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November 2003 - Posts

Wednesday, November 26, 2003 10:25 AM

Why are you so colorful?

People often ask me that... well not about me per se, but about my XL spreadsheets. So I decided to share one of my tips that often light up my colorful Excel demos... If you are like me, you can't stand plain, unimaginative spreadsheets. Numbers need
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 25, 2003 6:40 PM

View InfoPath XML

InfoPath is built with using XML technologies for ths sole purpose of gathering/providing data as XML. It does a great job of hiding its "XML-ness" from users which is both good and bad. Sometimes you just want to see that XML... Here's some sample ways:
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Monday, November 24, 2003 10:25 PM

Poster Child

<sorryForMyself> Ok - I started blogging and no one is reading them. Or at least not posting comments. Any one out there? Am I providing any value? Anything you would like me to share? Is this thing on? Ok... guess not... </sorryForMyself>
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 21, 2003 12:36 PM

<iDontGetAnyPrettier/>

<iDontGetAnyPrettier> If you are looking for someone to blame, it is Chris. HE was insistent that my blog be associated with a picture of me. NOT ME. No way! I have learned enough in this lifetime to say 'when'. I believe that you must be reasonably
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Thursday, November 20, 2003 11:29 AM

Spell Check: The Crown Gewels

You ask me a reason why smart client (or rich client or fat client or whatever) computing has its advantages, and I start with saying the feature of Spell Check. Normally associated (at least in my world) inside of Microsoft Word, it is one of those ‘services’
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 19, 2003 4:27 PM

Waiting is the hardest part...

If you are a developer, and you probably are if you are reading this, then you are (to stereo-type you) impatient, want to work with only with the coolest, latest things, and can?t wait for new things to ship. The term ?legacy? sends chills down your
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 18, 2003 4:48 PM

Outlook RPC > Sliced Bread

People 'looking' for reasons to upgrade Office 2003 should look no further than just the way Outlook can reduce the pain-in-the-arse task of e-mail processing and management. Let's face it, the once powerful time-saver of email has become a burden and
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Monday, November 17, 2003 3:43 PM

Microsoft PDF; Adobe marches on

I have always been curious why Microsoft has shyed away for a PDF-like format. It seems a logical step that Office would either 'print' directly to PDF or its own file format that ensured print-quality, locked down documents. It seems every organization
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Monday, November 17, 2003 9:23 AM

Free Schemas! Free Schemas!

Microsoft made it official today that you can freely utilize Office documents via XML without Office. You may think, well of course they would... its just open XML documents and isn?t that the whole point? Actually, they could have looked to limit use
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 14, 2003 3:14 PM

MSN Messenger Chat Log Dates

Microsoft's MSN Messenger 6.0 added a much needed feature of Message Logging. I live by it because I am forever closing windows and need to refer back to what was said. Nice to cover your tracks or simply so you don't inconvenience others by having to
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 14, 2003 12:17 PM

Maybe this explains it...

You probably know that Microsoft only hires top notch people and that they have a very methodical way of scrutinizing top candidates with their infamous questions. So I thought I’d share the Q&A of my experience in the hot seat at MS, and on
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 14, 2003 11:05 AM

The sign of things to come (?)

I would really prefer a nice IPO but this could happen - Microsoft Google
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 14, 2003 9:34 AM

Search Me

If you haven't played with Research Services from Office 2003 find out what you are missing here . If you have played with them, you may be wondering how to automate them from client-side Office. Here's a solution for Microsoft Word 2003 not documented
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 14, 2003 9:10 AM

The Microsoft Office 2003 Web Services Toolkit

An article on MSDN boasts what's new with the Office Web Services Toolkit for 2003. Before you get too excited, I can some it all up here in three bullets: Uses SOAP 3.0 (Meaning that you do not need to worry about redistributing SOAP to users who have
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:30 PM

Cells for Rent: Inquire within...

I saw on CNET that Platform Computing released a module to its Platform Symphony Suite product which will enables Microsoft Excel to leverage grid computing. In other words, using their ADAPTER FOR MICROSOFT® EXCEL , you can string calculation-intensive
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 12, 2003 7:27 PM

A nice Woody!

People often gripe about Microsoft Office's faults. And yes it is truly full of lovable, hate-able, and down-right peculiar quirks. But at some point, we still must look back in awe of the accomplishment it truly is... Woody Leonhard of "Woody's Office
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 11, 2003 8:20 PM

No Software

Software as a service. It is an interesting notion especially as organizations are continuously ‘forced’ to upgrade and buy features they don’t need or want. Indeed, this ‘lease’ vs. ‘buy’ approach for software
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Monday, November 10, 2003 6:36 AM

But this one goes to 65,537!?

Pretend I have data. Lots of data. Perhaps I have too much data. Let’s say I have 66,000 rows of data. Now before you going telling me not to put that in a spreadsheet, I am going to tell you that, yes… people want to do this and try to do
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Sunday, November 09, 2003 12:13 PM

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt...

A couple of games for a mindless weekend. One has nothing to do with Office. One is entirely written in Office. (Yes a game in Office - you think Office is all just about business?) 1) Since Chris K. lives in Minnesota, I thought I would post this useful
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Friday, November 07, 2003 9:18 AM

I Google therefore I am.

Ode to Google. I Google in the morning. I Google in the night. I Google in the darkness. I Google in the light. I Google when I don't know the answer. I Google when I do. 'cus even if I know the answer I Google to make sure it's true. And when I don't
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Thursday, November 06, 2003 12:20 PM

Sharing My Glee

Outlook 2003 Junk Mail feature. Many people have ranted on this feature... but I just don't get that. It simply works. I have done nothing to it and I am very suprised how good it has been for me. Now... go ahead and spam me about this one... I know you
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 05, 2003 5:34 PM

Look who's coming to dinner >:-)

A little over a year ago, Chris and I had the pleasure to sit through dinner with a couple of Microsoft PM?s from the InfoPath team. The product had not seen daylight yet and we had just sat through a preview session with them on campus. They had talked
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 04, 2003 12:00 AM

Events

Life is a series of events. You are born. You get a job. You get married. You die. OK, at least two of these are guaranteed and some may occur more frequently than the others ? see the middle two. But here?s a pondering? given the importance of events,
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Monday, November 03, 2003 11:37 AM

If you can't say nothin' nice, then don't say nothin'!

Remember that famous expression from “mama“. It's true that it is a whole heckofva lot easier to point out what's wrong than what is right with anything, so I want to go public with what's right before everyone else points out what is wrong.
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Sunday, November 02, 2003 3:44 AM

No one from Microsoft will see this post.

The world needs another blog as much as it needs another pile of self-serving crap tossed on the electronic compost come Internet. Surely a publicly displayed diary from another technologist-fancies-being-a-writer carries little value. So why write one?
Posted by charles | 0 Comments
Saturday, November 01, 2003 1:14 AM

The Office Developer

Oh, Office Developer... Where art thou? Microsoft say there are 3 million Office Developers. Yet I look for you and you are not there. I look for your articles, your code samples, your books, your web sites. Yet I still look without finding you. Your
Posted by charles | 0 Comments