TechBits

Windows 10 Dark Mode

If you find the default Windows 10 windows too bright you can change it to Dark Mode. Here's how:

Go to Settings > Personalization > Colors > Click Choose you color and then select Dark

Here is a comparison:

Common Sense Media

If you are looking for reviews of movies (both in theaters and available via streaming/DVD), as well as video games and apps, I am putting in a plug for Common Sense Media. Common Sense Media provides information about media content for families and educators. I have used it to help choose apps for my kids, in addition to figuring out whether now is a good time to watch say, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, or whether we should wait a year or two.

The site also has book reviews and does research into children's use of media and technology. If you have some time and are interested in these topics, I encourage you to check it out.

Best of CES 2020: Emerging Technology for Libraries

If you have an hour to spare and an interest in how emerging new technologies might be used in libraries, I'd highly recommend this recorded webinar from Florida Library Webinars:

https://floridalibrarywebinars.org/best-of-ces-2020-emerging-technology-for-libraries/

In the recorded webinar, librarian Diana Silveira reviews the newest trends, devices and innovations with a focus on which technologies can benefit libraries today and tomorrow, and what users may be asking about in the upcoming year.

Holograms, interactive screens, vein authentication, AR, VR, foldable and bendable screens, robots, drones, smart translators, and so much more!

Dashboard of Major Employers

When collecting community data, I often get asked what businesses are in the area. Often that data is only available from subscription databases, so I was thrilled when I heard about the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development LMI (Labor Market Information) dashboard that provides free access to major employers in a city or village. Here are steps to do a search:

Go to Wisconsin LMI Data Access 

https://www.jobcenterofwisconsin.com/wisconomy/query

1.  Click on the Create Visualization tab

2.  Select Category = Business AND Sub Category = Employers By Area - Info Group

3.  Click on Generate Visualizations

4.  Hover over the Employers - Major Employers visualization AND  Click on Load Visualization

5.  Select your County

6.  Select your City (or Village)

7. Select an employer to get details about the business.

Want more details?  Check out the other LMI visualization, Employers - Size and Contacts, to view businesses by NAICS sectors such as construction, education, health care, manufacturing, etc.  

Bookmark Moving Day!

Getting a new computer, or restoring a broken one, can be an exciting, terrible, fun time. With all of the ups and downs that come with setting up a new system, there are some tasks that can be a bear. 

My least favorite task is transferring all, 50 plus, bookmarks to my new device, one by one. In situations where you are able to use Google Sync, that transfers your bookmarks by logging in to the browser, there is nothing to worry about. A click of a button, a few typed words, and life is good again.

Unfortunately, life rarely gives us the "Easy  Button". The good news is that the steps necessary to transfer your bookmarks from one computer to another are relatively simple. I will include the steps for how to save your bookmarks(export) and transfer them back in to the browser(import) for both Chrome and Firefox.

How to Export Bookmarks in Chrome.

1. To start off, open Google Chrome.

       2. In the upper right hand corner of the Window, Click on the menu.

       3. From there Hover over Bookmarks, and then select Bookmark Manager.  This wil bring you to a page that lists all of your bookmarks.

       4. In the right hand corner click on the Three Dots and select Export Bookmarks.

               -From here all you need to do is pick a name and location to save your HTML file. 

How to Import Bookmarks in Chrome

1. This is the exact same as the previous steps, however instead of Exporting your  Bookmarks you select the Import option.

How to Export Bookmarks in Firefox

1. Open Mozilla Firefox
2. In the upper right hand of the Window there will be an Icon that looks like books on a shelf, Click on it.
3. Click on Bookmarks
4. Click on Show All Bookmarks. This will open up a smaller pop up window.
5. At the top of the window click on the Import and Backup button.
6. Select Export  Bookmarks to HTML
7. Choose your file name and save location

How to Import Bookmarks in Firefox

As you may expect it is the exact same process as exporting, but you select the Import Bookmarks from HTML instead.

 

It is generally a good idea to save your bookmarks file on a thumb drive, or as part of a backup, in case of any hard drive failures or other technical issues.

Here come the robots!

Last November, I learned that robotic food delivery had already arrived at UW-Madison. Neat idea -- how does it work? Here's an article and also a short video that explains:

2:13 video

I had heard about companies looking into drones and self-driving cars for delivery, but I hadn't realized that these little sidewalk delivery robots existed.  This got me to wondering... could libraries use this technology?

A little bit of searching led me to a couple of pilot projects where libraries are using these small delivery robots to deliver books,

• Meet BookBot: Mountain View library’s newest robot helper (1:28 video)
• Redwood City Library to make robot deliveries

one where a robot isn't delivering books to people but is instead is delivering the people to the books,  

• The Little Robot that Lived at the Library -  How we built an emotive social robot to guide library customers to books

...and a library that is planning a robotic/automated book retrieval system:

• Robots Retrieve Books in University of Chicago's New, Futuristic Library (2:36 video)

It will be a while, I think, before these sorts of technologies become widely used. Pros for the small sidewalk delivery robots include less pollution and less congestion on the roadways, and cons include potential pedestrian safety issues and sidewalk congestion. Food delivery robots in a college town or big city are not welcomed everywhere or without certain restrictions right now. The Madison Transportation Policy and Planning Board has recommended a proposed ordinance that would prohibit the use of delivery robots everywhere in the city except for UW-Madison’s campus in an effort "to prevent other companies from bringing new robots to Madison and clogging up city sidewalks." San Francisco established an Office of Emerging Technology to oversee new technologies that operate in public spaces like sidewalks and had already put strict guidelines in place to cover things like insurance, headlights, warning noises, and more.

What do you think about delivery robots? Looking forward to the day where your books/food/groceries can be delivered to you by robot, drone, or self-driving car --- or do you worry about safety, congestion, or other issues?

The Big Sweep

My favorite job in high school was working at a fast-food restaurant one town over from where I lived. During my first week on the job, the manager handed me a broom and told me to sweep the lobby, which he considered to be everything in front of the counter. I really didn’t want to sweep up the whole restaurant so I handed the broom back to my manager and explained that I hadn’t been trained to sweep yet, which is not at all true, but it worked, I got out of sweeping the floor…once.

I noticed Office 365 now has a sweep feature and I wondered what it might be used for, here's what I found out. The sweep feature is part of a suite of tools Outlook implemented to help organize your inbox, which I could really use some help with so I tried it and thought this is the kind of sweeping I could get behind.

Sweeping your inbox is really easy too. Highlight a message in your inbox and click the sweep tab above in the toolbar. A window will appear giving you several options of what to do with the message. I’ve been mostly using the first option of “Move all messages from the Inbox folder”, this moves all the messages only from that particular sender, then choose where you want that message and all previous messages from that sender put. You can also choose to have all future messages from that sender put in a folder automatically.

 

Update: These days I enjoy sweeping my floors. As a matter of fact, I have a different broom for almost every room in my house and two just for the garage.

Windows 10 Emojis

I have a serious, hard hitting topic to discuss for my turn at the TechBits.  I accidentally brought up a window full of different emojis today on my PC.  After some research, I discovered I must have pressed the Windows Key + period or semicolon at the same time.  Both of these key combinations will bring up the Emoji picker if you are using a Windows 10 PC with at least feature
update 1903 installed.  The bottom of the window will have several categories of Emojis for you to select from including animals, food and transportation.  One of them looks similar to SCLS Delivery trucks.

🚚🚚🚚🚚🚚🚚🚚🚚

You can see if you have Windows 10 version 1903 or higher by right-clicking the start button > Click Run > Enter winver.  The second line will tell you your windows 10 version.