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

When you go about your day on auto pilot, rarely do you need to change the direction you take to reach your destination. But on occasions when you are forced to take detours—like I have been recently while going to work—you might just find that there are all sorts of ways to reach your destination that you never knew existed.

The other day, I was taking a new detour that the signs said to follow, just to find myself at a closed road with new detour signs pointing me back the way I came. Anyone else ever have a problem with this?

So, geek that I am, I whipped out my handy GPS, typed in the destination, and found my way by turning off-course while the “lady in the box” (as my son calls it)  repeats “You are off route! You please turn at the next street and change directions.” Of course, the only way this is going to work is to constantly click the re-route button or veer off the beaten path enough that the “lady in the box” finds a new way to go so that you can hear the glorious phrase, “You have reached your destination.”

Well, you may experience this same kind of frustration when you arrive at a new PC or laptop computer and find a new version of Windows. You now have to navigate to familiar places in a very unfamiliar Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate or even Starter Edition on a netbook.

Don’t despair! We can narrow down your detours by helping to explain a couple simple routing options that you can use in any of these versions of Windows.

Let’s start with the simplest method first. The search bar. If you happen to know what you’re looking for by name, like Joe’s Pizza, The Museum of Natural History, My proposal for the boss, my new resume, etc…you get the idea! Then all you need to do is press the start button.

Wait! Wait! Stop right there! You might be saying, “What’s that? No start button?”

Oh, that’s right! It’s the large circular button with the Windows logo located in the lower left corner of your screen where the start button used to be. Once you push this magical button (I like that fact that it glows when you hover over it. To me, that’s magic!) you will see a rectangular box that says search. Simply type in part of the name that you are looking for and presto! It will likely show on the list. Now if that isn’t magic then I’m not David Blaine!

If you’re not sure what to look for by name, but keep saying to yourself “I can’t remember…But I will know it when I see it,” then you may wish to explore the Windows Explorer way of searching. Let’s say we were searching for a recipe on Gingerbread Houses or something similar because you might be feeling a need to revisit the fairy tales of your youth. You start by checking in your documents. No good. Then you try your videos. No good either. You start picking through your local C: drive, following the path but never finding it easy to just back up a little and try the alternate path. In the past you might have done this by using your back button or by using the up one level button, over, over, and over again until you couldn’t remember where you started. Why not whip out your magic wand and teleport to a specific place along the path? In Windows 7, your wand is a mouse pointer and your teleporting map is the address bar located at the top of the window you are in. Take two seconds and look at how it has changed. Instead of slashes you now see little arrows. If you click on the word or drive in the address bar it will take you to that folder right away. If you are not sure what lies ahead, click on the arrow to see a quick list of all the folders down that path—like peeking ahead in a choose your own adventure game so that you can control the ending.

Whether you are looking for help from the “lady in the box” or need to follow the bread crumbs, you will be able to jump for joy (or maybe scare your co-workers and family) and repeatedly voice “I have reached my destination!”

Until next time, don’t forget to stop by the blog and check out other useful tips at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

See ya next time!

The first item on our list is the angry e-mail. E-mail provides a crucial benefit over face-to-face communication: you have a chance to carefully choose your words and compose an eloquent message. But e-mail can also inspire a confidence that may be lacking in live communication.

This can lead to the angry e-mail, and sometimes it’s all too easy to write things you would never say. There’s probably a reason you would never say those things, so it’s important to keep that in mind before pushing that Send button. Once you do, there’s no way to get that message back.

So if you’re angry, upset, or irritated in any way, it may be best to step away from the computer for a break. That way, you will likely cool off or relax and have a better frame of mind; after all, you probably don’t want to burn any important bridges.

Next, let’s talk about the plague of electronic communication: the forwarded chain letter. We’ve all gotten these and may have even been tempted to pass them on at some point. I mean, let’s face it: if we pass that message on to at least ten friends, we could suddenly inherit millions of dollars. And if we don’t, it could mean bad luck for the next seven years. But that is more than likely not going to be the case.

Chain letters were annoying enough when they arrived as paper mail, but in that form they cost money to send. With electronic mail, which is mostly free, chain letter forwards are even more prevalent, and just as bothersome.

Some of these messages make you feel guilty if you ignore them, or even threaten karmic disasters if you fail to pass them on to a specified amount of recipients. And then there those that imply technical catastrophes if you don’t click on something or delete a certain file. Please, friends: don’t fall for those.

So, you might ask: what is the best way to handle these unwanted messages?  First of all, delete the message, especially if it is the kind that threatens technical disaster or asks you to click on a link. Second: if they are coming from a relative or close friend, ask them gently to not include you on the list for those e-mails unless they directly know the source.  Remember, this may be the only entertainment dear Aunt Sally has.

Our dear friend, the Cybercouth Tiger, sent a note about a few other aspects of e-mail etiquette that he wanted to share with us. Here is what he had to say:

One of my avocations is playing stand-up bass in an amateur jazz ensemble. We have six musicians in the band, but using electronic calendaring is impractical for us.  As a result, our rehearsals and gigs are scheduled via e-mail messages. This would be quite acceptable but for a few irritating habits of the members in the percussion section. They don’t seem to grasp the concept that only the band member serving as our organizer needs to know if they can or cannot attend a particular date. Being drummers (and in bands, it is always the drummers), they use Reply to All when Reply was all that was needed. We all get enough superfluous e-mail from spammers and bots without getting it from percussionists, too.

On top of this, the stick-wielding troglodytes don’t understand that typing in all capital letters is rude. I often must restrain myself from replying to them (not using Reply to All, of course) that, “ALL CAPS IS FORTISSISSIMO.  PLEASE STOP YELLING!” While the decorum of a jazz band would never allow me to comport myself in such a manner with my band mates, I count it a privilege to be able to help you avoid the percussionists’ errors and harmonize with the groups with which you work.

Thanks for the advice, Cybercouth!

The tips for this week center around these ideas and a few others that will help you avoid behaving like a troglodyte, or any other unsavory character.

• Reply to All With Care – Using the Reply to All feature in Outlook and Notes
• Think Before You Send – Understanding Outlook’s message recall feature
• Don’t Shout – Avoiding the use of all caps
• Unread Letters – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Outlook
• Need a Receipt With That? – Using read receipts in Outlook and Notes
• Break the Chain – Dealing with chain letters in e-mail
• Read it Later – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Windows Mobile

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.

That’s all for this week.  Until next time, remember to make Miss Manners, the Cybercouth Tiger, and Mom proud of your e-mail communication.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

DigIT and I will be discussing how to use different views when trying to locate files or other items on a computer.

Editor: DigIT, can you explain why this topic recently caught your interest?

DigIT: My regular computer operator (my human friend) was recently complaining that she could not find a file on her computer. I asked her which one and when she told me, I was able to find it immediately. I could not understand why my friend had trouble. She attempted to explain it to me, but I found her reasons confusing; she mentioned a strange character named Waldo that seemed to always be missing.

E: Oh, you’re referring to the Where’s Waldo book series. Those are fun—what don’t you get?

D: Why do you humans like Where’s Waldo?  It seems pointless to me if you do not like looking for things.

E: Well, Where’s Waldo started out for younger children, most of whom would only be playing games or doing learning activities on a computer.  The adults, like your friend, would typically be working; trying to produce things for other people.

D: She told me that finding a file is like looking at a Where’s Waldo picture, without the fun; that finding one file among all the other files should be easier.

E: That’s probably because Where’s Waldo is a game, and finding files is typically thought of as work for us.  Maybe you need to understand that we humans see the two similar tasks as entirely different things.  Work for a human is something we have to do if we want to eat, have a place to live, or have a computer.  Something like Where’s Waldo is for entertainment, something we make a choice about doing, which has an entirely different value scale.

D: That explanation makes it somewhat clearer, although I doubt I will ever understand you humans completely.

E: It works both ways, believe me. So, were you able to offer any suggestions to make files easier to find?

D: I really do not find those Waldo pictures very challenging, and finding files is something I do without even thinking. I recommended that she try eliminating some of the files; even rearranging them might be beneficial.  We discussed displaying the files in a different order, such as sorted by size or date.

E: Oh, yes, the Details view in Windows Explorer can sort items that way. It can be very helpful. But what can you recommend for locating other types of items, like e-mail messages? I often have trouble finding specific messages in my Inbox.

D: In e-mail, there are many ways to arrange items to make it easier to find the one you want, such as sorting by columns. You can also filter out some of the items to give you a smaller group to look at. In Outlook, Search Folders provide an efficient method of filtering messages by using a specific set of criteria.

E: Search Folders are great, and so are the built-in views.

D: I could elaborate further on changing views, but the options depend on which program you are using.  My human friend said she was going to provide some tips for some of the most common software applications.

E: She did, and I’ll be sure to post those on the blog entry for this podcast. Any last words, DigIT?

