Tip o’ the Week #149 – Take up thy Surface and Walk!

Posted on November 23, 2012 by ewand

Far out, man! The Surface, maybe more correctly described as the Microsoft Surface with Windows RT, has finally landed and, despite the odd bump in the logistics road for some, it’s flying out of (the) store(s).

In the UK, the Surface 32Gb with no cover keeps selling out – the only option if you want an other-than-black touch cover, unless you buy one with the black cover and splash out on a more lurid one as an accessory. The good news is, a few more colours have now appeared on the UK store – so if you’re holding out for a magenta or red cover, then fill your boots. Or you basket. Big-time Surface fanboy Edward Hyde is waiting for a camouflage-coloured keyboard; or perhaps some paint.

If you haven’t bought a Surface, then go and order one now. Yes, Santa Claus might be bringing you one in only a few weeks, but it’s such a beautiful device that you need one beforehand, and you wouldn’t want to run the risk of missing out, would you. You can always palm it off onto someone else in your family if you get one as a pressie, anyhoo.

Regardless of which version of Windows 8 you use, make sure you keep the Apps up to date – there were lots of updates which came out shortly before General Availability. If you look at the Store tile on the home screen, and there’s a number showing, that indicates that some of the apps you have installed need to be updated. To download & install those updates, go into the Store app, and click on the Updates link at the top right to list what’s available and to kick off the process. Apps, you see, are not updated by Windows Update.

Here’s something demo-worthy of Windows 8, that works particularly well if you have a Surface already…

Have you looked at the Bing “Travel” app in any detail? Even if you’re using Windows 8 on a non-touch laptop or desktop, it’s still a very cool app to play with and show people as an example of the Modern UI.
Example: Somewhere to go after dark if you fancy getting chibbed, perhaps?

Try the Panorama view whilst holding a Surface, or some other Win8 device with the appropriate accelerometers, and it’s impossible not to be impressed. See this demo if you can’t experience it first-hand right away.

If you do have a Surface already…

Did you know that if you press the Windows button on the device (ie the one on the front below the screen) and the volume-down key on the left hand side, it takes a snap-shot of the screen to the clipboard…?
Make sure you run Windows Update and get the new version of Office 2013, which moved the code from Preview to the final release.
Did you know that the video out is just a regular micro-HDMI port, so you can use the VGA dongle from the Samsung Series 9 ultrabook or 7 tablet?
Or get a micro-HDMI – HDMI or VGA cable from Amazon for a fraction of the cost of the official accessory? Shhhh.
… and that you can even run the Surface in multi-monitor Mode (press WindowsKey+P on the keyboard after you’ve plugged into an external display)…?

app o’ the week

AudioBoo – free

this week’s featured application…

Here’s a cool app highlighted by Liam Kelly… in his own words:

If Twitter is too outdated for you and you also believe that the “spoken word has been left behind in the current explosion of online innovation”, then Audioboo is the app for you. Come and join the likes of Stephen Fry & fellow Boo’ers and capture your own audio “Boos” and share them with the world!

Comedian Fred MacAulay knows that sometimes Boo isn’t enough (that link will take you to videos you shouldn’t listen to at work, unless you have headphones). In this case, AudioBoo is worth it only to hear an ex-Dr Who reciting the lyrics of S. Ballet’s “Gold” in a Shakespeare stylee.

Look out for the falsettoesque “Gold! ^Gold^!” – diamond!.

Click on the logo or link to the left to find out more, and install the app on Windows 8 PC.

Tip o’ the Week #148 – Some top Windows 8 Apps

Posted on November 16, 2012 by ewand

Ring out the bells, Windows 8 is here!

The UPS and DHL fairies have been (eventually) making deliveries of the first Surface with Windows RT devices to lucky folk. If you’ve been waiting for yours, at least it meant you had time to biff off to the flicks to see that film instead of staying home to play with a new “fondleslab”.

This week’s ToW is given over to a quick look at a few Windows 8 Apps, suitable (as any skoolboy kno) for both regular Windows PCs and also for the shiny new RT variants. If you have a favourite app you’d like to see show up here in future, please leave a comment and I’ll look into it. Click on the App name to see more, and follow a link the Store to download.

London Bus Checker

Rob Orwin worked with the partner who built this app, and of course, recommends it thoroughly. The IOS version covers London only, but the Windows 8 version covers the whole of the UK! It also uses Bing Maps, TFL travel data from Azure, has a live tile, uses the Share and Search charm and is generally very useful and looks dead cool. Rob says he used it to find the bus from Paddington to Cardinal Place (in Victoria): way nicer than the tube, he had a seat all the way there, enjoyed some sunshine and it took 20mins! It could also put an end to the questions, “when / where does the TVP bus arrive / stop?” question on Social.

