Mac Mojo : Productivity

Ship It, Ship It Good

Pat Fox — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:10:00 GMT

Hello everyone, I thought this would be good time to jump in and introduce myself. I’m the Director of Marketing and Planning for MacBU – a longtime ‘softie and closing in on my first anniversary in the Macintosh Business Unit. Like most of us in MacBU, I’m a long time Mac user – and this will date me – I set up and staffed the original Mac lab in college, finally saving enough to buy a “Fat Mac” of my own. As they say, the rest is history.

Speaking of history, we announced earlier this week RTM of the English version of Office 2008, with additional languages following right on schedule. What does that mean for my team? Well, we helped the dev teams celebrate (yes, that was me cranking the air raid siren Geoff was hearing.) Beyond that, there’s a lot more cranking to do before we launch January 15th – advertising, PR, launch events, and of course, getting ready for Macworld!

Ah, Macworld. It’s going to be a great show and we’re planning a big presence. First, A Day at the Office – a day-long conference at the Moscone on Monday, January 14th, dedicated to extensive user training on the new Office 2008 for Mac. Tickets are close to sold out, but if you’re quick you might still be able to grab one. We also have conference sessions and hands-on labs where attendees can get great training on the new Office 2008 for Mac.

You won’t miss our big booth on the show floor where we’ll have demo stations set up for you to test drive the new product and theatre presentations every half hour highlighting the most popular new features. Even better, most of MacBU and some of our most knowledgeable MVPs will be on hand to answer your questions. We’ll be hanging out again with the community in our new and improved Blogger Lounge (wireless access this year!) Best of all, the product will be available at retail (and online) starting January 15th in North America (including at that swanky Apple Store close to the Moscone.)

And since this is a year to celebrate - we’re the exclusive sponsors of the Macworld Blast at the Warfield Theatre this year, where we’ll have our blow-out launch party Tuesday, January 15th.

This will be a fun night. Long before Office 2008 was on the drawing board, before Mark Mothersbaugh contributed to Art of Office and way before Craig published his “Ship It” lyrics. I was a big fan of our surprise musical guests for the evening…DEVO! (Well, not such a surprise anymore. Sherjo couldn’t keep it from Shawn King on Your Mac Life during an interview with Paul Kent from IDG Wednesday night.)

Now we’re all excited, but I’m not your casual spudboy; there’s ample evidence of my devotion even back in college, as one look at my senior yearbook photo will prove. If you don’t know the band or have never seen DEVO live, do yourself a favor and get one of the few tickets left. The first 300 attendees will get a special gift bag with some limited edition goodies cooked up by Mark Mothersbaugh and my team, so get there early!

This will be a party to remember – and I hope to see you there! Look for the guy wearing the energy dome...

Pat O

PowerPoint to Go

blairn — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:36:00 GMT

PowerPoint is a communications platform at its core. We communicate ideas powerfully using PowerPoint in the board room, on the desktop, in the classroom, in the elevator, and on the go.

Wait. Did he say "In the elevator?" Sure, let me just pull out my Mac Book real quick and fire up PowerPoint for you here on the elevator. Oh wait, this is your floor? Elevator pitch is over? But I hadn't gotten to my killer slide yet to close the deal!

Back up. Let's try that elevator pitch again, this time using my iPhone. Now we're talking! Not only do you see that I'm a person of refined taste for using my iPhone, but I just showed you my killer deal-closing slide with just a few flicks of my finger. Bang, bang! You're sold, and we haven't even hit your floor yet. How about sashimi later? Great doing business with you, iPod!

Getting presentations from PowerPoint 2008 for Mac to your iPod or iPhone* is easy. PowerPoint exports your presentation as a series of pictures directly to iPhoto**, or saves those same slide images as pictures to your Pictures folder. From there, sync pictures to your iPod or iPhone through iTunes as usual, then use the built-in Photos or slide show program on your iPod or iPhone to show your presentation. No sweat!

Presentations look great on the big wide screens of iPhone and iPod Touch, but they look even better on a big screen TV or projected. Plug your iPod into a television or projector using the Apple Component AV or Composite AV cable and leave your laptop in the case.

