Thing 22: Exploring private browsing

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This post in unashamedly reused from our recent Cyber Security: Safety at Home, Online, in Life free online course. It appeared in week 1 and is an open step – so anyone can see it. You might like to share the link with others if you find the idea of private browsing appealing. Thanks to the team in Computing Science who wrote this article, for allowing us to share with you (they did a much better job than I could have done).

At the end of the article I have added a section on how private browsing might be useful to us every day at work and something to remember in terms of University use of the internet and forthcoming legislation relating to privacy online.

Cyber Security: Safety at Home, Online, in Life: Exploring private browsing

We use a range of tools which have options to protect our privacy online every day. Can we use these tools better knowing exactly what they protect?

Private browsing

Modern web browsers provide an optional privacy mode for browsing. Although privacy is increased, some features which make browsing easier, such as caching, are removed. ‘Privacy mode’ has different names in different browsers, but operates in a similar way.

How does private browsing work in your web-browser?

Let’s examine the official information provided by the major browsers on their privacy mode of browsing and how they work.

Choose the documentation for the browser you use the most.

Finding out about browsing terms

If some of the terms used are unfamiliar to you you may want to find out a little more about them.

  • Browsing history: What is it? What information exactly does each record in the history include? Where is it stored? Does a website I visit have access to my browsing history?
  • (HTTP) Cookies: What are cookies? What are they used for and how? Where are they stored? Which websites have access to which cookies?
  • Web cache: What is it and what is it used for? Where is it stored? Who has access to it?

Some possible places to start with are:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using private browsing mode?

How might private browsing be useful to me?

Do you have more than one email account you need to use at work? Have you tried to log in to Office 365 to access another account other than your personal work one and got frustrated that you are automatically logged in to your work account?

This is one example where private browsing can help you out. By switching into incognito or private browsing mode you can avoid the auto login feature built into campus desktop and access that group email account you find frustrating to access. Try using your usual browser in private browsing mode – and if that is still frustrating choose another browser (is you usually use Internet Explorer, try using Chrome, for example). By choosing incognito or private browsing mode, the browser does not store your browsing history, and you won’t therefore be automatically logged in next time.

If you are using a computer that is not your own desktop machine, or you share a computer at work, then private browsing could be useful, especially if you forget to log out, as it won’t keep you logged in, does not save passwords, and erases your browsing history. At home this might be handy if you are trying to surprise the person you share a home computer with….

Can you think of other examples where private browsing might be useful?

One thing to remember….

Here at work, private browsing does not mean that our friends and colleagues in NUIT don’t have countless other ways of seeing what you’re doing on your computer. The University’s rules of use, with guidance outlined in a statement on internet use and a corresponding policy, which should still be followed in line with the Computer Users Agreement that everyone signs before being given access to University IT facilities.

And at home, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) could, if required, be required to retrieve any browsing history under specific legal circumstances. The so called ‘Snooper’s Charter’ – Investigatory Powers Bill is in its final parliamentary stages. The final reading in the House of Lords takes place on 25 October, and once amendments have been considered it will go for Royal Assent before being entered into the statute and becoming law.

Thing 21: Typing less – building blocks, autocorrect and fields

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Fed up with typing out long phrases like “Learning and Teaching Development Service”? Why not get Word to do the work for you….read on to explore a couple of approaches.

Part 1: AutoCorrect

We can harness Word’s Autocorrect feature to do this – the one that automatically converts “necesary” to “necessary” when you press space bar.

Let’s make ltdsx expand to “Learning and Teaching Development Service”

Here’s how to do it:

In Word

  • click File/ Options / Proofing
  • click AutoCorrect options

autocorrect options 1

  • Add a new entry
  • Click Add, then OK

If you have some pet typos you can also add them in here.  A notable plus is that these autocorrect entries are saved with Outlook.

