By Joe Puckett, PC Helps’ director of recruiting and training

The one office item my smartphone or tablet can’t put in my pocket is the printer – and it’s the one I miss the most. (Sometimes you need a hard copy.) Who will step up and make it easy for me to print while I am on the road?

Two categories of businesses haven’t done so yet, but would benefit from it. There is also PrinterOn, a service with a technical approach that fills the bill nicely.

You email the file you want printed directly to the printer, which is about as platform-independent as you can get.

First, office supply and package shipping chains, who could learn a thing or two from convenience stores. A convenience store chain in my area made an excellent marketing move to drive foot traffic into their stores by installing no surcharge ATMs in every store. People come in for cash. They leave with a cup of coffee, a doughnut, milk, bread, a bag of chips, a thicker waistline and a thinner wallet than if they had gone to their bank’s ATM to get their cash.

Office supply and package shipping chains both have print services in their locations. Part of the reason is to increase foot traffic. All have apps for various mobile platforms, but none of them appear to have made it easy to print from those devices to their print services.

A service called PrinterOn may be able to show them the way.

The PrinterOn approach Read more…

Joe Puckett Mobile Devices, Worker Productivity Apps, office supply stores, PrinterOn, printing

Recently, we featured a series of rants and raves about upgrading to iOS 5. For the posts, Joe Puckett, our director of recruiting and training, offered his take on the new version — from using gestures and wireless sync to device standardization and setup challenges.

This week we offer another take on the tablet: The most common support questions from corporate iPad users.

Click to view a video of an iPad support call.

iPad usage in the enterprise continues to grow at a rapid pace, but quality support options for business users are limited. Companies deploying iPads have had to build support capabilities in-house, or direct their users to AppleCare standard support — the same support Apple consumers receive.

AppleCare support stops when a non-Apple-specific application, like Microsoft Outlook or PowerPoint, is introduced. When this situation occurs, to what resource or resources should the end-user be directed? And what types of questions can be anticipated?

Here are a few we have encountered from our customers:

Working with Microsoft Office Documents on the iPad

• Modifying a Microsoft Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) on the iPad
• Converting Microsoft Office documents to PDF files and annotating them (using downloaded Apps)
• Editing or working with Excel files on iPad using downloaded apps such as Numbers or Documents to Go
• Correcting formatting problems when converting Word or PowerPoint documents into Apps like Pages or Keynote
• Fixing formulas, formatting, and broken links in Excel spreadsheets on the iPad
• Viewing track changes markup or comments in Word documents using Documents to Go or Microsoft Office Web App
• Working with PowerPoint documents on iPad using Keynote app, and switching between PowerPoint and Keynote from laptop to iPad and back.

iPad Interface/Hardware

• Mastering Cut, Copy, Paste, and Replace features to avoid backspacing or retyping text
• Toggling and making effective use of spell checking, auto-correction and other keyboard features
• Configuring iPad for mobile device management solutions like MobileIron, and Good Technology
• Quitting Apps that are frozen or behaving erratically; restarting malfunctioning iPad
• Adjusting settings to conserve battery life when charger not readily available
• Recovering paid app that was accidently deleted
• Sharing files to a PC with Wi-Fi or USB connections
• Troubleshooting Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, and VPN connection problems

Read a more comprehensive list here (PDF), and view a video of an iPad business call here.

Jenny Sweeney iPad, Worker Productivity AppleCare, iOS 5, Microsoft Office, tech support

It’s common knowledge that email impedes productivity. It’s like having someone pop by your desk and interrupt you every few minutes. Imagine trying to get work done if that were the case?

If your company is on board, you can hold off on opening that 13th Reply All till Monday.

To remind you (or show you for the first time if you are of a certain age) how productive life was without email, an ad-hoc holiday was created – No Email Day, which is today, Friday, November 11. It’s hardly a holiday; you still have to go to work, and chances are you still can use your email. But if your company is on board, you can hold off on opening that 13th Reply All till Monday.

If you run out of things to do today, read the No Email Day manifesto, or visit the No Email Day Facebook page. Even better, figure out a way to organize your Outlook or Lotus Notes mail with our tech tips.

Jenny Sweeney Worker Productivity FACEBOOK, No Email Day

Why take the long road when a shorter one is available? I know, I know – it’s the journey, not the destination. But not when it comes to getting work done. The more efficient the better.

Enter Siri, the coolest thing I have ever set my eyes upon.

The iPhone 4s has been out just a week, and, as expected, the buzz is still strong. The press about Siri, a virtual assistant that lets you use your voice to send messages, make call and set reminders, is particularly robust.

