text:
November 27, 2010
Winners and losers: Simply Bedlam
Steve Megargee
Rivals.com College Football Staff Writer
The pregame buzz surrounding Saturday's Big 12 South showdown between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State focused on Biletnikoff Award finalists Justin Blackmon and Ryan Broyles. Naturally, two lesser-known pass-catching targets ended up winning the game - and likely the Big 12 South title - for Oklahoma.
Senior wide receiver Cameron Kenney and junior tight end James Hanna each caught long touchdown passes just 29 seconds apart in the final 3 1/2 minutes of Oklahoma's wild 47-41 victory over Oklahoma State. The big plays by Kenney and Hanna highlighted a fourth quarter in which the teams combined for 41 points.
Bob Stoops told reporters. "And let's face it, James has had a really good year. He catches the ball, and you saw what great speed he has to get behind everybody."
Oklahoma's victory moved the Sooners (10-2 overall, 6-2 in the Big 12) into a three-way tie with Oklahoma State (10-2, 6-2) and Texas A&M (9-3, 6-2) for first place in the Big 12 South. The highest-ranked team in Sunday's BCS standings will face Nebraska in next Saturday's Big 12 championship game in Arlington, Texas. Oklahoma State was ninth, Oklahoma 13th and Texas A&M 17th in last week's BCS standings, but Oklahoma's victory Saturday should move the Sooners in front of the Cowboys.
The Sooners passed their way to a championship. Sophomore quarterback Landry Jones tied a school record with 468 yards and was at his best when it mattered most. Oklahoma led 33-31 and faced third-and-12 from its 14 line with less than four minutes left when Jones threw deep across the middle to Kenney. He caught the pass at his 32, raced toward the left sideline and outran the entire Oklahoma State defense into the end zone for an 86-yard touchdown.
The Cowboys answered with an 89-yard kickoff return by Justin Gilbert that cut Oklahoma's lead to 40-38, but Jones wasn't finished. On a second-and-6 play, Jones connected with Hanna for a 76-yard touchdown that again seemed to put the game out of reach.
Oklahoma State again answered, this time with a 34-yard Dan Bailey filed goal that made it 47-41. When Oklahoma recovered the ensuing onside kick, the Sooners finally could breathe a sigh of relief.
"I thought [offensive coordinator] Kevin [Wilson] did a great job," Stoops said. "They were expecting us to run and try to eat up clock, and we were in our power formation. Instead of blocking down and running it, those guys pop out and James has great speed to get past people. Cameron did an excellent job of just crossing the middle and outrunning everybody. And Landry put the ball right on him. Otherwise, that's not a touchdown. Good execution on the players' part."
Kenney finished the night with six catches for 141 yards and two touchdowns, while Hanna had four receptions for 130 yards and one score. They nearly doubled their combined season totals in receiving yardage; Kenney entered the game with only 14 catches for 184 yards and Hanna had 10 receptions for 121 yards.
Although Kenney and Hanna stole the spotlight, Broyles and Blackmon also delivered outstanding performances. Broyles caught nine passes for 82 yards and a touchdown, and he also sealed Oklahoma's victory by recovering the last-minute onside kick. Blackmon had eight receptions for 105 yards and a touchdown while playing at less than full strength.
The fourth-quarter fireworks shouldn't have caught anyone by surprise. Oklahoma State entered the game ranked first in the nation in total offense and third in scoring, while Oklahoma was 13th in total offense and 16th in scoring. Both teams also have mediocre defenses.
Oklahoma managed to win a shootout Saturday, but the Sooners likely won't have quite as much success throwing the ball next week against Nebraska's outstanding secondary. Oklahoma won't earn a trip to the Fiesta Bowl unless it plays better defense next week.
Here's a recap of some of the other winners and losers from Saturday's action.
Florida State: The Seminoles hit the daily-double. They trounced Florida 31-7 to end their six-game losing streak in the rivalry, and they also won the ACC Atlantic Division title when Maryland knocked off North Carolina State 38-31. Florida State's 31-7 triumph was its most one-sided victory over Florida since 1988. "We're becoming a factor again in this league and a factor again in this state," Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said afterward. "That makes us relevant." Florida State faces Virginia Tech in the ACC championship game next Saturday in Charlotte, N.C.
