Microsoft Office

President-elect releases recorded message on Christmas Eve

President-elect Barack Obama offered appreciation to the U.S. military on Christmas Eve in a recorded message and then asked children of uniformed troops if they had their wish lists ready.

Obama and wife, Michelle, made their early morning trek to Marine Corps Base Hawaii just northeast of Honolulu as they had done during the last three days. After about an hour at the base on Wednesday where he went inside a gym for a workout, he walked over to greet more than 60 people who waited for him. The president-elect shook hands while onlookers took pictures with their cell phones and digital cameras.

“You guys got your Christmas list?” Obama asked one person standing in the makeshift ropeline. He asked another: “Hey man, what’s going on?”

Earlier in the day, his aides released a recorded message of appreciation to the military “serving their second, third or even fourth tour of duty.”

“This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted knowing that a loved one is absent, and sometimes in danger,” Obama said in the message, set to air Saturday morning. “In towns and cities across America, there is an empty seat at the dinner table; in distant bases and on ships at sea, our servicemen and women can only wonder at the look on their child’s face as they open a gift back home.”

The Obamas during past years spent the December holidays visiting Obama’s maternal grandmother, who died Nov. 2, before Obama’s historic Nov. 4 victory. The Obamas on Tuesday had a private memorial service for Madelyn Payne Dunham, known to friends as “Toot,” who helped raise him.

Aides said the Obamas would open presents on Christmas morning and have a traditional dinner of ham and turkey in the evening.

Is it impossible to retrieve your information afterward? Not 100 percent, but Lum says that unless the CIA is after you, you should be in the clear after using one of these disk-erasing tools that are available for download online:

Active KillDisk: This free hard-drive eraser overwrites data using zeros. You can upgrade to the professional version that conforms to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) standards.
Softpedia/DP Wiper: IT consultant Daniel Gresser recommends freeware programs from Softpedia, like DP Wipter, which overwrites in from one to 35 passes and has DOD-compliant wiping.
WipeDrive: WipeDrive overwrites your data as many times as you like and runs a verification test.
“Always keep a record of where all important files are stored,” says Gresser, who recommends deleting each file by dropping it into DP Wiper and selecting the type of wipe required.

Unless you take the hard drive out and keep it, to get a PC ready for sale, Gresser suggests that PC users delete the following using DP Wiper or a similar program:

Everything in My Documents folder.
All temporary Internet files.
All cookies.
All files relating to personal and financial matters that may have been stored in folders other than My Documents.
All e-mail: Outlook Express users need to search for and delete .dbx files and Outlook users need to search for and delete .pst files. This will send them to the recycle bin for secure deletion. Also, remember to remove all e-mail account settings and passwords.

From the Microsoft Office Hours Blog: How do you define good Web content? Is it as subjective a proposition as what makes a painting great, or how much cleaning is necessary to render your house “clean enough”?

As evidence that Office Online content publishing managers are taking this paradigm shift seriously, many of them are recommending Gerry McGovern’s course, “Creating Customer-Centric Web Sites,” to their teams. I recently attended this two-day workshop, which effectively gave me a Ph.D. in customer-friendly Web content.

What I learned
The push to make all content look as though it came from one (very important) person — Bill Gates, maybe — is what used to drive marketing campaigns and make companies rich. The problem is, that created enormous disconnect between the customer and the company.

Our customers just aren’t into that anymore. They do not want to be condescended to; they’re an incredibly sophisticated, increasingly impatient and skeptical audience. They expect to be written to (and understood) by their content providers.

Remember Creepshow’s Upson Pratt, the powerful techie (with a generous case of OCD) from the vignette, “They’re creeping up on you” (1982)? Although Pratt claims to have a “germ-proof” apartment, cockroaches invade his sterile environment, undermining his power, authority, and sanity. Pratt can’t contain the bugs; they just keep coming in.

What customers want: the short list
Short lists
The ability to search for information easily
To offer feedback on what they like and don’t like
Scannable articles, with bullet-points and images (nothing gratuitous though… only if it serves the content)
Humor (they don’t want to have to take you, or themselves, all that seriously)
Authenticity (phoniness on the Web is as obvious and transparent as that flash content that, come to think of it, seems to have died down…)
From Gerry’s presentation, I discovered that a great example of how Office Online has evolved to reflect this model is the Crabby Office Lady column (for which I am the lucky editor). Until Annik Stahl started offering Help content all dressed up in a fuchsia polyester track suit, all was as it was supposed to be: all-knowing, personality-neutral. Crabby’s intuitive entrance onto the Help scene signaled a grand departure for Office in tone and style, and look what happened. From 2002 to today, the column has been translated into at least four other languages and has close to 300K readers each month.

If your business focuses on consumer products or services, you’re probably wondering what kind of marketing message will work right now. With consumers tightening their belts and feeling nervous and uncertain about the future, how do you get them to open their wallets?

When the future is worrisome, people retreat to comfort — and that means home, family, and friends. In the coming months, more Americans will be spending their leisure time at home rather than going out. Fortunately, there are ways almost every entrepreneur can take advantage of this trend.

Can your product or service help people spend more time with their friends and families, or make that time a better experience?

If you sell housewares, for instance, marketing messages that show your products being used by a happy family playing board games or watching movies at home together can make your product more appealing.

If you own a housecleaning service, your ads should convey how spending a little bit of money on your company’s services gives parents time to spend on what’s really important — family time.

If you own a catering service, maybe now is the time to focus less on corporate events and more on intimate affairs. Use your marketing materials to show how your company can make that family gathering truly special.

If you own a beauty salon, offer a mother-daughter special. Mom’s more likely to get that pedicure if she feels like it’s also a bonding experience with her teenager.

Whatever your business, consider offering family discounts, or four items for the price of three, or “bring a friend” specials. If customers feel like your company offers a way to give their family or friends a hard-earned treat, you’ll assuage a little of their guilt about spending money — and they’re more likely to spend it with you.

From the Access Blog: A new hotfix for Access 2007 is now available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957690.

Issues fixed:
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When you open a form by using a macro, the form opens in a small reduced mode. You will see this behavior when you create a form by:

1. Specifying the following property values on the form: Property
Value

Modal
Yes

Pop Up
Yes

Auto Resize
No

2. Opening, updating, and saving the record source of the form. When you open the form by using a macro, the form opens in a small reduced mode.

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When you export a report to an .rft file format in Access 2007, the export process is very slow compared to the same process in Access 2003.

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You create a macro by specifying the RunMacro action in Access 2007. You specify the Repeat Expression parameter of the RunMacro action to run a second macro at least two times. The second macro contains the StopMacro action. When you run the macro and the second macro stops running because of the StopMacro action, the macro also stops running, even if the expression evaluates to True. However, in Access 2003, the macro stops for the current iteration, and then continues to run until the expression evaluates to False.

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You have a text file that contains a column of date values that are not delimited. When you try to link to the text file or import the column from Access 2007, you encounter the following problems:

· If you link to the text file by specifying the column as the Date/Time data type, the column values are displayed as #Num! in Access 2007.

· If you import the column by specifying the column as the Date/Time data type, the column values are not imported. In the ImportErrors table, you receive the following error message on the Error column:

Type Conversion Failure

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Subforms based on a parameter value do not refresh to reflect the data in the parameter. You create a form in Access 2007. You also create two subforms that are bound to Access queries or to stored procedures in Microsoft SQL Server. Additionally, Access 2007 populates data into the subforms by using parameter values. The first subform also sets the parameter value of the second subform. You update the first subform. In this scenario, the second subform does not update.
Note This problem does not occur in Access 2003.

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You create linked tables in an Access 2007 database. Additionally, you create a form and add controls that display data from the linked tables. When you operate on these controls, you experience very slow performance compared to Access 2003.
Note This problem does not occur if you use imported tables.

BY MELISSA NEWMAN

EVERY YEAR, AMID the excitement of Halloween-related fun, conversations commonly turn toward scary and unnerving talk of the mysterious world of paranormal and supernatural phenomena.Unlike the entertaining “safe scares” that Halloween brings, for those who encounter “real paranormal phenomena,” the encounters can be truly terrifying and even life-changing. And while these otherworldly phenomena have been a part of the human experience since the dawn of humankind – and, incidentally, is where Halloween originates – not even western society’s modern-day cynical culture of scientific analysis could dismiss and suppress the existence of these elusive phenomena. On the contrary, whether you are a believer or a hardened skeptic, an avalanche of experiences involving paranormal and supernatural phenomena continues to be reported worldwide.

According to several polls and surveys conducted around the world, belief in the paranormal and supernatural is at an all time high and shows no evidence of decline. In the U.S. alone, a recent Gallop poll showed that 75% of Americans have some sort of paranormal belief; a Harris poll showed that half of Americans believe in ghosts; a CBS poll showed that one in five Americans have seen or physically encountered a ghost; and still another survey taken from more than 400 college students with the highest GPAs found seniors and grad students more likely to believe in the paranormal then their “uneducated” freshman counterparts. Paranormal beliefs include such phenomena as extraterrestrial and UFO close encounters, all types of psychic phenomena, miracles and demonic possession, ghosts and poltergeists, witchcraft and metaphysics, and encounters with extraordinary life forms, including Bigfoot and the notorious chupacabra.

