Everyone today uses technology more than ever since the beginning of time, whether you are creating a document, browsing the web, etc. We use gadgets and technology in many ways today, various devices, various platforms. In this post, I am going to jot down some easy but incredibility useful technology tips that would benefit you for whole your life (you can thank me later ;-) ). These tips are not about anything in specific but mostly are general technology skills.

Capture text from online images

Countless times I see an image with some text on it and sometimes it’s quite lengthy, and I want the text in that very image in text form. You have perhaps also faced similar situation. Capturing text from an image can be quite simple actually, just install the Project Naptha extension in Google Chrome. This extension brings you a seamless and intuitive experience, where you can highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit (also erase) and translate the text formerly trapped within any image. Note that this extension is only available for Google Chrome (at the time of writing). I find this extension extremely useful and hope the same for you.

Delete a word at a time

Sometimes while editing a document, I have to delete a word and have to repeatedly press backspace key to do so, I find this a little annoying (yes I could also use Delete key but placing the cursor at the starting of the word is equally annoying), you can even call me lazy for this  :-D . You can easily delete whole word(s) by hitting Ctrl + backspace. It deletes whole words instead of single characters and also stops at most punctuation.

Fix an ‘ALL CAPS’ document

How many times you have received a document that was meant to be in standard format but is all capital instead? Even I and perhaps you too have written a document and suddenly you realize that this whole thing is in capital, or should have been in capital. This is quite frustrating actually, but don’t worry. You can easily fix it. Just select the whole thing and press Shift+F3 and that’s it! Pressing it would make the whole document uppercase, lowercase, or standard format (Lowercase and First letter after a punctuation is Uppercase). This trick can save you a whole lot of time and energy. This works on Microsoft Office and Libra Office, and may also work on other apps but I haven’t tried it on any other.

Find direct download links using Google

Wanted to download a file but couldn’t find it? Try using a Google search in the below format to find  your file. Most probably you will find your file using this method. Perform a Google search as below:

“YOUR SEARCH TERM HERE” -inurl:(htm|html|php|pls|txt) intitle:index.of “last modified” (filetype|filetype|filetype)

In this search, replace “YOUR SEARCH TERM HERE” with your search term and “filetype” with the type of file it is, you can also include more than one file types. Just change the file format like “(mp3|wma|aac|flac)” to your required format and you will get a search result of sites containing direct download links to your search query. Like if you want to find a video named “xyz”, you may want to search:
xyz -inurl:(htm|html|php|pls|txt) intitle:index.of “last modified” (mkv|mp4|avi|flv)

Open PowerPoint presentations as slideshow directly

If you want to open a PowerPoint presentation as a slideshow directly, just use the extension .pps/.ppsx instead of .ppt/.pptx when saving your PowerPoint Presentations. You can also change the extension after creating it. This will open the presentation directly as a slide show. Saves time and looks very professional 8-) .

Plug in a USB device in one shot!

Yep! That’s right, in one go. Struggling to plug a USB device correctly can literally make me smash it with all my force  :evil: . Now that I know this trick, I win that battle every damn time. There is a mark on all the USB cables used to plug in the laptop/desktop. Keep that mark facing towards yourself.

• If the plug is in horizontal plane keep it up.
• If it is in vertical plane keep this mark towards yourself. (If the CPU is on the right hand side. away from you if the CPU is on the left hand side.)

Know if a TV remote (or any other) is working

Many times, people cannot tell if the remote has gone bad or it’s something with the TV (or whatever the remote is of). The light emitted from IR emitter (bulb like thing in remote) installed in your TV’s, AC’s, RC helicopter’s, or any other thing’s remote(s). When a button is pressed, it emits light which is generally not visible. Now if you watch it with any digital camera, even that of mobile, you can actually see the light emitting whenever a button is pressed. So, next time if your remote is not working, you can watch the IR emitter through any digital camera and know whether there is some problem with the remote and can even know if it’s battery is low (light of less intensity will be emitted).

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That’s not all, I will cover gadget/platform specific tips in a post sometime near future too. Hope these tips would make your life a little simpler.
Have any such tips to share or some doubts to clear? Shoot them in the comments section below!