Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I realised that when I wrote the ISNA function article that I had never written an explanation of VLOOKUP. I want to write up explanations for a umber of other functions in the future like COLUMN, ROW, MATCH and INDEX followed by OFFSET. All these make lots of sense when you use them with the VLOOKUP function. So I though it best to start with this function. I will also say that everything I write about VLOOKUP here applies to HLOOKUP as well. the only difference is the orientation, that is VLOOKUP looks across columns from left to right, and HLOOKUP looks down rows from top to bottom.

The built in Excel Help is very good at helping with this function. However it doesn't point out many of the pitfalls than occur in common use.

Oh the things I do for you my gentle readers!

Some more nice cheeses were reviewed recently – and at the request of a reader the King Island Dairy Roaring 40’s blue cheese was selected.

I was expecting the cheese to be a raging stinky blue cheese – from the name I guess. However I was pleasantly surprised. The smell wasn't bad at all and the taste was awesome – very nice – I had it in sandwiches with hot chips and chicken – very nice!

The Mersey Valley Sharp and Crumbly series have been favourites in this house and the sweet chilli did not disappoint with kids who don’t even like sweet chilli eating it and declaring it their favourite cheese ever.

A very pleasant cheese.

As a special SpyJournal service to all our geek girl readers and followers I am letting you know that there is a discount on heels, wedges, flats and boots at the new online shoe store Therapy.

All the details are available on the Missy Confidential website who are announcing the discount. Missy Confidential have lots of good bargains and discounts, giveaways and promotions you can enter.

Therapy Shoes is excited to launch their new online store by offering all Missy readers 15% off.
During checkout, simply enter the code MISSY to receive your 15% discount.
Be sure to join the Retail Therapy Club and be the first to know about the season's hot new styles, sale items and special member discounts.
15% VIP Discount: Online offer for Missy Subscribers only and valid for unlimited pairs of shoes paid for in one transaction.

• WHEN
  Online offer from 10th Dec - 30th Dec, 08
• WHERE
  www.therapyshoes.com.au
• TIMES
  Online 24/7
• PAYMENT
  Visa / Master Card/ Bank card / amex

Some of my take aways from this conference:

• Client apps should be experience first, tech second – e.g. they are built for the consumer to use – the back end stuff should be largely invisible.
• These apps should live on the cloud and be able to synch across devices and platforms invisibly.
• 3rd party extensibility is important.
• Authentication and login (including Open ID) on websites can now be performed using the exposed LiveID framework – 460 million LiveIDs in se on the net.
• Twitter back channels can liven up the day – thanks to @NickHodge, @laflour, @aussienick, @DamianM, @kiwitwitter and @JamesHip.
• RSS, ATOM, JSON, SOAP feed data is available from the LOE (Live Operating Environment) to describe changes, news etc from the LOE.
• Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect allHTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. Fiddler is freeware and can debug traffic from virtually any application, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and thousands more.

May be more but that will do for now.