Business Hacks

Occasionally, debate will rage over the question of using two or more monitors. In my judgment, there’s no debate: No other single change to your desktop can have so profound an effect on your productivity. When I tell this to people that have never tried multiple displays, though, I get the same question every time: “What’s it good for?” Well, here are four ways to make that second monitor pay for itself.

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The Word 2007 ribbon: You either love it or hate it. There’s apparently no middle ground. But even if you like the way the ribbon exposes Word features that were previously very hard to find, the fact remains that it’s sometimes frustratingly difficult to track down something that you used to know exactly how to find in Word 2003. Well, fret no more. You can now have the best of both worlds.

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Sure, Windows 7 has some nice new eye candy, an overhauled taskbar, and those nifty Jump List thingies. But where are the features that’ll actually improve your productivity?

According to TechRepublic, Windows 7’s secret efficiency benefits can be found in its window-management tools: Aero Peek, Shake, and Snap. Here’s an excerpt from the author’s take on Snap, the tool that lets you rearrange windows just by dragging them to the edges of the screen:

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Send us your burning technology questions.

I have a few questions for you:

• How much time do you spend in your inbox every day?
• How much of that time is truly productive?
• Does your boss pay you to read e-mail?

If your answers were, in order: A lot, a little, and no, then step right up, because it’s time for an e-mail intervention. Here are some tips for being more productive with your e-mail every day so you can actually spend more time on the stuff that matters.

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A few weeks back I spotlighted three Web services I consider essential for modern business. Many of you chimed in with recommendations of your own, which was great.

So, because everyone loves sequels (as opposed to prequels, which invariably bite), I bring you three more indispensable Web services. If you’re not using them, you’re not taking full advantage of what today’s Web has to offer.

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It’s not as awesome as the war stories your Uncle Ben used to tell, but here goes anyway. “There I was, working late and trying to get out of the office before the sushi place closed. I was ready to shut down my PC, but I had like 25 windows open — Outlook, all sorts of browsers, a couple of Word and Excel windows, some folders… even Windows Media Player. I wanted to close them all in a hurry. My odds looked slim.”

Thankfully, I was able to close all those windows and programs with a single click.

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Pesky Windows — always wanting to reboot after installing new updates and patches. You’d think the OS would be courteous enough to restore your currently running programs (much like Firefox restores tabs after a crash or restart), but, alas, no.

Enter Cache My Work, which reopens your apps after a reboot. It’s especially handy for those times when you step away from your PC for awhile, only to discover upon your return that Windows has restarted without even asking you.

The utility builds a checklist of “cacheable” programs that are currently running. Tick off the ones you want to restore, click Save, and you’re done. (You also have the option of restoring Explorer windows, a nice touch.)

Of course, you can force any program to run at startup by dragging it to your Windows Startup folder, but that’s a hassle. Cache My Work offers a quick and easy way to auto-run selected apps whenever you start — or reboot — your system.

Best of all, it’s free. [via Download Squad]

As a general rule, mail servers don’t like large file attachments. While some can accommodate files as large as 20MB, others balk if they exceed just 5MB. In these days of mammoth videos, photo libraries, PDFs, and the like, that just doesn’t cut it.

Thankfully, one of our favorite file-sharing services, drop.io, just announced an Outlook plug-in that lets you send attachments as large as 100MB — without ever leaving the program. Take a look:

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A couple weeks ago Dave steered you to the Open Clip Art Library, a nice collection of royalty-free clip art.

Great, but what if you need actual photos rather than cutesy line drawings? Head to Cyclo.ps, a search engine for stock photo sites.

All you do is enter a search term, then choose one or more of the eight supported sites — including Flickr, Photos.com, and stock.xchng — to search.

If you end up using Cyclo.ps a lot, you may want to sign up for a free account. Doing so entitles you to saved searches, photo tagging, and thumbnail printing.

Much as I like the idea behind Cyclo.ps, I’ve actually had better luck with everystockphoto.com, which is what I use to find Creative Commons and other free-to-use images for Business Hacks. What about you? Do you have a go-to site for images? [via Lifehacker]

In the future, all browsers will be able to sync their bookmarks across multiple PCs. It only makes sense.

Firefox and Internet Explorer users can already get this functionality courtesy of Xmarks (arguably the best add-on ever), but Google is baking it right into Chrome.

Want to take it for a test-drive? A newly released Chrome beta includes built-in bookmark syncing. This short video shows you the ropes:

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