Save time with the Windows Quick Launch ToolBar

You are probably already using the Windows Quick Launch Toolbar. It’s very useful and probably looks something like this (I’m on Windows XP but similar in Vista – if you are running Windows 7 search on Google for “Quick Launch Windows 7″ to see how to install):

It’s already there when Windows XP/Vista is installed however you might not know how to add new programs to it. I have a wide monitor which allows me to have a BIG Quick Launch Bar and it saves a lot of time:

This short video shows you how I add a couple of things to my Quick Launch Toolbar… firstly a program and secondly a shortcut. I use it a lot, for programs and even in some cases for documents I use regularly. It’s also a handy way to get back to your Desktop when you have lots of Windows open… just click on this Show Desktop Icon:

(XP)  or  (Vista)

Note: this video was done to show how to add Breeze’s iConference program and the associated Internet Explorer ‘Enter Room’ URL to the Quick Launch Toolbar, however the technique applies to any program or document you want to add.

Any questions? Just drop me an Email to richard [at] interimcareersolutions.com.

How fast is your broadband?

I’ve had big problems with my broadband speed. We live in a village – Skelton-on-Ure – about two and a half miles from our nearest BT exchange, Boroughbridge. Hardly ‘in the sticks.’ We have 2 BT lines into our property, one to the house and one to the home office. Both lines have broadband and the office one gets up to 2Mbps on a good day, however the house line struggles to get 512Kbps – a quarter of the speed and about as slow as broadband can get.

So, broadband speed is clearly not just down to how far you are away from the exchange. I checked with BT and it’s apparently also down to the quality of the BT line… we have one good one and one bad one. And not a lot we can do as there are few spare lines in the village.

If you have a broadband speed problem I have found a very good free tool to see what speeds – both download and upload – you are getting. I’ve put the broadband speed checker on our new HarrogateLocal.com website: www.harrogatelocal.com/pages/broadband-speed-checker.html.

Click here or the above image

Our Residual Magic Newsletter has moved

One of our key aims is to help interim managers, management consultants – indeed anyone in between assignments, in between jobs, or wanting a career change – promote themselves on the Internet and set up additional income streams.

Richard Wall’s Residual Magic newsletter has useful tips and links to help you. From August 2009 we have moved the newsletter from our Wall to Wall Potential Ltd. company website walltowall.biz to this interim career solutions site. We hope you find it helpful.

Here are the contents of the August 2009 issue:

  o Welcome

  o Quotes of the month

  o Are you making the most of the Internet?

  o Oprius Contact Management Software – free 30 day trial

  o Video of the month – Five Rights by Brian Tracy

  o Guest article – The Lamest Success Secret Ever… by Mike Dillard

  o Technical nuggets

  o Book of the month: Residual Magic by Richard Wall

If you are looking for more work – either as an interim manager, management consultant or someone looking for another job - the 5 page ‘Are you making the most of the Internet’ PDF document will show you how Breeze can help you promote yourself or an existing business or start something completely new on the Net.

You should find a nugget or two this month – even if it is just you are experiencing slow broadband / ADSL connection speeds the free broadband speed checker tool will help… or if you are looking for a contact management, autoresponder system there’s an excellent free trial, or if you are just anxiously looking for a way to make money on the Internet and don’t know where to start there’s a link to my updated Residual Magic eBook. If you are actively looking for another income stream there’s an excellent 2 minute video from Brian Tracy about what to look for.

Millions of people are struggling with the economic downturn. For you and me these are very exciting times if we are prepared to learn new skills and jump aboard the Internet bandwagon… it’s only just begun and there is opportunity everywhere.

Click here to see the August 2009 issue of the Residual Magic newsletter and don’t hesitate to phone or Email me if you need any advice.

Richard Wall – Interim Career Solutions. North Yorkshire, UK.

How to do a MS Word Mail Merge to Email

If you want to promote yourself online – either as an Interim Manager, Management Consultant or maybe as someone in between jobs and wanting to add another income stream while you are waiting – one of the golden rules is you need to build an Email list. That means getting autoresponder and list management software like aweber, getresponse.com or the excellent new Oprius system (free Oprius 30 day trial here). It means getting people to opt-in i.e. give permission for you to send them information.

However in many cases that can be over the top – what if you just want to send out a personalized Email to your friends, family or contacts without them having to ‘opt-in’ to a list?Maybe you want to tell all your contacts you have changed Email address and you want to put ‘Dear Fred, Dear Sue…’ to make it personal? Or maybe you want to send out personalized party invitations. Or maybe you are wanting to send your CV to a number of Interim Management Agencies or Recruitment Consultants.

Well, if you use Microsoft Office (or at least Microsoft Word) you can do a Word Mail Merge, linking up to your names and Email addresses in Microsoft Excel and outputting individual personal Emails to Microsoft Outlook. This short video by Richard Wall shows you step by step what to do:

Interim Career Solutions will be producing many more Technical Nugget short videos like this to help you be more productive with your computer… stay tuned!

I have been using a free program called Shortkeys for a few years now. If you do a lot of computer work you will find this so useful. To explain what it does, here is the description from their website:

ShortKeys is a macro utility allowing you to setup replacement text or paragraphs for any given number of user defined keystrokes. ShortKeys monitors the keyboard activity on a global nature and anytime a user defined keystroke combination is typed in, it will be replaced with the replacement text.

An example: how many times do you type your email address out? All I do now is type rrrr and as if by magic richard [at] walltowall.biz is typed in. [By the way ever wonder why people put on websites [at] in an Email address? It’s to stop automated robots harvesting Email addresses from your website… useful tip!]

That’s just a small example… I use ShortKeys a lot in Emails – many of which are ‘standardised’ – I only need to personalise by ‘topping and tailing’ with the recipient’s name and maybe a few other details. When I want to pull in the standard part I just type a few keystrokes and ShortKeys does the rest. It saves a lot of time and is a lot quicker than copying and pasting from somewhere else. Here’s a screenshot:

Not only does ShortKeys make things quicker but it also guarantees consistency – many times in the past I have mistyped an Email address, url etc. Not now.

Download the free lite version here:  www.shortkeys.com.