Microsoft Office

Office Live Small Business

Store Manager

As a result, as of March 1, 2009, we no longer offer new subscriptions to this service.

We’re committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for you. We’ll be providing the subscription to Store Manager to you for free during the last three months that it’s available. Please read on for more details and your options moving forward.

How your account will be affected
No more subscription charges. As of March 5, 2009, you will no longer be charged a monthly subscription fee for Store Manager. This will allow you to complete any online sales at no cost for the remainder of this feature’s availability.

The Store Manager feature is being discontinued in two stages.

Shopping cart will be turned off on May 2, 2009. On May 2, 2009 the e-commerce shopping cart feature of your Web site will be automatically removed and customers will not be able to place new orders.
Remaining features will be discontinued on June 2, 2009. As of June 2, 2009, you will no longer be able to use Store Manager to process payments or access data and reports.

e-mail marketing

How your account will be affected
No more subscription charges. As of March 5, 2009, you will no longer be charged the monthly subscription fee for the E-Mail Marketing service. Also, the number of messages included in your subscription will be raised to 2,500 per month. Any messages that you send over the new 2,500 limit will be charged at the standard $.05 per e-mail.
Normal delivery until June 2nd, 2009. All campaigns will be sent as scheduled until June 2, 2009. Any campaigns scheduled beyond this date will be automatically canceled when the service is discontinued at that time.
E-mail campaign contact list still available. Your e-mail campaign contact list will not be affected, even after the E-Mail Marketing feature is discontinued. You can access your contact list from Contact Manager and, if you choose, export your contact information using Microsoft Office applications such as Excel, Outlook, and Access.

adManager

How your account will be affected

Campaigns in progress. Any keyword advertising campaigns that you have set up using adManager will continue to run and incur click charges as normal until June 2, 2009. After this date, your campaigns will be canceled automatically and no additional charges will be incurred.

From Microsoft Offcie at Work blog: Your meeting notes are incomplete. Something important was said that you forgot to write down. It happens to everyone, but how do you reconstruct the missing information? Actually, there is no need.

• The task: You need to get the details of something important that you neglected to write down during a meeting, conference, or class.

• The challenge: Trying to reconstruct the missing information from the notes you took, or from your colleagues’ notes, will take too much time and may not provide the answer.

• The solution: Use the audio recording feature in Microsoft Office OneNote to record meetings, conferences, and classes in real time, and then play back exactly what was said at precisely the time you took any given note.

Note Before making an audio recording, it is always a good idea to let those present know that they will be recorded.

How to get it done:

1.
Click the location on the page where you want to place the recording—for example, beside a paragraph or photo that you are commenting on.

2.
On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Record button, and then click either Record Audio Only or Record Video.

A time stamp is placed on the page.

3.
Start recording your audio notes or video notes.

4.
To finish the recording, click Stop on the Audio and Video Recording toolbar.

Audio Recording Toolbar

To display the Audio and Video Recording toolbar, click the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Audio and Video Recording.

From the Microsoft Office Labs Blog: Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop unveiled Microsoft’s vision for how we re-imagine productivity in our daily lives. In his speech you’ll see Stephen communicate the latest ideas and technical aspirations from across the company. It’s an exciting day as we go public with this vision and we hope you will take a moment to watch the speech:

Over the last year we’ve worked closely with partners, customers and R&D groups across Microsoft. So what will you see? You’ll see technology becoming more invisible, but working harder for you in both your work and personal life. Imagine a future where creating a document with a colleague will be as easy as having a conversation. Making connections with people and your content will be secure and seamless. Relevant insight and information will be delivered proactively and in context to the task at hand.

Mobile devices will be more powerful than desktop computers of today. Technology will connect you with the information you need, when and where you need it, whether it be your local coffee shop, an airport, or a roof top in Hong Kong. Software will be there to make getting things done as efficiently as possible in new ways that are more natural.

We are already exploring many of these concepts… check out our envisioning and concept test experiments that begin to explore how we are working to make this future a reality.

Great ideas coming out of Microsoft these days. Hopefully some of these innovativations will make it down to the masses in affordable options.

Daisy

As more companies, organizations, and individuals find reasons to upgrade their computer equipment, the problem of disposing of old equipment grows.

There are three reasons why finding the appropriate way to discard old computer equipment is important:

• According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 250 million computers will become obsolete in the next five years. In 2001, only 11 percent of personal computers retired in the U.S. were recycled.

• Each computer dumped in a landfill is a missed opportunity to provide Information Age tools to people across the digital divide.

• Out-of-date computer systems can be more of a burden than a blessing to schools and nonprofits, as it can cost them up to $400 to bring a pre-Pentium computer up to today’s standards. Donate computers to a recycler or refurbisher, rather than directly to these other groups.

Today, CompuMentor, a provider of technology assistance to other nonprofits and the home of TechSoup, is working with Microsoft Corporation to help consumers properly donate or recycle computer equipment to benefit both society and the environment.

