Social Fixer (formerly Better Facebook)

Social Fixer (socialfixer.com), formerly called Better Facebook, is exactly that: a way to streamline Facebook to take out the annoying features, and tweak the ones you want to keep, to create a better Facebook experience.

It's free, and will automatically discover what browser you are using and provides the appropriate add-in.  Once added, it will take you through a Wizard to show you to use the most commonly used features of Social Fixer.  A small icon will then appear in the upper right corner to give you access to all the tools available in Social Fixer.

You should definitely click the icon to see all the options allowed (the screenshot below is just one of fourteen tabs of options).  The Wizard will take you through the most basic options, but clicking the icon and seeing all the options available is really where Social Fixer begins to shine.  You can change the width of the display (or go full width of your browser window), add and remove features in the side columns, force the most recent stories to display first (as opposed to Facebook deciding what you want to see), get rid of sponsored posts, change color themes, even write your own CSS for your Facebook page.

Because of the sheer number of available options, it takes some tweaking to get things just right, turning off some features after you've tried them, turning some features back on.  But after getting a sense of how Social Fixer works, you can customize Facebook to make it a much more useful and enjoyable experience.

The New Prezi

Prezi is a free, browser-based, online presentation tool that allows you to build presentations that are a refreshing change from the tired familiarity of PowerPoint.  It allows you to break away from the march-step of bullet points that PowerPoint forces you into, and offers a non-linear and visually exciting way to present information.

The interface has changed rather drastically since last year. The zebra and bubble tool are gone (I personally loved working with the zebra), and replaced with more traditional menu choices at the top of the screen (upper left), as well as clearly labeled editing options when an object is selected (lower left).

The result is still the same, and old Prezis can be edited with the new tools.  It is still a excellent alternative to  PowerPoint.   Below I've embedded a presentation that gives you an idea of what a Prezi presentation looks like, as well as some tips on how to create an effective presentation (best viewed full-screen, use your left and right arrow keys to navigate).

There will be a Connect session on how to work with the new Prezi interface early next year.

Free Photoshop Express App

The desktop version of Photoshop is a pretty pricey program, so it is surprising that the Photoshop Express app is free (there is a $9.99 version as well, Photoshop Touch, which is more robust).  Admittedly, the online message boards are alight with dissatisfied users who preferred the previous version of Photoshop Express, but personally I found it easy and fun to use, with an intuitive interface and useful, if limited, set of tools. It is available for both Apple and Android devices, and both tablet and phone.

There are more tools available on the tablet version (screenshot at right) than there are the phone version (screenshot at left).  Both allow you to do basic cropping/rotating/straightening and color correction.  Both have a variety of special effects and borders from which to choose.  Available (and free!) at the iTunes Store and Google Play.

Quickoffice App is Free!

If, like me, you've already paid $19.99 for Quickoffice Pro, you might not be too happy to hear this, but now Google is offering Quickoffice for free.  You need to have a Google account to use it, and since it works in concert with Google Drive (formerly Google Docs), you will need that free app as well. You can get it in the iTunes store or at Google Play.

Quickoffice allows you to view, edit and create Microsoft Office documents created in Word, Powerpoint and Excel on your tablet or phone.   It is designed to work seamlessly with Google Drive, automatically saving and retrieving documents from there.  Unlike the old paid version, you cannot easily retrieve documents from other cloud services, such as Dropbox.  This is the only real drawback to the new version.

The good news: the new version makes it much easier to create documents from scratch, which was an annoying problem in the old version (my personal opinion).  The old version is not fully compatible with iOS7 (the latest Apple OS), and will not be supported after March, 2014.

For the next two years, Google is giving you 10gb of storage for free, as an incentive to using it.  And it's free!  So, if you are a current user of Quickoffice Pro, or looking for an app to create and view MS Office documents on, I'd recommend Quickoffice. 

Evernote Clearly

Evernote Clearly (http://evernote.com/clearly/) is an add-in for Chrome, Firefox and Opera that allows you to strip away the menus, ads and other extraneous content and only keep text and pictures.  The goal is to allow you to send a stripped down version of the page to Evernote for storage (I have a previously posted about Evernote, an app I become more enthusiastic about as I add content to it).

And while that alone makes Clearly a very useful tool, what makes it even more useful is that you don't even need to use it in the context of Evernote, but can simply use it to strip away all the distractions and advertisements and only focus on content.

Here's a random example.  Before...

 

And after...

 To launch Clearly, click the lamp icon (see screenshot at left) in the upper right of your browser (the elephant icon is used to send the webpage directly to Evernote).  In addition to the icon, there is a slide out menu (see screenshot at right) that allows you to highlight, print, change text size, and send to Evernote. Clearly is an excellent companion to an already remarkably useful tool.
 


      

Tabs for Microsoft Office

If you use tabbed browsing while working online to shift quickly between webpages, it can be frustrating to work in Microsoft Office products and have to open one document at a time, and use the taskbar or Alt+Tab to move between documents.


ExtendOffice (http://www.extendoffice.com/download/office-tab.html) is a free add-in for Microsoft Office that adds tab functions to Word, PowerPoint and Excel (the paid version also adds them to Publisher, Access and Visio).  This allows you to move quickly between documents, particularly useful if you are comparing documents or copy-and-pasting sections of content from one document to the other.  The screenshot at the upper right shows the tabs of two presentations pulled up in PowerPoint 2010, so the two presentations can be accessed more quickly, simply by clicking the tab.

The tabs are very customizable, and different settings can be used for different Microsoft programs (tab options for Word are shown at left).  It is compatible with Office 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013.

Connect Schedule, Fall 2013

A new series of Connect sessions begins in September.  The two topics we'll be focusing on are Basic Dreamweaver Skills and the iPad App of the Month!  Dreamweaver sessions will be the first Wednesday of every month, iPad sessions will be on the third Wednesday of every month. All sessions will be from 9-10 a.m. and last about an hour. Instructions for participating in the sessions will be emailed out at the beginning of the week each session takes place.

• Sept 4 – Defining and downloading sites, adding basic content in Dreamweaver
• Sept 18 – Presentations Using iPad
• Oct 2 – Optimizing images for the web
• Oct 16 – Evernote for iPad
• Nov 6 – Online Polling and Survey options for your website
• Nov 20 – Office apps for iPad
• Dec 4 – Using named anchors on your site
• Dec 18 – iFilmaker and Action Movie for iPad

Any questions?  Email me at jeffrey.wood@colostate.edu.