Part 2: Quick Parts/ Building Blocks

You may have noticed if you start to type Newcastle University that Word will predict this and give you the chance to press Enter to finish typing it.

autotext offered 3

This comes from Quick Parts – on Word’s Insert menu.

quick parts 4

Let’s add a new one to the list

University Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Committee (ULTSEC)

What would be nice would be for this to offer to autocomplete this after you typed “Univer “

Here’s what to do

  • Type out the phrase you want to store
  • Select the text

then either

  • Press Alt-F3  (the speedy keyboard shortcut way to do it …

Or

  • Click the insert tab
  • Select Quick Parts
  • Click “Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery”save to gallery 5

Both routes will take you to the “Create New Building Block”,

in the name field type in the name you want to use for this quick part….we’ll just go with the default.

create new building block 6

Click Ok and try it out, you should see….

autotext offerered ultsec

You can add whole blocks of text to quick parts. If you don’t want to wait for the prompt box to come up you can press F3 to insert the autotext.

Outlook and Word save building blocks in different locations (bah!), I’ve only found faffy ways to copy them between programs.  If it is easy though please say!

Part 3: Fields

Via Word’s Quick Parts you can also add useful fields, such as the filename and location, the page number, the save date etc. These can often be helpful in document footers.

Try this:

  • Double click in a document footer
  • Click on Insert ribbon, then Quick Parts, then field
  • Select Filename and tick “Add path to filename”
  • Click OK

field 9

 

If I do that on this document, I see:

path11

Putting these things together

You can add fields into the building blocks you create.

For example you may want to have a quick way of adding the filename + path and page number to the bottom of a document.

Here’s a final challenge:

  • Create a new building block called “footerbits” which adds the following fields: filename and path, page number.
  • Test it out by typing footerbits and then pressing F3

Hint: Generate the field codes first, select the text, press Alt-F3 and give it a name “footerbits”

Thing 20: Using online forms

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Using online forms is a really handy way of collecting information, organising events and taking bookings and means that all of the responses are automatically collated in one place.

Form builder

The university’s form builder service is available here: http://forms.ncl.ac.uk/

To get started click “Create New Form!”Create new form

Click on the form title to edit the form properties, here you can add a title, description and message that will appear after people have submitted the form.

Form Manager

All forms must have a relevant data protection statement added:

e.g. “All information that we hold concerning you as an individual will be held and processed by Newcastle University strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. We will not, without your consent, supply your name and addresses to any third party except where (1) such transfer is a necessary part of the activities we undertake, or (2) we are required to do so by operation of law. Newcastle University’s data protection policy is available at www.ncl.ac.uk/data.protection/”

You can then choose from a number of different fields to add to your form:    

Add a field

Once you have built and saved your form, it will appear in a list on your homepage:

Form builder list

Click “Publish Form” to get the url which you can either send via email or include in a website and you can set the entries to be emailed to a particular email address by clicking “Emails”.  You can also download a spreadsheet of the results by clicking “Entries”.

Once you have made a form, you can easily duplicate it to reuse it for another event or delete it.

Top Tip! Use a shared account to create your form, this means they can be easily duplicated or edited by anyone in your team

Typeform

Typeform makes a very pretty form which you can customise. It also allows you to apply calculations and logic steps. You can have a go using the free trial option which also has lots of handy How To videos.

You can access it here: https://www.typeform.com/

Click “Create a new typeform” to get started and you can choose to start from scratch or use a template.

New Typeform

On the left hand side, you will see that you can add a welcome screen, a thank you screen and choose from loads of different question types.
typeform menu

Have a go at creating a form to order some cakes using this spreadsheet. Add the welcome text, questions and thank you screen then we will add the calculations and logic jump.

typeform questions

Adding a Calculation

Now we are going to add a calculation that will give the user a total price for their cake and delivery. On the multiple choice “What type of cake would you like to order?” question click the calculatorcalculator

Then you can assign a price for each cake by clicking “Add a calculation”

typeform calculation

Then do the same for the delivery question and add the price for delivery when they answer “Yes” (You don’t want it to charge them if they said no!)delivery calc

Finally in the Thank you screen, you can add the variable of “Score” which will show them their total at the end of the form:

Thank you screen

Adding a Logic Step

We want to skip the delivery address question if they are collecting their cake and go straight to the end of the form.
So click the logic jump icon on the “Would you like your cake delivered?” question:

logic jump
Here you can set it so if they answer “No” it jumps to the Thank you screen.

logic jump step

View type form

Now you can check your form is working by viewing it.