CompuMentor’s Ten Tips for Donating A Computer
1. Determine if your old computer can be reused.
2. Recycle old and broken PC equipment.
3. Contact the refurbisher or recycler before donating.
4. Remember the accessories.
5. If possible, keep the operating system intact.
6. Provide the original media and documentation.
7. If you clean your computer of personal information yourself, it’s best to use some disk cleaning software.
8. Follow PC delivery instructions.
9. Keep a list of what you donated for your records.
10. Plan for future donations.

For more detailed information, click the blue link above.

PC Problem

Perhaps you’re more than familiar with this scenario: You’re working on your PC and notice performance getting gradually slower and slower. Programs become harder to open and close. You wait forever for Web pages to be displayed. And then, you get some serious-sounding “virtual memory is too low” message, like the one in the following graphic.

Don’t worry: This message isn’t as scary as it sounds.

Viewing a virtual memory low message

Virtual memory is the space your computer uses when it’s short of RAM (Random Access Memory), which is the memory used when running programs like Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office PowerPoint.

So what can you do to correct this problem and prevent this message from coming up in the future? The following are some solutions to keep your computer from displaying the “virtual memory minimum is too low” message.

Solution #1: Bump up the virtual memory size on your computer

The first solution is to increase your computer’s virtual memory settings. To do so, you first need to determine how much RAM you currently have.

Find the amount of RAM on your Windows Vista computer

On the Start menu, click Computer. Click System Properties (located at the top of the Computer window) to see the amount of RAM. Windows Vista automatically optimizes virtual memory. Learn more about Windows Vista memory management. display:none

Find the amount of RAM on your Windows XP computer

1. On the Start menu, click My Computer, and then on the left side of the My Computer window, click View system information. display:none

2. Click the General tab. You can find the RAM your computer currently has. display:block

Finding the RAM on your computer

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To increase the virtual memory on your Windows XP computer:

1.
On the Start menu, click My Computer, and then on the left side of the My Computer window, click View system information.

2.
Click the Advanced tab, and then in the Performance area, click Settings.

3.
Click the Advanced tab, and then in the Virtual memory area, click Change.

4.
Change the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum size (MB) text boxes to 1.5 times the RAM you have (in MB). For example, if you had 768 MB of RAM, you would enter 1152 MB RAM in both the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB) text boxes.
Read the rest of this entry »

OneNote

* Link between sections (OneNote 2007) I often have gems of phrasing in one section that I want to refer to in a totally different section. I could always copy the text, but it takes up space and probably interrupts the flow of what I’m going on about ad nauseam. Imagine: “If you want to see what I’m talking about, go to the X section and the Y page and look for the words …” No — that’s nuts. Instead, I create a link from one page to another. I open the notebook section containing the page that I want to link to, right-click the tab of the page in the margin, click Copy Hyperlink to this Page, and then paste the hyperlink wherever I want it to appear in my notes. Now my insightful mumblings are available wherever and whenever I need them.

* That is NOT my color, man! When you create a new section in OneNote, or when you start OneNote for the first time (the first time? Where ya been?), OneNote chooses a default color for you. Chances are it doesn’t suit you — it makes you look tired and washed out. Well, don’t just kvetch; change it! Right-click the section tab at the top of the page, point to Section Color, and then click the color that you want to apply. If you’re an ascetic, click None to remove coloring from a section entirely.

*Don’t burn your retinas with bad formatting If copying and pasting from a Web page to your notebook doesn’t retain the Web formatting, try capturing text in a screen clipping instead. On the Insert menu, click Screen Clipping, and then drag the pointer to create a rectangular selection around the content on your screen that you want to capture. A picture is worth a thousand words. Especially a picture of a thousand words.

Technology

Click the blue link above for the full list and descriptions.

Whether you’re partial to online services or to downloadable software, we have the Web’s best free stuff and it’ll keep you productive, secure and entertained.

Free. It’s the magic word for an ever-expanding wealth of downloadable software and online services. Free doesn’t necessarily mean good, however, and hunting for freebies can mean sifting through a lot of junk.

That’s where we come in. We surfed, clicked and installed to find sparkling free gems capable of planning your time, keeping you in touch and tuning and securing your PC, not to mention glitzing up your desktop, helping you stay productive and entertaining you with music, videos, photos and games. We paid special attention to programs and services you may not have heard of before.
We also singled out two free offerings — one download and one online service — as the best of the bunch.

What they cover:

In This Article:
File Sharing and Storage
Security
Video and Photo
System Utilities and Backup
Maps and Directions
Communications
Time Management
Music
Desktop Customization
News Readers
Games
Best Download and Web App

I’m always on the lookout for the newest, latest scanners in adware, malware, virus and spamware, and there appears to be quite a few in this annual batch. Microsoft has two entries. Their Microsoft Office Live Workspace and Microsoft Office Live Small Business, both of which I have, my business site Lione Services.

