Fordham IT: ITAC Blog » Tech Tip

Monday Mac Tip — Spaces

kcesiro — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:57:41 +0000

If you’re as much of a multi-tasker as I am, chances are you’ve usually got about a million programs opened up at once. While Macs certainly have the RAM to support that, their standard screen sizes don’t necessarily have the surface area for it. I’m a graphic designer, so at any given time I have Photoshop and Illustrator open together. I compulsively check my email, so Firefox and Lotus Notes are always a must. Factor in iChat and iTunes, and you’ve got one cluttered screen.

Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard come with a feature that saved me from this clutter: Spaces. It’s an incredibly easy way to organize your windows and applications by simulating a multi-desktop experience. The feature splits your computer into four (or more) screens and allows you to toggle between each by setting up your own keyboard commands.

Click here for a full tutorial. (PDF)

Have fun with it — this is a great option that will help you organize your workspace with tremendous ease.

Have You Heard the Word?

Kristen Treglia — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:30:57 +0000

Fordham University will be switching from Microsoft Office 2003 to 2007 over the next few months. For more details about when computers in the labs will be upgraded and how to get a copy for your home/office computer, see the previous blog entry.

So what’s new in MS Office 2007?

The biggest change that you will notice as soon as you open a MS Office 2007 product is “The Ribbon”. Instead of having choices that open up a drop-down menu, the new interface organizes tabs into “Tasks” that will display options on the ribbon.

Mini Tool bar

When text is selected the mini text toolbar will appear allowing you to edit such things as the font size or color without having to make a selection from the Home tab. Right clicking will also open the floating mini toolbar. For those of you who find the tool bar distracting and would like to turn off that feature, simply click on the Office button and select “Word Options”. On the “Popular” menu, you can check or uncheck the box for “Show Mini Toolbar on Selection”.

Live Preview

This is another new feature in Office 2007 products. When you mouse-over any formatting option, you will see a live preview without actually applying the new format. For example, if you highlight a portion of text and scroll through the font choices, you will see how your selected text looks with that font applied to it. This lets you quickly view different options without having to actually change the text.

File format issues

There are several things to keep in mind when saving documents in Office 2007 products. If you save a document in the 2007 file format and send it to someone who has Office 2003, they will be unable to open the document unless they download the Compatibility Pack from Microsoft (see below). To save a file in the 97 – 2003 format, select “Save As” from the Office button and choose that format from the selections offered. For people who want to save the majority of their files in this format, it is possible to set the default for saving documents as a 97 – 2003 file. To do this, click the Office button and select “Word Options” at the bottom. Select the “Save” menu and choose the desired file format from the drop down menu.

What is compatibility mode?

Compatibility mode will allow you to open, edit, and save documents in the 2003 format, however; in doing so you will lose the ability to use the new features available in MS Office 2007 such as SmartArt. It is also possible to convert a 2003 to a 2007 file format. To do this, simply click the Office Button and select “Convert”. To read more about compatibility mode in MS Office 2007 products, visit the Microsoft TechNet Website.

Can I still use shortcut keys?

Yes, to view the shortcut keys, press the “ALT” key at any time to display the shortcut keys next to their corresponding functions. For example if you press the “ALT” key, the H that appears shows you that you can press “ALT + H” to move to the Home tab. The shortcut keys can be toggled on and off at anytime by pressing the “ALT” key.

In the next several weeks, we will take a close look at Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 by sharing tips, tutorials, and resources. In the meantime, for more information:

Comparison of MS Office 2003 and 2007 via CNET (21 slides with text)
What’s New in Office 2007 via Microsoft
Sign up to receive MS Office tips daily, weekly, or monthly in a newsletter (via email)

Overview of MS Office 2007 via CNET (3:07)

DOWNLOADS:

Compatibility pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats: If you are still using MS Office 2003 and receive a file in the 2007 format, this download will allow you to open, edit, and save the file (via Microsoft). Please note, you need to make sure you have downloaded all critical updates first.

Microsoft Mac Downloads

Download classic menu and toolbar for MS Office 2007 (fee download)

Media Credit
Microsoft by Kristen Treglia
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Evernotes: pen and paper taken to the next level

Kristen Treglia — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:42:28 +0000

Have you ever scribbled a note to yourself on a convenient piece of paper, and then lost it? Or maybe you’ve taken a picture of something you wanted to remember with your cell phone, but it got accidentally deleted? Well, Evernote is a free application that can help you keep notes and ideas easily accessible and organized on your phone, computer and/or web:

Links:

Evernote
Evernote downloads for your phone, desktop, and other devices
Short Video tutorials, overviews, and ideas
“Evernote + Twitter = Instant Memories”
Evernote blog

“C” is for cookies….

