Whining and SharePoint: Enterprise social roadmap update

Today's post comes from Jared Spataro, Senior Director, Microsoft Office Division. Jared leads the SharePoint business, and he works closely with Adam Pisoni and David sacks on Yammer integration.

In November last year of SharePoint Conference we announced about three phases of the Yammer integration roadmap for enterprise social and said: "Basic integration, deeper connections and connected experience."  (Post that I published shortly after the SPC Keynote please see social work .)  Today at the convergence of 2013 , we provided an update on this roadmap and I wanted the details to share.

Yammer and Office 365.  During the Office keynote today we performed the integration of Yammer and Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management).  We delivered this update last monthand we love the scenario social plus CRM is a natural fit.  But CRM integration is just one part of a broader range of work that we do to the social layer whining about all of our products.  Our next step is to integrate with Office 365, and we are now ready, more details about what when are available to share.  Here is what you need to know:

Basic integration.This summer we update the Office 365 service and allow customers, with whining to replace the SharePoint newsfeed. Many customers worry confusing to provide their users with two different feeds, and with this update they can simply replace Office-365-global navigation bar with a link to Yammer.com "Feed" link on the. We a yammer app into the SharePoint store will ship also, so that end users can easily integrate a group of Yammer feed in a SharePoint site to establish a connection between groups and pages that deliver the best of both worlds. The SharePoint newsfeed will continue to be the standard social experience in Office 365, but the possibility of complaining through valuable be replaced first in the entire integration process. Deep links. In this case, we supply to deepen another update on Office 365 and integration. Customers have the possibility of choice between complaining and the SharePoint newsfeed, but this new, integrated Yammer experience provides single sign-on (SSO) and seamless navigation. In other words, if you click the Yammer link in the Office-365-global navigation bar, Yammer appears immediately below the navigation, to regain Office 365 services like Outlook and sites. See also the user to begin to converge the experiences of Yammer and Office 365 (cf. the concept, which is down to mock, a directional sense get). This new Yammer experience features also rich document to add integration of Office Web apps work and news column, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents.

Experiences connected. How to move, in 2014, we will update Office 365 with new social improvements continue, every 90 days. We just catch the links between whining and Office 365 services, these incremental improvements are social but in the course of time, collaboration, email, instant messaging, voice, video, and business applications in an innovative new way to combine. This is an exciting time and a hot room, and I can't wait to share more about our plans in the future.

Yammer and SharePoint Server.  Of course, we now recognize that many SharePoint clients still local.  You are working on your upgrade plans and find a way, with their on-premises deployment 2013 your Yammer network to connect SharePoint.  So as part of the summer updates offer we local through whining also instructions for SharePoint news feed to replace.  The Yammer app into the SharePoint store will be a valuable addition to allowing customers to create connections between Yammer groups and local SharePoint sites.  While we do not plan to deploy updates for SharePoint Server every 90 days, are numerous improvements to the Yammer service described above are still valuable in this scenario.  The SSO, updated UX, seamless navigation and all connections between the Yammer network and your local SharePoint deployment will deepen Office Web app integration.

What should I do?  Meet my clients in the last few months, people often have "asked, what I use for the social?  Yammer or the SharePoint newsfeed?"  My response was clear: go whine!  Yammer is our big bet for social enterprises, and we commit ourselves to making it the underlying social layer for all of our products.  It is the social experiences in SharePoint, Office 365, dynamics and more.   Lament the adoption of unique model appeals directly to end users and enjoy the benefits of social immediately relieved.  And whining because it is an online service that gives us the ability to innovations fast - update the service quickly developed as the market.  So no matter whether you are an Office 365 customer or current SharePoint local, complaining the latest innovations and provide optimum user friendliness.

What if I just use Yammer?  To whine my exuberance for all, I recognize that some organizations only not with multi-multi-tenant cloud services feel.  For these customers is our forecast to use the SharePoint newsfeed.  It provides rich social features with a wide range of SharePoint features integrated.  While the cloud lowers the barriers to adoption and allows for more frequent updates, we are getting some customers only ready to take the step.  (Some customers are in fact on it, which never move them to a multi-tenant service.)  When it comes to the cloud, we're "all in", but we are also realistic.  We have a large local installed base that is important to us and we are committed to future versions of the server.

Acquisitions can be tricky business, but we are very pleased with our progress.  Whining continues to have innovative grow and their independent companieshave, and the packaging and price changes , which we at the SharePoint Conference last year announced lighter the Yammer service accessible than ever before.  But the most to, what for me is that we are just beginning to have.  Today's schedule update provides a little more insight into how we plan to whining to integrate with Office 365 and SharePoint.  But we are out to change the world, and there is much more to come.

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Keep Your Location Private on Facebook, Use Picasa's Photo Screen Saver

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Oh, Facebook. Always with the weird, unwanted, hard-to-undo changes. Like a couple weeks ago, I noticed that all of a sudden, every status update I posted included my location!

I’m quite sure I didn’t request or enable that feature.

Previously, each update would note the time it was posted: “8 minutes ago,” “2 hours ago,” “yesterday,” and so on. Now, Facebook tacks on information about where I was when I posted: “near Wolverine Lake,” for example.

Unlike!

If you’ve noticed this as well, you’ve probably pored through Facebook’s settings in search of a way to turn it off. Amazingly, there is no such setting—not that I could find, anyway. But there is a way to disable this unwanted location awareness, and it’s hiding in plain sight.

When you click in the Update Status box, you’ll see your closest city listed in the gray bar along the bottom. I probably looked at this a hundred times without actually realizing what it was or why it was there—it just kind of snuck under the radar.

Mouse over that city and click the little ‘x’ to the right of it. Presto! No more location information tacked onto your status updates. If you want to restore it, just mouse over the now-blank area where the city used to appear, then click Add current city.

I’m glad this is such an easy change to undo, but annoyed that Facebook keeps slipping in stuff like this without notifying users or providing a straightforward opt-out option.

If you're not using Google Picasa to manage your photos, I think you're missing out. It's one of the fastest and most versatile photo managers/image editors currently available, and you can't beat the price. (It's free.)

If you are already using it, you might be missing out on one of its best--and most often overlooked--features. I'm talking about the Picasa screensaver, which was formerly a standalone product. The screensaver cycles through the photos of your choice (more on that in a minute) using any of nine impressive visual effects: pan and zoom, cross-fade, checkerboard, and so on. Here's how to set it up:

Start Picasa.Click Tools, Configure Screensaver.Windows' standard screensaver window should appear, with Google Photos Screensaver already selected. Click Settings.Now it's time to choose one or more sources for your screensaver: Picasa, your Picasa Web Albums, one or more folders on your PC (which, admittedly, are probably already represented within Picasa, so this may not be necessary), and/or public sites. This last can be any RSS photo feed, like from Flickr and other sites. Just enable the sources that you want, then click Configure if you want to fine-tune the settings (which you'll need to do for PC folders and public sites).Next, choose a visual effect from the pull-down menu. You can also use the slider to adjust the time between photos. When you're done, click OK.Back at the main Screen Saver Settings menu, click Preview if you want to see the setup in action. You may also want to adjust the time before the screensaver kicks in. (10 minutes is the default, but I prefer something a little longer.) Click OK when you're done.

I think you'll love the Picasa screensaver, which effectively turns your PC into a killer photo frame (when it's idle, of course). And here's a bonus: If you have multiple monitors connected to your PC, the screensaver will take full advantage of them, showing a different photo on each one. Sweet!

If you've got a hassle that needs solving, send it my way. I can't promise a response, but I'll definitely read every e-mail I get--and do my best to address at least some of them in the PCWorld Hassle-Free PC blog. My 411: hasslefree@pcworld.com. You can also sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

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Project available as 3 flexible cloud services through Office 365

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AppId is over the quota

We're proud to announce the availability of Microsoft Project as a flexible cloud service, delivered by Office 365. For the first time, customers can sign up for flexible plans, get started quickly and use the full capabilities of project and portfolio management without adding IT complexity.

There are 3 Project cloud services to choose from:

Project Online is a flexible online solution for project portfolio management (PPM) and everyday work. With a convenient subscription and delivery through Office 365, Project Online enables organizations to get started, prioritize project portfolio investments and deliver the intended business value—from virtually anywhere on nearly any device.

Project Pro for Office 365 delivers the latest version of Project Professional as a subscription through Office 365. Your software is automatically kept up to date (with options for customizable policies) and users on the go can work from the computer of their choice by streaming the complete desktop client with Project on Demand. Keep deployments simple, benefit from flexible options, and enjoy integration with other Office 365 services like Lync and SharePoint.

Project Online with Project Pro for Office 365 is an all-in-one subscription which delivers the full spectrum of project management capabilities – from task management for teams to project management to project portfolio planning. Now you can have the best of our suite of project management solutions in a single cloud service, without IT overhead and the ability to easily scale from just a few users to your entire organization.

Now that you can get Project virtually anywhere, through Office 365 cloud services, team members can manage their tasks as easily as pressing a check box on their smartphone browser and managers can check reports on the go with just a swipe on their wirelessly connected tablet device.

Collaboration is smooth and effective with Project Team Sites on SharePoint, where colleagues can share documents, comment in newsfeeds, and keep up to date on team tasks and deliverables with the Team Timeline. Real-time communication comes via Lync integration, making it simple to see a team member's status, open a chat dialog, or even initiate a phone call or video conference. Reports are more clean, clear, and easy to create right out of the box than ever before.

Ease your IT management headaches with Project delivered through Office 365. Microsoft offers excellent security, guaranteed uptime, and additional benefits so that businesses can gain efficiency and scale without losing focus on core competencies.

We invite you to visit our new website to learn more about Project, and hope that you’ll contact your nearest Project partner to make arrangements for a live demonstration. It’s our pleasure to share our new products with you and we look forward to maintaining innovative and robust services to meet your project management and project portfolio management needs.

--Mark Sargeant, Product Marketing Manager

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Review: DivX Stash stores Web videos for mobile viewing

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AppId is over the quota

Keeping track of all the online videos you want to watch can be a challenge...especially if you're not always in front of your PC. Sometimes, you see a video while you're on your computer, but you just can't remember what or where it is by the time you launch the browser on your smartphone. Enter DivX Stash, introduced at Mobile World Congress. This free service helps you create a queue of videos that you can watch later, either on your PC or mobile device. It's a very handy tool, and one that works well—most of the time.

Once the browser add-on is installed, you'll see a "Stash It" button appear on compatible video sites.

To use DivX Stash, you start on your browser, preferably on a PC or Mac. You must log in with your Facebook account and install the browser extension or add-on to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You then surf the Web as usual. When you come across a video on a DivX Stash-supported site (including YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Funny or Die, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, College Humor, and more) , you'll see a button underneath the video that says "Stash It." Clicking this adds the video to your Stash, which you can access via the Web on your computer or via mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. I tested it on my iPhone and iPad.

From your Stash, you can click a video title and watch the video within the DivX Stash interface. DivX Stash doesn’t download and store the videos offline. It simply stores the video URL and brings it up within its own app. That means you'll need an active data connection if you're using a smartphone or tablet, and spotty service will greatly impact the quality of the video you see.

In addition to the videos you stash, DivX Stash also creates a feed of all the videos found in your Facebook feed. These are all of the videos posted by your friends and made available to you on Facebook. It's nice to have them all in one scannable list, but it's unfortunate that you cannot search the list to find a specific video you may have seen. Instead, you have to scroll through the videos, which appear with those most recently posted near the top, to find what you're looking for.

That's a minor glitch, though. What's more unfortunate is the problem I had watching videos I'd stashed from Hulu. They played back fine on my PC, but when I tried to access them using the DivX Stash app on an iPhone, I was unable to do so, and saw only an error message that the video was not available on mobile devices. The folks at Rovi Corporation say this is due to the nature of Hulu and the fact that some of their videos are only available to paid users. I was unable to watch any video from Hulu on my iPhone, though, even content that was freely available on my PC. In future versions, the DivX Stash app should direct users to the Hulu Plus app, which will allow them to watch Hulu content on their mobile phone, the company says. But that will only help users who've paid for access to Hulu Plus.

Videos that you add to your Stash are automatically added to the list that appears on your mobile phone.

While DivX Stash can't offer an easy—or free—way to watch Hulu content on your smartphone, it does offer easy access to plenty of free video sources. If you're an online video junkie looking to go mobile, DivX Stash could be your new best friend.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you must log in to use the software.

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Data-linked diagrams: Linking data from an external data source

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AppId is over the quota

Yana Terukhova is a Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team.

Visually displaying always up-to-date information on clearly laid out diagrams helps to communicate information effectively. In this post, we will see how to connect data from external sources to a diagram.

Linking data to Visio diagrams was first introduced in 2007 and has been overwhelmingly popular. We’ve improved the functionality since then and the capability has become increasingly more powerful. Associating data with shapes on a diagram does not require any code. There’s a simple wizard which guides you through linking your data source to your diagram. Once you’ve linked data to diagram shapes, apply data graphics to shapes--text, data bars, icons, or color by value conditional formatting--to visually display numerical data. The important point here is that data-linked diagrams are dynamic; the data graphics change when data is refreshed in the source (like Excel). 

To get started, we created a simple organization chart in Visio. We’ve chosen the coin layout for this example. Once we have added the data, we can change the layout to better match the data format. As you can see, we have name, title, and photos for each of the members in our organization.

You can imagine that all types of data that be visualized--from vacation status/training completion, to number of documents in a particular step in a process, and to percent budget attained. Options are vast.

Before you add any data to a diagram, it is a good idea to decide exactly what data you want to see, because this will define which data visualization format best fits your needs.

A common task in organizations of all sizes is to track budget and spending, either by department or at the budget owner level. Let’s see how we can use Visio to show how each person is doing against their budget.

In this example, we will display revenue attainment, budget, and number of employees reporting to certain people. Here is the current view of our data in Excel.

Using this file as the data source, you could also link it directly to real-time budget information in a back office system (such as Microsoft Dynamics and other data sources).

It is important to remember that your data needs to be consistently arranged in the source, so Visio can understand all the logic behind it. For example, keep rows filled with consistent data and name all the columns in a consistent manner. Very often, when data is not displaying appropriately in a Visio data-linked diagram, there is a problem with how this data was originally organized in the source.

There are two steps to link data in Visio:

Import the data source into Visio. This creates the link between your Visio file and the data source, but does not link any of the shapes to that data.

Now we can see that the Excel and Visio files are linked together.

Link shapes to data. Once the data is associated with your diagram, you can associate individual rows in the data with shapes on the page (a single row may be associated with multiple shapes, such as visualizing multiple dimensions of data). Data can be associated by dragging individual rows from the shape data window or by automatically linking (if you have columns that correspond to shape data elements).

We linked automatically in this example, and Visio quickly associated all the shapes by unique names of each person in the chart.

You may be surprised by the result--there are text links to the right of the shapes. This is the default data graphic as text. Now we can change and add data graphics to the diagram to make it look exactly as we want it.

--Yana Terukhova, Product Marketing Manager

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Data-linked diagrams: Creating a diagram

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AppId is over the quota

Yana Terukhova is a Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team.

Visio offers over 60 types of professional templates to build compelling diagrams, and organization charts are among most the frequently created. Visio organization charts are simple and visual, but what if you want to connect them to key business indicators tracked by your organization, such as sales by region, budget by department, vacation status, or training progress? Sometimes this information is located in another source, like Excel or  a complex database. Data-linked diagrams let you add data to Visio diagrams--no code required--and anyone in an organization can quickly create such dashboards to get better insights into data using Visio Professional 2013 or Visio Pro for Office 365.

We’ll start with an organization chart diagram like this one.

The data you add to the organization diagram can be in an Excel file, populated from Exchange/Active Directory, or constructed manually by dragging shapes on a page.

Tip: if you pull data from Active Directory or Exchange, you must have Outlook installed and configured with an active profile--the requirement is a MAPI connection. Visio uses MAPI to get data, so if you don’t have one, the data import will fail.

In this example, the Excel file has three columns: Name, Title and Reports To. Visio uses this information to determine how to organize the reporting relationships in your organization chart.

From the Visio start screen, select or search for Organization Chart.

Once the wizard starts, select Information that’s already stored in a file or database. Then you can tell Visio what columns have your hierarchy information and where to import pictures from, if you have them.

 You can specify a folder with your pictures, and as long as there is a field that Visio can match to (such as Name). Visio will automatically associate them with the correct organization chart shape.

Once you’re finished, you’ll have an organization chart that looks like this:

Now you can click the Org Chart tab on the ribbon and make changes to reflect what you’re looking for, including spacing and other variants.

In this case, we used the Coin design to add a splash of color:

Although this example focuses on mapping departments of people, you can use the Organization Chart Wizard to map all sorts of hierarchical data--a website map, for example--as long as you can clearly format that data in Excel.

–Yana Terukhova, Product Marketing Manager

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Garage series: Goes under the hood of Office software updates

In this episode, our adventurous hosts go how software updates really succeed, lower for the new post. As they demystify, what is different when compared to the Office Professional plus 2013 MSI installation, and explain that optimized update service for Office 365 ProPlus click-to-run installation. Learn how the service works optional, so you look at your environment sanctioned updates on site or in the public cloud and find see how: leave default settings can set. Plus Yoni gets behind the wheel of a Ferrari F430 Spider to see if it will install Sydney, Australia-traffic in the today's XStream can beat.

Make sure you mark your calendar for new episodes , and learn more under www.microsoft.com/garage you can additional resources to discover and see the complete archive of all previous garage series shows.

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Crisp up your desktop with a window manager utility

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AppId is over the quota

Whether you use one monitor or three, Windows XP or Windows 8, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, you’re bound to have windows on your desktop. And you probably juggle several of them at once.

Windows operating systems come with several built-in management features, but they’re very basic and don’t always play well with multiple monitors. To control a cascade of windows effectively, you need a third-party window manager. I tested five popular ones—some of them free, and most of them inexpensive.

The free WinSplit Revolution is a great starter program. Simple and lightweight, WinSplit Revolution helps you manage multiple windows by assigning hotkeys to different window positions, and by providing a more sophisticated window-snapping feature.

Set up an exact layout for each window-snapping position with WinSplit Revolution.

WinSplit Revolution’s settings are completely customizable, and they handle everything from hotkeys to window-snapping positions, so you can move windows around swiftly and tile them exactly the way you want on each monitor. You can also set keyboard shortcuts for additional actions such as moving windows between monitors and toggling always-on-top desktop position.

A virtual numpad (a small on-screen arrow pad) is available for users who don’t mind clicking, but find dragging…well, a drag. You click the numpad to snap windows to various available positions. Though the idea itself is good, I found that the numpad tended to disappear inexplicably and remain gone until I restarted the program; even attempts to restore it from the program’s settings were futile. And because the numpad sits immovably at the top-left corner of the screen, it sometimes gets in the way of other windows’ options.

You can activate WinSplit Revolution's window-dragging-to-snapping function from the keyboard.

That quibble aside, WinSplit Revolution is a simple yet powerful program. For convenient window snapping, this app is your best option.

If your window management needs go beyond mere window snapping, however, the $10 Mosaico may be a better fit. Unlike WinSplit Revolution, Mosaico has an actual program interface, and you can use it to create different desktop snapshots for various situations. Once you’re happy with the way your windows are laid out, click the snapshot button to save the arrangement. You can save eight different desktop snapshots and restore them easily from the program’s snapshot browser.

Mosaico's simple interface revolves around taking (and restoring) desktop snapshots.

When restoring a snapshot, Mosaico will open relevant programs if they’re closed, and will minimize others that aren’t part of the snapshot. It can’t, however, open specific documents.

Snapshots aside, Mosaico offers an enhanced window-snapping feature, accessible by clicking arrows on the program’s interface or by dragging windows around. To perform the dragging function, you must first either enable the ‘Arrange manually’ option in the toolbar or press the M key. Mosaico supports multiple monitors well, and it comes with a built-in button for moving windows between monitors.

Mosaico's position previews make it easy to drag windows to an exact position on the screen.

Mosaico’s biggest weakness involves its imperfect state of Windows 8 compatibility. Though the program runs fine on Windows 8, I noticed some quirks, such as random display issues, and the program wouldn’t let me set custom keyboard shortcuts. These issues don’t occur on every Windows 8 system, however, and they should be fixed in the program’s next update. As Mosaico offers a 14-day free trial, you can try the program out to see how it works on your system.

Besides the ability to snap and tile windows, you may need more-advanced features in order to tame your desktop—such as windows that always open on a certain monitor or in a certain size, or easy access to transparency or always-on-top toggles, or program windows that snap automatically to one side of the screen whenever you open them.

Chameleon Window Manager's interface takes a little getting used to.

Chameleon Window Manager offers these and other features, in one or more of three packages: a very limited free version; a $25 Standard version; and a $30 Pro version. Surprisingly, only the Pro version offers certain basic features such as drag-to-snap, while the Standard version, too, includes some more-advanced features.

The custom title-bar buttons in Chameleon are reminiscent of a child's drawing, but they work.

Chameleon Window Manager gives you a multitude of options to apply to all of your windows, to specific programs, or even to specific windows within programs. Unfortunately, the interface is cluttered and confusing, so you could spend quite a while setting up everything. For each window, you can dedicate various title-bar buttons to performing actions such as basic snapping, monitor switching, and transparency toggling. Though the buttons are primitively designed, they work. You can save your configuration or create multiple ones and switch among them.

Chameleon's window-snapping layout is completely customizable.

These features look great on paper, but in reality Chameleon Window Manager performed very inconsistently for me. My settings worked only some of the time, windows became transparent when they shouldn’t have, and the title-bar buttons disappeared inexplicably. You could try the 30-day free trial and see how you fare, but competing programs in this roundup offer more-effective window management for the money.

Instead of focusing on how a window behaves when it’s opened, WindowSpace lets you control windows with dozens of customizable keyboard shortcuts. The operations involved range from regular window snapping and moving windows between monitors, to fine-tuning a window’s position on the screen, resizing, rolling up, and toggling transparency.

WindowSpace's interface is one big settings screen, and getting acquainted with it takes time.

Aside from letting you use keyboard shortcuts, WindowSpace can enhance each window’s title bar with additional context menu items and mouse actions that you can use to specify which menu items you want to add, and even how you want them to appear in the context menu. You can also set title-bar buttons such as Close, Minimize, and Maximize to perform new actions when right-clicked or middle-clicked.

Unlike the snapping function on most other window managers, WindowSpace’s Snapping tab doesn’t automatically send windows to corners. Instead, it concentrates on how windows behave when they’re positioned next to each other: Will they automatically snap to each other, for instance, or will they overlap? WindowSpace makes it easy for you to arrange your windows however you want.

In lieu of buttons, WindowSpace adds configurable context-menu items.

The program’s lack of a real interface—and the number of settings you need to ponder before you can start setting things up—can be confusing at first. Nevertheless, for fine-tuned control, WindowSpace is a solid option. It costs $25 after a 30-day free trial.

The four preceding tools above are free or reasonably inexpensive, but each offers only one set of features. The $50 Actual Window Manager includes every imaginable desktop-management feature, and then some—if you can find your way through the complicated, confusing, and rather unattractive interface.

Actual Window Manager's interface teems with countless options and tweaks.

Divided into nine different tabs, Actual Window Manager offers everything from specific window settings, a customized set of title bar buttons, and a configurable desktop grid for dragging and snapping windows, to keyboard shortcuts (dozens of them), window mirrors, virtual desktops, and a flexible Start-menu replacement. Unlike most Start menu replacements, Actual Window Manager lets you add just a Start button, and have the new Windows 8 Starts screen pop out of it, at full size or half size.

You can transform the Start screen's Apps section into a functional Start menu.

The program ably supports multiple monitors, giving you full control of multiple taskbars and their content. It even offers control of wallpaper settings, resolution controls, and other options that you’d normally select and manage through Windows’ native settings. Actual Window Manager includes more options than I could use in a year, and the program’s confusing interface can make them difficult to discover, but everything is there for the finding. All you need is the will to spend $50, the need for abundant features, and the patience to figure them out. The 60-day free trial can help you there.

Create your own desktop grids and dividers in Actual Window Manager, and use them to arrange your windows.

Windows is a manageable operating system even without these third-party programs; but once you add their fresh and useful features to the mix, you may find that going back isn’t an acceptable option. Whether you use multiple monitors or just one, a desktop manager can work wonders for your workflow. Try one, and see how well it helps you tame those wild and unmanageable beasts called windows.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
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Review: FatBatt lasts longer you off the grid, for an additional fee

The most spare battery meter utilities approach of information overload. Information leads to several decimal places, and reports was hidden behind obscure menu items, harboring deep secrets that require to extract click symphonies. Since laptops are factory equipped with basic battery monitoring software, third-party tool maker with one compensate for Checklist features designed the fork over the dough for something, that you free already to justify.

While this works well for everyone involved, there is a different approach: simplicity and directness a virtue, along with a heavy dose of style, that makes the software a pleasure do. FatBatt takes the latter route and despite a steep price, brings an honest charm that he was most pronounced next to his brothers sets.

FatBatt over MiserWares Web site search, get the impression the company his newbie status on the executor of laptop strongly tribal world is aware. The company makes no effort to hide the tiny size of the team or the playful personalities behind the software. The company blog inflate poetry about the product, feelings about questionable site layouts with free-form the six-person startup company popular download sites and Oden in the hometown. The same personality is on display in the software also with jokes in the "Options" window, and elsewhere.

The processor speed or screen brightness change and FatBatt fits the time estimates in the ongoing operation. All this makes for a good first impression, but the slick, plot graph interface is FatBatts's main attraction. It arranges time and free of charge a small chart that appears when you click the gadget FatBatt next to the clock on the taskbar. Conservative and optimistic estimates of remaining time create a shady spot on the chart, your battery life expectancy projects. Such as the software for more information on system usage and consumption habits, shaded specifies the field of narrows, improved accuracy due to more accurate information.

FatBatt the estimates vary often quite from the optimism on display with built-in battery gauge software, sometimes on the order of an hour or more. Although FatBatt deep software naturally don't show the tests with an A10-4600M AMD laptop system with a variety of mixed-load software results far more accurate than manufacturer or OS-provided solutions, usually within 5% or so of the reality of the.

A carefully selected range of conservation of energy options are available on the graph screen, including screen brightness control and a slider, set the speed of the processor. How to change them, you see the change of the battery immediately in the estimates on the display reproduced. Cut MHz or easy to materialize the backlight and the additional minutes. This feature alone is worth FatBatt. Also included are customizable alerts that you know when background processes are ruthless about your battery power budget before they turn into a wall socket-nomad.

The team is on full display in the software window options.

However, there is a catch. This boutique software comes it at a top-shelf price. You need to pay only a 14-day trial between nothing and the full version to appreciate FatBatts stimuli for a long time. MiserWare softens the $15 price with frequent discounts, but would a more reasonable number recommendation make an easier choice.

It looks like rival packages such as BatteryCare give you more free, but can FatBatts large surface area and the cool team behind it that your affection vary independently. The trial version is completely free of adware Chicane, so if you spend much time away from the charger, it makes sense, give it a try.

Note: The download button takes you to the manufacturers website where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Review: Hide your programs from prying eyes with WinLock

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AppId is over the quota
WinLock If you want to lock a window (as opposed to the whole PC), WinLock will do the job.

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Anyone who works in an office will know that when it's time to run to the bathroom, the chances of someone snooping around the computer increases. Whether it's a nosy colleague looking for gossip or a boss checking up on your work, no one wants to be caught out checking Facebook on company time. That's where a small program called WinLock comes in to save you.

You may say why not just lock the entire computer using the key combination WIN + L ? Why bother with WinLock? Well, perhaps you don’t want to lock the entire computer. Maybe a colleague will need to use your computer while you are away. Whatever the reason, you can now lock a window and make it disappear entirely from your screen, confident that no-one will be able to access it while you are away. This is a feature that should really be offered by Microsoft, by default. If you can lock an entire operating system, why not a single window?

Using it is extremely simple. Once you have downloaded the program, install it onto your computer and when you need it, run it. A small window will open up, with a text field for a password. The default password is 123 but you can easily change the default 123 password to something a lot stronger and a lot more memorable, then click the "Hide WinLock To Taskbar Tray" link to hide the program.

: In the main window, set your password for unlocking the window later.

When you want to lock a window—whether it is Windows Explorer or a browser window—just bring that window into focus and press the key combination CTRL + Space. Instantly, the window will disappear, not only from the screen but also from the Quick Launch bar at the bottom of your screen. To the casual snooper, it's as if the program is closed.

Obviously if a snooper were to check the Windows Task Manager, they would see the program still running, so this is not a foolproof system by any means. But interestingly enough, shutting down WinLock via the Task Manager does not make your window come back, so you can be sure that no-one can circumvent the security that way.

When you want to bring the window back, just double-click the program's icon in the taskbar tray and when the program's window pops up again, enter your password. Your previously hidden window will re-appear. It's as simple as that.

When you are ready to unlock your window, click on the program in the taskbar and enter your password. Your window will then reappear.

It goes without saying that this app isn't totally foolproof.  Anyone determined enough to break the encryption would be able to do so, given enough time and effort, and your corporate IT department will still be able to monitor your browsing habits if they want to. But if you are only using this in a casual office / family setting, to give yourself some privacy for a few moments while you step away from the computer, then WinLock is a no-frills alternative that should keep you safe from the office gossip.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Office 365-Nachrichten-Round-up

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AppId is over the quota

Every couple weeks, we round up industry news and articles you might have missed. We hope you enjoy our latest selections.

The Office 365 Upgrade: New Outlook Web App. The new Office 365 includes "a vastly improved" Outlook Web App.

ABB Deploys Office 365 and Yammer Worldwide. Power automation firm ABB plans to deploy Office 365 to its 145,000 employees around the world.

V8 Supercar Races Off with Microsoft Office 365. V8 Supercars chooses Office 365 because of trust in Microsoft brand.

Microsoft's Lync Communications Platform Used by President Obama's Re-election Campaign. The Obama campaign used the Lync platform during the 2012 elections, enabling staff to work from anywhere.

Why Office 365 Makes Sense for Small Business. Three compelling reasons why Office 365 may make sense for small businesses: a low upfront cost, multiple licenses, and Exchange Online.

Microsoft's Top Ten SharePoint Online Features. A senior product manager on the SharePoint Team shares his top 10 features of SharePoint Online.

Microsoft Turns Up 'Scroogled' Attacks with Campaign Against Google Apps. Microsoft calls on Google to stop providing user information to third-party Android developers.

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Project for project managers

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AppId is over the quota

With the release of the new Project, there's curiosity about how best to put it to work and apply its wide range of resources in a variety of business roles. Some people are experienced users who want to learn new tricks, while others are just discovering Project's capabilities for the first time. To help, we rounded up some of our most popular articles and organized them by common work responsibilities. Here, the focus is project managers with topics including great new and updated features like reports, timelines and task paths, fresh templates in Project 2013, and even some deeper technical discussions.

It's been 28 years since the first version of Microsoft Project, and in that time, our tools for project managers have evolved to meet the needs of the constantly changing demands of their role.  

Task path highilighting. Project managers' lives get a lot easier, because task path highlighting allows you to select any task and see the complete chain of predecessors and successors that are linked to it. Beyond that, the highlighting also differentiates between predecessors that are driving the scheduling of the selected task, and predecessors that are linked but can freely move without affecting the selected task.

Project plus SharePoint Task Lists. It's easy to put your task lists in the cloud with SharePoint. The SharePoint site and its tasks lists are where team members can view and edit the progress of their tasks, and Project Professional is where project managers can manage the progress of their projects. SharePoint tasks list sync empowers you to use the great functionalities of both Project and SharePoint tasks lists at the same time.

New and improved timelines in the cloud. With task lists in the cloud, it only makes sense that we would put timelines in the cloud too. Now, it's easier than ever to communicate a high-level view of your project to team members, stay focused on your upcoming personal tasks, and provide insight into all of your organization's work.

Reports. Whenever we talk to project managers, we hear one word over and over: reports. We hear how you're always preparing reports for status presentations or emails to customers, management, stakeholders, and team members, as well as how you have to make quick decisions and need reports to help you do this. All of that feedback inspired us to build a new reporting feature in the new version of Project.

New online templates. For the new Project, we've added some helpful online templates so you get started quickly, and we've even updated the template process.

New and improved schedule web part. Web-based scheduling with the new and improved schedule web part provides both the occasional and the certified project manager with the flexibility to quickly build simple and complex schedules online, and conveniently edit the plan via the browser from anywhere in the world.

Demand management. Learn how to use Project and SharePoint for demand management, empowering your team to submit new project proposals without getting overwhelmed with a deluge of information.

Let us know in the comments what you think of the new Project and how you're putting it to work for you, as well as any tips or tricks you've learned along the way. And don't forget to follow our Project for Project Managers blog feed!

 --Mark Sargeant, Product Marketing Manager

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Felicity Huffman on OneNote, and Surface RT giveaway

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AppId is over the quota

Actress Felicity Huffman has a lot going on. She's got her website Whattheflicka.com, family activities and responsibilities, television and movie projects, publicity details, and of course her own bucket list.

According to Felicity, "If Office 365 is like having your office travel around with you, OneNote is like having an office assistant combined with my own personal tutor right there in my big Mom bag that I carry around everywhere."

Go to Whattheflicka.com to find out how Felicity uses OneNote to keep everything straight--and don't forget to enter her Mother's Day Giveaway of four Surface RT tablets, all equipped with Office 2013 Home and Student RT with OneNote 2013 RT and other Office 2013 RT applications.

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United Airlines reduces web content administration from months to hours with enterprise solution

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AppId is over the quota

Based in Chicago, Illinois, United is one of the largest airlines in the world. To improve enterprise content management (ECM), United wanted to build communities around the products and services it delivers to customers. The airline initially deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and subsequently migrated to SharePoint Server 2010, which United developed into an enterprise platform for ECM and e-discovery, co-locating approximately 1 terabyte of content for the enterprise. In 2012, the airline deployed SharePoint Server 2013 for a variety of projects-including a service catalog that 87,000 employees rely on to search for and order products from the IT department. By using SharePoint Server 2013, United has also simplified content management-the amount of time required to enter a new item into the catalog has plummeted from two months to a few hours.

See more SharePoint customer stories.

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Review: Corel VideoStudio X6 eases creative video production

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AppId is over the quota

Version X6 of Corel VideoStudio brings the super-intuitive and easy-to-use video editor/producer within into a virtual dead heat with the feature sets offered by its competitors. New tricks in its bag include animation overlays, controlling DSLRs for stop motion animation, free-form motion editing, layer swapping, motion tracking, support for 2K and 4K video, and variable speed.

VideoStudio X6 also supports 50p/60p editing, AVCHD 2.0, 3D, surround sound, Blu-ray and most everything you could ask for. One cool new feature for subtitling is a form of audio beat detection that allows you to sync subtitles to speech more easily. There's even a whiteboard capture for animation overlays. Creatively, the VideoStudio X6 is very well-rounded.

The VideoStudio X6 interface isn't revolutionary, but because it doesn't overload you, it's easier to use than those it might resemble.

Most video editors have dark, paneled interfaces that rightfully focus your attention on the video. However, VideoStudio X6 manages to do it more cleanly and intuitively than Cyberlink PowerDirector or Adobe Premiere. It helps tremendously that Corel hasn't sized the icons for microscopes and has used them sparingly.

VideoStudio X6 also has a nice simple storyboard view that makes adding and arranging items a more intuitive process. You then use the timeline to tweak location and lengths, and add audio, multi-tracking, subtitles, and the like. I've only mentioned a few of the logical interface design decisions, but all told, they make VideoStudio X6's interface friendlier and more intuitive than just about anything out there.

VideoStudio X6 has a ton of transitions, effects, title styles, and what Corel calls instant projects which are basically templates. Drag an instant project element to your project, then edit details such as the audio file to be used, colors, text, videos to be used, etc. It's a bit different from the automatic productions you get from Muvee and others in that it requires your participation and creativity, but it's cool nonetheless.

2. The storyboard view in VideoStudio X6 makes it easier to order scenes than the standard timeline, which is also offered.

The Pro version of VideoStudio X6 costs $60, while the $100 Ultimate version adds a boatload of very nice effects from NewBlue and proDAD, plus the latter company's excellent video stabilization technology. Ultimate X6 is likely worth the extra $40, especially if you're editing lots of home video that needs steadying.

Corel may not be the powerhouse it once was, but the company is still putting out some very good software and VideoStudio Pro X6 is the evidence. For the average user it delivers a significantly easier, more intuitive, and more creative video editing experience than its major peers.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
More by Jon L. Jacobi

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Tips and tricks for the OneNote Windows Storage app

This post was written by Daniel Chandra, program manager in the OneNote team.

If you are new to Windows 8, you probably noticed, that the OneNote application looks and feels very different from other versions of OneNote. How are you looking for? What happened to the menus? The new Windows should avoid distracting you with commands that you do not need, but all that may change a little intimidating at first. Do not be afraid! In this blog post we will learn how to use the OneNote application from the Windows store. These tips and tricks can be used other Windows store apps on most. If you OneNote yet, download it now and the consequences- not it's free!

Instead of the traditional menus and toolbars, the OneNote Windows memory app uses so-called app bar, which appears when you right-click mouse button or swipe your finger in from the top or bottom of the screen. You can see the example in OneNote:

The app bar is contextual, meaning that you see different commands, depending on how you open it. For example, if you see with the right mouse button or cross blow (more on that later) to a page in the navigation pane of OneNotes you specific commands for the page, as you delete it or fixing it to your Start menu. Various commands shown when you drag your finger from the top or bottom edge of the screen.

OneNote added the app bar with a unique selling point, the radial menu, you find not called in most other Windows store apps. Try this: type text in OneNote, highlight it and press the round button with an A in the middle. See a menu that looks like:

In this context, the radial menu offers options, on the text, which you selected have applied, such as changing the font or copy and paste. Press the purple buttons on the outer edges of the menu, and see even more choices. Just like the app bar the radial menu is contextual and displays different commands, depending on how you it--try for example to open, to open the radial menu, notice without text to select, and the difference.

In the past, the various applications had their own way of doing things; only, because you knew you in Microsoft Word look like didn't knew you like in Firefox to search. The new Windows solves this problem the stimuli bar, with a single, consistent access to common functions such as search, sharing, and settings in each Windows Storage app. To open the stimuli bar, move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen, or you have a touch screen, swipe just your finger in the right side of the screen.

 

Play with charm bar and look at everything that you can do! For example, searches the search button within the app that you just opened. Meanwhile, the share button share information on another app; for example, in OneNote to share your notes to a friend email. In applications that support printing, you will find this feature under the button devices. (Sorry, the OneNote Windows store app doesn't support printing yet, but rest assured that we have heard there are requesting your feedback.)

As already mentioned, the app bar with contextual commands brings you with the right mouse button on an object with the mouse. But how we bring up the contextual app bar with touch? It's simple: Use the cross-swipe gesture. In OneNote, stroke from left to right on the name of a notebook, section, or page appear in navigation. This opens the app bar and displays features in connection with the item, which you cross stolen. Lay using many other Windows Storage apps, so this is a really useful gesture!

The new OneNote Windows store app brave reinvented for modern computer technology and contains many important improvements. However, it is undeniable, that is quite different from previous versions, and we know that the change can be a little scary. We hope this blog post your transition a little easier and helps you the most out of OneNote and make all the other Windows store apps!

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Webinar: A beginner's Guide to SharePoint online

Lets use it, small and large businesses to improve performance of SharePoint online Office 365 for enterprises. In this week webinar you will learn some of the basics, and we answer your questions.

The video will be available here in a few days.

What do you learn in Tuesday's webinar

Registration for the first time what is it? A look around where can I grab my stuff? Web sites: For your business and your customers

References for this webinar

Go to http://aka.ms/offweb for more information, how to join the series.

--Doug Thomas

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Summary of data on multiple criteria on multiple worksheets

Liam Bastick has modeling financial services and training customers for more than two decades available. A professional mathematician and accountant worked in many countries with many internationally recognized customers, provision and review of the strategic and operational models for various important business obligations. You can check out Liam's previous articles at www.sumproduct.com/thought, where you can subscribe to the monthly tips and tricks newsletter.

Ever to sum of data based on multiple criteria, in different Microsoft Excel worksheets? This article provides a quick tour of indirect references and table functionality during combination properties of the function SUMPRODUCT SUMIFS function provides a solution for the mother of all multiple criteria problems.

The functionality is best to walk through an example explained:

Ivana car sales has four business areas, smart as North, South, East and West. Each quarter the four divisions will submit sales reports detailing of the month sales, salespeople, the Auto color and the price for the car was sold.

The question is: How can you determine how many red cars Charlie in total sold in February in all four divisions?

The answer would be relatively easy if the data on a worksheet.  To cope with a single criterion of SUMIF would admirably well while SUMPRODUCT for multiple criteria can be used to generate the response (for more information see my blog posts to SUMPRODUCT function and approaches to the management of multiple criteria in a worksheet).

Because the reports are furnished, there are a few considerations:

It is important that these reports are from a master template, i.e., each report has the various fields in the corresponding column. This is important for what follows. If this is not the case, you should modify the data sheets. If the four reports do not in the same workbook are saved, the data on separate worksheets within the workbook should be imported, where the expense report to be generated.

If we want to refer to multiple data sheets, we need to know the names of these worksheets. For maximum flexibility, I would suggest, store them in a table (to highlight the data and on the tab of the Ribbon command bar, select Insert , table). Tables, see my blog for a full explanation.

I named this table Division_Table , as the divisions listing for analysis. To show why I used a table, keep in mind that I have recorded Division not the West. So I would give these to the line under East, West would be part of the table. This is a very useful function to refer to the lists.

It is also important to note that named the three divisions (South and East here North,) have identical names on the tab sheet name - otherwise, this solution will not work. Make sure that the text is exactly the same with that in the page tab.

We are now ready. In a separate worksheet, I would create the following table:

The formula in cell I12 here is probably one of the easiest that you have ever met (that is, if you are working in the world of relativistic quantum mechanics accidentally!):

= IFERROR (SUMPRODUCT (SUMIFS (indirect ("'" & Division_Table [relevant departments] & "'!"))))I: I "), indirect ("'"& Division_Table [relevant departments] &"'! ")"("F: F"),$ F12, indirect ("'" & Division_Table [relevant departments] & "'!")("G: G"),$ G12, indirect ("'" & Division_Table [relevant departments] & "'!")"H: H"),$ H12)),)

You know that you have created a monster, if you have three complex Excel functions in a fourth boxes. But have no fear. To work out what's going on, explains from the inside out is (as this is the order in which Excel calculates this formula):

Indirect (detailed here)--this function returns an array of reference such as ' North ' column F, 'South' column F, etc. that can be used by other functions. Note that "'" is the formula, quotation mark, apostrophe (the syntax in General to the sheet names), then quotation marks.SUMIFS-diese function now applies several criteria for the analysis of summation. However, when used alone, this only reports created in the first worksheet (the order of presentation within the workbook is irrelevant). Here comes the next function...SUMPRODUCT-diese function is necessary, as it is often referred to as a "pseudo array"function. What does this mean in practice here is that there will be conducted the SUMIFS function between all three worksheets. IFERROR--diese error trap ensures that if a worksheet in the Division_Table listed does not exist or there is a blank line, the formula will produce an error - #REF!, for example.

This is it. Now you will the workbooks to sum up and reports that Charlie was selling red car capable of, the data about $43 k in the four business units in February.

There are to consider two other possible solutions: pivot tables by using data from multiple worksheets or create a master data sheet as an intermediate step where all data on a worksheet is registered. I produced this response, because it was true to the particular circumstances of the problem.

Final thought is: keep it simple (also known as the KISS-rule). When data on multiple worksheets can complicate the problem and complexity. Before writing a wide range formulas as above described, you should always simplify the model structure first.

-Liam Bastick

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