Microsoft Ignorant

Although I am moving to the cloud at the moment for personal documents I still use MS Apps in work but.

Every day and I mean every day I am amazed that people who sit in offices every day do not seem to have basic skills in the applications. Only yesterday I was in my bosses office and said copy that and then Crtl-V it into the other document. He looked at me blankly.

Yes he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. (Ctrl-V is keyboard shortcut for Paste). Now I use keyboard shortcuts much more than any other thing as when your hands are on the keyboard you can get more done and be more productive. I believe for instance that I can produce more content in an 15 minutes than 95% of other people. Here are some keyboard shortcuts that I use all the time for a number of applications that makes me more productive and allows me pound out content and then turn to it and fine tune. I see so many people grasping for the mouse and this slows you down. So here are some tips that can help you on a day to day basis.

MS Word

Alt -I Return Return - Inserts a Page Break.

I use this when I am either writing a header page for a word document or a table of contents or even when I want to delimit a block of Text.

PowerPoint

When you are creating a lot of slides with the killer shortcut key is

Ctrl-M - Inserts a new slide - Keep typing and you are in the header.

Excel

Alt-I - Puts you into Cell Format Love it

Other Keyboard Tips

Thanks to http://www.twitter.com/jonnyboydublin who reminded me of Windows +M which allows you to minimise all windows at once. Handy in certain circumstances when you have a lot of windows open.

Fianna Fail Mess Up Web Site Launch?

It seems that Fianna FAil raised the heckles of many yesterdayat the Camden Court Hotel in Dublin when they brought many press and bloggers together to present what was titled by Strawberry Media as a talk by Joe Rospars and ended up being a launch of their new web site.

It is clear post event that it was not advertised as a Fianna Fail event but ended up being just this.  THis is blatant false advertising and many people took time to attend.  What seems to have annoyed most people is that there was the way the event was presented.

It it also seems that an internal release by Fianna Fail to its people DID mention that it was to  launch the web site.

If you were not at the event there is some plan to release a video of the presentation but if you are thirsty for information about Rospars have a look at his blog from the campaign.

A Twitter Poem!

I must admit that I had always thought Twitter was a bit of a geeks tool. Even the name brought a wry grin to my face. Editors Note: What IS a a wry grin. But this month I sgned up to give it a try as if anything I am open to new things. I must say that I am really surprised with what a fantastic service it is and the features that are available to it. So I wrote a little poem to commemorate my first month.

Woke up this morning dead late for a meeting
'Cos I had been up late on my IPhone Tweeting

Started with Twitter just a month ago
100 people now following and that's considered slow

Now I use terms like Tweet and RT
People have started to look at me funnilly

Tweet from Web at work from the PC
On my IPhone it has to be Tweetie

Tweetdeck on laptop at night
Following interesting people at the speed of light (Editors Note: COME ON!!)

Expanding my social network every day
Twitter now is more than play

Now I don't just give out my e-mail to other people
As @kdaly100 is one of the Tweeple!!

B. G. - Before GMail (or any e-mail tool for that matter)

I use GMail as my primary mail tool for pleasure and personal web design business.  When GMail was briefly down today I thought about what I could use for sending messages and went back into the past to try and recall how we communicated in the past before mail tools (yes there was such a time!!)

The Inter-Office Memo:  Still strong in some older companies I regularly in the late 80s and early 90s spent a half day slaving over a one page inter office memo, printed it, copied it and then walked from desk to desk handing it out. Now this may seem antiquated (it is a bit) but it had some advantages.

• I got to in most cases get face to face with the person to whom the message was for.  For E-mail we get so much that people often only scan and don't process your message.
• It stopped me making too many copies as it meant I had to walk more so I focused on who the message was for.  We don't always do this in e-mail.
• It allowed me to deliver a better message as with a memo you can add a diagram and it is seen and understood straight away - proff of its success was when people pined it up on their wall for information purposes.  How many people of this for your e-mails.
• I got some needed exercise !!
  

The Phone Call:  An e-mail is often a cop out to a conversation.  A lot of people send a one line e-mail to eliminate the need to have a conversation,  Do you?  Practice picking up the phone and speaking with someone - momentary pause I just did this and had a nice sociable Project chat with a colleauge in the US -

Drop By and Tell: As it says Tom Peters spoke at length in many of his books of MBWA Management By Walking Around.  When you walk around and speak to people it makes all the difference.  Do it regularly and e-mails will actually reduce as you should also encourage people to drop by and update you.

Notice Board(s):  As an add on to the Inter Office Memo you can often communicste by a well written note and a visula and posting it outside youroiffice, on the work notice board or where people can see it and process it quickly.  If you want to publicise status on an ongoing Project this technique works extremely well. 

There is a time and a place for e-mails - I am a believer in it as a tool but it is not an absolute solution to everything.  In a future blog I plan to share how I use e-mail effectively in both personal e-mails and work e-mails.

AutoHotKey for Twitter

I have started using Twitter in the past few weeks and like what I see so far.  I use it mostly on my IPhone using Tweetie  (see Tweetie review) and Tweetdeck when I am on my laptop at home.  In the office I use the web version but I use Twitter mostly as a social and learning tool in the evenings .  This article is not about either as the blogosphere is full of articles about Twitter at the moment I and I am not going to crowd it further.

