3 posts tagged “microsoft”
For as long as I can remember (which, admittedly, isn't always as long as I would like), Word has had a little trick up its sleeve. If you type in =rand(1), you get:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Changing the 1 for a higher number gets you more paragraphs of the same text.
In Word 2007, though, the game has changed a little. For a value between 1 and 3, you get the first n of these three paragraphs:
On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look.
You can easily change the formatting of selected text in the document text by choosing a look for the selected text from the Quick Styles gallery on the Home tab. You can also format text directly by using the other controls on the Home tab. Most controls offer a choice of using the look from the current theme or using a format that you specify directly.
To change the overall look of your document, choose new Theme elements on the Page Layout tab. To change the looks available in the Quick Style gallery, use the Change Current Quick Style Set command. Both the Themes gallery and the Quick Styles gallery provide reset commands so that you can always restore the look of your document to the original contained in your current template.
For higher values, it repeats the text.
It is not, perhaps, the most useful feature in the world to have in a word processor but it is interesting to see that Microsoft have "enhanced" it :).
As part of Bill Gates' CES 2007 keynote speech, one of the quietly kept secrets from Microsoft has now been announced - the Microsoft Home Server.
Details are a little sparse at the moment, but Charlie Kindel has posted a blog entry about it and there is an official Microsoft site for it.
Initial thoughts? It looks as if it may have potential but, like most products of this nature, it could live or die depending on the hardware support from manufacturers.
I've been trying to follow the Zune story ever since it was leaked that Microsoft were try to build an "iPod killer". I'm not a fan of iPods ... partly because it is yet another DRM-locked music format and I'm getting a bit fed up with it all. So I was interested in what Microsoft were going to do. Now that the big press releases have come out, I feeling a bit underwhelmed, to be honest. I know that MS are aiming their connectivity feature at mainly 18-24s and I definitely don't fit into that age group, but there just doesn't seem to be much in the device that is attracting me to it.
I think that I was was likely to go after a portable music device, it would probably be an iRiver ... one of the better ones that has the ability to record from an external source. I'd probably only do that if I totally gave up on my Hi-MD recorder ... hopefully if it doesn't destroy the next wedding recording, I'll be happy to keep on using it.
The shame of it all, from my perspective, is the difficulty of listening to podcasts. Apple have done a really good job of making it easy to get podcasts and I just don't have the time or inclination to sit at my main computer and listen/watch them. Transferring them to an iPod would be the better solution but do I really want to lay out a few hundred pounds just for podcasts?
Maybe I'm just in the wrong generation for this :)
