Archive for category: Heard on the Radio

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If you are involved with your company’s Web site in any way, listen closely. The strategy and thinking behind many corporate Web sites is typically based on what the company wants Web visitors to do or know. Many times I’ll hear people say, “we want users to learn about this”, or “we need to make the user do such and such”. Folks, this does not work and it will never work. Why? Because the Web site is not in control, the user is! Think about how you surf the Web. You go to a certain Web site because you have a job to do and if you can’t get that job done, you are outta there, right? So make your company’s Web site great by understanding what users might want to do and then make it easy and fast for them to get that job done. The better you do that, the more your site’s business will grow.

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Do you spend lots of time surfing the Internet? How would you like to increase your productivity by 2-3 times for free? One of the best ways to do that is by opening more than one web browser window at a time. By having several windows open, you can be working in one while the other one loads new pages. It also makes going back to previous screens many, many times faster and is perfect for navigating large, complex Web sites. Here’s how you do it: the next time you want to click on a link, use the right mouse button instead (we call this a right-click) and a menu will pop up. Click on the choice that says “open link in new window” or something to that effect and you’ll notice that a second window will open and show the new page, while the existing page will stay in your original window. Practice this technique because once you get the hang of it, you’ll be a “pro surfer” when it comes to the Web.

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When someone emails you a word document and asks for your review, how do you make changes and communicate them back? Most people put their changes in bold or underline but that really kinda messes up the document right? I’ll be you didn’t know that there’s a super cool feature in Word that is specifically designed for making and approving changes to documents. Hit the F1 key, and search for “Track Changes”. This really awesome feature automatically highlights all the changes you make to a document without any extra effort. This way when you send the file back to the original author, they have the chance to either approve or reject any of your changes. Once you get the hang of using the “track changes” feature you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. It’s the best way to work on a document together.

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When some part of your computer hardware is suddenly not working right, what should you do? Before you call the repairman for service, you might want to use the process of elimination to find the problem. Here’s an example: Let’s say your printer stops working. The cause of your problem could be the printer, your computer, or the cable, so try this: First, change only the printer and see what happens. Second, change only the cable and test the results. Finally, use different computer with the same cable and printer. Good problem solving techniques involve identifying the different components of a problem, then swapping out each component, one at a time, to identify which one is failing. You can apply this basic technique to almost any situation and after a while, you’ll get pretty good at it. Next time, you might fix the problem yourself and save some money.

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