It’s hard for me to believe, but Friday TechTips is now one year old. It began with an email tip highlighting the sync abilities of Microsoft’s Foldershare (which has since been re-branded Windows Live Sync). Since then we’ve covered photo management, IM and video conferencing, and other online “cloud-based” services to name a few. Before today’s tip, I’d like to give you an opportunity to provide feedback about the topics you’ve found helpful (or not) and topics you would like to see covered in the future. Please take just a minute or two to complete this short survey. My goal is to tailor each post to be informative, helpful, and fun!
Take the survey! – Friday TechTip Anniversary Survey
Finished? Then proceed to go, collect $200 and advance to today’s tip! Do you often need to quickly get group consensus over a project or decision and find it cumbersome to make duplicate phone calls or bounce emails between multiple recipients where there’s always one participant who forgets to hit “Reply to All?” If so, here’s your solution: TinyChat! You’re probably familiar with the URL shortening service TinyURL, which lets you convert long URLS to much shorter and manageable versions. TinyChat let’s you build on-the-fly private chat rooms and provides you with a short URL which you can email or instant message to everyone you need to bring together and get input from. Once invitees click the link, they’re immediately brought into the chat room (all done in the browser) where they can enter their name and report in. This will let all members see each other’s responses and ideas in real time and allow for immediate feedback. Are you wondering what happens when you’re done chatting? So was I. Here’s their official policy:
“After you leave the chat room, all the chat data is gone, so its perfect for secure chats.”
TinyChat also offers the ability to save the chat log before closing out in case you need to document everyone’s thoughts. You also have the option of inserting the chat window into a webpage for quick interaction with multiple users. If you’re interested in TinyChat and would like to test it out, feel free to create a room and send me the link!
Bonus Tip!
Are you still using one of the default Windows or Mac wallpaper images? If so, it’s time to try something new! InterfaceLIFT is my personal wallpaper site of choice. All the images come from professional or amateur photographers and many of the images are simply stunning. All standard monitor resolutions are available for each image, so you’ll be able to enjoy the full image no matter what setting you use. They also provide dual-monitor wallpapers allowing the full image to “stretch” across both of monitors providing a panoramic view. Who knows, you might find yourself inspired and more creative with an updated desktop!