TCU: The Horned Frogs remain firmly in the national championship hunt. TCU lost QB Andy Dalton to an injury in the second quarter and committed two turnovers that resulted in New Mexico touchdowns, yet the Horned Frogs still breezed to a 66-17 rout. TCU (12-0) should be ranked third in the next BCS standings and likely would play for the national title if either Oregon or Auburn loses next week. Even if Oregon and Auburn win to keep TCU out of the title game, the Rose Bowl would be a rather nice consolation prize.
Wisconsin's offense: The nation's hottest offense was in peak form Saturday in a 70-23 victory over Northwestern that helped the Badgers clinch a share of the Big Ten title; it was the Badgers' third 70-point outing of the season. Wisconsin has scored at least 31 points in seven consecutive games and has averaged 67 points in its past three contests. Wisconsin will find itself in the Rose Bowl if it remains ahead of Ohio State and Michigan State when the BCS standings are released Sunday.
Ohio State's defense: Ohio State entered the weekend ranked third in total defense, while Michigan was fifth in total offense. Even matchup, right? Not exactly. Ohio State allowed just one touchdown all day while beating Michigan 37-7 for its seventh consecutive victory in the rivalry. The Buckeyes admittedly benefited from a hand injury that sidelined Michigan QB Denard Robinson for much of the game, but they played quality defense even when Robinson was on the field. Wisconsin likely will end up in the Rose Bowl ahead of Ohio State, but the Buckeyes' 11-1 record should be good enough to earn them some kind of BCS invitation.
Michigan State: The Spartans probably won't get to the Rose Bowl; they likely won't get any BCS bid at all. But they still have plenty of reason to celebrate. Michigan State wrapped up an 11-1 season and clinched a share of the Big Ten title for the first time since 1990 with a 28-22 victory at Penn State. "We're Big Ten champions," Michigan State QB Kirk Cousins told reporters afterward. "No one can ever take it away from us. It's going on the wall at Spartan Stadium." This also marked the first time Michigan State had won in Happy Valley since 1965, the year before Joe Paterno began his head-coaching tenure.
Connecticut RB Jordan Todman: Even though he missed much of the first half with an injured right arm, Todman still rushed for 175 yards and three touchdowns in a 38-17 victory over Cincinnati that put Connecticut one win away from a BCS bid. Connecticut can clinch its first BCS appearance by winning at USF next week.
Maryland QB Danny O'Brien and WR Torrey Smith: O'Brien and Smith connected on four touchdown passes in Maryland's victory over North Carolina State. O'Brien threw for 417 yards, the most by a Maryland quarterback since 1993. Smith had 14 receptions for 224 yards and became the first Maryland player to catch four touchdown passes in a game.
Kansas State RB Daniel Thomas and North Texas RB Lance Dunbar: These players combined for an astounding 539 rushing yards in Kansas State's 49-41 victory. Thomas, a senior, rushed for a career-high 269 yards and two touchdowns, while Dunbar ran for 270 yards and three touchdowns.
Virginia Tech: The Hokies trounced Virginia 37-7 for their 10th consecutive victory, making them the only FBS team with at least 10 wins in each of the past seven seasons. Texas had won at least 10 games every year from 2001-09, but the Longhorns' streak ended this season.
Boston College RB Andre Williams: Boston College's rushing attack figured to struggle against Syracuse because the Eagles were without star RB Montel Harris, who had arthroscopic knee surgery Monday. But Williams delivered an outstanding Harris impression Saturday by rushing for 185 yards on a school-record 42 carries as the Eagles beat Syracuse 16-7 for their fifth consecutive victory.
Indiana K Mitch Ewald: He made two clutch kicks to help Indiana end its 12-game Big Ten losing streak with a 34-31 overtime victory over Purdue. Ewald connected on 26-yard field goal with nine seconds left in regulation, then added a 31-yarder in overtime to give Indiana its first win at Purdue since 1996. Yes, both field goals were short. But anyone who watched Friday night's Nevada - Boise State game knows that short kicks come with no guarantees.
Utah CB Brandon Burton: He blocked Mitch Payne's 43-yard field-goal attempt as time expired to preserve Utah's 17-16 victory over BYU, the last "Holy War" with the teams as conference rivals.
