Technology Tips
The Library on Your Smartphone: There’s an App for That
It’s no secret that the sale of smartphones exceeded the sale of computers last year (read more about this interesting trend here). Because we strive to anticipate the needs of our patrons, the library offers some handy apps for smartphone users:
LibAnywhere provides access to your library account and the mobile
catalogOverdrive Media Console allows you to check out library eBooks right to your mobile device – a must for folks who like to have some reading material at all times
Freading is another eBook service the library uses. The selection of titles on Freading is incredible; this is the place to find beautiful nonfiction and fun books for kids
Mango delivers language lessons to your phone, with the option of learning 38 foreign languages
OneClickdigital is the library’s eAudiobook partner; you can choose from titles recorded by Recorded Books, which also provides the library with many of our physical audiobooks
Zinio gives you access to full-text magazines exactly as they appear in print. Some of the most popular titles are Cosmopolitan, National Geographic and Consumer Reports.
To download these free apps, just visit the app store from your smartphone and search for them by keyword. Questions? Just ask us!
Microsoft Office - Quick Access Toolbar
Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 added a new feature, a Quick Access Toolbar.
The toolbar is located in the upper left corner of the screen, next to the icon displaying the program you are using.
Mine looks like this in Microsoft Excel.
You can customize it for each of the Office products individually. Start by clicking the More arrow at the end of the toolbar. You’ll see a dropdown menu like this
To add or remove features from this toolbar just click on the name. If the name has a checkmark it will appear on your toolbar. Click again to remove the feature.
If you’re anything like me, you often wonder where you’ve saved a document. I added a box to display the network path of my document. Instructions are available at this link.
Happy customizing!
Great article on single-purpose web sites - from Lifehacker.com
Lifehacker.com has a great article on web sites that do what they say: Need to perform a speed test? Check the security level of your password? Find your IP address? This article has a lot of great resources.
Format copied text
If you copy text from the internet or another document and paste it into your document bad things can happen. The fonts and text colors may not be the same, the background could be a different color, etc.
A clipboard will appear just below the information you pasted. Click on the clipboard and select the second option, match destination formatting. Now your new information is formatted like the rest of your document.
If you regularly copy and paste, you may want to select the last option and set the default Paste option to Match Destination Formatting.
Don’t forget to use footnotes or cite your source if you are copying someone else’s text.
Revealing word or character count in Microsoft Word
When writing an essay or entering a contest you often need to know you word or character count. Microsoft Word makes this easy to track. In Microsoft 2007:
- Click on the review tab
- Go to the Proofing section
- Click on the icon with ABC 123
- The Word Count popup box contains the information you seek
QR codes, or, what are those squares popping up everywhere?
Many people have been wondering about the odd squares appearing in our catalog and on library posters. These are called QR codes. If you have a smart phone/mobile device, simply get a QR reader app and scan the code. You will then be brought to a mobile webpage designed to give you more information.
QR codes can also encode phone numbers, addresses, URLs, text messages, etc.
You may also generate your own QR codes - one free generator is qrcode.kaywa.com
The QR code for the library website: http://www.waukeganpl.org
A link to books by Chris Bohjalian. The more text you enter when creating your QR code, the denser the code.
You can also scan QR codes in our catalog, click the catalog tab in the left menu, search for anything, scan the QR code in the record and your phone can keep track of call numbers of books so you can search our shelves without using paper.
Changing the capitalization of text in a document
hAVE YOU EVER TYPED A DOCUMENT IN THE WRONG CASE? or just missed the capitalization at the beginning of a sentence. Do you need the text in all uppercase or all lowercase?
All these problems can be easily fixed in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint 2007. On the home tab, navigate to the font section and on the bottom row click the arrow next to the “Aa”. This will open up the Change Case menu.
If you prefer shortcuts you can use ALT+O+E to open the menu, or highlight your text and use Shift+F3 until the appropriate effect is applied.
Sentence case is uppercase at the beginning, all other words lowercase, period at the end.
lowercase has no capital letters
UPPERCASE IS ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
Capitalize Each Word Makes The First Letter Of Each Word Uppercase
tOGGLE cASE is used when you accidently type something with Caps Lock on.
Thanks to Sara T for submitting this tip.
Typing and mouse skills
It’s a great day for learning or practicing your typing and mouse skills. Here are some great tools to help.
Easiest to get started typing, just click on the link and choose your lesson.
www.sense-lang.org/typing
Practice typing by rows on the keyboard
http://www.powertyping.com/qwerty/lessonsq.html
Practice word combinations
http://www.powertyping.com/practice/practice.html
After you choose your lesson, do NOT click the free download, wait until you see a Begin Lesson popup, then click the screen. http://www.typingweb.com/tutor/lesson/index/id/316/
Do you want to make typing a game?
Letter and words
http://www.powertyping.com/baracuda/baracuda.htm
Words at a time
http://www.powertyping.com/fog/foggies.html
One letter at a time
http://www.powertyping.com/rain.shtml
Try to line up letter combinations
http://www.powertyping.com/typing_games/jibe/jibe.html
Learn and practice your mouse skills
www.pbclibrary.org/mousing/intro.htm
http://www.mesalibrary.org/research/mouse/page01.htm
http://www.seniornet.org/howto/mouseexercises/mousepractice.html
Minimize and un-minimize the Ribbon in Microsoft Office
Like most people, I occasionally click something and the Microsoft Office Ribbon vanishes.
The ribbon is at the top section of the page and looks like this in Excel.
When the ribbon is minimized Excel looks like this.
Having the ribbon minimized is great if that’s what you desire. You can see more of the document/spreadsheet/database you are using. I prefer to see the available options.
There are several ways to minimize/un-minimize the ribbon, I’ll show you two.
1. Right click on the word Home in the menu and click on the last option. If you see a checkmark, the ribbon will be minimized.
2. Right click on the arrow next to the Quick Access Toolbar. The ribbon option is at the bottom.
Michael S. Hart - the first producer of free eBooks dies
Every day you hear more and more about eBooks. Today is a day to reflect on the man who invented eBooks, Michael S. Hart. You can read his obituary here.
Project Gutenberg is a great resource for downloading free eBooks in a variety of languages and file formats. We link to that and other free eBooks site here.
For free access to over 15,000 titles visit http://downloads.waukeganpl.org and click on this image.
