Computer Chit Chat

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

Have you ever been writing something or working on a website and wondered what the finished results would look like complete with text? If you use Microsoft Office you don’t have to wonder. There’s a way you can enter “dummy text” effortlessly. It’s great if you’re working on a newsletter. Depending on which version of Word you’re using you can type one of a couple of things into your document.

Word 2003, Word 2002, Word 2000, or in Word 97 for Windows.
Type =rand() and press enter in your Word document and you’ll get a paragraph of five sentences. Each sentence will read The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. You can put numbers inside the parentheses to obtain the output you desire. P is for number of paragraphs and l is for the number of lines per paragraph.

Word 2007 actually has three options.
Option one. Type rand() and then enter and you will get three paragraphs containing three sentences each. The text will come from Microsoft help files. Again, placing p and l inside the parentheses directs how many paragraphs and/or lines you want output.
Option two. Type rand.old and then enter and you will get three paragraphs containing three sentences each. Each sentence will read The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Again, placing p and l inside the parentheses directs how many paragraphs and/or lines you want output.
Option three. Type =lorem() and then enter and you will get three paragraphs of Latin text beginning with the words Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Once again, placing p and l inside the parentheses directs how many paragraphs and/or lines you want output.

That’s it. Let me know if you find it useful!

• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• How to add your Home page to your sidebar
• The cost of software

Many people are interested in managing their time and maximizing their income. If they aren’t they should be, because time truly is money. Expenses are also a part of money that it’s crucial to track. That’s what makes Journyx Timesheet such a great find. Journyx offers a free online time and expense management solution that can be used by anywhere from one to ten users. Because it’s a software solution, there are no more books and ledgers to keep, so you’ll save money on those items and the man hours it took to use them. Even if you have some one tracking all of this info in Excel it’s a good idea to check it out. If you use Journyx you’ll be freeing up yourExcel guru’s time to work on other projects.

You can do a lot of things with Journyx. Yes, Journyx manages payroll functions such as employee timesheets, attendance and vacations. But Journyx can also mange projects, expenses and client invoicing. To better understand what Jourynx does you really need to sign up for the free demo like I did. After downloading the complete version for free you can log in and play. Go ahead! Give it a test drive. Create a test project. While ideal for people that are self employed or those that own small businesses, Journyx could be used by any individual wanting to be more efficient and manage time better. Even bloggers can make great use of it to track how much time they spend working on their blog.

If you want to read about some Timesheet success stories, just visit their website.

• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• 25 free magnets
• Let’s chat about mailing lists

I received an email asking me for a little help understanding the menus within applications. Let me see what I can do to help.

Sometimes people get a little confused within an application because there are so many things going on. If you’re not familiar it could be a little intimidating. I remember when I first started using a computer I broke into a sweat anytime I opened most applications. It all looked so confusing because I hadn’t seen it before, and because I didn’t understand what it was that I was looking at. I recently received a question asking me about the different menus within an application. I’m going to do my best to explain what it is you’re seeing in there.

When you open an application, across the top of the screen you see the menu bar. All of the application’s menus are located within the menu bar. When you click or hover over one of the menus there, you will find a list of options or commands that can be chosen. Next to many of them you will see their corresponding keyboard shortcut. If you learn the keyboard shortcuts for the tasks you do the most you will find you aren’t in the menus nearly as much. Within the menus there is another menu called Toolbars. When you check an item a toolbar containing the commands from that menu will appear at the top of your screen. Toolbars can be customized to contain just the buttons you want by clicking the little arrow on the side of the toolbar. I love to have the formatting toolbar visible whenever possible.

That’s just a small dent in the big pile of information pertaining to menus. If you’re looking for something specific let me know and I’ll do my best to help.

• Shortcuts
• How to insert random text in Office documents
• The cost of software

I received an email asking me what was meant by shortcuts. There are two kinds of shortcuts.

The shortcut menu is a menu of commands that appears if you right click on something. I almost always right click to copy something.

