The idea to write a series of short tech tips which could serve as the springboard/entry hook to tech integration training sessions has been floated in our Writing Project leadership group for a while, but it was the suggestion of "blast" or "blitz" as the title that got me going on the project. Almost immediately the title 

"Fred Fifteen Fabulous newFound Fillips of [computer] Fun" 

came galloping across my mental screen. After sitting down and coming up with a full list of fifteen in a matter of a very few minutes, even though I had picked the numerical target only for its f-ness, I realized I could actually do this...even though the silly title faded away quickly, to be replaced by

Fred's Fab Fifteen

1. Text expanders

One of the most powerful ways a computer can help you in your daily workflow is to remember things you've already completed and let you reuse them. My favorite tool by far, using a text expander just makes sense--think of all the things, from email addresses to the salutation you use to close a message or letter, which you type and retype many times a day. Here are a few possibilities for the Mac:

TypeIt4Me:

My favorite text expander. I know there are others, but I've never tried them, having used TypeIt4Me since about 1991 with System 7. I met Riccardo, the developer,  at a MacWorld Conference a few years ago, and he was sweet and charming. More to the point, he's very responsive to help requests -- although the only problems I've ever had have been lost registration numbers. Sometimes called a macro, but since it cannot execute programs, it's not technically in that class. One of the small hidden features of TypeIt4Me is that it tracks your speed of typing, and will give you a statistic of your average words per minute, over your time of use, and then calculate how much time it's saved you. I never realized that actually can type over 50 words per minute--not pro level, but faster than I thought.

Being able to trigger a line of text, like your email address or a complete footer of several  lines, with just a few characters which you specify yourself, is a tremendous time saver. It will actually work well for any "boilerplate" text, even several pages of text. I first discovered the application during one of my first years teaching, when I found myself writing "[Student's name] needs to go the library and keep reading during summer" over and over and over again on almost every report card. I don't know of a free version of a text expander, and of all the software expenditures you could make, I think buying TypeIt4Me will give you many, many multiples of its cost back in value.

For Windows users, ....

2. Multiple clipboards

When you copy something to the computer's invisible clipboard, you can then paste it somewhere else. The essence of copy...but what if you need the string of words you copied just before the last one you copied? Or the one before that? A "multiple clipboard" utility puts what you just copied on a new piece of virtual paper right over the "piece" that has what you copied before, and then lets you flip the pages back to get to the earlier items.

There are many "multiple clipboard" utilities on the market. The one I use is called CopyPaste, but it costs money, and there is a very good open source one, which I didn't discover until long after I had spent my money on CopyPaste. Jumpcut works very well and is maintained as an open source project, meaning all the code is freely available and no payment is required.

For Windows users, ....

3. Applejack

Applejack is another Open Source project, and hasn't been updated for a while. It won't work with Snow Leopard, or OS 10.6. But for Mac users with Leopard or Tiger, it's a very important repair and rescue utility to have. Since Mac OS 10 is based on Unix, there is a suite of self-repair and maintenance routines that are built into Unix which are important to the stability and integrity of the operating system. Apple sets up Mac OS to run these routines automatically in the early morning, but the computer needs to be left on overnight for this to happen. Applejack allows a user to run these maintenance routines at any time. It also provides for a way to boot up the computer into a command-line rescue mode in the event of problems.

For Windows users, ....

4. Emptying the Trash

This is even more of a personal recommendation than any of the other items in this list, but I'm quite passionate about it. I have helped many people try to recover things from the trash. I can't recall any great successes, but there certainly were failures. In any case, my recommendation is, don't put it in the trash until you're sure you never need to see it again, and then immediately empty the trash! Don't ever let yourself think, "Well, I can always pull it out of the trash..."

The subtext to this recommendation is that "taking up too much space" is often based on folks' misconceptions about how much hard disk space various kinds of files take up, and what they really need to get rid of. When we get to Fab14, we'll learn how to look for what's really taking up space. The recommended ideal amount of free space to leave on a disk is minimum 25%, better about a third. In rough order the largest files on anyone's computer are movies/video, then music/sound, then images, last text files. So it's almost never necessary to delete text files--just keep em in folders (see Fab6). Back up and remove movies, then music, to free up hard disk space if you get an "out of space" warning, or know you are using more than the recommended proportion. External hard disks are really cheap these days, it's good to back up a lot and keep lots of free space on disks, including the backup disks.

5. Customize the Finder Menu Bar

Jing movie to come

6. Option-f ƒ for Folder names

Ditto

7. No spaces in document names

Ditto

8. Establish a dating convention and date things

You decide, but do decide. What I use is 070210 for say, the 2nd day of July, 2010.

9. Readability

This website allows you to create a bookmark bar button which will convert [almost] any webpage which has a substantial amount of text into a much more readable format. When you first create the button, you can specify the font size, how much white space, 

The way I back up versions is to date them based on Fab8.

10. Command-Tab application switching

Jing movie to come

11. Keyboard shortcuts

Links to come

12. Back ups

Essay to come

13. Arrange the desktop "by kind"

Jing movie to come

14. Sort folders by size

Jing movie to come

15. Bring your own

What's your favorite time saver/tip about how you use your computer?