50 Tech Tips In 60 Minutes

Hi folks, we're here this afternoon. I'm Shelley Reid of LSNTP. I'm the manager of LSNTP. I have three um co-hosts with me today to help bring this discussion and we have a lot of tips and we've got to squeeze it in as quickly as we can. If you have questions in the during the presentation, I suggest putting it in the chat and we will try to address those while we're not speaking. Um, and we we probably won't have room for questions at the end, but we will make sure that you have our email addresses and we will also be sending out the slides and making them available on our website so that you can also go back and refer to the notes in those slides. But let's go ahead and get started. I'm going to pass the um presentation over to Leardra and then we'll go to Jane and Angela um for introductions. All right. Uh, good afternoon everyone. My name is Ladijah Johnson. I am a program officer for technology at uh, LSC. And I'm Jane Ribbitanara, senior program officer for technology. Um, which just means I'm older, I guess. [laughter] >> I'm Angela Trip. Um, also program officer for technology at LSC. >> All right. All right, so kicking it off, my first tip is Text Blaze. Um, we had a similar tip in the past with Magical, but they have um there's no longer a free version. So, this is a free version that, um, helps with quick uh, shortcuts to repetitive uh, responses. So, um, if you're, you know, doing approvals or things that, you know, even email templates where you're emailing the same sort of thing, uh, multiple times, you can do a quick, um, keyboard shortcut to have that text, uh, fully displayed, um, in your browser. All right, my first tip is uh about a focus feature that's built right into Windows. Um which is a quick way to kind of cut out your distractions. I turned it on before starting the presentation. Um uh so uh you can set a timer um say like 45 or 65 minutes um so you have a dedicated block of time to concentrate and it will silence all your notifications so you don't get pop-ups to interrupt you. Um any app icons will stop flashing and you won't see any alert badges. Um and there is actually a simple simple timer you can build in breaks and things like that. Um, if you go to uh the way to get to it is just within the um Windows clock. If you just click on clock and open it up, there's something right at the bottom that just says uh turn on focus and hit the play button. Um you can go to the next slide. Uh, one other thing you can do is um you can either um you know have options for uh setting up a reminder when your time is up um or play a sound. You can also connect it to other tools such as like Spotify if you want to have a playlist that you like to listen to to help you when you're doing um focused work. Um, so check out there's uh more instructions and links in the notes to find out um how to use the Windows focus. My first tip is Timo. Um again a productivity focused tool. Um it is a it helps it's it's time AI. It's a visual planner. It helps you plan faster by turning your tasks into a clear realistic schedule. You can type or speak what's on your mind and it will help you by giving a draft of broken down tasks. It'll estimate how long each step might take and organize everything into a plan for a plan that works for your day. Um, it includes a focus timer. It can be gamified with trophies, trophies and rewards to celebrate your progress. And it just helps you with planning by making it very visual and easy. And I want to check, we have a note in the not in the chat that someone can't see the slides. Is that a a broad problem or is it maybe an individual problem? >> I can see them. Okay. >> So intermittent. A couple people can't. If you can't see them, maybe try leaving the meeting and coming back in. Yeah, >> we'll keep an eye on it. So, great. Thank you. >> All right. So, my tip is creating QR codes in Microsoft Word um using the display barcode um field. You don't have to have any kind of addin or install a third party. The fastest way is by pressing CtrlF plus FN and typing display barcode all squished together and then your link um where it says your link there and then QR slash Q and then you will get and press F9 and it will generate a Q a QR code that you can use wherever you might need a QR code. Sorry, I'm having technical difficulties here trying to change the slides. Let me give me a second. Not sure what's going on. Oh, there we go. There we go. All right. So, um [clears throat] this um next tip is in Microsoft Word. Um it converts speech to text directly um in Word. Um great for meetings, interviews, or even dictation. um helps with manual note takingaking. Um there's two ways to do this. Um the dictate dictate button. Um and then you click transcribe. You can have it re um record live as you're you know doing said meeting or interview and it will um trans transcribe it as you're going. Or if you have a recording that you say, "Huh, I would really love to have a transcript." You can also upload um an audio file um to develop a transcript as well. I apologize folks. I'm having difficulties finding screens. Oh goodness. No. Well, I may have to exit the slides and come back in. Let's see. While we're waiting, there was a comment that someone left them. Someone who couldn't see the slides left the meeting and came back and that fixed the problem. So, if anyone is not able to see the slides, that does seem like the solution. Perfect. >> As we said, go to the view menu up at the top. Make sure you have one of the side by sides. And sometimes there's a slider there that you make sure you can. There we go. I apologize. I'm not sure what's going on, but we'll get through it. All right. Yeah, the next slide. >> All right. Uh, so my second tip is um about a uh site called 18 alt 18F. Um, and there's a whole bunch of free uh practical guides. Uh this is are resources that were created by what was formerly the 18F federal digital services team um to help organizations uh build better