Linkable and One Note | Travel Research Online

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Linkable and One Note

Anybody who knows me, knows two things about me: One – I love to make simple technology work to run a paperless office; and two – I am a packrat even in the electronic environment (don’t get me started on what my garage looks like!). I have discovered a couple of new, or new to me, programs and tricks that I have had a lot of fun playing with.

Linkable – www.linkable.com

I have often commented that I would wither up and die if I lost my list of Favorite Bookmarks that I have been amassing for years – to me they are my salesman’s Rolodex. I’m so paranoid that it is one of the reasons I finally subscribed to Carbonite Online Backup. However, all those bookmarks makes it very difficult to navigate to frequently used ones, and my recent computer upgrade nicely re-alphabetized everything and completely wiped out all the rearranging I had done to make them easier to find. I have tried separate folders and desktop shortcuts, but recently stumbled upon a brand new online site that I really love called Linkable.

Linkable is a website that simply gives you an online page to store all of your favorite bookmarks and the ability to separate them by categories to make them easier to find. Since it is online, it is up to date and accessible to you from any computer – whether in a cruise ship internet cafe, using a portable netbook or even a smartphone. The best part about it is that is Free! You sign up and the username you chose becomes your URL (www.linkable.com/mmouse) so you can make it easy to remember. You can have a publically visible page of links or you can move them to a password protected one. The site is only a couple of months old so bear with them if there are any kinks to work out.

Windows 7 Snipping Tool

This one little function was worth the price of the computer and Windows upgrade to me. Simply put, you hit the Windows Key and S – and the screen grays out. You then drag a box around the area of the screen you would like to “snip” and it saves it as a .png file. Want to upload a special you received in an email from a supplier to Facebook? It’s always been a bit of a struggle. Not anymore! Simply drag the box around the portion you want to have show up as a picture and capture it. Upload it to Facebook the same way you would a .jpeg – include it in a Note or Status update and you’re done. I also just used this on a suppliers website that had beautiful pictures of their resort that I wanted to capture for a presentation to a client – but they had disabled the “right click – save picture as”. Not to be outsmarted, I was able to grab each photo as a png snip to use in my PowerPoint presentation.

Microsoft OneNote

Susan Schaefer recently wrote an excellent article about OneNote and I have to agree. As I said, I run as close to a paperless office as humanly possible – but when you’re researching a trip for someone, you can’t get away from taking notes on what you are finding. So now that you’ve all mastered how to use OneNote – I’ll share my two favorite functions.

– Web Research – With OneNote, the next time you are browsing a webpage – say for resort amenity information – and find information you want to remember, highlight the text, right click and copy the pertinent information. Go to OneNote and simply paste it onto the client page – not only will the text move, it will automatically notate the URL so you can easily get back to it.

– Windows Snipping Tool – Have you ever done an airline search and tried to take notes of all the available flights and times and stop-overs, or looked up a resort with all their various room categories, only to have the client ask you about something you saw but didn’t write down? Now you can do the search and take a “snip” of the whole section and save it on their page. What used to take forever and cause me to have to decipher my own handwriting – now takes 30 seconds!

Technology is moving at such a rapid pace  it’s very hard to keep up with it all. Even the programs I thought I knew I have discovered have been updated and now work the way I wanted them to when I abandoned them for greener pastures. Don’t try to learn it all in one day – just grab one thing that you think might simplify your life or office and run with it. Once you have that one down – try the next one!

 

Barbara Oliver CTA, MCC is the owner of All Together Now Travel based in Valencia, CA and specializes in Family and Family Reunion/Group Travel. Our tag line “A Journey Shared…is a Memory Forever” voices our commitment to strengthen family relationships, one adventure at a time. She can be reached at (661)255-9656 or boliver@alltogethernowtravel.com

  One thought on “Linkable and One Note

  1. John Frenaye says:

    For those not into the Windows 7 new computer upgrade thing….I use an add on for Firefox called “Screen Grab”.

    I right click to bring up a context menu, select “Screen Grab” and then am given the choice to either COPY or SAVE and then a SELECTION, VISIBLE AREA, COMPLETE PAGE, WINDOW

    It works great for me, but I find it hard to remember that I just can;t name the file to save, I have to put the extension in there jpg, png, gif, etc.

    But it is a freebie and works well.

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