I only just downloaded the new beta of Windows Live Writer today. I’ve been using this gem of a program for the last few years, and it just gets better and better. The UI is ever so slightly improved (especially the toolbars) but other than that it is essentially the same awesome program its always been. By the way I’ve finally started using the hot keys (I can’t remember if they were there...
I went along to the Sydney ALT.NET User group tonight, and was well rewarded. This was the kickoff meeting for the group and was an excellent start to what is sure to be an extremely useful gathering each month. Richard Banks was MC for the night, and started with news. I was pleased to hear good discussion amongst the attendees, and comfortable interaction. There’s nothing worse than a meeting...
Microsoft Research have released the Image Composite Editor (referred to as ICE by some, including the installer). It is ‘an advanced panoramic image stitcher’. It’s only 3MB and does a very nice job. It’s also very fast. Here’s two photos from our trip to New York that I stitched together. Plus I used the perspective tool to add some interest. Just for fun I tried to stitch together...
Microsoft gets more than 25 million spam submissions a day. Makes sense I guess, they’re a big company. I discovered this staggering stat going through their Microsoft IT* Showcase write-up on moving to Exchange Hosted Services. I’m not an IT Pro so the article probably isn’t aimed at me – but I still found it an interesting article to scan through. Microsoft basically transitioned the...
Benchmarks are like statistics – they are only relevant in context. Take this new TPC-E benchmark from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) as an example. If you were to read the gushing Microsoft Press Release you’d be forgiven for thinking that SQL Server 2008 topped out the list of all major database vendors in terms of price/performance. Here’s the quote: Of course what...
There’s a new Outlook Connector released, and this one improves the sync features with Windows Live Calendar. Supposedly. I had a play with Windows Live Calendar and I quite liked it. Having the connector would make it seamless to share calendar items. So I downloaded and installed it. Ran up Outlook and it crashed. Try again. Crash. Uninstalled the Outlook Connector and it still crashes...
If I were a software company producing productivity enhancing tools I’d love to have a tag line of: Use ‘X’ – it’ll save you at least a minute a day! I think this would be interesting for a number of reasons: It’s believable People would be able to easily verify the claim (much better than that ‘improves performance by 39.8%’ tosh we get bombarded with) The claim is so tiny it...
Product good. Marketing… not so good It’s been an interesting exercise thinking about marketing at Elcom over the last few months. In my opinion (biased as I am) I think we have an excellent product. However, something we haven’t been very good at is the marketing side of things. Often people have heard of us, but they don’t really know what we do. We mention that we have a content...
I can’t believe I didn’t know this – you can easily switch between the different functions in Outlook (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc) using Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, etc. Yet another reason why you should be reading the Outlook Team Blog. See their other keyboard shortcuts here. Here’s the full list: Mail Ctrl + 1 Calendar Ctrl + 2 Contacts Ctrl + 3 Tasks Ctrl + 4 Notes Ctrl + 5...
I love the weather in September. Warm, breezy and the days are getting longer. The cold and dark of winter is gone and it’s time to come out and party a bit. Which is why its a perfect time to start attending all the great User Groups around Sydney again. Here’s a quick rundown of the main groups around town this month: This week Tue 16 September: Sydney SharePoint User Group – covering how...