Did you ever wish you could quickly retract an email right after you sent it?

First, turn on Undo Send

1. On your computer, open Gmail.
2. In the top right, click Settings   Settings.
3. In the "Undo Send" section, check the box next to "Enable Undo Send."
4. In the "Send cancellation period" section, set the amount of time you want to decide if you want to unsend an email.
5. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

Undo sending your message

After you turn on Undo Send, you can cancel sending an email.

1. After you send a message, you'll see the message "Your message has been sent" and the option to Undo or View message.
2. Click Undo.

If you use Outlook you can also unsend right after you send an email by following the instructions found here.

Quickly increase and decrease web page font size

If you spend much time reading on the internet, you may find that your eyes get tired of reading the small print.  There's an easy "fix" for that (most of the time).

Simply hold down the CTRL key and press the + to increase the size of the font on the page and CTRL and - to decrease the size of the font.  Pressing either of these keys while continuing to hold down the CTRL key will continue to increase or decrease the font until it reaches its maximum. (Mac users will need to use the Command (Apple) key instead of the CTRL key.)

To reset the font back to the default size simply press CTRL and 0 (zero).

Taking better photos with your phone

Did you take many pictures over the holidays?

I've been enjoying looking through photos from the holidays; the time with our family just went too quickly!  With so many phones in the family a shared photo album was created at the beginning of our time together so photos taken on everyone's different devices could easily be shared among all of us.

As I've looked through those very typical Christmas shots, the pictures from our younger son certainly stand out.  Yes, he loves photography and takes a lot of pictures, but what is it that makes his photos stand out?

In search of some answers, I found a really good article with some simple tips for taking better photos with mobile devices. As I read through it, I noted that our son's photos reflected several of these tips.  If you're interested, the photography tips covered in the article are:

1. Keep your photos simple
2. Shoot from a low angle
3. Show depth in your photos
4. Align your subjects diagonally
5. Capture close-up detail
6. Include shadows in your composition
7. Take silhouette photos
8. Photograph reflections
9. Use symmetry
10. Enhance your photos with VSCO filters

What to do when a document won't open

Happy New Year!  Did any of you get a new digital device for Christmas?

Sometimes you will get an error message when you try to open a document on your computer.  This may happen when you move from an older computer to a newer one and the program that created the document is no longer on that computer or is out-of-date.

You usually do not need to pay someone to "fix" this for you.  Below are several suggestions:

1) For users of Mac computers (although PC owners might want to try this tip, too), take a look at this video. It is a VERY simple fix.
Documents won't open

2) Open another similar application on your computer that is comparable to the application that originally created the document.  Once it is open, do a File - Open and locate the document that won't open.  This works sometimes.

3)  Or, try importing the document into your Google Drive.  It will convert the document to that format and it should then open.