The Office Live Guy

Office Live at the Business Startup Show, November 26th and 27th at Olympia London

If you want to meet the Microsoft Office Live team, put a marker in your diary to attend the Business Startup Show at Olympia London on 26th and 27th November 2009.

Alongside the Microsoft stand (showing Office Live, Windows 7 & Microsoft Advertising), there will be 200 other exhibitors, 100 free seminars and 80 speakers, plus opportunities to network and get advice.

Free entry tickets are available via www.bstartup.com

Run a PowerPoint presentation from a netbook without Office installed

With thousands of people around the globe testing the Office Web Apps, some of the uses to which they’re being put are starting to emerge. I particularly liked this story about a PowerPoint presentation, made to a University class, from a basic netbook that didn’t have Microsoft Office installed at all. Read about it here

Using third party html editing tools with your Office Live website

I often come across people who would like to use an html editor, rather than the templates provided, to build their website on Office Live.

You can use any html editing tool with Office Live but have to go through a couple of simple steps first :

1. Within Site Actions, click “Activate advanced design features”
2. Then go back to Site actions, and click “Activate third-party design tools”
3. The Office Live templates are then removed and Office Lives’ free hosting space is ready for you to upload files from Dreamweaver, Expression Web, etc

Colour tips when building an Office Live website

I regularly read the Office Live Small Business blog, as it often contains some useful tips that I wouldn’t have necessarily have thought of.

An article posted this week delves into the importance of colour choice for your website, highlighting this site all about Tuscany.

The link below takes you directly to the specific blog article covering areas such as colour palette, company image, colour combinations, legibility of text and more : http://ask.officelive.com/smallbusiness/blogs/team/archive/2009/10/09/bright-imagery-simple-colors-make-this-office-live-site-a-winner.aspx

Office Live Workspace helps you get more out of your Netbook

I was just scanning the Office Live Workspace blog and came across this article about how Office Live Workspace can help make your Netbook handy anywhere.

The premise of the article is that for some users, putting an Office Suite on your Netbook is quite awkward as the device doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive, so why not just use Office Live Workspace ?

Whilst I can see that the lack of an optical drive might cause concern to some, its actually pretty simple to download the entire Office Suite, as detailed on this page : http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/HA103621001033.aspx.

Broadly speaking, you can either buy Office from Microsoft Store and choose the ‘download’ option, or you can buy a boxed copy of Office, download the required files and enter the product activation key from the box.

That said, the original article referred to above does include some useful tips on how to use the Office Live Workspace templates for everyday applications.

Office + Office Live Workspace = Better Together

Office Live Workspace on it’s own is a very useful tool. For instance, the 5GB of free storage space can be used as a backup for important files. The browser preview of Office documents allows full fidelity viewing of those files from any internet connected computer, even if Microsoft Office is not installed. Personally, I find this very useful for viewing content whilst travelling for business or pleasure. It really reduces the need to carry a laptop everywhere.

However, Office Live Workspace really comes alive when the add-in for Office is installed. This small download facilitates the opening, editing and saving of documents from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It works with Office 2007, 2003 and XP, meaning you can open files directly from Office Live and then save them back to Office Live. This effectively allows you to use Office Live Workspace as an extra 5GB of disk space that is accessible from anywhere, with the ability to invite others in to view and comment on files.

Here are a few of the more common scenarios we hear about :

• Planning a wedding – create all the required files on your PC, save them to a Workspace, then collaborate with others involved in the wedding organisation.
• Organising a holiday for multiple families – groups of friends often get together and rent a big villa between them for a summer break. Rather than spending hours on the phone and emailing files around, store them centrally in a Workspace and keep them updated centrally.
• Storing documents from a club, society or school group – avoid the need to email around lots of attachments by uploading them into a Workspace and sending out a pointer after each meeting.
• Working with an supplier external to a small business – set up a WorkSpace to store contracts, invoices, parts lists, minutes of meetings, and so on. Reduce email traffic and keep an audit trail.
• Charitable organisations – use a Workspace to store minutes of meetings, lists of donors, plan future events, store materials used to promote the charity.

Office Web Applications

The Technical Preview of Office Web Applications has just been added to a select group of Skydrive users around the world. Check out the video below to learn more about what’s coming with the Word Web App, Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App and OneNote Web App :

There have been many articles written about the Office Web Apps; here’s a small selection of them :

Microsoft Office Web Apps review: first look

REVIEW: Office Web Apps Will Pose Strong Counterattack Against Google Apps, Zoho

eWeek Labs' tests

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/172198/sharing_and_collaborating_with_microsoft_office_web_apps.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/17/imitation-isnt-always-flattery-microsoft-previews-google-apps-killer-to-beta-testers/

Office Live Small Business downtime planned to complete a server upgrade

Downtime is a rarity with Office Live, but an announcement has just gone out that on Saturday September 12th 2009 and Saturday September 19th 2009, there will be some periods of planned outage.

All customers will be sent an email to this effect later this week.

What this actually means is that for your Office live website, there will be three hours on either the 12th or 19th September when you will not be able to do any site maintenance and visitors to your site will see a message detailing the outage. You will still be able to log in and check email during this time.

This upgrade work is designed to further improve the performance, reliability, and stability of all Office Live websites.

Read the official posting here : http://ask.officelive.com/smallbusiness/blogs/team/archive/2009/09/01/brief-site-downtime-planned-to-accommodate-a-server-upgrade.aspx

Watch out for virus emails in your inbox

There seems to be an increase in hackers trying to get into your inbox, enticing you and all of your contacts to click on links that have very undesirable outcomes. This doesn’t just affect Office Live mail but is occurring in all email systems, so watch out.

The most recent one I’ve seen doing the rounds is an email with no subject, where the first line is something along the lines of “Hey, how are you doing recently ?”. However, the contents change on a daily basis.

The Office Live team in the US have just posted a blog article on this subject, including details of how to protect yourself against these sort of viruses, where to go to update your PCs protection against them and what to do if you find that your PC is infected :

http://ask.officelive.com/smallbusiness/blogs/team/archive/2009/08/24/beware-of-possible-virus-mails-in-your-inbox.aspx

‘Staycation’ in a Yurt in Devon on Office Live

This year we decided to take a summer break at home in England; the Blackdown Hills of Devon in the south-west of the country, to be precise.

As fairly keen walkers, we have a great love of the open countryside and a growing interest in all things eco. After having read various holiday articles in the Sunday newspapers earlier in the year, we decided to try staying in a traditional Mongolian Yurt.

The Mongolian Yurt dates back over 2,000 years, being a very simple and low-cost way for various nomadic groups to survive the harsh weather conditions in Siberia, where the temperature can range from +45°C down to -55°C.  In the UK, famers and other landowners can erect a Yurt within planning guidelines designed for camping, as long as the Yurt is taken down each winter. This makes them ideal for farmers fields  where it would be nigh-on impossible to get planning permission for a new-build holiday cottage.

Taking all this into account, a Yurt in Devon certainly seemed like a pretty safe bet for a short break. Look on it as a good compromise between the discomfort of British camping and the extortionate rates for renting a west country cottage in August. Yurt holidays are often referred to as ‘luxury’ or ‘glam’ camping.

Being the UK in August, the weather was mixed. A day of non-stop rain, a day of brilliant sunshine and the rest of the time something in-between. We expected nothing less.

The Yurt itself stands up to changing weather conditions pretty well. It’s like a big tent, with 10cm think insulation plus a wood-burning stove, sat on a large area of raised decking. You wouldn’t think the stove would be needed in August, but we found that if there’d been any rain at all the Yurt started feeling a bit damp inside and the stove burnt that off in minutes. It also kept the chill off the air on cloudless, starlit nights. At least we were burning locally sourced wood, which can arguably be claimed a carbon-neutral source of heat.

I was going to include a link to the website of the company we used (www.blackdownyurts.co.uk), but several people have reported that the site doesn’t seem to work outside the UK or through some corporate proxies. Therefore, I’ve put a short page together on Office Live, which you can review here : http://yurt.web.officelive.com

Change to Office Live Small Business Domain name policy

As of 1st October 2009, Microsoft Office Live Small Business will no longer offer free domain name renewals. For details of how this will affect your Web site and e-mail, or to learn how to renew your domain, please review the following list of frequently asked questions :

http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-gb/DomainPolicyChange

For UK customers, with .co.uk domain names, it’s worth focussing on this point :

What this means is that if your .co.uk domain name is due for renewal prior to 1st October 2009, you should get another two years free. If the renewal date is on or after 1st October 2009, then you’ll either need to pay for the next two years (£10.99 + VAT) or lose the domain name. If you choose not to pay, your website will revert to a fourth level in this format http://youroldcustomdomainname.web.officelive.com.

There’s more on Office Live small Business pricing at this page : http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-GB/pricing

Surfboard success story on Office Live

Paipoglide is a great little company, based in Cornwall, building custom surfboards by hand from a variety of wood materials. The result is a board which not only functions superbly on the waves, but is also a sculptural piece in its own right honed using the skills of ancient Hawaiian craftsman. Check out their Office Live website at www.paipoglide.com

The Harley Slack Fund website – built on Office Live

This is quite a well-designed Office Live website, put together for a very sad reason.

Harley is unfortunately critically ill with meningitus B and the site talks about the disease, a fund-raising charity bike ride from John O’Groats to Lands End, and various other sponsored events.

Have a look at the site here : http://harleyslackfund.giving.officelive.com/

This story was originally reported in June in The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail & The Sun (some of the images are extremely harrowing)

Office Web Apps – the three tenets driving design and engineering

There’s been quite a bit written about Microsoft’s plans to offer its core Office applications as ‘Web Apps’

A new blog has just been started this month, giving some useful information on how the Web Apps are being developed and what the guiding principles are for their design.

The three building blocks are :

1. Trustworthy set of Web Applications - the Web App will preserve the data in the document, even if the Web App doesn't support a specific feature
2. Familiar Office User Experience - consistency with existing experiences will make it easier to work with the Web Apps' interface
3. High Fidelity – providing confidence that others will see your work as intended

Read more here : http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/archive/2009/07/17/9837716.aspx

Microsoft Wave

Microsoft Wave is a new portal that shows the breadth of new technology that the company is involved in.

There are sections on :

• Hardware – Mediaroom, Surface & Xbox 360
• Software – Online services, Worldwide Telescope and Gaming
• Some key technology blogs
• Tools for learning more about Microsoft products
• Some of the latest videos

Under the software section, then online services, Office Live get a mention.

Take a peek : http://www.microsoft.com/uk/wave/home.aspx