D: Please try to remember the view options, and the other tools at your disposal, to assist you when searching for specific items. It is unfortunate that most of my family has not mastered the trick of talking to humans. If they could, it would probably make life for you humans much easier, but I am afraid it might also shock many of you.

By the way, here is a trick you can use for solving those Waldo pictures. Just look for the pattern in his shirt, then check for the hat and glasses to find the exact match. But I digress; I will stick to those bits and bytes.

E: Thank you for joining us this week, DigIT. We look forward to speaking with you again in the future to gain more insight on the computer world from your unique perspective.

Here are the tips for this week. You can find links for these in the blog entry for the podcast, at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

• Changing the view in a Windows Explorer folder
• Using different views in Outlook
• Using different views in Lotus Notes
• How to create your own view in Outlook
• How to use the Full Screen Reading view in Word
• Creating and using Custom Views in Excel
• Using the Slide Sorter view in PowerPoint
• Changing the Zoom level in PowerPoint
• Using different message views on a BlackBerry device
• Using different calendar views on a Windows Mobile device

Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you have any recommendations for future episodes, be sure to let us know by writing an iTunes review, or by droppping us a line on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Personally, the rhythmic tapping of fingers on a computer keyboard is like music to my ears. If there was a room with a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand computers…well, I don’t know if they’d eventually churn out a best-selling novel, but I’ll bet it would sound like a symphony in there.

This is one of the reasons I love using keyboard shortcuts while I’m working at my computer. When I’ve got a good typing rhythm going on my keyboard, I don’t want to have to disrupt the flow by reaching for the mouse to perform some commands (even though mouse-clicking can also be quite a pleasant sound).

Many e-mail clients support keyboard shortcuts, so when I’m catching up on e-mail correspondence, I try to make the most of those time-saving keystrokes. Everything from cutting, copying, and pasting text, to flagging a message for follow-up, and even sending the message, can all be performed right from the keyboard. If you’re doing something as simple as scrolling from the beginning of an e-mail to the end, you can avoid using the mouse altogether.

Even when you’re not composing a message, you can take advantage of many of the keyboard shortcuts that are available for organizing your messages and navigating through your mailbox. There are shortcuts for moving through messages in your folders, jumping directly to certain folders, moving or copying items between folders, and creating items such as messages and appointments.

Learning the keyboard shortcuts and teaching yourself to use them can take some time. I started off learning one or two, and found that I felt like I was working more efficiently when I could keep both hands on the keyboard. So I took the time to learn a few more, and eventually abandoned my mouse completely when I was working in Outlook or Gmail.

The tips for this podcast will focus on teaching you the keyboard shortcuts that are available for working with your e-mail, whether you’re in Outlook, Lotus Notes, or working on the go with a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device. The links for these tips can be found on the blog entry for this podcast, at www.productiveupodcast.com.

• A Hands-On Approach to E-mail: Keyboard shortcuts you can use while composing a message in Outlook
• No Mouse Required: Keyboard shortcuts you can use while composing a message in Lotus Notes
• Control and Shift Your Mail: Keyboard shortcuts you can use in Outlook’s main window
• Moving Multiples: Using the Ctrl and Shift keys to perform keyboard shortcuts on multiple messages at once
• Get the Most Out of Your Keyboard: Shortcut keys for the BlackBerry e-mail application
• Touch and Go: Keyboard shortcuts for Outlook on a Windows Mobile device

We’ll also throw in a few bonus links to sites that list keyboard shortcuts for some of the other popular e-mail clients:

• Outlook Web Access
• GroupWise
• Eudora (PC)
• Eudora (Mac)
• Gmail
• Yahoo Mail

Once you get into the habit of using keyboard shortcuts, you’ll find that they really can save a lot of time compared to using the mouse for certain actions. The best way to start using them is to learn one or two at first. After that, you may find yourself hooked and wanting to learn more. Then, when someone walks by your desk and mentions that you sound like a thousand monkeys, you can smile gratefully and accept it as a compliment, knowing that you are composing your own symphony of tapping keys.

That’s all for this week, but if you’re enjoying the podcast and the tips, be sure to write a review for us over at iTunes. Also, don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

But it’s a little early to be thinking of summer, isn’t it? So why would I mention this in the middle of February?

Oddly enough, even in the dead of winter, with temperatures in the single digits and several feet of snow piled up around the house, I still love a good ice cream sundae. Especially if it has peanut butter ripples, frozen pieces of candy, or chunks of cookie dough.

