Tips and Tricks-December 2005

Once in awhile you run across a product or service that sounds great at first blush, but when you step back a bit, you scratch your head and try to figure out if you’re missing something. I recently ran across an article that talked about a new screen saver from MSN. The product included RSS feeds, the ability to use your own photos, and the mail in your Hotmail account. It’s a beta from MSN available at http:/ /screensaver.msn.com. It is easy to install and easy to set up a folder of your own pictures for display.

The more interesting functions are having the MSN toolbar and RSS feeds on the screen. It comes with several built in feeds. You can also add your own feeds to the list. The toolbar sits at the bottom and gives you the weather, access to your Messenger conversations and the MSN search engine.

This all sounds pretty good until you realize that the only time all this information is available is when you haven’t used your computer for some period of time, often because you have gone away to do something else. I guess you can use it when you come back to find your photos, your RSS feeds and more. I might be missing the point, but somehow this doesn’t seem too useful.

On to something useful! It’s the holiday season. Time to create holiday cards, place cards for the Thanksgiving table, and labels for those batches of cookies and candy you make to give to your friends. What will help you create these quickly and easily—if you use Microsoft Office? Templates and clip art. If you go to http:// office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx you will find an assortment of templates.

When I visited the site, the featured items were labels for olive oil and food gifts. There are cards for every occasion from Cinco de Mayo to St. Patrick’s Day in either Word or Publisher format. The cards and labels include information about the labels or cards on which they should be printed. There are other templates for other purposes.

If you are in business, there are many resources, from Excel spreadsheets to Microsoft Project templates. Everything from calendars to tips to improve productivity. Explore and you will find something that suits your purposes.

The other treasure trove at Microsoft is the clip art and media collection. The collection includes everything from photos to cartoons to music files. In addition to all the downloadable files there are tips and instructions to do a number of tasks. One example is instructions for creating flash cards. There is too much to describe. Sit down and spend some time exploring what’s available. It beats waiting around to see what pops up on your screen saver.

PC Community, P.O. Box 3127, Hayward, CA 94540-3127
Copyright 2005

Banner Photo by Charles Scamahorn