This is about my ongoing love of the AutoHotKey (www.autohotkey.com) tool which I use primarily for shortcuts and spelling corrections when I type quickly.  For twitter I created one which does this

::rthanks::Hi Thanks for following me I appreciate it. I have decided to follow you as well.  Happy Tweeting !!

I know you can set up autofollow messages but I do not do this with this account at least so I use the above for a quick answer tool. So I just type rthanksand the text expands to the text following. Cool.  Try it.  I have used the entire list of Wikipedia misspellings in an autohotkey script to correct hundreds of  misspellings and expanded it to add more like below which I also regularly mistype.

::mometn  ::moment
::mometn::moment
::pleae::please
::Desing::Design
::sued::used
::hth::hope this helps

hope this helps for the moment !!

Tweetie Review - Iphone Application

In recent weeks I have started using Twitter and am a bit addicted to it to be honest as with my IPhone glued to my hand nearly every waking hour I like to see what is happening out there in the Web 2.0 cloud (is there such a phrase?). I used to be a user of MSN Messenger but Twitter goes a lot further as it allows you form contacts with people with similar interests as you.  I was using Twitterific a free application on my IPhone but it lacked a few features that I needed which may not be ones that other people look for but I really liked.

I have not purchased a lot of applications for my IPhone (2-3 in total) but Tweetie caught my eye and for the price I thought it was worth a try.  Overall I am vary happy with it and here are some of the things I like and a couple I dislike about it.

1. Multiple Accounts

Tweetie allows you to have multiple accounts.  Before I got it I hadn't even considered using multiple accounts on Twitter but now I have a couple for different purposes (friends, blog updates and one for blatant pushing of my fab web sites !!)

2. Easy To Read

It is easier to read on my IPhone and clearly shows the different type of tweets that you have received.  So at a glance you can scroll through and see the relevant messages out there.

3. Search/Trends

It has a nice Search and Trends function with the Trends showing what are the hot to pics out on the Twittisphere.  I like this as with Search it helps me look for people interested in similar topics.

4. Go To User

It allows you to quickly to jump to a specific user and find out what they are tweeting about.  I use this if I see a speciic name that looks interesting and I then can see if they are worth following.

Tools for Virtual Teaming Web Design Projects

I am doing more and more web design at the moment and one of the areas that intrigued me was how I would manage a virtual team for a medium to large web design project.

In these days of multiple blogging tools, tools for interacting like Twitter, MSN messenger and so on and on I though of how I could use the most common tools to be effective in doing a project for a customer while making sure that everyone was in contact and keeping good records.

Google seems to have most of the tools out there that you would need to do the communications at least (storage is another days work).  The team as I would see it would be working on a small design Project and would like to gather requirements, post notes and feedback and chat on small issues aas they come across them.

For e-mail for instance you could use the already solid as a rock GMail and now with multiple Inboxes you can keep business, fun, other projects e-mail in separate locations in addition to using labels.  I have already started to do this so that I don't forget to put he correct mail address responding to different e-mails.

For Chat GMail chat works OK.  I have never used it extensively but it seems to suffice and for a small team it would do for informal communications.

Google Docs now has all you really need for basic and not so basic document, presentation and spreadsheet work.  I agree it might not give you the power of the paid applications but it would be enough for what a small Skunk Works type of team would need.  It allows you share documents and chat during their presentation and gather feedback.  I like the speaker notes function for presentations as well.

Today I was talking with a potential Mac customer (I use Windows).  Although we will do most of our work through voice and e-mail if I do need to send him a document or presentation then Google Docs will suit the level I want.  Example here is a typical list of requirements that I send to customer when they are in contact with me for web sites. I find that most customers may be technically literate but cannot process e-mail like a moretechnical person is and they need to have a document like this

The question of how you would post the prototype web site is another one that I do not have a quick answer to so perhaps others have experience of a low cost or free method of posting / hosting a design as you work through it... Let me know.

Some Things Are Free in Todays Recession

All is doom and gloom at the moment in Ireland.  Unemployment figures are rising and all is dom and gloom.  I have stopped listening to it as it is the same story every day.  I am not putting my head in the sand but in a couple of hours per week on a couple of good sites I can read news and updates not just for Ireland but across the world.

On top of that I though this evening of all the free pieces of Software that are out there that if you are an IT professional you can use to at least try and get out there and make some money.  For example as I type this I am upgrading the Lactation Consultants of Ireland's website to WordPress 2.7 (a bit overdue but I have been pretty busy with 3 web site launches over the past couple of days and trying to get a Google Ad Words campaign sorted out and that isnt even my day job). 

Anyway I digress - WordPress is a fine CMS and one I use most and it is completly free with lots of free add ons.  I am surfing with a free browser (Firefox my browser of choice for years) and typing this blog entry in ScribeFire which I would be lost without as I (try) and keep a lot of blogs up to date and could not do it in the traditional way of logging in and out. So again a nice light tool that is free.  I am not pumping SEO terms into this blog btw just impressed byt the free software community out there.  A list of other free packaghes that I use constantly on a daily basis are

• Notepad ++
• Filezilla
• Easy Thumbnails
• and a few others

If I had to pay for these I would have to use a lot of old fashioned methods to do this type of work (I could still do it but not as fast).  So there end of post - WordPress upgraded just as I finsihed typing so I am now on the latest version which is good for the users of the site as I do not have to maintain it as much for them with posts, links and so on.