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Five productivity-boosting Google Drive tips

Twice in the last month I had to become reacquainted with Microsoft Office because a company I was working with required a genuine Office file. Both experiences made me appreciate Google Drive's simple, straightforward apps all over again.

Yes, there are tasks Google Drive's word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program can't handle well or at all, but for 99.9 percent of the files I work on, Google Drive fits the bill nicely. Here are five ways to use Google Drive to shave minutes off your workday.

Keyboard shortcut opens a list of keyboard shortcuts After a … Read more

Managing Finder aliases in OS X

Aliases in OS X are analogous to the Windows shortcuts, in which you create a small pointer file that references another location or file on disk, so you can quickly access that resource without continuously having to reveal it first. In a sense aliases allow a similar function as the OS X Dock or the Finder sidebar, except they can be placed anywhere on the file system. A benefit to this is that you can create a folder that contains aliases of all the common documents, remote folders, and other items you access, and then add this to your Dock … Read more

Open links in Chrome via keyboard with DeadMouse

The DeadMouse extension for Chrome might be the final piece of the puzzle if you are trying to go all keyboard shortcuts all the time. You can perform all manner of task in Chrome with keyboard shortcuts (here are helpful lists for PCs and for Macs), but opening a link still requires a click of the ol' mouse.

If losing your mouse is something you aspire to, give DeadMouse a whirl. With it, you simply start typing the first few letters of a link you see on the page you are viewing and the link will begin to wobble. Hit … Read more

Quickly access your iPhone's Camera Roll in Instagram 2.5

Instagram just rolled out a pretty big update, the first since the Facebook acquisition, to the iOS version of the app. There were big changes to the explore tab and a revamped profile tab, but there was also one hidden shortcut in the app that is going to make a lot of lives easier.

I learned of the smooth trick from a Tumblr post by MG Siegler that pointed to a tweet from a lead Facebook designer, Keegan Jones. Here's the tweet:

Cool @instagram 2.5 trick: Long press on the camera button to access your camera roll.

-- … Read more

Clean up iTunes with one playlist

My iTunes library is a graveyard. It's a place for my media to slip away and die in silence.

Sure, there are some well-worn albums in my iTunes collection, but there's also an increasing portion of dusty, old podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, and random music that I honestly don't remember how (or why) I acquired.

To break free from all the crud in my iTunes collection while leaving the good stuff intact I could methodically comb through the collection and delete the duds. But frankly, I'd rather chew a mouthful of tacks.

Wouldn't it be … Read more

CheatSheet reveals keyboard shortcuts for any OS X app

Learning, keeping track, and remembering every keyboard shortcut for every OS X app is near impossible. While there are ways to figure out what keyboard shortcuts are available for some apps, those methods aren't always convenient to access.

CheatSheet is a small OS X app that runs in the background and will show you all the keyboard shortcuts for whatever app you're currently using.

Getting started with CheatSheet is easy; just make sure you're running OS X 10.7. 

Download and install CheatSheet. It's free. Unzip and move the app into your Applications folder. Double-click … Read more

Three more ways to take a screenshot on a Mac

As a follow up to last week's post about three keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots on a Mac, I present three more keyboard shortcut tips.

Each of these tips uses the Command-Shift-4 keyboard shortcut. Hitting these three keys simultaneously turns your Mac's cursor into a crosshair, which you can drag to select a portion of your screen to capture. Releasing the mouse button or trackpad takes the shot.… Read more

Four tips for the Command key in OS X

One of the defining features of the Mac platform is the Command key, which originated from the Open Apple key on earlier Apple computer systems and joins the Shift, Control, Option, and Fn keys as modifier options for keyboard shortcuts in OS X.

The Command key is the primary modifier key for the Mac platform and is used to perform basic editing and application management commands such as quitting, printing, and copying and pasting, but in addition it can be used in combinations to force a hardware reset and to boot to special modes such as the OS X Lion … Read more

How to use Google Drive with keyboard shortcuts

Google is one of the biggest proponents of using keyboard shortcuts with Web services. Gmail keyboard shortcuts are very popular, and you can even control Google Music with keyboard shortcuts too. It's no surprise then, that Google Drive also supports keyboard shortcuts.

As you learn how to get started with Google Drive, try some of these keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate Google Drive a little faster:

Selection j : navigate to and highlight next item k : navigate to and highlight previous item x : toggle selection of highlighted item Shift + a : select all Shift + n : select none

Jumping g then … Read more