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Time is Money
: Certainly, today’s always-on-and-available-anywhere technology can lead to addictive work habits. We’ve all seen examples of that among friends and family.
But having a cheap, convenient, 24/7 global reach through technology can also efficiently enable you to live the life you’ve always wanted. The choice is yours.
Here are some affordable tools and ideas that harness technology’s power to save you time and money.
1. Use Voice-over-Internet protocol phone service (VoIP) to create a virtual office.
2. Use online services for office communications and banking.
3. Leverage the power of a professional Web site.
4. Use your site features to stay in touch with customers.
5. Use e-mail software to track schedules and tasks.
6. Stop thinking you must do everything yourself.
7. Create a sales contact database for your business.
8. Invest in e-mail marketing that yields results.
Great tips to help your small business or home life.
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Microsoft Access file
Sings the praise if Accesses ability to work with Excel files so much, he may even tempt me to transfer my Writing Submission Spreadsheet (which has taken on a life of it’s own) from Excel to Access.
In his article, he give three big steps:
System One: The things themselves
The system that held the files would give me data in comma-delimited text named as if it were an Excel file.
System Two: About those things…
Performance data about the articles was in a SQL Server database. Access talks to SQL Server, no problem.
System Three: The best-laid plans
Plans for new content live in a SharePoint list. Access, as it turns out, talks to SharePoint.
Ok, I have no idea how i’ll start my own process of transfer and whatnot, but it’d sure be nice to have a better format for that information than endless cells running sideways and up and down. With Steven’s accolades on Access and Excel working together, he gives me some interest in trying. If that is successful, I have another spreadsheet on recipes i’ve tried, with my own comments.
Think of the possibilies.
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Microsoft Excel Finance Calendar
Now there’s no excuse not to manage your money. Keep track of family, household, shopping, gifts, business, accounts receivable, accounts payable, etc., right from your home or office computer.
Templets available for download include 2009-2010 Finance Calendar, Event Budget, Family Monthly Bills Budget, Family monthly budget planner, Lawn and Garden budget, Wedding budget planner and many more.
With so many options available, there’s no excuse not to keep track of your expenses, especially in today’s economy, when we all have to start watching our budgets and pinching our pennies.
What budget templetes to you use? If you don’t, which of the budget templetes on the Microsoft Excel budget templete page interests you? And why?
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Microsoft Access
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Courtesy of Access Team Blog:
Highlights of the updates:
Package Solution Wizard
A wizard that creates a Windows Installer Package (MSI) to install your database and any supporting files and optionally includes the Access 2007 Runtime, or prompts the user to download the Access 2007 Runtime.
Updated for packaging databases with international character file names. Some surrogate Unicode characters are not supported due to MSI technology limitations
Bug fix: Repairing an package install to a custom location will correctly install to the original user-specified location.
Source Code Control
Integration with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe or other source code control systems to allow check-in/check-out of queries, forms, reports, macros, modules, and data. You can also see the differences that have been made to your checked out objects.
This is the first release of the ADE that ships the source code control components in additional languages beyond English, Japanese, French and German.
Click the link above for more and the download siet.
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Inauguration 2009
Watch President-elect Barack Obama become the next President of the United States on CNN.com Live. Update your own Facebook status and see status updates from your friends and other Facebook users on CNN.com Live.
Don’t miss out!
Add me on Facebook, Brick ONeil, as we watch this historic day when our Nation Inaugurates our first African American/Black President! What a proud day for the United States, and indeed, the World.
Remember where you were when America’s first chosen African American President was sworn in to bring America back! The entire world waits in eager anticipation, seeing President Elect Obama as the one person who can bring everyone together. What will his first actions, as President, be? How will world leaders welcome him? TIme will tell.
Enjoy history in the making.
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Verify Addresses
They give a pretty detailed explanation, complete with screenshots along the way. If you you use Mail Merge quite often (or need it once) this is a great tool. I, myself, do not have a lot of people (neither in my business life nor my personal life) to mail to. For those that have hundreds of people to send out cards, newsletters, notices or information, Mail Merge is a great way to set up printing and mailing.
You can even get a home United States Postal Service postage stamp machine for your home business and set up home pickup for bulk mailings. Just browse around on the United States Postal Service website for more information.
On the Excel blog, they cover how to:
Create a Table
The first step is to create a Table from the list of addresses.
Define a Name for the Table
Excel allows you to define names that apply to a range of cells in the worksheet. When a name is defined for a Table in a worksheet, the name will update automatically as the table is resized to add or remove data. This is helpful in this case because I want to add and remove addresses during the process of printing envelopes.
