Ever hastily made a change to a complex formula that now causes an error in an Excel worksheet? We all have; and the always-forgiving Undo button has been there to comfort us by restoring our lost work. What could be better?

Seek and You Shall Find
We are busy people. We often do not have time to read through entire documents, web pages, or spreadsheets. Sometimes we need to locate just one piece of information so that we can go on our merry way. Perhaps the most time-saving tool that is near-univeral is the magical key combination of Ctrl+F.

The Fast and the Furious
When working in various programs, we often find ourselves doing a lot of repetitive actions. Certain functions in programs are assigned to keyboard combinations called shortcuts. Many programs have similar functions and fortunately, they often assign the same keyboard shortcuts. Using these shortcuts can considerably speed up your daily productivity.

Well, that’s all for this week’s edition. But before we go, I would like to say a special thanks to Doug Mosiondz, my silent grammar guy (I’m a geek, but I never said I had good sentence structure), and David Clayton of Clayton and Fulcrum for the excellent beats behind my podcast.

See you next week for another exciting episode of “Pigs in Space” (just kidding!).

When my great-great-grandmother was young (only about 20 years ago), there weren’t very many external things plugged into a computer. Life was simpler; people typed away and we electronic beings did our jobs.

My son, Chip, complains most about the external rats – known to you humans as a mouse. He says they don’t always allow him to work as fast as he can. I keep telling him show off those keyboard shortcuts. They have worked since the early days of computers, they save time, and there is no problem understanding them. But he is young and stubborn.

So, humans, oh humans… Take a look at your menus or ribbons, your dialog boxes and tool tips, and look for those keyboard shortcuts. Many of them start with Ctrl+ and have a letter or number to press. They really are easy, and some can even make sense to you humans, such as Ctrl+S for Save and Ctrl+P for Print.

You might ask how much time you would save by using keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse for some tasks. Well, one of my favorite humans did a test. She uses the computer all the time for her job, so I asked her to not use shortcuts for a few days and she found this quite difficult. We figured that she used her mouse a couple thousand times a day, and just the time it took to move her hand took 2-3 seconds per touch. Well, that adds up to a couple hours a day. No, you probably can’t save all of it, but the tips in this newsletter will probably help you save a quarter of it if you learn them. So keep your hands on the keyboard and save the mouse for those pointing tasks.

What kind of impact can your little gestures really have on a company? I would say some, but not major, unless you get others involved. Think of it as your little penny savings plan.

“Pennies?” you ask. Really, pennies are virtually worthless and saving a few in a large company can’t really have an impact.

Here are just a few facts about those worthless pennies that aren’t worth our time.

Here is a link to the Americans for Common Cents website (the source of this information.)

• 84% of females and 74% of males would still pick up a penny off the ground
• 73% of females and 58% of males want to keep the penny
• 33% of males and 22% females do not value loose change or keep track of it
• While more Americans own Piggy banks than in 2002 (67% versus 56%), less are now using them for penny accumulation (57% versus 87%)
• Only 27% of Americans want to eliminate the penny, virtually the same level as in 2001 (26%)
• To date, Abraham Lincoln is the favorite president featured on U.S. Currency, just beating George Washington 28% to 25% (from 2004 Coinstar National Currency Poll)

To demonstrate just what kind of an impact a group of people could have with just mere pennies is evident with the Common Cents’ 17th Annual Penny Harvest, which benefits many charitable organizations nationwide.

Here are just a few organizations that have harnessed the power of the penny:

• Penny Lovers of America, who use over 1 million pounds of pennies each year to help send disadvantaged students to college
• The Kindness Foundation in Texas, who raised over $14,000 to benefit the victims of the Oklahoma City Bombings (1995)
• and Trinity Baptist Church in Marion, OH who raised over 4 million pennies for the Brother’s Brother Foundation for use in global-relief efforts

So how can you and your co-workers regain lost pennies in your organization? Well, the easiest way you can do this is by remembering that time savings for individuals is also a monitary savings for the organization. Remember that this isn’t an effort to be recognized, but a recognition that your efforts matter to your company and to your fellow employees. So here are 10 tips to help you and your friends make an impact.

1. Twitter has helped me be more productive by teaching me to write short messages and put them in the subject line of an email. By starting your message with an asterisk and ending with dash EOM for end of message, you can greatly reduce the amount of time others need to take up reading your message. Once they catch on, you will find others following in your footsteps. Example: * Are we having a meeting today? – eom
2. When emailing people you know internally in your company, who will recognize your email address, delete your signature. It creates needless noise and helps the reader focus on your message.
3. Don’t use the Reply All button. Your message, which may have been intended as a response to a couple of people, now must be read by everyone. Do the math; if it takes you 3-4 minutes to read and scan the message and there are 10 people on the list, you have just spent 30-40 minutes of valuable productivity time of the company. So is your response of “Thanks” worth the time it takes 10 people to read?
4. When answering questions in an email, don’t write your response in the other person’s message. Instead, make it easy to find by copying and pasting the questions into your response and then adding your answers. But if you still insist on doing this, at least turn on the “Mark My Comments With” feature in Outlook so it is easy to find both by your name and by color.Access this option by going to Tools > Options > Email Options



5. If you’re sending a link to someone, don’t include just the link, include a brief summary of why you think this link will be of use to the person you are sending in 1-2 sentences and let the person decide. Remember: every message someone reads takes time that costs money.
6. Archive your inbox frequently. This can vastly speed up the time required to access your messages from the server and save most people up to an hour or more each week. I know archiving takes time. So why not start your archive when you step away for a break, or first thing in the morning when you head off to get that sweet cup of java.
7. When you save files with a date in the file name, save them with the date at the beginning, formatted as year dash month dash day. This will make it faster and easier to find because it can be sorted quickly by filename. Example: 2009-04-24_TPS Report
8. Do regular maintenance on your PC to speed up its performance. Open up “My Computer”, right click on a local drive letter, and choose “Properties”. Once in Properties, you can choose the tab for Tool and select Defrag. This can easily be set to run when you go out to lunch or overnight when you leave the office. Looking to learn what this defrag thing really is? Check out the link in this blog post labeled “What is Defrag?” and our tip for creating a shortcut to quickly start it running.

   What is defragging?

   Create windows shortcut with: %windir%\system32\defrag.exe C: for easy access to starting the defrag process.

9. Use the disk cleanup utility to clean temporary files from your computer. Most people don’t know where these things actually get stored and some are stored in hidden folders. Using this utility is a great way to save drive space and make your PC run faster. Be careful to NOT remove Microsoft Office installation files in case you ever need to repair your Office programs.  Launch this by: – Open “My Computer”– Right click on local drive to clean– On the General tab click on the button marked “Disk Cleanup”
10. Hide the icons on your desk top and activate the desktop toolbar. It is a nice way to feel less cluttered, see your serene desktop background and easily access your desktop items without actually needing to minimize everything just to get to a shortcut or file. But if you prefer going to the desktop try using Windows Key + D which hides everything and takes you directly to the desktop and repeating this will return you to where you were.Hide your icons by:
    – Right click the desktop
    – Select “Arrange Icons By”
    – Choose the option for “Show Desktop Icons”
    – This will hide them, to get them back follow the same steps

So think of you and your co-workers to see if you can have a small impact on your organization and soon you may just find your company succeeding a little better from your efforts.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum