Organizational Research Survey

I'm doing some research for a paper for a course I'm taking. It'll eventually be incorporated into a larger paper for a research organization I'm a member of.

If you'd like to help me out (it should only take 5-10 minutes), please Click Here to take survey

I'll post more details on here in the future, including how to get a copy of the paper if you're interested.

ActiveWords

Trying out ActiveWords from www.activewords.com . It's really an ingenious utility -- performs word substitutions and/or commands by watching what you type. It can do some really amazing things -- from typing whole paragraphs for you when you type just a word, to launching programs and then making them do things for you.

I became interested in it out of a conversation I had at the Microsoft BizSpark Meet & Greet event a couple of days ago. As I was sitting there live microblogging the event, the founder of ActiveWords told me he had a way to make using my netbook easier, and suggested I download the trial of ActiveWords.

Well, a couple of days later, with some of the free Add-ins loaded, I can confirm - yes, it does indeed make using my netbook easier, and I strongly suspect it'll make using any of my computers a lot easier.

I'll keep blogging about ActiveWords as I learn new ways to use it in the coming months. Even now, though, it's clearly a winner.

Gimme more ribbon!

I never thought I'd say this, but I really wish Outlook 2007 had the proper "ribbon" so I could have it autohide like in my other Office apps on my netbook.

It’s not black and white (or David & Goliath).

Microsoft just announced the next entry in the Zune music player line – the Zune HD. Response in the blogosphere has been mixed – lots of excitement over its HighDef video and curiosity about its inclusion of HD Radio.

On the other side, people like Guy Kawasaki keep comparing every music player, including this one, with the iPod or iPod Touch. Others have gone as far as to declare that it’s DOA – again based on the idea that it’s not an “iPod-Killer’.

I think that these approaches are short-sighted – I don’t think anyone, even the folks over at Microsoft, really expect any player to take the market away from Apple any time soon. Apple made the digital music player market, and for a large segment of the population, one that is content with purchasing downloaded music one track at a time, it’ll take a lot more than an evolutionary competing player to get them to switch away, if only because conversion of music from one format to another is annoying, and until the music companies decide to allow license transfer from one vendor to another (so you only have to buy a track once & then can download it from any vendor that offers it), changing formats is going to be painful.

For me, the iPod model is a non-starter. I’m a subscription kind of guy. If it wasn’t for the Zune Pass, I’d never download a single thing –it’s only because there’s no downside to downloading an album that I thought might be interesting that I ever hear anything new. I’m personally hoping that Zune video will eventually include some kind of ability to download/stream Netflix like my XBOX 360 Gold subscription does.

I think there’s enough people like me that choose subscriptions over purchases to mean that Zune players – and certainly the Zune service – will have a market for a long time.

What do you think?

Keeping things in sync…

I remember the days before the Internet – in fact, I remember the days when a PC was a solitary affair, even at the largest corporations. Much of my early career (in the 1980’s!) was spent as the “tech guy” accompanying the sales people on calls, explaining exactly why it was that a company would want to connect their computers together.

Those days are long past us, thank goodness, and every day new reasons to have your computers connected – now to the Internet – become apparent.

One of those reasons that I’ve been using various forms of over the last year or so is keeping things in sync between different computers. By doing so, important files etc. are available no matter which computer you’re using – and as a side effect, are backed up so that you don’t have to separately deal with the whole backup/restore thing. Lose a computer – or, say, upgrade a Windows XP computer to Windows 7, and all you need to do to restore is subscribe it to however you were sync’ing the files, and voila, they’re back.

I often wonder what other people are doing in this area. Are you using one of the online backup systems like Carbonite (a trial of which came with my Acer netbook), or are you using something specifically designed for multiple system sync’ing like Windows Live Sync or Live Mesh?

Personally, I’m using both Windows Live Sync & Live Mesh. I initially started my foray into Internet-based sync’ing with Foldershare – the forerunner to Windows Live Sync. I find it ideal for sync’ing non-document files – specifically, things like my Internet Explorer Favorites that I do a lot of reading from – and occasional changes/additions, but don’t really interact with as documents.

For documents, I really like Mesh – partly because of the Live Desktop that allows me to access & work with them even on computers that I wouldn’t want to sync them all to (or can’t because I don’t have permissions to install software on them). I also really like the “News” feature where I can see what changes the system has noticed.

And, of course, Mesh also has that whole remote “Connect to device” thing … which is a topic for another day.

Live Media GPS

Thanks to @gannotti on Twitter for introducing me to a new idea (well, new to me) – geocasting. Geocasting is exactly what it sounds like – live (or recorded) broadcasting that is done using a client that utilizes your GPS to also record your location automatically. For me, this heads even further into the realm of things that when I was growing up I though were the realm of Star Trek – you know, “Captains Log, stardate 0905.22, location somewhere in space…” where the tricorder would notate your location automatically – so that when cadets years later were duplicating the experience on a Holodeck, they’d have exact details. :

Anyway, there were a number of points in the last few months where this would’ve been really useful to me – especially when on field trips with my daughter’s third-grade class. It would’ve been really cool to be able to record waypoints on their adventure to Mt. St. Helens and then plot them on a map.

I’m going to play with this over the next few weeks using my Windows Mobile phone – if it works as cool as it appears it will, I’ll use it on her next field trip in early June.

Live Media GPS

Windows 7 on my Netbook!

Last week, I realized that my Dell laptop was getting pretty heavy & bulky to carry around (not to mention noisy – thanks to the always running on high fan).

I went to Costco & took a look at the two Ultra-Mobile PC’s (a/k/a Netbooks) that they had in stock: one was an HP model with a nicer case & slightly larger keyboard, and the other, the one that I ended up getting, was an Acer AOD150-1322, with a 10.1” widescreen, Intel Atom processor, 160GB hard drive etc. In fact, all of the same stuff as the HP except a larger hard drive, better memory card support and a VGA out port (important if you might do some presentations from it).

The netbook came with Windows XP Home with SP2. While that worked well enough, the fact that it was the home edition (that can’t connect to our home domain) eventually annoyed me enough that I decided that I wanted to put Windows 7 on it.

I began the process by digging out the external CD/DVD drive I had bought about a year ago & plug it in. After doing some research (ok, I tweeted a help message!), I determined that the best path to go was to upgrade to Windows Vista first. Fortunately, I have a set of Windows Vista DVDs at home, so I began the process by upgrading XP to Windows Vista. Note: I specifically chose NOT to activate Windows Vista when online, so as to not burn a Vista key. Then, I downloaded & installed Windows Vista SP1 (which is the minimum required to upgrade to Windows 7) and installed it. I then let the computer install all the critical (and important) updates from windows update that it wanted.

There were a couple of driver issues – I ended up searching for & installing the Windows Vista version of the Synaptics Trackpad driver (found on the Synaptics site) and the Realtek Audio driver for Vista from the Acer site (note: one of the other Aspire one models includes Windows Vista by default, so I got it from there).

Once Windows Vista SP1 was successfully installed & critical updates installed, it was time to move on to Windows 7. I installed the RC from DVD, choosing to upgrade – and it went along without a hitch.

The one negative that I had was that, at the suggestion of the windows 7 installer, I removed the McAfee Security platform that had come pre-installed – and I haven’t figured out how to get it back – since it’s not on the Application backup disk.

Anyway, I continue to install updates as they come – but right now, I’m sitting typing this using Windows 7.

Oh, and as a bonus, the experience index turned out to be high enough to enable full Aero support.

Overall, I’d say this rocks. Big time.