Giving Google™ a Personal Touch - by Wendy Wolfington

Do you use Google™ on a regular basis to search for information related to your work? Do you have Internet Explorer or Firefox set to use Google™ as the page it opens to (your ‘home’ page)? If so, you might want to consider personalizing your Google™ homepage.

To personalize your own Google homepage you first need an account with Google. To sign up for an account, go to https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount . This isn’t an email account. It does not cost anything, and it does not contain any spyware.

After you have created an account you can go to http://www.google.com and Sign In Figure 1 (look for the sign in link in the upper-right corner). Once you have signed in click on the Personalized Home link at the top of the page.

 

After clicking the Personalized Home link you will see the blue box to the left (Figure 2). Click the top link to do the initial customization to get a list of options that will allow you to choose news feeds and other websites that might be of interest. In the Create a Section field you can enter a keyword (e.g. “Agriculture”) to findfeeds and sites related to your specific needs.

To select content to add to your homepage, simply click the add button found to the right of each item. You can then use your mouse to drag them into different locations on the page or just leave them they way they are.

Once you have your homepage “just right”, you can set your browser to open to this page. Go to Figure 3 Tools-(Internet) Options and click the “Use Current Page” button.

Have fun with your new customized Google homepage!

 

 

Tip of the Month: Custom Shows in PowerPoint by Jill Hughson

Ever have this happen? You’ve created a presentation that takes an hour to deliver. You’ve just been told you only have 30 minutes to make your presentation. You know you only have time to show the “important” slides in PowerPoint, but you don’t want your audience to see you flipping past a lot of slides and realizing they are missing more than half of the presentation. One option is to pull the slides you want and save into another presentation. A big problem with this option is having two versions to update if changes need to be made. You could also do the “flip past” option, but that can still be time consuming. So why not try this third option - customizing your slide show so that only the slides you want are viewed.

Here’s how you do it::

  • Open the presentation you need to customize.
  • Click Slide Show on the toolbar and select Custom Shows
  • Click New
    • Add the slides that will be used in the Custom Show
    • Slides can be added and removed as well as reordered
  • When all needed slides are added and in the correct order, click OK
  • You’ll see the new custom show listed.
  • Click Close
You have just created a Custom Show. You can create multiple c ustom shows for any given presentation. This helps save space on your hard drive and on the server by eliminating multiple versions of a presentation. You also save time when updating a presentation. Changes made to the original will automatically update on the custom shows. So you save space and time! So how do you use a custom show when it’s time to do the presentation? Open the presentation you need to customize, Click Slide Show on the toolbar and select Custom Shows, Click on the custom show listed and select Show.

What if you need to add or remove slides from your custom show? Open the presentation you need to customize. Click Slide Show on the toolbar and select Custom Shows Click on the custom show listed and select Edit Then add/remove or reorder slides as needed