Rix Bits

I had a great time this week talking with the Cincinnati Blacks in Technology group, sharing my tips, tricks, and thoughts about how cloud computing can be leveraged.

I tried to keep this talk focused on the lighter side of cloud computing, and didn’t go quite as technically deep as I’ve done in other cloud talks. But it seems like everyone enjoyed themselves and learned a lot. One listener even admitted to me later that I’d convinced him to give the Cloud a try. Victory. : )

Here’s my slide deck, or you can find it on slideshare:

In Part 3 of our series, consider this: we’re all used to presenting our PowerPoints in a room from our laptops, connected to a projector. But what if our audience is on the other side of town? Or the other side of the world? PowerPoint solves this with its Present Online feature, which lets other viewers watch your presentation live as you flip through out it. It’s the same kind of experience that in the past we relied on web conference tools like Webex and Lync to provide. Here’s what it looks like as I begin the process of presenting my SharePoint slide deck to an online audience (notice the word “free”):

Spike Lee is the acclaimed director of such films as Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, and Inside Man. To create these classics, I’m sure Spike used many different kinds of film editing technologies throughout the years. That being said, I’d still bet that PowerPoint is not one of the tools he ever thought about using.

But even though PowerPoint won’t necessarily give you the same cinematic skills to qualify your video as a Spike Lee Joint, we’ll see in Part 2 of our series that it does have the ability to do some pretty interesting things with videos that you might want to add to your presentation.

In the past, most people’s experience with Microsoft Office involved using it at their place of employment, because the price tag on the full suite of software was a bit hefty for personal home use. But the times, they are a-changing. : ) Microsoft has a handful of new options to help make Office available to home users. One of these is SkyDrive. That’s right, with your FREE SkyDrive account (which you get automatically when you sign up for a FREE Hotmail or Live email account), you’re now able to create, edit, view, and store Office documents in the browser for FREE (using what’s called Office Web Apps), including PowerPoint:

I’m sure you’ve heard of PowerPoint. It’s been around for decades, and it’s the de facto tool for creating a presentation. Whenever you sit in a meeting and someone stands up to give a prepared speech, you probably assume they’re going to use a PowerPoint presentation, and if they don’t you probably look at them funny. We’ve grown accustomed to learning things from others by watching a projector screen full of words fade in and out, and many times we’re even patient enough to allow the speaker to once again read the slides to us as if we’re not already Hooked On Phonics.

But there are a few things about the PowerPoint of today that you might not know about. Over the next few posts, I’ll talk about 5 PowerPoint factoids that may shock and amaze you. Specifically:

1. It’s free!
2. It’s a Spike Lee joint!
3. It likes it when you watch.
4. It’s the Wizard of Oz.
5. It’s mocking you.

Stay tuned for the upcoming posts where we’ll explore each of these topics! See ya soon!

Last month I represented Improving Enterprises (a Microsoft partner) as a speaker at the Microsoft Visual Studio Launch event in Columbus, OH. I spoke on the topic of what is commonly called DevOps. It could be described in one sense as the need within software development to maintain an effective relationship between the software-building phase of a project, and the push-to-production phase.

Clearly I’m a tablet PC fan. I appreciate the power of a PC in a tablet form.  I also appreciate the power of digital ink and true handwriting on my tablet. So I’m not easily impressed by all the Johnny-come-lately consumer tablets that are popular these days.

Right now I’m waiting to see how good the upcoming Surface RT Pro will be. Unlike the current Surface RT, it will contain a full version of Windows 8 Pro, as well as the inclusion of a pen for digital handwriting. In particular, I’m wondering if it’s worth upgrading from my HP Slate 500.

But I’m also wondering if anything will match the smooth performance of my Windows XP (yes, XP) Toshiba hybrid tablet from 2005. I still pull that out every now and then – not when I want to be mobile (it’s big & heavy) but when I want a large screen and good writing experience at my desk. The pen on that thing is flawless. If it wasn’t for it being so bulky, I’d still prefer the WinXP tablet over an iPad to this day.

I’ll let you know if the Windows Surface RT Pro seems powerful enough to become my new tablet. Let’s wait and see.