IT Pro Tuesday #31

Windows Shortcuts, A Blog, Free Tools & More

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Hello IT Pro,

Thank you for all your support last year getting IT Pro Tuesday off the ground. We now have many thousands of email subscribers and a new subreddit r/itprotuesday. The email is getting open rates of 37% (industry average is 10.9%) and click rates of 15% (industry average is 1.1%), so we must be doing something right. 🙂 Please help spread the word about the email and get yourself subscribed to our new subreddit if you haven’t already.

Anyway, having taken a break, stuffed ourselves with food and drink and generally enjoyed the holidays, we’re now back with your usual weekly IT Pro tools, tips and resources. As always, EveryCloud has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.

Everything

The Book of Secret Knowledge is an extensive collection of helpful lists, manuals, blogs, hacks, one-liners, cli/web tools and more that can be useful in the daily life of a SysAdmin. For example:

• Can I use—provides up-to-date browser support tables for support of front-end web technologies.
• ShellCheck—finds bugs in your shell scripts.
• Shell & Utilities—describes the commands and utilities offered to application programs by POSIX-conformant

It is intended for everyone and anyone — especially for System and Network Administrators, DevOps, Pentesters or Security Researchers. Thanks to wheybee99 for sharing this one!

A Free Tool

Sharex is a screen capture, file sharing and productivity tool. According to the recommendation of stesha83, there is no question of the value of this productivity booster: “Sharex sharex sharex sharex sharex. Sharex. Also sharex. Capture desktop or region to any image or video format and process through any workflow before uploading it or saving anywhere you like. Lifechanging.”

A Tip

Since the keyboard shortcuts for Windows seem to be so popular, we’ve got some more for you. Thanks for these go to RegularAlicorn.

• Win+Ctrl + D: New virtual desktop
• Win + Ctrl + (Left Arrow|Right Arrow): Switch virtual desktop backward/forward
• Ctrl + Shift + Enter (from the Start Menu): Open focus program with admin privilege
• Win + X (Win8+): Really neat menu (RegularAlicorn’s most-used shortcut)

A Blog

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Blog is written by Charles Parker, a Microsoft certified Deployment Specialist who has been working in systems deployment since 2005. The blog documents what the author has learned over time in the hope of making systems deployment projects easier for sysadmins and their end users. Topics covered are of interest for a breadth of different experience levels — from those new to deploying Windows with MDT or for intermediate MDT users.

Another Free Tool

Keypirinha is a fast launcher for Windows that is described as an alternative to Launchy and a cousin of Alfred. Recommended by DrnXz, who considers it “basically Spotlight for Windows but really nicely customisable.”

Have a fantastic week and as usual, let me know any comments.

Graham | CEO | EveryCloud

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