services for the people they um um uh help. And uh when that team was disbanded in early 2025, they created this alt alt 18F website to preserve and share their work. Um it's it's they're geared towards non-technical audiences. They focus on things like um uh plain uh clear plain language practices to help improve how to design, deliver, and manage um technical resources. Uh there's things like uh uh design and user experience. um how to how to write good content, accessibility, um sort of product um management and uh project management and also something interesting on derisking technology projects. So how to ask the right questions uh before you start building or buying new technology. So check it out. It's just at guides.f.org. >> All right. You're going to notice the theme. Um, I love productivity tools. Um, this one is called Goblin Tools. There's a free version or you can pay you can get a paid version for $2.99. And this is a collection of small, simple tools for when uh projects or tasks feel too big or complicated. Um, it's recommended for neuro neurodeivergent folks especially or for anyone who occasionally feels like uh they're overwhelmed. There's a magic to-do tool that helps you break down your to-do items a lot like Timo. There's an AI tool that helps transform your text. Um, like if you're doing an email or a letter, you can change the tone. There's also a judge feature to analyze text for emotion. So, if you're not sure if your boss's email was rude or not, um, that can help you uh give you a second opinion um on what what they think the what it thinks the tone means. There's a taskmaster that helps you focus on one thing at a time. There are tools to explain things to you or to help you make decisions. Um, an estimator that can guess an activity's time frame for those of us who are chronic underestimators of how long things will take. Um, there's a compiler to turn like a giant brain dump dump into usable actions. And then everyone's favorite AI party trick, creating a recipe from ingredients. Um, so it's uh it's a way to help you get a little bit more organized um when things are feeling overwhelming. Awesome. Project Gutenberg is a free digital library of over 70,000 public domain books. Think classic literature, historical legal texts, government documents, and so much more. Everything is free. No account is required. And books download in multiple formats. You can even use your Kindle or, you know, other reading apps for them. Um, they're great. It's a great place to go for reading and research. You can also download the items so that you can read offline. It's also great for training AI tools if you need text because it's public domain. The Gutenberg app is also available and it's um if you it makes browsing and downloading the books even easier than using the website. So check it out if you have um any interest in seeing books that are no longer in print and other things. All right, my next tip is uh Perplexity. It is an AI power search tool. Um it's a good source for uh quick research and summaries. Um but what set sits this one apart um is that it gives you inline citations. So if you're um you know wondering, well where is it getting this from? It gives you um the citation. so that you can um either go [clears throat] to the surface for deeper research or you know just have that gut check that um AI is not making things up. All right, [clears throat] so Microsoft Bookings is a simple tool that can help you schedule and manage appointments. Um it's part of the Microsoft 365 platform. Um so it also works with many tools you already probably use like Outlook and Teams. So instead of sending back and forth emails to find a meeting time, bookings lets um uh people choose a time that works for them using an online scheduling page and then that appointment is automatically added to your calendar. Um and you can set up different types of appointment with specific lengths uh different staff and uh sort of uh specify what your availability is. it always look it syncs with your calendar, but you can also kind of say, "Hey, I I want to leave the end of the day for focus time." So, I'm not going to leave that open for booking appointments. Um, something that could be really useful for legal aid organizations is the shared bookings calendar. And this is sort of a single team-based calendar where you can have multiple staff members such as intake specialists or maybe a proono group um where you can manage your appointments together. So you could provide your clients with an online link to book an intake appointment and then the system assigns it based on the staff's availability. So uh check out the Microsoft Bookings app. All right, this is one of my um most favorite tips and I think it's probably one of the most practical ones today. Um it's a totally free app that supports food stamps programs in 52 states and territories including both SNAP and summer EBT. It works in every US state except Iowa and Montana and is available in the territories of DC, Puerto Rico, the Virgin US Virgin Islands, and Guam. What it does is it it's an app that connects to the state's portal with the user's permission so that um it the the uh Propel app gathers um people's EBT or food stamp balance and transaction history making it easier for them to read and easier for them to see. Um people don't have to call the 1-800 number or log into a statewide website. They can just open their Propel app and see um uh where they are. Um, it can help also with deposit predictions so people will know when their next payment is coming. It, um, has clear transaction details, including store names and online purchases. And it does have security features like fraud monitoring and outofstate transaction blocking. So, it's a really great way for people to manage their food assistance benefits. And it's totally free unless you're in Iowa or Montana. And I don't know what the deal is with those two states. So, as people move away from having printers in their