Extending the Battery Life of Verizon Android Phones

Android Low BatteryIf you have an android phone such as the Droid or Incredible, you know how horrible the battery life is. If you don’t touch the phone all day, you MIGHT make it to lunch time before needing to recharge it.

Thanks to Terry, I now have two backup batteries and a dedicated wall charger for spare batteries with an extra spare battery in my pocket at all times for when I’ll be away from a wall outlet for more than 4-6 hours. Sad, I know.

The good news is that I discovered a fantastic way to extend the battery life of your android phone on the Verizon network. Continue reading “Extending the Battery Life of Verizon Android Phones”

Reducing PDF File Sizes on OSX

ColorSync UtilitySometimes when I print a file to a PDF, the resulting file is HUGE. There’s no reason for a print-ready 1 page, mostly text page made in Microsoft Word to be 7 – 40 MB.

Fortunately, there’s a little-known, but super-effective solution to reduce the size of your PDF files dramatically.

Open ColorSync Utility (search for it using spotlight) and then drag your PDF file to the ColorSync Utility icon in your dock to open it. From there, you’ll see a drop down on the bottom left.

Choose Reduce File Size and click Apply. Save the file and note the drastically reduced file size. I’ve gone from 7MB to 500kb with two clicks and even better in some cases.

Goodbye bloated PDFs!

Copying and Pasting Non-Hidden (Visible) Cells in Excel

Selecting Visible Cells Only in Excel
Selecting Visible Cells Only in Excel

Every have a huge spreadsheet with some hidden rows and columns, only to find that when you copy and paste the data, all the hidden data comes along for the ride?

Guess that would be helpful sometimes, but other times, you just want the visible data to be copied leaving the hidden rows and columns behind.

I searched the web and found solutions that involved filtering, re-hiding the data you didn’t want to see, and even using macros to get the job done.

The best answer, though, goes to April, who shows how to select just the visible cells and then copy and paste away. Continue reading “Copying and Pasting Non-Hidden (Visible) Cells in Excel”

7 Fun Tips and Tricks with Skype Chat

If you use Skype chat all day every day like I do, you may enjoy these few fun tips and tricks:

1. The “hidden” Skype emoticons

Skype EmoticonsSkype has a great set of built in emoticons, but there are dozens of more… “fun” ones that you can’t access from the menu. If you mouse over all of the icons in the menu, you’ll see what the code for them is, i.e. (giggle) (h) (y) etc… If you type those codes in (parenthesis and all) you’ll get the respective emoticons. Click on the chart to the right for an example.

But… there are some other emoticons Skype doesn’t tell you about. Try the following for a little fun: (drunk) (mooning) (smoke) (finger) (poolparty) and (rock)

These “hidden” emoticons can add a bit more fun to your IMs when used appropriately.

2. Kicking someone out of a group chat

Sometimes you have someone in a group chat and you want to boot them out of the chat. Perhaps it’s a work group chat and you’ve terminated someone and don’t want them coming back in the chat. Continue reading “7 Fun Tips and Tricks with Skype Chat”