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Tech Geek

Advice and new 'finds' in the tech world for those doing Youth and Family Ministry. Read about what's the latest and get your questions answered!

The 2011 Little Red Book

Andy Arnold - Monday, June 21, 2010
The Electronic Version of the Little Red Book (LRB) is back and updated for 2011. You don’t remember what the LRB is? Hang out with some older pastors and I’m sure you’ll see one slip this shirt pocket sized device out of their shirt pocket. Some use it as datebooks, some use it to track mileage, some just use it to find the lectionary texts for a particular day, but there was a day when just about every pastor used it. Now, for the second year, it’s gone electronic and been improved.

Last October I wrote a post (www.elcaymnet.org/_blog/Tech_Geek/post/The_Little_Red_Book/) about the first, or at least the first I knew of, electronic version of the LRB. After some tweeting back and forth with Beth Lewis, CEO of Augsburg Fortress and a great communicator to have at your synod assembly, I shared how to use the LRB in Google Calendar. This year there is a new page devoted to the LRB (www.augsburgfortress.org/redbook) and there are a few more options available, including ordering a good old-fashioned paper copy!

You can download your own electronic copy of the LRB into Palm Desktop, Outlook, iPhone, or iCal. Last year I showed you how to import the calendar into Google. You could still follow those instructions, but I realized there was an easier way as well. I asked Beth, and she worked it out with their Augsburg Fortress Technology Team, to link to a Google version of the calendar as well. If you use Google Calendar (or iCal, I believe), you can add this calendar into your own by clicking the plus sign at the bottom of the calendar. If you go to it now, it’s blank, because the LRB 2011 doesn’t have any events until the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2010. Yep, right after Thanksgiving!

By linking to this calendar as a separate calendar in my Google Calendar (and by extension my iPod Touch calendar) I can turn on or off all of the dates at once and keep them from cluttering up the rest of my calendar. I would assume iCal and Outlook users could do something similar. Maybe one of you who use one of those systems can post how that works in comments.
 
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Facebook Privacy

Andy Arnold - Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Many of us in youth and family ministry have been drawn into Facebook since it opened to the public, or at least anyone with an e-mail address, in September of 2006. Prior to that you could only join if you were a high school or college student. Now it seems that just about everyone, even my wife who held out until March, has a Facebook account. It’s almost a necessity in order to communicate with high school and college students today, family members, and even those that you went to high school or college with a few, or many, years ago. But there are those privacy concerns...

I looked at the Wikipedia article for Facebook to check out the date that the service was opened to the public and got drawn into the story of its founding by Mark Zuckerberg. Given that much of the recent news about Facebook involves the privacy settings of the site, it’s interesting that the first iteration of the site actually hacked into the accounts of others to give them a public page!

Facebook has been in hot water before for things that they chose to make public that people had not given explicit permission to publicize. One example I remember was a concern about sharing purchase information that could let others know what gifts you were getting them! Because Facebook is always changing their privacy settings, it is a good idea to check into how you have things set every now and again.

I understand that there are new privacy settings being rolled out - here’s a New York Times article detailing those - but I don’t have those yet, so this applies to the current version of Facebook. The new settings will likely be similar, so maybe the instructions will still be valid!

Go to www.facebook.com/privacy and sign in to your account. Each of the items in the list controls a realm of settings. Click on Personal Information and Posts and adjust the settings to your liking. Make sure you’re not sharing anything with Everyone that you don’t wish to. When you’re done, be sure and click the Back to Privacy Settings link to save your settings. Clicking on the Edit Settings link by Photo Albums will take you to a new screen and not save your settings!

Once you’ve set that category, start going down the list and setting the other categories. One area I was glad to change the setting in was on the Applications and Websites page, under the Ignore Application Invites setting. If you have friends who are constantly inviting you to play certain games, add their names to this list and you will no longer see those invites.

After you get all the way through that list, be sure and visit www.facebook.com/editapps.php and check the applications that you have given access to. Click the Show: dropdown and select Authorized to see all the applications that you’ve authorized to allow access to your account. You can then click the X to remove them if you’re not using them anymore or click the Profile link to learn more about what a certain application does or the Edit Settings link to edit the settings! Some applications are part of the core Facebook site and cannot be removed. I removed about a dozen applications that I haven’t used in ages and don’t need access to my information anymore.

Get in the habit of reviewing these settings every so often and cleaning out the applications you’re no longer using. Remember that anything you post to Facebook, or anything that someone else tags you in, is part of who you are online. Your youth group members, family, and potential new calls could all use it to form their impression of who you are, for better, and for worse. Especially if you have all the sharing settings set to Everyone!

One other setting in Facebook that I only discovered recently was that you can turn off chat. Expand the Facebook Chat window and then click on Options. Select Go Offline and you won’t have to worry anymore about old high school friends interrupting your game of Bejeweled Blitz!
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TinyChat

Andy Arnold - Monday, May 17, 2010
As a child I remember seeing TV shows like the Jetsons showing video-chat happening on a regular basis. There have been efforts over the years to make video-chat more and more popular, but most of these efforts require setting up a program or signing up for yet another online account. I use Skype and Google Talk with the video-chat plugin regularly, but not everyone has accounts with these services, and Google Talk doesn’t support video-chat with more than one person at a time. Skype is supposed to add multi-party conference video-chat service soon, but I haven’t had the opportunity to try it out.

I stumbled across a new service this week that doesn’t make you create a new account, although you can create one if you’d like. TinyChat.com lets any machine with Adobe Flash 10 support (sorry Erik - see last week’s post) video-chat with up to 12 people at one time. You can login with your Facebook or Twitter account, using Open Authentication support, so you don’t have to give TinyChat your password.

The thing that I liked the best about TinyChat when I tried it out was that it didn’t require any heavy lifting. I signed into Twitter, authorized TinyChat to have access to my account, and the room was created. I was given an easy-to-remember URL (tinychat.com/twitter/adnyla) and the option of having that automagically posted to my Twitter feed. I clicked Start Broadcasting and gave permission for Flash to use my webcam and microphone. You can require people to sign in with their Twitter or Facebook accounts to join the room, or you can allow unauthenticated guests.
You can moderate your chatrooms and do all the things you might find necessary, like ban people or make them moderators. You can use video, just voice, or just text. You can also share part of your desktop, open a whiteboard, share a YouTube video, or open a shared documents folder. I haven’t had the chance to test out all of these additional features.

If you decide to create a TinyChat account, you can gain a few more room customization options and a slightly shorter link - tinychat.com/adnyla. I went ahead and did this for testing purposes, but I’m more fond of the Twitter based chatrooms.
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A Third Geek's Thoughts on the iPad

Andy Arnold - Monday, May 10, 2010


A couple of weeks ago Justin and I shared our opinions of the new Apple iPad. I had contacted Justin because I thought he might have a completely different opinion than mine. It turns out that we were basically on the same page (or is that tablet screen) when it came to the device. What may have shown up after you read it was a comment from Erik Mathre, a photographer that I’ve met running around at CSLYOPs and the ELCA Youth Gathering. So, with Erik’s permission, sent while he was lounging in a hotel room and surfing on his iPad, here are his impressions.
My impression of the iPad (so far) is simply "WOW!" With each passing day, I find more things to love about this magical device.
I have to admit -- before the January announcement -- when all the rampant rumors were about an Apple tablet -- I simply couldn't care less. It was a 'tweener' product as far as I was concerned. Something that would have to fall between the iPod/iPhone and a MacBook. I have them all so I didn't care and I couldn't imagine that I would even consider one. Then came the announcement and I knew right away I had to have it. The morning it was available for pre-order, I ordered two. (I had already talked a family member into getting one of these rather than a MacBook).
To help understand a little more about some of the capabilities of the iPad, I would like to share a little story of divine intervention. My big screen HDTV broke just before Ash Wednesday and that seemed like a good time to decide to give up TV for Lent. And since the iPad arrived the day before Easter, I still haven't worried about fixing the TV. The iPad has become my media delivery device. It's awesome to be able to stream movies through Netflix, watch and listen to baseball games through the MLB app, and watch current episodes of TV series on the ABC app. I just heard that CBS will be following suit this fall with an app of their own.
Gaming is also incredible with size of the iPad screen. I’m a flight simulator fan so the X-Plane app is one of my favorites. The combination of the size of the device, large screen, and tilt controls makes it an ideal device for so many genres of games.
A couple of apps that I picked up for reading documents include Readdle and Good Reader. Both of these apps let me load and read most any kind of document -- PDF, Word, Excel, text, etc. But one of the amazing things is just how easy it is to move documents onto and off the iPad for these apps. You see, the app runs a file server so you mount the iPad as a disk wirelessly and then you can drag and drop files to the iPad. This makes the iPad a sort of wireless form of thumb drive. I mention this because of a unique way I used it this past weekend. I downloaded all the PDF reports, candidate bios and word documents for our Synod Assembly. I loaded them on the iPad and my parents, as delegates for the assembly, used the iPad for all that "paperwork" rather than lugging around the huge three ring binder that everyone else had. That, along with things like calendars, notepads, and many other apps, it proved to be an invaluable tool for just such an event.
I know that the second generation iPad is probably not too far off. But even if it came as early as this fall with the release of version 4.0 of the OS, I have no regrets. Speaking of OS 4.0, I am a bit disappointed that Apple will not be releasing the iPad version at the same time as the iPhone. Personally, I think the iPad will benefit from 4.0 more than the iPhone.
I did want to comment on a couple of points Andy and Justin made in their article. First is the issue of the "walled garden" for iDevice apps. Personally, I have no problem with Apple's approach here. It has been an incredible opportunity for the small developer and it really levels the playing field. Every developer has the same access to the user base with little or no money spent on advertising and marketing and in turn, the price of apps is incredibly low. There are so many great apps that never would have made it to market if Apple didn't set it up this way.
There have been those that don't like that Apple doesn't approve every app -- but that's actually a good thing. There are app stores for other devices that allow anything and everything. As it turns out, there were trojan horse apps and other apps that did bad things or opened security holes the day those stores opened. This was one of the reasons that Apple took a year to open the App store after releasing the first iPhone. They wanted to come up with a system that protects the user and I feel that, although the system isn't perfect, it has been doing a pretty good job.
The second comment is about "Flash". I wish to offer a different perspective. I started this response to Andy and Justin’s article prior to the famous “Thoughts on Flash” article by Steve Jobs. I agree with just about every one of his points. (Okay, so maybe I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy.) First, some history. Do you remember floppy disks? Sony officially stopped producing them last month. What about USB? How many USB devices do you use? Well, those are two technologies that were deeply affected by the introduction of the Apple iMac soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple. When Steve announced that he was releasing a personal computer without a floppy disk drive, the industry said it wouldn't work. Also, he only put USB ports and ethernet on those iMacs. People thought that there had to be a SCSI for hard drives, serial ports for modems, keyboards and mice, and parallel ports for printers. Steve saw that those technologies were dying and he was right. USB would probably never have got off the ground had he included those other types of connections on the iMac. As soon as the iMac hit the streets, manufacturers saw an instant market of people that HAD to have USB devices and the industry finally took notice. He was ahead of his time. I think the same thing is happening here with Flash. Steve sees that Flash isn't needed anymore. It's a technology that programs to the least common denominator and as there are more devices that it works for, it tries to be a jack of all trades but a master of none. Flash has been something people have hated for a long time because of it’s tendency to crash and take up CPU for no apparent reason. Adobe has been slow to address these issues so I think Steve Jobs is right to simply draw that line in the sand. Just like with the iMac and USB issue, people are seeing that they have to adapt if they want to keep up. Video sites that want to stay around are converting the HTML5 which is an open standard (unlike Flash).
Just my 2 cents.
Erik is Vice President of Mathre Communications, a computer services business. He volunteers in Youth Ministry at Lutheran Church of the Cross and Day School. He also does does some photography under the name EventPixels.com, that specializes in youth events. Recently he was one of the official photographers of the ELCA Natonal Youth Gathering in New Orleans. His email address is erik at mathre dot com.


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E-Cycling

Andy Arnold - Monday, April 26, 2010
I like gadgets. Due to a low WAF, I don’t get to have as many new ones as I might like, but I do get to upgrade once in awhile. I also take stuff from other people that has no value to them, but might have some value to me. Then it ends up in the closets, all over the computer table, and in the garage, taking up too much space. But what should I do with it, even once I am convinced that it’s not that likely to be useful in the future?

In honor of last week being Earth Week, I want to lift up one of the easiest recycling options that I have found. It worked great for me when I had to get rid of our deceased 25-inch television, which we had replaced with a very pretty HDTV! I got my exercise by getting the TV from the shed in my backyard all the way to the driveway to load it into my SUV. I drove a couple of miles to Best Buy and grabbed a cart, then I wheeled it into the customer service desk at the store. They charged me $10 to take the TV, but immediately gave me a $10 gift card to the store, so the net cost was nothing. Well, at least if you’re likely to spend money at Best Buy occasionally, like I am. Best Buy’s program has saved over 60 million pounds of consumer electronics from the landfills of our nation.

There may be other programs in your neck of the woods, and I encourage you to use them. I am excited by big retailers getting into the recycling (or E-cycling) game because those are the programs that will be used by the most people and be the easiest to us. Radio Shack’s Trade and Save program will pay you to recycle MP3 Players, Phones, Cameras, Camcorders, GPS Devices, Car Audio, Laptops, Game Media, Game Consoles, HDTVs, Monitors, Desktops, Car Amplifiers, Radar Detectors, Digital SLR, Keyboards, and Mice! They promise free shipping as well. I believe that many Radio Shack locations will also recycle used batteries including standard sizes, laptop, and cell-phone batteries.

Another way to cut down on the electronic waste that you generate is not to buy the physical media in the first place. I just completed my upgrade to Quicken 2010. As many of you probably know, Intuit forces you to upgrade Quicken every three years by removing online support for versions older than three years. I’m not overly fond of that, but I’ll adjust. What I did appreciate was that this year I could download the newest version of Quicken and not need to waste a box and a CD that I would use once to load on to my computer and never bother with again. If I do need to re-load the software, I can visit my account at quicken.com and download it again. No CD, no retail packaging, no shipping! No discount either, but that’s life.

Happy stewardship of the earth!

Is there anyone out there that would be willing to write a Tech Geek post on mini-HD cameras like the Flip Mino HD and on how you’ve used or will be using them in your youth ministry?
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Thoughts from Two Tech Geeks about the Apple iPad

Andy Arnold - Monday, April 19, 2010
I was watching one of the many technology video podcasts that get downloaded each day to my TiVo and they were talking about the, at that time, upcoming iPad from Apple. My wife walked into the room, glanced at the television for a moment or two, and said, "You're not getting one." Ouch! Apparently, the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) for this device is quite low. Actually, while they look incredibly cool, I'm not all that convinced I even want an iPad right now! I decided to call upon Justin Snider, our ELCA Youth Ministry Network friend for all things Apple, and ask him to join me in thinking through the pros and cons of the iPad.

There are many places you can find the technical specifics about the iPad, such as Apple's website, so I'm not going to rehash those here. Suffice it to say, it's a blazingly fast, beautiful to look at, touch-screen computer. Or you could think of it as a really big iPhone/iPod Touch or a setup roughly the size of gluing 4 of them together on a piece of cardboard! It features the same touch screen technology and ease of use that have made the iPhone and iPod Touch so popular. The first models to be released only connect via wi-fi (like the iPod Touch) and later models will have wi-fi and 3G connectivity, via the AT&T network.

What's great about the iPad is that it's a really big iPod Touch. What's not great about the iPad is that it's only a really big iPod Touch. It does not include a camera for video chatting. It does have a microphone, but it's really too big to hold up against your face and make a call! The rest of the buttons and features are pretty similar to the iPod Touch, with a really big screen. The speed of the device is quite snappy because Apple is making the hardware and software, and it is not running a desktop operating system, but rather a proven mobile graphical user interface.

Because the iPad is built upon these previous devices, it has access to over 185,000 apps right out of the box with thousands of those designed especially for the larger iPad screen. In addition, Apple has developed iPad iWork apps that allow you to work on presentations, documents, and spreadsheets right on the iPad. If you're doing a lot of typing, you may want to get either an iPad Keyboard Dock or use any bluetooth compatible keyboard with the iPad. Although the iPad doesn't come with a camera, tom Merritt has found a couple of ways to use an iPhone as a camera for an iPad.

The iPad is an excellent e-reader, supporting the formats and bookstores of Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble eReader, Stanza, Marvel Comics, and other common formats like PDF as well as, of course, Apple's new iBook format. It is the one device that will pull together electronic books from a variety of sources and let you read them wherever you are. It's comfortable to hold onto on the couch and the screen-lock feature even lets you read on your side in bed! But the screen is not electronic paper and may cause eye-strain after awhile. The battery life is claimed as ten hours, but many reviewers have said they're getting as much as twelve hours before it's totally drained, which is a nice change of pace from the usual practice of over-estimating battery life.