home, our clients also will often have the need to provide us documents. And it's really great when you can actually use your phone to you as a scanner. So, the Scanner Pro app converts your um iPhone camera into a smart document scanner, but you don't even need the Scanner Pro app itself. You can use built-in tools right in Apple Notes if you have an iPhone. So, you open the notes app and create or open a note and tap the camera icon and scan document and you quickly have a PDF that's available that can be sent right on over to um you know from your client or back to your client. Um it's just a great um a great way to get documents back and forth. My next tip is Microsoft Copilot being embedded into Word. So, um, what it looks like, this is just a, you know, uh, sample text, but you can ask it, um, to do simple tasks like summarize the paragraph and into bullet points or something like that. Um the highlight of this is that um you don't have to copy and paste like if you're using you know chatic t or claude it's going to work right within um your your window as like a sidebar. if you'll go to the next slide for me. And then also um just illustrating that if you have a blank page and you want to start a specific um template or um or something like that, it also can start from scratch to kind of just get you started um as well. Um so that's the that's the tip. >> All right. So this is a kind of a new feature of a former tip uh which is the have I been pawned website uh which is very helpful to find out if your email has been involved in a kind of a security breach on different websites you might uh be registered as a user. But um they also added a new feature about um looking for passwords that have been exposed in data breaches. Um, so you can go to their site and go to the pawn passwords page and enter your password that you might use if you especially if you use passwords across multiple sites, which is not recommended, but um, uh, it'll compare it to a large database of compromised passwords from real breaches. Um, it uses it doesn't store anything. It's never sent anywhere. So, it is safe to go ahead and check your passwords here. Um, if you go to the next slide, I actually checked a password that I used to use, no longer use, and um, you can see it was found in 78 different data breaches. Um, I don't do that anymore. So, make sure before you create or reuse a password, uh, this is a place to kind of check it and then think about how you can make uh, better passwords or use a password manager, which I'll talk about coming up. Next up, I have another uh client focused tip um which is a website and app called Foster Power. Full disclosure, um this was built by Bay Area Legal Services in Florida. Um and in part was funded by one of our technology initiative grants. Um the mission of Foster Power is to improve the lives and futures for youth in foster care by creating access to information um on their benefits, protections, and legal rights. um prior to foster power um and and I will also say that this is only relevant for Florida um at this point, but they are working to scale up and are actively working with advocates advocates in other states to reproduce foster power for other jurisdictions. Um one of my favorite things about the the site and app is that they they deeply collaborated with youth in foster care when they were both designing and building the app. Um, so it really reflects um uh the the community it was meant to serve. Um, as I mentioned, they're working to expand it to other jurisdictions. I realize it might not be widely applicable. Um, but if nothing else, I want to share with you the idea of this this kind of tool and just, you know, how a how a really um strong communityled design uh process turned out um in the hopes that maybe you will want to be part of future expansion efforts. So the Smithsonian open access is um the Smithsonian Institute's um website where you can download, share, and reuse millions of Smithsonian's images um right now for free without asking. So with um new platforms and tools, there's um more than 5.1 million 2D and 3D digital items from the Smithsonian collections and many more to come. So, why might you want to use these if you don't want to use AI to create a PowerPoint slide, you know, images for slides, or you have a smart TV and you want to have pretty pictures on that smart TV. Those are just some of the ways that you can use it. Um, so check it out. All right, my next tip is Microsoft Whoop. It's one of the newest um programs that Microsoft um has. uh it is included in some of it would depend on what um level of enterprise level that you have. Um it is essentially a collaborative workspace for teams to share live components. So instead of you know emailing a spreadsheet back and forth or you know versioning different word documents, it can live here um in your in your workspace and be um updated um simultaneously without the versioning and everything. It also has um you can share live across um different apps like teams and outlook. Um it also has some tracking mechanisms and um the ability to kind of you do some brainstorming and so everything is live and stays up to date without you having to um do versioning. So um I'm sure more to come um for Microsoft on this, but a really cool uh concept as we continue to be collaborative with one another. All right, as I said, um I'm going to talk about password manager. So, the average person manages 168 passwords for personal accounts and 87 for work. So, over 250 different accounts. Um and if one just one of those accounts is breached and you're using the same password, then uh attackers can try to use it everywhere else. Um, I honestly don't know how people manage without using passwords. Uh, I've been using one for a long time. Um, it's a simple tool that stores your passwords in an encrypted vault. And it also can help you generate strong unique passwords or passphrases. Um, and it fills them in for you as you're going and needing to to