You can also use the “Design” tab to change how the form looks and the “Analyze” tab to view the results and other info. You can download your results as an excel spreadsheet and you can also view a report which gives you stats for each question.

typeform tabs

Thing 19: Writing a reflective blog using ePortfolio

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‘It is not sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost. It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from this reflection that generalisations or concepts can be generated. And it is generalisations that allow new situations to be tackled effectively.’ (Gibbs, 1988)

ePortfolio is a tool that can be used to encourage and improve your reflective practice. The ownership of the blog is with you. You decide what posts to share, and with whom to share them. This can help encourage deep reflection including writing about mistakes you have made, your fears, and hopes, confident that only you can see the post unless you choose to share it.

To write a blog post, follow these instructions:

Blog entries can be made from several areas of ePortfolio. You will see the adding blog entry graphic on the frontpage, the blog page, communities, and the skills section.Capture

  • Title – This is the title of your blog post.
  • Blog Text – This is where you should type the main content of your blog post.
  • Everyone in the University – tick this box to make the blog post public.
  • Tags – this is where you would enter keywords to describe your blog posts. Use accurate keywords as this will enable more effective indexing and searching.
  • Communities – Communities are online collaborative spaces, where ePortfolio users can share blogs and comment on other members’ blogs. If the blog post is to be shared with any of the communities, use this area to select which communities can see the post. You will only see Communities that you are a member of.
  • Skills – you can align a blog post with a skill from a skill set, or competency framework. All undergraduate students will be subscribed to the Graduate Skills Framework
  • Shared group – if you wish to share this post with any of your share groups, ensure that group is ticked. If you do not see this option, you are not a member of any share/supervision groups.
  • Upload a file – You can add a file to go along with your post. Your file will be shared with any of the groups you are sharing the blog post with.

Note: If you save a partially completed blog post and have some sharing options enabled (either share group, supervision group, or community), the partially saved blog post would be seen by those you are sharing with. They will see a live link to your post, so if you edit it later, they will see the updated version.

If you are looking to further explore the reflective process I would recommend reading some articles from Jenny Moon, Graeme Gibbs, and Donald Schon.

Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Further Education Unit.

Why is this useful to me?

The ePortfolio system is automatically available to anyone in the University to use. You already have an account there. There are already easy ways to tag your posts with skills relating to the UK Professional Standards Framework if you are working towards HEA Fellowship, or with categories relating to Staff Skills including Success Factors. Both os which you might find useful in logging things you have done as you go along, so that when you come to prep for your PDR, or to write your fellowship application, you have material ready and available to draw upon.

Neat eh?

Thing 18: Focus on Windows Shortcuts

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1keyboardThere are loads of things you can do in Windows with keyboard shortcuts, some of which will be faster than:

  • Take hands off keyboard
  • Grab mouse
  • Move the mouse
  • Click
  • Go back to keyboard

So, if you are fast on the keys, you may find it useful to consider what things you do regularly and have a look for a new keyboard shortcut or two.

In this thing, we invite you to find keyboard shortcuts to add to your repertoire.  Drop a line in the comment with your favourites. (And we know that you can drive a Mac from the keyboard, so Mac-o-philes can join in too.)

