Would you like to more quickly navigate and jump between different Facebook pages?
Or, if you want to look at it from another angle, would you like to spend less time wasting time on Facebook?
Like many other applications and websites, there are some handy keyboard shortcuts that will let you more quickly jump around the various Facebook screens. Read on to learn them.
But, before we get into these actual shortcuts, some comments on the slightly different keys that are required in the various browsers. Most of Facebook’s keyboard shortcuts correspond with the numbers, starting with 1-5, which more or less take you left-to-right on Facebook’s main navigation links. Next, 6-0 will take you to various settings pages.
For each of the noted Windows and Mac browsers, the basic keyboard shortcuts use the following keys (where the # is replace with the number, letter or symbol listed in the next paragraph ):

• Windows:
• IE: Alt + # (And note, in IE you have to press Enter after entering the noted keys).
• Chrome: Alt + #
• Firefox: Shift + Alt + #
• Mac
• Safari: Control + Option + #
• Chrome: Control + Option + #
• Firefox : Function + Control + #

When substituted for the “#” in the various combinations above, the noted number, letter or symbol takes you to the specified page:

• Above keys + 1: Home page
• Above keys + 2: Your profile page
• Above keys + 3: Friend requests
• Above keys + 4: Your messages
• Above keys + 5: Notifications
• Above keys + 6: Account page
• Above keys + 7: Privacy [And we all should remember to go to this page more often to check our privacy settings!]
• Above keys + 8: Facebook’s Facebook page
• Above keys + 9: Facebook Terms/Agreement
• Above keys + 0: Facebook help center
• Above keys + ?: Search
• Above keys + m: Compose a new message

There you have it, go forth and waste time more efficiently with these Facebook keyboard shortcuts

Today I came across (hat tip to my assistant Tim) an amazing post titled How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques on John Tedesco’s blog.

In that post, Tedesco relates the content from a presentation by Google research scientist Daniel Russell. This post has the most amazing collection of Google tips I have ever seen in one place.
Everyone that uses Google to search the web should take time to read and learn the tips and search techniques covered in this post. It covers all the basic syntax tricks, but also some more advanced searching techniques. You can find it here.

Through the course of the day, you will find many smaller tasks coming to your attention. They can come from many sources – perhaps you all of a sudden remembered something you wanted or needed to do, and more often than not, someone else will ask you to do something.
You can’t suddenly drop what you are doing every time one of these tasks comes up – you would never get anything done. But you need to make sure you capture a reminder of these tasks so you can complete them.
Here is a simple way you can do this: Open a new e-mail message when a small task comes to your attention. Type a short descriptive blurb in the subject line, and, if required, type more details in the subject line. This leaves you will a visual reminder of that task in your email program.
When you come back to your e-mail program through the course of the day you will get a helpful reminder of the task. Hopefully you can get it done at some point during the day.
However, if the task remains undone at the end of the day, simplly save the message in your Drafts folder so you have a reminder tomorrow. You can do this by closing the message (Click on the X to close it out.) and clicking on “Yes” on the request to save to your drafts folder.
When you start your email program the following day, you will have a detailed reminder of the task in your Drafts folder. Use this trick to make sure you capture smaller tasks. This technique is for capture smaller tasks that will take a few minutes or less. Tasks that take longer should be on your formal to do list.

Some of us will have fond memories of grabbing a traditional book dictionary to look up the definition of a word. In grade school we had a smaller dictionary with big print and the occasional picture. Somewhere in most of our homes you will be able to find a big dictionary with lots of pages of very small print and no pictures.
In all likelihood, our personal dictionaries are all gathering dust. Why? There is no longer a need to go and grab a dictionary of the shelf to look up the definition of a word. Simply go to Google and type the word define, a space, and the word you want the definition for. Google will work its magic and give you a search results screen with a definition at the top, and links to various online dictionary sites further definitions.
Remember to go to Google next time you need look up the definition of a word.

Last spring, Meritas’ Leadership Institute released a Social Media Guide for Lawyers. This helpful resource provided lawyers with an overview of the three main social media tools — LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter— and some tips on how to use them for networking and marketing purposes. The guide also include two sample law firm social media use policies – one strict and one permissive.
As you all know, technology changes almost as fast as the weather does, and to keep up, Meritas has just released an updated version of the guide: Social Media Guide for Lawyers v. 2.0. This great guide is full of practical information for lawyers that want to learn more about using the three main social media tools. It will be helpful to lawyers that are just starting out in social media as well as those that have mastered the basics and want to do more.

If you are using Office 2007 or 2010, The Ribbon is now a part of your life. Some of you will be happy about this – some of you won’t.
The Ribbon was introduced with Office 2007. It replaced the standard Office toolbars and menus with a very large toolbar filled with graphical representations of control elements or commands. Commands are organized in logical groups by functionality and are collected together under tabs. Each tab relates to a type of activity, such as writing or laying out a page.
There are good intentions behind the Ribbon – honest! It was designed to help you more quickly find the commands you want to use when you are creating and formatting your documents.
If you are learning Office, you may like the Ribbon as it can be helpful to find commands you don’t use that often. However, if you are a power user, you probably don’t like it – likely because it takes up a huge amount of space on your desktop, especially if you are working on a smaller laptop screen.
If you want to go Ribbon-less for more desktop real estate, you can minimize the ribbon by pressing Ctrl+F1. This will make the Ribbon disappear or be “minimized.” When the Ribbon is minimized, the Tabs will still be visible. When it is minimized, pressing on a Tab will make the Ribbon appear, and it will disappear again after you press a command.
If the Ribbon is minimized, pressing Ctrl+F1 again will bring it back.
So there you go, if you want more space on your Office 2007 or 2010 desktop, remember to press Ctrl+F1 to minimize the Ribbon.