Canvas for OneNote allows you to navigate and edit notebooks in a new way by providing a high-level canvas-view of all your content. he prototype lets you zoom and pan around; view and organize content in new ways; add new pages right where you want them; and even locate pages in a timeline view.

Discover the many ways that Canvas for OneNote can help you identify and find the content, pages, and sections you’re looking for.

See how adding, moving, and editing notebook pages and sections from a canvas view can help you get all your content right where you want it.

Watch how easy it can be to browse your notebook, organize content to fit the way you work, and find what you’re looking for using the Activity View and various visual cues.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:4df5f112-f04a-490c-9d06-667126389298&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Demo Video">Video: Demo Video</a>

Requirements: Windows Vista and OneNote 2007.
Limitations:
Last updated: 02/25/2009

From the Office Labs blog:

Within Office Labs, we’ve been exploring alternate interactions with software that take advantage of the natural human capacity for spatial recognition in order to help users organize their digital belongings in much the same way that they organize their physical belongings. For example, pptPlex explored how presenting information could benefit from a canvas-based experience. Today we’re pleased to release Canvas for OneNote which explores how you can browse, organize, edit and create OneNote content using a canvas.

How does a canvas make things better? Think about your desk, with piles of papers on the corner and things in certain spaces. You have a lot of liberty to sort and arrange as you want. You know where certain things are, and you can go quickly and easily to those spaces to find them. Our gut feeling is that this canvas-like approach to organizing digital content is really promising, and with this prototype you can help us explore the truth of that feeling through your actual use, interactions, and work flow.

Canvas for OneNote was designed to allow OneNote users to navigate their notebooks more efficiently by using a high-level view of all of the documents, pictures, and anything else they’ve stored in their notebooks. Users will be able to see all their notebook pages and sections at a glance, and zoom into any content for which they want to see more detail or perform edits. It also enables users to organize sections and pages using spatial placement, easily browse and find content based on size and color, and add new sections or pages by simply double-clicking the canvas or using the toolbar. It also provides an Activity View to easily locate pages modified by date.

REGISTER to enjoy the full virtual launch experience, enabling you to download content via a convenient virtual backpack and sign up for more information.

SIGN IN if you have already registered, to view the site and continue collecting content for download via your virtual backpack.

ENTER without registering to go straight to the site but without ability to download content to a virtual backpack.

Information from Microsoft on the event:

Building on the customer, partner, and industry momentum of Office Communications Server 2007, the new Office Communications Server 2007 R2 update continues to deliver on the Microsoft promise to streamline communications for users, give IT organizations the flexibility and control they need to better manage their communications infrastructure, and provide an extensible platform for communications-enabled business processes. Streamlined communications Users face the challenge of managing their communications across many devices and applications, which can have a negative impact on productivity. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 streamlines the way that users manage communications; it enables users to find and communicate with the right person, right now, with the applications they use most. Some highlights include:

 Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 Attendant Console and call delegation controls
 Persistent group chat functionality and increased performance for multi-party desktop sharing
 Enhanced Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile experience

Operational flexibility and control IT administrators are called upon to control costs, improve security, integrate with existing infrastructures, and manage compliance requirements. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 helps IT administrators meet these challenges by giving them the ability to provide flexible communications solutions and by delivering tools to help manage more secure and compliant communications. Some highlights include:

 On-premise dial-in audio conferencing
 Single number reach functionality for mobile phone users
 Enhanced reporting that includes video and application sharing

Visual Studio

From Microsft Q&A:

PressPass: Let’s take a step back for a second. You introduced Visual Studio 2008 in February 2008. What has been the customer reaction to it since then?

Zander: Very positive. Today there are more than 14,000 customers for Visual Studio Team System 2008 deploying more than 500,000 clients.

One of the new user interface screens for Visual Studio 2010.
Click for high-res image

Customers’ favorite features include Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) technology, which significantly reduces the amount of code developers have to write and speeds up the development process.

We’ve also heard anecdotally from customers like AppPoint Software Solutions, Xerox Corp., Xcalia S.A., TestFactory and Veracity Solutions Inc. that they have seen benefits in all phases of the software development life cycle, from early testing and development to final deployment and customization.

Since the release of Visual Studio 2008, we’ve continued to add some new functionality to help customers get more out of their existing investments, such as the Client Profile introduced with SP1, which streamlines development and deployment of client-based applications. We’ve also improved the performance and scalability of Team Foundation Server considerably, responding to growing needs for greater scalability.

We are currently offering several promotions for Visual Studio 2008 at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio.

What’s different with this new UI?

Zander: There’s a lot more to the new UI than just a pretty face. We’ve completely redesigned the UI for Visual Studio 2010 with one goal: making developers’ jobs easier.

The new UI for Visual Studio 2010 aims to help developers work smarter with streamlined features and increased control of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but without creating a new learning curve for existing Visual Studio users. As developers, we spend a lot of time in our IDE. So it’s all about how to make your experience with the IDE most successful. Visual Studio 2010 now features a reorganized layout with file menus and commands on a “shelf” at the top of the IDE.