Raise your hand if you have the new Microsoft Office 2007….  Raise your hand if you hate the new tab based interface in Word and Excel….  Wow, same number of hands!

I am not sure what Microsoft was thinking with this new interface.  I have not found one person that likes this new interface.  In fact, most people really hate it.  It is so much slower to use, not shortcut key friendly and just not the same.

It is harder to find things than before, the menus are gone, it is just frustrating to use.  And the other frustrating thing is you do not have a choice.  There is no option to go back to the way it was before.  I applaud trying to improve on an interface but if you are going to make such a drastic change at least give the option to go back to the old way.  I mean this is not just a simple interface change like a new menu or maybe moving a couple of things around and re-organizing, this is a whole shift away from the way we have been using every program since the beginning of windows.

It is so frustrating that I now use other tools more and then paste in the text and tweak it after I get it in.  The same changes were made in Excel and Word.  I have had this update now for a few months and I still cannot find some of the features that were there before.  I am sure they are there somewhere but I sure cannot find them and I refuse to have to use help to learn how to use Microsoft Word.  After all, I have been using it for at least more than 14 years.  I should not have to use help.

Now, I have been ranting on how bad the new Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel are in Office 2007.  I must say I really like the new Outlook in Office 2007.  There have been some nice additions in there and they did not mess with the user interface and menus like they did in Word and Excel.

Microsoft…  Either go back to the old user interface or at least give the option to use the old interface.  Oh, and fire the person who designed the new interface!

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Well this is still in the rumor mill stage but a few sources now have mentioned about a new macbook that would be more tablet based.  So far nothing can be confirmed as there has not been an announcement from Apple.

One source described this new device like this: “Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at “low” price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will.  App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.”

How cool would this be.  October is just around the corner so we will find out soon.  Let’s hope the rumors are correct again.

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Have you ever wanted to just leave someone a message on their voicemail and not have to talk to them?  You know that person that you get on the phone and cannot get off.  When you are calling them you are saying in your head, don’t be there, be voicemail, don’t be there, be voicemail.

Well there is a new service called slydial that supposedly can do this for you.  You dial the slydial phone number then enter the phone number of the persons cell phone you want to leave a message for and slydial takes you directly to their voicemail.

There is no charge for using slydial except that you have to call slydial’s number which is more than likely long distance for you.

Slydial only works with cell phones and will not work with answering machines or landline voicemail systems.

In reading some of the feedback, a few people have said that sometimes the phone rings one time and then shows a missed call on the person’s cell phone.  so if they are one of those people that call back the missed calls you may get to have that lengthy conversation with them anyways.

For more information on this service visit http://www.slydial.com/index.php

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I have been wanting to blog some on the new applications on the iPhone.  This is really my first and it is first because it has to be my favorite application.

The application is called Shazam.  Shazam is an application that listens to a song on the radio or playing from anywhere else and queries a database of music and tells you the name of the song, the album and the artist.  It then allows you purchase the music from iTunes.

It does not work so well when you sing the song, in fact it never worked for me.  But, I cannot sing either   From the description though it can only index the original music from an artist.

You can visit www.shazam.com for more information but they really do not say much about how they do this.  It is amazing to me that they can identify music in just a few seconds.  So far I have had a great experience.  More than 9 out of 10 songs I have used shazam on are found.  And in one click you can purchase right from iTunes.

Of course that quick access to iTunes can be a dangerous thing for some people

There is no charge for the iPhone application and it can be downloaded right from the app store on the iPhone or in iTunes.

If you have an iPhone and have not yet downloaded Shazam, I recomend that you do.  You will be amazed as well.

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Apparently some of the folks over at boy genius have been seeing some logs of files for a new release of the iPhone.  It seems that build 5B101 is the 2.0.1 software for first-generation iPhones, while 5B103 is for 3G iPhones.

No details on what is in the update or when it will be released yet.  There have been complaints about the accelerometer and camera.  I personally can report a much worse battery life than before the update and also lots of lockups and need to reboot.

More updates to follow I am sure.

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I recently did a review on Adobe’s acrobat.com site that allows document storage, document editing, collaboration and screen sharing, file sharing and more.

