How good is your Google?

You probably Google every day but are you using the advanced features to get the most out of your search results? Here’s an easy way to get started down the path to better Google results. It’s given in the spirit of teaching you how to fish, rather than giving you the fish.

Run the following search on Google: file: pdf google cheat sheet

The “File:” command with the PDF file type will return results for Google Cheat Sheet PDF files. One of these is bound to be a good review of how to use the Advanced Search commands.

If you don’t find something of interest you could just go to:

http://www.googleguide.com/
OR
http://www.google.com/librariancenter/librarian_tools.html

but that’s like just giving you a fish.

Free Screen Capture with Jing Project

I’ve always been a great fan of using screen captures to document and explain things. I use SnagIt from TechSmith every day. These folks also make the Camtasia software for making screencasts (mini movies of your computer screen.) They have a free beta of software that kind of combines a simplified set of features from both SnagIt and Camtasia. It’s Called Jing. There is a Windows and a Mac version of the free downloadable client. It’s worth a try if you’re looking for a simple and free screen capture utility.

You can save your captures to a file, to a Flikr account, or to a Screencast account.  (Screencast offers a free trial for 60 days.) You don’t need a screencast account to use the utility though.

Website Speed Tester

Here’s a handy tool to test the speed and optimization of your website. Try this free website speed test to improve website performance. Enter a URL to calculate page size, composition, and download time. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time. The script incorporates best practices from HCI research and website optimization techniques into its recommendations. The site is hosted by Andrew B. King who wrote the book on site optimization: “Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization” (Out of Print.) He also offers a “Tweak of the Week” and that seems to be up-to-date.

I tested the CYBERCity site and the results showed good results with areas we could improve.

Send a bunch of links at once.

Here’s a handy tool: Linkbun-ch What is LinkBunch? A web tool to bundle a bunch of links. It condenses multiple URLs into one short address. Quite often I have to send a list of links to someone to review, or a list of links I want to send to myself to remember, and research latter when I have a chance. With LinkBunch, you take a list of links and put them into one “bunch”, which becomes just one single link–which looks like a TinyURL or SnipURL link–and save that one link instead of having find a place to store my list. If you use Firefox there is an extention that will open the list of links in your browser - all tabbed up and ready to review.

Fill out PDF Forms on the web.

Here’s a handy site to help you complete PDF forms online: PDFEscape.com

You can open a PDF Form on your computer (upload) or on the web (enter URL.) This is a very handy service. No need to buy Adobe Acrobat (unless you want to create the original PDF forms.) The tool will also let you add text boxes, arrows and annotate the PDF. That would be handy for a fast and easy way to add notes to a PDF.

The free version lets you complete the form and print it. The premium ($$) version will let you email the form.

You can also setup a PDFescape link to a PDF form on your website that will allow users use this service to complete PDF forms, an interesting feature.

http://www.pdfescape.com/

How does your website look in another browser?

Here’s a site to test how your website looks in different browsers.

Select the browsers to try out and the site builds views for each. The process can take some time so don’t pick them all at once.

Here’s the site: http://browsershots.org