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Did you know that you can create a keyboard shortcut to open any Windows program? Find the program you want to open (Start menu for pre-Windows 8 users; here are instructions for Windows 8 users). Right-click on the program and select “Properties.” Select the “Shortcut” tab, then click in the “Shortcut key” box. Type what you want your keyboard shortcut to be. Pick something you won’t hit accidentally or that you don’t already use as a keyboard shortcut. If you do try to use something that’s already a Windows shortcut, Windows will provide you with an alternative. In this case, I pressed CTRL, SHIFT andRead More →

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You know how to search Google. Did you know that you can have Google automatically search, and then let you know what it found out? Go to Google Alerts. Enter your search query. Let’s say that you’re interested in hearing anything about schizophrenia that appears in the news. Type schizophrenia in the query box, change the “Result type” from “everything” to “News.” Google will give you a preview of the search results. Next, choose how often you want to have the results of this query delivered to you: As it happens, once a day, or once a week. Do you want just the best resultsRead More →

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Look in your Microsoft Office folder, you know, where you go to open Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. There’s a program in there called OneNote. It’s an organization machine. Overview In OneNote, the notebook is the top level of organization, much like folders. In the image below you can see 6 of my notebooks on the left side of the screen: APA, Conferences, Work Notebook, STP, Technology, and Personal Notebook. Each notebook is divided into sections. My conferences notebook has 16 sections. You can see them on the left as “subfolders” of the conferences notebook, and you can also see the first ones as tabs alongRead More →

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Did you know that if you type mailto: in your browser’s address bar and press enter, your default email program will give you a compose screen? [Thanks to a LifeHacker reader for this tip!] Want to do it even faster? With your browser screen open, CTRL-L will take your cursor to the address line, and highlight it. Just type mailto: and press enter. Even faster? Using Shortmarks.com (see this blog post), create a new Shortmark with ‘m’ (or whatever you’ll remember as the keyword. For the direct link, type ‘mailto:’. Then save. Now, just typing m in the address bar and pressing enter is enoughRead More →

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Google Hangout is a quick and intuitive way to work with up to 9 others in a virtual environment. If you have a Google account, you can create a Hangout. Talk in real time over your computer’s microphone, see each other via webcam, and even share your desktop. Starting a Hangout In Gmail, you can click on the camera-in-the-callout box icon next to your photo to start a new Hangout. Or if you look below your name, you’ll see your contacts that are currently available. Mouse over the ones with a video camera next to their names, and a card will popup. Click on theRead More →

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Did you know that you can ‘import’ a gmail message into a new Google calendar event? Did you know that what most of us call appointments, Google calls events? “I have an event scheduled with my dentist.” That makes it sound way more serious than an annual checkup should sound. I don’t really know what ProjectX is, but it certainly sounds worthy of the “event” designation, however. Here I’ve received a message about needing to meet to discuss ProjectX in my gmail account. When I click on the “More” button, I get a dropdown menu where I can select “Create event.” This generates a newRead More →

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I’ve seen a lot of faculty desktops – both computer desktops and actual desk tops. It seems that for many of you, your approach to organization is to just toss it all on your desktop (or desk top) and hope for the best. And you swear that you’ll get both cleaned up over the summer, the same promise you’ve made to yourself (and the fire marshal) for the last 10 years. I can’t help with your desk top – actually I can. Just put it all in the trash and call it good. Really afraid you’ll need something that’s in that mess? Put it allRead More →

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MagPointer is a PowerPoint add-on (Windows only) that allows you to highlight certain areas of your PowerPoint slides on the fly. Although designed with web-based presentations in mind, it works well in the face-to-face classroom. In the screenshot below you can see a PowerPoint slide with the MagPointer toolbar on the right – 5 colored squares. Sometimes when I run MagPointer, I get the black border you see here. Other times the slide covers the entire screen, and the MagPointer icons overlap the slide. It works fine in either case, just an fyi. MagPointer at work Mouse over any element to see the dotted outlineRead More →

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I use Phrase Express for all of my canned response needs (see this post, for example), but for those of you who just want canned responses in Gmail, check out this Google Labs option. Enabling Canned Responses In Gmail, go to settings by clicking on the cog icon on the far right, and select “Settings”. Click on the “Labs” tab. Scroll down to “Canned Responses” and check “Enable”. Creating a Canned Response Compose a new email. Type up whatever you’d like to save as a response. Click on “Canned responses”. Add a “New canned response…”. Selecting it generates a popup that asks you to nameRead More →

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I was recently putting together a PowerPoint 2010 presentation that had a lot of charts in it. I wanted to reveal the data gradually, so I looked for a way to animate. It’s easy to do, if not entirely intuitive. After creating the chart, switch to the “Animations” tab. Click on the chart to select it, then click the “Add Animation” button. Choose the animation style you like; I chose “fade”. Now, with the chart still selected, click “Effect Options.” Here I can choose how I want the data to appear. When you mouse over each option, your chart will preview what it will lookRead More →