Once your presentation is saved as pictures on your iPod or iPhone, there's really no limit to where you can communicate. At the karaoke bar, on a train, on the beach, or in a ski lodge. These are just a few ideas. Where do you want to go today?

* Works with any iPhone or iPod model that supports pictures, like the iPod Touch, iPod Classic or current generation iPod Nano.
** Requires iPhoto ‘06 or later.

The Smart in SmartArt

Derek Snook — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:42:00 GMT

I use Office every day to communicate – email, documents, presentations, spreadsheets. I like to use visual aids to improve my communication -- it’s invaluable to reinforce your ideas with graphics, and if it looks cool, even better. How do you take a textual concept and quickly show your meaning in a graphic that is memorable, relevant, and beautiful?

+ click to enlarge

With Office 2008 for Mac, I do it with SmartArt graphics: a new set of tools for creating attractive, effective visuals. With SmartArt, a list becomes a colorful sequence array, a roster becomes an organization chart, or a numbered list awakens as a simple, bold process diagram.

+ click for additional detail

Choose a layout in the Elements Gallery and enter your data in the SmartArt text pane (we added the genie effect when showing/hiding the text pane; not only is it a cool touch, but it highlights the relationship between the SmartArt object and the text content you're bringing to life in the diagram.) In PowerPoint, you can select a bulleted list already in your presentation and click on a SmartArt layout to convert the list into a graphic.

What’s so “smart” about SmartArt graphics? The graphics automatically update and adjust as you add data, creating new diagram parts, moving existing parts to fit, resizing the contextual elements that show relationships.

Wine making, for example, is a continuous process of growing and harvesting grapes, fermenting, storing and aging, and finally tasting and enjoying. Describing this in your latest newsletter or school project? There’s a Continuous Cycle layout in the SmartArt gallery. Click in the Gallery to add the graphic, type in your stages of wine production, and click a SmartArt style in the Formatting Palette to add a splash of color. Done, and it looks great!

There are over 80 layouts built-in to Office 2008, and you can flip between them, updating your graphic in the document as you click, until you find the one that best expresses your idea. Add or remove data at any time and the graphic will adjust.

SmartArt graphics you create in Office 2008 for Mac are compatible with Office 2007 and vice-versa; we use the same SmartArt engine underneath. SmartArt graphics are part of the OfficeArt family, and inherit the powerful formatting and document theme awareness of other OfficeArt graphics. Use the Formatting Palette to customize SmartArt graphics, including 3D effects, reflections, transparencies, glows, and shadows. Explore your options willy-nilly; the Reset button takes you back to the crisp default SmartArt Graphic that you started with. SmartArt graphics automatically match your document, spreadsheet, or presentation color scheme, though that too is customizable. Roger Baerwolf and I will talk more about document themes in an upcoming sneak peek blog post.

a love letter to Entourage

nadyne — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:38:00 GMT

Aside from working on Entourage, I use it. No, that's not right: I don't use Entourage, I live in it. (I feel like those old infomercials -- I'm not only the president, I'm also a client!) I've had a couple of people ask me lately how I keep on top of everything that I'm doing. I'm not the sort of person whose monitor is covered with sticky notes, and I don't keep everything in my head. (Some might argue that I don't keep anything in there ... ) Entourage contains my entire life.

First and foremost, I am a big user of categories. My categories are all colour-coded. This is essential to me. Everyone in my address book is associated with a category. When I get email from people in my address book, their email is colour-coded in my inbox. (On any given day, I'd guess that less than 5% of the email that hits my main inbox is boring non-categorised black.) Here are some of my categories: MacBU, one for each of the application teams that I support, travel, services, personal. This means that I can tell, at a glance, what kind of traffic I'm getting in my inbox. Likewise, all of my calendar events have a category associated with them, so I can quickly tell what I'm spending the most time on this week. Tasks, notes, it's all colour-coded.

One of my goals in Entourage is to have an empty inbox. One way that I accomplish this is by extensive use of the Mailing List Manager and rules. I have more than 20 sub-folders that get the bulk of my email. I want my main inbox to only contain email that is addressed directly to me, which is the email that I’m most likely to need to do something with now. Of the stuff that ends up in my main inbox, I try to deal with it immediately upon reading it. This means responding to the email, creating a task/note from the email, or filing it away. I'm not perfect about this, but I'm getting better.

