The SMH ran an interview with a travel advertising exec today who had a nice tip for remembering your hotel room number:
Carry a marker pen with you when you travel. Write the room number on your room key/swipe card – but to be security conscious, make sure you write it in code. Choose a 9 letter word (like stoneflag) – and assign a letter to each number from 1-9. So room 475 would be NLE.
The article was peppered with eccentric travel tips. I liked this suggestion much better than his other one, which was to carry only 2-3 pairs of undies, wash them in the shower, then roll them in a towel and stomp the moisture out of it. Maybe I’m less practical, but I’d rather just carry more pairs of undies.
Dennis O’Reilly says he saved himself some dough by working out ways to work in Microsoft Office apps in full screen mode, rather than shelling out for a wide screen monitor. His post runs through ways to tweak the display in Office 2003, as well as the more limited options available in Office 2007.
By default, full screen view in Office 2003 doesn’t give you menus or toolbars, but here’s how to get them:
access standard menus (like File or Edit) in full-screen mode by pressing F10 or Alt, then pressing the underlined letters to access that menu’s options or simply moving the mouse pointer to the top of the screen. get access to more menus by right clicking Close Full Screen and choosing one from the pop-up menu. Press Alt to toggle between the standard toolbar and the one you chose. You can create a customised toolbar by right clicking a toolbar and choosing Customize > Toolbars > New. Name it, select a template (choosing Normal.dot makes it available to all documents), and click OK. Fill your new toolbar by clicking the Commands tab, then select an entry in the Categories window, and drag your chosen command to the toolbar. Hit Close to finish.Full screen options in 2007 are strangely more limited than in 2003. There’s a Full Screen Reading view (which you can’t edit) or there’s the Full Screen Mode, which lacks the toolbar options from 2003- all you can do is can view standard formatting options by right-clicking anywhere in the document. Does the Mac-clone Ribbon make up for this? If you’ve got any tips for maximising your screen real estate in Office, please share in comments.
If turning the lights off for an hour for Earth Day last week was your version of a big effort for the environment, may we tempt you with some more low effort ways to make a difference? The delightfully titled “The Lazy Cheapskates Guide to Saving the Planet” offers up a few tips for the well meaning but lazy. I’ve cherry picked the ideas that seemed most practical.
Make sure the seals around your windows, doors and heating ducts are intact – otherwise you’re wasting power and money on inefficient heating/cooling Turn down your water heater (they recommend 120 F which is about 49 C) and always wash your laundry in cold water. Washing in hot water is usually unnecessary, expensive and chews through power. Use cruise control when driving (I didn’t know that it’s more fuel efficient, but then my car doesn’t have CC) If washing dishes by hand, *don’t* do it under running water. Fill the basin, then wash. If you have a dishwasher, make sure you only run it when it’s full, and skip the prewash if possible.I’d add – hang your laundry out to dry! Dryers chew up power and in our fairly mild climate they’re just not necessary. Get a laundry drying rack for indoors if you don’t want to wave your smalls at the neighbours. Got any other tips for easy greening? Share in comments please.
The Lazy Cheapskates Guide to Saving the Planet [Fivecentnickel.com]
Windows Vista tip: Web site OCModShop details how to speed up your hard drive performance in Vista by tweaking an advanced setting to enable write caching and advanced performance on your SATA hard drive. The net effect of this tweak should certainly bring improved disk performance, but there is a catch: If you’re not using a backup power supply—either a battery on your laptop or an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) on your desktop—enabling these features increases the likelihood of data loss in the event of a power outage. Either way, this tweak is worth a look if you’re looking to beef up your disk performance, and besides—you should already be using a UPS anyway. How to: Speed Up SATA Drives in Vista [OCModShop]
All platforms: Normally we don’t feature individual widgets that require downloading a separate engine to run them, but the Informer Yahoo Widget might be worth the effort. Place system monitoring tools right on your desktop with Informer, like Wi-Fi signal strength, system uptime, and disk use. Keep tabs on your favourite web site feeds and inboxes with RSS and email notifications for Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and any other POP or IMAP account. Add shortcuts to local folders, favourite web sites and images as well with Informer. Check out Cybernet News’ walkthrough of what you can do with this full-featured widget, which is a free download for Mac or Windows and requires the Yahoo Widget Engine to run.
Informer [Yahoo! Widgets via Cybernet News]All platforms: Mozilla’s just made the latest release of the Firefox 3 beta available for download. Mozilla says Beta 5 “includes more than 750 changes from the previous beta, improving stability and web compatibility.” Testers and those willing to live on the edge with Beta 5 will get speedier Javascript handling in webappps like Gmail and Zoho Office, better Windows/Mac/Linux integration, and an improved Places (bookmarks) organiser. After the jump, see the list of Beta 5 improvements pulled from the release notes. Update: The final release of Firefox 3 is slated for June.
Windows only: Freeware email application eM Client is a full-featured mail application that comes with a calendar, task manager, and contact manager out of the box. With an easy to navigate graphical user interface that has the familiar feel of Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, eM Client doesn’t really require much of a learning curve. The eM Client team also promises to deliver Google Calendar and Google Contacts synchronisation, ActiveSync mobile phone synchronisation, and full-fledged CalDev support. Later development promises widget support from Meebo, Facebook, and MySpace. eM Client is a freeware application for Windows only.
eM Client [via Download Squad]Seeing a giant Word file arrive in your inbox can leave one feeling like it’s the last chance to cram before a test—you just want to find the portions with relevant information in them, in context. The How-To Geek blog shows how to use Word 2007′s AutoSummarize feature, creating a new document that scores sentences by the occurrence of certain words and using whatever percent of the original’s length you want. It’s a mighty helpful tool for students, and for anyone whose co-workers tend to, say, get lost in their own verbiage. Easily Summarize A Word 2007 Document [The How-To Geek]
Windows only: LocalCooling isn’t the only energy-use monitor out there, but it does give you real incentive, and real numbers, to help cut down your computer’s power use for both the environment and your monthly bills. While consolidating most of the features offered in Windows’ power use control panels is helpful, LocalCooling also offers estimates as to how many watts your various components (monitor, graphics card, hard drive, etc.) are using, and how much you could save—in kilowatt hours, trees, and gallons of oil—by pulling them back a bit. LocalCooling also lets individuals and groups create accounts at its web site to track energy savings over time and, well, compete with others, of course. LocalCooling is a free download for Windows XP and Vista systems. Feel free to also check out our Top 10 Computing Energy Savers, no download required. LocalCooling [via Download Squad]
There are a scant few features of the latest release of Safari for Windows and Mac OS X that you can’t recreate in Firefox with the help of a few add-ons and tweaks—except for Safari’s intuitive inline search. It’s not a direct port, but the CyberNet blog has put together a package that gives you the same darkened-screen highlighting that makes it easier to spot your key words on a page—and even gives them that little bounce in case you’re not sure where Firefox found the highlighted term. The download is three JavaScript files that you’ll drop into a profile folder and a single extension to install, and all of it should be pretty easily removed for most users. I tested it in the Firefox 3 beta in Linux, and it works as promised. Hit the link for the package and installation instructions. Safari 3 Style Inline Search in Firefox [CyberNet]
