Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

The following article is reprinted from a Microsoft Email

As Office 2010 becomes more prevalent in the workplace (most of our clients either have or will be soon updating to it) so the use of the ribbon has become more natural and intuitive for people. It is certainly much more intuitive than the old menu driven interface.

Play a fun game called Ribbon Hero 2 that allows you to learn the fastest and best ways to do various common tasks in the various Office Apps. My kids are using this to learn the interface and some of these common tasks. I have even learnt some things in the 5 minutes I have spent playing it so far! Download Ribbon Hero 2.

Take the first step in growing your Excel Skills. Microsoft have created a series of learning videos that assist new users to Excel to grow their skills

Learn how to create your own Excel Macros with a free training course. Ideal for the entry level person who wants to explore macro writing for the first time. Note this doesn't create efficient code, but its a start to understanding how the VBA code interacts with Excel.

PowerPivot for Excel - if you have looked or used PowerPivot (See my review of Power Pivot) than this page has some good links for additional resources.

I have been using the HTC Mozart for a few months now. Fair to say its the best phone I have ever used in a number of ways.

Best hardware I have every used. Simple easy to use external hard and soft buttons, ordinary 6.5mm stereo headphone jack, micro USB charger - uses both a power adaptor (supplied) or via a USB port.

Best Phone Software - EVER. This kills the previous mobile 6.1, 6.5 interfaces, and the previous HTC TouchFlo software. It is smooth, sexy, responsive and packed with features. The only draw back is its missing copy and paste.

Best ever applications. While there are plenty of stupid ones (I love the Chuck Norris Facts App) there are very good useful apps, including YouTube, Flickr Manager, Facebook, etc.

The built in maps software is fast with amazing fine grained detail.

I have setup access to two separate exchange server email accounts and a POP3 account. The calendar integrates with them and allows separate colours to differentiate.

The following pages were useful in setting up accounts:

Set up or delete an email account

Setting up your Windows Live ID and email accounts

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.