USEFUL-keyboard shortcuts,

Using keyboard shortcuts can greatly increase your productivity, reduce repetitive strain, and help keep you focused. For example, highlighting text with the keyboard and pressing Ctrl + C is much faster than taking your hand from the keyboard, highlighting the text using the mouse, clicking copy from the file menu, and then putting your hand back in place on the keyboard. Below are our top 10 keyboard shortcuts we recommend everyone memorize and use.

Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert

Copy the highlighted text or selected item.

Ctrl + V or Shift + Insert

Paste the text or object that's in the clipboard.

Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y

Undo any change. For example, if you cut text, pressing this will undo it. This can also often be pressed multiple times to undo multiple changes. Pressing Ctrl + Y would redo the undo.

Ctrl + F

Open the Find in any program. This includes your Internet browser to find text on the current page.

Alt + Tab or Alt + Esc

Quickly switch between open programs moving forward.

Tip: Press Ctrl + Tab to switch between tabs in a program.

Tip: Adding the Shift key to Alt + Tab or Ctrl + Tab will move backwards. For example, if you are pressing Alt + Tab and pass the program you want to switch to, press Alt + Shift + Tab to move backwards to that program.

Tip: Windows Vista and 7 users can also press the Windows Key + Tab to switch through open programs in a full screenshot of the Window.

Ctrl + Back space and Ctrl + Left or Right arrow

Pressing Ctrl + Backspace will delete a full word at a time instead of a single character.

Holding down the Ctrl key while pressing the left or right arrow will move the cursor one word at a time instead of one character at a time. If you wanted to highlight one word at a time you can hold down Ctrl + Shift and then press the left or right arrow key to move one word at a time in that direction while highlighting each word.

Ctrl + S

While working on a document or other file in almost every program pressing Ctrl + S will save that file. This shortcut key should be used frequently anytime you're working on anything important.

Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End

Move the cursor to the beginning or end of a document.

Ctrl + P

Print the page being viewed. For example, the document in Microsoft Word or the web page in your Internet browser.

Page Up, Space bar, and Page Down

Pressing either the page up or page down key will move that page one page at a time in that direction. When browsing the Internet pressing the space bar will also move the page down one page at a time. If you press Shift and the Space bar the page will go up a page at a time.

Read more »

Posted in: USEFUL

TIPS-Top 10 computer mouse tips

Most computer users don't take full advantage of the computer Mouse. Below are computer mouse tips and secrets that help you get the full potential of your computer mouse and increase your overall productivity while on the computer.

Shift key and mouse click

Many text editors and programs allow you to highlight all or portions of text using the Shift key and the mouse. For example, place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph in a text editor, hold down the Shift key and click at the end of the paragraph to highlight the full paragraph.

Bonus tip: Holding down the Alt key while dragging and highlighting text in a text editor will allow you to selectively highlight text. This can be useful if your paragraph or other text is in a column.

Take full advantage of the scroll wheel

Today, everyone is familiar with a mouse wheels ability to scroll up and down on a page. However, this wheel can also do so much more, below are just a few examples.

• The mouse wheel is not just a wheel, it can also be used as a button. Pressing down on the wheel will act like a third mouse button. This can be used to open a web page in a tab by clicking the wheel on any link and can also be used to close a tab by clicking the wheel on any open tab.
• Holding down the shift key while scrolling up or down in a Internet browser will quickly go back and forward between web pages.
• Zoom in and Out on a web page, word document, excel spreadsheet, etc. by holding down the Ctrl key and scrolling up to zoom in and down to zoom out.
• Move forward and backwards while browsing the Internet by holding down the Shift key and scrolling up and down. Scrolling down goes back and scrolling up goes forward.
• Some mouse wheels can be pushed left or right to also move back and forward on a web page.

Select with double and triple click

Any word can be selected by double-clicking the word. If you want to highlight the whole paragraph, click the mouse button three times on any text in the paragraph.

