OpenOffice Draw Functions

OpenOffice (OO) is such a powerful office suite but it's a shame most people are not even aware of its power and functionalities, which all come for FREE!

Here are some of the drawing features that are unleashed when you select File > New > Drawing from the main OO menu.

General Drawing Window:



Drop-Down List of Arrows:




Drop-Down List of 3-D Effects (you can transform any shape into 3-D object):



You can arrange the layering (front/back) of multiple objects relative to one another:



You can align the edges of multiple objects relative to one another or center them vertically and horizontally:



You can fill selected objects with photographic binary images:



You can fill your shapes with built-in gradients:



You can fill your objects with pen hatching marks:



You can connect your shapes with many different connectors:



OO Draw comes with built-in drag-and-drop graphic images and exploding stars, etc. (perfect for ads, certificates, etc.)



You can tear individual graphic tabs from the menu and use them all at once on the same drawing!



This is just a snapshot of the few capabilities of this free drawing program. Do you still think you need MS Visio?

Windows IE’s Research Tool

My regular readers know how much I like open source software and operating systems.

I’ve just had the privilege of having a look at the Beta version of (Linux) Ubuntu’s latest 7.1 upgrade, for example, thanks to the way my wonderful son keeps on top of these things. And I must tell you – it’s even BETTER than Mac OS X! It’s just awesome as we’ll all have the chance to appreciate it for ourselves when it’s officially released in October. (And of course, it’ll be FREE as usual.)

But I digress… despite all that, I still think Windows Internet Explorer holds a special place among all browsers because there are still a lot of things that are optimized only for Windows IE.

Take the Google Pages, for example, Google’s free and versatile web page design and hosting functionality. I’ve been using Google Pages for over a year now to host and maintain my main site www.writer111.com and I have only a SINGLE complaint: a number of editing functions work only if you are using IE browser on a Windows platform.

Today I’d like to bring to your attention to another great tool that is available with IE – it’s great built-in research tool, hidden under the Research button (two books under a magnifying glass).

You click it and a sidebar opens on the left.

Type in your search word and then click the drop-down menu button in the next field.

Windows allows you to make a quick search from the following sources:

Encarta English dictionary, Encarta Thesaurus in 3 languages, Translation module, Encarta Encyclopedia, Factiva iWorks, HighBeam Research, MSN Search, MSN Money Stock quotes, and Thomson Gale Company Profiles.

If you are a writer or researcher such functionality comes in very handy indeed.

How to Copy and Paste with OpenOffice on a Mac

I love OpenOffice because it’s a very powerful and FREE open source office application. Its lack of enterprise-level mail program (like Outlook) is its only shortcoming. Otherwise it’s (at least) as good as its Microsoft counterparts Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

However you need to be careful if you have downloaded the Mac version of OpenOffice to your Macbook or any other Mac machine because Macs run OpenOffice through an outer shell program called X11. You first download X11 and then OpenOffice will work.

It works but not thew ay you are used to when it comes to Copying and Pasting text between OpenOffice and a non-OpenOffice application, like Safari or Firefox browser, for example.

Here is a must tip for copying and pasting text between your OpenOffice word processor and your email window. It’s a MUST because if you don’t know this you cannot copy and paste your text.

When you are in OpenOffice COPY by pressing CRTL+C.

But when it comes to PASTING it in your email window, use APPLE BUTTON + V.

No other combination will work since within the X11 shell, you can access your clipboard through the CTRL button only. However, when you are in the mail screen, you are no more in X11 but in Apple environment. Therefore you can reach the clipboard only through an Apple command, which is accomplished by switching to the APPLE BUTTON.

MS Excel -- How to join texts in different cells

Imagine you have the name of your company in cell A1 and the address in F1 but you would like to add the address to the company name and display them in a new cell, D1.

This is how you can do it:

Click and select cell D1.

Click the fx link to the left of the Formula Bar to display the Insert Function dialog box.

