Microsoft Office 2010: Six Key Features You Should Know

On Tuesday, Microsoft Office 2010 began appearing on retail shelves, and a lot of people have asked me whether they should upgrade. The answer, as always, depends on what you are going to do with the product.

In general, I think this is a more important upgrade for larger businesses than for home users and small businesses. But it does have a number of neat features many individuals will like.

I've been using Office 2010 as my primary office suite, and have to say I've been very happy with it. Here are the five new features I think will be most attractive for home and small business users:

The Return of the "File" Menu: A lot of people liked the "ribbon" user interface that Microsoft introduced with Office 2007; and a lot of people hated it, at least at first. If you currently use Office 2003 or earlier, you will still find the change a bit jarring and it will take you some time to get used to it, but after a few weeks, you probably won't notice it unless you were a power keystroke user.

But one thing that tripped up a lot of people has been notably fixed. There is again a "file" tab in all of the applications, so it's pretty familiar for users of the older version. Clicking on it brings up all the controls for saving, sharing, printing, and so on, in what Microsoft calls a Backstage area.

The name is a bit hokey, but the organization of the page gives you much easier access to all sorts of options, such as previewing what you are printing and saving to different file formats. It can be a real time-saver. One suggestion: I added the "Quick Print" option to the "Quick Access" toolbar on the very top of the Window, so I can again print without going to a menu.

Word's Navigation pane: A version of this, called Document Map, existed in earlier versions, but it's been markedly improved. You first use styling to indicate the different levels within your document--title, headings, and so on. Then, when you turn on the navigation pane, all the headings appear in an outline fashion on the side of the screen. You can just click on a heading to navigate to it, or rearrange your document by dragging headlines. I find myself using this all the time.

PowerPoint video editing: The new version lets you import a video clip into PowerPoint and then trim the clip, setting start and end points. It sounds simple, and again, you could always use a separate video editor to to this. But it's incredibly convenient to have this capability within the presentation tool itself. In addition, PowerPoint adds a number of ways for making a video look better within a presentation.

Better graphics editing: Just about all the features now include new tools with which you can better edit graphics within your documents. The one I've used most lets you remove the background from a photo fairly easily, so you just get the parts you want. Sure, you could do this with a graphics program, but being able to do it within your document in much more convenient, and I've found myself using it more and more. There's also a new feature for doing screen captures.

Sparklines: These are "in-line" graphics that you add to cells in a spreadsheet, letting you see trend lines at a glance. For instance, if you have monthly sales listed for each product, one more column in the grid can now just show a tiny chart representing sales.

Those are the five features inside the basic Office 2010 that I think are of most interest to consumers and small businesses. But of course the biggest change is....

Online Apps: The biggest change in the 2010 versions is the ability to edit and create your documents online, with Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These applications are free: They are meant to compete with free online Web applications from Google Docs (or alternatives such as those from Zoho or Glide), so you don't need to buy Office 2010 to use them. Documents are stored on on Skydrive, a Microsoft service that you can log into with a Hotmail or Live password. Microsoft is initially limiting this to 25 gigabytes, but that should be more than enough for most casual users.

If you buy Office 2010, though, you'll find that integration with the online applications is a bit easier. You can create the documents locally, then use options in the Backstage area to save directly to Skydrive and share them. And you can take documents you created online and just simply click "open in Word" to move them to the desktop version for more advanced editing.

I found the online apps to work pretty well, for online applications, though they're not advanced as the desktop versions. Microsoft talks about how they do a better job than competitiors of preserving the look of documents as you import and export from the desktop equivalents, and certainly, even complex documents did look quite good. For instance, in Word, basic editing was simple, and the word processor worked well with tables and inserted graphics; but it lacks the fine control of photos, charting, and reviewing options that the desktop version gives you.

Again, you don't need Office 2010 to use the Web apps, but it makes using them easier. Web apps are pretty new, so I haven't done a lot of sharing with them so far, but it does seem like a credible entry in the market.

If you're a business user, a number of other features may be more compelling to you: Outlook now has the ribbon interface, with a social connector and a conversation view; the Web Apps can be used with SharePoint so you can share documents more easily on an internal server; and Excel can now handle bigger models, offers an easier way to work with Pivot Tablets, and adds PowerPivot, an in-memory tool for dealing with lots of data. (More on these later.) My guess is that the Excel and Outlook upgrades will be enough to make a lot of businesses want to upgrade.