Use the right-click

Take full advantage of the right-click any time you highlight text or wish to view the properties of an object. For example, if you highlight a file or text, you can right-click that highlighted item copy it and then right-click anywhere else to paste it.

Tip: If you right-click on any file or text and drag it while continuing to hold the right button, when you let go you will be given the option to move or copy that file or text. This saves you the extra step of having to right-click where you want to paste the item.

Tip: While in a browser pressing and holding Ctrl while clicking on any link will open that link in a new tab.

Ctrl key and mouse click or highlight

While holding down the Ctrl key you can left-click to select multiple objects or highlight multiple sections of text. For example, in Microsoft Windows you could hold down the Ctrl key and click to select multiple files at once. If you wanted to highlight different parts of a paragraph or web page, you could also hold down the Ctrl key and select each section you wanted to copy.

Tip: Mozilla Firefox users can also hold down the Ctrl key and individually click on each cell in a table they wish to copy or drag their mouse down a row to select just that row or text without selecting any of the other text in that table.

Use the mouse side buttons

Many new computer mice have buttons on the side of the mouse. These buttons can be programmed to do anything, however, by default the left-thumb button can be used to go back on a web page. This makes browsing the Internet more enjoyable since you do not need to move the mouse cursor to the browser back arrow button in order to go back a page.

Use the Windows Snap To feature

Take full advantage of the Windows mouse Snap To feature, which will automatically move your mouse to buttons that appear in a dialog box. For example, if you delete a file or close a window you may get a prompt asking you if you are sure you want to perform the task. With the Snap To feature enabled, the mouse cursor automatically moves to the Ok button, so all you will have to do is click the mouse button if you agree. This saves you the time of having to move the mouse cursor over to the Ok button and then click Ok. To enable this feature open the Mouse properties under the Windows Control Panel and check the Snap To check box under the Pointer Options tab.

Tip: While changing this feature we also suggest looking at other available options in the Mouse settings. For example, increasing the Motion speed can also help increase your productivity while using the mouse.

Manage the open window with the mouse

Double-click the top title bar of any window to maximize a window or if it is already maximized resize it to a window. You can also double-click the icon for the window in the top-left corner of the window to close that window.

Move the mouse with your keyboard

Instead of using the mouse that came with your computer you can also enable Windows to use the number pad as a mouse.

Customize your mouse

Finally, if you have a mouse with more than two buttons, installing the included mouse software will allow you to customize the mouse even more. For example, if you don't use the side buttons to move back and forth in a web page change it to something you do more often, such as switching between open windows or opening the calculator.

Read more »

Posted in: mouse tips,TIPS

TIPS-Top 10 Facebook tips

Below is a listing of our top 10 tips for the popular social networking website Facebook.

Hide users, games, polls, etc.

It quickly gets annoying seeing some users posts, game invites, polls, etc. Hovering your mouse to the right of the post and clicking the Hide button as shown below can hide any post. Once this button is pressed you'll be prompted with the option to hide that user or in the case of a Facebook application the option to hide that application from ever showing up on your profile.

To unhide someone or unblock an application click the Edit Options link in the bottom right corner of the news feed as shown below.

Greasemonkey and FB Purity

Although Facebook does not allow the ability to hide friends getting new friends messages, friends becoming fans of something, and some application messages they can still be hidden with browser add-ons. If you're running Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari we suggest installing the Facebook Purity add-on.

Update your privacy settings

Click Account in the top right corner of the Facebook window and then click Privacy settings to adjust who is capable of seeing what on your Facebook profile. We highly recommend going through all the privacy settings to verify your privacy is properly protected.

Anything that is not set to friends only or friends of friends can be seen by anyone searching on the Internet. Below is a few things we recommend for most users.

1. Under Search in Privacy settings uncheck Public Search Results. This will prevent users from finding your account and profile picture in search results such as Google
2. Under Application settings, make sure you're only allowing applications you want to have access to your information. Applications that you grant rights to can have access to your Facebook profile information.

