I’m recovering from two good nights out in a row – Parents’ Quiz Night (the teachers won and I definitely heard people phoning friends from the cubicles when I went to the ladies!) and Burns Night where, disturbingly, a haggis was stabbed.

Quiz Night raised a good sum of money for charity and revealed every Type A parent in the room, including me, while Burns Night was a wonderful celebration of the kind of tradition you hope never dies out, if only because it is so eccentric.

For more on that, go here:

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/toahaggis.htm

Now on to your Weekend Takeaways and this week I have decided to round up some tips and tricks to help with everything from time and sanity-saving keyboard shortcuts to social media hacks that will make your life a lot easier.

For some excellent general tips, including keyboard shortcuts I’d never heard of (but will now use all the time) and what to do if you accidentally close a tab on Chrome and want to bring that page back from the dead, check this out:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/timmy-parker/2013/07/15-awesome-useful-internet-tricks/

There are even more keyboard shortcuts here that could save your bacon as well as a great deal of time and fumbling around:

http://www.computershopper.com/feature/the-best-computer-tips-and-tricks-keyboard-shortcuts-for-windows-vista-and-xp-and-microsoft-office

If you’re on a Mac, Dan Rodney’s list is uber useful:

http://www.danrodney.com/mac/

Want to rev up your Facebook experience and make it far more efficient?

Try Social Fixer which will do all kinds of useful things such as hide posts you have already read, organise everything in a series of tabs so you’re not forever scrolling down your Timeline and even (ulp!) show you who has Unfriended you:

http://socialfixer.com/

There are several good tips and tricks that can make your YouTube experience slicker and this is an excellent selection of them:

http://lifehacker.com/the-six-best-youtube-url-tricks-1422544868

Did you know that you can legally watch some full length movies and TV shows on YouTube?

YouTube has a dedicated, country-specific page that lists them all for you. This is the movie one:

http://www.youtube.com/user/YouTubeMovies

And this one is for TV shows:

http://www.youtube.com/shows

If you’d like to know what live shows are scheduled or showing them go here:

http://www.youtube.com/live

I love LinkedIn but I never liked the fact that people could see I’d checked out their profile – turns out I could have remained anonymous all the time.

Not for any nefarious purposes, I might add, but sometimes you like to check out prospective clients/potential JV partners without appearing like a total internet stalker and here’s how to do just that:

http://www.informationweek.com/software/social/10-top-linkedin-tips-tricks/d/d-id/1005773?image_number=7

Bear in mind that switching to anonymous means that your viewer stats get erased so only do so if you don’t mind that happening.

The other tips and tricks in that series are pretty good as well so do take the time to go through the lot and apply any that are useful to you.

As for Google+, I admit I’m still on a learning curve so this list of 25 tips for power users is an absolute gift:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241869/Getting_around_Google_25_tips_and_tricks_for_power_users

Your Kindle freebie this week is packed with time-saving tips to help in your business. It’s entitled A Work at Home Mom’s Ultimate Guide to Building a Business, Blog & Brand but don’t let that put you off – I can assure you it’s packed with stuff that is relevant to everyone building a business from home:

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Building-Business-Brand-ebook/dp/B00DQD788K

As far as productivity and time-saving goes, Tim Ferriss is way out there in front (4 Hour Work Week, anyone?) so who better to deliver your Ted talk this week?

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