News Bento

Here’s one of many news aggregator type applications, but not just a me-too. It’s a really slick app that shows you news headlines from lots of different sources, and it also includes news feeds from many sites – as well as the ability to provide your own feeds. It’s not an ideal “Modern UI” app in some ways – there’s no senantic zoom and there are a few UI funnies, but it’s free and it’s also very nice looking.

Didlr

Thanks to Richard Peers for this tip-off. Didlr is a simple yet very powerful app, and also one of a few in its genre – that of drawing and doodling on-screen. Clearly, it makes more sense on a tablet or other touch device, but has a pretty sweet palette of brushes, tools and effects to keep the budding artist amused for a bit.

Wikipedia

Here’s a nice Wikipedia application, which provides a good search front-end to the massed ranks of Wikipedia content, as well as some interesting asides like “On This Day” section. It’s the same content you can get on the Wikipedia web site, but presented in an easier-to-read format.

Metro Commander

Geeks needs to be able to fiddle with files. Ordinary folk too, sometimes. Sure, you can still use Explorer to move stuff around, but if you want to operate within the M***o (don’t say that word!) environment, then you could look at Metro Commander to help you move your stuff around. All free, so what’s not to like?

There are more and more apps arriving in the Store every day. Check it out, have a browse, and look under the categories – for each, there’s a “What’s New” and a “Top Free” section.

Tip o’ the Week #147 – Sharing Windows 8 Apps

Posted on November 9, 2012 by ewand

The next few weeks’ Tips will be out of sequence since they coincide with the launch of Windows 8.

As the world continues to enjoy Windows 8 (4m copies sold in the first week, apparently), the number of apps in the Windows Store is growing every day. It’s easy to discover apps – fire up the Store app and browse through the categories, or search for app names (just press WindowsKey-Q and enter the search term, and click on Store in the app list).

Once you’ve found your favo(u)rite apps – and there are already several thousand in the store, with plenty of big names – then you’ll be delighted that you can install them on multiple PCs (up to 5, in fact). So, when you get your Shiny-Shiny Surface device, you’ll be able to install the same Modern apps as you already have on your Windows 8 PC.

In order to install Apps from the Store, sign in using your ~~Hotmail/Passport/MSN/Live/~~Microsoft ID, and that means you can always track which apps you’ve previously “bought” – whether you paid for them, or they were freebies – and you can always install those apps on other PCs, or if you had to reinstall Windows, you could restore your App portfolio.

There is a scenario though, which isn’t so obvious – what if you have other users signing in to your PC, but you want them to see the apps too? Try creating another account on your own Windows 8 PC, and if you sign into it using a Microsoft ID, the default is that the Store will want to use that ID when it comes to seeing what apps are available.

This means that if you set up a PC and install all your bestest apps, then create an account for your Significant Other to use it too, they’ll log in and be offered only the apps that come out of the box.

You can also do this with a Surface or other Windows RT tablet device – so it’s a cinch to switch between profiles and have all the personalisation and content follow each user from other PCs as well as be kept apart on the tablet. Try doing that on your fruit-based, single user tablet Smile

Share your apps

In order to let your better half see the apps you’ve already purchased/downloaded and installed, you need to go into the Store, bring up the Charms† (WindowsKey-C, swipe from the right, or throw your mouse into the top or bottom right of the screen), open Settings then go into Your account and Change user to set the account that will be used for the Store.

† Not to be confused with the lucky variety.

Now, when you swipe from the top or bottom of the screen when in the Store (or press WindowsKey-Z, or right-click the mouse anywhere), you’ll be able to look at Your apps and see the apps that are available but not installed under the user’s account…

When you’re finished “installing” the apps, you could – if you want – reverse the process so your S.O. could go and buy/install their own favourite apps on the PC too. And you won’t get to see whatever apps they choose to install, on your “Your apps” list.