log in. Um, so it's an easy way to avoid reusing passwords. Um and there are some lowcost and free options that you can consider. Uh these are just three of them. One password uh is noted. Um it's widely used. It has very strong I mean they all have very strong security. Dashlane um that's what I use. It's it's I've found it uh very easy. Um it includes sort of that security monitoring of the dark web so you do know immediately if something has been breached and encourages you to go change your um passwords on those accounts. There's also a tool called Proton Pass which PC Magazine rates as sort of the best free password manager um which allows you unlimited login um and devices. Uh so if you remember just one thing from today, never reuse your passwords and don't try and manage them on your own. All right, my next couple tips are going to be about tools for uh people in organizations that are experimenting um with integrating AI, generative artificial intelligence into their work. Um the this one is part of a suite of uh websites created by the um Stanford Legal Design Lab. Um it's a great it's called Justice Bench. Um this is for folks who are curious and wanting to learn more about uh what is being done um with justice AI. it. You can discover AI projects across the access to justice landscape, understand where you fit in this journey, and also find data and evaluation tools that you can use on your own um on your own work as well. It's the discovery layer of what uh Stanford legal design lab calls their legal help commons. Um it's essentially a research and development platform for legal teams, technologists, researchers, and community members working on AI to advance access to justice. Um after you explore the landscape, you can head to the legal help comments, which will be my next tip, um to uh learn even more. So hopefully everyone is aware that we have a YouTube channel here at LSNTP. Um, and so when you go to our YouTube channel to watch past webinars, there are some shortcuts that you can use to make it easier to navigate. So the spacebar can be used to play or pause a video. J can will send a video back to 10 seconds. L will send a video forward 10 seconds. The left and right arrow go back and forward 5 seconds. Um, M for mute or unmute. F is full screen toggle. And there's a few more listed in the notes of the slides, but we have lots to get through. So, I'm going to move on to the next. Um, and this is a Microsoft Word tip. Um, immersive reader. So, this is what it usually looks like. And if you'll go to the next slide, you can be found in the view tab. It will strip out everything and make it um more um increase the readability and accessibility. You also can have it read aloud. It increases the spacing um and um you know just very helpful for um either your eyes are tired and it's been a long day um you know or you know different clients and staff that may have different um different support needs. All right. So um as of uh the middle of October 2025, Microsoft stopped providing security updates, bug fixes, and technical support for the um uh desktop uh well, not the desktop, but the the um Office 2016 and Office 2019, which were the one-time software purchases that you may have either gotten with a computer when you purchased it. um you know maybe licensing through Tech Soup um and it provided the full apps like Word and Excel and Outlook. Um and while those apps will still open and work uh they are becoming now more vulnerable to security risks and malware and other data breaches, you may also start to see some uh compatibility issues. Uh so they what Microsoft is doing now is um you need to upgrade to their Microsoft 365 which is their subscriptionbased platform and is uh more cloud-based although you can you will download and still have the full desktop apps um on your local computer but they will automatically get send out and get regular updates um just like you it has always happened with uh Windows for instance. So if you're still using um those purchased versions of Office 2016 or 2019, it's time to plan to upgrade um to stay secure and and supported. Um uh also Windows 10. If you're still on Windows 10, that also mean you need to upgrade to Windows 11. >> All right, as promised, legal help comments. So this is the this is the portal for people who want to go beyond curiosity and uh start working with AI. Um this is shared infrastructure for the access to justice sector. So legal aid organizations, courts and technology partners can build better AI together instead of reinventing the wheel alone. Um uh the legal help commons organizes shared resources around three complimentary pillars. um those are discovery, implementation and community. So um as I mentioned before, Justice bench is the um uh the R&D space. The implementation library helps you build something. It's got reference architectures, implementation playbooks, proven code and classifiers, RFP templates, cost models, and evaluation rubrics, and more. Pillar three is cohorts and community. It helps um organizations build together. Um this is through working groups around specific workflows, public interest tech courses and groups, justice professional networks and peer learning programs that can connect folks together. And instead of just one tip, I'm going to give you a whole list of them. There's a website here that has a gigantic list of little Trello tips. um you know so things like finding your email address where you navigate your board click show menu um so you can if you didn't know you can email things to your Trello board and so if you go to the show menu in Trello and select more you will see select you'll be able to select an email to board setting and to find the unique email address for your Trello board and start stop having to type everything just send over an email Right. My next tip is um a USB data blocker. So um these uh little devices protect from what we call juice jacking. So when charging in a public place um it does not