Here is PC Magazine's full review of the complete suite (note the Home and Office version just includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, and lists at $149 for the boxed version that supports up to 3 PCs, and $119 for the Key Card version). And here's a post on how Office uses the latest PC hardware.

As I've said before, I'm surprised at the number of people who take Microsoft Office for granted. Yes, there are open source alternatives like Open Office, other reasonable traditional packages such as Corel's WordPerfect Office, and now a number of good online tools such as Google Docs, Zoho, and Glide. All of those are more than adequate to create a basic document or add up a set of numbers, but none has the depth of features as the traditional boxed Microsoft Office.

In short, for the home user, if you have Office 2007 and just use it locally, you'll find Office 2010 a useful but not necessary upgrade. If you have an earlier version of Office, though, now may be the time to think about upgrading.

Cirque du Soleil helps Microsoft in creating a Kinect experience in L.A.

Microsoft went big Sunday night in unveiling the final name of its controller-free video game technology.

Note: And yes, USATODAY.com accidentally posted a story with the name about four hours earlier than agreed on. We did our best to take it down, apologize and then reposted it at midnight ET.

An army of Cirque du Soleil performers (80 or so) and crew -- as well as an immense elephant puppet -- heralded in the arrival of the Kinect controller-free system for the Xbox 360 system.

They created a jungly environment within the Galen Center at the University of Southern California. High above the arena floor, suspended at one end of the arena was a "living room" where performers acted out the part of game players, while video of the performers and the games played on adjacent arena-length screen.

Light sabers (for Star Wars), bowling, dancing, track and field were played. Adding the Cirque touch, a pony-tailed woman walked across the ceiling of the living room as the "family" played sports games.

"I'm not sure what I'm witnessing but it's ... something," tweeted BitMob's Dan Hsu. "Over the top crazy and extravagent," he labeled the event.

Early on, the name "Kinect" formed on-screen. "That had to be the most unique introduction of a tech product I've ever seen," wrote VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi.

Later, the shoulders of the white ponchos attendees were asked to wear lit up in different colors based on their location in the auditorium. Lady Gaga would have been proud.

Other impressions from the Twitter-sphere:

-- UGO.com's Tracey John: "The Star Wars Kinect title may fulfill my dream to really use a lightsaber in a game, but I hope there's more to it."

-- GamePro's John Davision: "Non-game Kinect applications seem interesting, but games mostly come off a bit too Wii-like. There's a yoga thing with a ton of potential."

-- Kotaku's Stephen Totilo: "Kinect games at tonight's circus looked fun but v. similar to what I've played with Wii and Eyetoy for years. Microsoft sent in the clones?"

Microsoft approached the mega-performance troupe after realizing it wanted to announce Kinect in a "hypercreative setting," said Xbox general manager Rob Matthews in an interview last week. "We said, we need to do something Cirque-esque or Cirque-like. Why don't we call Cirque du Soleil."

Cirque du Soleil artistic director Michel Laprise and several other crew members came to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., tried the Natal games and Laprise was "intrigued. The freedom and physicality as so strong. This is so emotional, it makes sense we are doing it."

To get across how Cirque works, Laprise says that at a planning meeting with Xbox executives in Montreal he poured a bucket of sand on the table. "Natal is a name of a beach on Brazil and our company co-founder had the idea that … on the beach this is where friends have dreams. So let's all dream together a story that will touch the people in the room," Laprise says.

"Then I took some rocks and said, 'This is a story where four meteors land on Planet Earth and what is very magical is that they all fall in the same Amazon forest, the place where there is the most biodiversity. It's not been spoiled by tech, it's just purely orgainc. People heard about the four meteors and when (the meteors) aligned there's a big giant monolith that came out of the center of the earth. … That attracted people from the four corners of the world and people started to interact between themselves with more friendship and more playfulness."

That concept provided the seed for the performance, he says. About the final presentation, Laprise says, "I didn't want it to be big. It had to be big."

MTV will broadcast a recording of the performance, titled "The World Premiere Project Natal for Xbox 360 experience, as imagined by Cirque du Soleil" without commercials on Tuesday at 3:30 P.M. ET. It will be rebroadcast later that day on Nick at Nite, mtvU, MTV Hits, and Logo at 9 P.M. ET.

