Save Time with Macros

At a book indexers meeting yesterday I realized that not everyone takes advantages of macros.

What is a Macro?
The Guide to Computing defines a macro as “a series of keyboard and mouse actions recorded to a single key, symbol, or name.” Macros are especially useful when you have to repeatedly perform the same series of keyboard and/or mouse actions.

Usefulness of Macros
For example, when I’m using Microsoft Word and want to format text on a page to save paper, instead of manually going through all the steps to change the page set up, format the text to two columns, and change the font size of all  the text, I record a macro of the process and use it to do the work for me.

Creating Macros in MS Word 2003
In Microsoft Word 2003, go to Tools > Macro > Record New Macro. When given the option to name your new macro it’s helpful to type in a meaningful name that helps you remember what the it does. Once the Record button is selected everything you do will be recorded in the Macro. When you’re done click on the Stop Recording button. To use your newly created macro just hit Alt + F8 and click on the Run button.

Macros in Other Software Programs
Many other software programs provide macro options that are easy to use. If you poke around in the software and can’t find the option consult the Help files and browse or search for macros.

RefDesk.com

If you’re trying to find stuff on the web here’s a website that saves you time. It’s a really useful all-in-one reference resource called RefDesk.com. It contains links to search engines, news sites, telephone directories, maps and driving directions, homework help sites, dictionaries and encyclopedias, good news sites, fun sites, and more. Phew!

A few things that are helpful for me include the calendar, the link to check email, and the link to the time zone map. One link,  I just discovered, leads to the Copykat Recipes site. If you’ve tried something in a restaurant they might have the recipe for you to make it at home. I’m going to make the Mississippi Mud Cake.

One thing I don’t like about RefDesk.com is that most of the links open in the same window. To get them to open in a new window hit the Ctrl key while clicking on the link.

Typing Speed Tests

Do you need to know how fast you can type or are you just curious? I checked out my typing speed with the online typing test at TypingTest.com. Thinking it probably went down I was surprised to find out it stayed about the same as it was 10 years ago, 55 wpm.

The online test is free and the time duration can be set to 1, 2, or 3 minutes. You can also pick the kind of information you want to type, such as Aesop’s Fables, Rules of Baseball, and others. For a fee, the site also provides official documentation of your typing speed and sells software for improving your typing skills.

After checking my typing speed I tried a couple of typing games and got hooked, wasting time playing the KeyMan Typing Game. If you remember Pac-man it’s just like that game. You have to work through the maze and catch the ghosts before they get you.

Search Inside Magazines with Google

Besides allowing web surfers to search inside books, Google offers the option to search inside some magazines, such as Baseball Digest, Men’s Health, Nutrition, and New York. You get full page views of the entire magazine’s content, advertisements included. But don’t expect to see all if the issues published for each title. Most magazines scanned are available in partial runs only. This is one of those things that can be useful for homework or research. You can check it out at http://books.google.com/.

Google Cheat Sheet

Google’s Cheat Sheet provides some common tips for refining and improving web searches.

For example, if you want to search Stanford University’s website for admissions information enter “admission site:www.stanford.edu.” “Site:” tells Google to search only in the website address that follows it.

If you’re looking for an exact phrase such as “to be or not to be,” enclose it in quotes.

Do you need a quick math calculation? Just type it into your search box. For example, if you want to know what 38% of 125 is, enter “38% of 125″ and Google will calculate the answer for you.

Get more time saving tips from Google’s Cheat Sheet.

Science Only Search Engine

If you need to do online searches for scientific information, check out Scirus. It is a specialty search engine that indexes scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the web. It’s definitely a time saver over using Google. Why? It pinpoints your search queries to include only results related to scientific information. That means you won’t get a bunch of mixed results that aren’t related to your search. It’s as easy to use and as fast as Google.

Learn more about Scirus.

Search using the Scirus search engine.

Retrieving Lost Passwords

Most of us have too many passwords to remember and like me you probably have a system for retrieving them. But sometimes the system doesn’t work. In that instance we can usually get a new password emailed to us.

Here’s another method for retrieving some passwords. If you have your password set to be automatically entered for you and you can see the asterisks that represent your password there’s a free tool that lets retrieve the password hidden behind some asterisks.

It’s called Asterisk Key and is available from Passware at
http://www.lostpassword.com/asterisk.htm.

Beware of Clicking on Shortened URLs

It seems like there’s always something new to beware of on the web. Although not new, spammers and others are using shortened URLs to their advantage.

About Shortened URLs
Shortened URLs can be created by using services such as TinyURL. They’re especially convenient for providing links to URLs that are exceptionally long. The service shortens a long URL, such as 100 characters, into something as short as 15 characters, making it fit on one line and short enough to  fit in messages, such as Twitter, that limit the amount of characters in a post.

The Problem
For example, if the URL points to Amazon.com, instead of being able to see that it really does point to a page on Amazon all you see is this.

http://tinyurl.com/n93tvz

The “http://amazon.com/” part of the URL is hidden and you don’t know if it really takes you to Amazon’s website.

A Solution?
TinyURL offers a preview option. Instead of taking you directly to the site the URL points to, the preview option takes you to TinyURL to view the original. Here’s the preview URL for the same page on Amazon.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/n93tvz

First it takes the surfer to TinyURL to view the original URL and provides a link to “proceed to this site.” It looks like a safer option but I imagine spammers will find a way to get around this.

Visit:
TinyURL.com
Information Week

Read More:
Information Week’s article Web Link Shrinkage Powers Spam Surge by Thomas Claburn .

WebNotes.net for Faster Research

Researching on the web and sharing the information can be a lot of work. For information I need to refer back to later I’ll either bookmark the page, or copy and paste the text and URL’s (webpage addresses) into MSWord. If I want to share the information I’ll email the URL with some notes about what the page contains.

Now I’ve discovered a much easier method for saving and sharing information using a new tool called Web Notes. With it you can highlight text on webpages, add notes to them, share the information, and save it for later. There’s no more copying, pasting, and opening multiple programs.

For easy organization and retrieval of all those notes and pages Web Notes provides folders and reports. The folder system is straight forward allowing for adding, organizing, and deleting notes. The reports tool provides full views of notes and URLs which can be saved and printed. I’ll be saving a lot of time with this tool.

Read the PC World review in the Washington Post.

Visit the:
Washington Post website
PC World website
Web Notes website

Opt Out of Online Ad Tracking

When we use the web advertisers collect data on where we go with a tracking device called a cookie. For the most part cookies are good because they store bits of data that makes repeat visits to websites smoother and faster. However, cookies are downloaded onto our computers without us knowing and we might not want them on our systems. If you want to easily opt out of ad tracking go to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) Opt-Out page.

To learn more about opting out go to Kim Komando’s tip Opt out of online ad tracking.