The part of the acrobat.com site that allows for document editing is called Buzzword.  Buzzword is a pretty powerful web based application that allows you to edit documents online in a word processor that somewhat resembles the big guys like Microsoft Word.

Buzzword is not as feature packed as Microsoft Word but for most tasks it will probably do just fine.  There is no charge for acrobat.com or Buzzword so it is hard to complain that they are not full featured .

This is the initial release of Buzzword, so I suspect that sometime in the near future new features will be added.

One cool thing about Buzzword and acrobat.com is they allow collaboration between multiple users.  You can share files, share documents, etc.  It also appears that more than one person can be editing the same file at the same time without losing work.

If you compare it to the other free word processors out there, buzzword is better than any that I have seen.  Also, you can access your document from anywhere on the Internet.  But yes, you need to be connected to the internet to get to it.  So you cannot just take your laptop out to lake where you have no internet and work on your document.

There is also an Adobe AIR based version of the acrobat.com suite of programs.  I am not sure if it can run without the internet or not, that is something I will have to research and update everyone on.  The little bit of research I did on the AIR version did not turn out happy comments.  Most comments were that it was hard to use.

Check back soon for an update on the AIR version of acrobat.

Bottom line, Buzzword is great for most regular word processing, it is free and has nice collaboration capabilities.  But if you need the advanced features that are available in Microsoft Word, then Buzzword is not there yet.  But by all means, check it out.

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Have you heard about Adove AIR?  Sounds like some new oxygen bar Fad right?  Well, it is a fairly new technology from Adobe that brings the rich content of web 3.0 content to the desktop without a web browser.

Adobe AIR installs a small client application that is basically the framework for the AIR application to run in.  You then download these AIR applications which are typically designed in the Service Oriented Archtecture design with XML data transfers, etc.

Anyways there are some very cool applications that are available for Adobe AIR.  My favorites are the Ebay Desktop and Twhirl (a Twitter Client).  Also following closely behind is the Google Analytics client.  It is way cool and much easier than having to login to google to look at the reports.

There are so many cool apps for Adobe Air that I am going to create a category for Adobe Air and review some apps that are available.  As new ones come out I will keep reviewing and make recomendations.

If you know of some new site, software or technology drop me a line so I can check it out too.

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Ok, so the new iPhone has been out for 7 days and iPhone 2.0 software has been out just a little bit longer.  I am still on my old original iPhone but now with iPhone 2.0.

So far I am not overly impressed.  Well let me say, I love the new stuff they added but they also added some not so good stuff as well.  There are a ton more problems.  The problems are not just with the new iPhone but with iPhone 2.0.

New Stuff:

Lets start out with some of the positives first….

1. My #1 is it now support Activesync via Microsoft Exchange OWA.  This is major.  I can now use the iPhone with my corporate email, with security, etc.  And Amazingly, it works much better than my Windows Mobile 6.0 device I have been carrying around for my corporate email.I mean I can add a calendar entry and in seconds it appears in my outlook calendar.  Email is fast and best of all.  There is no more searching the GAL for people.  It does it for you automagically in the background.  Very Cool.
2. My number two big item….  3rd party app support that can be installed and run locally.  Shouldn’t this have been in the first release after all?
3. Bulk Email deletion is much better now.  Plus they added another little secret deletion trick (see the Tips and Tricks below).
4. They put the contacts on as an icon/app now so you no longer have to go into the phone to get to your contacts.
5. The new AppStore where you can download low cost or FREE applications for the iPhone and install them on the iPhone.  So you can actually play them on a plan when the wireless is off.  There are some really cool apps out there and they are just starting to become available.  Just wait till a little time goes by.

I will be writing some followup blogs on some of the Applications that are available on the iPhone.

Problems:

Of course with every new code release there are problems.  Some of these problems are taking some of the fun out of the iPhone for me.

1. Battery life with iPhone 2.0 is horrible.  It does not last half as long as it did prior to the software upgrade.
2. Programs Lock up.  Sometimes it locks up for as long as 30 seconds.  There does not appear any specific program that causes it or it happens in.   I have been doing lots of reboots which seems to fix it for a little while.