Select TEXT for category and then select the CONCATENATE function.

Click OK to display the Function Arguments dialog box for the CONCATENATE function.

In Text1 field insert the cell ID of the text “ABC Company” (which is A1 in this example).

In Text2 field, hit the SPACE BAR to introduce a space between two text fragments.

In Text3 field insert the cell ID of the text “123 Main Street” (which is F1 in this example).

Click OK and The Company name and Address will be now displayed in cell D1.

Obviously in as simple an example as this, you might as well just copy and paste the text from one cell to another too.

But imagine having 20 or 30 different pieces of text dispersed all over a spreadsheet. That’s when the concatenation function really comes in handy.

MS Excel can concatenate up to 30 text items, including the spaces.

Multitasking Tips

For all you work-from-home professionals, here are some multitasking tips from David Meyer, a professor of cognition and perception at the University of Michigan (brought to you by WIRED magazine):

1) Double up on tasks that use different mental channels like writing a report and brainstorming for a company logo.

2) Think carefully about the requirements of each task. If you are trying to close the sales while driving a car and the conversation does not go as planned you might be endangering both your life and the lives of innocent others.

3) Minimize unnecessary distractions by switching off your phone ringer, shutting down your email and closing the door (if you have one).

4) Interrupt tasks at natural breaking points. Finish writing a sentence before answering a phone.

5) Set aside time for not doing anything at all. Take breaks, eat well, exercise and make sure you get enough sleep.

Happy 4th and an E-Card Utility for All Occasions

Happy 4th of July to all my American readers!



Here is an article by Peggy Noonan, one of my most favorite writers, that expresses the sentiments of the day very well:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010269

In case you're wondering where I got the image from, here is my source (thanks to my client and reader Steve G.) :

Click here for iCards

It is a great utility to send quick, tasteful, and free postcards through e-mail.

Enjoy!

UBUNTU's "Virtual Desktops" End Multi-Window Clutter

Remember how you have a single desktop on a Windows machine and that everything runs there?

Do you also remember how annoying it can get when you have 2, 3 or 4 programs open at the same time, with many windows overlapping and hiding one another? Navigation can become quite a problem when you are multitasking on Windows.

Not so with UBUNTU Linux, thanks to the Workspaces you can create and individually name.

Each Workspace is a Virtual Desktop that displays only those application windows and/or documents that you place there.

You can have up to 36 such virtual desktops, arranged in up to 16 rows. You can click and switch to anyone of them without the clutter of a typical Windows desktop.

To configure your workspaces:

1) Right-click on a workspace square displayed on the bottom-right of your UBUNTU desktop.

2) Select Preferences to display the Workspace Switcher Preferences screen:



3) Select the number of workspaces you need and the number of rows to display them.

4) If you need to name them individually, double click on each desktop placeholder displayed in the list and type in a title. Click the "show workspace names" checkbox to display these titles inside the workspace button instead of a miniature representation of the desktop.

5) Click Close.

Now you can, for example, save all your writings on a workspace named "Writing" and keep all your images on another workspace named "Images."

When you click one, you will see only those items that were assigned to that workspace (virtual desktop) and nothing else. This way you will avoid clutter for good.

Two Useful Tips:

1) When you press CTRL and roll the middle wheel of your mouse, you automatically scroll from one Workspace to another.

2) When you have your Internet browser open in UBUNTU, right click and select "Move to Another Workspace" option. Then select the workspace in which you want your browser to display. This way all your web pages will display only in that special workspace and leave the other workspaces uncluttered.

Tomboy -- UBUNTU's Great Note Pad

UBUNTU (the great-looking and totally free Linux operating system for your computer http://www.ubuntu.com/) comes with a very useful built-in notebook utility called TOMBOY. It is under Applications > Accessories.

