I sometimes let Kathy Sierra’s writing accumulate in my blog-reader, because I don’t want to just skim her entries. She’s my favorite writer online, and a huge inspiration both to my work and what difference a passionate individual can make. Reading what she’s been through, the way she’s been abused (serious death and sexual threats) as a blogger and as a woman, is just plain awful. Hurtful. Disgusting. While nothing could justify such treatment, the fact that she’s been subjected to it is just unfathomable to me. She’s making such a difference for so many people, in a field that’s not even personal (people have opinions about usability…but it’s not personal). This just hurts.

I thank people like Kate who are continually bringing attention to the continual violence against women, time and again. For raising issues to the light that are often glanced past. This sort of news needs to be in the media. And it needs to change people’s behavior.

I applaud Scoble’s stance on this and hope others will protest as well. If I had a way to, I would. Reading the comments on Kathy’s page shows that people are listening today. I just hope this can make a lasting difference.

Filed under: Social Media, Technology
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I checked on the known issues list and didn’t see these little annoying gems. Here are two things I’ve run into with PowerPoint 2007:

1. The slide footer functionality from PowerPoint Presentation templates doesn’t work in PowerPoint 2007. Thus for the many clients where we used formal footers (so that they could update them in one place for the whole document), those footers will not work at all in PowerPoint 2007. Even worse, when someone opens a file in PowerPoint 2007 with footers that were created in PowerPoint 2003, the footer fields immediately become text fields–which means that if you save them in PowerPoint 2007 (even in compatibility mode!!) you permanently lose the ability to edit all footers at once–even when you open that file in PowerPoint 2003. No warning–just zap, and the footer fields (date, too!) are gone!
2. The Custom Animation tool is quite forgetful. Often I had to select “Start with Previous” when Start with previous was already selected–in order to get the event to take place right away in the sequence. This came up when I previously had delays set at other places that pushed the timeline on my animation back. The easy workaround for this is to look at the Advanced Timeline view and then just re-set the setting you’re trying to get to work–just right-click and again choose “Start with Previous” for instance.

I’m really enjoying PowerPoint 2007’s aesthetics and drawing tools–but I do wish Microsoft could address these couple issues.

Filed under: Technology
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Well, I did manage to get Vista installed. The advice here worked like a charm, and I was able to install Vista clean with an upgrade product key. No, Microsoft never did follow-up with a solution…but at least it worked.

I’m really enjoying Windows Vista. Sure, a few programs don’t work (I don’t want to upgrade QuickBooks and iTunes isn’t even upgraded) but the visual improvements are stunning. Sure, Mac may have had similar features for a while…but it’s great for us PC users to finally get a break.

Some of my favorites: the integrated search, the new Windows Media Player, the lovely Aero interface, the massively improved wireless and network connection management, the better display options, the weather gadget… I really dig it.

On the other hand, I’ve been seriously disappointed with Apple. The majority of my gripe is that I purchased a lemon of a MacBook. I’ve spent about 5 or 6 hours on the phone in the last week with a unit that is now officially considered DOA. Now I have to run between a few places to get it repaired. And I’m going to think twice before purchasing from MacMall again. When business is so busy, as it is now, this is a horrible waste of time.

But, for the record, when this MacBook was working it was no panacea, no magnificent wonderful machine. It wasn’t necessarily more intuitive to work with, and I’m not in any way sold. Some of my least favorites: error messages that are immensely unhelpful, no manual way to eject a CD (and no eject button that works without software), a remarkably sparse online support, no visual or audio indication when important statuses changed (like connecting to a network or disconnecting from a network), and about a million compatibility issues with Office. But I’m going to take a deep breath and get this machine (for SET’s designer; it’s running Vista, as well) repaired…

So this week has seen a great deal of upgrades. A MacBook. A Vista install on my primary machine. A gorgeous new notebook (Dell XPS M1210) with all the bells & whistles. Now it’s time to update the infrastructure a little bit–redo the server, clean up a dedicated XP box for use as a computer-to-be-dialed-into, and figure out some more features in OneNote 2007 and Groove Server…

Filed under: Business, Technology, Vista
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