Tip o’ the Week #144 – Office 2013 Templates

Posted on November 2, 2012 by ewand

A short and sharp tip this week, courtesy of Louis Lazarus, concerning the way the New Office handles template files… and how to configure search in Outlook 2013 to be a bit more fullsome. See more templates online, and now, over to Louis…

When you create a new document in Office 2013 with Word, Excel, etc, you are not given a choice of the templates on your local machine. You can fix this by…

1. Click File, Options

2. Select the Save item in the menu on the left

3. Enter the location of your templates folder in the “Default personal templates location”…

4. Click OK

Now when you select New, you will see a choice of Featured or Personal Templates – click on PERSONAL to see your templates…

Outlook 2013

By default Outlook 2013 only includes your emails for the last 12 months. You will usually see a message saying something like “there are more items on the server” – clicking the link sometimes returns more items and sometimes does not. To get rid of this message and have all your items sync’d to your PC…

1. Click File, Account Settings…

2. Click Change… and drag the slider to get All mail items…

3. Click Next and then Finish

4. Now all your mail will be available offline.

Tip o’ the Week #143 – Share your calendar externally

Posted on October 26, 2012 by ewand

Organising our home lives is increasingly done digitally, from keeping in touch with friends and making arrangements over social networking, to just the basics of communicating intra-family – how many readers have multiple laptops or <cough> “tablet type devices” (soon to be Surfaces for Microsofties at least, thanks Steve!) at home? Have you ever IM’ed your significant other even if you’re both in the house at the same time?

Well, as an adjunct to the merry-go-round of keeping your home life under control, Tim Hall suggested this week’s tip, and although it concerns something that’s actually been possible in Outlook for several versions, it’s a hugely useful feature which is perhaps easily forgotten.

We’re all used to having other people in the company being able to see our calendar, so they don’t make arrangements with or for us that conflict with other appointments. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to share the calendar with your nearest and dearest?

Well, you can. Go into Calendar in Outlook, and in Outlook 2013 (other versions are available, though the UI may vary), look at the Ribbon on the Share part of the main Home tab. You’ll see the ability to Publish Online – with a few clicks, you can have Outlook push some or all details of your calendar to an external service on Office.com (after prompting you to login with your Office.com/Hotmail account ID), and which can in turn be consumed by invited Outlook.com/Hotmail etc users if they too are running Outlook. You choose who to invite, and they get emailed a link to add your calendar straight into their Outlook client. Simple as that.

There are a few other options which could prove more useful if not quite so straightforward to set up. What if your other half isn’t using Outlook? How about being able to sync a copy of their calendar onto your Windows Phone…? We’ll look into these in a future Tip o’ the Week, but if you’re keen to press on, you could look into a free third party addin that replicates content between two calendars, meaning you could keep a copy of your work Calendar in a household Outlook.com account, and sync that to the Windows Phones of everyone in the house…

Tip o’ the Week #142 – Touch and Outlook 2013

Posted on October 19, 2012 by ewand

Here’s a super-quick Outlook 2013 tip for anyone with a Touch-enabled PC running Windows 8…

Incidentally, If you have a multi-touch laptop like the Lenovo x201 Tablet or X220 Tablet, you may find that after Windows 8 is installed, it won’t see that the screen can see multiple touch points … so pinch/zoom etc won’t work.

To resolve, go into the System Control Panel applet by either pressing WindowsKey + Pause/Break, or just type Computer into the Start Screen, then right-click on the icon, and choose Properties from the menu at the bottom). Once there, click on the Windows Experience Index link and then run or re-run the assessment then run Windows Update.
That should sort it out.

Now, Outlook 2013 will allow you to do a number of things with touch, most notably navigating around an email (swiping up & down to scroll) or smoothly zooming in and out on text (pinch/stretch forefinger and thumb or use any other two fingers for added panache) to increase the text size – something that’s highlighted to you slap in the middle of the screen.

Navigating around an application designed for mouse interaction isn’t always easy, though, and although it has shied away from large-scale touchification, there is one cute addition to Outlook 2013 that is worth switching on if you ever let your finger do the pointing, rather than the mouse.

If you click on the little down arrow to the side of the Quick Access Toolbar that’s visible in Outlook, and select Touch Mode, then it will add a new icon to the toolbar which literally just spaces things out a bit more – meaning it’s easier to tap folder names from a list, or icons on the Ribbon, using a fat finger rather than a skinny mouse pointer.

Definitely worth having a look if you’re a touch friendly user.

PLUG: A group of Microsoft staff, friends and Microsoft partners (collectively called “Project 100”) cycled from Edinburgh Castle to Buckingham Palace a few weeks ago, to raise funds for 5 different and worthy charities. We’d love it if you could support us – thanks!

Tip o’ the Week #141 – more Outlook 2013 tweaks

Posted on October 12, 2012 by ewand

A couple more tweaks for those of you who are enjoying Outlook 2013 (or Outlook “15”). The first comes from ToW stalwart Stuart Handley, who is driven to near distraction by the Reading pane in Outlook. In his own words…

How can I disable in-line reply in the Reading Pane?