Most MS Outlook users know that you can sort your Inbox by a single column. A single left-click on any column head will sort all the messages in the Inbox by the contents of that column. For example, alphabetically by subject or chronologically by sent or received date.
Note as well that a second click on the same column will sort the messages again in reverse order to the initial sort.
Sorting your Inbox by a column can be helpful for locating a message or deleting old messages.
But you can do more – you can actually sort your Inbox by two or more columns. It’s actually very easy to do.
First, sort by the first column by clicking on a column head. Then, hold the Shift key down and click on a second column heading. If you do this with From and the Received date, your messages will be sorted primarily by sender, and all the messages from each sender will be ordered chronologically.
You can add a third column to your sort by following the same steps. Wow!
Go tackle your Inbox – use the multi-column sort to find and delete all the old messages that are clogging your Inbox – I’m seeing the elusive “Inbox Zero” in your future.
A hat tip to Paul Unger for including this great tip in his presentation at the ABA LPM Section meeting in Napa last week.

During a recent phone call, my colleague Catherine Reach and I had a bit of a chuckle over a rather risqué and NSFW (not suitable for work) article that one of our mutual friends had apparently just read online. Think clothing-optional antics by a celebrity in a bedroom in Vegas. As it happened, a few minutes before our call, we had both seen a Facebook update telling us that our friend has just read this particular article.

The critical fact here is not what happened in Vegas, but rather that our friend likely had no idea that the articles he was reading were being shared with the world via Facebook. And our friend is certainly not the only person unknowingly embarrassing themselves in front of all their Facebook friends and acquaintances. Catherine and I have both noticed recently that more and more people seem to be sharing embarrassing information about what they are reading and watching on Facebook.

Please remember, some sites will automatically share what you are doing with your Facebook friends. Some of these sites may warn you the first time you visit them (usually when you look at an article that someone you know has shared). There will be vague warning or checkbox to click on before the article you want to read loads. In most cases, this will be the one and only warning you get. From that point forward they will automatically share a description and link to every item you watch or read. Yikes!!

This is called “frictionless” sharing. Read more about it in this CNET article (How Facebook is ruining sharing).

The number of sites using frictionless” sharing is growing very quickly. At first it was the mainstream media and sites like Netflix and Spotify, but now there are many more, and the list is growing longer on a daily basis. See this Mashable post for a list of 60 apps that will share information on Facebook.

Do any of the apps on this list look familiar? Are you using any of them?

Go to your Facebook Privacy settings page and review the list of apps you have installed and what they are sharing. Do it now. Right now. I am guessing you are sharing information that you don’t realize you are sharing.

And while you’re at it, check the privacy and sharing settings on the other social media tools you use. MyPermissions.org is a great tool to help you do this.

A HT to Catherine who tweeted about our conversation earlier today and inspired me to write this.

Many people experienced some degree of frustration today with the Gmail outage. The Internet is more reliable than it has ever been and most major service providers like Google very rarely suffer service outages. But when they do, it can be a great inconvenience, in both your personal and/or professional lives.

For that reason there are some lessons to be learned. If you store your data on the cloud, be prepared to operate when you can’t access the cloud or the particular service. What cloud services do you use and how long could you function with access to them? Consider the ones you can’t live without and what you can do to access them in alternative ways. There are many options, depending on what service you are using and how you access it. The alternatives could involve different hardware, software or an offline backup of your data.

If you use Gmail, this excellent post on Lifehacker gives you various alternatives for accessing Gmail, even when Gmail.com is down. It is a must read for anyone that uses and relies on Gmail.

We all need help on keeping up with our email. The Gmail styles feature could help you more quickly see the messages that are most important to you.

Gmail has several built-in configurations or “styles” that change how your Inbox sorts messages. In the Classic style – the default Inbox style – messages are ordered chronologically by the date they arrived (newest first). The other styles present messages in slightly different ways. These are the other styles and what they do:

• Unread First – Unread mail stays at the top; everything else is at the bottom.
• Starred First – Starred mail stays at the top; everything else is at the bottom.
• Important First – This style brings mail from the contacts you email most often and other important mail to the top of the page. Everything else is in its own section at the bottom of your inbox. See this Google Support page for more information how Google flags “important” messages.
• Priority Inbox – Messages classified as important and unread are in the top section, then starred messages, then everything else. Each section can be customized further, so if you want more control over your inbox, Priority Inbox is for you. See this Google Support page for more info on Priority Inbox.

You can change the inbox style by clicking the arrow that appears when you hover over “Inbox” on the left side of your Gmail page. You can easily and instantly switch between inbox styles any time. Try the different styles out to see if something other than Classic helps you better manage and find the messages that are important to you.

• Nicholas on Software Tools for Editing
• Jamie on Software Tools for Editing
• Steve Coughlan on ‘I Hope This E-Mail Finds You Well’
• Lyn on Womxn
• Celia Chandler on Gross Negligence

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