Need a desk? Crib? Couch? Do you visit garage/yard/estate sales looking for good deals? It can be time consuming to find them and you can waste even more time visiting them if you don’t know what’s for sale. Leverage your time in the planning and driving with the free YardSaleTreasureMap!

Try it once (it’s free – no sign up) and you’ll see how powerful it is.

Today’s time-saving tool is a little gem which you most likely won’t use every day, but when you need it, you’ll be looking up our blog just to kiss the screen in thanks!

If wasting time typing doesn't make you this happy, you need JOCR!

We all have things that we don’t use all the time, but come in extremely handy every so often. Things like the tire wrench, the stack of old books out in the garage, and the vacuum cleaner. You just don’t need them every month [yes, even in the case of the vacuum cleaner ], but when your in-laws are headed over or you back over a set of tire spikes, they’re invaluable. Okay, maybe I do use the tire wrench every month…

It’s the same with this free Optical Character Recognition Tool that allows you to extract text from images without re-typing the whole thing. If you’ve ever been emailed a scan of a document by a non-tech savvy colleague or friend, that you needed to edit slightly and send back, you’ll be very, very excited right now. You’ll be avoiding one of the sneakiest work time-warps of all.

JOCR is a simple, no-fuss application for recognizing characters within an image. It uses screenshots, but you can also set it to capture an entire window – useful for the scan scenario. It’s a two-button operation, and the program itself is fairly fast.

However, be aware that you’ll need to manually proofread the recognized characters against the original image, especially if it is something like a scan from a magazine, where captions and breakout boxes will get jumbled up with the main text. You’ll end up with genius like: “To list, or not to list? 1. Use both hands on your computer, save time learning – for many of us are mousebound, using only our right hands …”. We did mention the program was simple!

You'll need to proof your JOCR text, sometimes it gets a bit mixed up...

JOCR then lets you know the number of characters that have been recognized, and stores them on the clipboard. Just go into Notepad or your word processing program and hit Ctrl+V or Edit-Paste, and voila!

You’ll need Microsoft Document Imaging for this specific program. It comes standard with Office 2003 or higher, and is usually in your ‘Microsoft Office Tools’ folder in the Program list. If this additional feature wasn’t installed on your computer originally, first go kick your computer-setter-upperer, then return and go to Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel to activate it.

Yes, this time saving tool can also be used for evil, as well as good – copying from copy-protected documents, etc – but we’ll leave that dilemma to your conscience.

Don’t you love those ‘a ha!’ moments, where you realize that things you’ve seen every day for the past five years actually have a use … and could save you time! No, I’m not talking about the moment you realize that your kids are old enough to do the dishes on their own. That’s always nice too … the Windows logo key is the subject of our forced ‘aha’ today.

See what using the Windows logo key too much can do to you ... just be careful!

For years, I thought this was just another piece of Microsoft marketing, and ignored it. Then my toddler pressed it, along with some other funky buttons one day, and shut down my computer, losing my work in the process. Hmm, better watch out for that one, I thought. Then I stumbled across a blog post on how to use the thing, apart from keeping little fingers in your house away from it, and I saw the light!

If you are currently uninitiated in the joys of the Windows logo key (or indeed, any other handy computer shortcuts), let me introduce you to its ecstasy (and sometimes agony!). Use the Windows logo key to:

Use the Windows Logo key to have more time for fun stuff!

• Minimize all applications – Logo + M
  This is great for getting back to the desktop, or you can press Logo + D to do exactly the same thing.
• Pull up the Start menu – Logo by itself
  I don’t use this one that often, since you usually need the mouse to navigate that menu anyway, and it’s right there. But, horses for courses.
• Lock your computer desktop – Logo +L
  I love this one for office situations. You just need to pop your computer password in after you get back from lunch to unlock it – another Logo+L doesn’t do the trick, fortunately.
• Open Windows Explorer – Logo+E
  Now, if only they could make all the blasted subfolders mind controlled, I’d really be saving some time.
• Open your Find dialog to search for files and folders – Logo+F
  This is actually the easiest way I have found to look for anything in Vista. I much prefer XP for search.
• Flip through all your open applications like a 3D book – Logo+Tab
  If you are the sort of person that has fifty programs open during the day, and each has an obscure title or is grouped with five others so you can’t easily get to them, this is a great one.

There’s a complete list of shortcuts for the Windows logo key at Wikipedia.

You can also get third-party programs to personalize Windows logo key functions – let us know your thoughts on the best of them. You can use the time you’ve saved navigating your Windows to drop us a line in the comments!