👀 You get a cheat sheet, you get a cheat sheet, you all get cheat sheets

#41 | The best tech website ever

I know Just One Thing has sent you on several nostalgia trips already. So I won’t take you on another. Because nostalgia is extremely overhyped. Things were not better in the “good old days”, just different. I mean, storytelling apart, The Matrix was so technologically superior when it was released. But you wouldn’t hype that to your kids today, would you?

Also, nostalgia is usually reserved for things that don’t exist anymore. But what I’m introducing to you today is still around. And just as good as it was when it first launched way back in the prehistoric year of 2007.

I was in my 13th year of working in the internet back then. And understandably jaded. And yes, I’ve dated myself with this info. But then again, maybe I’m the Doogie Howser of the internet.

Anyway, the year was 2007. Twitter had launched but was barely a blip. I’d already opened and deactivated my Facebook account. Google hadn’t yet devolved into hardcore evil. The iPhone was still a very, very new thing. The internet was a far more homogeneous entity than it is now. MP3 downloads from Russian sites were still a thing. And there weren’t that many web resources you could go to for information. Or even entertainment. Even I Can Has Cheezburger? was a little while off from becoming the meme factory it evolved into.

There were the standard news organisation websites, there were a few sports websites, there were the Indiatimeses and the like. There were infestations of butt-ugly corporate sites… some of which still exist in that form. And there were tech sites, all of whom had the same content, and the same freebies for download, largely the same look and feel.

And then, I discovered Make Use Of. Which, true to its name, helped me make use of all the tools I was using then… and since. Excel, Word, browsers, operating systems, iPhone (and later, Android) tips and tricks… this site had it all.

It became my go-to website for everything. In the mood for a game? MUO would give me games by genre, by OS, by platform… with ratings and reviews to boot. Briefly around then, I was making a lot of Powerpoint presentations. And yes, I learned from MUO how to become THE powerpoint ninja. On one of my projects, work was at a standstill for 13 months. And I spent 7 hours a day every working day of those 13 months on Make Use Of. One hour I used for lunch.

15 years later, nothing has changed. The site still looks a lot like it did in 2009, except with modern frameworks behind it. And it’s still jam-packed with far too much help on everything you can do on any computing device, with continuous updates for all the apps and technologies the tech world keeps adding to our lives on a near-daily basis.

And whether you’re looking to master Siri or learn all the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Illustrator or become your company’s Google Drive expert, MUO’s cheat sheet page will have a guide for you.

Go ahead. Take a deep dive. I promise you will find something you can make use of.

Dolly.