One significant knock against the iPad is that it is a walled garden device. The only applications you can run on it are the ones that Apple approves and sells through the iTunes store. It may be possible to jailbreak an iPad so that you can run unlicensed applications, but this isn't a process for the feint of heart. There are other devices which run versions of Windows or Android that are, or will be, more open to a wider range of software. One major missing application if Flash. Websites that use Flash for video or game content won't work on an iPad. There will just be a blank square where Farmville is supposed to be!

The iPad uses wi-fi to connect. That, along with going through iTunes, is about the only way of getting data on or off the device. There are no USB ports or card readers built into the iPad, though Apple is selling a $29 Camera Connection Kit that will allow you to connect a camera via USB or SD Card. To get your movies, applications, or anything else onto or off of the device, you have to hook it up with a cable to your computer with iTunes or pull them over wi-fi. Coming later this month will be a version that uses AT&T's 3G network as well as wi-fi, but still no physical media support out of the box.

Then there is also the fact that Apple has a history of releasing second generation products that build very well upon the first version of a product. There are lots of rumors about what the iPad Second Generation will have and how it may be better than the current one. The iPad may end up being a case where the early adopters feel slighted by what the next device has that theirs doesn't. One of those things is a webcamera. Most netbooks let you videochat, but you won't be able to do that on an iPad, at least not without some iPhone magic.

The two of us both love the look and feel of the iPad and, if someone offered, either one of us would love to have one. But we're also recommending that folks proceed with caution if they're thinking about getting one for themselves. Make sure you're happy with what it does and doesn't do before plopping down your cash!

And, for the record, both of us watch Brian Cooley talk about $75,000 cars all the time and we're not all that interested in those either!

Finally, here's a link to a comparison of the iPad and the iPod Touch.

Andy hasn’t gotten to play with one yet, but Justin has! One of my church members pre-ordered one, and brought it to church this last Sunday, and let me play with it for a bit. It is truly a gorgeous device, that is really snappy to use. I currently own an iPhone 3GS, and see many of the same great qualities in the iPad, but with way more screen real estate. My wife actually has been eyeing one simply as a couch device for email, web-surfing, and Facebook, I would love to see what Apple improves in the second generation model, then we may jump at the chance to get one!
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LG Text Ed

Andy Arnold - Monday, April 12, 2010
I like when people and companies that are part of a problem are also willing to be part of the solution. So I was glad to hear recently of an effort by LG Electronics, the world's third largest mobile phone handset maker, to help adults understand text messaging. Last summer I wrote an article for Lutheran Partners entitled Tech and Youth: Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves. In researching that article, I discovered the prevalence of sexting, as well as how, in one case at least, the consequences can be deadly.

LG Electronics has recently unveiled a new site called LG Text Ed, available at www.LGTextEd.com. On it they hope to help parents understand the language of text messaging and also the potential dangers of sexting and other threatening messages. The homeroom of the site links to a ton of good resources, more than I have had time to read or even skim, including Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), a Library of information, and Facts about phone use. LG has brought together an "advisory council of leading child behavior and health experts who examine important issues related to tweens, teens, and mobile phone use."

Related to that site is another LG site called DTXTR, or de-texter. This site allows you to enter a text messaging term and have it decoded into English! LGDTXTR.com also has links to texting tips, a glossary of commonly (and un-commonly) used terms, and a quiz to see if you're up to snuff on the shorthand codes that teens are using. I only got 5 of 10 right on the quiz!

I'm going to pass these sites along to my parents and continue browse it to educate myself. Texting is the most efficient way I've found to communicate with the people in my youth groups and I have talked to many parents who are discovering that it works well for them and their children. As with any technology, parents need to understand what their children are doing and anything we can do to educate them will certainly help.

(Another resource I haven't explored too much is SextingIsStupid.com )
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Youth Group Study Resources

Andy Arnold - Monday, March 22, 2010
I would guess that many of us face the weekly issue of what to do with our youth group. Some weeks are easy to plan because we are gearing up for an event or a fundraiser or a trip and will use our Wednesday Night, or Sunday Night, or whenever, time to work on preparing for that. Other weeks we are well prepared and have something ready to go days ahead of time. Some of you probably are better at keeping things in nice organized files than I am. And there are weeks that I, and I'm guessing some of you, find ourselves scrambling for something with only a few hours, or minutes, to get it ready.

