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Microsoft’s vision of how we will work and live in the future

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Microsoft is working on its view of the future. This is a video of how Microsoft envisions Office in the (near?) future, and how it impacts our work and home live. Pay close attention to the recipe the girl selects at the end – it shows the ingredients being displayed on the kitchen counter. What it leaves out is something I’ve seen in another video, where the ingredients are put on the counter, matching the displayed ingredients – and it detects mismatches in the items.

Exciting to see this kind of vision, and I’m really curious how far away this is. We have face to face talk, interactive surfaces, touch screens, etc. Maybe 10 years from now, this will be the norm…

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Google Docs introduces Pivot tables for Spreadsheets

June 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Recently Google Docs added Pivot Tables to the Spreadsheets type of documents, adding a powerful and much-needed feature.

It has most of the functionality PivotTables in Excel has: you can select columns and rows to display, how the data in the table is displayed (Sum, Average, Count), and add filters to it. All this is done with drop-downs and dragging fields around.

One feature I missed during my short forage through the pivot tables is the Collapse All/Expand All: when you have multiple fields selected on either rows or columns, creating a hierarchy, the higher level fields get a little + or – sign next to them. It appears impossible to collapse or expand all on a certain level, forcing you to do it one by one.

A step by step tutorial to Pivot Tables is available here. For those who need a visual to make it all understandable, Google provides a training video:

Note: the step by step tutorial explains how to add a filter to a pivot table, but uses fields that were not available in my version of the sample spreadsheet. Just add a filter on Major, and select Physics as the only value.

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Why work doesn’t happen at work

December 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Jason Fried of 37Signals presented a talk at Ted this October, explaining why so little work is actually done at work:

A few Take-aways:

  • Cancel meetings – and see if work still gets done
  • Institute a No-Talk Thursday – nobody can talk to each other
  • Rely more on IM, email, and other non-interactive means to communicate to each other

This may be a good time to plug a 37Signals product called Campfire. It enables co-workers to be available for chat, but not miss anything when they’re not in the chat. It’s also a better solution than IM, since it allows easily for 3- or 4-way chats. Last but not least, you don’t need to install every IM client in the world to be available – all you need is a browser.

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Google creates a “Teach Parents Tech” package

December 22, 2010 By 2 Comments

Just in time for the holidays, and getting close to the cut-off date for even electronic greeting cards to arrive in time for Christmas, Google present the “Teach Parents Tech” Care Package site.

This site allows anyone to create a greeting card with a number of instructional videos (provided by Google) on a range of different topics, from changing your background on Mac or PC to setting up video chat and sharing photos online. The resulting email is a little bland and not as exciting as the promo on the GMail login page shows, but I think it does the trick.

The only video that’s missing is how to check your email and play videos… I guess a little in-person help may be necessary for some parents.. :-)

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the original Google Blog article. I guess I’m a little late to the party.

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Google Wave gadgets get second chance in Shared Spaces

December 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

Google Wave is scheduled to be closed at the end of this month. Luckily, there is a place to go for all the gadgets that were written for Wave – and it’s not gadget hell, but Shared Spaces.

Shared Spaces is a Google Labs product, and instead of centering around the conversation like Google Wave, Shared Spaces is more centered around a particular gadget. You can create a space around a map to collaboratively plan a trip, or around a mind map gadget to brainstorm about an idea.

The slideshow below shows a little about Google’s idea of a shared space:

It looks like Shared Space uses Google Buzz in the background. I’m also not sure if it’s possible to make Shared Spaces invite-only, or that anyone who guesses the URL can participate. I’ll let you know more once I’ve played a little more with it.

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