How the new Office helps me manage my "mompreneur" life

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Guest blogger Erica Diamond is the founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning women's lifestyle blog, WomenOnTheFence.com, and the new global Get Off The Fence Movement.

As a busy blogger, mom, entrepreneur, coach and TV correspondent, I need to be organized. Microsoft Office has been keeping me on top of my business and family for many years, and I simply could not function without it.

Here are some reasons why I love the new Office and why you should too!

The new Outlook is noticeably cleaner. It now offers a clear view of email, calendars, and contacts. It's easy to enter baseball practices into the calendar and then invite my husband with a simple click. My emails, tasks and calendars are all in view at the same time, making navigation a breeze. And now the calendar view includes the local weather forecast along with current weather conditions so I'll never get caught in a rain storm without the right attire!

I also love that the People Card collects all the key details about my contacts in one place. I can see my contacts' social media info, which is crucial being a social media mom! If I want to notify my husband about parent teacher interviews, for example, I can schedule a meeting with him right within his contact information. So easy and quick!

As I mentioned, I'm always on the go. I often use the free Office Web Apps because they allow me to access and edit Office documents from virtually anywhere! Even if a colleague or friend doesn't have Microsoft Office, they can still view and edit the documents through the Web Apps.

The Web Apps also come in handy because I'm on the board of my son's school and we have about 10 documents that all members need to access at any given time. A solution for us is to save them all to SkyDrive. It was as simple as getting a FREE Microsoft Account, which allows all of us to have access to view and edit the same document in real time from our home, office, or on the go from a compatible mobile device. I also store my media kit in SkyDrive, so I have everything I need at my fingertips from virtually anywhere. I no longer have to run home and send it from my desktop!

As for Excel, I LIVE in it. From creating my invoices, to managing my family schedules and activities, to easily planning my family budget, Excel is a user-friendly and phenomenally powerful program.

What can I say about Microsoft Word? I wrote my first book in Word, my son does his homework in Word and I write my blog posts for WomenOnTheFence.com in Word.

As you can see, I couldn't run my life without Office. From going paperless and using OneNote to replace sticky notes and binders, to PowerPoint for creating brand presentations, this program is simple to use and extremely powerful.

I'd love to know how you use Office throughout your daily routine! Share your tips about how Office simplifies YOUR life!

--Erica Diamond

Keep up with Erica on her award-winning women's lifestyle blog, WomenOnTheFence.com, and the new global Get Off The Fence Movement.

View the original article here

Review: Anki helps you to learn and memorize virtually anything, for free

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Spaced repetition is a simple study principle: I show you the front side of a flash card bearing, say, a word in Spanish. You then have to tell me what that word is, in English. If you got it right and it was very easy, I won't ask you again in another two weeks; if it wasn't so easy, I'll ask again in a week; and if it was really hard, I'll ask again tomorrow. In this way, you don't have to spend time going over material you already know–the system adapts to the data you've acquired, Software like Anki (free and open-source) bring ease, sophistication, and much more power into this process. And if you think flash cards are only for memorizing trivia or language, you'd be surprised.

Anki makes it easy to break down information into separate bundles.

Trivia and language are the two most common uses, and flash cards are great at that. I first tried using Anki almost two years ago, when I decided to master the NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Charlie, and so on). I used Anki's mobile companion, AnkiDroid, for most of my studying, and it was remarkably effective. Within a few short days I was able to spell out anything using the NATO alphabet, and I retained the knowledge for months. Recently, I came across something called the Janki Method, in which you use spaced repetition to learn anything, including computer programming, and not just limited sets of data.

Cloze-type cards have you fill in the blank, either mentally or by typing the answer.

The key piece here is creating your own decks of cards. Anki plugs into a free service called AnkiWeb, which hosts many ready-made shared card decks. There are some users who carefully created extensive decks of cards for learning anything from anatomy to Japanese, and it is very easy to download these packs. Creating one from scratch seemed like a lot of work, until I realized the key was to do it incrementally, one new datum at a time, as I learn.

Once the answer is revealed, Anki asks you to rate how easy or difficult it was to recall.

Anki makes it very easy to create new cards, and you can create different types of cards. The most basic type is the traditional flash card. There's also a reverse card, where you're sometimes shown the front ("Chair") and sometimes the back ("Silla," Spanish for chair). You only enter the information once, and Anki is smart enough to generate multiple cards based on the data.

