Heck, we're not wild about verbal communication in general anymore, but voicemail in particular seems pretty archaic and impractical these days. Would you agree?... Read the full entry »
There’s Google buzz, and then there’s Google Buzz. The former is what happens when the famed search engine generates a lot of interest in you, your company, your product, etc.
Microsoft’s response this week: Relax, it’s just Windows 7 doing its job. You see, the new OS can determine when a battery has outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced. But XP and Vista don’t offer any such reporting, so the message might indeed seem surprising to Windows 7 users.
And let’s face facts: Laptop batteries start to lose some capacity around the 18-month mark — sooner if you leave your system plugged in most of the time. (In that scenario, the battery never gets the opportunity to discharge and recharge, resulting in poor performance when you eventually do pull the plug.)
You can read more about the controversy — including Microsoft’s response — at PC World’s Business Center. At the risk of sounding like a Monday-morning quarterback, I kind of suspected this was the case. Most laptop users aren’t too educated when it comes to battery longevity and performance (and why would they be?), and I think we’ve all fallen into the habit of blaming Microsoft whenever anything goes wrong with our PCs.
What do you think? Do you think Microsoft’s just ducking the issue, or are they right in saying this whole battery-reporting thing is a feature, not a bug? Image via PC World.
Do you still struggle with the ribbon interface in Office 2007 and 2010 Beta? Do you want to discover more formatting tools in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint? Do you want to have fun in the process? Well, Microsoft has answered your prayers with an experimental add-on for Office apps which treats learning how to get around the ribbon like a computer game.
Last Friday, I got out of bed to discover that my Internet cable service was out. Not only couldn’t I get any e-mail in Outlook, but I was unable to see any Web pages.
That was bad enough, but then I found that my iPhone wasn’t working either — for some reason, I couldn’t connect to my POP server via the phone, and most Web sites would not load. I was totally cut off from the Internet.
Since both my desktop and mobile Internet were dead, I actually worried that some sort of catastrophe had struck during the night.
Last night, Google taught the world how to make a killer TV commercial. If you haven’t seen it, “Parisian Love” is elegant in its simplicity, clever in its design, and utterly, utterly charming. Take a look, then read on to learn some of the lessons you can and should take from this — and see the knockoff video I made in under an hour!
I don’t work in your office, but I bet that I can describe how a typical project gets accomplished. Not only are the SMEs — the subject matter experts — assigned to the operation, but so are partners from across the company. These are people that have little direct impact on the outcome, but are included in the spirit of collaboration and cooperation. The end result: You spend half your time just communicating, and the project inevitably falls behind schedule.
What’s the right way to manage a project like that? I’ve got some logical, yet nontraditional advice for how to organize our team.
Software that promises to do your bidding is usually more annoying than helpful — just ask Clippy — but technology seems to be advancing to the point that such apps might start to be actually useful. Indeed, there’s a new app for the iPhone that’s truly a game changer. It responds to voice recognition, interprets your plain English commands, and leverages a slew of Web sites and services to actually do useful work for you.
There are studies indicating that every March, during the NCAA basketball tournament, nationwide office productivity takes a hit. I suspect it’s the same during the week leading up to the Super Bowl. So we understand if you spent the better part of last week choosing your squares in the office pool.
In fact, we’ll bet you missed a few of last week’s best posts, which is why we’ve assembled them here:
I don’t know about you, but these days I find my office voicemail more of a hassle than a help. It’s such a slow and unwieldy method of communication! This Doghouse Diaries cartoon pretty much sums up my feelings (click to view a larger version):
Funny, right? But also so true. These days I strongly prefer e-mail, instant messaging, and text messaging, all of which are faster, more succinct, and much more convenient.
For the record, my iPhone’s famed visual voicemail is a lot better, as it provides an at-a-glance overview of my messages and the option to play only the one(s) I want. Too bad few office systems offer that kind of capability.
What are your thoughts? Do you still find voicemail an important and useful part of your business life, or do you find that you’re barely using it anymore? Tell us your VM tales in the comments.
I frequently find that I need to rearrange paragraphs in a document that I have written. Often it’s as simple as wanting to move a paragraph (or a “graf,” in writer lingo) up or down a little, swapping positions with the neighboring paragraph.
Sure, it’s easy to do by selecting the text with the mouse and dragging it where it needs to go, but what if you don’t like taking your hands off the keyboard? I’ve got a cool, so-little-known-that-it’s-almost-secret keyboard shortcut that lets you rearrange paragraphs instantly.
Dave Johnson
Over the past 20 years, Dave Johnson has written three dozen books (including the best-selling How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera), co-hosted a weekly call-in radio show, and covered technology for a long list of magazines that include PC World and Wired. As his neighbors can attest, he also plays drums. more »
What the hell is former Dallas Cowboys head coach and current Fox NFL Sunday host Jimmy Johnson doing making ads for Extenze, the dubious herbal pill advertised on late night cable that offers "an increase in size"? Courting legal disaster, that's what.
Even smart people make financial moves that are downright illogical. Emotions and superstitions have a sneaky way of keeping you from rational financial decisions. But dumb choices can have serious, real-world consequences. Here are some of the biggest blunders we all make, plus tips from the experts on how to keep cool.
There’s Google buzz, and then there’s Google Buzz. The former is what happens when the famed search engine generates a lot of interest in you, your company, your product, etc.