I use the Project Center to help me keep on top of projects. Some of these projects are pretty short-lived. For example, I usually set up a project for each usability test that I run, which means that those projects last for roughly 6 weeks from beginning to end. Others last a couple of years or more. The main benefit of the Project Center is that it gives me a directed view of what I'm working on: I can go in there and see only the emails, calendar events, tasks, and notes associated with that project, as well as the files on my hard drive associated with it. Depending on what I'm doing, I'd guess that roughly a third of my email/tasks/calendar/notes are associated with a project at any given time. And when I'm done with that project, archiving it is easy.

The best part about all of this? It gets even better in Entourage 2008. We've already shown an early version of my single most favourite feature, My Day, at Macworld Expo earlier this year. There's more, and I can't wait to tell you about it. Stay tuned.

MacTech’s Mac Office VBA to AppleScript Transition Guide

blairn — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:01:00 GMT

Mac natives inside and outside of MacBU have provided their efforts and expertise to produce a guidebook to help you navigate the transition from VBA to AppleScript. That's right, MacTech magazine's April edition will be a massive 150 page blockbuster entitled "Moving from Microsoft Office VBA to AppleScript: MacTech's Guide to Making the Transition" and is authored by none other than Mac Office MVP and all around great person (so I'm told) Paul Berkowitz. Paul and many of the other Mac Office MVPs work very hard on AppleScript and lots of other important Office topics on behalf of all of us (check out the MVP page to learn more about this group of experts). MacTech - along with Paul and a cast of editors and reviewers whose combined experience with AppleScript and VBA boggle the mind - have stepped up big time with this book.

MacTech subscribers receive this generous tome as their April edition. Not yet a subscriber but want the guide? It's a great time to subscribe and, if you act now (before April 2), you might even be able to get a complimentary subscription. Or, support your local newsstand. MacTech magazine can be found in the mac tech section.

PowerPoint Links

Brianjo — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 07:32:00 GMT

I've been thinking about doing a PowerPoint links post for a long time. Communications is one of those skills that can really open new doors for you in business, and being able to communicate your ideas in a fresh way can make a big difference in your overall effectiveness. Here are some of my favorite PowerPoint for Mac and general presentation resources and posts from around the net. There are many more of course, but I picked these because the ideas behind most of them are a little different than your standard, X bullets per slide, X words per bullet, posts.

PowerPoint Articles and Tips at Mactopia
Here you'll find dozens of tips and techniques specific to PowerPoint 2004 for Mac. There's a lot of stuff here, so take some time to read through it.
Sociable Media
Cliff Atkinson is the author of Beyond Bullet Points. I love this book and Cliff has some unique ideas about how to create and present a compelling presentation. Be sure to check out the excellent articles that Cliff has posted at the site. (They're not as easy to find as they probably should be.)
ProfCast
From the product site: ProfCast is a versatile, powerful, yet very simple to use tool for recording lectures including PowerPoint and/or Keynote slides for creating enhanced podcasts. ProfCast is an excellent solution for capturing audio with your presentation for later use as video podcasts.
Presentation Zen
From the site: Garr Reynolds' blog on issues related to professional presentation design. Excellent presentation resource.
My Best Presentation Tricks
Solid presentation post by Chris Brogan at Lifehack.org.
Top 10 Best Presentations Ever
Once you have all the skills, check out the kinds of presentations that people talk about for years afterword.

Finally, a little history. PowerPoint for Mac has been around for a long, long time. Check out this episode of The Computer Chronicles from 1989. One of the more interesting things to note is how far along projection technology has come. Imagine how far ahead you had to plan to send your slides out to a service bureau before your presentation.

Productivity Links

Brianjo — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:51:00 GMT

I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about links, but I couldn't come up with a really good set to put together. Then I was reading Paul Stamatiou's excellent post, How To: Cultivate That Killer Idea, and it made me think about the great productivity blogs that are out there.