Kristen Treglia — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:39:13 +0000

So, what exactly is a cookie?

“Cookies” are generally harmless and oftentimes helpful bits of information stored by your Web browser when you visit many Web sites for the first time. Once a Web site sets a cookie in your Web browser, unique information stored in the cookie is used by the site identify you on subsequent visits. Because the site is able to set you apart from all of its other visitors, it is able to effectively customize itself according to your past preferences and recall information that you may have entered on previous visits; the reason that the Google search engine “remembers” how many results that you prefer per page or your favorite Web-based store is able to display the contents of your shopping cart from a week ago, for example, is due to the fact that cookies from these sites have been implanted in your Web browser.

It should be re-asserted that cookies are essentially harmless; they are not viruses or malware and cannot directly alter information on your computer. Many Web sites, in fact, will not function properly unless your Web browser is configured to accept cookies. Cookies are not, however, viewed positively by everyone. The use of “tracking” cookies by advertisers to monitor personal browsing habits is considered by some to be a violation of their privacy. In addition, cookies can in rare instances cause Web-based applications such as the Fordham University Portal to malfunction until they are removed.

Because of these concerns, it is advisable to be aware of how to control the way in which your particular Web browser handles cookies and delete cookies from your browser if necessary. This week’s screen cast will demonstrate how to configure cookie handling and removal in the Mozilla FireFox Web browser. Next week, I’ll do the same for Internet Explorer and Safari.

For more information, see:

Cookies Tutorial – Part 1
HTTP cookie – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia..
What is a Cookie? | Microsoft Security

-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)

Photo Credit
cookiemonster by technovore via Flickr
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Creating channels on MyFiles

Kristen Treglia — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:11:29 +0000

For this week’s screencast, I’ll demonstrate a way to incorporate an RSS feed into your personal Fordham University information portal site on my.fordham.edu.

This feature that enables this is a portal “channel” called “My RSS”. Along with many other useful channels, this feature may be added to your personal Fordham University portal page as you customize it to suit your needs.

Although not as powerful as using a full-featured RSS reader such as those demonstrated in my previous posts on the topic (e.g. see posts demonstrating Google Reader, NetNewsWire, FeedDemon), using the “My RSS” channel can allow you to quickly check up on one of your most valuable RSS-enabled Web sites while conducting your daily business on the Fordham portal.

Documentation regarding the use of the Fordham portal as well as several screencast tutorials can be found on your portal home page.

-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)

Photo Credit
RSS and MyFiles by technovore via Flickr
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Firefox: Customize your Web experience

Kristen Treglia — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:45:55 +0000

Most people don’t give much thought to what browser they use to surf the internet; in fact they might not even realize how many different kinds there are to choose from.

Why should you make the switch from using Internet Explorer to another browser such as Firefox? There are several good reasons: security, customization, and speed. Firefox is not only a more secure browser and faster than Internet Explorer, but it also allows you to customize your browser experience with add-ons to make your browsing experience easy and save you time.

The following are the Firefox add-ons I use at work and why I like them. You can also download them all from the Firefox Collection that I created.

Delicious Bookmarks integrates delicious into the browser. For all readers who are new to social bookmarking or have not yet signed up for a Delicious account, take a look at my previous post on “What’s so Delicious About Social Bookmarking?” for more information and resources on using Delicious.

Twitterfox: I primarily use Twitter to keep in touch and share resources with other educators. At work I use Twitterfox and Twhirl to keep up with the latest tweets (at home I prefer to use Tweetdeck). I’m planning a future blog post on the benefits of educators using Twitter, but in the meantime if you are interested in learning more then take a look at the Twitter tab on my Pageflake for some helpful links. If you are a Twitterer, please feel free to follow me (kris10_), I primarily tweet about education, technology, and math.

Download Statusbar: Instead of getting an annoying little pop-up every time you download something from the web, you’ll see a notification on the status bar of your browser. There are also many other features available to customize your downloads.

Session Manager: I like this add-on because it’s an easy way to restore previous browsing sessions. This is especially helpful after a crash occurs when I’ve got multiple tabs open!

Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar: I’m a big fan of being organized and this add-on lets me further customize the bookmarks toolbar so that I can not only use folders to organize my bookmarks by groups, but I can also add multiple rows.