Tennessee's resolve: After a four-game losing streak dropped its record to 2-6, Tennessee responded with four consecutive victories to become bowl-eligible. The Vols continued their streak with a 24-14 victory over Kentucky as Tyler Bray threw for 354 yards and two touchdowns. It was the Vols' 26th consecutive victory over the Wildcats.
Washington's gamble: Washington trailed 13-10 and faced fourth-and-goal from California's 1 in the closing seconds. Rather than settling for a chip-shot field goal to force overtime, the Huskies decided to win or lose in regulation. The gamble paid off when Chris Polk ran into the end zone to give the Huskies a 16-13 win that preserved their bowl hopes. Washington (5-6) can become bowl-eligible by winning at Washington State next week.
USF QB Bobby Eveld: Eveld, a true freshman walk-on, replaced an injured B.J. Daniels in the second half and rallied the Bulls to a 23-20 overtime victory at Miami. Eveld didn't have remarkable statistics - he went 8-of-15 for 120 yards and no touchdown passes - but he avoided mistakes and scored the tying touchdown on a 1-yard run with two minutes left in regulation.
Arkansas QB Ryan Mallett: He threw for 320 yards and three touchdowns and broke the school record for career touchdown passes in a 31-23 victory over LSU that moved Arkansas closer to a BCS bid. Mallett has thrown 60 touchdown passes, breaking the record of 57 formerly held by Clint Stoerner, who played at Arkansas from 1996-99. Arkansas likely will earn a Sugar Bowl invitation if Auburn beats South Carolina in next week's SEC championship game.
South Carolina: Can this season get any better for the SEC East champions? South Carolina's 29-7 victory at Clemson gave the Gamecocks consecutive wins over their in-state rival for the first time since 1969-70.
Stanford QB Andrew Luck: His four-touchdown performance in a 38-0 shutout of Oregon State allowed Luck to set the school single-season record for touchdown passes. Luck has thrown 28, breaking the record of 27 formerly held by John Elway and Steve Stenstrom.
Hawaii RB Alex Green: He rushed for 327 yards in a 59-24 rout of New Mexico State to break his school's 60-year-old single-game rushing record. Green also scored three touchdowns.
Notre Dame RB Robert Hughes: Hughes, a senior, has endured an up-and-down career, but he made his final regular-season game one to remember. Hughes' 5-yard touchdown run with 2:23 remaining gave Notre Dame a 20-16 victory over USC, which ended the Irish's eight-game losing streak in this rivalry. Notre Dame needed a physical rushing attack to take the pressure off freshman QB Tommy Rees, who committed four turnovers while playing in a driving rain. Hughes delivered by running four times for 36 yards on the winning touchdown drive.
The job security of Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez: Yes, Michigan finally became bowl-eligible in the third season of his tenure, but Rodriguez hasn't gotten the Wolverines to play solid defense and hasn't made them competitive against Ohio State. If Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh has any interest in returning to his alma mater, expect the Wolverines to make a change.
Miami coach Randy Shannon's job status: Shannon has cleaned up the program off the field, but that might not be enough for him to keep his job. Miami lost to both Florida State and USF at home this season. Fans are staying away in droves. Miami's 7-5 finish includes a 3-3 mark at home, the Hurricanes' worst home record since 1997. Shannon also isn't getting much help from his players. Miami had driven into position for a game-winning field goal before Jacory Harris threw an interception with five seconds left in regulation against USF. Miami has committed nine turnovers the past two weeks.
California: The Golden Bears' last-second loss to Washington dropped their record to 5-7 and ended their streak of seven consecutive bowl bids. Cal ended the season on a three-game losing streak.
Iowa: Another week, another close loss for the Hawkeyes. Iowa's 27-24 setback at Minnesota marked the third consecutive game in which the Hawkeyes lost by four or fewer points. Iowa's five losses have been decided by a total of 18 points.
North Carolina State's lack of a killer instinct: All that stood between North Carolina State and the ACC Atlantic Division title was a Maryland team that had no apparent incentive, since the Terps already had been knocked out of title contention. When the Wolfpack scored the game's first 14 points, their spot in the ACC championship game seemed inevitable. But instead of extending their lead, the Wolfpack gave up 24 consecutive points and never quite recovered.
