Here is a great Microsoft Excel 2010 addon for Twitter analytics. Analytics for Twitter creates an amazing template for twitter users to see their basic twitter statistics.
As you can see from the template users will be able to see tweets, frequencies, search queries and a lot more.
Perform up to 5 parallel Twitter Searches (limited to 1500 results per query per day).
Drive ad-hoc analysis of tweets by day, by hour, by tweeters, by #hashtags and @mentions.
Customize your views (using slicers, DAX formulas or reference tables).
There are a lot of reports this morning that Samsung are preparing to acquire Nokia. Nokia recently signed with Microsoft to produce Windows Phone 7 devices and it seems like Microsoft could even be a potential buyer. However, it seems as though Samsung are interested in Nokia and very close to closing a deal.
I cant see Microsoft acquiring Nokia and making their own device, so Samsung is the perfect match for the company. Im quite surprised HTC havent thought about putting together a syndicate.
It seems as though everyone is starting to develop Windows Phone 7 looking themes for all different software and device. The latest is a new WordPress theme called Metro Style. This theme is taken from the very popular Windows Phone 7 Metro UI.
As with all applications within the Microsoft Office suite, Access is a powerful and easy to implement program which can be used to effectively manage your data. Whether a completely paperless office will ever exist or not is open to speculation, but there’s no denying that we’re increasingly moving in that direction.
In the world of commerce, losing important contact details can be catastrophic. Scrabbling around in drawers looking for a crucial business card, without which a project will simply grind to a halt, can be a terrifying prospect. Even in our personal lives we’ve seen our list of phone numbers almost double over the last couple of decades as people have steadily acquired mobiles. Whichever way you look at it, the age of paper phone books is slowly drawing to a close (according to the Local Government Association, unwanted copies of the Yellow Pages create 75,000 tons of waste paper annually).
There are plenty of ways to store such information electronically – you could just type a long list in a Word document, for instance. However, this is not nearly the most functional or efficient method.
Excel and Access are perhaps the best tools for the job, and today we’re going to look at how you can use the latter to create an electronic phone book.
For the purposes of this tutorial we’re going to assume you are using Microsoft Access 2007. If you have a different version of the application, there may be some subtle variations between the programs but the fundamentals remain the same.
Step by Step: Creating an Access Phone Book
As with many of the Office applications, you’ll be no doubt pleased to hear that Access does most of the hard work for you. There is a template for precisely the task we’re about to undertake together, and it couldn’t be simpler to perform. Read on however, and we’ll run you through each step in detail. You’ll need to be connected to the Internet to follow the template wizard.
- Open Access (this should be under the Start menu in the Microsoft Office tab)
- When Access opens, you’ll be faced with the Getting Started window in which you should see the Featured Online Templates section. Here you’ll be able to select the Contacts option. This lets Access know that we are looking to download a template with editable contact information.
- Before hitting the Download button, choose a name for your phone book. Once this is done a new window titled Getting Started with Contacts will open – feel free to watch the videos giving you more information on the process, or close it and move on to the next step.
- Now we get to the data entry portion of the task at hand. Click on New Contact which will produce a Contact Detail window with a variety of tabs. If you’re not there already, select the General tab. From here we can put in contact details for each individual we wish to archive, including addresses and phone numbers.
Don’t feel that you have to create two separate databases for both work and home – you’ll notice at the bottom of the window that you can specify whether a contact is for personal or professional use. Afterwards, you can filter your search for either when searching through your phone book. With this system, you can keep the addresses and contact numbers of your family members in the same place as your colleagues’ details.
- After completing the first lot of details, select Save and New. This will give you a fresh Contact Detail window in which you can repeat the last step for as many times as necessary. Once you’re finished added contacts, hit Save and Close.
- You can now specify how you want your contacts appear in the database by utilizing the column headings. Typically, your contacts will be displayed in alphabetical order by name.
Five minutes later, and you’re done! Hit Phone Book to finalize the database and take a look. You can search through your new contacts database using the Access control panel, quickly jumping to the exact person you need without having to flip through a notepad or rolodex. In fact, now you’ve got everything safely backed up on the computer you can delight in chucking all those hastily-written scraps of paper in the bin. One less piece of clutter on the desk is always worth a few minutes of your time!
Guest post by: This Short Guide to using Microsoft Access was provided to us without charge by reclining sofas specialists Sofasandsectionals.com
As we reported yesterday Microsoft has acquired Skype and it seems to be a great addition for Microsoft. With this acquisition there has also been a lot of talk about video conferencing and video calling via the Kinect. Below we have embedded a video from last years E3 where Microsoft showcased the product they have been developing. With the Skype addition Im sure they will be able to use some of the technology to really improve Video Kinect and get it out to the consumers.
Soon we will be able to use video calling on Video Kinect, Live Messenger, Windows Phone 7, iOS, Android and more. Thus, there will be no reason to not stay in touch with your old friends and family.
It has now been confirmed that Microsoft have acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in cash. Microsoft and Skype are yet to confirm the deal themselves, but a press conference is expected later today.
This is a great result for all investors in Skype who were starting to get a little nervous about their anticipated IPO later this year.
Who were the big winners in this deal:
If the price is $8.5 billion. eBay received around $2.55 billion for 30%. Great result!
Founders – Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis made about $1.19 billion for their 14% stake.
Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) own 56 percent of the company and that stake is worth $4.76 billion.
It will now be very interesting to see what Microsoft can do with Skype. There is already a lot of talk about Skype on Kinect and we will post a little something about that within the next hour.
