I already shared a few weeks ago a short list of shortcuts that are useful in getting the most out of Windows. Before I share more, let me list some of the reasons I am a proponent of keyboard shortcuts:

1. It’s quicker.

That’s all.

Quite simply, you can work quicker as you learn and remember more and more keyboard shortcuts and as you work to make them a part of how you work. Think about this, how long would it take you to minimize every window you had open right now? I have 7 windows open right now, for me to go and hit the “minimize” bar on the top of each window would take about 6 seconds total, for me to hit the Windows key and the letter D together (Win+D) takes about 1/2 a second – tops. (I know that Macs have a Mouse Shortcut for this, which works very well indeed.)

Most people already know some keyboard shortcuts and they don’t even realize it, for example Ctrl+C for Copy, Ctrl+V for Paste, Ctrl+X for Cut, Ctrl+P for Print and Ctrl+S for Save. I’ve even mentioned F1 for the Help menu a couple of times.

Take a few minutes and peruse your menus in the programs that you have open. For example, under the File menu you’ll find options that look like the image to the left. Here you can see that Ctrl+T opens a new tab while Ctrl+W closes a tab.

One shortcut that is common to just about every Windows program is Alt+F4 which closes the program down. It works the same as hitting the button at the top right of the window.

Also, to switch programs you can hold down Alt and hit Tab (Alt+Tab) to file through the windows you have open rather than clicking the items on your taskbar. Ctrl+Tab works within a single program – say to switch between documents you have open in Word or tabs in Firefox.

I’ve found a number of lists of shortcuts that I want to list here. Check some of them out and take advantage as you gain more of your time to work (and a better control over your computer use).

• Common Windows Shortcuts
• Mac OS X Shortcuts
• 230+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services
• Gmail Shortcuts – there is an option in Gmail to turn these on and off.
• Microsoft Word Shortcuts
• Microsoft Excel Shortcuts
• Microsoft Powerpoint Shortcuts

Links via [Lifehacker & Mashable]

WHY? Focus on the web updates you really want to digest while skipping or saving others for later makes you more effective.

Now that you are motivated to receive updates from your favorite websites and you know how to get updates all in one place, let’s talk about how to make streamline your online experience even more by using Google Reader well.

Viewing Options

There are a few ways to have your web updates displayed in Google Reader. One option is deciding how the items are to be displayed. One is called “List View” and the other is “Expanded View”. You’ll find the tabs to change the view on the right side of the site.

List View allows you to see the items in one line. It’s like only seeing the subject of an email. Unread items are in bold and are typically unbolded to show you read items. Expanded View allows you to see some or all of the content.

The other option is to decide if you want all of the items from a website listed (read and unread) or if you only want to see what you have not read. You make this choice by clicking on one of the options on the left side of the site.

Organizing Your Updates

If you are only subscribed to a few updates then organizing them may not be of great concern to you. But if you are like me and subscribe to many (over 200 for me!) updates, it will be more effective to get some control over them!

You can add a tag (or folders) each update feed with as many tags as you like. I use several like “friends”, “business”, and “fun”. I have several others I use as well.

One trick I use is to double-tag my favorite updates as “top”. This way when I’m running short on time or I just want to read the “best of the best” as determined by me, I can just click on the “top” tag or the + button beside it to show which ones are updated. When I read one in the “top” tag and it’s also tagged “friend”, for example, that update will be marked as read in both.

You can also drag and drop the entire tagged set of items so it doesn’t have to be in alphabetical order as you can see in my example. This also works for individual feeds as well.

One last bit of customization in how new items are displayed is by choosing to show only the feeds that have an update or show them all even if there are no new updates. I like to have Google Reader only show me what is updated. This keeps the list a lot cleaner.

Save and Share Your Favorites

At the bottom of every update item are several options you can do with that particular update. Let’s look at each

Adding a star will save that particular update in Google Reader. I use this all the time if I want to save an item or come back and read it later. You are able to access all starred items at once using the top-right menu (see below).

Pressing the Share button creates a blog of just those items you choose. People can then visit that site (or subscribe) to see what you are finding interesting.

If you want to send that item to a friend, you can use the email button to do so.

You have the option to keep an item marked as “read” or “unread”.

You can also edit the tags for that item.

In the top-left corner of Google Reader you will find several choices you can make. Though it’s first on the page, I saved it for last because some of these choices make more sense while you are reading your updates.

One interesting link is the “Trends” link that lets you see some basic statistics about what feeds you are reading, who’s updating frequently or infrequently, etc.