allow it allows the electricity to go through but not the data to come back out. Um you can find them on Amazon pretty cheap. Um like you know $10 to $12. Um and it's a very simple lowcost security tool um to make sure that your um data is secure. All right. So um a few years ago I switched to using Microsoft Edge as my main work browser uh because it worked well with uh a key work platform. Um, and since then I've come to appreciate some of its built-in integrations with other Microsoft products. Here are a few quick tips around Edge that can help save you time. Uh, first, you can turn on the sidebar and it gives you quick access to tools like Outlook and Teams and Copilot without leaving the web page that you're using. You can kind of look at your you can check your email, view your calendar, look up a contact. Um, this is especially helpful when working in a cloud-based case management system, for instance. Um, once the sidebar is enabled, you can just click that plus button to explore, um, any other apps that might be useful in your workflow. And then, um, there's a couple other things. Second, you can customize the toolbar and the home screen. So, it lets you put sort of the most used tools, um, right where you need them, like downloads. I tend to download a lot of things. um look at your history or share. Um this cuts down on the number of clicks and makes sort of common tasks that you use easier. Um and third, you can also search for information across open tabs. Um but also recently closed tabs. So that's kind of helpful. Um you know, if you are keeping tabs open cuz you think, oh, I might need to come back and find this. Um it's a way to kind of say, hey, I can I can search [clears throat] across and find what I've been looking at. So to enable these uh just go to your edge settings menu um as outlined on these screenshots and turn on the features you want to try. There's also some links uh to more uh instructions in the notes of the presentation. All right, my first two AI tips were for people who are curious and building and then this this is for the more advanced um users of AI. Langfuse is an open-source uh LLM engineering platform that is here to help you with structured testing of your AI tools. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can just tuck this information away for later. Um if you when you are building AI tools because you will need to do some kind of structured testing. It helps teams collaborative collaboratively develop, monitor, evaluate, and debug AI applications. Um, it enables developers to debug complex production apps, track costs, and monitor quality. And it has native integrations for tools like Langchain, Open AI, and Llama Index. It is free for hobby users. Um, and that includes up to 50,000 units per month and 30-day data retention. Um, you if you're if you're a bigger if you if you need if you're a more heavy user, you can self-host the full core platform for free without limitations via Docker. Um, or you can there are a few paid options that are uh $29 a month for higher limits and more users or um you can become a self-hosted enterprise for $500. But mostly probably the free version will do what you need. >> [snorts] >> Sorry about that. Tried to skip ahead. So, if you're not familiar, we have a a sister site called A to J. And one of the things that we needed to do was automate the form so that people could update their job listing if if the situation changed. So, we found a that fill out works well and it's another um app that you can use with air tableable and I've provided the link in the notes on Gareth Provenos directions. He is a a a an Air Table expert or Air Tableable guru and he has a great video that explains step by step how to do it. Um, but if you ever have an air table that you're using embedding on your website, a form, you can now ask provide people a link where they can update their listing and save you again that manual typing. All right, my next uh tip is Windows Voice Access. So, um this allows you to um use commands to have your computer work without um using your hands with simply your voice. So, um, this first, uh, slide is just kind of shows you the the setup. It's not long, but it does have to sort of get used to your voice and and how you sound. Um, and then if you'll go to the next one, um, how you know that it's working is at the it will just have a little um box at the top just letting you know that it's listening to you so that you're aware. And if you go to the next one, um here's just some um examples of the different commands. So it's more than just like dictation, but you can ask it to open specific apps, to minimize windows, to click, to scroll, um to cancel, etc. Um so this is obviously can be an accessibility tool, but I also think it could also, um, you know, help with just you're at the end of the day, you don't want to use your fingers anymore, but you still need to be productive. It's a way um that you can um still still have some some productivity going. >> All right. So, I'm curious if people here have heard of or used uh Microsoft Viva Learning. Um uh Viva Learning is a is a hub built right into Microsoft Teams. Uh and it shows you recommended courses based on your role and interest. You can also search for topics um such as things like learning about Excel, Power Automate. Um you can bookmark, share, or recommend training to colleagues in the chat um or in your team's channel. And you can also add your own content. For example, if you're rolling out um a new feature in your case management system and you want to add a short training on using it, you can share it directly in Teams uh using the Viva Learning. So, look for that under the apps and teams. Um, if you don't see it, you may need to check with your IT team to make sure it's enabled. Um, but, uh, recommend trying that out. I have another tip for um, folks who are actively developing AI tools. This one is called Prompt Fu. And I just want to say that both Langfuse and Prompt Fu, you