E vernote Web Clipper: Now that Evernote has a mobile app for blackberry, I’ve installed the add-on for Firefox. Evernote is a neat way of saving and organizing notes and features synchronization between web, desktop, and mobile platforms. You can also send tweets directly into Evernote!

Coral IE Tab: While most web pages that are created now are compatible with various browsers, sometimes websites need to be viewed in Internet Explorer. This add-on is a great way of viewing a page in Internet Explorer in a tab which avoids having to open up a new window.

Colorzilla: This handy add-on lets you get a color reading from anywhere inside the browser. If you are into graphic design or frequently use products like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, this add-on can save you valuable time when you need to match a particular color on a website.

FireFTP: If you are looking for a free and secure FTP client, this is an easy and intuitive option.

FoxyMeter: An unobtrusive way to keep track of the number of web pages you surf.

Additional Ways to customize Firefox:

Browse for Firefox add-ons by catagory or collection. There is even a collection add-on that will notify you when there are updates made to the collection. In addition to add-ons, you can further customize your Firefox browser by changing the theme, which is the way the buttons, icons, and browser looks. Personas are a new Firefox feature that adds an image to the top and bottom (status bar) of the browser.

Links to other Browsers:

Google Chrome
Safari
Camino
Opera (Windows) (Mac)
Opera Mini for mobile devices
Introduction to Opera Unite (an introduction to the alpha release that turns any computer into both a client and a server)
Fennec for Windows mobile devices
Flock

Browser Reviews:

Firefox 3 (CNETeditor’s choice)
Chrome
Safari 4
Opera
Flock 2.5
Links to more browser reviews
About “The browser wars”, reviews, and download links

Additional Links of Interest:

How to clear your browser’s cache and surf securely

Photo Credit:
Browser by technovore
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Create your own RSS Feeds with NetNewWire for OSX

Kristen Treglia — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:09:36 +0000

NetNewsWire is a free RSS aggregator for Mac OSX created by Newsgator, the same company that produces the free “Feed Demon” RSS reader for Windows. In addition to NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, Newsgator offers “Newsgator Online“, a free Web-based RSS reader service that can synchronize with NetNewsWire or FeedDemon. This allows users of either desktop application to follow their RSS feeds when away from their computers and effectively create a backup of their RSS subscriptions.

For my third screencast on the topic of RSS feeds, I’ve decided to demonstrate how to use NetNewsWire’ to subscribe to RSS feeds, organize their subscriptions, and, in conjunction with Newsgator Online, create custom RSS feeds based on existing RSS-enabled content from around the Web. Custom RSS feeds are made using NetNewWire’s “Clipping” feature (also available on FeedDemon). For professors who maintain their own Web sites or Blackboard pages, this capability could provide a way to quickly share content from around the Web with students and colleagues who use RSS readers applications.

I’ve used the Fordham ITAC Blog and Fordham Information Technology’s weblog as examples during my demonstration of NetNewWire’s capabilities. Both blogs are highly recommended.

-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)

easy way to find eye-catching images…

Kristen Treglia — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:58:59 +0000

As we all know, it’s important to avoid infringing on copyrighted material. So, how can you find excellent quality images to use in presentations or on blogs without having to pay expensive royalty fees to use licensed material? The simple answer is to use the Creative Commons on Flickr. There are literally millions of excellent photos that have various types of creative common licenses that allow you to use them without having to spend money or sacrifice quality!!

How does creative commons work on flickr?

There are several different types of licenses to choose from, you should search for a photo with the license that best fits how you will be using it. Here is a brief description of the different types:

Attribution: Others can copy/distribute/display/perform copyrighted and derivative works based upon it but only if credit is given.
Noncommercial: Others can copy/distribute/display/perform copyrighted and derivative works but for noncommercial purposes only

No Derivative Works: Others can copy/distribute/display/perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share alike: Others can distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the work.

If you’d like to see more information about the various licenses and how they work on Flickr, check out this blog entry “Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images“.

If you have not signed up for an account, and plan on using Flickr images in the future, it might be worth it for you to take a minute or two to create a free yahoo account (Flickr’s parent company). One of the many reasons why you would want to have your own Flickr account is because you can conveniently keep track of images that you would like to use. When I am searching for images on Flickr I quite often find other photos that I would like to bookmark for later– since I have an account I can do this quite easily by marking it as a “favorite”. Take a look at the Newbie’s Guide to Flickr for the basics of uploading photos on Flickr or view a presentation that includes a step by step guide to signing up for a free account.