A keyboard shortcut is a combination of two or more keys used together to carry out a command. An example is my favorite, control-V, which is paste. If you want to know what the keyboard shortcut for something is, take a stroll through your menus and next to many of the commands you will see the combination of keys included in the shortcut for that particular command.

If you use shortcuts, what’s your favorite? If you don’t, what shortcut might be the most helpful for you?

• So many menus
• Pixel Pick, a free color coding tool
• Journyx, free time and expense management software

The cost for some software titles is quite expensive, which is one of a number of good reason why people don’t rush to upgrade their software to newer version. What some people don’t know is that there are many times software can be bought for less, with an academic discount. Companies such as CostCaptain offer their educational discounts to both students and staff of research labs, libraries and schools. Here’s an example. A copy of Microsoft Office 2007 would typically cost the average person like me. Those that qualify for the educational discount can purchase the full version of Office 2007 starting at $129 and the Vista Upgrade starting at $89. Some people wonder if academic version are fake. I sold them for years and they are quite real. CostCaptain is a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller, meaning you are purchasing a 100% Authentic Microsoft product. And, if you know of someone that qualifies for the academic discount and needs software but is short on cash, you can buy them a gift certificate. Valentine’s Day is next week and I’m sure that would be quite a useful gift. Educational discounts are a great program and a great way to save some money and show value for education!

• How do you unzip?
• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• How to insert random text in Office documents

Did you ever want to use a certain color that you saw on your monitor but couldn’t figure out the color code? It’s happened to me more than a few times. What can you do about it? Get Pixel Pick. Pixel Pick is a simple free program that will tell you the color code of whatever is under your mouse. It will translate the color into seceral different formats including RGB, CMYK and HEX. It’s so simple it doesn’t even require installation. It minimizes to the system tray and is ready to use. Just click once and point your mouse over the color you want and you’ll see the code appear. It’s very neat and quite helpful. Pixel Pick can downloaded for free at http://www.design-lib.com/the_pixel-pick.php

• Color picker Firefox addon
• How to install Firefox
• Save and Restore back up software deal for under $1

More and more people use computers for every day things all of the time. Computer usage is growing in both the workplace and in the home. Many people work on things both at home and at work, thereby bring their files with them. People use flash drives and cds, among other methods, to transport their files. Now there is no further need for transporting a file. You don’t ever have to worry about forgetting a file again. Google Documents is a basic online office available to everyone for free. Many people are aware of Google’s email product Gmail. Besides Gmail, Google Docs also includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation area. Documents previously created in both Microsoft Office and Open Office can be imported. Newly created documents can be downloaded in a variety of formats. They can also be emailed out as attachments.
Google docs permits sharing. Online collaboration facilitates communication, particularly over a large distance.  It also saves time and money. under this system other people, by your invitation, can view and/ or edit your new files.
And here’s the best part of all. It’s free!

• How to insert random text in Office documents
• The cost of software
• How do you unzip?

How do you unzip zipped files? Like many people you might use Winzip. Wizip is shareware, meaning if you’re going to use it you’re supposed to send in some money. Mind you winzip still works if you don’t pay, it just takes a long time to open (basically it counts to 150). I used to use it all the time and came across something that works just as well and is freeware, meaning no payment requested or suggested or needed. The software I’m referring to is Coffeecup Free Zip Wizard. If you don’t really want to pay winzip and don’t want to wait to open your zipped files, this software is exactly what you’re looking for.

• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• The cost of software
• How to install Wordpress using cpanel 11 on your own domain

Check out this deal for Norton Save & Restore 2.0
List price: $49.99
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$35.00 Mail-in Rebate
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$0.79 after $10.00 off if you’re a new Google checkout user
This software is for backing up files. It is capable of backing up to removable media. It will back up everything, or just what you select. It can perform incremental backups and scheduled backups.
I liked this deal so much I posted on the catsandcoupons site too!

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