In my blogs and also in presentations I write about various topics that interest me. In this case, I usually use my smartphone for photos to underline my explanations. To change the size, to modify them or to add text, I like to use Paint.NET. You can see the results of this work in the other part on my blog with this picture. It is very easy and intuitive to use. In my digital communication course at MCI, I heard about Pexels and Pixabay. Both sites are great and I like to use pictures from these sites in presentations and also in my blog. Another tool that I use a lot is Diagrams.net. I like this tool very much and it is also very simple and you can use many different icons and pictograms to explain different processes. It is much easier to explain and in my case, it is not necessary to translate into different languages.
created with diagrams.net and modified with paint.net
Personally, I don’t like extension so much. If you are using a special function, it is useful to have a helpful tool that makes it easier for you to accomplish your task. If you use more different tools and each of them is very helpful, the performance of the browser speed decreases with each tool. Just like the saying, too many cooks spoil the broth.
I keep my browser, same as the whole PC simple and fewer tools as possible. Nowadays Systems have running too many tools in parallel.
Since the last US president, „fake news“ becomes a common wording. But for sure, to forward the wrong information is happened since human being. To find out the truth is most of the time not so easy. For me the sentence most of the time is working „If it sounds so beautiful that it can hardly be true, it is usually not true at all“. On other information, my way to find out the truth is to check different platforms, where I can get this information. In this case, I can compare different meanings and side of views and so I can build my own meaning.
Now to the next topic on our list. Most of us use Google to search the internet, but back to point 4 of my blog (security on the internet), you should know that all your search terms are stored and evaluated. These search terms are also related to you and reflect your interests. If you don’t want this, you can use duckduckgo.com or similar search engines without tracking function.
During my research for this text I also found some useful websites like https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-advanced-search-tips. But there are certainly many more.
There are some small hints for better results, such as combining more words for better results. As I know, AND does not have to be written between these words. If more text with spaces is entered in the search field, these entries will automatically be ANDed. It is not only on the internet that I need to find some information. In my mail program, I don’t use many subfolders anymore. The search function with the same boolean combinations is much more efficient for me. I also use the same topology to search for some documents on my PC. Especially the wildcard function with „*“ is often used by me. If I know the name, but not the program I used for this info, I use the name.* or vice versa *.doc, if I only know that this should be a Word document. All these search functions are very helpful to me. Since Win-7 this search function now also works by pressing the Windows key and entering the keyword in the search field. In my case, I also use this function to start programs, just by entering the name. If any Apple user reads this blog, yes, on Mac you have a similar function by pressing the CMD+spacebar. So these are some of the many words you can write about the search. This function will become more and more important as the volume of data we receive every day increases.
I use these functions, whether they are on my mobile phone or on my laptop, as a tool for information and help for different things. If there are some interesting things on it, I spend more time or, if there is nothing interesting, less time. OK, in some cases you read or look at an article that is linked to the next one…to the next one and so on. After some time the subject is completely different. In my case it happens to me more often on YouTube. But for me it’s ok, and sometimes I have some good ideas to solve some problems in a completely different way than I thought before. So it’s not a waste of time either. But even this waste of time happens sometimes. But there is no reason for me to limit my time. If a limitation is necessary, then we should also think about television, eating sweets or generally useless things. Normally nobody has a timer on his TV, which he turns off after 2 hours or locks his drawer where the sweets are.If someone has so little self-control, he would have to use all these things and not only activate a restriction for social apps.
So think about the things you do in your free time. For me it’s okay to relax and read or sometimes see things that are not so useful, but most of the time I want to use my time wisely. Tinkering with things, reading or looking at topics to get a better insight into different subjects.
