Clean Computer « An Extra Hour Every Day

Dec

11

Have a special folder for temporary bookmarks

by Nicolas

If you don’t organize your Internet bookmarks you soon will have a jungle in your browser making it difficult to manage. On one hand you have the links of websites you visit regularly, which you should organize in a proper folder hierarchy. But on the other hand there also are many links we just save spontaneously because we find them interesting and might want to come back.

I propose having a folder in your browser called “temporary” or “delete me” to bookmark such URLs. It is a folder which you review from time to time and then decide if you delete, keep or move the bookmark to your folders with regularly used websites.

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Oct

28

Use the single click option for folders in Windows

by Nicolas

Did you ever count the number of clicks per day you make in your computer per day opening folders and files? You can almost reduce this time by half if you change the folder options.

In your file manager / Tools / Folder Options you can select the option “Single-click to open an item (point to select). After activation of this option all folders and filenames will be underlined such as links on the Internet and you will be able to open them with one single click. It also enables you to navigate with the directional keys and to open a file by just pressing the Enter key.

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Sep

18

Use feeds instead of newsletters

by Nicolas

Newsletter are a nice thing but in the end they fill your email inbox and distract you from concentrating on what you need to do. Use RSS or Atom Feeds instead of subscribing newsletter. You can collect the feeds and flip through them from time to time and just pick the ones with interesting items.

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Sep

06

Take photos for your address book

by Nicolas

Buidling up and maintaining a network requires to manage many contacts in your address book. After a while you might get problems remembering every person, especially when it comes to associate a face to each name. On the other hand you know from your own experience that it makes your counterparts feel good if you remember them quickly - even if you only met once a long time ago.

There are people who have the wonderful gift of a great memory for people’s faces and their names. For all others who do not have that gift, technology can be a great ally. I recently started asking people if they allow me to make a picture of them with the camera of my mobile phone, which I will store in my address book.

Most people laugh about it and acceppt instantly admitting that this is a good idea. I think that this is not against any convention and that most people will easily accept if properly asked. Otherwise there are good chances of finding someone’s photo on a social network for business.

Having a face stored in each contact will make it much easier for you to remember people and it will at least allow you to have a quick check before meeting people again whom you don’t remember anymore. BTW, most people forgot that you made a photo of them and are impressed when you can immediatly identify each member of a group. Its up to you if you will convey you remind them or keep a small secret
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Sep

04

Internet Bookmarks

by Nicolas

Although Internet Bookmarks are a very good function to remember all these very interesting places in the Internet, most browsers are not very useful if it comes to manage a large number of bookmarks. On top of this you might want to access your bookmarks not only from your own computer but from any place with Internet access. You nowadays have a lot of pages on the Internet that will help you to manage your bookmarks as well as your RSS feeds, I try to comment on a small selection and please feel free to let me know about other sites (I will check and add them):

1) Delicious

This is a social bookmarking site, where you can list up your links. You will see how many other people also use the same link and communicate with them. You can share your bookmarks with a community interested in the same topic and also check other people’s bookmarks, learning about other related sites that might be interesting to you.

2) Netvibes

Netvibes provides one of the largest collection of widgets on the Internet allowing you to design your own personal website. You will be able to integrate a lot of functionalities on one site such as your various email accounts, RSS feeds, to do lists and calendars, Flickr, Youtoube, search engines, etc.

3) Search Engines

All major search engines such as google and yahoo also provide such personal websites.

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Temporary folder on your desktop

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Aug

28

Temporary folder on your desktop

by Nicolas

Create a temporary folder on your desktop. You will use this folder to store files which you only need for a very short time such as downloads, templates you will only use once, etc.

When you clean up your computer the next time you know that you can delete the contents of this folder without checking each file one by one and you will have less files in other places where you wonder what they are and where you will spend a lot time checking their contents before you can made a decision on how to proceed.