Office 2007 Beta 2

Well, I have been previewing the latest beta from the MS boys in Redmond. And, I hate to admit it, but I think this might be Microsoft's first worthwhile update for their Office suite since XP. So far, there have been quite a few moments that can be summarized by... thank God... I was waiting for them to finally do that. And, none of the programs have crashed on me in the last 5 days. Here are some of the things I like:

• the ribbon


• expedited function requests (changing margins, styles, and so forth)


• improved filtering in Excel


• record counting of filters


• removal of personalized menus and toolbars


• RSS feeds in Outlook


• tighter integration of tasks in Outlook

Check it out... it is only a 440MB download for the Office 2007 Enterprise Beta.

Ruminations

I finally have a comedian that is in my frame of mind lately, Aaron Karo. You have to check out his newsletters to see what I am talking about. NSFU40...

Windows Live Outlook Plugin

I was reading an entry from my buddy Jimmy talking about the recent enhancements Microsoft has done for Windows Live Local. And, it really does seem better than Google Maps/Google Local. That is one thing that you have to give Gates and Microsoft. They are the masters of taking a marketable, great idea that cannot be copyrighted and tweaking/spinning the heck out of the thing into an awesome, money-making product. And Jimmy is right... they might just have something here.

Regardless, I noticed after browsing the Windows Live Local site that there is an Outlook plugin. I just downloaded the free beta plugin to try it out. Who knows what kind of damage may ensue on my computer? But hey, it can't be any worse than what IE7 Beta 2 did to the OS. It has rendered the IE functionality useless even upon the safe uninstall. It even does a neat trick where I can type in URLs into my original IE6 and the Web sites will open in Firefox, which is not set to be my default browser. Sounds great, huh? I'll run down the report after a couple of days.

Podcasting Thoughts

By previewing the NECC 2006 workshop sessions online the other day, it didn't take a rocket scientist to notice some distinct trends in presentation topics. Of course there are your standards like professional development, blogging and the like. But, one that really stuck out to me is podcasting. Yeah, big shocker... now this technology is not new by any means. But, the money/funding does seem to be flowing like the Mississippi River into the Gulf for research projects investigating the cost/benefit to implementing iPods into the curriculum. It is happening at the K-12 and Higher Education level. If you do any kind of surface level investigation, one can notice that everybody is for it, and nobody wants to be realistic and play the devil's advocate. So, I am ready to...

1. Podcasting is an awesome tool if used correctly. That means equipping end-users with some software client that subscribes to RSS feeds. The point being that the process needs to be simplified in a manner to be non-exclusionary by default for all technology skills.


2. Users need training. But, the process (see point 1) should contain no more steps that we have fingers on one hand.


1. Download and install a podcast client.


2. Subscribe to the RSS feed which syncs on a schedule.


3. Plug in the portable audio/video podcast player.


4. Sync the player with the software client.


5. Listen to the podcasts downloaded to the player.


3. Content creation, editing, and production needs to be an organized process. This is crucial. This tenet relates to all forms of media - print, TV, etc. I really think that this is where programs will fail.

Bottom line is this... Implementing a podcasting project of any scale takes a detailed, organized plan. Anything less will render the project into the bin of federal or state-funded projects that have good intentions but never meet project goals.