Productivity

I hate waiting the 3 or 4 minutes after logging into Windows for it to load all the background applications and become usable. It’s just such a waste of time. Most of the programs that load are ones that I use on a daily basis (Skype, SugarSync, PhraseExpress, etc) but don’t need to be used as soon as you turn on the computer. They aren’t actually that resource hungry but when they all try to load at the same time it slows down the time it takes to open applications that you actually want to use, like Firefox.

This is where Startup Delayer comes in.

Continue Reading »

If your company creates a lot of documents, forms, white-papers, etc it’s very handy to have a specific Word style set that matches the rest of your company branding so all your documents are consistent. In this post I will go through the steps on creating your own style set and deploying it through your organization using Word 2007. If you are using a different version of Word, the process will be very similar, but the clicks might be slightly different.

Continue Reading »

Since Alborz mentioned it last week I decided to write about the apps that I use to track time spent on each client and overall productivity.

Continue Reading »

Launchy is a simple, light-weight, open-source application that allows you to open applications by searching for them.  Once you’ve installed the app, hit ALT+SPACE and the little launchy window appears allowing you to search for the application you want to open. Mac users have had the same thing for a long time with Quicksilver.

Continue Reading »

So I've had PhraseExpress installed for about two hours and I've already saved about 30 minutes. It's awesome. It's so simple to use, create new phrases and (most importantly for me) the network edition just works.

Compare that to my attempt to use ActiveWords over the last week and with all the screwing around it probably wasted two hours. It's confusing, bloated, and the network edition doesn't work at all.

To make it even better, PhraseExpress is free for personal use.