Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I have had a lot of articles, news and other tech information filling up my browser and its time to de-clutter before Christmas.

Microsoft Excel

INDEX -MATCH - a much better lookup function combination than using VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. Charley Kyd writes a very good instructive post on using this combination. We use this a lot where the failings of VLOOKUP make it impossible to use.

MSDN announces the new developer roadmap for Excel and VBA. Interesting reading and has lots of useful links.

Power Pivot is an amazing AddIn for Excel 2010. I have written about Power Pivot before. Dick Kusleika has written a simple function to determine whether an Excel Workbook contains power pivot data.

Microsoft Outlook

Conditional formatting and highlighting your emails based on content, subject, sender etc.

Roy MacLean asks some interesting questions about storing data in Outlook. I love Outlook and think it is a very good tool, however there are lots of limitations with using it. Mind you I don't see any other email client out there that can do everything that Outlook can do or even half as well in most cases. Still Roy has some good points.

Everything good or interesting I have found lately – loosely organised. And a photo I took recently.

Social Media and Web Design

Darren Rowse talks about how churches should use Social Media

Robin Good on Website Accessibility: How To Make Your Website Highly Accessible And Standards-Compliant. Article written by Drazen Dobrovodski.

Add Facebook Plugins to your Blog

From Digital Inspiration - Zero to a Million Users. Adam Smith and Drew Houston, founders of two successful Internet startups – Xobni and Dropbox – share secrets that helped their products win two million users in two years with mostly word-of-mouth marketing and no advertising spend.

Clearing the browser from all the links to cool tools and content for today.

Microsoft Stuff

• Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 BETA – Includes enhancements for Windows 7-based computers
• Seadragon.com – Convert Any Image On The Web Into A Deep Zoom Image
• Deep Zoom Composer Updated To Fix An Export Related Bug
• Streaming Media in Windows 7 – Streaming your collection over the Internet – unfortunately this doesn’t work if your Windows 7 machine is joined to a domain
• Sneak peek of what’s coming in Windows Live Movie Maker
• Live Video Streaming: Guide To The Best Broadcast Services To Stream Your Video In Real-Time
• What's new in Windows 7: Tour Windows 7
• Get a Live-Updating Bing Wallpaper Windows 7 Theme – i did this it worked really easily
• Megawoosh Slide for Microsoft Project – this is a funny little video that has gone viral in Europe. Heads up from Duncan’s blog.

I have been building / rebuilding a lot of virtual PCs lately.

We use them a lot in our software development because we need to be able to develop in the same environment as the client has. Many clients are still stuck on XP and Office 2003. So we build a virtual machine that has this OS and Office installation.

I have been accepted into the Office 2010 tech preview, and was trying to build a Windows 7 64bit beta virtual machine to load the 64 bit Office applications into. I was unable to do so and it relates to something to do with hardware virtualisation. Personally I think this is just an issue with the windows 7 64 bit beta architecture because I was able to do it using a fresh real hard drive.

On the way I have found some tools and websites that have been helpful.

• VHD Resizer and the VM Toolkit
• Microsoft Tech Net – lots of resources here about Virtual Server 2005
• Creating Virtual Hard Disks