Tech tips for a productive start to 2011

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As many of us resolve to make changes for the better in the new year, consider adding better productivity to the list!  Here are some great tips to help us maximize productivity at home and at work:

• Use a Daily Log to Keep Yourself Focused on Productivity
• Productivity All Around: Be sure to sync your tools!
• 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology
• The 10 Best Productivity Apps For Business Professionals
• Create a productive home office:
  • How Much Storage Space Do You Need in Your Computer?
  • How Can I Speed Up My Aging Laptop?
  • Set up wireless internet access in your home
  • How To Expand a Wireless Network
  • How Can I Find Out If My ISP Is Limiting My Download Speed?
  • Office Design Tips to Increase Productivity
  • How to Find Your Ideal Desk Height
  • Manage Cables with an Old Coiled Phone Cord
  • Something to think about - Where Are You Most Productive When Working at Home? 
• For those who need to be productive while on the go:
  • Check out the best in mobile/portable devices - Laptop Magazine's Best of CES 2011,
  • Five Mobile Productivity Apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry
  • Productivity On the Go with Office Web Apps
•  See also:
  • Assign Email a 15-Minute Minimum to Avoid Unnecessary Checking
  • 15 tips to customize Gmail to increase productivity and organization at work

Reduce the size of your digital photos before emailing

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If you want to share your holiday photos via email, here are some great tips to reduce the file size of your photos before sending your email.

Edit & Share Photos:  How To Resize Your Digital Photos

Facebook has officially announced it's new messaging service

Tweet See also: Office + Facebook = Easily share your ideas and documents with friends

This week's tech tips and news

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Here's this week's roundup of helpful technology tips and interesting news!

TECH TIPS

• Email:

How to use the “Send to” feature in Windows 7

Three New Tricks for Gmail’s Priority Inbox

Controlling Amazon E-Mail

Email links – the devil is in the detail! – How to check the destination of links in your email before following on them

• Eliminate Spam from Search

• Google Chrome Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts

• Automatically back up your flash drive

• Music fans:

Album Reminder Keeps Track of Your Favorite Artists So You Don't Have To

Finding the Missing Music in iTunes

Install iTunes 10 Without the Extra Bloatware

 

TECH NEWS

• Internet Explorer 9:

The Register’s review of Internet Explorer 9

No Planned Support for IE9 on XP

• Social Media:

Social Networks Exhibit Senior Appeal

Twitter Tweaks Website to Show More Photos, Video

Courier App Easily Uploads Your Files To Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and More

• Customer Loyalty:

How to Get Loyalty Card Prices Without Loyalty Cards

How Your Likes Are Turning Facebook Into the 'Loyalty Card of the Internet'

• Gamers Better at Fast Decision-Making - Maybe all those hours kids spend playing games aren't wasted!

Build your company's mailing list with Facebook

Tweet Building a mailing list is key to executing a successful email marketing strategy for your business. If you have set-up a business page on Facebook and are looking to engage with those users that have "liked" your page outside of Facebook, you can ask those users to sign up for your compnay's mailing list directly from Facebook.

If you use comF5, AWeber, Mail Chimp or another service to manage your email marketing, you can add an email opt-in tab to your company's Facebook page using the Static FBML application and the opt-in HTML coding provided by your email marketing service. ArtBizBlog gives a great tutorial for creating an opt-in tab on your company's Facebook page.

Email marketing service, Constant Contact, has made it easy for their subscribers to add an opt-in tab to their Facebook pages with a dedicated application, details are here Look for other email marketing services to follow suit!

5 tips to help you make the most of your Gmail account

Tweet Google continues to roll out improvements for it's Gmail service. With the many capabilities of Gmail, here are some tips to help you maximize the use of your account:

Priority Inbox - A newly launched feature, Google uses it's spam filtering technology to determine which messages are most important. You can also "train" the filter by using the "+" or "-" buttons in your Priority Inbox to tell Gmail which messages are/ are not important to you.

If you've maxed out the 7GB storage limit on your account, try signing up for a new Gmail account and importing mail from your old account into the new account.

Buzz - Google's foray into location-based social-networking. You can post status updates and share links, photos and videos with other Gmail users. Buzz may also be accessible on your web enabled cell phone.

GMail Plus addressing - A great tool for managing your inbox. You can add a "+" and any combination of words to your Gmail address, i.e., gmailer+mailinglist@gmail.com when signing up for emailing mailing lists. Emails to your "+" address will be delivered to your gmailer@gmail.com inbox but you can label, star, archive or delete using filters for the different versions of your address. This is particularly helpful when a service that has your "+" email address has shared/sold your email address to another mailing list - you can set a filter to auto-delete the unwanted messages.

Multiple account sign-in - Another new feature - if you have more than one Google account (not just Gmail), you can enable multiple sign-in in your settings. The first account that you sign-in to will be the default account for your browser session. You may be signed-in to up to three accounts simultaneously using the same browser session. Caution: if you sign-out of any one account, you will be signed out of all accounts