Most of you should be familiar with Google’s Street View. It allows you to see pictures of the street you are viewing on a Google Maps map. That can be very handy when you are wanting to know about the landmarks you should be looking for when you are driving to somewhere you have never been before.

But if you are wanting to have some fun with Google Street View, you can use MapCrunch to “teleport” or jump to a random place in the world.

MapCrunch allows you to easily explore the vast array of imagery captured by Google in …

I am going to assume you have a recent complete back-up of all your computer hard drives. You do – don’t you?

Here is another important question: Do you have a Startup Repair disc?

Of course you do! But if you don’t, please take a few minutes to create one. It could be a lifesaver if your hard drive crashes. A Startup Repair disc can be used to start your computer in situations where your computer won’t boot-up due to corruption or damage on the hard drive.

Creating a Startup Repair disc is simple and fast. Put a blank writable …

Do you have a burning desire to catch a sunrise or sunset? Google can help. If you type “sunrise” or “sunset” followed by the name a city (don’t type the quotes), Google will give you the time of the next sunrise or sunset in that city and how many hours and minutes until it arrives.

What will Google think of next?…

On a complex PowerPoint slide, you will often can have several objects (e.g. clipart, pictures, textboxes) carefully placed so they appear just where you want them. They could be next to each other, overlapping, partially overlapping etc.

If you want to change the location of several objects, moving them one at a time is a pain because it takes multiple moves to move them individually and all your careful spacing is lost and will have to be set-up again as you move each item.

Next time you need to move multiple objects on a PowerPoint slide, remember this handy trick …

You can change line spacing in Word by clicking on Format, selecting Paragraph, clicking on the Indents and spacing tab, and adjusting the spacing settings. Whew! That’s a lot of work. There is a better way.

Changing the line spacing in a Word document is very easy if you remember a few keyboard shortcuts:

• Pressing Ctrl+5 changes to 1.5 line spacing
• Pressing Ctrl+2 changes to double line spacing
• Pressing Ctrl+1 will give you single line spacing

If you are using Word for Mac, substitute the Command key for the Ctrl key.

Remember these keyboard shortcuts next time you need to …

Renaming a file in Windows Explorer is very easy: Just select the file with a single click and press F2. This allows you to edit the file name. When you are done, click Enter to finish.

But what happens if you want to rename multiple files? Yes you can press F2 multiple times, but there is a better way!

When you need to rename multiple files, press F2 and edit the name of the first file as you normally would. But, don’t press Enter when you are done. Instead, press Tab. This will jump you to the next file in …

At some point or another, every computer user has had Windows or another program lock-up and crash. After this happens, you will sometimes be lucky enough to get an error message. On occasion, that error message will actually give you helpful information about why the computer crashed.

But all too often, the error message will be complete gibberish and offer absolutely nothing that will help you understand why the crash happened, much less what you need to do to fix it. Here is a sample:

Say what????

Next time this happens to you, don’t despair. You can safely assume loads …

When you need to collaborate on a document displayed on your screen, it’s great to have a colleague from down the hall come into your office and look over your shoulder.

But what happens when that person is across the city or on the other side of the world?

You can use join.me – a ridiculously simple screen sharing tool for meetings on the fly with up to 250 people. Use it for collaborating on a document, a training session, computer trouble-shooting and anything else that requires you to share a computer screen. You can also share files and chat …

At one time or another, most of you will have plugged your smartphone or cell phone into computer to charge it. And on occasion, many of you may have charged a camera, GPS or other device on your computer. Using a computer or laptop for charging these devices is especially helpful in a pinch – most often when you forgot your charger at home and have a dead device.

I’m also sure that those of you that own an iPad or other larger tablet will have tried to charge it on your computer only to be frustrated by the “Not …

You may have noticed that the pictures on your digital camera or smartphone are always stored in a folder named DCIM. Ever wondered why? Here is the answer:

At some point in the distant past, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) created a standard defining where and how digital images would be stored on digital media used in cameras. This standard gives direction to camera manufacturers on the directory structure, file naming method, character set, file format, and metadata format for the storage of digital images on media used in cameras.

Having such a standard means that …