Milo Riano walks us through the transition and options of availability in his recent article about the change.

There’s quite a bit of interesting tools available from the site that you can use to increase your productivity in Office or just give yourself some new tools to help make Office a little bit more than it is currently.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Relaunches Office Labs on Silverlight

I just saw this commercial while watching TV tonight. Do you think it’s really this easy? Or, do kids just pick up things related to technology much easier and faster than us older people realize?

Who’s using Windows Live Photo Gallery. What do you think? Is it this easy?

Post from: EveryJoe

Is Windows Live Photo Gallery This Easy

I’m visiting Orlando, FL this week with my family and enjoying the magic that is Walt Disney World.

Awhile back I wrote about using Microsoft Office Live Small Business as a potential business solution for smaller companies, but wasn’t sure how people were really using it or what their results were.

Fitting with my current travel, I saw this case study about how a travel agency has used Microsoft Office Live Small Business as a resource to communication and service their clients. The example is made-up, but the suggestions and solutions are very real. I’ve got 7 years of employment history in the travel industry so much of this type of information is the same challenges I helped our agency work through in a variety of situations.

I’m hoping to help the travel agent that assisted us with our Walt Disney World trip with a website of their own and these suggestions and examples are a good opportunity for me to show them exactly what types of things can be done and how they could benefit.

This article was part of a 6-part series that covered a variety of topics like setting up a website, an online store, contact management, email newsletters and advertising.

Source: Margie’s Travel Creates Private Workspaces

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Office Live Small Business Solution Scenario

If you’ve a small start-up company with less than $1M in revenue and haven’t been around for more than 3 years, you may be able to get some assistance pushing your endeavors into the future by grabbing some help from Microsoft.

They have launched a service to help small businesses start using some of their new Windows Azure and Mesh services without any type of barrier to entry. Not too bad of a gig I might say.

You can grab more information at www.microsoft.com/bizspark and www.microsoftstartupzone.com if you’re interested.

BizSpark is an innovative new program that unites Startups with entrepreneurial and technology resources in a global community with a common goal of supporting and accelerating the success of a new generation of high-potential Startups.

That’s a fairly straight-forward explanation of what’s going on here, but the Startup Zone website goes into a little bit more detail with this information:

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

• Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.
• Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.
• Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners
  As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Software, support and exposure goes a long way for a new company wouldn’t you say? I hear about things like this and it makes me wonder why people think Microsoft has no competition with open source opportunities and promotion, or that the only way to make use of Microsoft products is by paying out the nose.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Helping Start-Ups with BizSpark

If you haven’t heard, Microsoft is now letting you earn money by using Microsoft Live Search instead of Google (or any other search site for that matter).

The only catch is that you also can’t be the type of person that uses Firefox (or any other browser except Internet Explorer) as their browser of choice.

To earn value for your searches and join the SearchPerks! promotion you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to participate. Copy this URL and paste it into Internet Explorer:

http://www.getsearchperks.com

Sign up for SearchPerks! and start earning tickets towards exciting prizes whenever you search the Web – up to 25 tickets per day. It’s free, easy to use, and your tickets accumulate as fast as you can search.

And because SearchPerks! is brought to you by Microsoft Live Search, you can count on rich, comprehensive search results.

Be sure to sign up before the registration deadline on December 31, 2008—the sooner you sign up, the more opportunity you have to earn tickets!

Is it just me or wouldn’t a good strategy for increasing your audience be to include absolutely everyone you can think of that’s not already using your products?

Anyone using Microsoft Live Search Perks? How much money have you made?

Image Source: Direct Email from Microsoft

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Live Search Perks As Long As You’re Not Using Firefox

Microsoft Office Live Small Business now has over one million users. Is that much of an accomplishment nowadays with so many people on the web?

I also wonder how many people are actually using the service.

Do you use Microsoft Office Live Small Business?

I’ve got an account but I don’t use for it anything. I’m not really sure why I don’t. It may be because I’ve got Office 2007 Ultimate and don’t need anything else? Anything I do online I don’t think I really need what’s being offered by the service. My clients haven’t really had a need for it that I’m aware of at this point. Maybe I should ask them.

Are you one of the 1,000,000 people out there that’s using Microsoft Office Live Small Business? Why do you use it? What are getting out of it?

I’m very interested in hearing some stories for how people are using it in real-world situations to solve real-world problems they’re experiencing with their business.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Office Live Small Business 1,000,000 Strong

It seems the more questions I have about a variety of Microsoft topics, the less helpful Microsoft Help is actually becoming to me.

It’s been quite awhile (since broadband Internet?) that I’ve relied on the built-in Help information for a Microsoft product. More often than not I usually type the error message into a Google Search and find the answer that way.

