eRin Pheil: Share specific online content with your friends and family

Online Tool of the Week: Clipmarks

Clipmarks likens itself to “scissors for the web” because it lets you choose specific content on just about any web page that you’d like to save or share with others.

Perhaps you’re one of the many online users comfortable with bookmarking web pages or saving them to your list of Favorites. If so, it’s likely that, at one point or another, you’ve bookmarked a page only to discover that, upon your return, you couldn’t locate the information you’d been interested in. This is the one weakness of Bookmarks/Favorites — you can only bookmark entire pages.

Clipmarks lets you clip sections of pages and then share them anywhere on the web or by e-mail. The service is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox, it’s entirely free, and signing up takes less than a minute.

Interested? Head over to www.clipmarks.com.

<b>Microsoft Word Tip of the Week: Avoiding Messy Links in Your Documents </b>

If you’ve ever tried copying website addresses into Microsoft Word, you’ve likely experienced a bit of frustration upon finding that the pasted link was a different size, appeared to be a different font style, or ended up in the wrong place.

The secret to keeping your Word documents nice and organized while still including links to web pages or other documents is the keyboard combination of the Ctrl + k.

Go ahead and type a sentence in a new Word document. Next, highlight a few words of the sentence. Now, hit Ctrl + K and a little window pops open. This window allows you to type (or paste) in the address of a website or link to a different document located on your computer. Upon clicking the OK button, the text you highlighted will become a link that matches the rest of your document’s text.

<b>Grab Bag: Five Links of the Week</b>

• www.getnetwise.org — A public service created to “help ensure that Internet users have safe, constructive, and educational or entertaining online experiences.” This site exists to help people make informed decisions about their (and their family’s) use of the Internet.

• www.nationmaster.com — If only a resource like this had been available for public use back when I was writing geography and history reports in high school!

NationMaster.com is a massive data source that allows people to graphically compare nations across the globe. NationMaster compiles data from sources like the CIA Word Factbook, the UN, and the OECD, and users can generate maps and graphs comparing any of this information with ease. Cool.

• www.instantstorm.com — A freeware tool for PCs that allows you to create Flash-based screensavers complete with plenty of bells and whistles. Features include a Wizard mode for beginners, screensaver scaling options, the capability to create Start Menu shortcuts, and the capability to fully customize your screensaver’s “about” box.

• www.wintabber.com — Attention PC power-users! Wintabber is a nifty, free little program for adding tab support to just about any window on your PC. Multi-tab just about any window in seconds.

• www.stikipad.com — The layperson’s definition of Stikipad: “a blank piece of paper where you decide its use.” A techno-geek’s definition of Stikipad: “a hosted wiki provider that lets you collaborate online.” Make a task list, plan an event, keep all of your team on the same page, book a trip, track document updates, and more … Plans start at $5/month.

And that’s it for today, everyone. Have a great week, and see ya next Monday.

<i>Based in Frisco, eRin pheiL is the primary creative force behind timeforcake. Learn more about her Colorado website design company at www.timeforcake.com or contact her via e-mail at info@timeforcake.com.</i>