Technology has become a necessity in our lives. It’s already pretty easy to use, but did you know there are ways to simplify it even more? In this post I’ll provide twelve tips that make it easier to use the Web, smartphones, Google, word processing programs, cameras, and presentations.
On the web
- When scrolling through an article or Web page, hit the Space bar to scroll down one page instead of using the mouse.
- When filling in forms, when get to the state, press the first letter of the state until you get to the one you’re looking for instead of clicking the mouse to open the menu and scroll down to it.
- If you can’t see text, hold down the Control key and hit + until you can see the text. If you need to make it smaller, hit the minus key.
- Instead of typing a period to end a sentence, hit the Space bar twice. This inserts the period, adds a space and capitalizes the first letter of the next sentence.
- To redial someone you dialed before, press the Call or Dial button to automatically redial the last person you dialed.
- When listening to voicemail, you can press a certain key to skip the voicemail greeting completely and start recording your message. The key differs depending on the carrier. For Sprint it’s the “I” key, for Verizon it’s *, and for AT&T and T-Mobile it’s #.
- If you’re looking up the definition of a word on Google, just type “define” followed by the word. If you’re using Google on a smart phone you can use your voice to ask Google to define a word.
- You can also use Google to look up flight status information — just type the airline and flight number.
- You can also use Google to do currency and unit conversions — just type the currency or units you need converted, for example “10 dollars to euros” or “10 miles to kilometers”
- To change a word, double click on it to highlight and then type the new word over it.
- To highlight one word at a time, double-click the mouse and drag it.
- To get rid of shutter lag, press the shutter button halfway down to get the camera to pre-focus
- When giving a presentation, to get the audience to focus on you instead of the slide behind you, press B for blackout or W for whiteout.