bruceb news

A few weeks ago Microsoft released a OneNote app optimized for iPads.

Long-time readers know about my fondness for OneNote, the program you’ve never heard of that’s included with every copy of Microsoft Office 2010, right alongside Word and Excel and Powerpoint. Here’s more information to get you oriented. To repeat: “The concept is simple: OneNote collects information on the fly from any source you can imagine, and helps you find it again later when you need it. That’s any information. OneNote can hold your grocery list as easily as your research or trial preparation.”

OneNote is designed for its notebooks to be stored online in Microsoft’s Skydrive service. […] continued

Previously:
Battle Of The Browser Updates
Comparing The New Internet Browsers, aka Microsoft And The LastPass Problem
Syncing Bookmarks And Favorites With Firefox 4 And Chrome 10

 

 

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Microsoft is bringing up the rear for a reason.

Since it’s not obvious how to do it, let’s type “IE9 sync favorites” into Google. The first choice takes us – well, it takes us to an obsolete third-party site. But the second choice! Ah, that must lead right to the official Microsoft answer: “Sync your favorites using Windows Live Toolbar.” Perfect!

We don’t want a toolbar but the page promises that favorites will be synced and stored in our Skydrive account for online access, and that’s good, right? […] continued

My goal for you is simplicity. I want you to use wonderful tools that are easy to use and easy to keep up to date.

Little things make me irritable.

Here’s a story of a little thing. It’s not important. You are not requested to do anything. This has no consequences for you. It’s just a little irritating thing.

You’ll recall that Microsoft lumped a bunch of programs together in a package most recently called “Windows Live Essentials 2011.” The individual programs are not particularly related to each other, despite being presented as a package. It’s hard to say why a photo editor and an instant messaging program are bundled with some family safety tools and a blog editor, but so it goes. […] continued

Microsoft announced today that it is making OneNote Mobile for the iPhone available as a free download from the iTunes store. Here’s a Microsoft blog about the new release. This has a bit of a back story that deserves telling.

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OneNote basics  Every version of Microsoft Office 2010 includes OneNote – if you have a new computer, you likely have OneNote on the Start menu waiting to be discovered. It is my favorite Office program, and one of the ones I use most often. If you’re not familiar with it yet, I urge you to learn more and try it. […] continued

Mark Zuckerberg is Time’s Person Of The Year. Every person on earth has a Facebook page. Most household pets have their own Facebook pages. On average, people in the US spend more time reading Facebook than sleeping. The federal government will spend $740 million next year wiring 1st and 2nd grade classrooms for Facebook.

No, no, none of that is true except the Time magazine part, but doesn’t it feel like that sometimes? Businesses are moving onto Facebook en masse for marketing and I expect Facebook to be used more and more for business communications, for better or for worse. […] continued

Previously: The Good And The Bad In Windows Live Essentials 2011

If you have Windows 7 or Vista, you might have seen the Windows Update icon down by the clock this week, alerting you to available updates. Opening Windows Update reveals an “Important Update” ready to install.

We trust Microsoft and the Automatic Updates system. We have to trust someone and Microsoft has earned our respect by using Automatic Updates conservatively to deliver security patches for Windows and Office.

This week’s “Important Update” is the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite, which doesn’t improve our security or fix bugs.

I’ve been urging you to install updates from Microsoft when prompted by the icon in the lower right corner. […] continued

The good news is that Microsoft has released Windows Live Essentials 2011, an updated collection of free programs that are well designed and useful additions to Vista and Windows 7.

The bad news is that you almost certainly don’t want all of them, and Microsoft has released them in a way that makes it more likely that you’ll install them all by accident, with some side effects that you won’t like.

The programs included in Windows Live Essentials 2011 have been shifting for the last couple of years – programs have been added and dropped, features have appeared and disappeared, and names have changed around endlessly. […] continued

Previously:
OneNote 2010 – Introduction
OneNote 2010 – Outlook Integration

Stick with me. I’m going to describe the feature built into OneNote 2010 that works so well – quietly, seamlessly – that it deserves to be noticed, used, and celebrated.

OneNote 2010 is designed to be used on multiple computers. When you create a notebook, the first option is to store the notebook online. It’s not a requirement but it’s highly recommended.

It doesn’t change your use of OneNote. The program opens and you can use it, regardless of whether you’re online or offline.

But when you’re online (and you’re almost always online), anything you do in the notebook is synced almost instantly to the copy of the notebook stored in the cloud. […] continued

Microsoft is finalizing a new version of Windows Live Sync, its free software for syncing files among different computers. The new version replaces the two overlapping programs available from Microsoft for the last few years, Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh, combining features from both of them.

This should be good news. Microsoft has declared that the entire resources of the company are being devoted to moving us to the cloud. The file syncing program could have been an important part of that transition to a new way of working with our files that is less tied to particular computers. […] continued

 

Microsoft has introduced Office Web Apps, free online versions of Office programs that can be used entirely inside a web browser. Visit http://office.live.com to take a look at technology that will change our world.

That sounds breathless and exciting, right? It’s not hyperbole. You are living through a long-term shift away from dependence on individual computers and toward shared resources that live online and can be accessed from any of our devices, big and small.

The problem is that this first incarnation of Office Web Apps is pretty weak. You have to squint to see the future from here. […] continued