Verify Addresses
After my Table is created and a name applied, I start going through the addresses to confirm which ones are correct. I do this by adding a new column to the Table for this year. To do this, just type 2008 in cell H2. The Table and the name that we defined will expand automatically. Once you have the new column, then you can type something in the column to indicate whether the address is correct. I used a “Y” in my list.
And much more. Click the link to learn how.
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Microsoft in Education
Attend a Webinar, fill out a questionnaire and get a free copy of OneNote 2007 (and become a MOONIE, that is, MicrosOft OneNote).
From Mike Tholfsen’s Blog:
Next Tuesday, (January 20th, 2009 from 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm PST) Microsoft Solution Specialist Tony Franklin will be presenting a Teacher Tech Tuesday webinar on OneNote 2007 in the classroom. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Tony a few different times, including the Philadelphia School of the Future and the Freedom Writer Teacher event. Tony works extensively with the Philadelphia School of the Future and has been a proponent of OneNote and education for many years. I highly encourage you to sign up for this free webinar and engage with Tony for his presentation.
OneNote 2007
Microsoft will also be giving a free a copy of OneNote 2007 for any teacher that views the webinar and completes the survey at the end! If you missed the last one, now’s you’re chance to get a copy of OneNote. More details on how you get your free copy are listed below.
So round up as many teachers as you can and watch this webinar on Tuesday.
Go HERE to register. Get as many of your fellow Teachers to participate! Encourage everyone to become a MOONie.
Get tips on how OneNote can help you organize class materials and class work, create collaborative work environments, and share workspaces. In this webinar we will cover:
- Getting Started with OneNote
- How to get organized with OneNote
- Organizing class materials & class work
- Creating collaborative work environments
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European Commission
Microsoft faces new charges in a European Court that they have been accused of beating the competition with a big stick by inserting their world famous “Internet Explorer” web browser into their software that goes into all computers. The official charges are “Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice,” Europe’s top antitrust watchdog said in a statement.”
The Commission “sets out evidence and outlines its preliminary conclusion that Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between Web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice,” the EU executive said in a statement.
“If the preliminary views expressed in the statement of objection are confirmed, the Commission may impose a fine on Microsoft, require Microsoft to cease the abuse and impose a remedy that would restore genuine consumer choice and enable competition on the merits.”
Microsoft and the EU have engaged in a running spat over competition issues for years, and the U.S. company has been fined several times for allegedly abusing its 95 percent dominance of personal computer systems through its ubiquitous Windows software.
Microsoft is no stranger to European courts. In September 2007, Microsoft lost an appeal before Europe’s second-highest court against a fine of nearly 500 million euros that EU regulators slapped on the company in 2004 for abusing its dominant market power.
In February, the commission hit Microsoft with a further fine of 899 million euros for defying its 2004 ruling. Microsoft has lodged an appeal against the decision.
Microsoft continues to appeal each decision.
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Access Bug Database Templete
Click for Video.
Free Bugs application available for download
Haven’t used Access much myself, although have been wanting to build a database of Writing Contests. Currently, I’ve been using Excel, and the spreadsheet is unwieldy. Access has the ability to take a transfer from Excel files and make the necessary changes.
Anyway, my point is, for those Access users, this bug templete will be a great help.
From the Access Team Blog:
A few months ago we solicited feedback about a new bug tracking template that was in development. We got lots of great feedback and I’m happy to announce the template is available in the Access Getting Started screen in the business category and on Office Online..
Let us know how this helps you and your work/business.
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Microsoft Powertoys
He states he uses multiple laptops and desktops daily to test programs, OS’s like Vista, XP and win 7, Servers, Office and, of course, OneNote. He uses a Sharepoint server on a few.
The powertoys he lists that he’s fond of are, in no particular order:
OneNote Favorites addin, Sudoku!, Object Model, A Calendar/Planner Agenda Maker (that I blogged about recently), Embedded File Finder, Double hyperlinking powertoy, and the OneNote Karaoke Machine (raised eyebrow).
Since I’ve had an almost overwhelming amount of no comments, questions and statements, I thought I’d share what I have on my system. My main (and only) computer is a TC1100 Slate Tablet PC, with XP. The pgms I have are Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which has ten programs, of which I use mostly Outlook with Business Contact manager and Outlook connector and Microsoft Word 2007. Tomorrow or Saturday, I’m receiving a 1G RAM module so my poor little tablet can run the programs without crashing. The powertoys I have used are tablet calculator and tablet search tool. I’ve tried the meeting with the Virtual Earth mapping powertoy with outlook, but it’s never worked properly.
What is your favorite Microsoft program and what, if any, powertoys do you use?
