Techreluctant.com

Ever google something and down drops your past search history including “homemade hemorrhoid treatments”, all while your boss is sitting next to you at the computer? No? Me either, but I have been appalled when some of my past google searches appeared onscreen. I mean the things you can conceivably google in a day could run from chicken recipes to sexual positions so every now and then it’s a good idea to clear those out. The search box on the Google homepage displays suggestions to help you search and they come from more popular searches but also from your own previous searches. But starting afresh with google is as simple as a few clicks, but which clicks depend on what browser you’re using.

In Firefox:

• Click the Tools menu at the top of the browser
• Click Clear Private Data.
• Select Saved Form and Search History.
• Click the Clear Private Data Now button.

In Internet Explorer 6:

• Click the Tools menu at the top of the browser.
• Select Internet Options.
• Click the Content tab.
• Click the AutoComplete button.
• Click the Clear Forms button.

In Internet Explorer 7:

• Click the Tools menu.
• Select Delete Browsing History .
• Click the Delete forms button.
• Click Yes.
• Press the Close button.

Phew, now no one needs to know about those searches you’ve been doing on what to do after you’ve talked with an alien. But good luck with that.

I’ll be honest, I just found this one out recently. My cellphone is probably one of my least used pieces of technology, or at least it was until I just got my new phone recently, which I am loving. Anyway, maybe you don’t know about this trick either. If you want to get a list of recent calls, just press your Talk/Send/Picture of a phone button (whatever it is you press when you talk on your cellphone). A list of recent calls will come up, including incoming and outgoing on many phones . Just scroll to the number you’re looking for and press Talk again to call that number. Wow, could I have saved a lot of time knowing this before. Hopefully you can save some time and trouble too.

This one is new to me. Instead of typing the whole web address (or, as you know, the URL) into your browser’s address bar, you can just type the part that usually goes between www and .com then press Ctrl+Enter. www will be put before what you typed and .com will be automatically placed after it. So if you type techreluctant then press Ctrl+Enter, you’ll automatically get www.techreluctant.com. I think this is one I am going to start using a lot. It works in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, and the new Google Chrome.

Sometimes friends and family members ask me to do stuff on their computers, you know, as long as I’m there and if I don’t mind. One of the most frequent requests is to change their home page in their browser. This is a very simple task and is similar across browsers. The first step is to go to the website you want as your home page. Mine is Google News Canada. Once you’re there you do the following, depending on your browser:

In Firefox:
1. Click the Tools menu in the browser.
2. Select Options.
3. Click the Main tab.
4. In the Startup section, Click the Use Current Page button.
5. Click OK.

In Internet Explorer:
1. Click the Tools menu in the browser.
2. Select Internet Options .
3. Click the General tab.
4. In the Home page section, Click the Use Current button.
5. Click OK.

In Google Chrome:
1. Click the Tools menu (the little pic of a wrench) in the browser.
2. Select Options.
3. In the Home page section, select the ‘Open this page’ option (make sure the right address is there for your home page).
4. Click the Close button.

There you have it, just in case you don’t have a geeky friend like me around to do it for you.

Whether it’s some documents you’re trying to back up to a disk, a bunch of MP3s you’re transferring to your MP3 player, or some pictures you want to send to a mail recipient, there are times you want to select, or highlight, multiple files. To make the task easier, don’t forget to take advantage of your Ctrl and Shift keys while highlighting.

In order to select consecutive items, just click on the first file you want to highlight then press and hold down your Shift key until you click on the last file you want to highlight. Now the whole group, whether it’s three files or three thousand, are selected.

If you’re highlighting nonconsecutive files just press and hold down on the Ctrl key while you select whatever files you want (don’t let go until you’re done).

And if you want to just select all files in a folder, go to Edit on the toolbar on top of the open folder and then click “Select All”.

To edit in most Windows programs, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts, using the oft misunderstood but very helpful Ctrl button along with other keys:

• Ctrl+z undoes your last action (if the program has an undo function)
• Ctrl+y redoes your last action (if the program has a redo function)
• Ctrl+a selects all
• Ctrl+x cuts
• Ctrl+c  copies
• Ctrl+v pastes
• Ctrl+p prints a file
• Ctrl+s saves a file

The right-click can help you do lots of things (or left-click if you’re a leftie). One of the most underused is probably the Send To option. If you right-click on any file (click the right button of your mouse instead of the usual left) you can scroll down to Send To and send that file to any number of places including other drives, your documents folder or a mail recipient. Send to mail recipient is great for sending photos. Just select the photos you want to send, right-click on them then choose Send To–>Mail recipient. Your default email program will pop up and you can add the text, subject, and addresses of the recipients. Even better, Windows will ask you if you want to resize the photos which makes pictures taken at high resolution and the best settings much easier to send. So the Send To is pretty helpful on its own but you can improve it. You can add things to your Send To section but that’s a tip for another day.