Florida's fake punt: Florida State led Florida 10-7 early in the second quarter when Meyer called for a fake punt on fourth-and-5 from his 36. Florida P Chas Henry was brought down a yard short of the first-down marker. Ponder threw a 39-yard touchdown pass to Rodney Smith on the next play, and the Gators never seriously threatened again. Florida had been 8-of-8 on fake punts in Meyer's tenure.
Kansas' offense: The Jayhawks capped a 3-9 season with a 35-7 loss to Missouri, continuing their season-long inability to put points on the board. Kansas exceeded the 16-point mark just once in its final eight games and was held to seven or fewer points in four of those contests. The lone exception during that eight-game stretch was a 52-45 victory over Colorado, a shootout that seems more improbable with each passing week.
Cincinnati: The two-time defending Big East champions won't go bowling at all this season. At least the Bearcats have company. Texas' 5-7 finish assures that two BCS teams from last season won't earn bowl bids.
Northwestern's defense: Northwestern figured to struggle after a season-ending injury to QB Dan Persa, but it's the defense that has killed the Wildcats since Persa went down. Northwestern has given up a total of 118 points during its two-game skid.
Vanderbilt: Maybe the Commodores were emotionally spent following Robbie Caldwell's Saturday morning announcement that he was stepping down as coach. Whatever the reason, Vanderbilt certainly didn't send Caldwell out on a positive note. The Commodores closed the season by falling 34-13 to Wake Forest, which had lost nine in a row by an average margin of 24.9 points.
Clemson's offense: This offense simply hasn't been the same since QB Kyle Parker bruised his ribs in a 27-24 overtime loss to Auburn in mid-September. Clemson's 29-7 loss to South Carolina marked the fourth time in the past five games that the Tigers have failed to exceed 14 points. Clemson went 2-3 during the stretch and finished the regular season with a disappointing 6-6 record.
The hands of USC's receivers: USC's Brandon Carswell and Ronald Johnson each dropped passes in the Trojans' final possession of the loss to Notre Dame. Johnson almost assuredly would have scored a go-ahead touchdown if he had hung on to the ball. USC still drove inside Notre Dame's 25 before Harrison Smith made a game-clinching interception at the 1.
Kickers in the clutch: Boise State's Kyle Brotzman received plenty of criticism after missing two short field goals that cost the Broncos on Friday in an overtime loss to Nevada, but he wasn't the only kicker to struggle this week. BYU's Mitch Payne had a potential game-winning field goal blocked in the final play of a 17-16 loss to Utah, and Georgia Tech's Scott Blair missed an extra point that would have tied the score with less than five minutes remaining in its 42-34 setback at Georgia.
Steve Megargee is a national writer for Rivals.com. He can be reached at email@example.com.
Talk about it in the collegefootball Message Boards
College Football News
Rivals 2011 All-America Team
Forde: In tight Heisman race, stats matter
Rivals.com 2011 college football coaching carousel
Rematch: LSU to face Tide for title
Rivals.com is your source for: College Football | Football Recruiting | College Basketball | Basketball Recruiting | College Baseball | High School | College Merchandise
Site-specific editorial/photos �2012 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. This website is an officially and independently operated source of news and information not affiliated with any school or team.
About | Advertise with Us | Contact | Privacy Policy | About our Ads | Terms of Service | Copyright/IP policy | Yahoo! Sports - NBC Sports Network
Statistical information �2007 STATS LLC All Rights Reserved.


text:
Has anyone been able to get Sala's Password renew to work in WinPE 2.0? I am able to get it to open, but when I browse for the partition with windows on it, the browse window is just blank. Any ideas?
I am also trying to get Locksmith from ERD 2005 to work. I used ERDRoot to select the windows partition and then select the user I want to reset and then I get an error. I can't remember the error, but it doesn't change the users password.
Are there any free password reset tools that work in WinPE 2.0?
Welcome to MSFN ForumRegister now to gain access to all of our features. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to create topics, post replies to existing threads, give reputation to your fellow members, get your own private messenger, post status updates, manage your profile and so much more. This message will be removed once you have signed in.
Login to Account Create an Account
WinPE 2.0, Sala Password Renew & Locksmith
Started by marccrawford123 , Jun 06 2007 06:14 AM
Posted 06 June 2007 - 06:14 AM
Posted 06 June 2007 - 03:51 PM
I have used this one in WinPE 2.0
NTPWEdit version 0.2 FREEWARE
NTPWEdit version 0.2 FREEWARE
Edited by FredBeagle, 06 June 2007 - 03:51 PM.