What is still missing?

Well, I am a little disappointed that the new iPhone 2.0 does not have a few features.

1. There is still no copy and paste functionality.
2. There is no voice dial.
3. GPS is not a navigateable GPS.  It only shows a little dot where you are located.  It gives no directions, etc.

The App Store:

The new App Store on the iPhone is cool.  You can see a quick list of applications that are available for the iPhone.  Many of them are free, the rest are low cost app.  There are some very cool applications, games, etc available.

I am going to spend some more blog time reviewing a few of these apps.

Tips and Tricks:

Screen capture

The iPhone 2.0 now has a screen capture function.  When you perform a screen capture the image of the screen is saved into your camera roll of pictures.  You can really freak some one if you take a screen capture then view the picture.  It looks just like the desktop.

Quick Email Delete

New in iPhone 2.0 is the ability to quickly delete a single email message.  Apple made the bulk delete much better than before with the edit button.  Now, if you have only one email you want to delete….  Slid your finger over the message starting at the right edge towards the left edge.  A delete button will pop up on the message.

Keep checking back for more iPhone updates and application reviews.

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Oh, the great debate about Mac vs. PC. My view on the subject may not be a popular one

We have all seen the Apple commercials where Mac looks like the cool kid on the block and PC a whiny, geeky hypochondriac with severe allergies that was denied fun by his parents. Ok, so I read a lot into the commercials.

The debate between PC’s and Macs has gone on since the Lisa was first introduced in 1983. Back then it was the GUI interface vs the command line interface.

Ok, so let’s get down to the nitty gritty dirty stuff, but first let me just say I am not prejudiced towards either one. I love all computers. I have both PC’s and Macs in my house as well as linux machines. And I not only have all of these but use them all regularly.

I am a network / security engineer by trade and let me just say that for that type of stuff, the PC has many more tools available. Linux falls a close 2nd right behind Windows. It seems Windows has a big jumpstart on the tools I need to my job. All of those years prior to the Mac OSX operating systems put the Mac way behind because it lacked a good networking system.

Now that OSX is based on a unix kernel, the development of such networking tools would be much easier. There are tons of unix tools already out there and it would not take much to port them over to the Mac, at least in a command line form. And, now the Mac can run X-windows. But so far, there have not been many ports yet.

So, from a perspective of doing my network jobs, a PC is a requirement. I mean you cannot get tools like Solarwinds, the checkpoint dashboard, etc. on a Mac. At least not in native OSX. I do not want to delve into Parallels or VMWare Fusion. They may solve what I am talking about.

From the perspective of the office tools, I use both, it all depends on what else I am doing. For example, if I am using my Laptop doing some regular work I will use the PC. My main email is on an Exchange server. I do like Outlook better than Entourage. Although I will use Entourage if I am on the Mac.

For development tasks, I use the PC more than the Mac except if I am working on web pages. I use both for developing web sites. You can code in php, java, flash, etc just as easy on either platform. I use Dreamweaver which is available on both platforms. I think I am a bit more familiar with Dreamweaver on the PC but Dreamweaver on the Mac is easy too.

Now, I do a lot of photo work and video editing, I do all of that work on the Mac. There is in my opinion no better editor than Final Cut. I have used lots of them and Final Cut is a step above the rest. The Mac really shines in the graphics and video world and has for a long time. In fact that was a stigma that the

So, I know I sound like a politician, not taking sides. Why would I take sides, I like them both. As I mentioned before I also use a lot of unix (mainly linux). That is probably my favorite operating system. However, I do not use much XWindows. For the nice gui interfaces I stick with the Mac or the PC.

So which one is better? You could use the numbers that are published by Microsoft and Apple to determine that, but according to them, they each think they are better and winning. I do think there is a platform shift going on right now. I think the Mac is gaining ground.

A couple of years ago I got my mom to purchase a computer and get on the Internet. She is not computer savvy at all. She has Windows XP and I keep it updated for her. If I had to do it again I would probably have her get a Mac. I do think they are much more intuitive than a Windows system.

