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This
Month's Links
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June
Highlighted Webinar -
Critical
Excel Tools for the Administrative Professional
June 7, 2011
This is the first of a two part series, partnering once again with
On-The-Right-Track. This first webinar, enttiled The Fundamentals
& Beyond, is not just for newbies. It will provide many way cool
tools, and set the stage for even more advanced functionality this
fall.
Also, don't let the title
fool you. This webinar is for anyone (not just Admins) who is
looking to improve their Excel skills enormously.
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Where's
Waldo?
6/2 - Webinar - The
Essential Guide to Facebook & Twitter for the Meetings Industry -
Meeting Jobs
6/7 - Webinar - Critical
Excel Tools for the Administrative Professional - On The Right Track.
6/15 - Del Mar, CA - Hot
Technologies for the Meetings Professional - FICP Educational Forum
6/16 - Webinar - Hot
Technologies for Marketing Your Funeral Home - NFDA
7/13-14 - Louisville, KY - Way
Cool Tools; 75 Sites in 75 Minutes; Google-licious - Kentucky
Association of School Administrators Annual Summer Institute
7/19 - Weston, FL - Social
Networks & Web 2.0; Smart Phones - Florida Dietetic Association
7/23-26 - Orlando, FL - Multiple
Sessions - MPI World Education Conference
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Blog/Podcast
of the Month – Fooducate.com/blog
A single person’s effort to help his family (and
others) make healthier food choices. They
also have a mobile nutrition app. Nicely
done!
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Hi …
So, the “monthly”
newsletter has been MIA since February.
The good side of that is with all of my traveling and teaching,
I’ve seen many of you over the past few months.
The bad side, well, is my delinquency in getting this newsletter
out to everyone. For
those reading for the first time, Techniques is my occasionally monthly
e-letter that discusses cool tech tools & tips.
Lots of fun stuff (well, at least when I send it out).
I am going to push the phone apps issue back one more month.
So it’ll be part of the July issue (yeah, yeah, there will be a
July issue). So without any
more excuses or fanfare, here we go.
My
Fave New Tool – This one’s at the top of the way
cool (and completely free) chart. Called
Screenr (www.screenr.com), this
web-based service allows you to create and publish
“screencasts”…video recordings (with audio) of your computer screen.
Ever need to create a quick instructional video to show a series of
computer steps? This is
your tool. In fact, my Excel
tool of the month is going to be linking to the first screencast I
created.
I’ll
Have a ShortStack of Pancakes, Please – Another tool
I’ve been using lately is to help me customize my Facebook Fan
(Business) page (which is www.facebook.com/meetingu).
Shortstack (www.shortstackapp.com)
provides a simple (no programming knowledge needed) way to create new
pages on your Facebook Fan page. Since
Facebook changed the game a few months ago, and FBML (Facebook Markup
Language) tools can’t be used, I found ShortStack to be a solution that
is very user friendly. It’s
a Freemium tool (pages with less than 100 Fans can use it for free).
You can see examples of ShortStack pages on my Facebook/MeetingU
page (Welcome and Speaking Where).
Spam
Spam Everywhere – I’m getting more and more social
media & smart phone spam these days…and am pretty tired of it.
I have found a really good tool to help combat Facebook spam,
called Defensio (www.defensio.com).
A freemium service (free for personal and small business usage), it
protects & notifies you when a spam or malicious post has been made to
your account. It works
as well for blogs and websites. Check
it out…I’ve been using it for a few months.
More
Defensive Maneuvers – Need a reason to make sure your
home wireless network has a good security password (one which you have
updated)? Have you seen
RouterPasswords.com (www.routerpasswords.com)?
This website is a list of all routers (make and model) to find out
the default username and password assigned to it.
As with most tools, it has good & bad capabilities.
On the good side, if you need to reset your network & can’t
remember the password, this will give you the list so you can find out
your default info. Of course,
that means any unscrupulous type can find that, and easily hack into your
network (if you didn’t change the defaults).
Consider yourself warned.
My
Music Streamed…Anywhere – At least anywhere I am
with my Android device. Google
(who has been really busy with new products lately) has just released
Music Beta (http://music.google.com).
In beta (and you’ll need to request an invitation from the site),
it streams your music on your PC (including iTunes) anywhere you are with
an Android device using the Android player for Music Beta by Google.
Have
You +1’d Today? – Speaking of Google, have you
noticed in your searches a very faint +1 icon next to your results?
If you have, you’re seeing the latest social search tool, called
+1 (plus one). The idea is
simple – by clicking on the +1 icon, you share with others that the
website is one you recommend. You’ll
need to be signed in to your Google account to see the +1 icon, and soon
you’ll be seeing it for webpages (not just search results) as well.
Excel
Cool Tool of the Month – Transpose – Ever receive a
workbook where the addresses were entered the wrong way (up and down the
rows, rather than lining up the columns)? Excel
has a great function, =TRANSPOSE, that offers you the ability to make a
vertical list horizontal.
Instead of trying to
type in the explanation, here’s my Screencast using the Screenr tool I
mentioned earlier, which will show you a short video (with audio) I made
to explain how to use it (www.screenr.com/user/jspellos).
I only have one video there so far, so it should be easy to find.
Needless to say,
you’ll need to do some additional work (using previously discussed tools
such as Text to Columns) to make this layout as perfect as you need it to
be. But I’m certain many of
you will be happy to learn about this really cool, useful tool within
Excel.
What,
Another Free Tool? – Yeah, this newsletter’s chock
full of them. Online-Convert (www.online-convert.com)
will convert media files between various formats (eg. Video, audio ebooks).
Not much more to say about it.
Free and useful. I like
that.
Looking
for Local? – The web sure has enough sites with
national & international information.
But how about for local communities?
One place to look is Patch (www.patch.com).
This site is a community-specific news source.
Currently in over 20 states (and many communities within them),
it’s a cool free (there’s that word again) local resource in the
United States.
Well, that does it for
this month. Since I plan on
committing next month’s newsletter to phone apps, you still can send me
(email, Facebook, however you’d like) your favorite apps for
consideration to be included.
Have a great
June…see you next month!
Jim
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