This morning I wrote the following list of ways to make your academic or professional life richer and more productive. It just so happened that I came up with 10.
1. Learn how to paste a logo, picture or full screen onto a PowerPoint slide (works great, for example, when you encounter a print-restricted PDF document - just hit the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard with the document in view, toggle to your PowerPoint slide deck, and hit Ctrl+V to paste. Then use PowerPoint's cropping tool to adjust the image).
2. Giving a PowerPoint presentation? If you've covered a slide but want to continue talking, hit the "B" button on your keyboard to darken the screen - that way the focus will be on you instead of your distracting slide.
3. Carry a USB stick around, maybe even on your keychain. They come in handy.
4. Learn how to register and manage a domain name - including things like creating an alias for your registration for privacy, basic HTML and web page design, placing ads and understanding how to use web analytics. Clueless on this stuff? The modern Internet is almost 15 years old - time to get up to speed.
5. If you work from a laptop at your desk, get a second monitor - it improves your productivity and you can get a larger screen. And with free tools like
this one it's easy to switch back and forth between the two.
6. Wondering whether you're viewing the most current content on a web page? In many cases what comes up is cached on your computer. Hitting Ctrl + F5 (refresh) will take care of that.
7. Interested in viewing your desktop without minimizing each open window individually? (Or interested in hiding from view whatever you're viewing in a hurry?) Hit the button on your keyboard that has the Windows logo on it + the "M" key and voila - clean desktop.
8. Want to improve your web surfing experience? Download
Google Chrome - it's tabbed browsing feature is the best on the market, including showing you miniature page views of your most visited sites, and it tends to be faster. A version for Mac should be out soon.
9. Converting a document to PDF can be a pain. But if you have
Cute PDF Writer it's a snap. Once you download and install it the application will show up as a printer in your print window - select Cute PDF Writer and hit "Print" and you'll then be given the option to save your as-converted PDF document wherever you like. This can also be handy for documents that have download restrictions - just print them to PDF and you've got your download.
10. Learn how to aggregate RSS feeds from the websites you like to read into an application like
Google Reader. That way you can view all the content from your favorite RSS-enabled sites (which is most sites nowadays, not just blogs) in one place.