Here are mine:

  • Windows – left arrow – send the window to the left of the screen
  • Windows-M – clear the desktop
  • Windows-tab – cycle through open programs, a bit like alt-tab but more fun

Web Browsers

  • Ctrl-J – goes straight to your downloads folder

There are loads that work across many browsers  see http://www.groovypost.com/tips/50-universal-web-browser-hotkeys/

Word

  • Ctrl-M indents (cntrl-shift-M unindents)

For more see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/290938

Explorer

  • Windows- E opens my computer

More shortcuts here https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee851673.aspx

Outlook

  • Ctrl-N New message
  • Ctrl-Enter Send
  • Ctrl-Shift-M move message to a folder

And there are many more on this Microsoft article

Starting programs

What if you find yourself continually needing to open a particular program or folder?  You can add these to your start menu, or to the quick launch area.  But, you can also add your own shortcuts to start something off.

Eg.  I want to be able to open Microsoft Word with Ctrl-Alt-W

Search for Word

2searchword

Right click on it, select “send to”

3sendto

  • then select “desktop (create shortcut)”

Find your new shortcut on your desktop, right click and select “properties”

4properties

Open the shortcut tab, put your cursor in the Shortcut key box:

5shortcut

Windows will now capture the next keystroke you type as a shortcut key to launch Word.

  • Press Ctrl-Alt-W, then click the Apply Button
  • Try it out!

You can add shortcut keys to any shortcuts you create by other methods.

Over to you:

  • Add a comment with details of any gems you have found.

Thing 17: Managing your professional profile online

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After scouring through lots of pages of “social media top tips” and “how to get a killer LinkedIn profile”, the take home message about managing your professional profile online is: be savvy about balancing professional and personal uses of social media.

The careers service recommends this article to our graduates: Social networking and graduate recruitment: manage your online reputation which advises:

“Separate your personal and professional online personas and actively manage your ‘net rep’.”

So a good place to start, is to think about your target audience and the purpose of your profile. You can then tailor your tone and manage who can view your stuff accordingly.

Checking your digital footprint.

What does your current online profile actually look like? To find out, have a go at checking your digital footprint.

Start by googling your name, or your name and job title, and see what comes up. Is there anything there that you didn’t expect? Or that you wouldn’t want as part of your professional profile?

If you would like to find out more about your digital footprint, there is a great activity in the Cyber Security free online course: Find out about your digital footprint.

Updating your university web profile

You can manage your university web profile via My Impact.

My Impact menu

Here you can add:

  • a profile photo
  • contact details
  • publications
  • research information
  • teaching information

Your profile is then linked to your listing on the uni people search.

This document gives a step by step guide for updating all sections of your profile: MyImpact User Guide To Editing your Web Profile

If you like, you can also add a link to the personal blog that you created in our first 23 Things post, by clicking “Edit Personal Details” and adding a personal website address.

Facebook

As Facebook privacy settings change quite frequently, it is a good idea to check what your profile looks like to the public or to a specific person.

Who can see what information on my profile?

Go to your profile page and then the “View Activity Log” drop down menu and “View As..”

Facebook activity log menu

Not what you expected?? Time to check your privacy settings!

Changing privacy settings

You can change who can view all of your future posts in “Who can view my stuff?”. If you do not want your Facebook profile to appear in search engine results you can stop this happening by clicking “See More Settings” and “Who can look me up”:

Privacy Settings Search engine

LinkedIn

Now how about a few top tips to improve and manage your LinkedIn profile:

Use a professional profile photo!

Profile Photo

Make sure you choose a professional photograph, that is current and sets the tone for your profile. Its probably best not to use a photo of you down the pub, on the beach or posing with giant cardboard teeth!

 

Control who can see your information by customising your public profile.

Go to your profile and click “Update your public profile settings”:

Linkedin Profile settings

You can then select exactly which sections can be seen publicly:

Customize your public profile

Customise your personal url:

Make it easier for the right people to find you by personalising your url.  Again in your public profile settings, you can edit the link to your profile:

UrlTurning off your activity broadcast

If you haven’t updated your LinkedIn Profile in a while and it needs a major overhaul, you can turn off your activity broadcast so you can quietly update it without notifying everyone in your network!

