This week, though, I found a new use for the iPad – watching webinars with the free GoToMeeting app. With the iPad sitting between the two computer monitors, I can listen to the webinar, and glance at it occasionally. It’s perfect for those sessions that don’t require your full attention.

GoToMeeting App Advantages

It’s great — none of the valuable monitor real estate is used, and you can even zoom in on the iPad presentation to see something.

For the meeting that I attended, the audio was fine, without plugging in the earphones. Attendees were in “listen only” mode, but it looks like you can use the iPad microphone if the meeting organizer allows it.

GoToMeeting App Limitations

On the down side, none of the extra features for GoToMeeting are available, like chat, or screen sharing, or voting. And you can’t set up a meeting from the iPad app – you can only attend scheduled meetings.

So, this app will be perfect if you want to attend a webinar, and aren’t interested in posting questions, or other interactions during the meeting. Not recommended for client meetings, unless it’s an emergency!

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If you go out for the evening, then decide you shouldn’t drive home, you can call Operation Red Nose. They’ll pick you up, and take you home in your own vehicle. A team follows in another car, and returns the driver to the home base. The ride home is free, and contributions are gratefully accepted.

The program operates from late November until New Year’s Eve each year. This year Operation Red Nose Caledon provided 321 rides, and received over $7000 in donations. That money will go to four local programs:

• The Optimist Club of Caledon
• Caledon Navy League
• ‘L.I.F.E. for Youth’ Caledon Community Services
• ‘Safety Village and Graffiti Eradication’ Caledon O.P.P.

I helped with their Access database, and am glad that it reduced the paperwork and manual tracking that the volunteers had to do. It’s a great feeling to help out a team that is doing something so positive in their community. And I even got a plaque!

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Scroll down a bit, and in the right-hand sidebar there are links to Google
spreadsheets — one for the locations, and another for recipes. Below that, you can click on a Flavortown Menu name, to see a filtered list
of recipes.

Have fun, and eat at your own risk!

http://dinersdrive-insanddives.blogspot.com/ ]]> http://debradalgleish.com/blog/2011/01/16/diners-drive-ins-and-dives-spreadsheets/feed/ 2 http://debradalgleish.com/blog/2010/11/01/shrink-long-urls-with-google-url-shortener/ http://debradalgleish.com/blog/2010/11/01/shrink-long-urls-with-google-url-shortener/#comments Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:28:00 +0000 Debra Dalgleish http://debradalgleish.com/blog/2010/11/01/shrink-long-urls-with-google-url-shortener/ Continue reading →]]> When you’re adding a link in Twitter, or in an email, you might not want to include a really long URL. In the past, I’ve often used a site like bit.ly or is.gd to create a shortened version of the link, and use that instead of the long link.

Now there’s a Google URL Shortener, that’s built in to your Google account, so I’ve just switched to using that. It’s easy to use, and I can quickly see all my shortened links, and track the clicks.

For example, I created a short link for my latest Contextures Blog post.

• The full link is: blog.contextures.com/archives/2010/11/01/excel-vba-click-shape-to-sort-column/
• The Google shortened link is: goo.gl/fqmr

Create a Shortened URL

To create a shortened link:

• Copy the long link
• If you want to track the click on the shortened link, log in to your Google account
• Go to the Google URL Shortener page, and paste the copied link into the URL box

• Click the Shorten button, to create the shortened URL
• Copy the short URL, and paste it into your tweet or email (or anywhere else you need a link)

Track the Shortened URL Clicks

To see the details on clicks for the shortened links:

• Log in to your Google account, and go to the Google URL Shortener page
• In the list of your shortened URLs, click the Details option for any of the links

• You’ll see the information about the clicks on the selected URL, such as Referrers and Countries.

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I had two large phones, a huge scanner, an answering machine, giant router, and a business card Rolodex file. You can see the top of a filing drawer under the table, and the corner of my Apple printer at the left.

There’s a modem sitting on top of the scanner, but I’m not sure why it’s there. And yes, despite its enormous size, that’s just a scanner, not an all-in-one machine that also does the laundry and cooks dinner.

Today’s Peripherals

Here’s a picture of the same table, taken today, almost 9 years later. The current scanner is much smaller, as are the two phones. Each phone has a headset plugged in, which makes it easier to talk and type at the same time.

The filing drawer is gone, and you can’t see it, but there’s a UPS under the table. It has saved me from considerable aggravation any time the power has flickered, because it keeps the computer and monitor running while I save and close my open files.

