LANcom Technology Blog

Thinking about getting an iPad? MakeUseOf.com currently has a great article on their site covering free iPad applications that could be of use in a business sense.

Here’s a quick look at 3 applications we think you might want to check out.

1. Roambi – Roambi is a free application that can take data from multiple sources and turn it into interactive charts and graphs.
2. Dragon Dictation – Dragon Dictation is a voice recognition application which allows you to speak to your iPad and have your words converted into text. According to the Dragon Dictation page, it can be up to five times faster than typing on the keyboard.
3. Popplet lite – Popplet lite is a free brainstorming application that allows you to create great looking mind maps using text, drawings, and photos.

To read the MakeUseOf article mentioned above click here.

Do you have a PowerPoint presentation you would like to share with others online? Here’s 3 free ways you can go about it.

1. SlideShare – SlideShare is a website that allows you to upload and share your slideshow presentations in a number of ways. You can share your slideshow publically through the site, privately with a secret URL, or privately thought email invites. You can also embed SlideShare presentations within your website. To learn more about SlideShare click here.

    

2. Zentation – Zentation is an online tool which allows you to sync your PowerPoint slides with video, simulating the experience of being at a live presentation. With this tool your audience will be able to watch a video of you presenting while being able to easily see your slides at the same time. You can share your Zentation presentation by either giving out the link to it on the Zentation site, or by embedding the player within your own site. To find out more about Zentation click here.

    

3. PowerPoint 2010 – If you have PowerPoint 2010, you have the ability to broadcast a presentation live on the web. PowerPoint can provide you with a link which you can then send to those you would like to watch your presentation. Everyone who clicks on this link will be able to see your slide show in their browser as you move through your slides. To see a video of how the broadcast feature in PowerPoint 2010 works click here.

Exclaimer Signature Manager is software that allows you to manage all the Outlook email signatures across your organisation. With this software you can easily create a great looking email signature, and then enforce the design as a corporate standard across the company.

Over the last week we’ve been trialling Exclaimer Signature Manager at LANcom and have found it to be very useful. If you have received an email from LANcom lately you might have noticed our new signatures.

Here’s a quick overview of what you can do with Exclaimer Signature Manager.

1. Create your own email signature template, or use one from the Signature Manager gallery - Signature Manager has an extensive gallery of ready to use signatures if you don’t want to design one yourself.
2. Include information from your Active Directory - This means that Signature Manager can automatically insert each person’s information such as their name, job title, and phone number into the signature design.
3. Update all of your organisation’s signatures at any time from one place – Signature Manager gives you the ability to easily change everyone’s email signature at once. This means you can quickly update or tailor your signatures to promote certain products at different times.
4. Create and manage banner ad campaigns within your signature – With Signature Manager you can insert banner ads below your signatures to highlight your new products, specials, events etc.

Pricing for this software varies depending on your number of users, but you can trial it free for 30 days. If you would like to learn more about Exclaimer Signature Manager click here to visit the site.

Update: LANcom is now a registered reseller of this technology. If you are interested in Exclaimer Signature Manager for your organisation, please contact us at info@lancom.co.nz or on 09 3778282.

Want to keep up with what is happening at LANcom, offer us feedback, or just check out some LANcom photos and videos? You can now become a fan of LANcom on Facebook.

You can visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lancomtechnology.We’d really love to hear any comments you have.

Just updated to Office 2010 and looking for some tips? You can sign up to The LANcom Microsoft Office Secret and receive a new tip in your inbox every week.

The Office Secrets series is an email we send out every Friday containing one tip or ’secret’ explaining how to use a feature of an Office program. Previously these have been tips for Office 2003 and 2007, but starting this week we will include a 2010 secret as well.

If you would like to sign up to receive these weekly emails, or would just like to learn more about them click here.

If you ever try to send an email only to have it bounce because the attachment is too large, YouSendIt is a great way to quickly get around this. YouSendIt is an online tool which allows you to upload a file and then send an email with a link to that file, all from the homepage of their site.

How does it work?

All you need to do is enter your email address, enter your recipients address, select the file you want to send, enter a subject and message (optional), and click Send IT. YouSentIT will then securely store your file and email your recipient a download link.

The free version of YouSendIt allows you to send files up to 100MB and will store your files for 7 days, so the recipient has a chance to download it.

YouSendIt also has pro and business plans with additional features like storage of files up to 2GB, control of the expiration date of files, and tracking of when files have been downloaded and by whom. If you would like to learn more about YouSendIt or try it out yourself click here.

Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is a free data analysis add-in that allows you to manipulate and analyse large sets of data, from multiple sources, with ease. As a business intelligence application, PowerPivot integrates with many data sources to help you gain better business insights.

So what can you do with Microsoft PowerPivot?

1. Work with 100s of millions of rows of data – The PowerPivot add-in allows you to work with much more data than you could with just Excel.
2. Pull data from multiple sources and combine them – With PowerPivot you can import data from almost anywhere including relational databases, multidimensional sources, cloud services, data feeds, Excel files, text files, and the web.
3. Create relationships between the imported data and analyse it using familiar Excel tools – PowerPivot allows you to easily create relationships and analyse all your data using the tools you already know like PivotTables, PivotCharts, and slicers.
4. Use new DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) Formulas– The new DAX formulas in PowerPivot are specifically optimized for business intelligence use.
5. Publish to SharePoint – If you use SharePoint 2010 you can publish your analysis so others in your organisation can see it and to continue to slice and dice the data.

Here at LANcom we use PowerPivot to analyse data pulled from our professional services automation system and our IT monitoring software, and we have found it to be very useful.

For the best results when using PowerPivot you will need the 64-bit version of Excel 2010, but it is still possible to use it with the 32-bit version. If you would like to learn more about PowerPivot click here to visit the website.

Want to edit an image for free but need more functionality than what’s available in Microsoft Paint? There are actually a number of great programs you can download for free. Here are 3 that I have found useful.

GIMP – GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and is a free alternative to Photoshop. If you’re looking for a program with a lot of features then this is the one for you. The only downside is that it can take a while to learn how to use it. To visit the GIMP download page for Windows click here, for Mac click here.

Paint.net – Paint.net is like a more advanced vision of Microsoft Paint. It’s powerful, with many of the features you find in software like Photoshop, yet is simple enough to be easy to use. Paint.net also has a great online community, which makes learning how to use it and asking questions much easier. To learn more about the features of Paint.net click here. To visit the download page click here.

Photoscape – If you’re looking for a tool that will let you do all the really fun stuff easily then Photoscape is the tool for you. As the name suggests, Photoscape is designed for working with photos and it has a huge number of effects you can apply to them. To check out Photoscape and see all the interesting things you can do with your photos click here.

Like to learn about other free image editing tools? Click here to read a MakeUseOf article.

Ever get annoyed by how awkward it is to change batteries in devices that require them to be put in a specific way round? Soon you might not have to worry about which way round you load your batteries . Microsoft has just announced a new battery contact technology called InstaLoad, which allows batteries to be put into a device without worrying about positive and negative polarity.

This technology works for both rechargeable and disposable AA, AAA, C, and D batteries. It doesn’t matter whether you are using multiple batteries or just one, you will still be able to put them in any way and they’ll work.

InstaLoad battery contacts will be particularly useful for devices that require regular battery changes or battery changes at inconvenient times/places. The diagram on the left shows how batteries could be placed any way inside a wireless mouse.

If you’d like to learn more about InstaLoad technology from the Microsoft website click here.

Hat tip to geekzone for the idea for this post