To provide a more streamlined experience without the need of popping up extra message windows and dialogs anymore, Outlook 2013 introduces in-line reply which allows you to press reply and directly start writing your reply in the Reading Pane (which means that it is not really a Reading Pane anymore and they should have changed the name).

You can press POP OUT to open your message in a regular Message editor window which provides access to additional formatting options and features.

To always use the regular Message editor window instead of in-line reply, disable the option:

File-> Options-> Mail-> Replies and Forwards-> Use inline replies when replying or forwarding

Maybe the new Reading/composing pane thing is a mixed blessing, although a lot of the time, progress means having to adopt an at-first uncomfortable change. Maybe try it out and if it causes you to want to cast a spell on its designers, just switch it off.

On a more benevolent level, there’s one nice design feature which is highlighted by Phil Hand…

I just typed out an email in Outlook 2013 which contained “attached” in the body. As usual, I forgot to attach the attachment but wow!, I got the following popup J

Wonderful! – now if only it was Clippy that was telling me 😉

If, like Phil, you have a wistful thought when Clippy is mentioned, you could always sign the Bring Back Clippy petition. Only 51 signatories at the time of writing, so don’t hold your breath for People Power bringing the Clip back from the great wastepaper basket in the sky.

If you’d rather not be warned about missing attachments, you can always switch it off by going into …

File-> Options-> Mail-> Send Messages and clear the “Warn me…” checkbox.

It’s also worth noting that now and again, clearing the Auto-Complete List could be a good idea – as people leave the company, you might find their names & old addresses are still being listed. Of course, you can always ditch individual addresses from the cache by clicking the X that appears at the end of the errant address.

Tip o’ the Week #140 – PDFs in Windows 8 – reprise

Posted on October 5, 2012 by ewand

Hot on the heels of ToW #138 which looked at handling PDFs in Windows 8, lots of feedback from avid ToW readers with their own tuppence to contribute.

Mike Mundy pointed out a simple way to print from within the built-in Win8 Reader app – good ol’ fashioned CTRL-P. Actually, this combo works for any Modern UI Windows 8 App, as long as the app itself supports printing. Try it out – Internet Explorer lets you print, for example, but the News and Weather apps don’t.

One of the features of the Modern UI App is that they declare to the Operating System what they’re capable of doing – maybe they support sharing their content with other apps, or they could support interaction with different devices… like sending their content to a printer, for example. These capabilities and “contracts” are typically exposed through the Charms.

Woody also suggested that Tracker Software’s PDF-Xchange is an even better reader than FoxIt. If you haven’t tried out an alternative to the Adobe monolith, then you might want to give it a whirl.

John Owen and Jason Carter both pointed out that Office 2013 (well, Word 2013) has the capability to edit PDF files too. Well, it does rather want to save the edited version back as a Word document type, but you can always over-ride it and save as PDF.

You can also save documents as XPS format, or just print a doc out (as per the screen shot above) to the XPS Document Writer. XPS – or XML Paper Specification to give it the full moniker (or ECMA-388 for its standard name) – is a freely available spec that Microsoft developed as a way of taking stuff that’s onscreen and representing it exactly as it will appear on paper. Kind of like a PDF or PostScript file, but without requiring the license from Adobe.

XPS has never really taken off, much; even Microsoft internally makes pretty heavy use of PDFs, still, maybe for things that aren’t supposed to be edited (job offers letters, annual review docs, that sort of thing).

Or things that weren’t easy to edit before Word 2013 came along… d’oh!

Tip o’ the Week #139 – Taskbar fun

Posted on September 28, 2012 by ewand

Windows 95 (aka “Chicago”) introduced us to the wonders of the Windows “Taskbar” as a way of managing open apps. It was a response to people’s increased ability and need to multitask in Windows, as previous versions of the OS provided no ready visual indication of how many windows were currently open. Other than a pile of open windows on the screen, obviously.

Windows 7 brought with it some brilliant enhancements to the taskbar that have pretty much remained unchanged in Windows 8 (even the spirit of the Start Button is there, if only you drift your mouse over to the bottom left of the screen…) Useful functions like Jump Lists and the ability to pin Internet Explorer favourites by dragging them directly to the taskbar (see ToW #83 and #86) are all retained in Windows 8.

Like every step forward, however, there was a down side to the changes made in Windows 7 (& by the same token to Windows 8), in the way the taskbar behaves with certain apps that offer no additional functionality by situating themselves on the taskbar (other than cluttering it up). Lync and Skype are examples of ‘always on’ but not as frequently used as Outlook, which has a permanent place on just about all of our taskbars.

