Addicott Web » Resources

Resources for Working with Clients

Addicott Web — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:20:16 +0000

If you’re in business for yourself like I am, then chances are you’re always looking for tips on how to improve the experience your client has when working with you – and vice versa. Being able to work well with your clients is essential to all aspects of your business, from the immediate project at hand to your long-term chances for referrals and growth.

Today I came across a comprehensive list of resources to help you improve how you work with your clients. It was put together by Christian over at the Smiley Cat web design blog, and since I thought it was such a great list, I wanted to share it with my readers. The list has a ton of great links on a variety of useful topics, such as:

Understanding clients
Communicating with clients
The client relationship
Your process
Dealing with difficult clients
Getting paid
Legal stuff
And more…

You can view the full list here.

Is the Word “Google” a Verb?

Addicott Web — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:30:03 +0000

Let’s be honest – most of us probably use the word Google as a verb in everyday conversation. I do it all the time – especially so when my wife and I don’t know the answer to something. Sure enough, whenever we type our question into Google, we usually get a pretty good response.

But did you know that there is a whole lot more that Google can do other than just searching for words? There are a ton of neat tricks out there that people have discovered, some of which I’ve compiled here. Try some of them, and see if you’re able to Google more efficiently.

Tips and Tricks

Track Packages

You can track your UPS, Fedex, and USPS packages without having to visit their respective website – just input the tracking number in the search field.

Get the Local Weather

If you don’t want to wait for the weather on the 8′s on the Weather Channel, and don’t want to navigate through your local newspaper/TV station website, simply type weather “your ZIP code” in the search box.

Product Reviews

Do want to find consumer reviews for a product that you’re interested in buying, but you don’t want to be taken to websites that are trying to sell you those same products? Try typing “product name” sucks into the search field to get more accurate reviews.

What Time Is It?

Want to know the time anywhere else in the world? Simply type in time “city” and it should display the current time in that part of the world.

Movie Times

Want to go see a movie, but you don’t have the local paper in front of you to find out when it’s playing? Type in “movie title” “your zip code”.

Use as a Calculator

You can use Google as a calculator to answer anything from the simplest math to the most complex equation.

When entering your math, + is used to add terms, – to subtract terms, * to multiply terms, and / to divide terms. Besides these basic operators, you can use ^ to work out something to the power of something (for example, “2^4” would be 2 to the power of 4), and “sqrt” to calculate the square root of a number (for example, “sqrt 4” would be the square root of 4).

Track a Flight

Don’t want to go to your airline’s website to find out when your flight is departing or someone’s flight is arriving? Then just type in “airline” flight “flight number” and get back the arrival and departure times right inside Google’s search results.

Convert Currency, Metrics, and more

Google’s powerful built-in converter calculator can help you out whether you’re cooking dinner, traveling abroad, or more. Find out how many teaspoons are in a quarter cup (type in “quarter cup in teaspoons”) or how many seconds there are in a year (type in “seconds in a year”) or how many euros there are to five dollars (type in “5 USD in Euro”).

Dictionary Definitions

By typing in “define” before a word, Google will display a list of dictionary definitions for that word.

Other Tips

Phrase the question you are typing in the search engine in the form of an answer. For example: Instead of typing in, “What is the average rainfall in Chicago?” you might want to try typing, “The average rainfall in Chicago is”
Place quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example: If you put quotes around the words, “baseball hat” Google won’t waste your time by looking for Web pages with the words “baseball” and “hat”.
Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Type in phonebook “business name” “city, state”, and Google will automatically display the address and phone number.

Suggest Your Own

Have tricks for using Google that you think others would find useful? Share with everyone by commenting below!

Working with PDFs: Tools and Resources

Addicott Web — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:09:42 +0000

On the modern Internet, PDFs have become a standard and very common way for people to share information. Since they are an easy way for someone to capture information from any application (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) and share it with anyone else, they are used quite frequently on websites.

A great example is in the restaurant industry. Many restaurant websites feature their menu as a separate PDF file, rather than present the information as a built-in page on their website.