• If you're curious to see how a program or web page connect to the Facebook API can see your profile see Tip135.

Use the Facebook top bar for navigation

Knowing how to properly navigate is vital if you want to get the most out of Facebook. Below is a brief description of each of the available options in the top bar as shown above.

Home (facebook logo) - Clicking this logo will take you to your wall (News Feed) that shows all friends recent posts.

Friend requests - If any friend requests are waiting to be approved this icon will show a notification of how many friends are waiting for approval. This icon can also be clicked when you want to view any friend recommendations or search for friends on Facebook.

Messages - This section allows you to send and receive private messages between one or more people you're friends with.

Notifications - Any time a friend or Facebook application creates a new post you'll be notified in this section. Clicking this icon will show all recent notifications. If you wish to change what is capable of sending you notifications including any Facebook applications or games click the See All Notifications link at the bottom and check or uncheck what you want to be notified on.

Search - Finally, the search box in Facebook can be a powerful tool that can be used to quickly find any current friends or people on Facebook. In addition searching for terms such as a company name, product, sports team, music band, etc. will find fan pages and groups that can be joined.

Modify your account notifications

Keep your e-mail and your cell phone clean by updating or eliminate Facebook notifications or keep more up-to-date by adding new notifications. Facebook notifications can be added and removed by clicking Account link in the top right corner, then Account Settings, and then clicking the Notifications tab.

Top News and Most Recent

By default Facebook will display your wall postings in the News format, which means it only displays posts it believes are most relevant to you. These results are based on your past interaction with your friends. If you want to see every post made by all your friends that are not hidden click the Most recent link in the upper right section of your news feed as shown in the above picture example.

If you want to adjust who shows up manually click the Edit Options in the bottom right corner of your news feed.

View High School work friends

If you've added your High School or previous Work locations to your profile, quickly see all classmates and co-workers on Facebook by clicking the link in your Info tab under your profile.

Quickly change profile picture

Your profile picture can be quickly changed to any other picture by visiting your profile, hovering the mouse over your current profile picture, and clicking the Change Picture link that appears in the top right corner of the picture.

Don't post private information on friend's walls on in comments

When you make a post on a friend's wall or in any of their comments realize that any of their friends are going to be able to see that post. If you wish for something to remain only between you and a friend send them a Facebook message instead.

Suggestions and random friend invites

As you get more friends on Facebook it will begin making friend, groups, and fan suggestions. These are suggestions made by Facebook and not your friends. Unless these are something you're interested in they can be ignored.

This same rule can be applied to people who may want to be your friend that you don't know. If you don't know someone don't accept his or her friend invite. Once someone becomes your friend they'll have access to any information your friends are capable of seeing.

Tag your Facebook friends in your photos

Always make sure to tag any of your Facebook friends that are in pictures you upload. However, never tag someone who is not in the picture. When someone is tagged in a photo that picture is automatically added to that persons profile and is a great way to share pictures with all friends.

Read more »

Posted in: TIPS-Top 10 Facebook tips

HOW-TO--Shut Down Windows Without Installing Updates

Shut Down Windows Without Installing Updates

Has this happened to you? You're sitting at your laptop, typing away, when you glance at the clock and realize it's time to go. So you shut down Windows--only to be informed that it needs to install some updates first. Ten minutes later, you're still waiting for the job to finish--effectively held hostage by your operating system.

That, my friends, is a hassle with a capital 'H.'

How hard would it be for Microsoft to add a deferment, an "install updates later" or "not right now" option? This whole thing about forced updating during shutdown is borderline insulting.

Fortunately, if you see the little update-alert icon alongside the Shut Down button, there's a simple way to bypass it. Here's how:

1. Shut down all your programs so that only the desktop remains.

2. Press Alt-F4.

3. Click the pull-down menu, and change it from Install updates and shut down to simply Shut down. Then click OK.

Presto: Windows shuts down straight away, without installing any updates. That'll teach you to take me hostage, Microsoft!

Actually, once you get in the habit, you might find pressingAlt-F4 a quicker and more preferable way to shut down your PC. One less mouse click!

Read more »

Posted in: HOW-TO

HOW-TO-Create your own ebook simply and easily

Ifyou are a writer in the 21st Century it is a damn sight easier and cheaper to get your work published and 'out there' to your potential adoring public than ever before. The romantic idea of the tortured author taking his manuscript from publisher to publisher, possibly striking a deal and then waiting for it to be printed and published is not the only way to get your story across. The rise of the kindle has created an online marketplace where readers are avid for more online ebooks and I believe Amazon sold more ebooks than the paper equivalent last year. PapyrusEditor is a simple but powerful online editor that lets you create, design, publish and sell your ebook without your having to trudge the streets looking for break.

The kindle has been one of the big successes over the last year or so and I've lost count of the number of my friends who received one as a Christmas present this year. There is no doubt that it is a growing market which is only going to get bigger. So, if you write a blog or a journal, don't you think the time is right to get involved with this new visual phenomenon and maybe even make some money on the side? The difficulty in the past has been the often costly and complicated setups but now there is an easier and much cheaper way of achieving your goal of shook publishing. PapyrusEditor is a simple online editor than lets even the most un-technical of us create attractive and effective ebooks without any fuss and bother whatsoever. You can create and edit beautiful cover pages in minutes using a simple drag and drop cover editor, import content like your blog or journal from the web or create new content as easily as it is to write a blog post.  Papyrus also has a set of beautiful predesigned theme template that will help you get started while creating your ebook. And when you have finished putting it all together and want to sell and market your ebook then all you have to do is to create a marketing page, set a price, click publish and start selling your books via Gumroad ... with just a single click. PapyrusEditor lets you create books in PDF, epub as well as the regular kindle format and then share them with your readers, collect feedback and use simple reports to gauge reader interest.

Let's just get the obvious out of the way straight up and say that PapyrusEditor has got to be the easiest and cheapest way to create, edit and publish your work as an ebook that there is. It really does provide you with all the tools that you will need to create an ebook from beginning to end - and you can even put it up for sale, if you like, via Gumroad. Now there is absolutely no reason not to collect all those great blog articles you wrote, or gather together all those reminiscences from childhood that you have been meaning to collate and publish them as an ebook with just a few clicks. You never know, this could become the start of a new writing career.

Read more »

Posted in: HOW-TO

HOW-TO--Facebook Timeline Looms - What You Need to Know

Facebook Timeline Looms - What You Need to Know

Soon Facebook users who have been avoiding the social network’s Timeline feature won’t be able to stave it off any longer and will be seeing their profiles change considerably. That’s because Facebook is making Timeline compulsory and is rolling it out to users in the next couple of weeks.

You should be aware of several things before the launch. Here's how to prepare.

Are Your Posts Viewable by Strangers?
Instead of a linear stream of your posts, the new Timeline is a visual aggregation of everything you’ve ever done on the site: the information you’ve included on your profile, your photos, everything you’ve ever “liked,” any Facebook apps you’re using, a map showing where you’ve been (according to geo-tagged posts and photos), as well as a Timeline of everything you’ve ever posted.

The problem is that Facebook seems bent on making all of that data more public. Now any post that you make defaults to Public, so if you forget to choose “friends” in the inline audience selector when you post something, the entire world can see it.

That’s why it’s very important that you check out how your Timeline looks when other people view it. You may find that many of the posts you intended for your friends are public.



To see how your Timeline looks to strangers, click on the small gear just below the right corner of your cover (the spot where you can place a large banner photo at the top of your Timeline). From the gear, click View As. From there, you’ll be able to preview your public Timeline.

To make sure your past posts are limited to friends, click on the small arrow on the top right corner of your Timeline. Then go to Privacy Settings>> Limit the Audience for Past Posts>>Manage Past Post Visibility and select Limit Old Posts. Alternately, you can change the audience by clicking on the small pencil icon at the top right of individual posts to edit or hide them from the Timeline.

Once you get Timeline you only have seven days to make changes to it, such as hiding old posts from years ago that you may not want the world to see, or managing the visibility of your posts.

So if you’re someone who doesn’t check into Facebook often, you might want to proactively get Timeline now and then sit down to review it and make changes.

Several privacy groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether Facebook oversteps its authority with Timeline, but in the meantime, it's up to you to check your privacy settings.


Facebook Wants More of Your DataAnother thing that the new feature lets you do is add events from any part of your past -- all the way back to birth, if you want -- to create an online scrapbook of your entire life.

If you’re not sure what kinds of things you should add, Facebook has plenty of ideas. Inside your Timeline you can click on Life Event in your status bar and you’ll be asked to categorize your entry into one of these headings: Work & Education, Family & Relationships, Home & Living, Health & Wellness or Travel & Experiences.

Within each category is a slew of suggestions. For instance, under Home & Living, you can choose: Moved, Bought a Home, Home Improvement, New Roommate, New Vehicle and Other Life Event.

Can you imagine all the new data Facebook is going to be accumulating from users? The reason, of course, is to laser target ads at people. But some people don’t like the idea of Facebook having such rich profiles about individual users on file.


Some Security ConcernsSecurity firm Sophos polled 4000 Facebook users, asking them what they think of the new Timeline and the response was overwhelmingly negative, with 51 percent saying the feature worries them and another 32 percent saying they don’t know why they’re still on Facebook.

For one thing, with more of your data possibly accessible by strangers, it may be easier for criminals to profile people and glean personal information.

The reality is that personal data is very valuable to criminals.  For example, with enough information a bad guy can impersonate someone in order to do things like pull off phishing scams.

In its Naked Security blog, Sophos points out that once they see all their data clumped in one place many Facebook users are shocked at how much information about themselves they’ve posted online.

Another thing that might make you uncomfortable is the map included in Timeline that shows where you hang out. If you don’t want people seeing that information, make sure to go back to any geo-tagged posts or photos and either change the location or hide it from the Timeline.

Timeline Fans Exist, TooNot everybody is going into paranoid mode with the rollout of Timeline and some people really like it.

PCWorld’s Jared Newman believes that in time, Facebook users will come to like Timeline. The downside, he points out, is that users must do some cultivating to bring their most relevant life details to the surface.

Read more »

Posted in: HOW-TO

How To-- Draw Animals Section

Drawing tutorials on any subject are always in demand, but learning how to draw animals seems a particularly popular quest for vast numbers of artists of all abilities.

Maybe it's our inherent love of animals - their innocence, freedom and general lack of human frailties.

Or perhaps it's our desire to capture their grace and movement, maybe against a backcloth of their natural environment. Take the Kangaroo illustrated here, for instance.

If you're new to learning how to draw animals, this might not be the subject you'd first think about - though if you're in Australia, perhaps you would! Whatever, it just proves that following the simple steps in the articles, you can pick your choice of subject at will..

Perhaps you'd love to record a portrait of a much loved family pet. Yes, I know photos will record your favorite dog, cat or horse very accurately for decades, but a sketch of him that you've produced yourself... Now that is one you'll keep for the family album - better still, framed on the wall!

To make it even easier if you're new to sketching, all of these drawing articles use just a few basic shapes to get you started.

As you can see from this photo of a kangaroo, these simpleshapes help to define the main parts of each animal.

This helps you to quickly sketch a rough outline to get the proportions right before you attempt the detail.

To cater for this interest in how to draw animals, I've put together a series of tutorials devoted to many specific creatures, including how to draw horses, cattle, dogs, cats and many others.

Read more »

Posted in: HOW-TO