Month: November 2007

Everybody knows and uses Microsoft Word but how many people actually master all of its features? Most of us use Microsoft’s Office app to simply type up and edit documents, without daring to dig into the different tools and options. I came upon a good post on General Disarray, which outlines in detail 10 advanced features: styles, header styles and table of contents, table styles, character styles, line and page breaks, captions and cross references, turning off auto-formatting, character-based formatting, continue previous list, and keyboard shortcuts.

Now this last one doesn’t list all of the keyboard shortcuts, for which I recommend going directly to the Microsoft website. On the whole though, all the advanced features listed here are fairly easy to learn, and should really improve your workflow in Word. I’m not saying you should learn them all, but check out the ones that you might need in your everyday word processing. Styles, for one, is fairly important to know well, so your text is always well formatted. Page breaks can be annoying when writing long papers, so you’ll also need to master them. I’d also suggest the tip on table of contents for those of you writing up essays.

If you run a business where you need to have a group of agents on call for customer enquiries, then you’ll need some way to organise and manage the calls. Advanced Personal Contact Manager is a call management system for small centres or help lines that aims to improve customer service. It allows you to manage and monitor incoming and outgoing calls, emails and any other contact with customers. The interface is very simple to use and most importantly, recalls in a click customer data, the priority of the call, the call status etc.

However, the problem with this program is that it can’t actually take or re-distribute calls. For this, you’d be better to use Express Talk. Express Talk can maintain up to six simultaneous conversations, reduces background noise and can be configured to circumvent firewalls, record conference calls in MP3 format, identify incoming calls and store numbers etc. You can also use it to put calls on hold although this requires upgrading to the business version which also allows you to transfer calls. Although neither of these tools are suitable for a large scale project, for small businesses they’re ideal.

Pandora is one of the best online music services you’ll come across and, thanks to PandoraJam, you’ll be able to enjoy it straight from your desktop. The application is fitted with a nice interface which displays a list of your stations, the basic playback buttons and a handy search bar. You can adjust it to work with your Airport Express and record tracks to play directly on your iPod or iPhone.

If you’re a serious business person or you’re trying to spread the word about a new company, then a business card is essential. Nowadays, with printer technology as it is and high quality printing paper available, you can produce some really professional business cards on your PC. What’s more, there’s plenty of programs out there to help you compose and create an impressive card.

• Advanced Business Card Maker – Hundreds of logos and templates

• BusinessCards MX – Template based designer for professionals

• Create Your Business Card – Very easy to use wizard-based creator

• Advanced ID Creator – Also enables you to make ID cards

• Belltech Business Cards Designer Pro – Elegant designer for highly professional results

• Business Card Designer Plus – Three-step business card publishing

• Visual Business Cards – WYSIWYG card designer

• Flipbook Printer – Create business cards and even story flipbooks

• Newlite Business Card Printer – Optimised for high resolution cards

• Business Card Creator – Very basic but quick card creator

Open/save dialogs in Windows feature a series of handy shortcuts on the left side which you can use to access certain folders directly. But now you can make these shortcuts even more useful: use PlacesBarEditor to replace them with your most frequently used folders and you’ll be able to open and save files in your favorite locations with just one click.

A Cambridge University researcher whose blog was being hacked apparently managed to find his attacker’s password just by searching in Google. Using a dictionary attack in English and Russian, the researcher simply entered his attacker’s MD5 hash (used by WordPress to store passwords) into Google, which revealed the word “Anthony”, the attacker’s password. This is just another example of how important it is for you to have strong passwords and to make sure you protect them at all times. Check out Elena’s good tip on how to create and remember strong passwords. She also wrote up on how to unveil hidden passwords in web pages, a trick similar to that which the Cambridge University researcher pulled.

We’ve also found a few other applications that allow you to reveal or crack passwords. Ophcrack uses rainbow tables to crack passwords, Password Revealer can show passwords typed in edit boxes, and both Asterisk Key and Asterisk Logger can unmask the password that hides under asterisks. Remember though, try to keep your use of these programs “legal”, ie don’t start trying to break into banking sites or people’s emails. If what your looking for is to recover a lost password, check out our list of top password recovery tools.

If you regularly download torrents then you’ll know that it’s quite time consuming to keep going back to the torrent sites and scan through them to see if your favourite ones have been released yet. One tool that can make your life easier is Torrent Episode Downloader (TED). The small program is a Java application that combines RSS channels and BitTorrent downloads. It allows you to subscribe to torrent RSS feeds and also configure key words as to which ones you want to download. In a nutshell, it does the hard work of tracking and downloading torrents for you without the need to even visit a site.

It works on a similar principle to the way iTunes subscribes to Podcasts except that with Torrent Episode Downloader, obviously the file will be sent to your BitTorrent client rather than being played. This application is particularly useful if you’re following a series of torrents based on the same subject which are released on a weekly or monthly basis. Just make sure you’ve got enough space on your hard drive as it’s easy to forget that while you’re working, it’s busy downloading content.

Pool, or pocket billiards it was known a long time ago, is one of my favourite games. There’s something very soothing about smacking alabaster balls around a cloth with a big stick. Apparently, I’m in good company too. Other enthusiasts of the sport included Mozart, Louis XIV and Bob Hope. In their day however, pool involved venturing down to smoke filled pool halls where you’d probably either end up drunk as a skunk or with a pool cue through your head. If only technology had advanced enough at that time, they could have enjoyed these top 5 pool games from the safety of their PCs. Then again, if that had happened, The Color of Money might have been a very different film…

• Carom 3D – Use the cushions to gain points and chat to competitors

• Real Pool – Very realistic 8-ball or 9-ball simulation

• DDD Pool – Great graphics and lots of different venues to play in

• Cue Club – Try your hand against the best players on the circuit

• 8BallClub Billiards Online – Play against players from all over the world

VR+ offers a simple and efficient interface to quickly record and send voicemail to your contacts. This may be of good use if you want to get your point over, and simply don’t want to waste time talking to your contact. VR+ has simple playback features that can be executed without needing to dig into the menu.