Do you use Microsoft Word? Have you ever tried this? Ok .. try this out once..

But at first lemme share a tiny shortcut to open MS Word. Go to Run and type winword and click Ok/hit enter. Well thats the way I start my MS Word app. Open a new Word document and type = rand (200,99) and hit enter. What did you get? Yup .. if you are using Office 2003 you will get this ..

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

repeated in 200 paragraphs, with each paragraph saying it 99 times. Since the sentence covers each and every character of the English alphabet, its presumably a built in macro to test out fonts for generating sample texts.

But surprisingly, if you use MS Office 2007, you wont get that result. Instead you will get a nice paragraph that starts with ..

On the insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document.

which is a kind of manual of exciting new features of Word 2007! An uninterrupted effort by Microsoft to popularize their product I guess .

BTW, lemme share one more MS Word trick with you ..

How to change a selected text to all caps, small caps in MS Word?

Well herez the trick for you: Select the text you want to change and press SHIFT + F3 key. Press again. And again .. Enjoy!

Route tracking/sharing was bit of a problem when I was a teenager. But things are changing fast, really fast. We now have online route tracking apps which we may use to share routes with friends, relatives. When Google maps was first launched we used to have fun tracking the (in)famous Pentagon building, Red Square, or the Taj Mahal. But now you may use it as a route tracker!

At Sanoodi you start creating a new route on the Google map with the help of markers and save it. Calculate the distance (in miles) in respect of landscapes. Apart from Sanoodi, you may also do that at RouteSlip or Gmap-Pedometer. But at Sanoodi you may share your route/activity with others. Who knows .. you may find a friend of yours doing a similar activity same place, same time! A pretty nice and innovative Web2.0ish attempt to build the worlds first online route-tracking community!

At Sanoodi, you may upload .gpx track outputs from GPS devices, map directly onto Google maps and share it. This is really helpful for runners/cyclists/bikers. It has also integrated Flickr photos with Google maps. So if someone creates a route that goes past the Howrah Bridge, images related to Howrah bridge will be displayed in the map making things a bit more realistic and fun. Nice integration of Google and Yahoo aaps!

For years, webmasters have been spending hours to search for their favorite domain name. Nothing wrong if someone spends days and nights to search for apt domain names. But the most painful step in this whole episode is the search method. You enter a domain name, click on the search button, and wait for the availability status of that domain. And yup .. in most cases you find that the domain is already taken which is much more frustrating, irritating!

But with the introduction of AJAX based domain lookup tools, life gets bit more easier. At Ajaxwhois and InstantDomainRegister type out a domain name and get instant results! (No need to press the search button.) Ajaxwhois even has two handy Firefox extensions which enables you to integrate the domain and whois lookup search facilities into your Firefox searchbox.

PsychicWhois (beta) is WAY ahead of the former two. It is very similar to Google suggest. Once you start typing, it provides you suggestions or possible domain names thus reducing your exertion to a great extent and increasing the probability of finding a suitable domain in less time. Hence the name ‘Psychic’ I guess! As a part of their marketing strategy, they have also released widgets for websites/blogs. Browser compatibility may be a BIG issue. For more, read the note at the bottom of their page.

Microsoft’s virtual desktop manager has been an effective Windows XP desktop manager for quite a while now. But Yod’m may be an effective replacement to it.

Just like MSVDM (the Microsoft version), Yod’m lets you create three additional desktops. But when switching desktops in Yod’m, you get a nice rotating 3D cube which makes it bit more impressive.

Another interesting feature of it is its ability to show the the exact number of windows in the taskbar in a particular desktop. In MSVDM we get to see a fixed taskbar. In both cases though you may change the wallpapers of the four desktops.

Yod’m is a freeware which even doesn’t need installation. Simply download, unzipp and start using it!

Download Yod’m: Link  Download MSVDM: Link  Via: Download Squad

UPS, the world leader in logistics, have recently launched a cool online flash based whiteboard which lets you send a ‘hand written’ message/greeting to your friend. You create a whiteboard, leave a message and send a mail to your friend to view the message.

The whole concept is very similar to sending egreetings or ecards. But why say its a ‘hand written message’? Well .. to make things interesting they have created a fictitious character called Mr. Brown, representing UPS. Once your friend visits the UPS whiteboard, Mr. Brown says .. “Hey there .. your friend wanna give you this message” and starts writing the message on an online whiteboard!

BTW UPS is celebrating its 100th year of service and this is a part of their unique whiteboard advertising campaign.

“Imagination at work”? Yup .. rightly so!! General Electric has launched an useful online drawing board where you may draw up your ideas. You may also invite your friends via email or AOL instant messenger and draw together which makes it an effective collaborative tool. So you may use it to draw up a logo or a web layout and share it with your client or colleague. They have named this unique drawing board as Imagination Cubed. You will require atleast Flash Player 6 or 7 (for better performance).

Once you enter this drawing board, you will see a ‘pen tool’ which you may drag and start drawing. Apart from a mere pen tool, it has a whole lot of other tools like shape tool, stamper, line tool, type tool, background tool. Undo and Clear options lets you to step back or clean up mess. The File menu lets you save your work or send it to your friends. Nops, it doesn’t let you save your work as a gif/jpeg/png image. A copy of your work is saved in their servers (no time specified) and a link of the same is sent to your email address for future access. Happy drawing!!

Related: Convert files online with Zamzar

Today I was searching for an online file conversion tool to convert a Microsoft DOCX file to a PDF format. So I started searching the web and discovered Zamzar. This is just a real hand little website I found for online conversion of files. You know this is important, cause its done online. So you don’t need to download a software. Zamzar works like this ..

1. Browse and upload a file to convert.
2. Select the format to convert the file to.
3. Enter your email address to receive converted files.
4. Click on the CONVERT button.
5. Zamzar converts the file and sends you a link via email from where you may download the converted file to your PC.

In my case, it took less than 9 mins to receive the PDF file and believe me the resultant file was pretty nice. Zamzar can simultaneously convert a maximum of 5 files (of same extension). Apart from Microsoft Word to PDF conversion, you may convert iTunes AAC files to MP3, Flash (flv) files to MP4 for iPod use, etc. (All supported formats) Another nice feature is its ability to convert online videos at the click of a button! Wonder how? Click here to learn more.

Well that it for now folks! Enjoy

Related: Test your website for cross browser compatibility