I’m not too concerned about the in-software help not being as robust as it could be, and directing more people to the web for full-details and advanced user questions. I don’t think though that Microsoft should be pleased with the idea that people can get answers to their Microsoft questions easier at any other website than Microsoft’s own don’t you think?

My latest challenge is that Microsoft doesn’t even have the page available they say they do. I’ve been working through some issues of cleaning off and formatting a 250GB Western Digital Passport drive from FAT32 to NTFS. I’m now into the 7th hour of CHKDSK running on the drive to try and clean-up and fix any errors that might be left on it.

Me being the curious type decided I wanted to know what all happens during the CHKDSK event so I went to Microsoft’s TechNet website to get information.

I clicked on the link for "chkdsk" and was presented with a page three different times that told me the page no longer existed and directed me, in a not very helpful way, to a list of other pages of topics that might interest me.

However, I just tried the link again to get a screen shot of the page and now it’s working and directing me to the appropriate Chkdsk page of information.

Was that helpful? Eventually I guess.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Help Isn’t Helpful

Have you heard about the Mojave Experiment?

Welcome to the "Mojave Experiment." What do people think of Windows Vista when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename "Mojave," the "next Microsoft OS," so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do – and decide for themselves.

I LOVE IT! How much perception of what people think about Windows Vista is because of what they’ve read or heard from the media about the product. Much of the critique has come from bloggers and other individuals in the tech community that haven’t enjoyed their experience and then they’ve written about it.

My question has been though, what’s the average computer user really going to think? Most of us that are actively involved in the tech community have a little bit of a higher standard for software and systems.

This group interviewed 140 people in their test (yes, it would have been better to multiply that by about 10) and got their feedback on what they thought about the software. There were some that still didn’t like it, but overall it, it was widely accepted and enjoyed by the participants.

• 94% of respondents rated “Mojave” higher than they rated “Vista”
• 0% rated “Mojave” lower than “Vista”

Now you’re asking, “But who were these people?”

• 84% Windows XP users
• 22% Apple OS users
• 14% Pre-Windows XP users
• 1% Linux users
• some users used multiple platforms

Interesting. I’m wondering if this whole “experiment” is part of Microsoft’s new campaign that’s trying to battle/compensate/educate people from the Apple ads we all love and enjoy.

Get more video responses and feedback directly from The Mojave Experiment website.

Hat tip to Brian Layman for alerting me to this little science experiment.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Mojave Experiment – Have You Been Tested?

Was it a case of bad planning, low expectations or just a complete oversight? Did anyone think about how popular Microsoft’s Photosynth application from Microsoft Live Labs was actually going to be?

When I talked about Photosynth back in May I barely gave it any thought at all.

Perhaps the most famous of them is the Photosynth application. This takes a collection of images from the same place and stitches them together into a sort of 3D virtual image of the location.

I thought the technology itself sounded like it would be interesting, but I didn’t really think it would gain much traction with users. Which brings us back to the original question, what was the deal with Microsoft being prepared for the launch.

The Photosynth examples on the website sure make the technology look pretty good. I can imagine this becoming really popular in an organized fashion. I’m thinking of realtors that would use it for virtual house tours and tourist destinations and buildings.

Jason Kincaid covered the failure of Microsoft to be prepared for the popularity of the Photosynth site on TechCrunch.

We see similar optimistic responses to server failure all the time from startups. Except they’re startups. Imagine if Apple had responded to the iPhone’s server registration outage by proclaiming that it was overjoyed by the overwhelming response. It’s understandable that Microsoft is happy to have made a product people like, but let’s save the celebrations until the program actually works.

This comment just refreshes my perception that it doesn’t matter what Microsoft does, people are just going to be haters. They over prepare and someone calls them cocky for thinking their product is awesome and might compete in the market. Or, they just throw something out there and see what happens then they get berated for not having everything polished and presentable. They’re this behemoth of a software company and evil and who knows what lurks behind the walls of the corporation. Or, they show some transparency from their development teams on their blogs and again get persecuted for it in the tech community.

I say keep up the good work and continue doing what you’re doing. Be prepared and be ready to respond when something you have takes off.

Post from: EveryJoe

Oops…Photosynth. You like it! You really like it!

I believe I’ve now tried to watch videos on the NBCOlympics website more times than the number of medals that the United States has won so far in the games.

I thought I was getting closer this morning as I was back at the office and wanted to have some live video playing on the computer next to me. Everything seemed to install fine until I got the message above.

I’ve exceeded the number of attempts allowed to access live Olympic video? Hmmm, it’s surely only been attempts because I’ve yet to actually succeed at watching live video from the site.

I was hoping to give Microsoft some credit and praise their use of Silverlight for the streaming video, but I’ve yet to actually see any video on the site. That’s just unacceptable.

Post from: EveryJoe

More Silverlight Issues for Olympics