Some things are just better when they’re frozen, but a computer is definitely not one of them.

When your computer decides to freeze up or hang, it usually does so at a crucial moment, like when you’ve just spent several hours editing a Word document and haven’t saved it yet.

That feeling of dread sets in. You begin to panic, and then you fear the worst: that all your hard work will be lost.

Sometimes, unfortunately, this is the case. But there are some steps you can take to ensure that your work will be recovered in the event that Word crashes.

If you enable the AutoRecover feature, which is available in several of the Office applications, it will periodically save a backup version of the file you’re working on. Then, if the program quits unexpectedly, it will prompt you with the recovered file the next time you open that program.

There is no guarantee offered with the AutoRecover feature, and at times it will fail to recover your work, so your best bet is still to save frequently when working in a file. You may find it much easier to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S to save your work as you’re typing, without your fingers ever leaving the keyboard. If you can get into this habit, you might just find your left hand automatically reaching for those keys without you even realizing it!

When the Deep Freeze sets in, whether it’s Windows, an Office application, or a mobile device, we don’t want you to be left out in the cold. The tips for this week will provide you with a starting point for when it seems like all is lost.

• What’s Frozen? – How to determine whether it is Windows or an application that is frozen
• An Ounce of Prevention for File Loss – How to enable the AutoRecover feature for Microsoft Office applications
• Mittens for Your Computer – How to clear out temporary Internet files, cookies, and browsing history
• Save Your Fingers By Letting Your Fingers Save Your Work – Using a keyboard shortcut to save while working in a file

And since you can also experience crashes on mobile devices, here are a few tips that can help you with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile:

• Just In Case – How to back up your BlackBerry data
• How to Thaw a Frozen BlackBerry – Resetting a frozen BlackBerry device
• Frozen In Your Hand – Resetting a frozen Windows Mobile device

We hope you’re enjoying the podcast and all the tips. If there are any topics you’d like to see covered in a future episode, please let us know in an iTunes review, or leave us a message on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week. Try to stay warm even when your computer is freezing, and we’ll see you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

It seems to me that the language would be pretty difficult to master, especially when you consider that there are separate schools of thought on topics such as:

• Should you include a comma after the last item in a list?
• Should you include one space after a sentence, or two?
• Should punctuation be placed inside or outside of quotation marks?

I personally prefer to include a comma after the last item in a list. This is called a serial comma (or an Oxford comma) and it helps avoid ambiguity when typing a list of items. Consider the following sentence:

I enjoy eating popcorn, apples, mustard and spaghetti and meatballs.

“Spaghetti and meatballs” should be counted as one item in the list, so it makes sense to not type a comma after “spaghetti.” But if there’s no comma after “mustard,” it seems like it’s part of the spaghetti and meatballs combo. The result is quite obvious: people will think you’re a freak because you put mustard on your spaghetti and meatballs. And quite frankly, I’d agree with them.

But since nobody can agree on which is the “right” answer to the above grammar questions, you can do one or the other and still be grammatically correct. Some might critique it anyway if it’s not their preference, but the important thing is that you remain consistent with your style. If you’re going to type two spaces after a sentence, do it for every sentence in your document.

Microsoft Word’s grammar checking options can help you maintain consistency throughout your documents by highlighting errors in your grammar based on your preferences. For example, you can tell Word that you prefer to have one space after a sentence. Then, when you run the spelling and grammar check, Word will underline any instances where your sentences are followed by two spaces.

In addition to the grammar checking options, Word also has features to help out with spelling errors. You’re probably already familiar with the standard spell-check feature and you’ve no doubt seen those red squiggly lines beneath typos in your documents. But what about when those red squigglies are found under words that aren’t really typos, but words that just aren’t recognized by Word’s dictionary? In these cases, you have the ability to add words to the dictionary so they stop showing up as spelling errors.

This week’s tips will focus on the tools you need to find and use the best words, with the correct spelling and grammar, in your documents. The links can be found on the blog entry for this podcast, at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

• One Space or Two? It’s Up to You – Using Word’s grammar settings for punctuation
• What’s Another Word for Thesaurus? – Using Word’s thesaurus feature to find synonyms
• Banish the Red Squiggly Lines – Adding words to the custom dictionary in Word
• Write Your Own Dictionary – Editing the entries in the custom dictionary
• Back Up Your Word Words – How to back up the custom dictionary
• Words That Are Rarely OK – Creating a dictionary exclusion list

Armed with these new tools, you’re all set to head over to iTunes to write a raving review of our podcast, complete with impeccable grammar! Also, don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, keep learning English as a first or second language, and don’t be afraid to let Word do some of the work for you.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Well my personal “fix” has to be my iPod Touch. It has become the companion that keeps me warm on those lonely solo commutes to work and when traveling to our office in Cleveland, Ohio.

