How to create your own Photomosaic

Engadget has this great article about how to create your own photomosaic.

The program to use is Andrea Mosaic. This is a free tool which can create photomosaics out of all the snaps that is lying unused on your hard drive.

The complete article is here.

Microsoft Office Tips

Microsoft Office Tips

Over the last many years, I've collected a bunch of links to which I keep referring to when it comes to Microsoft Office products.

This blog is a result of Siddharth Ghosh wanting a list of all Word Keyboard Shortcuts. But I'll list all Microsoft tips that I've collected.

The method to list all of Word's keyboard shortcuts is :

1. In Word, go to 'Tools -> Macro -> Macros' (or press Alt + F8)


2. In the Macros dialog box, from the 'Macros in:' dropdown listbox, select 'Word Commands'.


3. You'll get a list of macros in-built in Word in the box. Here scroll down to 'ListCommands', select it and click on 'Run' button.


4. You'll get a Message Box asking you whether you want the 'Current Keyboard Settings' or 'All Word Commands'. Choose your option and click 'OK'.

Word will create the document as chosen.

The best part about this is, you don't need to carry the printout all the time. Also, you can check not only the shortcut keys that you might have forgotten, but also the shortcut keys of the PC you're working on.

Now for the links:

Microsoft Word

The best site for Microsoft Word tips is word.mvps.org. This site is by far the most comprehensive site I've ever seen. You'll find everything here.

Microsoft Excel

Solvenet: This site provides numerous, and I mean numerous ways of working wonders in Excel. Remembering everything is tough, so I keep this site in my favourites always.

MrExcel: The MrExcel website provides a lot of useful stuff. A whole lot of macros can be found in their Mr Excel Forum. You can also get a lot of questions that people have asked and their solutions.

J-Walk: This site, put up by John Walkenbach has a huge amount of stuff, including a nice history of Microsoft Excel which also includes numerous tips. His Excel Section is unparalleled.

Stephen Bullen's Excel page: This is also an excellent website for checking out Excel tips and tweaks. This site is getting reconstructed currently. So be sure to visit it later.

Microsoft Powerpoint

Microsoft Powerpoint is an animal of it's own. If you've prepared Powerpoint slides you know the innumerable ways it can irritate you!

A Bit Better gives numerous Powerpoint tips which are very useful. They also have a very, very comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts.

Sonia Coleman provides another great site with a lot of useful Powerpoint tips in a very informal manner. What is interesting about this site is the huge number of free templates that she provides! Also included is a way to create a presentation in a CD. Unfortunately, this last feature is only in Powerpoint 2003.

PC Magazine provides lots of very interesting tips and tweaks at their Expert Advice Section. They relate not only to Office but to a whole lot of other things as well.

And lastly, Microsoft themselves provides a very, very useful place to dig out templates from. Whether you want to create business cards, letterheads, greeting cards, or any number of Microsoft Office objects, you'll find an enormous number of templates at the Microsoft Template Gallery.

Google for the PC (Although Blinkx does more!)

Phew! Finally!

Google has introduced a search for the PC. This creates an index of all documents, which includes text files, Microsoft Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint presentations, as well as email handled through Outlook or Outlook Express and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) conversations & Web pages browsed in Internet Explorer! You can set it up in preferences as to what to search for.

One of the interesting things being that while doing a Google search on the web using Internet Explorer, you're also shown how many documents on your PC match the query!



The download link is here. And a review by O'Reilly here.

But honestly, I thought Blinkx already did all that, besides searching in News, Real media files and Adobe Acrobat documents.



My choice is still Blinx, because it's far more unobtrusive (I don't have to open a search window), as well as not needing Internet Explorer.

So, Google, I'll stick to Blnkx, thank you!

Some Simple Google Hacks

Google has been doing some interesting stuff lately. There's plans of them coming out with a browser too. Hopefully in another couple of months!

They've already come up with a Google SMS feature, by which you can do searches through your cellphone. And besides SMS, the tools that have improved are Google Groups (beta). Information about the new Google groups is here



I find these more interesting & useful though -

1. Google Personalized Search
   You create your profile, add your interests, and then Google filters search results to show items which match your profile first.


2. Site flavoured Search
   If you have a website, then you can put a bit of html code in (given by Google) and then have Google searches in your website.


3. Search by Location (works only for USA). Just put in your zip code and give look for something interesting like 'single bars' or 'strip clubs'!! Also works for burger joints and laundromats.


4. Google Conversions
   By the way, if you want to convert between units, like pounds to kilograms, or feet to meters, that works from the usual Google search page too. Like if you want to find out how fast you're travelling when you're going 70 mph, just enter "70 mph in kph". Or if you want to convert 7.5 inches to meters, try "7.5 inches in meters".


5. Google Glossary
   This is the simplest and best of all. If you want the meaning of a word, phrase, acronym or abbreviation, just add the word 'define' in front of it and do a Google. The first result is your answer. Like put in the phrase "define double entendre" in the google search bar and click on search!

More interesting stuff at Google Labs