Picnik is closing

This might be a bit late for a link tip, but I’ve always admired the site www.picnik.com . A photo-editing site where casual users can do amazing things without being a photoshop pro. I’m a bit sad to say that Picnik will be closing shop by mid-april. Until then however, the whole site will be free. Even the premium services. I’m excited to see what the Picnik team achieves in service of their new master Google. I hope to see some of their awesomeness come to one of google’s free services, such as Picasa.

Two quick Office 2010 tips

Today’s tips might reflect the kind of project I’m working on. Today I’m going to give two tips on how to work better in Excel 2010 –_-

Tip1

Here is how to make your own keyboard-commands in excel:

1. Find an action you perform a lot but often have to click to access (insert row in my case)

2. Right-click on the command in the ribbon and select “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”. My command landed at spot nr 5 in the list

3. If your command is at place 5 in the list, Alt+5 now performs this command. In my case, Alt+5 inserts a new row.

Tadaa! Effectiveness

 

Tip2

This is more of a forgotten feature than a tip. When working in Office 2010, you have access to something called the Clipboard. This tool allows you to save up to 25 copied texts, images, cells, etc. To open the clipboard, click at the little arrow in the copy menu under the Home ribbon.

This might be helpful when performing tasks where you need to paste three different texts or number sequences over and over in a document. Or when you just want to be able to copy-paste without losing your previous snippets.

That’s it for today. You’ve been great, tip your waitress!

My favorite part of the Win8 installation

License to kill remove malicious software

30k hits and BUILD

I didn’t really notice that, yesterday, I reached 30 000 unique hits on my blog since it started up two years ago. By international blog standards this isn’t a lot, but I’m glad that my thoughts have reached so many minds. If this means that a thousand people have read thirty different posts I’ve written or that one dude is furiously changing IPs to reload my main page 30 000 times, I’m glad there’s interest in what I have to say.

 

Now for something completely different a bit more relevant. BUILD starts up tonight (CET) with a keynote address. Myself I’m very excited about this, though a bit sad not being able to attend. Catch the keynote at Channel9 tonight or find the videos at BuildWindows.com tomorrow.

Word is that we might see a CTP of Win8 as soon as tomorrow. Although I wouldn’t be able to install such early release code on my work machine, I have a netbook at home just begging to be reformatted

Thoughts on cross platform and HTML5

My friend Ciel and I are discussing phones as usual. He’s getting an Android from his new employer. We talk a while about apps and I tell him that if I want a platform with bad app support, I’ll choose WP7 any day. We talk a bit more and get into cross platform support. It bugs us that, aside from Mono, there is no real effort to do cross platform development for the different mobile devices. Maybe HTML5 is the future and native apps are going away as my friend Michael Björn suggests, but I don’t think were there yet.

However, when it comes to HTML5, it’s clear in my eyes who’s leading the charge. Since I attended MIX this year, I was able to pull this video clip from YouTube to show Ciel. He agreed that hardware accelerated browsing was the future and that it might prove an important aspect for app developers. I wish I could pull any event from my memory into existence in this way.

Look for me in the front row

What I want for Christmas

Just saw an awesome preview of Sony’s latest tech. An awesome looking 3D visor which gives the viewer the experience of a 750” screen (omg!).

This is all I want for Christmas (plus a box of bluray 3D pornos).

What’s going around?

Everyone I know either have a cold, a broken knee or something worse.

This is pretty much my friend Johannes right now

Here is a classic Swedish commercial dealing with when a man “Has a really bad cold”

Rough translation

You women talk about giving birth, but you should know how it feels when a man has a really BAD cold

 

Myself, I have an inner-ear thing going on which allows me to sport this fanciful/practical/very uncomfortable head bandage. 

Until next time, stay healthy friends!

Windows 8 Tech Breakfast

My good friend and colleague Jonathan Zaar recently informed me that the Microsoft event on Windows 8 that I’d been looking forward to, was delayed without a new date. http://msdn.microsoft.com/sv-se/aa700831.aspx 

I took this not as a loss, but as a challenge and am now hosting my own Windows 8 event for Avanade Sweden employees. Unlike the tech-breakfast after MIX11, which was six months delayed, the information at this tech-breakfast will not be six DAYS old. Hot off the presses and run through your favorite subjective tech filter (me), it’s going to be glorious.

Tech-Breakfasts are a long standing tradition where members of the Avanade community meet to chat, discuss latest developments, and eat tasty sandwiches.

Richard Klees coming to Stockholm

Microsoft TechNet and Knowledge factory are hosting a cool lecture later this month. The topic is how to give successful presentations. The speaker is none other than the famous Richard Klees flown in from the US by Microsoft. Here is a blurb from the event site:

We can feel and demonstrate confidence, professionalism and conviction when we are comfortable, feeling well, know our content inside and out, and the stakes for being successful are not so high that the pressure to do well isn’t so great. If we had a good night’s sleep and the audience is a manageable size made up of people we know and feel calm, we can do a good job.
But what happens when life is not going as well as we planned?

• We’re nervous
• We didn’t get a chance to prepare as thoroughly as we would have liked
• We must be successful because our boss is counting on us to do well
• We are jet-lagged or fighting a cold, and just don’t feel well-rested
• We are presenting to a larger audience than we are used to and they are complete strangers
• We feel pressure to do well and so we are constantly self-evaluating, even as we speak
• What’s at stake could mean the difference between moving ahead and staying in the same place
• WHAT DO YOU DO?

We would always like life to play fair, but it doesn’t. That’s where this seminar and “The Action Effect” come in. This seminar will show you how to be confident, compelling and persuasive under any circumstances, with any audience, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. That’s a big promise, but this seminar can deliver and you will see it before your eyes. Hope to see you there.
- Richard Klees

The event is September 29th here in Stockholm and is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to improve your presentation skills. Hope to see you there!

EVENT LINK HERE

Damned good coffee

Kahls coffee in Kista Gallerian serves damned good coffee. If you’re passing by, stop in for a good cup of java (mine’s empty since it’s so good)