And to round out the options, Google Reader will collect your friend’s shared items in one place. To configure how that works, click on the “manage friends” link.

If you’d like to watch a video about how a guy named Robert Scoble can sift through over 600 web updates, check this video out!

You can also learn some new tips (like keyboard shortcuts) and basics from the Google Reader FAQ page.

What experiences have you had using Google Reader more effectively?

---

Editor’s Note: This post is the final part of our “RSS Awareness Week” Festivities. It was originally written by Rob Williams for his website 170spoons.com and is copied here with his permission. Thank you very much Rob!

I love keyboard shortcuts. The more you can do without having to move your hands from keyboard to mouse the better – and the quicker!

Today I want to share a list of what you can do with the Windows key. Honestly, do you know all the stuff that you can do with it? For the purposes of this post, we’ll use the letter W as the Windows key.

W: Opens Start Menu

W+ E: Opens up Windows Explorer

W+ R: Opens the Run command.

W+ U: Opens Utility Manager

W+ L: Log Off

W+ F: Search files on your computer

W+ D: Show Desktop [will switch back and forth from all minimized and back again]

W+ F1: Windows Help Menu

W+ Pause/Break: System Properties

W+ Tab: (Vista) Cycles through open programs in the cool-looking Aero slideshow.

W+ Tab: (Other Windows) Cycles Through Buttons in Taskbar

W+ M: Minimize all open windows. (Similar to W+D, but with less power.)

W+ Shift+M: Maximize the windows you had open before minimizing

W+B: Set focus to the first System Tray Icon [which is the arrow if you enable the Hide Inactive Icons option]

CTRL+W +F: Search for computers

Do any of you have shortcuts that you use often? Are there any similar shortcuts for Macs?

From [MojoStix]

I do all of my emailing through a single Gmail account. I am able to do this simply because of Google’s amazing thoroughness in the implementation and design of Gmail. Let me list off a few of the many advantages and post a walkthrough of how to sign up for a Gmail account.

Some advantages:
• Free. Anyone can sign up for it. There are extras that you can pay for, but not really necessary.
• Storage space. By the time you read this there will be more than 6.5 GB (gigabytes) of it. If every email you send or receive is 50 KB (pretty big for an email without an attachment) that allows for almost 21,000 emails before it’s full. (You can add 10 GB more for $20/year.)
• Growing storage space. It’s estimated that Gmail is adding 3.3 MB daily (67 of those hypothetical emails).
• POP and IMAP access. POP and IMAP are the primary ways that programs like Outlook and Thunderbird bring in emails from the web. This can make your email available anywhere.
• Incoming POP access. This is how I do all of my email from my Gmail account. You are able to have Gmail pull in your USCM.org (or CCCI.org) email and store it in Gmail – this also works for your internet service provider account (Verizon, Comcast, etc.). You can even have Gmail send emails from those accounts.
• Keyboard shortcut navigation. This is a great feature in any program for working quickly and efficiently, we’ll learn about this in future posts.
• Multiple accounts built into one. If you sign up for johnny.crusade@gmail.com you also own johnnycrusade@gmail.com, j.o.h.n.n.y.c.r.u.s.a.d.e@gmail.com (or anything in between) as well as johnny.crusade@googlemail.com. You can also add words to it with a plus; for example johnny.crusade+ebay@gmail.com for all of your eBay stuff so if you start getting spam you know who has been selling your email address.
• Search don’t sort. Remember, Gmail is from Google – a search engine. Gmail can instantly find old emails as you search for them. It’s quick and thorough. There are also advanced searches that you can use… we’ll look at them closer in a future post.
• Sort if you must. Gmail can sort emails just like Outlook into categories (called tags) – the main difference is that you can have multiple tags on one email. So, if you have a student who is a leader at one of your schools but is also attending the summer project you’re directing you can label his email both “Podunk State” as well as “OCMD Summer Project”
• Filters. You can have Gmail automatically filter things depending on what email it was sent from, or sent to, or words that are in the email itself… or by about a thousand other things.
• Threaded Conversations. Gmail will group related emails together as a “conversation” so that you don’t have to flip back and forth between individual emails between you and someone else. It will group them together in order so that you can read them all at once. Honestly, this may be the main feature that changes the way you read email.
• FREE!

If I have convinced you (and really, what more could you ask for?) take a look at the walk-through that I put together a few months ago.

We’ll walk through the Inbox next.