Tips and Techniques #12

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Tips and Techniques #12 – July 2020

Shortcuts

If you haven’t tried Shortcuts on your IOS device, you should.

If you don’t already have it, this is a free app available on the App Store on your iPhone or iPad.  It is a set of automated instructions for your device to do something quickly for you. It also can be used for a Home Hub to things like turn on lights, adjust the AC, etc. Some are simple that you could accomplish in a few steps and selections and some can be quite complex and would require a considerable amount of your time. Use Siri to invoke it or click on the Shortcut from your list of “MyShortcuts” in the app. Use it to do simple things like turn something off/on like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Sometimes using Siri might not work as expected because she did not understand. You’ll need to say the correct name for the Shortcut and speak clearly. If it did not work, try again. This is getting better as Apple improves voice recognition.

Here are some examples from the many pre-made Shortcuts:

Open my book – this will open your Kindle app and take you to the last page you read

Set Audio Output – this will switch audio output to Airplay, AirPods, or a Bluetooth device

Directions Home – get direction to home from your current location

Remind Me When I Get Home – you will get a reminder to do something when your arrive home

Share Location  – share a Maps URL with your current location in a text message

Share Availability – Enter a date, get your free time from the calendar, and share it with others to make appointments

There are many, many more in the Gallery within the app or with a bit of study you can create your own custom Shortcuts.

You can leave your Shortcuts within the app in “MyShortcuts”, place them on your desktop for easy access, or ask Siri to perform them for you.

 

Ten Cool Tips for your Mac

  1. Special Characters and Emojis – access these in an email or word processor easily by typing CTRL+CMD+Space. You can chose from math symbols, special punctuation, bullets/stars, and emojis. Type in the search box to quickly locate what you want. For emojis type “happy, airplane, etc.”
  2. Rename files – select the files you want to rename. If they are all in one folder, use CMD+A to select all. Then go to File Menu, drop down to Rename, then enter what to find (image_1) and then enter the replacement word. It will name them “Beach trip, 1, 2, 3, etc. If it did not turn out to be what you wanted, use CMD+Z to Undo. Try again.
  3. Versions – For apps like Page® and some third party apps like Word®, you could save yourself if you accidently deleted something. In Page, go to File-Revert To… for a prior version. You can do this in Word® also, but the document must be saved to your OneDrive Account. You can find it in File/Browse Version History.
  4. Hot Corners – you can set a corner (up to 4) of your desktop to do something if you move the cursor there. For example, I use the lower left corner to bring up my desktop just by moving my cursor there. Moving the cursor to the upper right corner brings up notifications. To set this up, open Preferences/Mission Control/Hot Corners. A dialog box opens and select from the choices available an action that you would like.
  5. Dictating – Go to Preferences/Keyboard and select Dictation Tab and make sure dictation is turned on. Choose a keystroke to start dictation. You’ll need to tell it punctuation too.
  6. Read/Speaking – within an email, Pages, or text/edit app you can select text and then go to Edit/Speech to have your Mac read the text.
  7. Summarize Text – you can try this to see the Mac summarize an article with the salient information. It’s not perfect but worth a try.  For example, in Safari, select text in a webpage/article, go to Safari (left of File Menu) and drop down to Services – and then look for summarize. You can adjust how  much summarizing you want with the slider.
  8. Calculator – open the Calculator app. You can click with the mouse on the keys or use the number keys on your keyboard, You can also see a “paper tape” of your work by pressing CMD+T. You can copy/paste this if needed or print it. On your iPhone, if you turn it horizontal, the calculator turns into a scientific calculator. You can get a free one for the iPad that does this also. Don’t forget Siri can also do math, just ask her.
  9. Another calculator – for a quick calculation or conversion of units, type CMD+spacebar to bring up Spotlight. The type in 2*2 or $12 and it will offer the conversion rate to euros, yen, Canadian dollars, and Swiss francs. You can perform algebraic function and trig function using parentheses when typing in the search box in Spotlight.
  10. Reader view – when you just want to see an article on Safari without all the ads, select the reader view icon to the left of the URL/search box. It looks like lines of text. It will render the article text and graphics with the ads stripped off. Much easier on the eyes to remove the distractions.

 

Revisit to Evernote – for those who have used this tech stalwart for years, someone compared it to a marriage.  There were the early days when everything was wonderful, then after a few years you start to ignore the benefits and notice more of the warts.  True, no application is perfect, but with several hundred million users worldwide, it continues to provide solid foundations for our storage and a powerful ability to “find it when you need it”.  Sure there are more competitors like Notion, Bear, OneNote, and Google Keep to mention a few of the major ones. They all have their quirks and learning curves.

Just to remind you of the most important features:

Scannable – unfortunately it’s only on IOS but it’s ability to copy documents as a picture or PDF is unsurpassed. Send the capture to a friend via email and it’s saved to Evernote too. Android users can look at CamScanner as a substitute. Another remarkable feature is OCR. Give Evernote a few minutes and text become readable, even in a picture. It can even read handwriting (unless it’s mine, ).

WebClipper – this continue to be improved and is available on major browsers such a Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Grab the entire article, a simplified version, screen grab or just the URL. Send it directly to a Notebook, rename and tag it all at the same time. What more could you ask for.

Evernote – syncs with the desktop, your phone (Android or IOS) and your tablet. Change something on one and it appears on the others. At a computer away from home? Just sign into your account and use the web version. Out of the office, if you have your phone or tablet, you have everything with you.

Sharing – when you create a Note, click on the Share button in the upper right corner to send it to a team member or a friend. You control if they can just view it or edit and make changes. You can revoke permission too. People can see the document by sharing just the Note’s unique URL, they don’t even need Evernote. You can also share directly to social media. Again, click the Share button in the upper right corner of the Note, and then at the bottom of the dialog box, click More Sharing and pick from Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Email to Evernote – with the Premium version you can email directly from your email account directly to your Evernote account. Email accounts are not meant to be large storage devices. Send your important correspondence to Evernote. It’s not that costly. Give up that fancy Latte each month and it’s paid for.

General – use your mobile devices to gather information or look up Notes. Do your heavy lifting on the desktop version. You can encrypt information too within a Note. Need more security, use two-factor authentication. The Evernote website has links to third-party apps that give Evernote even more power.

Thought for Today – If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble you wouldn’t sit for a month… Theodore Roosevelt

Next time: More on shortcuts, Asana – another powerful and popular project manager, looking more deeply at Getting Things Done and another recipe.