Stop showing up early for meetings! Fix your calendar timezone.

Have you showed up for a meeting an hour early since the time change on March 8? If so, you may have never set the proper timezone in your Google Calendar.

Here's how to do it:

 From the Settings menu (1) select Settings(2).

Ensure that the Country is set to United States (1) and the time zone is set to Central Time (GMT-6:00) (2).

All done. Enjoy your extra hour of sleep.

Filter Google Calendar Invitation Responses from your Inbox

If you send a lot of calendar invitations, especially for events with a lot of attendees, you may get tired of deleting the emails you get back when someone responds to your meeting invitation.

It's fairly easy to set up a filter in Gmail that will take those response emails out of your inbox, or delete them altogether.

What the heck are Labels in Gmail and why should I care?

"Labels" in Gmail. Gmail users love 'em, Outlook users hate 'em, at least at first.

The great thing about labels is you can use them exactly like folders, but why would you want to? Labels are much more flexible and offer some distinct advantages to the antiquated notion of folders.

Simple Peer Review with Google Docs

I needed a simple peer review process that did not involve the problems associated with passing a document around through email, but was simple enough that it could be used immediately without any additional software or end-user training.

I came up with a simple peer review header that I could embed in a Google Doc. The header contains three things:

1. Some metadata about the usage and purpose of the content
2. A two-sentence user's guide
3. A sign-off area

I drop this header on top of any content for which I would like to gather feedback and approval and then share it with my peer group in read-only mode. Users can use chat to discuss changes between themselves or with me, and suggest improvements with the comment feature. Once the review process is complete, users "sign-off" on the document by commenting by their name on the Approval list. It's dead simple and users have responded well to the process.

Since comments and chat are saved with the document, I have a trail of the whole discussion and approval process. One day when I'm feeling really brave, I'll open the content up for editing by the whole group. Google Docs is pretty good about tracking changes to the document, so this may not be as dangerous as it seems. I'll let you know how it goes.

This is very simple to do yourself, but if you want a jumpstart, copy my sample peer review header here.

How are you using Google Apps in interesting collaborative ways? Let me know in the comments.

Keyboard Shortcuts Week Five: Textual Selection with the Shift key

This week’s tip is an extension of the textual navigation shortcuts presented last week. Sometimes you need to select a word or an entire block of text in order to delete it or replace it. You can use the Shift key on your keyboard to select text in various ways:

Hold shift and use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to select one character to the left or right.

Hold ctrl+shift and use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to select one word to the left or right.

Similarly, hold ctrl+shift and use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to select one line above or below the cursor.

Shift also works with the mouse. You can place the cursor at the start of a block of text you want to select, hold Shift, and then click the end point of your selection with the mouse. Everything in between will be selected.

Keyboard Shortcuts Week Four: Textual Navigation with the Ctrl key

When editing text, you don’t need to take your hands off of the keyboard just to move the cursor to a new location.

Hold the ctrl key and use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to move one word to the left or right.

Ctrl + left arrow = move one word to the left

Ctrl + right arrow = move one word to the right

Keyboard Shortcuts Week Three: Printing

This one is easy. To open the print dialog use the following shortcut.

Print = Ctrl+P

Keyboard Shortcuts Week Two: Bold and Italic Text

Want to bold or italicize a piece of text in your word processor or email? Just highlight it and use one of the following shortcuts.

Bold = Ctrl+B

Italic = Ctrl+i

Keyboard Shortcuts

The single biggest time-saver related to everyday computer work is keyboard shortcuts. An application’s menu is a long way away from the content you are working on, and constantly moving back and forth between them is tedious. Don’t succumb to mouse-induced nausea, try these keyboard shortcuts instead.

There are literally hundreds of keyboard shortcuts that can save you time and effort, but we will focus on the most useful and ubiquitous ones. I will present a new set of shortcuts each week. Try to use each one daily until it becomes a habit. You’ll soon be surprised how you got along without them.

Keyboard Shortcuts Week One: Cut, Copy, Paste

This set of shortcuts is the grandaddy of them all. They can be used in almost every computer program under the sun and are a great introduction to shortcuts.

To perform a keyboard shortcut, press and hold the first key in the sequence, then press the second key. For “Cut” below, this means holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, then pressing the letter X.

Highlight some text in your email or browser and try the following shortcuts:

Cut = Ctrl+X

Cutting text means removing it from the current location and copying it to the computer’s clipboard. Cut text if you want to remove it from one location and paste it into another.

Copy = Ctrl+C

Copying text means copying it to the computer’s clipboard so you can paste it somewhere else later. Copy text if you want to make a duplicate of it elsewhere.

Paste = Ctrl+V

Pasting text inserts previously cut or copied text from the clipboard to the current location.

Opening email links in Gmail instead of Outlook

It is possible to have your computer open Gmail as the default email handler when you click mailto links on the Web; the SHC Campus Directory, for example. You'll just have to give up Internet Explorer to make it work.

Install Chrome or Firefox and then check out the following posts on the Google Operating System (unofficial) blog. See my previous post about the benefits of using Chrome

For Chrome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABqjXCCY5pc

Firefox is not quite as simple, but it can be done:
https://sites.google.com/a/brown.edu/google-migration-project-site/how-to/making-gmail-your-default-client/gmail-default-firefox

As always, holler at the Help Desk [helpdesk@shc.edu] if you need additional help.