Shortcuts and searches in Google Wave

I've been playing around with Google Wave ever since I received my invite from a Romanian blogger almost two weeks ago. Generally it made a positive impression on me, but more on that later. Right now, let's see how you can improve the Wave experience with some neat keyboard tricks.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Although only a preview product, Google Wave has some nice keyboard shortcuts that can really help speed up things:

• > Use Space/Shift+Space to navigate to the next/previous unread message in a wave. If you're at the last unread message, hitting Space moves the focus to the next unread wave in your inbox, something I find confusing and annoying.
• > You can also navigate through the messages in a wave, regardless of their read-status, with the Up/Down arrows and with Tab/Shift+Tab. Like Space, it marks messages as read, but it doesn't jump to other waves when it reaches the last message.
• > With Enter you can reply to a message. If you select some text before hitting Enter, Wave inserts a comment at the cursor position. Combining Enter with Shift places the reply at the bottom of the wave, below all other messages.
• > Shift+Enter also exits editing mode when you have finished writing your reply, like hitting "Done".
• > If you want to go back to editing, you can use Ctrl+E.

I find these shortcuts related to replying and editing the most useful; with the mouse you need to click three times for these actions: twice to bring up the floating menu and another one to select one of them. Not to mention how easy it is to click 'reply' instead of 'edit' or vice-versa!

Google Docs improves sharing and interface

Two days ago in the late evening I was writing on my previous article in Google Docs. When I closed the document, a brand new interface popped up with a message about a long awaited feature, sharing an entire folder. Probably less than 20 minutes passed since I opened the doc from the old interface until the new one was rolled out. Now that’s what I call a seamless software update!

Probably a lot of people will be excited about this new feature, that was previewed on the Google Operating System blog more than a month ago. I never really used sharing to it’s full potential, and I don’t expect that to change with this release.

Learn more about lenses from Canon

I've been a little behind with my articles in Google Reader lately, passing the 1000+ unread items limit all too often. But to prove it's worth checking every subscription for updates, here's what I discovered with some 3 weeks delay from TOP: an official guide from Canon to it's EF lens line!

The book, suggestively subtitled "The Eyes of EOS", can be ordered online from B&H Photo Video, but is also available as a free download in PDF format from Canon's European Support page (in several languages too!).

Insert multiple blank rows between existing rows in Excel

Microsoft’s Excel is an indispensable tool for the work place, thanks to it's multitude of features, and will no doubt remain so at least for the near future. I also use it on a regular basis and generally consider myself an advanced user. Even so, given it’s complexity, it never hurts to find out new tricks to speed up your workflow or to change it altogether.

One of my sources of information is the Microsoft Office blog at TechRepublic. One of their recent articles detailed a workaround for adding several blank rows between rows already filled with data at once, without repeating the right-click-Insert routine for each new row. While the idea is ingenious, it’s by far not the easiest way to do this in Excel.

Shortcuts to friends' shared items

Sharing articles was a built-in option in Google Reader for as long as I remember, and I've been using the app since the summer of 2006. It started to evolve and become more social about a year ago, but the feature didn't became very popular until the acquisition by Facebook brought a big cloud of incertitude over the future of FriendFeed. It also helped that Google Reader eased the access to the shared items by giving them an easily readable address, that can also be added to Google Profiles.

Brizzly – a better Twitter

Dozens or perhaps hundreds of Twitter clients populate the Internet these days and more of them launch every week. Although brizzly is still an invite-only beta product, it stands out in this crowd with the best combination of features and user interface I have seen so far. I discovered it through Google Reader, where Louis Gray mentioned it in one of his articles and offered 150 invites for this new webapp. I used one of the invites and it impressed me so much, it became my twitter client of choice ever since.

Taichi Yamada - Străini

Eu sunt un mare admirator al scriitorilor japonezi, așa că atunci când am descoperit într-o librărie din Vatra Dornei (poate singura) romanul “Străini” de Taichi Yamada n-am stat mult pe gânduri dacă să-l cumpăr, deși nu auzisem până atunci de acest autor. Și pot să spun fără îndoială că n-am regretat alegerea!

Personajul principal este Hideo Harada, ca și autorul romanului un scenarist de aproape 50 de ani din Tokyo. În urma divorțului și-a pierdut casa și acum locuiește într-un banal bloc de birouri care-i este în același timp și loc de muncă. Clădirea se golește cu regularitate seara, lăsând în urmă holuri pustii, străbătute doar de zgomotele neîntrerupte ale traficului. De altfel peisajul urban e foarte familiar pentru un bucureștean, cu căldura sufocantă, praful și gazele de eșapament, traficul greoi și lucrările ce modifică înfățișarea orașului de la an la an.

Singura prezență umană în timpul nopții e o vecină mai tânără de la etajul 3, Kei, care își oferă un pic prea insistent compania într-o seară singuratică pentru amândoi. Deși la început o refuză brutal, sub impulsul furiei față de fosta soție, cei doi devin din ce în ce mai apropiați de-a lungul romanului. În ciuda relației lor intime, Kei refuză să se dezbrace complet în fața bărbatului, complexul ei mărturisit fiind o cicatrice urâtă de-a latul pieptului.