------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine ------- Vol 3, Issue 10 We went out to our local "Hands-On Museum" for a family-oriented networking event. Lots of fun science exhibits, a scavenger hunt, and numerous display tables for local tech companies, including the requisite swag. Kaylie had a great time running all over the place. Her particular favorite was a little rubber ball given out by my good friend, Megan Torrance of Torrance Learning (http://www.torrancelearning.com/). The ball, when squeezed, would bulge out and turn from a deep blue to a fluorescent yellow. Cool stuff. Let it be known that Megan bears no blame for what happened later that evening. She did warn me. After the event, we met with some friends at a sidewalk restaurant. We were having a good old time when we heard the phrase dreaded by parents everywhere: "Uh-oh!" My darling daughter had chewed through the outer covering of the ball. Day-glo yellow liquid had sprayed everywhere. She had it on her dress, her plate, and running down her face. Fortunately, everything cleaned up just fine and the little one is motoring around as fast as ever, none the worse for wear. Personally, I'm glad my discoveries don't have to come with fountains of fluorescent yellow paint. Most of mine come through email or through one of the many blogs I read. I thought I would talk about a few of those new discoveries this issue. ---------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue... ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: A Few of My Favorite Upgrades 2. Shameless Self-Promotion 3. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: A Few of My Favorite Upgrades ---------------------------------------------------------------- Aside from the perennial updates I see on Facebook (most of which really don't excite me one way or the other), I'm perpetually amazed by the folks who are constantly updating the tools and toys I use on the Web. Being a coder myself, I can understand their motivation. The systems they build are largely labors of love. No matter how good it is, we always think we can make things even better. So what are some of the tools that I've seen updated recently? Here's a short list: 1. OpenOffice.org (http://openoffice.org/): This amazing and free office suite is what I use instead of the Microsoft offerings. Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations. It has it all. One of the things it was missing, though, was file compatibility with Office 2007. Now that more and more people are getting the newer version, I've been receiving more and more of these files. Fortunately, the OpenOffice.org 3.0 release now can open the Office 2007 files directly. It makes my life so much easier. 2. Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com/): I've been using Google Calendar for quite a while now. I've even set up calendars for some of my clients to be displayed on their websites. It's got a remarkably easy-to-use interface that's hard to beat. They recently added task lists to its array of features. I'll probably take a look at this, but I'm pretty happy with "Remember the Milk", so the Google task lists are going to be something really special for me to switch. At first blush, it feels a little clunky (though that might just be my lack of familiarity with the feature). It is also missing the ability to prioritize the items in your list, though you can apparently rearrange at will. Presumably you could just sort the items in order of importance by hand. 3. Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/): Google is continuing to improve its online office suite. The feature set is still a bit sparse, but being able to share work easily makes it quite useful in my book. One of the thing that it sports now is an offline mode. You have to follow some relatively simple directions to get it set up, but once there, you no longer have to worry about having access to the Internet if you want to edit your files. You make all of your edits on your local computer. When you have an Internet connection again, the system automatically synchronizes with the online version of the file. Now they need to get the same feature for their online spreadsheets. I use them just as often as the Docs, so having them available offline would be wonderful. Special additional mention for almost all of Google's online offerings: Check out the "What's new" links on any of them as frequently as possible. The Googlers are always adding new features -- some of which you didn't even know you needed! I know I'm missing a few of the recent upgrades I've noticed. Maybe I'll gather those up for review next time. In the meantime, if one of your favorite tools has been upgraded recently, please let me know by dropping a line at: gpeters@cyberdatasolutionsllc.com. Copyright 2009, Greg Peters ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Shameless Self-Promotion ---------------------------------------------------------------- The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your webmaster. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 3. 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