Tag Archives: speed

February 19, 2013, 11:00 am

Learn Your Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’ve been reading ProfHacker for a while, you probably know that one of our primary goals is to talk about those things in academia that people simply don’t talk about. If you’re here–so the logic goes–you must already understand <insert topic of choice here, like which are the prestigious journals in your field>, and so we won’t bother to teach you these things. But these things are important; it turns out that knowing the hidden information of the university is a really powerful way to make yourself more effective in your career.

It also turns out that in some ways academia is very much like the keyboard you’re probably sitting in front of right now. Sure, it’s got those familiar 36 alphanumeric keys. But like academia, the keyboard has hidden information that will make you more effective in your career: keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts can be a great way to get…

October 12, 2011, 8:00 am

Want To Read Faster? There’s a Bookmarklet for That

By Jason B. Jones

There are, no doubt, many, many benefits to doing teaching and research (even ~~service~~ governance!) in the modern networked, mobile-enabled era.

“Having less to read” is *not* one of those benefits! Quite the reverse, really–there are more and more articles and books to read, blog posts to follow, papers/exams to grade, and the like. For the ~~forlorn~~ ~~obsessed~~ dedicated, there are even committee minutes and by-laws.

It is a modern commonplace to note that the problem of research used to be one of scarcity, but now is one of nearly-intolerable plenitude. And while there are all manner of tricks, services, and apps for tracking down that information, archiving it, and mining it, there’s no getting around the hard truth that you’ve still got to find time to read a lot of it.

The ability to read quickly–not just skimming, but genuine reading–is thus an important skill….

June 27, 2011, 8:00 am

Using Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Tools

By Brian Croxall

Last month I covered an easy way to create keyboard shortcuts for anything. Using the built-in tools of Mac OS X or AutoHotkey in Windows, you can customize keystrokes for any program to help you get your work done faster. Of course, many of us do our work in browsers these days. You can use shortcuts to control the browser itself—using Ctrl-T / Cmd-T to open a new tab, for example—but that will almost never help you control the specifics of a site.

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