Another of MTV's networks, Spike will broadcast Microsoft's E3 media briefing live Monday from 1:30 to 3 p.m. ET.a

To Make A Website Design More Effective

As the potential e-commerce has been realized by the people, there has been quite a prominent shift that has been noticed from the real world of markets & shops to that of the virtual world of internet. Not only that is a new era of commerce but the fact that this provides an amazing platform for the people to reach out to their potential customer without spending much, has attracted more and more people to either shift completely or extend their business as e-commerce. People as need shops to market and sell their products in the real world they require websites while carrying on with their online business.

The need of the websites has given rise to the concept of website development. There are people who are aware of the nuances around it, and hence for them creating a website design and getting started with the website with a website hosting company is not a big deal. On the other hand who need to intervene into e-commerce but re relatively ignorant about the same would need professional help for website development and for the web design needs. However, that is not a point of concern as nowadays whatever you need is available ready made, and website design is no exceptional. But, remember, if you are using a free service, you should not expect to find something unique in there. The website design of your site would also look like the many other out there. Hence, if you want your website to stand out you should go for professional website development.

There are certain things, considering them while you are working around your website design you could really be benefited. You should be very clear in your mind that why you need this website and what are your expectations form the same. While you are clear in your mind you could write these as well for better clarity and this would help if someone else is helping you with web design. Keep your goals clear, there could be many things that you would be allured by while picking your web design, but in case you pick something that doesn’t go with the tone of your goal – it is a waste. While designing the website you might need to decide before hand if you would like to enjoy the traffic from the search engines. As then while website development you would have to keep the search engine optimization angle into your mind. This would make your web design SEO friendly.

Website design tampa

Last but not the least look for the best website designer around. You could either consult your friends or other people who are into the same business as you are and take their advice. The other way could be that you can look for the web designer who specialize in the kind of business that you have. By doing that the web designer would be able to give constructive ideas while website development as he would also be exposed to the website design need of your business.

By inculcating the suggestions above you would be able to get a website that is more effective.

How to Speed Up Your Website by Reducing Your Graphics and Flash

Communication is all about an exchange of information.

How Your Website Design Pages Communicate With Your Visitors Computer

Your computer communicates when it is online too. It exchanges information with every website you visit. Your computer goes through a longer process when it communicates on the internet.

Even if you do not notice any part of this communication it still happens.

When someone goes to your website for the first time, every object on each of your web pages they visit will be sent from your host server to the user's computer.

These visitors may be your potential clients.

On future visits your visitor's computer will need to make a round trip to your server to identify everything that was not stored on his computer during the previous visits.

Your visitor's web browser stores some files on his PC and will only download these again when he tell his web browser to do so.

Don't Make Your Visitors Wait

Here is the hard part.

Your visitor will not be patient. If you make him wait for anything he will click away from your website, just like you do yourself.

He will not wait while your pages load. He will click away while your fantastically useful flash graphic has a little bar showing 45% loaded. He will even cancel a download if he file you created was just too big.

The biggest theme in website design should be minimalism.

Your website has to take into consideration the tiny attention span of your visitors have. If you want better online business this attention span is your primary concern.

You want your visitors to like your websites. For them to like your website they have to see it, quickly. Only then can you work towards capturing their attention further and cultivating repeat visits.

Keep It Simple: Reduce Graphics

All too often website designers have a sweet spot for fantastic graphics. This creates conflict.

Why?

You have to reduce your graphics as much as you can.

Reduce them either in quantity or size. You need to reduce them in any way you can.

Tip: One trick that works here, if you really must have a graphic you can put it on the lower half of the page. Allow the text to come in first and while the client is reading your image can be loading. When he scrolls down to the image, it will be ready.

Let Flash Files Fly

Be wary of visitors who hate your flash files.

Flash is great for some things, like significantly increasing the size of your page and slowing the clients download time.

Tip: If you are working with a website designer, or a design firm ask about their testing method. There are some really complex ways to test how quickly a webpage loads but they are not real life.

If you want to test how fast a page loads elsewhere, do a real test. Call a user in a distant country and read your URL, then start a timer. Ask people who you consider as your potential clients, is this time too long?