Other ways that PDFs are used online include registration forms, flyers, bulletins, and more.

In the business world, there is often a big need to work with PDF files. In my experience, I’ve often been asked questions about PDFs from the people I work with. Most often, these questions are things like converting a Word or Excel file to a PDF, making edits to a PDF, etc.

I currently have the full version of Adobe Acrobat installed on my computer, so for me to work with PDFs is relatively simple to do. But a lot of other people I work with don’t have that full version on their computer – so what usually happens is I get asked to convert files to PDFs for them.

So for those out there who work with PDFs quite often but don’t have the luxury of the full version of Acrobat, this brief list of some tools, both online and not, will be useful for you.

These resources were originally compiled in a blog posting called “Mastering PDF: 80 Free Tools, Tips, and Resources” written on Hongkiat.com.

Online Tools

FreePDFConvert – Convert commonly used files such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images, and more to PDF, and vice versa.
Web2PDF Online – Allows visitors to blogs and/or websites to save that particular page as a PDF file.
PDFIt – An extension for Firefox that allows you to convert any page on any website you’re looking at into a PDF file.
Google Docs – A free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application offered by Google. It allows you to download the file you create as a PDF. This is a great option for someone who doesn’t have Microsoft Office or any standard word processing/spreadsheet/presentation software on their computer.

Offline Tools

doPDF – This little application installs itself as a virtual printer on your computer, so you can print any file or e-mail into a PDF.
PDF to Word Converter – A desktop document conversion tool to convert a PDF file to Word document – and it’s free!
PDF Creator – A tool you can download that easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in any Windows application.

As a reminder, if you don’t have the latest version of the free Adobe Reader installed, you can visit the Adobe website to download it today.

Internet Explorer: Time Saving Tips and Tricks

Addicott Web — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:06:03 +0000

Just to show that I don’t totally dislike Internet Explorer, I wanted to put together a list of tips and tricks to help you use it faster and more efficiently. This list is similar to the list of time saving tips and tricks list for Firefox that I put together yesterday.

If you want to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, you can do so here.

Keyboard Shortcuts

It might take you a little while to learn these shortcuts, but once you do, your browsing will be that much quicker. Here are some of the more common shortcuts:

Alt+Home (Go to your preset home page)
Alt+Right Arrow (Go to the next page)
Alt+Left Arrow or Backspace (Go to the previous page)
Home (move to the top of a page)
End (move to the bottom of a page)
F5 (reload the current page)
Ctrl+D (bookmark the current page)
Ctrl+F (find)
Ctrl+O (open a new website or page)
Ctrl+N (open a new window)
Ctrl+T (open a new tab)
Ctrl+W (close the current window)
Alt+D (select the text in the Address bar)

Tab Navigation

(Note: these shortcuts apply to IE 7.0 only; version 6.0 does not feature tabbed browsing.)

If you’re like me, sometimes you have a lot of tabs open at the same time. Instead of using the mouse to select between the different tabs that you have open, use the following keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrk+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
Ctrl+Shift+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+W (close the current tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
Ctrl+Alt+F4 (close other tabs)

Mouse Shortcuts

If you’re already using your mouse and it would be easier for you to use a mouse shortcut instead of switching to the keyboard, here are some quick shortcuts. Note that these shortcuts depend on whether your mouse has a scroll wheel built into it or not.

Shift+scroll up (go to the next page in that tab)
Shift+scroll down (go to the previous page in that tab)
Ctrl+scroll up (increase text size)
Ctrl+scroll down (decrease text size)

Auto Complete

While not as well known as the shortcuts above, this can be very useful.

Go to the address bar (Ctrl+L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there – like magic!

Thoughts?

I’m curious to hear whether you find these tricks useful or not. Or, maybe you have some of your own that you’d like to share. Either way, good luck as you use Internet Explorer more efficiently!

Firefox: Time Saving Tips and Tricks

Addicott Web — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:03:57 +0000

Do you use Firefox as your main Internet browser? If so, here are some neat tips and tricks to help you use it faster and more efficiently.