This can be done from your profile page:

Network

Twitter

There are hundreds of articles out there about how to have an amazing professional Twitter profile, and most of them suggest the following top tips:

  • Make use of your bio section and include key words to help you network with relevant people.
  • Link to your blog or website.
  • Have a professional twitter handle.
  • Do not link to your Facebook account if you use them for different purposes/to reach different audiences.
  • Separate professional and personal! If you have a twitter account which you use as part of your professional profile, that network might not want to see you #GBBO retweets!

 

(Ellie masquerading as Nuala!)

Thing 16: Loving our Campus Managed Desktop

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Filestore

Unlike files stored on mobile and portable disks we know that information stored on University filestore is secure and backed up.

Our files are held on physical storage owned by the University and each day (twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon) files on you Home folder are copied, keeping around 3 weeks of changes safe. Even better, you have the power to restore these Shadow Copies.

1-shadow

Try this:

  • right click on a file you have been working on over the last couple of days
  • Select properties, then the previous versions tab.
  • Go to the page on Shadow Copy to find out more

And… if you can’t remember which Tower your Home folder is stored on click the the Technical Information link on People Search/My Details.

Getting Organised with Filestore

We collaborate therefore we use shared filestore.

Take a moment to think about the places you go to regularly.  If you are spending ages every day navigating to a single folder buried in the PSS share then why not add it to your favorites?  (We can use this even though it is spelt wrong!)

File Favourites

Simply drag the folder from the LTDS filestore to your favourites to have it listed.

2-favourites

Network locations

Or, if you are regularly using a bit of shared filestore from somewhere else add it as a network location.

3-places

Type in the long address eg:

4-path

5-folderthere

Software

Rather than having every single employee updating their versions of Adobe Reader, Chrome, Office, anti-virus.  It all happens automatically, the software updates are packaged up, tested and deployed to PCs so that we all remain up to date.

There is an orderly elegance to it – If the library want to use an updated version of an Endnote file it can be copied to all the managed PCs running Endnote in 90 minutes.

If something nasty happens the whole system can be reset and can be rebuilt in a few hours without the need of feeding in lots of DVDs.

Try this:

  • Click the start menu, then the shield

6-shield

  • Click “Switch to Advanced View”

Scroll down to see a list of software “applied” to your PC, for example.

7-filelist

 

Free stuff

The University negotiates software purchases for commonly used products centrally.  As members of staff we reap the rewards.

  • You can install Office for free on your home PCs/ tablets and phones
  • Other titles are available for free and at a discount.

See: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/software/softwaredeals/staff/

Single Signon

7-logongateway

Thankfully you don’t have to remember gazillions of passwords as our IT folk are big fans of Single Sign On.  A downside to this is if you want to access resources via different accounts eg your own account and a role account you may need to do one of the following:

  • Use a different browser for each id (e.g. Internet Explorer for your own id, Chrome for the role account)
  • If you have trouble swapping between identities, close down and open up your browser (to clear the session data); or open an incognito tab in Chrome.

The downsides

“I can’t install software on my own PC.”

This is a two edged sword! To my cost I know that the downside of recklessly installing any new bit of freeware-comes with a -guarantee that once every 6 months a full PC reset will be needed.   Chances are if you would like to use Audacity, then it is already “packaged up” in a way that will work.  You can ask for the software to be installed and it will be updated when the next version comes out.

“I can’t have the latest versions of the software I want to use.”

Sometimes having a safe, tested collection of applications that work together can be better than embracing often aptly named bleeding edge.  Somethings are best upgraded in a managed way, for example it’s helpful to have versions of Office, SPSS, etc in sync across staff and student PCs.  But, if our computing officer trust us we can always ask for local admin rights if we want to live a bit more dangerously!

 

Thing 15: Weeding and Housekeeping H drive and roaming profile

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Analysing your H Drive

If you get one of those emails to tell you your Home folder is full you will be forced down a path of deleting some files.  But how do you know what is hogging the space?

There is a clever little utility on all campus managed PCs that does this for us.  Here’s how to get to it.

  • Click on the start menu
  • Click the Shield
  • Click Analyse my H Drive
  • Go and make a cup of tea/coffee/talk to a colleague for a few minutes.