So that being said, what is the right one for you? There are a lot of factors that need to be looked at. First of all, what are you going to be using it for? If it is going to be just a home machine for the family to use, a Mac is a great choice. It is easy for kids to use, it is intuitive for the new computer users.

Macs are also come in some nice packaging forms now. The iMac is self contained. All you have is a monitor, keyboard and mouse with one power plug. The Mac is a complete system that includes matched hardware and software. Unlike a Windows machine where the hardware is made by Dell but the operating system is provided by Microsoft. If you have a problem you have one place to call for the Mac.

Now, I just talked up the Mac, now lets talk up the Windows platform a little bit, afterall, I like it too. First let me say, I am not a huge fan of Vista. I like XP better. I agree that Vista looks prettier, but like your prom date, it is what is on the inside that counts.

I have much better luck with Windows XP than Vista. Just my 2 cents…. Ok, so if you have specialized needs that require Windows or you are already used to Windows, there is no reason to switch. Unless you are getting tired of blue screen of death (BSOD) crashes.

Windows is not too hard to figure out. Windows does support a much larger selection of hardware and has a ton more software available for it than a Mac OSX does. More games, more productivity software, etc.

Ok, now you are convinced a Windows machine is the way to go right? Afterall it has all of this software, lots more than the Mac does. Well….. What if you could run all of the Mac software AND all of the Windows software on one machine? Are you saying to stop teasing you, oh stop confusing you…..

Well, with Parallels for Mac or VMWare Fusion the Mac can run Windows programs too. In fact, you install Windows inside of your Mac. Now, this is only a good option if you have a new Intel based Mac. the older Mac that used powerPC chips had to run a program called VirtualPC which runs very very slow. Not something I would recommend.

On my 8 core Mac Pro I run VMWare fusion and have Vista and Windows XP running and they run better than if they were on their own dedicated hardware. You ask why VMWare Fusion over Parallels? Well, I have another review of the 2 products coming out soon, in there I describe the 2 products. Let me just say you can have drag and drop between the operating systems as well as file sharing. It is awesome.

Ok, so now you are confused. Sorry…. Deciding on the right computer for you can be confusing. The first thing to look at is your budget. If you have the money, I can recommend a Mac with VMWare Fusion running Windows. You will have all bases covered and you will love the solution. The Mac has easy to use video editing and other tools that blow windows away. If you decide on a Mac, check out a .mac account, there are some really cool features you get with a .mac account.

What about Windows for a new machine for the family? Well sure, it will work just fine and you will save a few bucks over a Mac. Shop around, there are some great deals out there for Windows PC’s. I like IBM hardware, I am not a big fan of Dell Laptops but they make good desktops.

Now that I have probably completely confused you, the bottom line is I think both platforms are great platforms and each has their advantage over the other, but I think the Mac has more advantages over Windows when it comes to hardware and software integration . But you will not be making a horrible choice with Windows.

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ok, for more than a month now I have been using Twitter. At first, the awe of the new shiny toy had my attention. As time has gone by, it has lost it’s luster. I have found the most useful thing is tracking subjects. For example, I am tracking Frederick, MD and a few other items. When news comes out from the local paper, etc. I can get those tweets. I have been tracking a few people, some of the people I was tracking became very annoying. Like a look into their weird world.

There are still some good people I am tracking but I was tracking some tech celebrity type of people and was surprised by what they were twittering.

My favorite was to use twitter is on my iPhone. It is like an Twittering machine. I have a firefox plugin for Twitter which is ok but my favorite thing on a computer to use is Twhirl. It is an Adobe Air based Twitter client. It runs on both Mac and PC. I generally keep this client up all of the time.

One thing I wish Twitter would do is allow you to track subjects without having to do it with a text message format. I do not understand why that would only be available with text messages and not through the web.

However, with Twhirl you can search through all tweets for a subject. That is a help but still not exactly the same as it being pushed to you.

One of my other complaints is the stability of the Twitter site.

It has been a good experience and I like twitter but I have not yet made it a habit to update on a regular basis what I am doing.

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