don't need to take my word for it. Um, these are tools that I have heard many other people talk about. um the tools that they use when building AI tools. Prompt FU is an open-source CLI and library for evaluating and red teaming LLM apps. It can help you build reliable prompts, models, and uh uh retrieval augmented generation with benchmarks specific to your use case. Um it can help you secure your apps with automated red teaming and penetration testing. It can speed up evaluations with uh different tools like caching, concurrency, and live reloading. And it can score some of your outputs automatically by defining metrics. Um you can also use this with open AI, anthropic, azure, Google, hugging face, open source models like llama, probably more since I looked this up um in May. or you can integrate with any custom API providers. >> So, we been doing lots of traveling, so being able to supply power has been a continuing issue. I solved that with the Anker 25,000 mega amperage hour power bank. And it's a high-capacity portable battery pack that can charge phones, tablets, and even laptops multiple times without needing a wall outlet. It's great for all day conferences, travel, field work, and since my recent move to Florida, it's also something great to have as we go into hurricane season. Great. My next one is uh Microsoft Windows uh power rename. So, if you've ever had a collection of documents and you wanted to, you know, have them in a more organized way by renaming them, you can bulk rename them quickly. Um, and you can use search and replace patterns um to um have a more unified um naming conventions for those. All right, my next tip is uh a site called um the card catalog Substack. Uh this is uh run by a librarian um named Hannah Lee Golden and it's designed to help people think like a librarian in the age of AI. Um and as you might expect from a librarian, she provides a wealth of information and resources. Um I particularly want to point to two series of articles that that she has. First is a series on how to use AI better which focuses on getting higher quality results and the second is a series on how to verify and evaluate AI. Um and she offers a lot of great tips on how you can that you can use um every day. Uh also if you go to the next slide there's kind of two specific posts um I wanted to highlight. Uh, one is a post about Google's Secret Reference Desk, which shows how to improve your search skills um by using tools like quotes, site limits, filters, and something I hadn't heard of before called verbatim mode, which is found in the tools menu, and it makes Google stop paraphrasing you and return results for exactly what you typed. Um, and another one of her top posts, um, I think if you click once again, is called What a Librarian is reading in times of moral nausea and psychological despair. Um, and it's a curated reading list for moments when too much information feels overwhelming, and it offers some thoughtful sources to help you slow down, reflect, and make sense of um, complex issues. Since Shelley brought up hurricane season, um I want to share this uh really great resource. First of all, um it is an LSC website. So, full disclosure, and it is called Heartland Disaster Help, but it is not geographically limited. This is an LSC website for the public where anyone can enter your address and see what extreme weather events you may face where you live. Additionally, it includes general information and resources for varying types of disasters, floods, heat, wildfire, wind, and more. There are also links for each state and territory for organizations that can help with disaster preparedness and recovery, including contact information, websites, and descriptions of services. Again, while the name says Heartland, um it is now available to everyone. So, I put my address in here and if you can click to the next slide, Shelley, you can see my personal risks at home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Um, this is uh what might happen. You can also sign up for the Heartland Disaster Helps monthly newsletter to get um updates on disasters, recovery tips, and community stories delivered right to your inbox. So, if anyone else is like me, when I get, you know, down into coding or doing something that's really um [snorts] uh intense, I sometimes forget that I need to actually get up out of my chair occasionally. So, there's this app called the Touch Grass app, and it's a light-hearted wellness app that um you know, comes from the internet slang for go outside. So, it sends reminders during the workday to take short breaks from your screen and get a m few minutes of fresh air. And the only way to stop it is to go outside and take a picture of you physically touching grass. Um, so it's just kind of fun to get outside. And it also is smart enough to know that you're sending it a picture of um your fake grass. [laughter] So, so you actually do have to go outside and get a fresh the fresh air. So, give it a try if you don't ever leave your office like me. >> My next tip is Melonator. This is a temporary disposable email inbox. Um, in the context of promoting this tip is um if you're testing forms or signups or [clears throat] anything of that nature and um when you're in that testing phase and you want to clog your own email trying to see how it looks and you know uh all your links work, etc. Um then you can um set up [clears throat] this temporary email um to do to do that kind of testing. >> All right. So, uh do you think your phone is listening to you? Um if so, you might want to review the apps that have access to your microphone. Um many apps uh do have access to you've given them access to your microphone. Um and you could do a quick settings check uh to limit access only to the apps that you feel like truly need it. Um because the when they have access they can capture your audio. Um and sometimes uh even if you're just uh the capture audio in the background, not only when you're using them. Um so here is