Micropodcast

Friday, October 26, 2007

Daylight Savings Time - Is Your Computer Ready?




MicroPodCast – Podcasts for Microsoft Office Accounting Users. Useful bookkeeping, software, and business tips for MS Office Accounting users, consultants, and business owners.

Hello and welcome to another in our series of MicroPodCasts. I’m Jayne Miller, your MicroPodCast host. Today I’d like to remind you that the new Daylight Savings Time takes effect next week...November 4th. Are you ready?

Your computer may not be affected by this change, but if you are not sure or want to read about the changes or need support, you can visit Microsoft's Daylight Savings Time Support Center for information and assistance. Just go to http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst. I've put a link on the blog at micropodcast.custmbiz.com and on my website at www.quickbooksgal.com.

I'll be back again soon with more in my series of MicroPodCasts. If you have questions or comments, drop me a line at jayne@quickbooksgal.com. You can find this and my other podcasts about QuickBooks and Peachtree at blog.quickbooksgal.com.

That’s it for now. Look for discussions on the new Microsoft Office Accounting and Point of Sale software in future MicroPodCasts. I appreciate your time and hope you will tune in again.

I’m Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal and your MicroPodCast host…..thanks for listening.


Jayne Miller is the owner of Custom Business Solutions, a firm in Reno Nevada that specializes in bookkeeping, payroll and small business accounting software support.
"Got A QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!"

©2007 Custom Business Solutions, Reno, NV

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Microsoft OneNote 2007




MicroPodCast – Podcasts for Microsoft Office Accounting Users. Useful bookkeeping, software, and business tips for MS Office Accounting users, consultants, and business owners.

Hello and welcome to another in our series of MicroPodCasts. I’m Jayne Miller, your MicroPodCast host. Today I’d like to talk about Microsoft’s One Note 2007. I have been using MS Office 2007 for some time and I love it! Now, there's a new feature built right into the Office Suite called OneNote. My office has been using for several months....it's great!

OneNote is a wonderful tool for small business - a digital notebook for organizing notes, information, audio clips, video, graphics, and so much more. Office OneNote can help you become more productive by keeping the information you need at your fingertips and reducing time spent searching for information across e-mail messages, paper notebooks, file folders, and printouts.

Microsoft has posted a
list of the top 10 benefits of OneNote on their website that I think are worth repeating here. With Microsoft’s New One Note 2007, you can:

1. Gather your notes and information in one place.

Gather, store, and manage your notes and information — including text, pictures, digital handwriting, audio and video recordings, and more — in a single location. Having all your important information at your fingertips can help you make more informed decisions and be better prepared.

2. Back up your valuable information.

Office OneNote 2007 automatically saves and backs up your notebooks, whether stored locally or on a network file share, so you’re less vulnerable to data loss.

3. Find information more quickly.

Powerful search technology with optical character recognition helps you find what you’re looking for more quickly — whether you’re searching handwritten notes, text in pictures, or spoken words in audio and video recordings.

4. Work together more effectively.

Shared notebooks give everyone access to the same information at the same time, online or offline. Office OneNote 2007 manages changes for you so that multiple users can work simultaneously in the same notebook—there’s no need to keep track of versions and changes.

5. Avoid duplicate work.

Office OneNote 2007 makes it easy to collect, store, and search information about projects in a central location. Capitalize on ideas, notes, and best practices when briefing new project teams or team members. Take advantage of OneNote archives to avoid duplicate work.

6. Organize your way.

Organize information in the way that works best for you. See all your open notebooks in a single view, and easily arrange and rearrange your notes with drag-and-drop functionality. You can add hyperlinks to other pages in your notebook so you can quickly find content relevant to the task at hand.

7. Prioritize and manage tasks and your to-do list more efficiently.

Use note tags to mark and easily track actions and important items. Note tags can be customized according to your needs and quickly viewed in a summary pane. Tasks created in Office OneNote 2007 synchronize with Microsoft Office Outlook tasks so you can manage your projects more efficiently.

8. Make meetings more productive.
Office OneNote 2007 gives you the flexibility to capture all of the information presented in meetings, including status updates, presentations, documents, typed and handwritten notes, and more. With all meeting notes stored in one location, everyone has access to the same information, helping ensure that all team members are on the same page and that everyone walks away with a consistent set of action items.

9. Get up to speed quickly.

The familiar look and feel of other Microsoft Office system programs and an intuitive user interface make it easy to get started using Office OneNote 2007 right away. Integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system means you can share information between Office OneNote 2007 and other Microsoft Office system programs easily.

10. Improve productivity away from the office.

Synchronize your Microsoft Windows Mobile–powered devices with Office OneNote 2007 so you can take contents of your notebook with you and view them on your mobile device. In addition, information you capture on your Smartphone or Windows Mobile–based Pocket PC, including photos and text, can be transferred to Office OneNote 2007 and made text-searchable.

This is a great program that you can use as a stand alone or from within your new Office 2007 software. You can go to blog.quickbooksgal.com for a transcript of this podcast and a link to Microsoft’s One Note page.

I hope this gets you excited about this cool product. If you have questions or comments, drop me a line at jayne@quickbooksgal.com. You can find this and my other podcasts about QuickBooks and Peachtree at blog.quickbooksgal.com.

That’s it for now. Look for discussions on the new Microsoft Office Accounting and Point of Sale software in future MicroPodCasts. I appreciate your time and hope you will tune in again.

I’m Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal and your MicroPodCast host…..thanks for listening.

Jayne Miller is the owner of Custom Business Solutions, a firm in Reno Nevada that specializes in bookkeeping, payroll and small business accounting software support. "Got A QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!"

©2007 Custom Business Solutions, Reno, NV

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Sunday, October 7, 2007

I Hate My Website!




MicroPodCast – Podcasts for Microsoft Office Accounting Users. Useful bookkeeping, software, and business tips for MS Office Accounting users, consultants, and business owners.

I recently received a wonderful guide from Microsoft called "I Hate My Website". It's a great document full of tips, tricks and links to resources that are great for those of us who have a web presence.

Today, I would like to discuss some Do's and Don’ts excerpted from this guide. In addition, I will put a link to this guide on my blog at blog.quickbooksgal.com.

Microsoft's Do's:

1 - Make your site easy to navigate.
2 - Create a consistent look & feel throughout your site by using similar fonts, colors, & layouts.
3 - Make sure your website works on more than one browser; for example Internet Explorer and Firefox (Mozilla, Netscape).
4 - Put the most important information near the top of the page so users don't have to scroll down to find it.
5 - Use headlines, icons, bullets, boldface words & color to draw attention to important information or content.
6 - Include your phone number on every page.
7 - Use high-quality graphics and photos, including your logo. Make sure the images are crisp and don't take too long to load.

Microsoft Don'ts:

1 - Use text and color combinations that are too busy or include distracting visuals that make the site hard to read.
2 - Let the content, especially the links on your website, become outdated.
3 - Include graphics or other design elements that slow down site performance.
4 - Put too much clutter on any one page.
5 - Put too much personalization on the homepage.
6 - Be too flashy.
7 - Create option overload.
8 - Neglect to fill security gaps.
9 - Include obtrusive advertising.
10 - Use Jargon.
11 - Forget to keep it real.
12 - Chatter too much.

Don't forget, you can listen to our podcasts about Peachtree and QuickBooks....just go to blog.quickbooksgal.com.


I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal and your MicroPodCast host...thanks for listening!

Jayne Miller is the owner of Custom Business Solutions, a firm in Reno Nevada that specializes in bookkeeping, payroll and small business accounting software support. "Got A QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!"

©2007 Custom Business Solutions

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