New Google docs, Facebook preview image, and Jitter

Issue #1

Jan 03, 2023

Greetings All!

Here is your weekly issue of Tools of Tech, news and notes on the tools you love and use. Please feel free to forward this along to friends.

snowfield — Photo by Katarzyna Pe on Unsplash

👋 Welcome

Welcome to the new people joining this week.

Let me know what you think of your first issue. Replying helps Google realize it’s not spam.

Now let’s get on with the newsletter. 📰

👆 Google Docs shortcut

If you are a user of Google Docs it can take a few (too many) clicks to create a new document. Here’s the fix, by way of Internet darling Tim Ferriss: type “doc.new” in your Chrome browser in the URL or Location bar. A brand spanking new doc will appear. Voila! The following also work: “sheet.new” (Sheets), “slide.new” (Slides), “meet.new” (Meet).

Eager for more time-saving finger moves? Keyboard shortcuts for Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc.)

✌ Change the Link Preview Image when sharing your website on Facebook (WordPress + Yoast)

This challenge came to me by way of my spouse. When she would share her website in a Facebook comment the Preview Image that appeared was not what she wanted. Here’s how the image was set. (The following steps apply to a WordPress site with the free Yoast SEO plugin.)

Sign in to the WordPress site
Go to Pages and choose to edit the Home page (Front Page)
Scroll to the Yoast SEO section
Select the Social tab
Set the Facebook image (200 x 200 pixels)
Update (save) the page
Open a new browser tab
Go to the Facebook Sharing Debugger https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
Type in the website address in the field at the top and select the Debug button
Scroll to Link Preview to confirm the image appears that was set above
If the image does not appear initially choose ‘Scrape Again’
You did it!

🤟 Jitter - a free tool to create quick motion graphics

Looking to add a little sizzle to your social posts and your site? Jitter can do that. With just a few simple steps you can create a graphic that pops and stops. Below are a couple of mine.

Sources: https://jitter.video/, Article

🤩 Feedback

Got feedback? Use the Comments button below. I’d love to hear from you. Which tech tool is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Leave a comment with all the juicy details.