Why did Microsoft buy Skype:
Great enterprise tool that uses Skype voice call, video calling and sharing options
Relationship with carrier who are looking to partner with Skype
Mainly for Windows Phone 7. Skype will offer Microsoft a competitor to Google Voice and Apple Facetime
Thanks to a new virus which makes users believe all of their data has been deleted, computer users everywhere are in mass panic and repair shops are busier than ever. This new virus is pure genius and is, as old-school hackers would put it, a “truly righteous” hack. It exploits a loophole in Java which gives the virus god-rights on the computer and installs without the user ever knowing. Unlike most viruses today which trick the user into thinking they have a virus and clicking ‘OK’ to clean it up (which actually installs it), it is embedded in webpages which use Java and installs silently. And since nearly everyone has Java turned on to surf the internet, it installs quietly and effortlessly. Suddenly, all the computer’s files, icons and folders are “gone.” Panic ensues as users frantically try to figure out how to recover their “lost” data. But what has really happened is that the virus has simply hidden every file on the computer! Genius, right? I can only imagine the developers are sitting back having a good laugh about it all.
So what do you do if you get hit by this lovely virus? A non-techy person could take it to a computer repair shop and spend anywhere from $85-$150 to get it fixed. Or for you geeks, you could fix it yourself using the following steps:
(Please note the following steps are for experienced users only – if you are not comfortable performing any of the below steps, take the computer to a professional!)
1) Immediately boot into Safe Mode (with networking) and do not leave this until you are done! (Mashing F8 at the boot screen will do this on most computers – read the boot screen if F8 doesn’t do the trick)
If you have to reboot at any time, make sure you boot back into Safe Mode!
2) Download and run RKill: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/anti-virus/rkill. This will terminate the virus from running and allow you to clean up the computer. Any of the download links should work – they just have various names to confuse viruses.
3) You need to be able to see the folders/files which are hidden. To do this, do the following:
Click your start menu
In the ‘run’ field, type “cmd” and hit enter
Type: c:*.* /d /s –h
**The virus may make files read-only as well. If so, include –r.
**If the virus makes files system files, add –s.
Do NOT add any unnecessary –r or –s commands. Only use these commands if needed.
4) Make sure you have the following programs installed and updated:
Remove ANY other antivirus program you have as most don’t live up to their promises and often do more harm than good (ESPECIALLY Norton, McAfee and AVG).
5) Run a FULL scan on both Security Essentials and Super AntiSpyware.
6) Clean up your registry! (If not comfortable with this, pay for a professional cleanup!)
Go to Start –>Run–>’regedit’ and hit enter, then ‘Ok’ or ‘Yes’
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER–>Software–>Microsoft–>Windows–>CurrentVersion–>Run
i. Remove anything which looks suspicious and is not a file you recognize. For instance, an entry with a name like FKA546542EJJAL and stored in a temp file is probably a virus (EXAMPLE ONLY). This is also a good time to remove unnecessary programs from starting up at boot time.
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER–>Software–>Microsoft–>WindowsNT–>CurrentVersion–>Winlogon
i. Again, remove anything suspicious. If you don’t see anything obvious, DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING.
Go to HKEY_USERS–>’user name’ or ‘.DEFAULT’–> Software–>Microsoft–>Windows–>CurrentVersion–>Run
i. Remove suspicious files as mentioned above
ii. Do this for EVERY user
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE–>SOFTWARE–>Microsoft–>Windows–>CurrentVersion–>Run
i. Remove suspicious files (be EXTRA careful here as some of these files are necessary for system files to run at startup. Again, if not sure, take it in for a professional cleanup!)
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE–>SOFTWARE–>Microsoft–>WindowsNT–>CurrentVersion–>WinLogon
i. Double click on ‘Shell’ and make sure it ONLY says ‘explorer.exe’. If there is anything after it, delete it!
ii. Double click on Userinit and make sure it ONLY says ‘C:Windowssystem32userinit.exe,”. If there is anything after it, delete it!
7) Lastly, do a quick file cleanup
Go to C:WindowsSystem32
i. Sort by Date Modified – click twice so you see the most recent date on top
ii. Going from the date you got infected (hopefully you are doing this the same day or the next day) remove any files which look suspicious (yet again, if you don’t know what you are doing, take it to a professional!)
Go to C:Windows and do as above but look at folders as well as files
Delete cookies and temp files (any self-respecting geek knows how to do this already)
So by now you have:
1) Made your files viewable and usable again
2) Removed the virus and any associated viruses or malware through using the recommended software
3) Removed registry entries to prevent anything bad from loading on startup and thus re-infecting your machine
4) Removed any negative system entries which may also be contributing to the problem.
You might have even discovered you had other spyware, malware or viruses you didn’t know about throughout all this. But if you did everything correctly, you should be clean. If not, now is definitely a good time to take the computer in for a professional cleanup as your machine likely has bigger problems than you were aware of. Good luck!
**Please note that running these commands will make EVERY file on the system viewable and editable, including previously hidden system files you shouldn’t mess with. Use extreme caution when working with files after doing this. If you aren’t comfortable with this, consider paying for a professional cleanup.
We haver just received Internet Expolorer 9 and now Internet Explorer 10 is already in test drive mode. The first preview of Internet Explorer 10 was launched at the Mix 2011 conference a week or so ago. You can download the full Internet Explorer 10 preview here.
Internet Explorer 10 preview required Windows 7 to test out all the cool new features. Internet Explorer 10 supports full HTML5 standards and even supports CSS Flexbox, CSS3 Grid Alignment, CSS3 Muti-column, CSS3 Gradients on background images. You can try these features at IE testdrive site to get a feel of it.
Microsoft seems to be the latest company to get App Store fever! There have already been a few Windows 8 leaked images and here is the latest. The above image is leaked from Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 and its of the new Windows App Store.
It seems like Microsoft is trying to bring together the designs of IE9, Windows and Windows Phone 7. The Windows App Store seems very similar to the design of Internet Explorer 9.