Two of the websites that I find myself going to pretty frequently are our own ELCA Faith Lens site at http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/ and the Youth Culture Lessons archive at http://www.youthworker.com/youth-lessons-bible-study/youth-lessons/archive/

These aren't zero-prep, but they are a good springboard to conversation about a relevant topic. Faith Lens follows the lectionary and ties into current events. My High School Sunday School class is using that right now and, because you don't have to worry about how far the last person got in the curriculum, it works well to rotate different adult teachers through each week.

The YCL are not written from a Lutheran perspective, so there are times they need a little tweaking, but they do tend to raise some interesting cultural issues that many of our young people are probably dealing with.

What about you? Do you have sites that you use for starting conversations? Please share in the comments field.

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Advanced Mac Shortcuts

Andy Arnold - Monday, March 15, 2010
Last week Pastor Andy did a great job giving some basic but helpful keyboard shortcuts.  This week I have decided to help our Mac using audience with some ways to make your Mac experience quicker, easier, and may even open up some creativity in your publications.

General Shortcuts
Quit: Command-Q
Minimize all Windows (Within a Program): Option-Command-M
Spotlight Search: To open up spotlight to search your computer, the dictionary, or recently viewed webpages, click Command-Space.  Once in the list, Command-Click opens the containing folder in Finder.
Find in a Program: Command-F opens the find function within programs like Safari and Word Processing programs.
Eject: To quickly eject a USB flash drive click on the flash drive in finder and click Command-E.  Or if you know the name of your flash drive type the first letter, then Command-E (I would press j-Command-E, because my flash drive is named Justin's).
Trash an Item: Command-Delete
Empty the Trash: Command-Shift-Delete when in finder.
Force Quit: Option-Command-Esc
Adjust the Volume without Making a Sound: Hold Option (or Shift on some Macs) with adjusting the volume with the Volume keys.  Or you could turn off volume feedback all together in the System Preferences Sound pane.
Save: Command-S
Save As: Shift-Command-S
Screen Shot: Shift-Command-3  (Pic will appear on desktop)
Partial Screen Shot (You Select Area): Shift-Command-4 then select the area you want to copy.  (Pic will appear on desktop)
Dictionary: Hover over a word and hold down Control-Command-D and you will get a dictionary pop-up on that word.

Publication Shortcuts (Work especially well in iWork)
Select Without a Mouse: In text, push Shift-Left/Right/Up/Down Arrows to select the exact text you want without the mouse.
Duplicate: When making postcards or other publications that involve lots of copy & pasting, you can click and hold down the Option key, drag, and you will get an exact duplicate of the item.
Free Rotate: If you want an object to rotate just the angle that looks best to you, Command-click a corner then free rotate away.
Show Colors Menu: Shift-Command-C
Show Inspector Menu: Option-Command-I
Show Fonts Menu: Command-T
Add New Row to a Table: Option-Down Arrow
Add New Column to a Table: Option-Left/Right Arrow
Paste & Match Style: Often I am copying text from BibleGateway.com in to a Keynote Presentation but want to keep the formatting in Keynote, so Shift-Option-Command-V does the trick (or by right clicking in the document and selecting from the menu).

Other Shortcuts
Save a YouTube Video: Note: you must have Safari, and the Perian extension installed (found at perian.org)  If you would like to use a YouTube video offline, open Safari and the YouTube video, open the Window menu, then select Activity.  In this menu you will see a list of all your open, or recently open webpages.  Scroll to the YouTube section, and find the biggest (maybe currently increasing) webpage (usually has "videoplay" in the URL).  Double click that URL, and it will download into your download folder for use in Keynote, or whatever that will play Quicktime or flash video files.
WiFi Details: in Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6), hold down Option with clicking the Wifi icon in the menu, and you will see what wifi network you are connected to, the speed (a,b,g, or n), and the type of security the router is using.
Zoom a Webpage: Sometimes items on a webpage just need to be bigger or smaller.  Command-Shift-+ or - will do the trick.