TOMBOY is simple enough to use it over and over again for all kinds of quick notes and brainstorming. But it is also smart enough to LINK all your notes to one another, keep a good list of them, allow you to search through them, and even format them in enough ways to do the job.

For example, I have just created a series of notes about the E-books I'm planning to write within the next 6 months. So I have created a note for the general list (lower bottom in the screenshot) as well as separate notes for each e-book (see the one for Article Marketing on top-right).

Currently these notes include only a rough outline of the things I'd like to cover eventually. For example, if I need to go interview someone or read a book on a certain topic, I can create separate notes for them as well and LINK them to which ever spot I want.

UBUNTU made Tomboy links so easy. You just SELECT the text you want and then press Ctrl+L -- bingo! You have a NEW note not only titled as such but also automatically linked to your selected text in the ORIGINAL note.

What's more, when you change the TITLE of your note, the TEXT in the ORIGINAL note which is linked to this one also changes to preserve the paths. This way you do not need to worry about those pesky broken links when you change the titles of your notes. Good thinking!

UBUNTU... an amazing and very user-friendly free solution for all creatives around the world.

A Firefox Secret to Blogger Productivity

Darren Rose of PROBLOGGER writes:

"One of the little tricks that I use every morning when I first log onto my computer that gets me off to a flying start is to open up my ‘StartUp Folder’ on Firefox.

This is a bookmark folder that contains 15 or so key sites that quickly give me an indication of what is going on across my blogging business. Within 60 seconds I know what’s hot, what’s broken, where there’s a fire that needs to be put out and where I can give things a nudge to make them go viral.

Here’s how it works.

Firefox (and other browsers) allows you to arrange your bookmarks via folders and place these folders in your bookmark toolbar across the top of your browser. These folders can be accessed in two main ways:

* by clicking the folder and selecting a bookmark from the drop down menu
* by right clicking the folder and selecting ‘Open in All Tabs’ (if you have tabbed browsing turned on).

It’s this second method that I use every morning (and 2-3 times per day)..."

Click here for the rest of the story

Yahoo Mail Alert

Have you checked your Yahoo mail recently to make sure it is working properly?

I have received a few complaints within the last 48 hours about how SLOW Yahoo mail is these days, with mails arriving DAYS after they were sent. If you are relying on Yahoo mail for your business, that might be a costly delay indeed.

Since I'm not using Yahoo mail myself I was not aware of the problem.

Linux or Windows?

As I'm writing these words, DELL has decided to ship some of its new models with Linux OS. They have selected UBUNTU distribution of Linux.

Go DELL!

A perfect choice because I've been using UBUNTU on one of my machines for over a year now and I have nothing but qualified praise for it.

Qualified? Yes. Because I cannot run any of my Windows application (like Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive) on Ubuntu.

GIMP comes close to doing what Photoshop can do (at least at my level of graphic comptetence) but other Windows applications do not have their Linux-copunterparts yet. There is nothing over the horizon yet, for example, to match the reliability of power of FrameMaker in a Linux environment.

So why I still like my Ubuntu? Let me count the ways:

1) It's FREE.

2) OpenOffice that comes with it is FREE as well and it can match WS Office in every category, except in mail management.

3) No viruses. Period. I have not used any anti-virus programs or firewalls with my Ubuntu system yet. Knock on wood.

4) No system crashes. And when I crash my system (a rare event) while trying to open 10 different applications or files at the same time, Ubuntu recovers beautifully, restoring each crashed file one by one when you restart the system.

5) Auto updates... when you click this great little "you have updates" button on top of the screen, UBUNTU automatically downloads (after your approval of each item) whatever updates are developed by hard-working Linux volunteers around the globe.

I do all my writing, for example, on my Linux machine. Since OpenOffice also has a free PDF conversion utility built right into its word processor, I'm writing my new book ("Copyright-Free Content for Your Web Site and Newsletters") also on my Linux machine.

Click here for a great article that compares UBUNTU with MS Vista