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An awesome song from Paramore's new album 'Brand New Eyes'. I have picked this one out because I have listened through the whole album three times now and it really stands out...

After an interesting chat at lunch in work, I decided to have a look at the imminent release of Microsoft Office 2010. There seems to be some cool new features available and everything seems to be getting much more web based including online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The online versions will have fewer features than the full desktop software but for people unwilling to pay the extortionate price MS charges or plunge into the rough seas that is illegal downloading this is a much friendlier compromise. Windows will truly be getting somewhere when Windows 7 and Office 2010 are standard but painfully it seems it will take some time…..

1. A new navigation pane and search experience
With navigation pane, users can not only quickly switch to the beginning of any chapters by clicking the desired headlines, but also locate your desired text by inserting keywords in the instant search box. As the following image presents, the search words will be highlighted in the text.

2. New graphical goodness
Word 2010 provides users more artistic picture effects and easier picture editing, and more SmartArt diagrams, richer graphical and typographic effects on text are also available.

3. Online simultaneous editing with multiple people
In Word 2010, users can share co-author right within Word documents. Using new co-authoring capabilities, users can edit or modify Word documents with multiple people from different locations at the exact same time. You can see who else is working with you, and where they are editing. In the way, users do not need to hassle with exchanging documents via email attachments when they have to confirm them together.

4. Offline editing and syncing of shared documents online
When you open a shared document, Word 2010 will automatically cache it so that you can edit it offline, and then Word will automatically sync your changes when you come back online. So if you need to work outside the office, you will no longer need to worry about saving local copies or manually merging your changes into the server document when you get back to your office. Word 2010 takes care of all of that for you.

5. Access and edit Word 2010 documents anywhere
In Word 2010, users can store their documents online, then access and edit Word 2010 from practically any Web browser and mobile phones without compromising your document's richness.

The rest of the article is here: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/5+Most+Amazing+New+Features+of+Word+2010-a01073978587

Wednesday night was Allianz Idol at the Stoke Pub in Guildford. I was supremely apprehensive about going but it turned out to be an awesome night where I drank way too much for a Wednesday night....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Excel-Annoyances-Annoying-Favorite-Spreadsheet/dp/0596007280

Came across this when I was searching Google for ways to sort out Excel's irritating features. Is definitely next going on my bookshelf alongside "Programming the Universe" and "The Brief History of Time"……….Yeah…..

 

This is article I wrote for the Allianz graduate newsletter. I was quite pleased with it so thought it would be a nice thing to add to my Posterous.

As some may have noticed Allianz Intranet’s search facility is now powered by Google and Best in Class talked to Paul Towner to get an insight into the benefits, challenges and technology involved.

Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine on the Internet and after valuable feedback from the Business Intranet Group, which highlighted the previous search system’s errors it is now available for all Allianz employees. It is currently live on the Retail section of the Intranet if anyone wishes to test it out.

Google indexes all documents on the Intranet, so that with a few keywords finding a needle in a haystack doesn’t seem so difficult. The way in which Google provides results to searches is the query processor. It has several parts, including the search box, the engine that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results themselves. It will be important for everyone to add as many metatags and keywords to their intranet pages as possible to make the querying more efficient. Combine this with fast processors and the results are quick and useful. The busy Googlebots will be trawling their way through the Intranet and will try and pick up as many keywords as possible using query words such as URL’s and titles, etc. 

One of the benefits of having Google on the Intranet is that it is extremely similar to searching on the Internet so the familiar tools such as advanced and quick search are readily available (Check out BIC’s Tips for some useful search terms!)  Also, Google is so widely used almost everyone will be familiar with its interface. The system is already growing in size and thanks to our busy developers telling it where to crawl for information, there are over 20,000 pages fully indexed. It is hoped that by later this summer even more will be and the search facility will be accessible via the homepage.

Another huge benefit is the Google console allows us to run reports which show us the most popular searched phrases. This will enable us to see areas in which we need to improve the general intranet navigation and also see what information everyone is pursuing.

The biggest challenge which the developers have come across is that the Allianz Intranet wasn’t built with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in mind. SEO is the process of ranking links in search results so to improve the quality of this it’s strongly encouraged for all publishers of content to complete some housekeeping such as deleting old versions of documents and pages. Paul hopes that working on sponsored links (similar to the Internet version of Google) could be implemented into the Intranet, but that will be for future development.

The addition of Google to the Intranet seems to be welcome and productive and a big thanks to Paul for talking with us. Remember to clean up after yourself and perform housekeeping to keep the searching clean.

Go on, Google yourself on the Intranet!

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This is a song from the new Muse album 'The Resistance'. I think... I like the album but it is a bit hit and miss. I am already sick of 'Uprising' after really liking it when I first heard it. Also I don't really see the fuss in 'United States of Eurasia'..... Resistance is pretty good though.

These are just a few of the photos of my trip to Milan, if you want to check out the rest take a look at my facebook page. I was going to upload them all to Posterous but wanted to  do them all at once and none of my e-mail account could attach that many...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=313823&id=769060596

http://people.stfx.ca/bliengme/ExcelTips/Columns.htm

These are instructions to an awesome type of graph which can be made in Excel and really helped me in work today.

Even though it was an incredible eight years a go today I can remember exactly where I was and what I did when I heard about the planes crash into the twin towers. I was just starting my second year of secondary school and was the tender age of 12, it was a usual school day - I would stare out of a window, flick my ruler against the table and generally not pay much attention. At the time I lived very close to my school (about five minutes walk actually) and everyday I would come home, get changed and go over to my grandparents to pick up my dog who for some reason would be over there... quite bizarre but I literally can't remember how he got there... Anyway, I came home and after weeks of having to go over to my grandparents it would take me longer and longer to get changed. I turned on the TV where this live feed was being displayed instead of the nauseating crap I used to watch. I found this incredibly odd and continued to watch and couldn't fully comprehend what was going on and at the time I assumed it was a horrific accident but obviously I was mistaken.