Trackpad Shortcuts
Note: You can enable or disable any of these features in System Preferences: Trackpad
MacBooks with the Physical Button
Scrolling: Two Fingers Up/Down/Sideways scrolls webpages, documents, any window you are pointed at.
Right Click: Tap two fingers on the trackpad to call up the right click menu.  Control-Click also works for this.
Zooming: Pinch to zoom in and out.
Newer MacBooks with the integrated glass trackpad/button (All above gestures also work with this MacBook)
Three Finger Swiping: In programs like iPhoto and iCal, a three finger swipe left or right will advance the pictures (iPhoto) or dates (iCal).
Four Finger Gestures: Left or Right: Opens the Application Switcher (Then you may choose one.) Up: Shows the Desktop  Down: Shows All Open Applications (Then you may choose one)

Make Your Own Keyboard Shortcut in Any Application!
In Pages I often Merge Cells in my tables, but involves two menus or a right click option to do it.  So I made my own keyboard shortcut to do it much more quickly.  First remember the Menu Title you want to create a short cut for, and make sure this command is not be used already (Like I wouldn't use Command-M because that is the command for minimizing the window).  Then go into System Preferences, Keyboard, then Keyboard Shortcuts.  In the middle of the menu, you will find a + button.  Click the + and assign what application or all applications this shortcut this will apply to (I clicked Other, then Pages).  Next type in the exact menu title as it appears in the application (I did Merge Cells).  In the final field type your command and click add (I did Control-Option-M).  Exit out of the Preference menus and try it out!

Hope these shortcuts speed up your productivity and creativity!

Justin Snider
AIM & Director of Youth & Young Adult Ministry
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
Olympia, WA
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Keyboard Shortcuts

Andy Arnold - Monday, March 08, 2010
Recently I was helping my Office Manager with a project that she was working on. We needed to move some information around between different windows and she was using the mouse and menu items at every step. As a keyboard user, this was about driving me nuts! So I thought maybe reviewing a few common keyboard shortcuts that I take for granted might save some of you a few moments in your day.

The most common keyboard shortcut that I use repeatedly throughout the day is [ALT-TAB]. To get this shortcut, press and hold the ALT key and then tap on the TAB key. On a Mac, this is achieved by pressing [COMMAND-TAB] in the same way. This will cycle through the open program windows that you have on your system. Depending on the specific version of Windows that you have it will show a small icon or live mini-screen indicating what programs you have open. This is much faster than reaching over for the mouse and clicking the program in the task-bar at the bottom of the screen.

Related to the above command is [CTRL-TAB] on PC or [COMMAND-~] (~ is the tilde, at the top left of your keyboard) on a Mac which will cycle through multiple windows in the same application. For example, I use it to go between tabs in Firefox, my Internet browser. Some applications open multiple instances, so you need to use [ALT-TAB] to cycle between windows.

The next set of keys that I use on a very regular basis are the ones for cutting, copying, and pasting text or other items. I'm going to talk about text, but you can use these same keys to operate on files, pictures, or other objects. First, you have to highlight the text or item, often by using the mouse. You can also highlight text by pressing SHIFT and either one of the arrow keys or the HOME or END keys to go to the beginning or end of a line.

Once you've gotten the text highlighted, you can use [CTRL-X] or [COMMAND-X] to cut the text. Cutting removes it from its current place and places it on the clipboard. Pressing [CTRL-C] or [COMMAND-C] places a copy of the highlighted text on the clipboard and also leaves it in its original location. Then you move the cursor to the new location by using the arrow keys or mouse and press [CTRL-V] or [COMMAND-V] to paste the text there. You can also copy text in one window or application, use [ALT-TAB] or [COMMAND-TAB] to get to another application, and then paste the text there. Sometimes the formatting gets all funky, so I'll open up Notepad and paste the text into Notepad to remove the formatting.

Sometimes you're working on a document and you paste something into it in the wrong location. Or you just type the wrong thing. This is where my favorite keyboard shortcut comes in, [CTRL-Z] or [COMMAND-Z], the undo key. It would really be nice to have an undo key in other parts of life sometimes! This will undo the last action that you did. Some programs even support multiple undos, up to ten or even more of the last actions you performed can be undone.

Then, if you undo something that you find you really liked after all, you can redo it by pressing [CTRL-Y] or [SHIFT-COMMAND-Z] and it will be back where it was before you undid it!

When you're done working and want to close windows and applications there are some keyboard shortcuts for that as well. To close the current window that you're working in, press [CTRL-W] or [COMMAND-W] and it will be gone. It may pop up a window asking if you want to save your work. If you've closed all the windows and the application is still running, press [ALT-F4] or [COMMAND-Q] to shut down the application.

The one Windows only shortcut that I find myself using often is [WINDOWSKEY-E] which pops up a new Windows Explorer window so I can find a file.

What are your favorite keyboard shortcuts that you couldn't imagine living without? Leave a note in the comments below!
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