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These days pretty much everyone who does some sort of research as part of their job makes extensive use of the Internet to find information. Keeping track of bookmarks and quoted text and managing passwords for multiple forums and research sites can become quite a chore. Here are SOME extensions you can install on the Google Chrome browser to make your work a little easier.
The past few months have seen a few hastily written copyright protection laws being drafted, nearly passed and then abandoned after massive public outcry in both Europe and the USA. These bills were SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) in the USA and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) in Europe. SOPA and PIPA have effectively been abandoned, and ACTA has been put on the back burner while European lawmakers review it to make sure it is constitutional and does not violate any fundamental human rights.
I have written before about various options for keeping your data backed up for the dreaded moment when disaster strikes or your computer fails beyond repair. Realising that you have lost your important documents, or having the tech team at the local computer store say that you should have backed up your data before bringing your computer in for repair, is not a good feeling.
Have you ever felt as though you spend a good portion of your working day doing trivial things on your Windows desktop – highlighting sentences, minimising and maximising windows and applications, endlessly right-clicking on things and scrolling through context menus? If so then this list is for you. Now you can wow your colleagues with your IT savvy, using this list of tricks every Windows user should know:
Prioritise tasks using the Windows 7 taskbar
When you look at the Windows taskbar, you probably would never think that it can be used as an effective to- do list. Windows 7 allows you to drag application icons on the taskbar to the left and right, however, and you can use this to prioritise your tasks at hand. Arrange your open applications from left to right according to priority. For example, if answering email is your most important task, keep Outlook to the left, followed by that Word document you need to work on before lunch, then your case management system and finally the game of solitaire that you hope to win once you have completed your pressing tasks.
The battles seen in the US over software patents could spread to the UK and the rest of Europe if the unitary patent is allowed to come into force.
Europe's 'Unitary Patent' Could Mean Unlimited Software Patents
The battles seen in the US over software patents could spread to the UK and the rest of Europe if the unitary patent is allowed to come into force
Just as the US software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated all-out software patent wars, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course. When the Hargreaves report urged the UK to avoid software patents, the UK government had already approved a plan that is likely to impose them.
Google is the most popular Internet search engine used today. It indexes the greatest number of search pages and provides a free service for people to search this index in less than a second. In addition to providing easy access to billions of web pages, Google has many features that can help you find exactly what you’re looking for, which can be very useful when trying to find information at work or if you are working as a PA for your boss. Some of these features are listed below:
View Expanded “Send To” Menu
Sometimes you may want to quickly move a folder or file to another folder on your computer, network or even a mail recipient. One of the fastest ways of doing this is right-clicking the file/folder and choosing “Send To”.
You can get an expanded “Send To” menu by holding “Shift” and right-clicking on the file or folder. This will give you even more destinations for your document/folder.
Add Any Folder to Favourites
To-do lists are a great way of increasing productivity. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the tasks we have to do during the course of a week, but we can eliminate stress by creating achievable goals. If you take the time to write down the tasks you need to complete, you will find that the list will help you to put your workload in perspective and keep the end in sight.
Here are some tips on creating to-do lists to make your workload more manageable:
1. Be realistic. Set achievable outcomes for each day and don’t put too much on your list.
Dropbox is the best way to back up your files and keep your files synced between multiple computers. Once installed, Dropbox creates a folder in your Documents or Home folder. Anything saved to this folder will be backed up online and can be synced to any other computers that have Dropbox installed on the same account. You can also share folders with your friends who use Dropbox. The basic account is absolutely free and gives you 2 gigabytes of storage space. It is cross platform and runs on Windows, OSX and Linux.
Dropbox