Google Plus

Want your message to be in italics?

_your words_ 

Want your message to be bold?

*your message*

Want your message to have a line through it?

-your message-

Know any more? Feel free to share them in the comments!

I am sure more formatting or navigation tips will be picked up with time.  Overall, I think Google Plus has great potential and I can not wait to see what they do with the platform next.

Want a more productive menu bar in Windows?

For the past few months now, I’ve gone with the extra thick menu bar at the bottom of my computer.  Since my screen size is so big now (1920×1200), I figured I could spare the extra space.  Here is how I created mine, just in case you might want to try the same.

To get the extra tall menu bar in the first place, you need to right-click on the menu bar down there and unlock it.  Next, just grab the edge of it with your mouse and stretch it up till it is the size you want.

Little Recycle Bin

Next, create a shortcut of your Recycle Bin on your desktop (right-click, create shortcut) and then cut and paste that into your Quick Launch toolbar.

Customized Toolbars

To setup the categorized shortcut icons, you just need to right-click on the menu bar, select “Toolbars” and then “New Toolbar”. Then, select a place you want to hide your toolbar shortcuts (I have mine in My Documents > Toolbars) and create a new folder in that location.

Now you have the toolbar there, but it is empty.  You can either drag and drop items down there, or navigate to the folder’s location and create your shortcuts there.  Here is the inside of my “apps” toolbar folder in Windows.

That’s it.  Now you can choose to customize from this point on to meet your own needs.  You might even mix in a few internet shortcuts (like to Gmail or Google Calendar) to give yourself quicker access to them.

Hope this comes in handy for those of you looking for more productive ways to organize your Windows menu bar/toolbar layout.

Right click on the desktop, select “New” and then “AutoHotkey Script”.

On the desktop icon created for the script, I want you to right-click on it and select “Edit Script”.  This should open up a Notepad window with your empty script inside.  Go to the Notepad window, hit enter twice so you are on a new line.  Next I want you to type in the following:

c:testscript::

Now this is telling your script that the word “testscript” is your keyword to type to get your longer response to launch.  Next add some text to the end of that – such as…

c:testscript::Thank you for your suggestion.  I really appreciate it.

Now that you got that text typed into there I want you to go to “File” and then “Save” to save your script.  Now lets go back to the desktop where you created your quick response, and double click the icon created on your desktop to launch it.  You should see the green box with the “H” in it in your taskbar now. 

Now go into any text field, e-mail, search box, anything and type in testscript then hit enter after typing it in.  Presto – you just saved yourself a few more seconds in your day.  You can now quickly type out phrases you use multiple times in the day and save your keyboard (and fingers) from all that extra work.