If you’ve already signed up for an account or would like to see what else you can do with Flickr, check out Mashable’s FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts or Digital Inspiration’s Flickr Guide for some great ideas.

Photo Credit
Creative Commons: flickr by technovore via Flickr
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Additional Links of Interest:

100 Amazing Flickr Collections for Architecture Buffs
Step by step instructions on downloading Creative Commons images on flickr
10 Ways to Find Great Photos on Flickr
Teaching with Flickr Wiki

Some Useful Sets and Collections on Flickr:
Brooklyn Museum
Library of Congress
New York Public Library
Powerhouse Museum
Smithsonian

rss = really, simple, syndication, but what does that really mean?

Kristen Treglia — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:11:55 +0000

We live in a world where time is precious and the amount of new information that appears every day on any given topic can be overpowering. RSS feeds and RSS reader applications can be very powerful tools for students and professionals who want to tame “information overload” while keeping up with the latest information in their areas of Interest and expertise.

What is RSS and why is it useful?

RSS, short for “Really Simple Syndication”, is a way for Web sites to publish content so that users of RSS reader applications, or “rss aggregators” can easily view links to the site’s latest content. Web sites with RSS-enabled content make their latest pages available to users of RSS reader applications by using links to RSS documents (also referred to as “feeds”, “web feeds”, or “channels”).

Links to RSS “feeds” on RSS-enabled Web sites are typically represented by images labeled as “RSS” or “XML” (short for “eXtensible Markup Language”, the type of code that makes up RSS documents).

In fact, you’ve probably seen them on just about every website you visit, but didn’t know what it was or what it was for!! For some slides on how to recognize feeds and find them on websites, view the short presentation on Slideshare by Kristen.

How can I use a Feed Aggregator to follow RSS feeds?

When RSS feed links are copied into an RSS reader such as Google Reader (web based), Feeddemon (for MS Windows), or NetNewsWire (Mac OSX), the user has “subscribed” to the feed and will be able to viewsummaries of the latest content from the subscribed Web site from within the RSS reader. By subscribing to multiple feeds in an area of interest, or “aggregating” feeds, users can user their RSS reader applications to browse, search, and sort content from many Web sites without having to visit them individually.

This capability can save a great deal of time and allow users to use information from the Web much more productively.

For this week’s screencast, I’ve created a brief demonstration of how to use the Google Reader RSS application to subscribe to an RSS-enabled Web site. If you are new to the idea of using a feed reader, it’s probably best to start out with using Google Reader. However; there many different feed readers available for any platform with a variety of interfaces. Here’s a chart comparing the different features of three popular feedreaders: Bloglines, Google Reader, and Newsgator with a list of pros and cons for each. If you are looking for a list of feed aggregators and tools, take a look at Mashable’s Ultimate RSS Toolkit. RSS feeds and RSS readers can be used to easily and effectively keep up with the latest news headlines, journal abstracts, blog entries, and organizational activities.
Are you currently using an RSS reader application to make the Web’s latest, greatest content manageable and useful? Can you provide any examples of great RSS-enabled Web sites? Please leave your ideas in the comment section or email them to me at jbehnke@fordham.edu or Kristen at treglia@fordham.edu. We would love to hear from you!!!

Additional Links of Interest:

Kristen’s pageflake uses RSS feeds to keep up with teacher blogs and education news.
List of “100 Most Subscribed to RSS Feeds” with descriptions, link to original site, and copy of the rss feed
ITAC Blog entry rss feed/

Tuesday Tip: Working with multiple documents in Microsoft Word

Kristen Treglia — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:58:11 +0000

Save All: Quick shortcut to save all documents
1. Hold the Shift key down
2. Select “File”
3. Click on “Save All”
Note, you must hold the shift key down before you click on “File”. Also remember, you should check to make sure you have the correct location and name of the document before saving.

Cycle through documents quickly:

Press “Ctrl” + “F6” to jump from one document to the next
“Ctrl” + “Shift” + “F6” will jump you backwards.

Split screen view of multiple documents:

From the “Window” menu

Click on “Arrange All” to see/work with multiple documents on the screen at the same time
Click on “Compare Side by Side with” to view/work with two documents side by side

More Word Tips:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/
http://www.microsystems.com/resources/word-tips-and-tricks.php
http://girishk.com/2009/03/02/top-50-microsoft-word-tips/