New posting and a promise ...

I just realized it's been two years since I posted anything here. Pretty SAD! I promise to do better and post SOMETHING at least weekly.

I just recently got an iPhone! I didn't really see the need for one, but now that I have it, I wonder how I got along without it. Upcoming postings are very likely to be about the iPhone or some particularly interesting app.

One of the first apps I downloaded was one from my bank which allows me to deposit a check by taking a picture of the front, the back and then clicking Submit! Easy as that!

Doodle

You are planning a picnic, meeting, or lunch or whatever to which you are inviting a group of people. You want to pick a time that is convenient for you and suits the largest number of invitees. Could mean lots of back and forth phone calls or emails. Better idea, use Doodle.

How does it work?

1. Create a poll.
2. Forward the link to the poll to the participants.
3. Follow online what the participants vote for.

Free. No registration required.

Check it out.

Polleverywhere.com

I don't see much use for this for me, but anyone who was doing a presentation or just wanted to get a sampling of opinion from a group of people would find it useful. It's called polleverywhere.com and the way it works is you go there, make a poll with a multiple choice or true false question, and people respond via text message or via Twitter. They text a number that corresponds with their answer. Interesting to know it exists, even if I don't have a use for it.

A couple of Office tricks

Excel 2007: Move Between Worksheets
If you tend to have lots of worksheets within a single spreadsheet, it can be cumbersome to jump from one worksheet to another. Here's a quick way to see a list of all of your worksheet tabs and select the one you want to go to.

1. Right-mouse click on the navigation buttons that move you from one worksheet to another. (These navigation buttons are in the bottom, left corner of the screen.)
2. From the pop-up menu, click on the worksheet name that you want to go to.

Word 2007: Display Page Thumbnails
Do you know that you can add a window pane in Word to display thumbnails of the pages within your document? If not, you may find this hint especially useful when navigating through longer documents.

1. Click the View tab.
2. In the Show/Hide section, click to place a checkmark next to the Thumbnails option. (A window pane appears on the left showing a thumbnail for each page in the document.)
3. Scroll down the Thumbnail window pane and click on the page you want to go to. (To turn off the thumbnail view, click the Close button for the Thumbnails window pane.)

Another search engine

I LOVE Google and use it all the time. Sometimes, though, the sheer volume of results is overwhelming. To get results in context, with a little more detail, try cuil, it gives results like:

Wolfram Alpha

Well, I just tried out the new "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram Alpha. It's NOT a Google killer! It IS a useful tool in the ever changing art of finding accurate, relevant information on the Internet. Type in a date and it gives you something like this:


I've got a lot of playing around to do to test it out. I think it's got a way to go, but will likely improve over time. I typed in Erie, PA and among other things, it old me the nearest large cities were Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (80 miles away) and Toronto (112 miles away). I guess they missed Cleveland, Buffalo and Pittsburgh! Also, when I typed in "NFLX GE", it gave me stats for Netflix and GNE which General Electric on the Paris Bourse!

I'll keep you posted as I experiment with it. Comments welcome!

Mmmmm Good!

I access the web from many different places: my home, my office, different computers in different labs at Behrend and, less often, computers in hotels or at conferences. That means URLs I've bookmarked at home do not appear at work and vice versa and that I have no bookmarks when I get on a computer in a lab or elsewhere. What to do? Enter delicious. It is a site where you can put all your bookmarks and they are available anywhere! If you use Firefox (why WOULDN'T you?), there is an addon that will automatically sync your bookmarks. Add one in delicious, it appears in Firefox, add one in Firefox, it appears in delicious! Try it, you'll probably like it.