Outlook Hacks : Best Outlook 2010 Tips And Tricks

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Microsoft Outlook is one of the best ways to keep in contact with friends and colleagues, and arrange your time. Here's how to make the most of it

Access Google Mail

Google Mail (more commonly known as Gmail) issued extensively by small businesses and Outlook enables you to get all the benefits of both services at the same time. First click 'File', and then look for the 'Account Settings ‘option under the info category. Click the drop-down menu and choose 'Add account’. In the next step, select 'Email account', enter your name, email address and password, and then click ‘Next'. Outlook now does all the work of configuring and connecting to Gmail, and will come back to you when it's complete. Now you just need to click ‘Finish' and wait while Outlook synchronises with your old emails.

Import Gmail Contacts

Open Gmail and select the Contacts view. Click ‘More' and select 'Export'. Under Export Contacts, select 'All contacts', and under Which Export Format, select 'Outlook CSV format'. Click 'Export' to save the list to your computer. Now, in the Outlook File menu, cl ick 'Open', then 'Import'. Select 'Import from another program or file' and click 'next’. Choose 'Comma Separated Values (DOS)' and hit ‘Next'. Browse to the Gmail CSV file and click 'OK'.For the destination file, select the Contacts folder.

Emails Out Of Outlook

If you're using Windows 7, you don't need to be in Outlook or even have it running to create messages, appointments, or meeting requests. They can all be created using Jump Lists. If Outlook isn't running, use the Start menu Jump Lists, but if Outlook is running, use the Jump Liston the Taskbar. Right-click the Outlook button on the Taskbar and click 'New email message', 'New appointment', 'New Meeting', 'New Contact', or ‘New task'. If Outlook isn't running, click 'Start' and move your cursor over 'Microsoft Outlook 2010'.Click on the right arrow next to it, then select the task you want to perform.

Make Things Happen In A Click

Quick Steps enable you to apply multiple actions to email messages at the same time. Select the 'Home' tab, and in the Quick Steps group, click the 'More' arrow. Then select 'Manage Quick Steps’. If you want to build a Quick Step to copy an email to your whole team at work, click the Quick Step Team Email', then click 'Edit’. Under Actions, select 'Forward', and then add team members in the to box. If you click 'Show options', you can also add flags and text. You can add a shortcut such as [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [1) to the Quickstep, then click 'Save'. From now on, when you click on an email and select the Team Email Quick Step, the email is forwarded to everyone.

Add A Signature



Click on 'File > Options', then select the 'Mail' tab and click on 'Signature'. Click 'New', type a name for the signature and click 'OK'. In the Edit Signature box, type the text you want to include at the bottom of your emails. You can format it with the Style and Formatting buttons. To add other elements, click where you want it to be, then click 'Business card ' and select a contact in the 'Filed as' list; or 'Insert hyperlink'; or 'Picture’. Common formats include BMP, GIF, JPG and PNG.
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Best Bit Torrent Clients (Windows 7)

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Bit Torrent

 www. bittorrent.com
Min requirements: Windows XP/ Vista/ 7
File size: 5.9MB
Bit Torrent has its own search engine for finding and downloading torrents, and also offers support for RSS feeds. You can manage the speed of uploads and downloads, either globally or individually.


Tribler

www. tribler.org/trac
 Min requirements: Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X or Linux
File size: 42.6MB
This advanced Bit Torrent tool lets you search for content, see what other people are downloading, browse channels, and stream videos using the on-demand option. Content can be shared with other Tribler users.

BitComet

www. bitcomet.com
Min requirements: Windows XP/ Vista/ 7
File size: 10.4MB
As well as torrents, BitComet can download files via HTTP and FTP. The Channels column gives you links to popular torrent sites, and signing up for a free account will give you extra features and faster downloads
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Firefox adds new RWD tools

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Firefox 15 will introduce new tools for aiding webdesigners working onresponsive sites. The responsivemode places a web page 'within' the browser window, enabling youto manually resize it, snap to specificviewport dimensions, and to rotate the viewport.

According to Mozilla's Chris Heilmann (@codepo8, principal evangelist) and Kevin Dangoor(@dangoor, product manager,developer tools), the mode primarily aims to simplify working on responsive web designs. A pileof devices is inconvenient and expensive, while manually resizing abrowser window can lead to losingspace for developer tools and othercontrols. Fi refox's responsive modefixes both problems, according  to the pair, along with breaking out ofthe conventional  'developer panel' view found in most browsers: "By modularising the developer tools into different panes and allowing the developer to choose what theywant to see, we have more options to extend the classic 'console, element inspector and DOM view' models


The pair also argued tools of this sort are important for reducing the friction involved in creating responsive sites, and they show how browsersare increasingly becoming testing and development platforms: "The ability to see changes live is a very powerful draw. Instant feedback and iteration makes the development process faster and more fun. Making the path from development to final product as short as possible is the job of any good developer tool."