just some screenshots on how you [clears throat] how to go about reviewing that on your iPhone. I have some similar instructions in the notes for Android. Um they're all done through the through the settings and privacy security um uh portion of settings. And if you click one more time, Shelly, um the other thing you want to check on is to disable the background app activity. Um and that's a different thing also within settings and general. So, um, uh, you go to the background app, uh, [clears throat] refresh and turn it off completely or just limit it to essential apps. I'm circling back around to where I began with uh, another productivity tip. Um, the Pomodoro method. Um the Pomodoro technique, it's a time management method developed by Francesco Cerilio in the late 1980s that boost productivity by breaking work into 25minut distraction-free focused sessions called pom pomodoros separated by five minute breaks. After four sessions, it reminds you to take a longer 15 to 30 minute break to rejuvenate. Um there are many apps that you can get. This is just happens to be my favorite one. Um, it's called Focus Pomo, but there's a ton of Po Pomodoro timers. This one, um, has cute tomatoes that you can collect for each successful 25minute period. It has lots of bells and whistles and things that you can and you can get a paid version for more fanciness, but I'm cheap and the free version works well for me. Um, but if you don't have an iPhone or want something else, there are many versions of this out there in the world. It doesn't matter what one you pick. You can just use the one that's best for you. And one of my favorite features is all of the orange um tomatoes that you earn stack up on your home screen. And if you do have to interrupt a pomodoro, you get a little bit of a sad face yellow tomato because that tomato was plucked before it was fully ripened. So you know, did you know that you can lock any app behind Face ID? I mean, we most people know that you can use Face ID to unlock your phones now, but now you can on an iPhone, you can lock apps. So, say you give your phone to your child to play a game and you have apps that you don't want them to access. Um, say your work email, for example. [laughter] Um you can use the um you go to settings and then general and check make sure that you're on iOS 18 plus and then on the home screen long press which is basically press and hold any app icon and then you can tap require face ID in the menu that appears and you're done. So to remove you just long press and don't require face ID. Um, yeah. So, that's the quick version. >> Lord, >> oh, Lord, you're on mute. >> So, sorry. Um, my next tip is just some low entry uh prompts to um test out if you're um you know haven't really played around um with the lang large language models whether you prefer you know chachi bi claude and others. Um but just some um different prompts that I thought that people might find um helpful if you're past the like just for fun and want to move into um how it could help you um in your work. Uh, so these are just some examples um to get folks started if you haven't really uh dive dove into um using AI in your workflow. Um all right, >> this is weird. >> What happened? um >> how can we help? >> I don't have that as my next tip anyway on my version. [clears throat] Um but I will um just say that that the uh uh this is a website um that I would recommend checking out. It's the court listener which is uh developed from the free law project. Um they have uh created um a place where you can search millions of uh legal decisions by case name, type or citation. And um it has is free to use and go search. So check it out at the courtlister.com uh website. [clears throat] Um, this is nothing new, tab grouping, but I thought it bears repeating for those of us who continue to live our lives in tab chaos. Um, I love how it dovetales with Jane's tech tip about how to search across recently closed tabs. That does help me feel a little bit more secure about closing some of my 8,000 open tabs. Um, there are tab there's tab grouping grouping opture. There are tab grouping options in browsers like Chrome and Edge that allow you to organize, label, and color code multiple tabs, reducing your clutter and improving your workflow. Um, there are some detailed instructions on the screen that I'm not going to read to you. um as an example of one of the ways to set this up. Um this feature uh it just can really help you manage research, separating work from personal tasks or keeping project related sites together. Um and uh there are also extensions that you can download um uh to do it in an even uh fancier way. And don't feel alone, Cindy, in feeling called out because I am also uh very bad at my open tabs. When multiple people have made track changes in a work word document, this feature lets you filter to see only one person's edits at a time, making review much more manageable. To use this, open the Word document and click the review tab in the ribbon. And then in the tracking group, click show markup. The drop-down will let you choose the specific person. and you can then, you know, go through their changes and then move on through all of the people who have changed. Makes it a lot easier to see what's going on. All right, the next tab is um you can turn any website into a desktop app. So, um thinking [clears throat] about um reducing your tab clutter that we just talked about, but if there are, you know, different websites that you have to go to um you know, daily, you can absolutely have it turned into um an app that just lives on on your um on your desktop. All right. So, um, following up on Leardo talking about getting started, uh, with AI and how to write prompts, um, one way you can also kind of learn how to write better prompts is to use the chatbot to actually write you a prompt of what you want to do. So, um, just, uh, type out kind of your stream of consciousness in terms of what you're trying to do, who it's for, and what