Once it has finished have a look at the tree map it produces.  You can identify folders taking up most space. Here’s an insight into mine:treemap

Clicking on the largest purple blob, will take you to the name and location of the file. I can quickly see that this is in fact a video (mp4)

northernbridge

And I know from the filename that it’s something that is now on ReCap, so there is absolutely no reason for me to have it.  Then, just right click on the filename and delete it. (If you are really, really sure select Delete (no way to undelete).

nowaytoundelete

WindirStat can be used to examine other file locations too, like shared drives, project filestore and roaming profiles… but more of this later……

Roaming Profiles

Chances are even if you haven’t filled your H drive you will have had a “Profile Over Quota” message.  (If you haven’t seen this, you can simulate it really easily by copying a really large file like the uni powerpoint template to your desktop)

Roaming profiles are a brilliant thing… they give us the ability to go to any PC on campus and still access the same mapped drives, internet shortcuts and application settings.  Your profile is read when you logon to a PC and it is written back to the profile server when you logoff.  When you launch programs for the first time they typically create a new folder in your profile.

Having a look at your roaming profile

The contents of your roaming profile can be found by opening Windows Explorer and going to:

C:\users\<yourcampusid>\AppData\roaming
(eg if your campus id is nfb99 you would type:  c:\users\nfb99\appdata\roaming)

Open this up…You will probably see folders for Adobe, Microsoft, and Google – these hold your settings for Adobe Reader, Microsoft Office, programs in your start menu and Chrome.

Profile Clutter

Your profile can easily get cluttered ……..

  • Following an upgrade to Office 13 your profile may contain information for the new and old versions of office.
  • If you use an application on a different PC, you could then have its bits in your profile. (This in particular is a hazard for those regularly using strange apps on cluster machines!).
  • You may have profile folders for applications you no longer use
  • You may have indavertently saved files to your desktop (do use shortcuts instead)

Deleting Profile Clutter

Let’s take the example of Microsoft Office, try this:

  • Open the folder: C:\Users\<yourcampusid>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office

You should see a folder here for “15.0” (office 2013)

office15

If you have folders for earlier versions – you can safely delete these – just right click and select delete.

What to do if your profile is over Quota

There are some helpful instructions here in the IT Service article on Profile Over Quota.

If you find the scrolling box a bit too annoying – have a look in the advanced bit below….

Starting from Scratch (Zapping your Profile)

If you are really struggling you can ring the  IT Service to delete your profile from the profile server.  (The nice IT Service people will talk you through this and ask you to logout before they wipe it).

A few more advanced things ….

Another way to weed your profile

We can use Windirstat – but let’s launch it a different way – we are going to create a custom shortcut our desktop for this.

  • From Windows Explorer navigate to c:\program files\cmdinfo\
  • Locate the file windirstat.exe
  • right click on it and select create shortcut (say yes to put the shortcut on your desktop).

Now, go to your desktop and right click on the shortcut you have just created and select properties. We’re going to give it a couple of parameters.

In the target box you’ll see

“C:\Program Files\CMDInfo\windirstat.exe”

  • Add a couple of bits to the end of this line so that the shortcut shows your profile space.

“C:\Program Files\CMDInfo\windirstat.exe” %appdata% /treemap

  • Click OK
  • Rename the shortcut to something that makes sense eg “My Roaming Profile.”

Double click on your shortcut to visualise the space used in your roaming profile.

Avoiding Blowing Your Profile

If you are beleaguered by full profile messages then it is worth getting in touch with the IT Service.

  • If you know what program is causing the problems you can run a script to exclude a particular application from your roaming profile (VideoScribe is a particular culprit)
  • More drastically, if you really only ever use one PC it is possible to save all your settings locally rather than to and from the profile server.  (But this requires a policy to be added to your local PC).