Anki also features more traditional flash cards, with front and back sides.

Another great type of card is the Cloze, where you include a paragraph of text and blank out some words ("O say can you see [...] early light"). Anki then shows you the card and you need to recall the missing part. You can also use one block of text to generate many Cloze-type cards, making card generation very easy.

Unlike with physical cards, Anki shows you the front and back at the same time.

You can also have Anki prompt you to type in the right answer using your keyboard, which is excellent for mastering programming language syntax. There is an art to creating the right type of cards: SuperMemo, a commercial spaced repetition product that preceded Anki, put together a great list of the 20 rules of formulating knowledge in learning.

It is easy to edit the current card and amend it right when you're studying.

Anki is a mature product, but its interface can seem unintuitive at first. There is a learning curve to both the system and Anki, so if you're just starting out, you should probably find a ready-made pack of cards and use that for a while. You can then transition over to creating your own cards.

All in all, if you enjoy learning new things (or have to, for school), Anki is an invaluable piece of software, well worth the time it takes to master and use on a daily basis.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system. This program is a known to receive false positive malware results from Norton Antivirus.

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

View the original article here

Outlook delegate access helps a principal burden shoulders

The question of the always primary schools - public, or in other ways - on board with electronic communication has taken some time. It needs may result in a strong leader, in the form of a principal to this effort. If you a busy are principal or administrator, your administrative assistants, Secretaries, Office managers, and other support staff which are crucial in the day-to-day operations front office. If you use Outlook with Microsoft Exchange, you can use parts of the calendar of the hand and mailing duties to anyone setting a delegate. Then you have more time to the reduction in, unannounced, some classrooms and each make nervous.

My third grader school is just down the street from us, we are one of the lucky families who every day can go to and from school. When an almost-full-time normally could drivers, the school in the vicinity also means that I can longer voluntary as I as I'm not dealing with travel. Now, at Microsoft, people tend to think that I know about computers from the best Office fix (I know nothing), as you (, that one) what I can do. So when I saw a lot of e-Mail communications, which was written to the e-Mail address of their front Office Admin of the principal out, asked me if they knew about the delegate of access (they don't) set up. And so I'm on my way show them how over there.

But hey, not everyone has the Crabby Office Lady directly on the road, they do now? Let you make quick and easy me this:

Delegate access permissions is an advanced feature as only your Outlook folder with other people in your company by using Outlook with Exchange Server. You would like to purchase from Kagi, additional permissions, such as allowing a delegates to create e-Mail messages or responses to meeting requests on your behalf, you must delegate access use.

If a delegate Send on behalf of has permissions, the delegate can compose an e-Mail message and type the name in the field from Manager. Recipients of the e-Mail message displays the text delegate name on behalf of manager name next to from. If you are a grant delegate access, you can how much or how little you want to grant access - to your calendar or Inbox.

There are far from me to tell you what you need. But if you really, if you a lot of appointments to make and respond to have, and if you plan a good amount of mail, if you have access to any Wizard (and you are all Exchange send natural), it is my humble opinion after it you it would be well advised. It is a large integrated feature of Outlook with Exchange, so why not use it?

Before I send to these resources, let me say that it is not very difficult to set this up; You can do it in a few minutes.

Outlook 2010

Outlook 2007

So, this bright and shiny Monday morning, I am glad that I could help my daughter school in this way; It sure beats sale fundraisers managing to bake...

Office partner

View the original article here

Office 365 helps you collaborate in the cloud

If everyone in the Organization must work on a project, you want to gut-- without work in the other way and without anything slipping through the cracks. You want to able to keep track of how, when it is done and problems that emerging - anytime, anywhere.

With Office 365, you can save your files in your own, private Internet space--, which keep these people talk cloud. You can access project documents and these projects, no matter whether you are at work or at home or on the bus with your mobile phone.

When looking at such Office 365 business and not for-profit groups could help our team visited a local arts organization. Several people have key roles in a project to grant applications on a deadline, so cooperation is most - especially when it finish to financing,. People on projects can work together by making available files anywhere, faster, Office 365, with less stress.

You can get a quick look at a solution.

Find more information about Office 365 or sign up for the beta version. And you can help us tell the story of how Office 365 could your business, and perhaps win a $50,000 business package and an Executive for a day.

-Joannie bar country

View the original article here