Developers we spoke to were spliton the new mode. ZURB's JonathanSmiley {@smiley) thought it was "nice,but not earth-shattering” and said he was concerned about the disconnect between it and how work will actually be rendered: "You can see how the responsive part will work, but you don't get a true representation ofhow another engine will handle your code". Christian Oliff (@christianoliff) thought otherwise: "Firefox is already my favourite tool for testing websites in various resolutions, and it's useful for testing on myriad Android smart phones and tablet screen sizes".


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Best Responsive Design Articles

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There's a wealth of great articles and tutorials out there for anyone wishing to learn more about responsive design. Here we have chosen some best


Responsive Web Design 

www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design


The article by Ethan Marcotte for A List Apart that started it all. ''Fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries are the three technical ingredients for responsive web design," he writes. "But it also requires a different way of thinking. Rather than quarantining our content into disparate, device-specific experiences, we can use media queries to progressively enhance our work within different viewing contexts."

5 really useful responsive web design patterns 

http://designshack.net/articles/css/5-really-useful-responsive-web-design-patterns/

Some interesting responsive design patterns that are being implemented by talented designers all over the web.

CSS Regions 

Adobe's proposal seeks to enable magazine-style layouts to be created on the web.

Find out more at:

http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-regions/
http://www.broken-links.com/2011/11/07/introducing-css-regions/
http://experiments.hertzen.com/css-regions/

Responsive questions 


http://adactio.com/journal/5351/

A great post qn Je.r. emy Keith's Adactio blog. "We've always had the ability to create fluid layouts,'' writes Keith. "And yet web designers and developers have wilfully ignored that fact, choosing instead to create un-webby fixed-width layouts ... It was never specifically about mobile devices or users in a mobile context; it was always about adapting layout to varying viewport sizes."

The future of CSS layouts

 http://www.netmagazine.com/features/future-css-layouts

Peter Gaston's article for the .net website takes a detailed look at the different options for creating rich, dynamic pages.

Why we shouldn't make separate mobile websites

http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/19/why-we-shouldnt-make-separate-mobile-websites/

 "The reasons many full websites are unusable on mobile devices are because many full websites are unusable on any device.," says Bruce Lawson in this article for Smashing Magazine. In other words, if it's designed well enough in the first place and built correctly then it should seale down gracefully and effectively.

Responsive layouts using CSS Media Queries 


http://kyleschaeffer.com/best-practices/responsive-layouts-using-css-media-queries/

A great blog post from Kyle Schaeffer explaining the basics of responsive web design layouts.

Ethan Marcotte answers your responsive web design questions 

http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/ethan-marcotte-answers-your-responsive-web-design-questions

The guru of responsive web design asks questions posed by readers of .net magazine.

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CSS3 Email

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Email code has always been a bit of a technology backwater, with coding standards that haven't advanced much past 1995 - thanks mostly to the wide array of email clients and their varying support for HTML. There are also several rendering challenges: Microsoft uses the Word rendering engine in Outlook 2010, which knocks out background images and animation, and owing to security concerns JavaScript, Flash and CSS positioning receive almost no support. But with the onset of smart phones and tablets, we're seeing more and more users accessing their email from devices that can support CSS3.

We're not going to get away from table-based design any time soon, but this at least means we can start to use CSS3 to enhance the experience for an increasing number of mobile users, and still provide an adequate fallback for those users still viewing their mail on a desktop. So what options do we have?


  • Text shadow  A nice, easy tweak to help text stand out, this works in many mobile devices - and some desktop clients too.
  • Border-radius Support for border-radius is good, and it's proving useful for making buttons from web-text instead of images. They'll fall back to being square edged in some desktop clients, but we can live with that.
  • CSS animation Lots of the complex stuff that works in conjunction with JavaScript is out, but we can use simple animations such as glows around buttons to enhance the experience on smartphones.
  • CSS gradients Another useful addition to making web-text buttons, gradients are supported on mobile and increasingly in desktop clients.
  • Progressive disclosure Campaign Monitor has done some great experiments with emails that enable you to show and hide content using CSS. Backwards compatibility can be tricky, but it's a good step towards more interaction.


Unfortunately there's no luck bringing web fonts to email yet- they're almost universally stripped out by email clients.

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WordPress Best Practices

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Word Press can be done one of two ways: really well or so terrifyingly badly that you'll fall to your knees screaming 'why?'. But, jokes aside, it's an absolutely astonishing piece of software that enables any level of developer to install, customize and sell.