you need as an output. Um, for example, here I'm just asking for a prompt to create a good project plan for uh conference session proposals. And then if you go to the next slide, it actually uh produces a very detailed structured prompt that I can then review, refine as needed, adding any details like audience tone or length, um, and go back and forth and then actually give it that prompt to create a really good output. um from the chatbot. For those of you new to 50 tech tips, by the end we kind of veer away from serious work-based tech tips into more fun personal ones. So, in the timehonored tradition of David Bonere, who used to do um this this presentation um he did 50 tech tips for many years when he held the position that I now have at LSC. I bring you my favorite music to work to. Um bouvois. I'm I'm convinced I'm uh really going to send this artist uh to stardom by letting you all know that it is really great music to work to. Um it uh I I I specific specifically listen to um uh you know a a playlist generated by his music and others like it. Um it's just really upbeat tracks with no words. It's given me many many hours of productivity um and keep me moving. So, it keeps my it just holds my mind just enough that it doesn't wander away even um if I've been doing a task for multiple pomodoros, for example. So, following up on my previous tip on how to use biometrics to lock, you know, lock apps, we want to make sure that our clients and we also know how to stop them from working. So, if on an iPhone, if you simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button for about two seconds um until the slide to power off screen appears, your phone will no longer use biometrics to unlock. You will have to enter your um passcode. And you can also um say, "Hey Siri, whose phone is this?" if you're not able to get to your to your buttons. So, it's just a great way. Also, if you do full restart, that also will require your passcode. So, all great ways to um disable biometrics so that um you cannot be compelled or held down and have your phone used against you. All right. Uh this tip is for um a follow up on the password managers. Um there are sometimes inevitably where we need to share passwords and so this is a more secure way to do that um via Bit Warden which also uh has password managers. Um but instead of having a sticky note under your keyboard for someone to grab to be able to access an account that you share um you can um use [clears throat] a platform like this um to securely share passwords. And as you can see there's different member roles and things like that. And so um just a a more secure way of being realistic that sometimes um in our world we do need to share passwords you know based on limited licensing and things of that nature. [clears throat] All right. So um this is my fun tip uh also with help from an an um uh so I have trouble falling asleep because I have trouble quieting my mind. Um, so I tend to listen to podcasts that maybe aren't interesting enough that they keep me awake, but are enough that it kind of helps quiet my mind. And there's a specific podcast called Nothing Much Happens, which was created by a meditation teacher, Kathy Nikolai, and each episode is a short calming bedtime story where, you guessed it, nothing dramatic happens. And that's the whole point. Um, so the stories are very quiet and descriptive. something like walking through a garden or sitting by a fire and it just gives your mind something else to focus on so you can let go of your racing thoughts. Um, and the she reads each episode twice uh a little bit slower the second time. Uh, and it helps you relax and fall asleep. All right. Uh, and I have two quick ones. Uh, we talked about focus on our computer, but our phones sometimes uh, rule our lives. So having focus filters on your iPhone. So instead of just throwing your iPhone on D and D all day, every day um which um [clears throat] you can um customize specific um focus um filters. And so there's one that you know you may want a different one when you're working versus you know through the night when you're sleeping and things like that. Um and so or you know you may want different um [clears throat] notifications when you're um you know working out or driving. Um and so you can really customize what you want to come through as interruptions um on your iPhone based on what you're doing. And the last one is really uh my favorite and that's the challenges app. So um if you are familiar with uh you know your eyew watch and you or I don't know Apple watch it's called eyew watch an Apple watch and you challenge people but you've ever want to uh challenge multiple people um and and kind of have as a as a as a group thing there's an app called challenges where it's essentially just like the onetoone but allows you to invite more people you can do teams you can nudge you can trash talk all the things. Um, but a a fun cool way to to stay motivated to um get active. >> Well, we have done it. We have gotten through all of the tips in the hour. Here are our email addresses. So, if you have any questions, um, but please give a chance for the the slides and the video to make it out to you. Um, we should have that out by the end of the week. Um, but then if you have questions, we're certainly happy to answer any of them. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope that you will also come back and join us for um our uh OpenAI series that's coming up in July. We have a three webinar series. If you've not registered or heard about it, you can go to our events page on lintentap.org. But thank you to Jane and an and Lira for being here. And we hope that you found or heard um some tips that maybe you hadn't thought about before or reminded you of of something that um maybe you've heard before and then this reminds you to go back and follow up on it. Any final comments from the other panelists? >> Oh, good. >> Oh, thanks. It's great seeing everybody today. Yep. >> Thank you. Take care. Bye.