Most have heard of and probably used favourites as part of their Internet browsing experience.  Fewer people know of and use favourites as part of their computer browsing experience.  Be one of the elite with this Pod Pointer.

If you are using Windows 7 or Windows Vista, in Windows Explorer (quickest way to open it:  Windows Key + E) you’ll find in the top left pane there is an area with a Favourites header (well, actually it is misspelled as Favorites).  By default, it comes with a few things in there (Desktop, Downloads, etc).  Well, you can add some of the favourite file locations that you use.  Simply navigate to the folder that you’d like to add and click-drag that folder into this Favourites area.  This will create a link from within that Favourites area and is easily and directly accessible for future use.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

You’re waiting in line at the grocery store, surfing the net with your iPhone and you’ve found a funny image that you want to share with your spouse.  You could take a screenshot.  Or, you could be a pro and actually save the image to your saved photos on your iPhone.

How: Simply touch and hold the image you want to save and you will be presented with a menu that will give you the option to “Save Image”. If you choose to click that, you will then find your funny image in your saved photos. From there, you could email it to your spouse, but by now you’re hopefully at the front of the line paying for your groceries.

Note that this functionality isn’t available in all iPhone applications, but you should definitely find it available with Safari.

The inevitable “mousapocalypse” is coming  – a time where computer mice will cease to exist.  You need to prepare for survival in advance.  Start with these tricks:

Open the Start Menu using the Windows key and the arrow keys to move up and down the menu:

Then click ENTER when you have selected the program you want.

Once you are in the program you can navigate the menu bar by pressing ALT and tapping the underlined letter on the menu option.  Then you can use the arrow keys and ENTER to select what you want.  See below for an example from Microsoft PowerPoint:

Ever had to reboot your iOS device because of a frozen app?

Try holding the Home button for at least five seconds – this will forcefully close the currently active app.

Check out this Pod Pointer for further reading about how many apps are currently running on your iOS device and what you can do about it.

If you’re as busy as I am you like to save time anywhere possible.  Don’t waste any more time hitting tab to manually indent paragraphs in Microsoft Word – try this instead:

For newer versions of Microsoft Word (2007 and beyond):

• Find the Paragraph section on the ribbon
• Click on the small arrow at the bottom right-hand corner of the Paragraph section.  It looks like this:

• Under Indentation, choose First Line from the Special drop-down list
• Choose your indentation amount in the By: box

For older versions of Microsoft Word:

• Click Format –> Paragraph…
• Choose the Indents and Spacing tab
• Under Indentation, choose First Line from the Special drop-down list
• Choose your indentation amount in the By: box

This is what it should look like in all versions of Microsoft Word:

Use your newly found free time wisely!!!

Technology is collaborative and we often need to share with others.  Sometimes that means sharing something on your screen that isn’t really in a format that is transferable.  For example, you might get a strange error message pop up on your computer that you’d like to share with Smart Dolphins’ amazing Service Desk.  You could type up a message that captures the essence of the error message.  Or, you could just use the Snipping Tool to capture an image of the message on your screen!

You can find the Snipping Tool under your Accessories folder in your start menu or try just typing snip in your Windows search box just above the Start button (it’s built into Windows Vista and 7, but in Vista you may have to activate it first).  When you initiate the tool your screen will whiten and you’ll see the Snipping Tool menu.  By default, this whitenning of your screen means the tool is ready for you to choose the area on your screen that you’d like to capture as an image – you simply just click-drag to highlight an area.  The Snipping Tool will then display the image you’ve captured.  This image can be saved to your computer or simply copied into another program or an email.

Try it now!

Right-clicking on a file and selecting “Send to” to create a shortcut or move a document is useful.

Holding SHIFT while doing this allows you to “send to” even more locations:

In fact, holding SHIFT while right-clicking on a folder reveals a number of hidden options: