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It’s always awkward upgrading to a new version of your software. Everything is pretty much the same, yet seems different. But the worst aspect has to be that users of the old version you’ve just waved goodbye to will probably have difficulty opening your documents.
Take Microsoft Office 2007 – the most user-friendly incarnation of the program yet. Try sending a colleague on Office 2003 a Word attachment, though, and you’ll be met by furrowed brows. That’s because Office 2007 defaults to using the new Office Open XML file formats (such as .docx rather than .doc for Word) – improving compatibility with non-Microsoft users, but not instantly accessible to users of older versions of Office. While you wait for the world to catch on to the new version, you can still use the old formats as a safety measure. Read full article on Guardian Unlimited
Once in a while you discover a keyboard shortcut that really bestows a sense of satisfaction – something that makes you wonder how you ever got along without it. Like taking a picture of what’s on your computer screen, for example. It comes in handy in loads of situations, from keeping records of online payments to pasting grabs into documents or emails – and it’s really easy to do. Read full article on Guardian Unlimited
We’ve all experienced the “black hole effect” at some point. But when the absentee item in question is a vital PowerPoint presentation, panic can soon ensue. Generally speaking, retrieving information from a less-than-perfectly organised desktop throws up two choices: wade through a virtual sea of documents, emails, music files and photos, or get a desktop search application to do the legwork for you. Read full article on Guardian Unlimited
Most of us have a less than monogamous relationship with our computer. In fact, when you take into account laptops, desktops and work computers, it is not unusual for a worker to regularly call on the services of as many as three machines – which means that things can get a bit complicated when it comes to moving files.
An often-overlooked tool in this department is the iPod. Not only does it have plenty of gigabytes for storage, you’re also more likely to have it with you than a fiddly USB thumb drive. All iPods, apart from the most recent Touch (which requires third-party software), have a built-in “disk mode”. This allows you to store virtually any kind of data file, from Word documents to PDFs, on your iPod, alongside your music tracks. Read full article on Guardian Unlimited
One of the most common reasons we use search engines is for information on people. But standard tools such as Google will throw up literally thousands of results, often making you question exactly how you got from Jacques Cousteau to custard – which is where the dedicated people search engine Spock.com comes in.
Still in beta, Spock (“single point of contact through keyword”) is dedicated solely to the business of people finding, and has an index of more than 100 million entries. Rather than providing a biography-type summary (like Wikipedia, for instance) it produces a list of when the name is mentioned online – and then links the sites back to the individual, giving you an instant back-catalogue of data. Read full article on Guardian Unlimited