This isn't always the good thing it's made to sound, since more often than not you'll be given a project that will just cause you issues. But another thing that's great about Word Press is that it has a very thorough, well-thought-out framework powering i t, so re-factoring any install is a simple and very smooth procedure. Most of the work is usually in the theme's functions.php ; I find the best way to keep this file workable and maintainable is to create a folder in the theme directory called lib and make separate files for the different pieces of functionality of your theme.

On top of separating functionality into different files and including in your functions.php the location of different pieces of code such as headers, footers, articles and sections (otherwise you will end up chasing code around your different themes' files), your meta information, style sheet s, favicons and the opening <head> tag should all go in the header. php. The article, aside, section, nav elements. and so on. should go in any of the single.php, post.php and other body template files - and of course your footer elements should go in the footer.php.

You'll also find that not enough internet tutorials utilize the built-in WordPress functions to attain the functionality you're looking for. Most if not all of what you want to do can be achieved by using WordPress's integral functions, and I encourage you to use them as much as humanly possible. They protect you and your shop from security threats, they're optimized  and you'll never have much of an issue learning how to use them after reading the Word Press Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org).
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The best apps for sports fanatics

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Untitled Document

While the big summer of sport has drawn to a close, any sports fanatic will be able to tell you that the fun has only just begun. With new NFL and English Premier League seasons kicking off in August and plenty more to come like the NBA, NHL, international cricket and the rest you don't need a European Cup or Olympics to be enthused about sport. Those who follow all the major competitions would have once had to scour the Internet or satellite television in order to find all the news and results they needed, but now a simple app can do all the leg work for you. Here we've collected together some of the best apps for the gathering and streamlining of sporting headlines. From breakdowns of the latest contests between rival teams to the hottest news about your favourite athletes, these apps deliver you everything you could desire and so much more. But as ever, the question remains, which of these excellent apps has the best balance of facts and functions?

YAHOO! SPORTACULAR(free)

  
Bringing together some of the most popular sports in the world under one banner, the Yahoo! Sports news app is one that we come back to again and again. With dependably regular updates and a solid design, it should fare well in this contest.


CUSTOMISATION

By adding your favorite teams from the MLB, NHL, NFL NCAA, NBA, MLS, and major European football leagues. You can streamline the scores and information, and set up notifications for their games.

RANGE

There's definitely an American focus to this app as all the acronyms would suggest, but this is not an app limited to team sports. Golf, tennis and NASCAR are also represented, with plenty of in depth stats and schedules.

INTERACTIVITY

Before matches begin you can make your predictions as to who will win and compose comments to be shared with others. A map of the US and a globe will show which way ABOVE: Seeing game predictions the majority of opinion is facing, and you can broke down can be insightful compare that to the score later.

PERSONALITY

Sportocular is a pretty dry app that's really beginning to show its age. While it's fairly deep, you don't get the excitement or flair that other apps here manage to capture.

For a few stats and scores it's worth a look, but it lacks in range and features that some newer apps are offering


TEAM STREAM HD (free)
   
With the ability to customize your news feed to follow as many or as few teams across multiple competitions as you wish, Team Stream offers flexibility, it features the up to the minute news and scores that sports fans look for in these apps. 

CUSTOMISATION

Pick your preferred sports and teams to customize the news you want to read about. You can also reorder these feeds to priorities the news, although the homepage features big stories regardless.

RANGE

With teams from all the major North American sports, as well as the English Premier League and the top European football teams, things get off to a good start, but peter out. WWE news is also an option, which is something of a surprise.

INTERACTIVITY

You can choose to share the stories you find via Facebook, Twitter or email, but if it's a Bleacher Report story you can also post comments and get involved in the debate surrounding the top headlines of the day.

PERSONALITY

The Bleacher Report-sourced articles feature excellent images and videos, but you'll also find news from other feeds. In those instances you're just getting the original content, which is a shame.

Team Stream HD has a decent range of content, but it's strongest when sticking to its own newsfeeds

ESPN SCDRECENTER (free)

   
Another stalwart of sporting excellence, ESPN's apps always have grand design, great interfaces and quality content. Throw in some customized feeds and solid stats and you should have the perfect fan-app.

CUSTOMISATION

Put your favorite teams and sports into a custom feed so you can streamline your experience with ESPN. All your teams are collected to gather while your chosen competitions and sports are each given their own panel in the app.

RANGE
From water polo to mixed martial arts the ESPN app offers an excellent range. A good example of this is that the football leagues it covers go well beyond Europe and the US. Most major sports are covered here.

INTERACTIVITY

This is the one area where Score Center falls behind the pack, with no interactive elements in terms of gauging fan opinion. You can set up alerts for the latest sporting headlines, but that's really all you get.