I should mention that I'm a productivity aficionado. What that means is that I dream of finding the magic system that's eventually going to make me completely productive. I read productivity books and blogs, I watch videos and I listen to tapes. That said, I haven't hit on the perfect system for me. I get somewhat bored of keeping the same system going all of the time, which is, I guess, what makes being a productivity hobbyist so much fun.

So I've pretty much accepted the fact that I won't be as productive as I dream of being, but you know the old quote, "Winning is not everything - but making the effort to win is." The links listed below will help in your efforts to be more productive. Even if you only find a few things here that make sense for you, I think you'll find that you can be more productive.

43 Folders - 43 Folders is one of the premiere productivity sites on the Web.From the site description: 43 Folders is an independent web site by Merlin Mann.Topics that come up a lot include: productivity and time management tips, “life hacks” to improve efficiency and get things off your mind, interesting Mac OS X programs and technologies, ideas about modest ways to improve your life and reduce stress, and cool or helpful shortcuts that make life a bit easier.
Lifehacker - Another great site. From their own FAQ: Lifehacker, the software and productivity guide, is a blog that covers tips and tricks for streamlining your life with computers (and sometimes without). Updated several times daily, Lifehacker points out software downloads, web sites, do-it-yourself projects, how-to's, tutorials, shortcuts and tips for going beyond the default settings and getting things done in the most clever, unexpected and efficient ways. Think of Lifehacker as self-help for geeks.
D*I*Y Planner - Does paper make you more productive? A lot of times I take the advice from this site and I make similar tools in Word and Excel. From the site's description: We are a community of people who see the value of paper as a medium for planning, productivity, creative expression, and exploring ideas. We encourage visitors to share advice and inspiration, and we love to see submissions for templates, kit images and story articles. We are also the official home of the free D*I*Y Planner kits. Please enjoy your stay, and make yourself at home!
moleskinerie and notebookism - These two sites are all about notebooks and are great for artists and thinkers who like to use notebooks to capture data.

Of course, there are more of these kinds of sites out there. These are the ones that I try to read all the time. After you take a look at these sites, come back and take a look at how you can use the tips you find with your Office for Mac products. The two Office tools that I mostly associate with productivity are Word for Mac in Notebook Layout View and the Project Center in Entourage. (Though arguably an office suite is all about productivity.) Also be sure to check out the Articles and Tips at Mactopia. This is the link for Word tips, but you'll find tips for all the products at the site. I learn something new nearly every time I visit these pages.

Mac Office Resource Links

Brianjo — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 09:25:00 GMT

Ever have one of those really busy weeks where you can't even remember what you did at the end of the week? I'm having one of those. Not complaining though, we've got a lot of interesting stuff we're doing at work, unfortunately not too much I can talk about at this point.

All that said, one of the cool jobs that I have at Microsoft is talking to customers directly about how Mac Office is working in their companies. Before I talk to them, I usually ask for a list of questions they might have so I can get the answers together for them before hand and hopefully save them some time.

So where do I get my information? Sure, I can track down a developer or a PM and get an answer, but ideally I want them focused on building the next great version of Office. So what I try to do is track the information down myself. Where do I look? That's where this weeks links come in. I have a bunch of places I go for information, but if I had to pick 5, I usually go to these first:

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Resource Kit version 2 This document usualy has the information I'm looking for. It was even updated this summer. From the description: The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Resource Kit version 2 provides procedure and reference information for administrators and support professionals who deploy, administer, and support Office 2004 for Mac in networked environments. This Resource Kit provides guidance for using Office 2004 for Mac with Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Live Communications Server, Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server, and related products.
The Entourage Help Page A lot of great Entourage information: The Entourage Help Page is provided as a resource to help Entourage: Mac users. FAQs come from the Entourage Newgroup and the Entourage Talk list.
MacWindows.com The web site for Macintosh-Windows integration. Some of the best information available about using your Macs in Windows networks.
Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Solutions Center Tons of great information from Microsoft Support. Browse it and put a link in your favorties.
Mactopia Resources Actuall, all of Mactopia is a great resource, but if I'm going to go looking for something I'm not sure about, I usually find it linked from this page.

Of course, I'm just scratching the surface of what's out there. What's your favorite Mac Office resource? Let's keep a list. Have a great week!