HALLOWEEN ORIGINS

Whether one is a believer or a skeptic, Halloween in the U.S. might be the one time of the year that both stand united in simply having a good time in the shadow of such reported phenomena. The origins of Halloween itself lay in supernatural beliefs and an ancient Celtic festival that dates back some 2,000 years. Originally called Samhain (pronounced sow-in), the festival originated amidst the region now known as the United Kingdom and celebrated the one night each year that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became indistinguishable. On this night, the Celts believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to Earth for good or for bad and allowed Druid priests to additionally interact with them for the wellbeing of them all.

Over the course of hundreds of years, early Christianity would attempt to suppress and replace the Celtic festival with All Saints’ Day, which was celebrated on November 1, a holy day of obligation to honor saints and martyrs in the Christian faith. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. But even the powerful influence of the church was unable to squelch the supernatural festival, and Halloween endured and flourished over the centuries to become the sensationalistic celebration it is today in the U.S.

While Halloween is still mostly an American commercial phenomenon, little by little every year, evidence that the spooky holiday is being embraced globally is being seen more and more. UNICEF itself has a special “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” program aimed to empower kids, not just in the U.S., but in other countries as well, by trick-or-treating for donations to help their counter-parts in need all over the world. The reluctance to embrace Halloween in other countries has been primarily due to the seriousness that the supernatural and paranormal is taken in other cultures. While the western world can make light of beliefs, both religious and metaphysical, other old-world cultures are very sensitive to and deeply immersed in their beliefs and find such playfulness like the Amercanized version of Halloween to be considered as taboo and, in some cultures, even sacrilegious.

Enjoy your Halloween!

bThis is the first community prototype from Office Labs. Community prototypes are projects Microsoft employees work on in their spare time. Speed Launch’s goal is to let you get to the stuff you use faster and with less frustration.

Why do I need Speed Launch?
Work faster and with less frustration. Speed Launch gives you lightning quick access to all the documents, files, and websites you use often. In the past when you used something a lot you might have created a desktop shortcut, added it to your IE favorites, or placed it on your quick launch bar. Speed Launch allows you to create centralized shortcuts to all the stuff you need and allows you to access them effortlessly.

What is Speed Launch?
Speed Launch is an application launcher that extends the functionality and usability of Microsoft Windows. With Speed Launch, users can select their own words to open frequently used websites, documents, and applications. The most compelling feature of Speed launch is the use of a drag and drop interaction model to make this advanced functionality more intuitive to novice computer users.

How is it used? How does it work with Windows?
Speed Launch is a downloadable program available at www.officelabs.com. After you’ve download Speed Launch, simply drag the file, document, or website url onto the Speed Launch bull’s-eye to create a Speed Launch shortcut. From then on, any time you need to access that file, document, or website, just hit “Windows+C”, type the shortcut name, and what you need will immediately appear.

Is there a shortcut key to open the launcher?
Yes. Use “Windows+C”.

How do I use Speed Launch to open multiple things?
Drag the first item on to the bull’s-eye and give it a name. Next, drag the second item on to the bull’s-eye and give it the same name. When you do this, Speed Launch will give you the option to replace or merge the two items, choose merge. Now, hit “Windows+C” and type the name. Speed Launch will open both items.

Is there a limit to how many items a single Speed Launch shortcut can open?
Not that we know of

I notice that Speed Launch comes with some shortcuts that allow me to search websites. How do I use them?
Speed Launch comes preloaded with a few useful fucntions. For example, to search Wikipedia just type “Wikipedia Search” and hit enter. Next, type what you want to search for in the new window and hit enter. Speed Launch will open the related Wikipedia page.

Cool! Can I create my own “functions”?
Yes… but it’s a little tricky. You can watch the video below for a walk through (and some good music). In short, go to the results page (e.g., search for the information you are looking for) and, if the search term appears in the URL, you can drag it on to the bullseye to create a function. Name it with a period (e.g., “MySearch.”) which tells Speed Launch you want a function, and follow the prompts. We will make this easier in the future, but our current focus is in making the basics as easy as possible.

Vern Yip, a former “Trading Spaces” interior designer whose work is now featured on HGTV’s “Design Star” and “Deserving Design,” offers tips for good home office design.

