If you own an iPhone or iPad, use this quick tip to use it to remind you to shut off your sprinkler, take the roast out of the oven, call a friend, pick up the dry cleaning (does anyone do this any more?), walk the dog, take your medicine, or anything else you need help remembering. To create a reminder,… Read More »How to Create Reminders on your iPhone or iPad with Siri – Video Tip
One of the computer’s greatest weaknesses is filling in forms…until now! For a long time, I have recommended using FoxIt Reader as my PDF (Adobe portable document format) reader of choice. On and off, they have offered tools to help you fill in forms or annotate documents, but with their newest version, the form filler or typewriter tool is now… Read More »How to type on a PDF or scanned form – Video Tip
If you own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch from Apple, they have provided you a complete and free user guide right on your device. To find it, just launch the Safari web browser, tap the bookmarks icon, then swipe to the bottom of the list to find the guide. Apple also provides a free PDF download version of their device… Read More »How to find your FREE iPhone or iPad User Guide – Video Tip
Google acquired a CIA funded mapping and satellite company in 2004 and released Google Earth less than a year later. Most images that make up Google Earth are 1-3 years old and taken from a variety of public and private satellite imaging systems. Google Earth imagery is not live and has never been live. Google offers Google Earth for free… Read More »Google Earth & Internet Maps
You know that I’m a huge Gmail fan and have written and recorded many tips for the email service here for you at HelpMeRick.com. This short post simply gives you a quick and easy way to access ALL those Gmail tips by clicking here ! Enjoy and leave any Gmail related questions you have in the comments! Thanks.
Although we now have 19″ and larger monitors on most new desktop computers, the text seems to shrink. Why is that? It has to do with screen resolution (how much information can be displayed). Screen resolutions on today’s monitors are up to 3X that of monitors we used just 6-8 years ago. We can see a lot more information, but often the text is too small to view for some computer users.
Never fear. Using this week’s tip, you can easily and quickly enlarge the text of any web page using only your keyboard and mouse. This tip will work with any web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc) and any operating system (Windows, Ubuntu, Mac OS X).
All you need is a mouse with a scroll wheel and your keyboard. This tip can be performed without the mouse as well, but I’ll touch on that later. First, when you are reading a web site, particularly news web sites and blog type sites like mine, look for an indication of a printer friendly page. Often designated as Printer Friendly, Print this article, or simply Print, clicking this link brings up a version of the article you are reading that is much less busy and cleaner than how the article presents on the web page itself. This alone may make enough difference for readability.
However, you can quickly increase the size of the text you are reading by holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and spinning your mouse scroll wheel away from your body (towards the computer monitor). Amazing, no? Holding down the Ctrl key and spinning towards your body (away from the monitor) will shrink the text again.
The same result can be achieved by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the “+” or “-” keys as well. I think the mouse method is a little more intuitive and elegant.
Watch the short video below to see this tip in action and see the web as never before!
I created these notes for a client today who visits many sites with text that prints small. She knows how to make the screen text larger, and I referred to the tips (below) about printing from the web, but sometimes good ol’ copy and paste is necessary to truly get the look you want on paper. Learn how to use… Read More »How to print stuff from the web the way YOU want it – Notes
The web and email were not meant to be printed. However, many computer users love to print many things we receive via email or the web. In this tip, I’m going to teach you how to use less paper and ink when printing AND get better looking printouts for things you do want to print. If you combine this new… Read More »How to save time & money when printing from the web – Video Tip
Give this quick, little tip a try on your iPhone or iPad and watch the enjoyment of reading on the devices soar! The function is called “Reader View” and is used in the Safari app on your device. Reader View doesn’t work for every web site, but it does for many. In a nutshell, Reader View strips away all the… Read More »How to use Reader View on your iPad or iPhone – Video Tip
Please DO NOT use the address bar as a repository to return to sites you use all the time…eventually they will get lost. The address bar history maintains a small amount of your recently visited site and can easily be wiped out via an update or disk cleaning and maintenance tools.
Instead, use the Favorites (Internet Explorer) or Bookmarks (Firefox and every other browser). Favorites/Bookmarks are designed to save and give you quick access to your most used sites and sites you just want to keep track of for later use. Also, you can back them up easily.
If you are like me, you visit a handful of web sites every single day and sometimes multiple times per day. Having bookmarks to these sites works fine, but that requires a minimum of three clicks to reach your favorite sites.
In this video, I describe how to get 1-click access to your favorites using the extremely underutilized Links toolbar (Internet Explorer) and the Bookmarks toolbar (Mozilla Firefox).
This tip requires no downloading and no installation of extra software. Everything is built-in to the browser and available to you right now. So watch the video and learn how to take charge of these extremely useful tools you never knew how to use!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwE__e7oYq4&hl=en]