I’ve tried Siri, and I can confirm that it is neat as heck. I’ve used it to order Chinese food, send text messages, create calendar appointments, and set a reminder to organize my files.

Here’s what the tech press is saying:

It’s a Catfight Read more…

Jenny Sweeney iPhone, Worker Productivity ALICE, Alicebot, Android, chatbot, ELIZA, Iris, Siri

With school in session and the summer officially over, we thought it fitting to take a look at productivity for this week’s post.

Two articles stood out among the rest this week.

Bernard Golden looks beyond the buzzword to what BYOD will mean for the workplace.

The first, on CIO.com, reports on a recent study that found that employees who were permitted to surf the web were more productive than those who weren’t.

The study, conducted by the National University of Singapore, included 98 participants with an average age of 21, who were divided into three control groups. Each group either surfed the web for 10 minutes, did whatever they wanted during the time period except look at web pages, or performed the task of bundling sticks into groups of five. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Consumerization of IT, What We're Reading, Worker Productivity Apple, BYOD, CIO.com, iPad, National University of Singapore, SAP

If you are going to clean your home or apartment, you know what you need to accomplish: Clear the clutter, clean the bathrooms, dust the shelves, wash the windows, etc. A fresh, clean space is more conducive to happiness and productivity. (We don’t know that scientifically; just anecdotally. But go with us on this one.)

Last week we offered tips for keeping email inboxes tidy. This week, we look at ways to keep the operating system clean.

At work, keeping a tidy space is just as important, and keeping a clean computer is even more so. Here are some cleanup tips compiled by our techs that will no doubt improve your computer’s performance, and possibly even your own.

Clearing Temporary Internet Files

Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8

We often get calls from people who want to know how to get rid of temporary Internet files, Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To, Time-Saving Tips, Worker Productivity clear temps, cookies, disk cleanup, disk defrag, spring cleaning, Windows

Remember when “increased productivity” was a phrase no worker in the business world wanted to hear? About two years ago, during the height of the economic depression, the last thing employees wanted to hear about were ways to increase productivity, or how to “do more with less.” To them, it was just code for taking on more work for the same pay.

With a waning recession, the notion of increased productivity isn’t so frightful — especially not if it means getting your mitts on a neat new iPad.

But today, with a waning recession, the notion of increased productivity isn’t so frightful — especially not if it means getting your mitts on a neat new iPad and the accompanying apps.

With the growing acceptance of tablets in the workplace, some industry folks like Gigaom’s Darrell Etherington see the same happening with apps. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Apps, iPad, tablets, Worker Productivity CIO.com, Gigaom, iPad, recession, TCGeeks.com, TechRepublic

Although December can be frantic, January is likely the busiest time of year. We start thinking about taxes and springtime, and most people have recovered from their yuletide hangovers and are ready to return to full productivity levels. Here are a few clip-n-save tips from our tech folks on getting stuff done in an organized manner.

How-To: Quick Launch, Shortcuts, Save As and Jump Lists.

1. Adding Items to the Quick Launch Toolbar
Microsoft Windows (2000, XP, Vista, 7)

This feature gives users one-click access to favorite applications without cluttering the desktop. And because it is always visible at the bottom of the screen, it saves them the hassle of having to close every open window to find an application shortcut. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To, Time-Saving Tips, Worker Productivity Office, productivity, time management, Windows

As someone who works in tech support, I am always the go-to person when family or friends need computer help. I’ve thought about changing my Gmail signature to this:

It was a 20-slide beast of pasted-in Word tables, slapdash formatting, and more than a dozen randomly customized slide masters. She was frustrated.

“If you get an alarmist virus warning message, don’t click anywhere. Seriously, DON’T CLICK ANYWHERE AT ALL. Instead, hit Control+Alt+Delete on your keyboard, select the Task Manager, Applications tab, and force quit the Internet Explorer or Firefox browser application. Restart your computer, tap F8 repeatedly when you see the Windows splash screen, choose System Restore, and select Last Known Good Configuration. If you’re lucky it will work.” Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To, PowerPoint, Worker Productivity Gigaom, Gmail, Google, virus

Workplace productivity is something the world lacks around the winter holidays. Our work weeks are interrupted by holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s (but who is complaining?). We also do a fair amount of scrambling in our personal lives this time of year — shopping for gifts, traveling to see family, cooking feasts — which leaves little energy for our work.

Here are a few BlackBerry and iPhone tips from PC Helps staff to help you get more done in this notoriously unproductive time of year. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney BlackBerry, iPhone, Time-Saving Tips, Worker Productivity business card, tips and tricks, vCard, voice recorder