So what is it about this little device that has me sleeping with it at night and grabbing it before my morning coffee? (Yes, my wife does get jealous and asks why that THING is between our pillows. I usually just tell her “It’s okay, honey, you’re still my number one precious…yes, my precious.”)

Well, it has to be the apps…

Yes, I bought it originally for its most basic functionality—you know, to play music and watch videos on trips—but, WOW, have the apps changed how I go about my day!

Here is a list of the apps I love most and how they shape my day. Let’s start with the apps I use for work:

I use the built-in Voice Memos app when I’m inspired with an idea while I am driving the car into work (and with a brain like mine, if I don’t get the idea written down or recorded, it could be gone by the time I get to work). Once I arrive in the office, I can then get the thought down into a more appropriate location, such as one of my Microsoft OneNote notebooks. But, like anything, you can use this little app for evil, too. For instance, let’s just say some truck driver who cut me off the other day got a nice message left on one of those 800 numbers that ask “How’s my driving?” Ha, as if he didn’t already know. You’ll need an earbud with a mic to use this feature, and not all models come with them.

The iPod Touch also works very well for syncing my e-mail and calender items with the Exchange server at work. With my handy dandy gadget and a little WiFi connection, I can now respond to e-mail and schedule meetings while sitting in other meetings where someone is droning on about some topic that we had covered completely well over an hour ago. (If you’re careful, you can also work in a game of Skee-ball, another great app.)

If you’re really into the social media stuff, then I highly recommend using TweetDeck. Not only is it a free app, but it allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts. I use it for my personal account and my podcast account. By the way, if you’re enjoying this podcast, you might like to let me act like the Pied Piper and follow me @productiveUcast.

Looking for some way to type without typing? If you’re familiar with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Nuance also has a free app called Dragon Dictation that transcribes dictation using its online transcription engine. Keep in mind that you’ll want to have a WiFi connection or else it doesn’t work. It helps with this app to speak somewhat like you would if you were, say, visiting in France and didn’t know French so you would try to get the people to understand you by doing things like speaking slowly and enunciating clearly. Also, it doesn’t hurt to be in a quiet location. Although it may not be perfect, it can help and it’s certainly fun to see what your app might really think you’re saying.

If you find yourself traveling and looking for a good way to save on phone calls, find yourself a WiFi spot and turn on the Skype application. I personally have a “Skype Out” and “Skype In” number, so I can place calls to virtually anywhere at a fraction of the cost of what I would pay using a traditional cell phone plan. Keep in mind that some models of the iPod touch don’t come with earbuds that include a microphone, but I picked up iPhone earbuds online that have the mic.

Now, these last few apps can be used both for home or work, but still I find myself using them everyday.

Alarm Clock is a great app and well worth paying for the premium version. This is also another reason it is either in my bed or on the night stand. I have given up my traditional alarm clock for this one. It works wonderfully on a daily basis or, better yet, on business trips. It’s reliable and, more importantly in my case, loud.

If you’re like many people, you’re probably on Facebook. The free Facebook app is really good and keeps getting better. Although you can’t view videos on it, you can see pictures, chat, post status updates, send messages, accept and send friend requests, and receive notifications. It’s always great to be able to stand in your kitchen cooking up bacon and grilled cheese while telling all your friends about it.

And finally, probably my favorite app of all is Air Mouse by RPA Tech. It turns your iPod Touch into a remote mouse and keyboard for your PC and the Mac. Yes, you can use this to control that presentation in PowerPoint or Keynote, but where I get the most use is in the basement of my house. My personal Man Cave. I have my Windows 7 laptop connected to a projector along with my Wii and I use it to control Windows Media Center while using my Netflix instant viewing account and the Hulu Desktop Client. Now I can change my movies and TV shows and still surf the Web on a really large screen. A word of warning: Don’t let your seven year old in on how you “magically” control the computer with the power of your mind. It’s great fun watching my son trying to scroll through Netflix while squinting hard and thinking about the show he wants to see. Hey, the way I see it, I have to pay for him, so I might as well have a little fun before he wises up and stops being my “can you get that for daddy” guy.

