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Web browsers have gotten smarter. Enter a few letters and the browser flips through your browsing history to find matches. Want to go even faster? Check out Shortmarks. When I type gm into my web browser’s address bar and hit enter, Google Mail opens. When I type im Jodie foster, my browser automatically searches IMDB for Jodie Foster. Shortmarks starts you off with a bunch of shortcuts. Here are some. Most of these were already provided by Shortmarks. The keyword is in the first column. Typing this in your browser’s address bar will open the site it’s attached to. If you don’t like the keyword,Read More →

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I tried out a new assignment in my Psych 100 course this quarter. After students have done the assigned reading, but before we cover it in class, students are asked to reflect on what they found particularly interesting in the reading and why the average person on the street should know that information. They’ve been emailing me their responses, which has greatly increased the volume of email in my mailbox. I thought there must be a better way. And then I remembered that you can create forms in Google Docs. I’m not a heavy user of Google Docs, I prefer Dropbox as my cloud storageRead More →

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My personal laptop was no longer as useful as it had once been, so I took the plunge this weekend and bought a new one. Of course it’s never that easy. Oh, the purchasing was easy enough, it was the deciding what to buy part was hard. After much investigation, I found the one I wanted. With that out of the way, I steeled myself for the onerous process of setting it up according to my preferences. Turned out not to be onerous at all. I’ve been using this password manager for several months now, and it has made my life so much easier. OneRead More →

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A colleague (thanks Craig C.!) recently sent me a link to a Forbes article (10/18/2011) about Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox. (Disclaimer: Craig swears he doesn’t usually read Forbes; he was in the waiting room of his dentist’s office.) At a recent presentation before 100-or-so psychologists (educators, researchers, and practitioners), I asked how many used Dropbox. About 90% of the hands went up. I confess I was surprised at the number. But in case anyone had any doubts about the widespread use of Dropbox, read this excerpt from the Forbes article: The opportunity in front of Drew Houston revealed itself again a few months agoRead More →

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Quick Tech Tip. In my last two posts I’ve addressed ways to get to the folder where your open Word document is located. Folder navigation in general can be a hassle – unless you’re the kind of person who just puts everything in the same folder, in which case you have other issues. For Windows 7 users, you have a quick way to access your most-used folders. Open any folder. Here I’ve opened my Dropbox folder. On the left, see the favorites area? You can add any folder here. No matter what folder I navigate to, my “favorites” will always be listed here. To addRead More →

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I have an open Word document. When I hit CTRL+ALT+O on my keyboard, the folder that contains that document opens. This is very handy if I want to attach the open file to an email message by dragging and dropping the filename onto the message. It’s also very handy if there are other files in that folder that I want to open. Tip: Always save your file before attaching it to an email message. If you attach without saving, only whatever portion that was already saved will be sent. In my last post, I discussed four options for opening the containing folder of an openRead More →

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I ran into a colleague today who posed an interesting question. (Shout out to Tina O. and Eric B.!) Paraphrasing, “I’m replying to an email message in Outlook, and I open a file in Word, and edit that file. Now I want to attach that file to my Outlook email message. Is there a way to do it?” There’s the save-and-send option in Word, but that will attach the file to a new email message, not attach it to a reply, so that’s not going to work here. Option 1 (least desirable). In the Outlook message, click the Insert tab, then click “Attach File,” andRead More →

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The theme for the last week on this blog has been email management. This morning I ran across a LifeHacker blog post that was talking about the same thing. See “Top 10 Tricks for Dealing with Email Overload.” That post reminded me that I’ve been wanting to show you how to turn off Outlook 2010 email notifications – that little popup box that appears in the lower right corner of your screen when a new email comes in. If you’re like my colleague Deb M., you are able to completely tune it out and ignore it. If you’re like me, you see it, and ifRead More →

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I’ve left Firefox. It was using up a massive amount of RAM (Firefox 6) and had slowed to a crawl. I started looking at my add-ons to see what might be slowing it down as I did with previous iterations of Firefox. And then I stopped. I thought, “Using a web browser shouldn’t be this hard.” I had tried Chrome before, but I had Firefox set up exactly as I wanted with the add-ons that I wanted. Then the scales tipped. I didn’t have many add-ons left that worked, and Chrome had many more add-ons available. I’ve been happily, and speedily, cruising the web withRead More →

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Feeling harried?  The latest edition of Faculty Focus encourages you to take back your time. We know that humans don’t multitask.  Instead, we switch from one task to another, and in the process we lose time during that switch as we try to refocus.  The author suggests scheduling “like with like”.  Do similar tasks together to minimize losing time to refocus. The author also suggests scheduling your tasks.  Block time off in your calendar to get stuff done.  During that time, focus on that task.  Sometimes we get so caught up in being available for our students we forget to take care of ourselves. It’sRead More →