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Another day in the Office


A blog about Microsoft Office, Groove, SharePoint, Software Development, Business Productivity, Social Computing, Cognitive Science and anything else that comes to mind.

This stream of conciousness brought to you by Alistair Speirs, Office Technology Specialist @ Microsoft Australia.

May 2008 - Posts

Busted!
Full story at the SMH ... If I were responsible for this, I'd not be happy for a number of reasons: If they were using Word 2007, they could have inspected the document and stripped out personally identifiable metadata and the like, before saving as a Read More...
3 Office System Whitepapers you need to know
For all you collabronauts out there, whether you are architecting, developing, maintaining or consuming information - it these three whitepapers should be a required text and on hand for any snappy business cases you need to put together. Collaborative Read More...
What is an Office Business Application?
Is it a macro? A sharepoint customisation? A mashup? What is important, in my mind, is that the user is shielded from the complexity (or lack of it) in the process and the application can just stay out of their way so they can do their job and keep using Read More...
The Command Line is dead. Long Live the Command Line!
Graphical Powershell . Mmmmmm. it almost makes the command line sexy again: Want to try it out but can't even work out Pasta Shells? Check out the Office Script Repository here Read More...
Tech.Ed Office System track by the numbers
Tech.Ed is inching closer and closer. The amount of unsolicited session nominations has been huge, and we have been wrestling with how best to condense the ecosystem of software that is the Office System into 3 days of technical education. So, to feed Read More...
Free Office Templates (that aren't from the 80s)
6 designs, 9 colours,  7 templates. 378 new options for creating documents that don't suck. Go get them tiger. Microsoft Small Business Center | Free Office Templates Read More...
Presentations without clipart or bullet points
I mentioned in an earlier post, Beyond Bullet Points . Here is a recent presentation I delivered, using the BPP process.  Originally I intended to replace these with nice glossy clip art images. However, I ended up sticking with the stick men, because Read More...
Tech.Ed 2008 - What to expect in the Office System Track
We've started planning the Australian TechEd content already. How do we do it? Think really hard about what we need to cover. This year: With the big release of Office, SharePoint last year and SP1 earlier this year, adoption has well and truly moved Read More...
Cool Download: Open XML Theme Builder
  Codeplex has lots of interesting tools. Here is one I stumbled on today - This is a much easier way of making Office 2007 themes and styles than manually doing it through the Word or PowerPoint interface: The Open XML Theme Builder is a tool that Read More...
Delivering Presentations that don't suck
Last week was almost a perfect storm of presentations this week: A Deep dive on Excel 2007 and Access 2007 for hardcore banking users A whole of Office System walkthrough "Collaboration Anywhere with Groove and SharePoint" at the SharePoint Read More...
Tech.Ed Australia 2008
The conference site is live - full of silverlightiness and early bird discounts.   Microsoft - Tech.Ed Australia 2008 - Learn - Agenda Here is an insiders tip: All the cool kids go to the Office System track. Read More...
Microsoft Press Shop opens in Australia
Tired of waiting for months for your local technical bookshop to stock the book you need to learn the skills, finish the project and go home and play GTA IV? Sick of waiting weeks or months for Amazon to ship books to the antipodes? Well the australian Read More...
Expression Studio 2 adds Expression Encoder, Silverlight
New version of the expression tools. Cool, I know what to use when I need to get serious about cropping.  Expression Studio 2 adds Expression Encoder, Silverlight What is more interesting is the subscription pack: Expression Studio® Visual Studio® Read More...
New Australian Live Maps data
Bird's Eye view for Sydney. Check out the Harbour bridge : And in funky photosynthy 3D mode: Read More...
Social networks are still too closed?
Interesting blog post on social networking over at c|net. Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Social networks are still too closed | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com This quote struck me as odd: "If it's not searchable by Google, it's not open, and open is Read More...
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