BECOMING A POWER USER

What is a Power User?

Definition from Techopedia

What Are they NOT? Power User ≠ Computer Programmer Power User ≠ Tech Wizard

Gateway Starts with using keyboard shortcuts Ends with remapping your keyboard

What is Automation? Using some process to let the computer

take care of an action or actions rather than doing them manually

“Social Media Time” – Clock strikes 7:30am Open Feedly Open file tweets.csv Open Facebook Page admin panel Bring up posting checklist Play “Morning Playlist” on iTunes Popup message saying, “Get Posting!”

Why Automation and Power Usership?

Your time is precious

Tedium rots the brain

You feel like a genius

These Things Add Up 1/3 of life is spent

unconscious 4 weeks brushing

teeth In the afterlife,

you’ll relive these things in sequence

How do your cumulatives stack up?

Time Savings

What We’ll Cover Clipboard Managers Text Expanders App Launchers Automator Macro Editors URL Processes

Keep In Mind We’ll use specific examples, but focus on

the utility genre We use examples, but power usership

and automation are personal missions Use AlternativeTo.net to find other apps

Before We Get Started… Buddy up Write down as many tedious, repetitive,

mind numbing, boring, things you have to do (or make your RA do) in your work

No complaint is too small

Hold Onto Your List Make note of when you see a connection

between these tools/processes and your problems

Don’t try and work problems out, just make note and we’ll talk through some of them at the end

Step up your copy pasta

Clipboard Managers

Clipboard Text/Images that you cut or copy are

stored on a “Clipboard” Clipboard Managers give you a history

What For? Copy multiple things from document Get that text you copied ten minutes ago

Apps

MacClipMenu

WindowsDitto

Don’t retype long strings

Text Expanders

Text Expanders Generic term for utilities that watch for a

typed string trigger and then replace it with another string Strings are sequences of characters Trigger/Expansion pairs are called

“Snippets” Doctors use them to write reports

Medical terms are long and complicated ‘chlx’ ➡ ‘Chlorhexidine’ ‘tdap’ ➡ ‘TDaP’

Features to Look For Taxonomy

Should allow you to organize effectively Tags or Groups

Placeholder Tokens Allow for inputs

Keypress Tokens (advanced) Tab, Return, Arrows, etc.

aText Example

Actions from your keyboard

App Launchers

What Are App Launchers? Utility that let’s you search for files,

apps, or the web and perfom actions Mac = Spotlight Windows = Windows Key

Alfred Create custom searchs and use them

instantly No need to go to a site or database to

search it Don’t break your train of thought!

Search Journal Databases JSTOR Google Scholar Nearly Anything

App Launcher Apps

MacAlfred

WindowsListary

Do it all at once

Batch File Operations

Automator Mac’s graphical process builder Chain together actions to get desired

result Pretty user friendly, but also a pain Google “Must have Automator

workflows” to explore its uses and how to build things

Automator Workflows

Happen inside Automator Applications

Saved as a .app file and used in the finder Service

Actions that can be summoned from the service menu or contextual menu (right click)

Folder Actions Apply rules to folders that they’ll automatically

follow

When you’re really into automation

Macro Editors

What Are Macro Editors? Macros are a preset series of actions and

instructions Pairs of Triggers and Actions

What Kinds of Triggers? Hot key Typed string Time Connecting to a network Adding files to a folder

What Kinds of Actions? Move mouse to coordinate and click Access application menu items Write to a file Type text or keystrokes Open or switch applications Set and call variables

My Favorites Chrome — ⌘ + L

Copy URL of current page Everenote —⌘ + K

Activate link editor, paste most recent link, hit return Text — twf

Pastes current clipboard as plain text (non-formatted) Anywhere — researchmode`

Launch Off Campus Access (if off campus) Open research folder Bring up current task overview

Calendar – Switch to Calendar Switch to Week View and center on today

Tips for Growth Start small

Don’t overwhelm yourself with things to remember

Set limited goals for the week Copy others Embrace the reward over the gain

You deserve it

An example of doing boring stuff less boringly

Case Study: Fun With URLs

Link Checking The Need

To check lots (dozens to hundreds) of URLs to see if they’re active

The Bad Way Copy the URL, Go to browser, Paste it in,

Mark result The Better Way

Give a link checker 50 links at a time, mark the bad ones

The Process Repetitive tasks are best left to the

computer URLitor will check multiple links for you

Will even give you the results as a spreadsheet!

Link Opening If you need to actually look at things on

the page Many web tools will do this

Open All URLs Multiple Link Opener URL Opener

Opens any URLs you give it in new tabs

Multiple Similar Searches Need to do searches where only one or

two things change Put the search phrase into a spreadsheet Create formula to generate search URL Paste into URL opener

Query Strings Like with Alfred, searches are just URLs

Google https://www.google.com/search?

q=SEARCH+TERMS+HERE I’m Feeling Lucky

https://www.google.com/search?btnI=&q==SEARCH+TERMS+HERE

Search terms go in Column A Formula for query string in Column B

=CONCATENATE("https://google.com/search?btnI=&q=+",SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","+"))

Finished Product You now have your query strings Go ahead and use one of the URL

openers

Surely you’re sick of listening

Discussion Time

What Looks Useful? Did anything here sound useful? What specifically will you use any of this

for? Did any of this relate to what you wrote

at the beginning? What repetitive tasks do you want

solutions for?

The Conversation Continues Hand in your gripe sheets