Forget Network Simulators: Do Live Tests

There are tools called network simulators. They are tools that are supposed to slow the network between your server (on the left side of the room) and your PC (on the right). The simulation is supposed to show what the "real user" will see.

They don't work.

OK. That may be an overly negative point of view. A network simulator slows traffic down and gives a result that is closer to real life than doing nothing.

But network simulators show the scenario with a server doing only one thing, and using a PC that is probably top of the line, and sitting in the same room. In the same room! Network simulators don't work.

Make the call, do a real live test.

Use Primary Business Objectives For Each Web Page To Design Your Page

If you are having trouble scaling down, go back to the designer. Review each item on your webpage cover each item on the page. Identify the reason for each object on your webpage; see what it does and how it contributes to your primary business objective.

Each web page should only have one primary business objective.

This primary objective can be:

• Make a sale


• Get client contact details


• Entertain


• To get readers from point A to point B


• Or a thousand other options

If any item on your page does not support that primary business objective, remove it from your web page or your website.

By focusing on the purpose for each page and streamlining all of the objects on that page you give you readers a good experience.

You pages will load quickly and your message will come across clearly.

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Learn how to combine cross-cultural marketing tools and international sales strategies for faster sales.

Usability Features of Web 2.0 for Websites

The concept of web 2.0 has seen the upswing in last few years, one of its unique features is that website content is produced dynamically by the users itself. It holds true especially for social bookmarking websites. Many famous social networking sites are example of sites using web 2.0.

The websites that use web 2.0 faces chain reaction with different traffic methods helping in raising your search engine rank. Experts dealing with web 2.0 always advice to bring in many links from other web 2.0 websites for information collection purpose.

Even if your website is not web 2.0 type, you can submit your articles to such sites. It has been seen that these websites has great amount of website traffic, thus increases the chances of getting more number of potential clients. Through this method you can also promote your company’s products or services.

Online technologies like podcasts, social bookmarking, RSS feeds, web blogs, etc have gained greater momentum and visibility thus the quality of online interaction is improved. Also file sharing, banner Ads, photo sharing, foster mashups and so on also earns greater online visibility.

The pattern of web usage is witnessing a major change, the entire web development styles has been refined. Here the users get software advantages eliminating the waiting time period for upgradation of software version.

The concept of web 2.0 has made possible for a website to make themselves complete entity where not only products/services are promoted but also becomes hub for online information sharing. This technology works for online public communities and facilitates information exchange making online marketplace a cosmopolitan venue for the users.

Web 2.0 is available as an open source help, it helps in widening your web horizon by using and reusing the market resources. You can practice individual control, communicate your thoughts, resources, views, create fresh corporate pattern, etc. Web economy has also seen steep growth due to web 2.0. This data driven platform is created by talented web developers. Web 2.0 has the potential to generate network effects dominated by service merger and content.

Now-a-days web hosting with web 2.0 is considered respectable in the field of web design. The reason behind its rising popularity is due to many benefits it offers through web design like- its universal appeal, improved texts coverage, use of brighter colors and so on.

To conclude web 2.0 takes holistic approach comprising of software for various types of websites and carry a number of web processes as well.

Search Engine Optimization : a Smart Way to Grow Your Business

In present times if you want to expand your business then it requires a lot of capital and hard work. Not only that but then even after vesting in so much effort and all your life savings into your business, chances that you might succeed may be miniscule. So then you get discouraged and end up being broke. Well this doesn’t have to be the case for you if you choose search engine optimization.

It is an easy way to prosper in your field of business what ever it may be from real estate to accounting to even travel and tourism. The amount to invest is also very less almost one third of what you would normally put up to advertise your business. You must be wondering how can there be such an easy way to prosper in business. And some might wonder if this is some scheme to fool people. It is possible and genuine way to go ahead in business.

Search engine optimization is a way in which your traffic; that is the number of users clicking on your site increases. Now, some might already have a site but not many users who visit it. Search engine optimization would give you tips and the general codes to follow so that your site would come in the search engine when any user would search for the respective keyword. For example in Google when a user types Australia the site that come might be one of yours if you are in the business of travel and tourism. Now that is a sure way to increase revenue you might think. Just imagine, you get global recognition, your brand gets promoted, the advertisement you make would be an instant hit.