There are other taskbar villains out there too – the Windows Live Messenger app always wanted to stick itself there, even if you didn’t sign in – but with the groovy “Messaging” app now part of Windows 8, you could spam FB & Windows Live Messenger, all from a single, chromeless, modern, Windows UI app style UI app, so who needs separate apps to do all those things anyway?

Here’s how to banish those Skype & Lync apps to the ‘tray notification area’ (a.k.a. systray) while they are not in use. [Rumour has it that we’re going to merge Skype & Lync together at some point and call it Slync. Actually, that isn’t true but it would be amusing and certainly better than “Klype”].

Lync 2010/2013

Open Lync and click on Options (cog wheel) located in the top right
On the General tab, locate a section called Application Window and check the box next to it
Click OK and watch the icon disappear from the taskbar (that is if you don’t have any open Lync conversations)

Skype

Open Skype and navigate to the Tools > Options menu
Uncheck the ‘Keep Skype in the taskbar while I’m signed in’ checkbox
Click Save and close the Skype window

If you’re using a widescreen monitor or laptop, try setting the taskbar to the side of the screen – it’s more efficient and allows better navigation for most people. Try it out by checking out this KB article.

Tip o’ the Week #138 – PDFs on Windows 8

Posted on September 21, 2012 by ewand

File Extensions. The lost remnants of MS DOS that started to vanish when Windows 95 removed the tyranny of the 8.3 for most people. This 8 year old survey asks, which one are you?

There are other historical artefacts littered around in Microsoft history – like the alias/login name, which for many is still their email address and is limited in length.

From a 1998 snapshot of the Microspeak Glossary:

E-Mail Names: On the surface, a reasonably logical method of distinguishing 20,000 or so Microsoft employees and contractors on the internal corporate e-mail system. Consists of a five- or six-letter alias (q.v.) constructed from first and last name — if Leonardo Di Caprio worked for Microsoft, for example, his e-mail handle would be something like "leodic." Where it gets strange is that the corporate culture fosters a substitution of the e-mail name for the real name, in memos, formal documents, and even, repellently, in conversation. (Ex: "johnd owns that issue," "contingent staffers report to edcur," and constant casual references to Bill Gates as "billg.")

[in actual fact, the maximum email name, logon name or alias length was 7 then 8 characters, a restriction originally imposed by the Xenix and then MSMail systems – Xenix was a version of Unix which Microsoft used to sell, and on which our first corporate-wide email system was based. MSMail disappeared nearly 15 years ago, yet the length limit still applies because, erm, nobody knows why. Probably.]

People continue to refer to document types by their file name extension, at least in part – “PPT” is still used (even if it’s really a PPTX); now and again you’ll talk about a “JPEG” or “MPEG”, but one of the most used is “PDF”.

The Portable Document Format was originally used by Adobe nearly 20 years ago, after the company was founded by people who had worked at the legendary Xerox PARC (having developed the PostScript page description language there, before leaving – like seemingly everyone else at PARC – with their good ideas, and making millions elsewhere).

There’s a PDF reader built into Windows 8 (called, simply, “Reader”). It’s quick, it’s clean, it isn’t full of unwanted functionality and security vulns, and it’s already there, so no downloading and updating every time you reboot. Hurah!

The downside? Well, sometimes it can look a bit funny on different machines, and it isn’t so easy to print as you might expect – on the Charms Bar (swipe from the right, throw your mouse to the bottom right, or press Wnd-C) you need to use Devices to print out.

The most annoying feature though, is when you click on a PDF link in an web page or an attachment in email, you view it in the full-screen, chromeless, Modern UI, and when you’re done, you close the window by dragging down from the middle of the top (like in any Modern UI app). And you get dumped back to the Start screen rather than the app you were in.

foxit

Ex-UK wonderboy Matt McSpirit was always a big proponent of Foxit Reader, an alternative to Adobe’s ubiquitous, monolithic and forever-needing-patched trad. PDF reader app. If you spend most of your time in the Desktop app side of Windows 8, then you might want to check it out – it integrates with browsers (of several flavours), and it is quick to launch and easy to make go away too.

If you do take a look at Foxit Reader from the link above, make sure, however, you pay attention to the install routine (this one) – like a lot of software these days, it insists on advising that if you don’t want to not install this software and not make it your undefault, then make sure you don’t not untick this already ticked box…

Check you don’t want what it wants to set your defaults, that you uncheck the checked check boxes. Check?

Other PDF readers are available. Paul “Woody” Woodman recommends PDF-XChange Viewer; you may want to check that out before taking the plunge.