Category: Technology

Microsoft Office 2007

Thursday, 31 July 2008 23:26 Written by Mike 0 Comments

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!

Macbook Touch?

Thursday, 31 July 2008 23:12 Written by Mike 0 Comments

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.

slydial.com

Thursday, 31 July 2008 23:05 Written by Mike 0 Comments

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

shazam on the iphone

Thursday, 31 July 2008 22:57 Written by Mike 0 Comments

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.

iphone 2.01?

Thursday, 31 July 2008 22:46 Written by Mike 0 Comments

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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