Search Engine Optimization professionals would give you tips on how to make your site sell. They would tell you if you are doing something wrong and would also advice you to make it right. You can start with no capital here just some easy free of cost tips and look for yourself the results and then later maybe further invest more into it. There are plenty of tips on how to make your website so good that the traffic would increase overnight.

One important tip is to increase the number of links on your main webpage. The link should also have the right amount of information to promote your brand name. Too much information would confuse the user and they would get bored of reading so much and leave the site. Too little information would make the user wonder what sort of product you have or what kind of business you do.

Another important point to remember is to keep a good tempting picture on your site. If you deal in loans and investment then keeping a picture full of money would usually tempt the user to go ahead and take interest into your site, its way to lure customers to get more information about you. You could use forums to discuss your business into greater detail.

The Internet Marketing - a Most Successful Businesses

Internet Marketing, also known as Online Marketing or E-Marketing is proven successful for major business companies which gain lots of benefits from their online business. Internet Marketing or Online Marketing just not increases business and profit in very short period but also saves valuable time and money which require in other advertising media for brand awareness and promotion of companies products or services.

Internet Marketing is today’s most effective marketing media which helps businesses to grow rapidly. Marketing via internet will not help only large businesses but it is also helpful for small businesses promotion. Professional SEO Company who gives internet marketing services assesses your current situation including major rivalry, current advertising and marketing program and give best internet solution for online business within your marketing budget.

To build your brand and make it popular is long process as it employs long time and need lots of money to spend. But now with use of internet by applying efficient website promotion you can make your company / brand popular in cost effective manner.

Internet Marketing is a type of marketing / promoting product or service using internet. Internet Marketing Services includes Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Web Development, SEO Copy Writing, Blog Writing, News/Article Writing, Directory Submission, Search Engine Submission and Web Analysis. Your SEO Consultant can guide you to take what type of services best suitable to your business. Professional Internet Marketing Companies offers best web promotion plan helpful for small and large businesses.

How Internet Marketing Helps Small Business?

People can search their businesses (website) easily on Internet. Your website becomes a valuable customer resource. Internet Marketing is becomes one of the fastest growing media compare to other media such as Television, Radio, Press, Outdoor etc. Less expensive compare to other advertising media, the return on investment (ROI) for online marketing is fairly good as compared to other forms of media advertisements. Quick Response and immediate results Fast and Effective Internet Marketing Services Email Marketing is very effective and powerful to reach target market in short time and with less spending. By preparing effective email letter you can reach your potential customers as well as build strong relationship with your existing customers. Go help visit to www.internet-marketing-world.com smartly prepared Email Marketing Campaign by considering target market, understanding need of people and shoot frequently [with proper time interval] helps in generating good business enquiries. You can increase your web traffic by giving web site link in your business mailer. Business Blog helps you to increase ranking of your website in search engine result pages. You can include all information about your business in blogs which can useful to increase inbound links to your website. Submission of website in major business directories / online business portal generates natural traffic to your website; thus increase quality enquiries and profit. Online shopping cart increases your sales by buying or selling products online. It becomes your 24 X 7 and round the year online shop without spending money for shop/office and salesman. Banner advertising is also helps to increase visibility of your product / brand awareness by placing your ad banner on popular websites or directories or portal. Using SEO copy writing for your website, you can get good advantage of your website for getting top rank in search engines. Once your web site start getting good position in search engine, the chances to get good business enquiries definitely increases. News / Article also help to get good listing in search engines. You can increase volume of website by increasing number of article pages in the website. By providing latest news related to your industries can help you in increasing number of visitors on your site. It also helps in getting good position in search engine as search engines are always search for new and fresh content. In addition it also gives preference to the frequently updated sites. Trend for online shopping is increasing day by day because of various reasons; one of them is lack of time. Because of time shortage people prefers online buying products for their needs. Go to www.internet-marketing-world.com the other reason is choice, people can surf more sites to get best price and product and take final decision to buy. The other advantage is people can shop online from any where [from home or office or anywhere] in the world just by few clicks.

Building competent strategies for Internet Marketing services definitely boost sales and profit of small businesses. Professional Internet Marketing Company with having broad marketing and e-marketing knowledge, expertise in SEO services, strong analytical capabilities can positively help you to increase your business domestically as well as internationally.