Thing 14: Staying safe online – spotting suspicious emails, viruses, and scams

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We all have emails that get through to us from time to time which we might have some doubts about, and a small proportion of those even look genuine (!). We have all seen the messages that come out from NUIT to all staff when someone has opened an email which contained a virus….. but how do we recognise those rogue emails? And how do we stop ourselves from clicking on something that might turn out to be malicious and result in our identity being used fraudulently?

How do I know if an email is spam, a scam or contains a virus?

In the development of the forthcoming Cyber Security: Safety at Home, Online, in Life free online course, we have, in our little office, become even more acutely aware of the increasing sophistication of our online adversaries. There is a lot of brief and helpful  guidance available. Here are a couple of pointers:

Many of these scams are about criminals trying to get more information about you – including personal details like bank card and account details. This can lead to identity fraud.

Have you been or do you know anyone who has been a victim of identity fraud?

CIFAS has been doing a lot of work to raise awareness of identity fraud.

Watch this film about how easy it is to piece together details of people from something as simple as buying a coffee:

What surprised you?

There is an online fraud risk profiler to assess how at risk you are. Have a go at it.

Will you do anything differently as a result?

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has a really good page on Identity Theft with advice on what to do if you have been a victim.

I want to learn more!

There will be more advice on managing your online professional profiles in a forthcoming thing, and on how you can manage your campus desktop, email and general electronic housekeeping soon.

In the meantime here are a few online courses which may be of interest:

 

Thing 13: Team Top Tips on Saving Stuff

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This week’s problem:

  • After a lengthy Google Search you find a gem of information
  • A colleague sends you a brilliant link or tip in an email

What do you do with these? How do you ensure that you can find them again when you need them?

With a trusty notebook and pen I pestered LTDS colleagues for ideas…

Bookmarks

Lynsey suggested bookmarks as “saving stuff 101”.

Look for the Star on the IE or Chrome address bar.  If you want to move to the next league you can organise these into folders.  (see Chrome instructions and IE instructions)

My Bookmarks on the Staff Homepage

Have you spotted “Customise My Bookmarks” on the Staff Homepage?  No longer any need to trawl for ages to find the list of active purchasing agreements etc.

Try adding a hard-to-find-University-page as a bookmark – it will take a jiffy and you can even modify the order.  (Carol is our resident expert.)

OneNote

Janice and Carol were keen to include OneNote on our list of great tools.  You may even remember that we had a look at OneNote back in Thing 3.  Carol points out that it works well with other Office Products — I didn’t know that you can  move an email straight to OneNote. Here’s how it goes:

https://youtu.be/-V_hiKHPqr0

And you can email stuff to OneNote notebooks too. And there is a webclipper for Chrome.  And… can you tell I really like OneNote?

Evernote

Evernote is a third party tool that synchronises notes you take between your PC, Mac, tablet, phone.  You need to signup to create an account and it can be used free as long as you only want to use the App on two devices – still OK for most people.  Some of the really neat things about it are:

  • it works really well on a smartphone (OneNote is a bit clunky on phones).
  • text on photos you add to Evernote becomes searchable –  it scans and OCRs the photos for you.  (Yes it does work on photos of business cards!)
  • It is very easy to use – for proof see this much more professionally produced video.

Social Bookmarking Tools (Delicious and Diigo)

How about if you want to share web bookmarks with a bunch of colleagues involved in similar work? For this Graeme suggests a tool like Delicious.  You have to create a free account, and add a bookmarklet to your browser (no need for admin rights to do this thankfully).

Then you can get cracking adding links to Delicious.  You can share your links, as Graeme has done, search other user’s links and follow other people.

Diigo is a similar tool, also giving you a publically visible list (see this list from The Enterprise Shed). We’ve also had a go at presenting some of these links in a more organised manner using Diigo’s Outliner feature.

Other Strategies

Our colleagues suggested:

  • Email the link to yourself (but put something useful in the email other than “useful link”)
  • “Just remember it”
    (you know who you are.. youth must be on your side!)

So, have I missed anything?  If so add it to the comments.  Try out one or more of these ideas and let us know how you got on.