Recent Events

A relatively quiet month for events (unlike next month), but I did attend Unfiltered to catch up with other businesses and meet representatives from the Scottish Government Innovation Centres to find out how the centres can support businesses and about the Scottish Government's Innovation Programme. Presentations were given by:

• Fiona MacDonald of Built Environment - Smarter Transformation

• Cameron Gordon of The Data Lab - Innovation Centre

• Ally Longmuir of CENSIS

• Gillian Hambley of Interface

Productivity

As recently discussed in previous newsletters, the focus has been on reducing the time spent on the day-to-day tasks that clutter my day.

This approach has reduced my working day for repetitive tasks from 5 to 6 hours to 2 hours in the morning, leaving more time to think and develop strategies for the future, as well as releasing time to network and help others with social media and content marketing products and services.

Hardware and Applications

Here are some hardware and applications currently in my toolkit and being used to focus on productivity and efficiency improvements.

Hardware

Ultrawide Monitor

If you want to buy a new monitor, there are more options than ever.

It's no longer a question of size and pixel density; you also need to choose an aspect ratio.

Ultrawide monitors are increasingly popular because they provide the same horizontal space as a dual monitor setup, and you get to skip the bezel and the added wires.

Given the added cost, are ultrawide monitors worth the money?

But first. What is an ultrawide monitor?

An ultrawide monitor is a monitor with a 21:9 aspect ratio or more. This is compared to the standard 16:9 offered by most monitors and televisions.

They are significantly wider than standard models but are usually around the same height.

They were initially developed because more and more people were using dual monitor setups. However, an ultrawide monitor provides a similar user experience to a single monitor.

Ultrawide monitors are available with curved screens, but you can also purchase flat-screen versions.

Curved screens provide better immersion and allow you to see more of the screen without turning your head.

But flat-screen monitors remain popular for anything that requires straight lines. They also offer wider viewing angles and are often better suited to wall mounting.

Ultrawide monitors are easier to use than dual monitor setups. They don't just allow you to skip a bezel. They provide a more seamless user experience overall. You can also use virtual screen dividing software that provides added organisation.

Most applications aren't designed to be used on two monitors simultaneously. And it isn't always convenient to push program windows from one screen to another.

Pros

The most significant advantage of an ultrawide screen is that there's no bezel running down the middle of the picture as dual monitors do. You have one large, uninterrupted panel.

Ultrawide screens are also a much more elegant solution. You can split your laptop or PC screen with two or three applications across the screen (see software section below) and have plenty of room for everything. Also, there's just one power cable, display cable, and monitor.

Cons

The main disadvantage of ultrawide screens is how massive they are.

The screens take up significant desk space and are harder to move around and set up. Subsequently, a monitor arm is highly recommended to get the most out of your ultrawide.

Besides the sheer size of an ultrawide, some types of content don't work well on them. They are fantastic for multitasking, where you have control over the screen elements. However, if you try to watch standard widescreen video content, you'll end up with massive black bars on either side of the video. As you can imagine, those bars are even more ridiculous when watching older 4:3 aspect ratio content.

Software

PowerToys

Microsoft PowerToys is a set of utilities for users to tune and streamline their working experience for greater productivity.

The utilities include:

• Always on Top

• PowerToys Awake

• Color Picker

• FancyZones

• File Explorer add-ons

• Image Resizer

• Keyboard Manager

• Mouse Utilities

• PowerRename

• Quick Accent

• PowerToys Run

• Shortcut Guide

• Screen Ruler

• Text Extractor

• Video Conference Mute

For the ultrawides, FancyZones is the leading and my most used utility.

FancyZones is a utility for arranging and snapping windows into efficient layouts to improve the speed of your workflow and restore layouts quickly. FancyZones allows you to define a set of zone locations to be used as targets for windows on your desktop. When you drag a window into a zone or enter the associated keyboard shortcut, the window is resized and repositioned to fill that zone.

Choose your layout (Layout Editor)

The zones editor presents a list of layouts that can be adjusted by how many windows are on the monitor. Selecting a layout shows a preview of that layout on the monitor. The selected layout is applied automatically. Double-clicking a layout will apply it and automatically close the editor.

The zones editor supports creating custom layouts.

Trending Created Content

A couple of created blogs have been trending through social media this month.

Do you know what is digital marketing? What are the key elements of digital marketing and how can you use it to achieve your organisation's goals? This article answers these questions

How to achieve a higher rank from a Google search by backlink building

Most Popular Curated Content

The most popular curated content was from HubSpot and discussed the most popular search engines.

Take a look at the top six search engines of 2022, so you can discuss some other potential traffic sources in your next SEO meeting.

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