 Pick a space with good natural light
- Good lighting, in a home or business, is one of those things that goes unnoticed — if it’s done well. You only notice the lighting of a room if it’s too bright or too dim, not if it’s just right.
- You can add variety by using different types of fixtures and having illumination flow in different directions.
 Determine your design style
- Determine how you want your home office to look and how you want to feel while you are in your space.
- Accessories are a great way to showcase your personality and individuality.
 Use natural colors and textures
- Coordinate the finishes of materials.
- Balance the visual weight of pieces with the size and height of the room. Strong, simple fabrics and large pieces of art also anchor a room without adding visual clutter.
 A little technology goes a long way - Look at digital solutions for scanning in receipts, keeping notes and managing information instead of having boxes of paperwork and notebooks lying around.
- Find technology that helps your business look more professional and get great results faster.
 Make the space work for you- A clear desk is directly related to your productivity. Clutter free = stress free!
- Whenever possible, store regularly used items where you use them most.
- Choose furnishings for function as well as beauty.
 Place something organic in your space
- Bring something from nature indoors. Live plants go a long way toward making a space more inviting, natural and homey.
- There are plants that can live in virtually any environment — ferns can thrive in low light, orchids bloom for up to eight weeks and can go two weeks without watering, for example.
 Always place imagery that inspires you
- Whether it’s family photos, pictures of your friends, trips or pets, make sure to be surrounded by what matters to you most.
 Work in colors that stimulate you
- Choosing the right color is important — people react to colors differently — some people are energized by red, some people find it relaxing.
- Nothing changes the look and feel of a room as dramatically as color, so updating the walls can make a big change to any room.

Microsoft works collaboratively with educators across Higher Education and K-12 to provide software plus services aimed at enhancing the learning environment and streamlining the operations of institutions.

This site is your resource for webcasts, podcasts, and other valuable information to gain insights into how Microsoft and Microsoft Partner solutions can help enable learning in the 21st century.

What’s coming up:

Are you up to date on US Education Market Trends and Microsofts EDU Priorities and Vision?

Live Oct 3 10:00AM-11:00AM Pacific Time

Education is the foundation for success and the link between employability and economic output. Public education is under much pressure for change in order to deliver a 21st Century Workforce able to flourish in the global economy. These trends are driving Microsofts education focus and business opportunities in key areas. This webcast launches our Partner Webinar Series and sets the stage for all future webcasts. In this session, we will scratch the surface on trends Microsoft is seeing and that research groups (e.g., Center for Digital Education) have confirmed. These trends represent the drivers behind substantial business opportunities we see for Microsoft-based solutions and they have played a role in the development of Microsofts education marketing campaigns that will help support the business.

Speakers:
Mary Cullinane—Director, Innovation and Business Development
Anthony Salcito—General Manager

Live@edu Overview
Live Oct 6 9:00AM-10:00AM Pacific Time
Looking for innovative solutions for keeping your students and alumni connected? Learn about Live@edu, Microsoft’s newest platform for delivering student and alumni email, communication and collaboration services. Join us for this one hour presentation on Microsoft’s Live @ EDU offering that offers:

The Apps students want

A co-branded email inbox students can use as their primary account, with additional services like Office Live Workspace, Windows Live SkyDrive, and more of things that encourage collaboration.

Integration with what you have in place

Live@edu works with the devices your students already use, and integrates with the infrastructure you already have.

Reliable Infrastructure

Outsource the time and cost of spam-filtering, server uptime and ongoing maintenance to Microsofts enterprise-class infrastructure.

Safety and Privacy

Keep your students data private and help keep them safer online. All for free to your institution!

Speakers:
Jonny Chambers—Senior Solution Specialist - Live@Edu

From Microsoft Outlook Team Blog: You’ve seen several posts on the Outlook Team Blog focused on ways to help you more effectively manage your incoming e-mails and appointments in Outlook. Office Labs has also been exploring some innovative methods to help people manage the vast amounts of information they receive on a daily basis.

To help alleviate this information overload, Microsoft Office Labs released Email Prioritizer last week on www.officelabs.com. The prototype – inspired by Microsoft Research’s “Priorities” project – is an add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that was built by the Office Labs development team here in Redmond. Email Prioritizer provides a “do not disturb” button that temporarily pauses new email arrival from ten minutes up to four hours. Email Prioritizer will also assign priority ratings of 0 to 3 stars to incoming mail to help users focus their attention on the most important email messages.

While we encourage you to test out our prototypes, they are unsupported concepts with no plans for inclusion in any products. Please direct any feedback you have on Email Prioritizer to Office Labs at emailpfb@microsoft.com.

Thanks!

* Email Prioritizer is a plug-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (running on Exchange Server) that helps you manage email overload. This concept test provides a “do not disturb” button that temporarily pauses new email arrival, and prioritizes email with a 0-3 star rating system. We hope this prototype helps you focus on the emails that are most important to you.