Google Desktop – find your own files

Peaceful FernsHave you ever lost a file on your own computer? Or have you even forgotten that you wrote something in the past that would be useful for a current project?   Try Google Desktop.  It’s an amazing tool that you use to “google” your own computer. 

Go to Google and download the latest version of Google Desktop. It will take just a few minutes to download it to your computer and run the install process. Then you will have to reboot your computer.   After that, the Google Desktop will take several hours to index all the files on your computer. It will create an index of the words in your Word documents, Emails, Excel sheets, Powerpoint Presentations, PDF files, HTML pages and other data files.  This indexing process will go on whenever your computer is idle. After the initial index setup you won’t notice that this is happening.

The latest Google Desktop has several options – you can choose to have a sidebar with various “widgets” to display things like the weather, special links, photos, maps, news and a wide variety of other things to select from. You can choose to have a small deskbar that lets you search your computer from the taskbar at the bottom of your browser, or have a larger floating deskbar.   There are also short cuts such as hitting CTRL key 2 times to bring up a quick text search box which is handy when you are using other applications.  A small search box also will appear on your OUTLOOK that searched your emails much faster than the Outlook search function.

 I have found Google Desktop to be a real time saver.  I have used it on both IE 6 and IE 7 on a PC notebook.

An effective website – some key points

Caliornia PoppiesUsing your website successfully and effectively to achieve your organization objectives involves several key points:

  • Your website must have a professional, credible look that is appropriate to the needs of your target audiences. The content must be updated regularly, and the website should be easy to navigate.
  • You must bring visitors to your website – and encourage them to return often. This can be with a variety of methods ranging from having your website URL on all of your printed materials, announcing the website at your events and in interviews, registering the website with search engines, and using email signatures and an email newsletter or announcements.
  • Add tracking statistics and strong “Call to Action” links on your website so that you can see what is happening on the website and evaluate if the website is helping you achieve your objectives.

Click on this link to download a guide to evaluating your current website.

Guide to Evaluating your Website