PERSONALITY

Thanks to color-coded sections for each of your favorite sports, strong photography and plenty of video content, this app is great for browsing and makes you feel really welcome. lt brims with joy in what it covers.

Solid content and customization make this a winner every time.

SPORTS REPUBLIC (free)
   

Kind of like Flip board but dedicated to sports, this spin off from the News Republic app is a welcome new addition to the field with some fresh ideas and a fresh design. The fine form also come with good functionality.

CUSTOMIZATION

The tiled homepage of Sports Republic can be filled with subjects chosen by you. Since all the news is brought through from various sources it hunts for tags related to your keywords, to bring you the headlines you want.

RANGE

Since you can add virtually any tag you like to your feed, the range of sports should be very broad indeed, but because Sports Republic is limited to only a few feeds you may not be able to get the sport you want. Live results are also lacking.

INTERACTIVITY

While there are no chatting options for discussing the top stories with like-minded sports fans, you can share your mood on each story. This then becomes another way to search for news.

PERSONALITY

Thanks to its wonderfully animated tile homepage, use of photography and Mood system, Sports Republic is one of the strongest apps in this bunch. it's great fun to browse and delivers news in good time.

                            Wonderfully designed and great for customizing your sports news
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CSS Transitions Browser Support

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CSS transitions has great cross·browser support. Most modern browsers can code just fine, and jQuery makes fallbacks and pollyfills easy to add

While you may be forgiven for thinking that CSS transitions are a new technology, they were introduced way back in 2007 by Safari, originally called CSS animations. Since then most modern browsers carry support. We are going to use Modernizr to feature check the user's browser: 
  1. if(! Modernizr.csstransitions){
  2. Some fall back code here
  3. }
  4. else{
  5. Some code if transitions are supported.
  6. }
We can use the above to add some code if CSS transitions are not supported, or we could use it to load an external JS, dependent on the result, by using modernizr.load. 

What about Internet Explorer? 
The best thing about browsers that don't support transitions is that the CSS hover effect will just change instantly. You lose the animation effect, but there's no loss of site functionality. it's your call as to whether you want to take the time to add fallbacks for non-supportive browsers. If the idea of writing CSS transitions, then adding fallbacks for less supportive browsers appeals to you, try jQuery-Animate-Enhanced (http://playground.benbarnett.net/jquery-animate-enhanced/). This plug-in lets you write jQuery animate() as usual, but will switch to using CSS transitions if the browser supports it. 

it's a great way to get the benefits of CSS transitions on sites where the client demands perfect cross-browser experiences.
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Responsive Workflow

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When working with responsive designs, my old workflow wasn't working any more, so a new one was needed to match my new way of thinking about content, structure and navigation. I needed something more robust to help explain to clients how responsive design would benefit them and their users. Here is what I've come up with so far:

  • I still like to start with rough sketches to work out basic layout ideas. Two great tools that help me organize my thoughts are Sneakpeekit (www.sneakpeekit.com) and the Responsive Design Sketchbook (http://appsketchbook.com/products/responsive-design-sketchbook).
  • For wireframing, I use Wirefy. it enables me to build a solid foundation for the content and get a sense of how users will navigate the site quickly. I'm also able to test out my ideas without any hassle. I compliment my responsive wireframes with Style Tiles (www.styletil.es). Since I'm working within the browser, a strong presentation layout here that I use is the Sparkbox Style Prototype (http://seesparkbox.com/foundry/our_new_responsive_design_deliverable_the_style_prototype).
  • Finally, to design. I've moved away from working in static form, and now mostly use Photoshop to test colour palettes or design specialized icons. Most designs are coded directly into the browser. I use TextMate and Chrome while building and testing styles on top of my wireframes. 


This is the flow I've been able to use when working on client projects. Going through this flow helps me articulate solutions to clients, and get faster sign off with minimal back and forth, but this might not always work best for your way of thinking. Working with a range of tools and testing options will help make you create smarter solutions, because you will discover new methods of thinking.

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Android Beam

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Use NFC technology to send and share files to your contacts

There are plenty of ways you can share files from one Android device to another, but none of them are as quick and easy as Near Field Communication (NFC). Devices running the latest OS update, Ice Cream Sandwich, are fortunate enough to have the capacity to launch Android Beam. This feature automatically configures all your NFC connection settings, and leaves the user only needing to select the file they want to send, and its recipient. Unfortunately for older devices, Android Beam is not available, and the process of using NFC is a little harder to set up and use, if it is supported at all.In this case the best way to access your phone's NFC capability is by downloading the File Expert app. In this tutorial we will show you how to set up Android Beam .
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