Well, that’s it for this week’s podcast. If you like or dislike what you hear, please stop by iTunes and write a review of our podcast, or leave a comment on the blog at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

Until next time… If you squint hard enough, maybe you too can start “He-Man” on Hulu!

Enjoy!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

The other day, the song “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla came on and I found myself singing along with the lyric: “We count only blue cars…”

Nerd that I am, I couldn’t help but immediately conjure up an Excel formula to help them out:

=COUNTIF(Cars, “blue”)

It might be completely missing the point of the song (about which I’m clueless), but being able to count and sum based on conditions in Excel can be really useful.

The formula I used for counting blue cars is a good example of a simple COUNTIF doing what it does best: counting only those items that match the criteria you specify. In that formula, “Cars” could be replaced by a range of cells in an Excel worksheet that contain the names of different colors. The formula will return a number that represents how many of the cells in that range match the criteria.

COUNTIF’s summing counterpart is known as SUMIF. It works in much the same way: you tell it which cells need to match a criteria, you specify the criteria they must match, then you specify which cells will be summed as a result. This last group of cells can be in another column if needed. For example, a SUMIF formula can examine the text in cells C2 through C16 to determine which ones contain the text “red,” then sum the values in the corresponding cells from column B. So if C5 and C8 were “red,” the values in B5 and B8 would be summed.

In these examples, we’re just writing the criteria inside double quotes so that an exact match must be found. But let’s say you wanted to count how many cells match an approximate condition. For instance, if you specify the criteria to be “*ito” the formula will return a count of how many cells end in the letters “ito.” So burrito, taquito, and mosquito would all match the criteria. Mmm…I’m starting to get hungry now…and slightly itchy.

The asterisk in that formula is called a wildcard—it represents any number of characters. Likewise, you can use a question mark to represent a single character.

When you need to count cells that don’t have similarities, such as enchiladas and wool sweaters, using wildcards won’t work; but you can combine multiple COUNTIF formulas to get the results you need.

If any of this sounds confusing, just check out this week’s tips and you’ll get a better idea of how to set up these formulas.

Links to the tips are on the blog entry for this week’s podcast at www.productiveUpodcast.com, and they include:

• Let’s Sum If It Fits: Using the SUMIF function
• Count By Conditions: Using the COUNTIF function
• Creative Conditions: Using wildcard characters as criteria for SUMIF and COUNTIF
• Summing This Not That: Using the SUMPRODUCT function to sum or count using multiple conditions
• Arrayed in Splendor: Creating an array formula to sum based on multiple conditions

We’d love to hear your feedback on the tips and the podcast, so head on over to iTunes to write a review for us! And don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Thanks for joining us for this week’s podcast. With these tips, you may soon find yourself counting blue, red, and green cars all with a single formula. See you next week!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

“I’ll just give you the money and you give me the donut…end of transaction. We do not need to bring ink and paper into this.”

This scenario might seem a bit ludicrous, even for those who prefer to document everything almost religiously. But with the increase in activity on social networking sites, the minutiae of everyone’s daily lives seems much more prevalent now than it was several years ago.

Think about how often you’ve seen your friends informing the world what they had for lunch via Facebook, Twitter, or any other site with status update features. Is this something they would have shared with you over a phone call a few years ago? “Hi, Dave. I just had a tuna hoagie. Okay, talk to you later.” Probably not; but as technology advances, we find ourselves equipped with new ways to keep track of all kinds of information.

It’s comforting to know, then, that this capability has some uses that are actually productive. E-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes, for example, make it particularly easy to document your appointments, tasks, and other activities. So not only can you set up an appointment to meet with a contact, you can also have a record of the meeting for future reference.

Outlook takes this a step further and allows you to associate a contact with other items, such as e-mail messages, appointments, documents, or tasks. Once the items are linked to the contact, you can view all this related content on the contact’s Activities tab. You can then filter this view to show only upcoming appointments with that contact, for instance.

The tips for this week will focus on those features that help you keep your appointments and tasks organized and well-documented. The tips include:

• Your Presence is Requested: How to schedule a meeting in Outlook and Notes
• Stay Active: Using Outlook’s contact Activities feature
• A Noteworthy Feature: Making quick notes with Outlook’s Notes feature
• “Dear Diary…”: Using the Journal feature in Outlook and Notes
• Raising the Flag: How to flag items for follow up in Outlook and Notes
• A BlackBerry Never Forgets: How to flag an e-mail for follow up on your BlackBerry

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.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, remember: you might never need a receipt to prove that you bought that donut. But then again, you just might. See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum