Die Garage-Serie für Office 365: Touch und der neuesten Immersive Erfahrungen überall

This week comes out of a six-part series on location in New Orleans, and covers the enhancements to touch and immersive experiences in the new Office. Jeremy Chapman is along with Valley Krzypow and Tim Bakke Office experiences across screens of all sizes - from cell phones to large panel displays show. On the way they put some lesser known features in PowerPoint, tour the GeoFlow preview for Excel and show the capabilities of the 82 "Perceptive Pixel (PPI) display.

Jeremy: This week we are from the TechEd New Orleans comes to you and takes the garage series on the journey. We have infused the local culture and scenery, such as Office to put to the test. In the coming weeks you will see real-time implementation, using Office Web apps, we will test whether Office can be productive in Louisiana and we take another turn on providing online and offline racing-. But this week, we discuss with Office.

Valley: Devices take more and more shapes, sizes, and input methods. Accordingly holds office on desktop applications, Web apps, the best experience delivers everywhere developed apps for Windows 8, and across other platforms. Yoni demonstrates some of the capabilities in the garage series live in April, but we decided, a bit deeper under the hood in this episode go. The combination of Windows 8 investments in touch APIs, and met up with Office investment in fluid and intuitive touch experience, unlocks new experiences and scenarios. If you use new OneNote for Windows 8 and the radial menu or the Outlook Web app on a touch screen, even simple actions touch feel like scrolling, the they built were with a surface, which sticks to your fingers and a fluid movements throughout.

Jeremy: So it was great to welcome Valley, as the host team in the Office product to show some of the new and existing features, touch, as trigger can use to touch icons and create the new animation, merge forms, Slide Navigator and zoom slide. Watch the show for some awesome recipes, that Valley found with local delicacies.

A question that we hear is much like the perceptive pixel (PPI) display, which we, in the garage series use when compared to other large-screen devices. So we brought Tim Bakke PPI team to the talk about the capabilities of the device and showing how it used to 3D renderings, visualize the GeoFlow preview for Excel, OneNote app for Windows 8 and the new PowerPoint.

Next week we will the next functions show back from New Orleans as we Office Web apps and test, whether one can write local Blues Band song in real time, offline use of various devices, browsers, and even the word desktop application.

See you then!

Jeremy and Valley

Additional resources:

Garage-series-video channel

Touch-Guide for the new Office

Perceptive pixel from the Microsoft homepage

Use the new Office with a twist (next Office blog)

Garage Series season 1-blog archive

 

About the garage series hosts:

During the day Jeremy Chapman at Microsoft, is responsible for optimizing the future of Office client and service delivery as a preliminary deployment starring. Jeremy's background in application compatibility, building automation was deployment tools and infrastructure reference architectures for the prioritization of new Office Enterprise features like the latest click-to-run installation of fundamental importance. At night, he is zealous and serial linguist a car modding. Valley began his path at Microsoft as the product planners PowerPoint and graphics. Today, he serves as the technical product marketing manager for Word and PowerPoint. Valley persistence with PowerPoint through different roles is no coincidence. A passionate, enjoys Valley design, news, stories and pictures. His creations include a collection of over 200 icons in PowerPoint and its very own handmade PC Messenger bag.

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Garage Series: Best of stunts and demos

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AppId is over the quota

In this episode of the new Office Garage Series, we look back at some of the best moments of Season 1 from XStream Office installs in air, on land and water and some of the best demos as we helped answer your top questions about the new Office. It's not too late to catch up as we get ready for Season 2 kicking off next week in the Big Easy where we'll add Louisiana flair to upcoming shows.

Be sure to mark your calendar for new episodes and learn more at www.microsoft.com/garage where you can discover additional resources and check out the complete archive of all previous Garage Series shows. 

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Review: Master Gmail shortcut keys with KeyRocket

Engineers love keyboard shortcuts. So, the ability offers like most Google products, Google mail, all with a touch of a button, by creating a new message (c for compose) pretty much goes back to the main list of emails (u for themselves). These shortcuts are one of the best features of Gmail: you can compose, archive, forwards and replies to messages, switch labels, search, and more all without reaching for the mouse,.

Oh, they are also difficult to learn. After you enable keyboard shortcuts in the settings screen, press the "?", a semi-transparent overlay to get list of all links. For some people not look at a long list of the best way to learn-and that the KeyRocket thinks that it can do better.

Every time when you use the mouse to do something that can do your keyboard, you let know, KeyRocket.

Veodin's KeyRocket for Gmail sits in the background and quietly watches as you use Gmail your every move. Once (to select it), click the checkbox next to a message, it opens a discreet notification let you know, you could've made just "X" on your keyboard, to do the same. If you had used the reply button, DaaŸ KeyRocket 'R' as well.

Because the messages are contextual, much more useful than a help sheet: you learn in bite-sized pieces, and only the functions that you can actually use.

KeyRocket makes it easy to understand key combinations.

KeyRocket is not perfect: it should ideally able to say, if you already know a shortcut and just prefers using the mouse out and again for the same function. KeyRocket should not tell me about the "#" shortcut at a time when I use the mouse-clicking the button only the first couple of times.

But despite this minor flaw, KeyRocket is an excellent learning tool for Gmail.

Note: The download button you get to the chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into the chrome browser.

Endless tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission, the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to discover, make happen this morning.
More by Erez Zukerman

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Review: SocialSafe keeps your social data safe

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AppId is over the quota

Chances are, you have tons of information stored in your various social media accounts. Everything from photos and videos to chats with friends, contact lists, and more. If your favorite social network goes offline or becomes unavailable for any reason, all of that data could disappear. But not if you've backed it up with SocialSafe, an easy-to-use PC and Mac tool that makes safeguarding your social data downright fun.

SocialSafe makes it easy to pick and choose which accounts you'd like it to back up.

SocialSafe is free to try for 60 days, but the free version is limited to syncing four social media accounts. After the trial is up, you have to spring for a 12-month license to keep syncing your social networks. It costs $7 for four social network accounts, $17 for ten accounts, and $28 GBP for up to 20 accounts. Any data you download will always be available to you via SocialSafe, even if you do not renew your license.

Using SocialSafe is simple: You authorize it to access your social media accounts, and then set it to sync. SocialSafe supports the biggies in social media, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Vladeo, various blog services, and Facebook pages. If you have more than one Facebook account, you can add both.

A thin column on the left side of SocialSafe's interface offers access to its main features.

Once your accounts have been synced—which can take anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on how much info you have packed in there—SocialSafe stores the data right on your computer. You access all of the info using the SocialSafe interface, which is colorful, attractive, and intuitive.

SocialSafe lets you browse through your social network activity and data in a variety of ways. The calendar view lets you see how active you were on a certain date, while the journal view lets you see your activity in more of a story format. The journal is organized by date, and you can flip through its pages to see your added friends, posted photos, status updates, tweets, and more.

SocialSafe shows you how many times you were active on your various social networks on certain days.

Anyone who relies on Facebook and Instagram to capture and store photos will appreciate how SocialSafe allows you to back up and browse all of your snapshots. You can export the photos to another location on your PC for editing or other uses, too.

One of the most interesting aspects of SocialSafe is its Insights feature, which helps you gauge both the timing of your social networking activity and its reach with your friends and followers. You can see how often you post on certain days of the week, and which of your posts and online activities have proven the most popular. SocialSafe also shows you which friends you interact with the most and which photos have garnered the most feedback.

SocialSafe breaks down your social networking activity by day of the week.

I do wish SocialSafe synced your accounts automatically when you launched it, but that's a minor complaint, given that you can schedule the application to sync at a certain time each day. Overall, SocialSafe is a handy tool for backing up all of that data you store online…and one that makes it fun to browse.

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

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Microsoft turns Siri against Apple in hilarious new Windows 8 ad

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AppId is over the quota
Windows 8 Professional $200.00 Windows 8 isn't for everyone. If you're mostly a desktop PC user comfortable with Windows 7, upgrading to Windows 8 is probably not worthwhile. If you're a mobile user who needs easy access to the...

After coming out swinging a few days back with a Surface ad that focused on Office, Microsoft has a new ad that confronts the iPad head-on. And here’s the crazy part: it’s surprisingly amusing.

The commercial is a takeoff of Apple’s iPad Mini piano commercial. In the Microsoft version—entitled “Windows 8: Less talking, more doing”—the company pokes fun at Apple’s personal digital assistant Siri, all the while showing off the advantages of a Windows 8 tablet over the iPad.

“Sorry, I don’t update like that,” Siri says when the disembodied hand often seen in Apple commercials tries to get Live Tile updates from the iPad’s grid of icons. “Sorry, I can only do one thing at a time,” Siri chimes in again while a Windows 8 tablet shows off the Snap feature that lets you view two apps at once.

Finally, in what sounds like a moment of digital exasperation, poor Siri says, “I guess PowerPoint isn't one of those things. Should we just play Chopsticks?” Fade to pricing. Hey look, the Windows 8 64GB tablet is $250 cheaper. The message is clear: The iPad is a child’s toy next to a full featured Windows 8 tablet running Microsoft Office; it’s cheaper and it’s better.

Now, forget all the things that are wrong with this ad. Even though Microsoft hasn’t released the oft-rumored Office for iOS yet, Apple offers its own presentation software—Keynote—that opens PPT files just fine, and the iPad can work with PowerPoint Web apps in a pinch.

Also, the iPad is certainly a lot more useful than Microsoft’s portrayal suggests, and it starts at $500, not the $699 mentioned in the ad. The 64GB version is $699, however, and that's how much storage the Asus tablet shown in the clip packs in.

But the commercial is amusing and informative about the advantages of Windows 8—and that’s what's effective in advertising.

Apple’s “Hi, I’m a Mac” ads portrayed the Windows PC as a product for pencil-pushing buffoons. It was a distortion, but it was amusing and it enumerated many of the Mac’s selling points over a Windows PC. Again, that’s what counts.

Microsoft may lose points on originality since this ad is a spoof, but the company’s latest run of commercials is impressive for a firm that has a terrible track record when it comes to marketing. Who can forget the completely meaningless Seinfeld ads that started in 2008 or the oh-so-lame I’m a PC campaign from 2009?

But this iPad vs. Windows 8 ad makes you wonder how long Microsoft plans to hype the iPad as an ‘Office-less’ device. After months of reported sightings and speculation, Office for iPad is rumored to show up in fall 2014, according to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley. Is Microsoft just trying to get a few digs into its longtime rival before it’s too late, or does this ad suggest a change in tactic that may keep Office off of iOS indefinitely?

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Advancing the enterprise social roadmap

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AppId is over the quota

 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.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Yammer acquisition, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on where we've come from and talk about where we're going. My last post focused on product integration, but this time I want to zoom out and look at the big picture. It has been a busy year, and it's exciting to see how our vision of "connected experiences" is taking shape.  

First off, it's worth noting that Yammer has continued to grow rapidly over the last 12 months--and that's not something you see every day. Big acquisitions generally slow things down, but in this case we've actually seen the opposite. David Sacks provided his perspective in a post on the Microsoft blog, but a few of the high-level numbers bear repeating: over the last year, registered users have increased 55% to almost 8 million, user activity has roughly doubled, and paid networks are up over 200%. All in all, those are pretty impressive stats, and I'm proud of the team and the way the things have gone post-acquisition.

Second, we've continued to innovate, testing and iterating our way to product enhancements that are helping people get more done. Over the last year we've shipped new features in the standalone service once a week, including:

Message translation. Real-time message translation based on Microsoft Translator. We support translation to 23 languages and can detect and translate from 37 languages. Inbox. A consolidated view of Yammer messages across conversations you're following and threads that are most important to you.File collaboration. Enhancements to the file directory for easy access to recent, followed, and group files- including support for multi-file drag and drop.Mobile app enhancements. Continual improvements for our mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone.Enterprise graph. A dynamically generated map of employees, content and business data based on the Open Graph standard. Using Open Graph, customers can push messages from line of business systems to the Yammer ticker.Platform enhancements. Embeddable feeds, likes, and follow buttons for integrating Yammer with line of business systems.

In addition to innovation in the standalone product, we've also been hard at work on product integration. In my last roadmap update, I highlighted our work with Dynamics CRM and described three phases of broad Office integration: "basic integration, deeper connections, and connected experiences." Earlier this month, we delivered the first component of "basic integration" by shipping an Office 365 update that lets customers make Yammer the default social network. This summer, we'll ship a Yammer app in the SharePoint store and publish guidance for integrating Yammer with an on-prem SharePoint 2013 deployment, and this fall we'll release Office 365 single sign-on, profile picture synchronization, and user experience enhancements.

Finally, even though we're proud of what we've accomplished over the last twelve months, we recognize that we're really just getting started.  "Connected experiences" is our shorthand for saying that social should be an integrated part of the way everyone works together, and over the next year we'll be introducing innovations designed to make Yammer a mainstream communication tool.  Because of the way we develop Yammer, even we don't know exactly what that will look like. But what we can tell you is that we have an initial set of features we're working on today, and we'll test and iterate our way to enhancements that will make working with others easier than ever before. This approach to product roadmap is fairly new for enterprise software, but we're convinced it's the only way to lead out in space that is as dynamic and fast-paced as enterprise social. To give you a sense for where we're headed, here are a few of the projects currently under development over the next 6-8 months:

SharePoint search integration. We're enabling SharePoint search to search Yammer conversations and setting the stage for deeper, more powerful apps that combine social and search.Yammer groups in SharePoint sites. The Yammer app in the SharePoint store will allow you to manually replace a SharePoint site feed with a Yammer group feed, but we recognize that many customers will want to do this programmatically. We're working on settings that will make Yammer feeds the default for all SharePoint sites. (See below for a mock-up of a Yammer group feed surfaced as an out-of-the-box component of a SharePoint team site.)Yammer messaging enhancements. We're redesigning the Yammer user experience to make it easier to use as a primary communication tool. We'll also be improving directed messaging and adding the ability to message multiple groups at once.Email interoperability. We're making it easier than ever to use Yammer and email together. You'll be able to follow an entire thread via email, respond to Yammer messages from email, and participate in conversations across Yammer and email.External communication. Yammer works great inside an organization, but today you have to create an external network to collaborate with people outside your domain. We're improving the messaging infrastructure so that you can easily include external parties in Yammer conversations.Mobile apps. We'll continue to invest in our iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8 apps as primary access points. The mobile apps are already a great way to use Yammer on the go, and we'll continue to improve the user experience as we add new features to the service.Localization. We're localizing the Yammer interface into new languages to meet growing demand across the world.

It will take some time, and we'll learn a lot as we go, but every new feature will help define the future--one iteration at a time.

When I take a moment to look at how much has happened over the last year, I'm really proud of the team and all they've accomplished. An acquisition can be a big distraction for both sides, but the teams in San Francisco and Redmond have come together and delivered. And as you can see from the list of projects in flight, we're definitely not resting on our laurels. We're determined to lead the way forward with rapid innovation, quick-turn iterations, and connected experiences that combine the best of Yammer with the familiar tools of Office. It's an exciting time, and we hope you'll join us in our journey. 

--Jared Spataro

P.S. As you may have seen, we'll be hosting the next SharePoint Conference March 3rd through the 6th in Las Vegas. I'm really looking forward to getting the community back together again and hope that you'll join us there for more details on how we're delivering on our vision of transforming the way people work together. Look forward to seeing you there!

 

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Review: Dashlane is a robust password manager with a gorgeous interface

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AppId is over the quota
Dashlane With its simple interface and myriad of features, Dashlane is a powerful password manager anyone should consider.

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A password manager is a must. Unless you're using the same password for everything (not recommended) or have a truly phenomenal memory, your productivity can benefit from a place to store all your passwords and easily use them whenever necessary. There are several strong players in this field, such as LastPass and KeePass. Dashlane (free for basic version, $20/year for Premium) aims to take on both.

Dashlane is a robust password manager with additional room for your various IDs, credit cards and other payment methods, receipts, and notes. It comes with an auto-fill feature for online forms to which you can add different addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information you're tired of typing repeatedly. There are two features that make Dashlane stand out when compared to both LastPass and KeePass: Its beautiful and easy-to-use interface, and its optional cloud syncing.

The Security Dashboard analyzes your database, alerting you of weak, recurring, or breached passwords

Setting up Dashlane is exceptionally easy. LastPass and KeePass are both fairly easy to use, but they have nothing on Dashlane. The installation process takes you step by step through setting up the program, with clear instructions and smooth guidance. After choosing your master password for Dashlane--unlike LastPass, there's no "password reminder" here, so you must remember it or lose access to your database--Dashlane will install itself on your browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer are supported), and will lead you through trying out its different features and interface elements.

If you're already using a different password manager, you can import your database into Dashlane pretty easily. The import tool supports databases from Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, LastPass, 1Password, RoboForm, PasswordWallet, KeePess, and custom CSV files, but the tool is a little finicky. For example, my KeePass CSV did not contain a filled-in URL field, as this is not mandatory in KeePass. Dashlane ignored every password that did not come with a URL, leaving me with no way to import my large password database into Dashlane. Fortunately, Dashlane can automatically add new credentials upon logging in to websites, so after using it for several days, most of my oft-used passwords were transferred to Dashlane without much effort on my part.

On every new login, Dashlane will offer to automatically save your credentials

Dashlane's strong yet subtle browser integration makes logging in to websites a seamless operation, but doesn't add unnecessary clutter to your browsing experience. Once a password is stored in Dashlane, it can log you in automatically every time the website is loaded, or auto-fill the credentials without logging you in. If you're opening an account on a new website, Dashlane can generate a strong password for you right from your browser, and store it in your database in one fell swoop.

You can categorize passwords and other information for easy access, and a small blue impala icon in a browser text field will alert you to the fact that Dashlane can auto-fill this for you. If you have more than one account with a website, more than one email address you like to use, etc., clicking the blue impala will open a dropdown menu where you can choose the desired information.

One of the most important aspects of a password manager is security, and with Dashlane, you can select your level of paranoia. Your database is encrypted with AES-256 encryption, only you know the master password to decrypt it, and you can enable Google Authenticator for extra security. Unlike LastPass, where everything is in the cloud, automatic cloud syncing and backup is a Premium feature in Dashlane, so free users don't have to worry about it.

Even if you're a paid customer, however, you can easily opt out of cloud syncs, meaning your password database is only stored locally, just like with KeePass. Unlike KeePass, though, Dashlane's free mobile apps can be managed as separate databases, so you can access your passwords on the go without worrying about constant cloud syncs. When enabled, Dashlane syncs happen every 5 minutes, and there's no way to control or reduce this frequency.

The Premium version also includes Web access to your data from any browser, anywhere

Dashlane is an impressive password manager with some excellent features and a beautiful interface. It does require a certain amount of trust in the company, especially when using its syncing options, and for $20/year, its Premium version is expensive when compared to the alternatives. Nevertheless, it is the perfect password manager for the less tech-savvy, and even the experienced are sure to enjoy it, if only for the merits of its interface. It's available in Android, iOS, and Mac editions, in addition to the PC edition I reviewed.

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