Carnival of Journalism: life/work hacks

Ok #jcarn team, I’m back in this month. Life/work hacks, as prompted by this month’s host, Will Sullivan (aka @Journerdism), seemed like too good a topic to pass up.

Sullivan’s prompt for us:

For this installment of the Carnival of Journalism we’re going to go ultra practical:

What are your life hacks, workflows, tips, tools, apps, websites, skills and techniques that allow you to work smarter and more effectively?

I love this topic because it relates to a lot of the work that I do: trying to help my colleagues in the newsroom work more efficiently on the web. This has ranged from little things like tabbed browsing and Firefox extensions, to big things like how to leverage RSS and Google Alerts.

My favorite things (in no particular order):

Evernote. Try planning a wedding without one. I dare you. But seriously, the ability to get my info anywhere I have cell service has been awesome — for work, AAJA and wedding planning. I’m also in a weird bind at work where we can’t add our work email accounts to personal phones, so the Evernote clipper integrated with Outlook inbox has been awesome as well - I can take anything I really need out of my work mail and clip it to Evernote.

Pixlr Grabber extension for Firefox. It’s “Print Screen” on steroids. Ability to clip any portion of a web page is fairly common among many extensions, but I like Pixlr’s options of download to desktop OR copy to clipboard. As someone who  makes a ton of social media handouts for a living, this has been a huge help.

Diigo / Delicious + keyboard shortcut. Delicious worked great for me, and when I upgraded to Firefox 4, initially I couldn’t get the Delicious add-ons to upgrade too. Someone told me that’s since been addressed, but I had already transferred my bookmarks to Diigo and their extension works essentially the same. This is a huge help for showing my colleagues an example of using a new social media tool, so I can call them up by tag (and try searching under multiple tags).

Google Calendar/Outlook Calendar. This is kind of a no brainer to keep work-home-wedding-AAJA-etc calendars synced on PC, Mac and iPhone, but it works. I also keep a paper desk calendar for the occasions when I’m away from my desk or my phone is dead.

Google Docs. This was my number one tool when I was job searching. I uploaded all of my best clips, my resume and my cover letter to Docs, so I had them at my finger tips to print or email to recruiters any time I saw an opening I was interested in. This was a big leap for me after losing one too many thumbdrives that essentially held my lifelines.

CTR-SHF-T aka the best Firefox (I think it also works in Chrome? anyone confirm/deny?) keyboard shortcut I have learned all year. It opens the last tab(s) you closed in the order that you closed them.

2 computer screens. When I shifted into my new job, I immediately asked for two PC screens. When I’m editing the homepage AND trying to keep an eye on our social media accounts this has been absolutely awesome. Or the ability to rearrange stories in our CMS in one screen AND view the site in the other. If you can find a way to get two screens, go for the two screen set up.

Never get lost in a parking garage again. My fiance makes fun of me for this but since I got a smartphone, I take a photo of a landmark or a number near where I park whenever I park in parking garages. It’s usually faster than digging out a pen, trying to keep track of whatever scrap of paper I scribbled it on, and I no longer have to attend conferences with “P-16” or “Orange level 3” on the back of my hand. Maybe you’re pretty good at remembering where you parked your car and think this is kind of lame. To that, all I can say is Lucky You. :)