Chapter 4
Streamline Common Tasks
No doubt you perform dozens of repetitive actions every day, like typing www.google.com into your browser's address bar, or clicking the Start button and navigating to the Programs menu, or typing "Let me know if you have any questions" at the end of an email. These are opportunities for shortcuts that can add up to large savings over time. Every movement, every task, every action is a candidate for optimization and streamlining.
Hack 25
Search the Web in 3 Keystrokes
"There are dozens of ways to do a web search from your desktop, but the most common method takes the longest."
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Hack 26
Quick-Launch Software Applications
"The graphical user interface revolutionized personal computing because it made using a computer so much easier and visual. However, using the mouse is one of the most inefficient ways to drive a computer."
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Hack 27
Save Time with Text Substitution
"If you spend your day at a keyboard, chances are you type particular phrases several times throughout the day, like "Thanks for contacting us." Maybe you've acquired a maddening habit of typing teh instead of the when your fingers are really flying over the keys. Perhaps you enter the current date into documents all the time, or you tend to use Internet acronyms like IMO for 'in my opinion.' These are all situations in which text substitution can save you time."
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Hack 28
Text Message Efficiently
"To the uninitiated, texting can seem inconvenient, but text messages have numerous advantages over voice calls."
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Hack 29
Batch Resize Photos
"Everyone likes to email digital photos, but no one likes to receive pictures that are so huge they take forever to download and require you to scroll left and right and up and down to see the entire image."
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Hack 30
Send and Receive Money on Your Cell Phone
"Popular online payment service PayPal is a quick and easy way to email money to friends and co-workers -- to cover your share of the dinner bill or to pitch in on a shared gift or to make a payment for work done."
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Hack 31
Bypass Free Site Registration with BugMeNot
"An active web surfer can easily accumulate dozens of logins for various sites across the web. But what about when you don't want to go through the whole rigmarole of registering for a web site--you simply want inside?"
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Hack 32
Speed Up Web Pages on a Slow Internet Connection
"When you're surfing the Web on a slow connection, it can seem like grass grows faster than the download progress meter on your web browser turns."
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