One of the little things I use the most on the computer, and one that most people ask me about when they see me do it, is to open a web page in a new window. Instead of just clicking on a link, right-click the link and you will see a dropdown box. Choose Open in New Window or Open Link in New Window (depending on your browser) and that web page will open in a new window. Now you still have your original browser window open and when you finish reading the new page, just close it. For me, when I surf the Net, I find someting interesting, click on it, go to that page and there’s something interesting there so I click again and so on and so on and so on. Before I know it, I’ve lost where I started and wish I could find my way back. That’s why I love opening in new windows. You may have noticed that most of the links I put on here open in new windows and that’s why, so you can always return to where you started. Now you can do it on any web page.

You can also open in new tabs, both in Firefox and recent versions of Internet Explorer. Again, just right-click the link and the dropdown box will give you an option to open in a new tab. That’s not my preference but maybe you’d like to try that as another way of making your tech life easier.

Last week, I went over the basics of googling, This week, I’m going to tell you about Google’s advanced search and also some pretty cool things you can do in that little Google search box.

Google has an Advance Search link on their page (in smaller letters to the right of the search box). With this you can do more specific searches without the minus signs and quotes (sure, now she tells me). It also allows you to change how many search results you see on your results page and is a way to search for something on one specific site (or you can type in your keyword in the main Google search page and then type site:[name of site] such as tech site:techreluctant.com). So, that’s most of the basic searching advice and where to find the advanced search, but there are some extras that Google searches can provide and these can possibly make your life easier (don’t forget that instead of clicking on the Google Search button, you can just hit the enter button once you’ve typed your search).

• Google has a calculator so if you type 144+17 in the search box then click Google Search, you’ll get your answer.

• Looking for the definition of a word? Type the word define followed by a colon and the word you want to define  such as define: easy.

• In these days of economic woe, maybe there’s a stock you’re following. If you want a quick stock quote, just type the ticker symbol in the search box and click Google Search.

• I use Google all the time to convert measurements. So, last week when I needed to know how many cups were in 48 ounces, I just typed 48 oz in cups, hit enter and there was my answer.

• Your friends are vacationing in Australia and you’d like to know what the weather is like there. Just type in weather sydney australia.

• Want to call those vacationing friends but don’t want to wake them up by calling at the wrong time? Just type time Sydney Australia and you’ll know exactly when they are (although I couldn’t get this to work for my city).

Probably the thing I like the most about Google though is the way it checks my spelling. I am not usually a bad speller but I do not want to look up the proper spelling for armadillo every time I want to google it (yes, I have searched about armadillos before and I’m not telling you why). Also, I have a tendency to transpose letters while typing. Each time I type Newfoundalnd in a search, Google always comes back and says “Do you mean Newfoundland?” with not a hint of judgment in its tone.

The Internet is a wealth of information. Finding exactly what you want in cyberspace can be the biggest task but your friendly Google (or other search engine) can make that search much easier, especially if you know how to find what you’re looking for. Happy Googling.

Google has become a verb in our language so that if you want to find something out you google it. Google (www.google.com or www.google.ca for the Canadian version) is a search engine for the Internet and there are others like Yahoo and MSN, to name only two, but I’ve been a fan of Google since before it was cool so I’ll stick with it unless they change their clean and crisp site to something flashy and cluttered.

As much as I like Google, a tool is not much good if you don’t know how to use it. It can be pretty straightforward of course. Just type a keyword into the little box on Google and press the search button but the problem is that you will probably get millions of results and lots of them won’t be anything you’re looking for. The key to good googling is knowing how to find what you are looking for and Google provides plenty of ways to do it.

First of all, if you are looking for a specific phrase or sentence, just put quotes around it. This is especially true if there are words like “the”or “and” in your phrase since these words are so common Google just ignores them if you don’t use them in a phrase with quotes around them. So when I did a search for Canada council for the arts I got 759,000 results but when I put quotes around “Canada council for the arts” I got 220,000 results. Still a lot of results, I know, but a big difference and that difference makes it much more likely that you’ll find what you want. But note that when using the quotes, you have to be careful. If I searched for “fish and chips”, I wouldn’t get results for “fish n chips” or “fish & chips” so make sure you know what you want.

Another thing you can do with Google (and many other search engines) is add a minus or plus sign. Let’s say you’ve been hearing about glucosamine to help with your arthritis. If you want to know more, you can type in arthritis glucosamine and find lots of sites that want to sell you glucosamine but you want to get some real information, not sales pitches from GlucosamineRus, so you simply put a minus sign before the words you don’t want included in your search. If you try arthritis glucosamine -shop -buy -order you’ll find 77,800 results. That may sound like a lot but if you just type in arthritis glucosamine, you’ll get 178,000 as of  today. It’s much more likely now that you’ll find relevant information. A plus sign in front of a word will ensure that the word will be included in the search since, as I mentioned before, Google ignores some common words. So if your search really needs the word “the” in it then make sure you use +the in your search.

Google also has a number of other cool features that can help you with your searches. We’ll check those out next week on Tips & Tricks Tuesday.