A new modem is under the printer table, and an external hard drive, lamp, BlackBerry and iPod have been added. The business card file is still there, but moved to the printer table. Funny that it has survived, while lots of high tech stuff has come and gone.

Your Office

What did your office look like 9-10 years ago? What does it look like now?

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Usually that page has a bunch of stuff that you don’t want to print, like ads and header and footers.

A while ago I discovered Print What You Like, where you can enter a URL, then clean up that page for printing. However, I could never find that page when I needed it, so I rarely used it.

Today I found The Printliminator, a similar utility, which runs from a bookmarklet. Just drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks toolbar, then click it when you want to clean up a page.

Highlight a section, then click to remove it, or press Alt and click, to remove everything except the selected section.

There’s also a set of buttons, including one to remove all graphics, and a button to Undo the last step.

When I went back to find the Print What You Like page today, I saw that it has a bookmarklet too. Maybe it’s new, or I missed that the last time that I looked.

Anyway, I hope you find this useful, and I wish they’d invent a cleanup tool for email too. Then I could crop off those long paragraphs that warn me about saving the environment by not printing.

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Jan 26 – Ed, based on Lotus 1-2-3 release date

Feb 29 – Mike Alexander, “I vote to have Spreadsheet Day on Leap Year. In part, because it pays omage to the old Lotus leap year bug. But mainly because it only comes once every 4 years, and I’m fairly lazy.”

Apr 1 – Jon Peltier, “I want to overrule Debra and vote for April 1. The most fitting day of the year.”

Aug 1 – Debra, because it represents A1, the first cell on a worksheet, and avoids the April Fools stigma

Sep 5 – Chandoo, “It spells XL on phones when you type 95″

Oct 17 – Ken Puls, “The first copy of VisiCalc for the Apple ][ (Version 1.37) went out the door on October 17, 1979." (http://www.benlo.com/visicalc/visicalc4.html)

What Date Will You Vote For?

Please vote for the Spreadsheet Day that you think is best, or suggest another date.

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I don’t remember exactly when I started using Excel, but it was definitely on a Mac, and probably around 1987. That puts me in the 21+ years of Excel category.

How about you? How long have you been using Excel?

The only solution to the stuck email seemed to be copying its contents to another message, deleting the original, and sending the new message. Who has time for all that, especially when a client is waiting?

Stay Away From the Outbox

After unsent Outlook messages happened to me a few times, I finally figured out that the problem occurred if I clicked on the Outbox folder, before the message was sent.

So, I try to avoid clicking on the Outbox folder, but I accidentally click on it now and then.

Advice From the Experts

An Outlook message got stuck in the Outbox again today, so I Googled to see if anyone else had the same problem, and had posted a solution. The Google search turned up a page on the Slipstick site, owned by Outlook expert, Diane Poremsky – Email Won’t Send – Common Causes.

Her advice? Stop looking in the Outbox. Well, that’s the recommended quick fix. There’s also a longer article on the problem: After viewing the Outbox, the messages in it won’t send.

Apparently some add-ins mark the outbound messages as Read, if you peek in the Outbox, and that prevents them from being sent. Maybe I have one or more of the add-ins that are in that long list.

Okay, I’ll Stop

Anyway, it’s reassuring to know that other people have the unsent Outlook messages problem, and I can avoid it by staying out of the Outbox.

Next time I accidentally hit the Outbox (oh, I will), I’ll try marking the message as Unread, to see if that will fix the problem, and let me send it.

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I took a quick look at both sites. Edufire looks like it would be great for running training sessions and small classes. ShowDocument lets you upload and work on files, so that could be a good way to work with a client, without having to install anything.

Bob Ryan commented that he plans to use DimDim for his business. I set up an account there, and ran a trial meeting, which worked well, but my screen settings seem slightly different, after using their screen sharing option.

For yesterday’s meeting with my client, I tried Office Live Meeting (OLM). Before the meeting, I set up a practice session, the tested the controls and settings. You can upload files, and share the screen, or a portion of the screen. Also, you can share a specific program, so that’s the option I used most of the time.

OLM was my favourite online meeting tool so far. I could pass the controls to my client, so we could both test the Access database that we were discussing.

I had to use Internet Explorer, instead of Firefox, and there are some components to download and install. But, most people have a computer that’s full of Microsoft products anyway, so that might not be too big a hurdle.

Dick had volunteered to be a guinea pig, if I tested WiZiQ again (thanks, Dick!). I’ll be trying OLM again, to see how some of the fancier tools work, so may he’ll agree to join that test session, if I set something up for later this week.

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