Posted 09 February 2010 - 11:32 AM
there are several free password reset tools that do work.
0 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Author has written 1 story for Fantasy.
Hey, just another original writer... I couldn't think of anything for my pen name so I just used my nickname and first letter of my last name. My friend gave me this account after she didn't want it anymore. Some of my stories are darker but some of them are okay.


text:
Cottonwood road closure starts today
Pine Street near its intersection with Front Street at the railroad tracks in Cottonwood will be temporarily closed starting Monday at 7:30 a.m., Shasta County Public Works officials said.
A temporary controlled crossing over the tracks will be provided until the area is open again at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
For more information, call Shasta County Public Works at 530-225-5661.
Subscribe to the Redding Record Searchlight
Ready to subscribe to the Redding Record Searchlight? Choose between a Premium or Digital subscription below.
Need Help? Call us at 1-877-710-6185.
Monday-Friday: 6am-6pm / Saturday & Sunday: 7am-10am


text: i just bought an old red 4 hole turret press thats still in its original box. it has been used . it came with everything else you could need to reload. even a trickler. all the accessories are RCBS and still in their boxes. it came with a whole bunch of different caliber dies. and a 8 quart tumbler. $180 when i get a chance to look through all the dies etc. i will tell you guys more. i think i have done well on this one.:09:


text:
Happy Caturday!
by GiggleSugar
Like us on Facebook
Baby Milo's Jazz Paws skillz serve him well in this vid. (You can almost hear the swoosh of light-sabres in the background.) He's all a-blur trying to get that string. Get it, Milo, go get it!
POPSUGAR, the #1 independent media and technology company for women. Where more than 75 million women go for original, inspirational content that feeds their passions and interests.
Beauty 8 years
Yep, that's me in the video. I don't normally sound so fierce—that's my "kitty playtime" voice. Have to encourage healthy play, right?
katygirlthing 8 years
lol hes crazy!!!!!! and occassionally hes like "wtf, where did it go??"
urchin7980 8 years
I miss my cats as kittens, they are so playful at that age!!! That kitten sure is cute and feisty!!! :)
Jennifer_2sugar 8 years
My cat can do that too :oy: Just a question, if milo is bellasugar's cat then is that bellasugar in the vidio? :?
rubialala 8 years
:LOL: That is one fast cat!
bizzybee 8 years
Tee hee hee. My cat, Mookie, used to looooooove that kitty dancer toy. It provided hours of silly entertainment.


text:
Bloomfield Laser and Cosmetic Surgery Center
Call Now for a FREE Consultation – (248) 338-1110
Dr. Roche is one of Southeast Michigan's premier cosmetic surgeons offering the latest advancements in surgical and nonsurgical procedures in a relaxed environment. Preparing to look your best doesn't have to be an intimidating process. Dr. Roche's more than 36 years of experience combined with his knowledgeable staff make his cosmetic office the ideal place for cosmetic surgery and nonsurgical enhancement procedures.
Whether you're coming in for a lift, a tuck or just to smooth out a few too many laugh lines, surgery patients of Dr. Roche become friends and family. Quoted in plastic surgery studies across the country, Dr. Roche carefully explains the many cosmetic treatment procedures available to change the signs of premature aging or the shape and size of any body feature.
I still cannot believe how wonderful the Rhinoplasty and Blepharoplasty came out. Thank you for the great care and the superb surgery… I experienced no pain whatsoever.
It felt fantastic not to worry about a "five o'clock shadow" for the first time in my life. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.
Thanks from all the Laimbeer family for a job well done. I will definitely call on your services if ever I run into a stray "elbow."
Thank you so much for my beautiful nose! I am so pleased with the results and have had very favorable comments and reactions. You've changed my life!
You and everyone else are so awesome! I was nervous before I got there, but you and everyone else are a godsend.


text:
Effective Security in a BYOD Environment: Arming Your Organization Against the Unknown
There is good reason for IT to get involved in and maintain "bring your own device" (BYOD) procedures. These devices bring more than employee convenience — they promote agility and efficiency throughout your business. However, it's on IT's shoulders to form a pragmatic strategy to secure data from malware, theft and loss. Read the White Paper >>
Provided by: Dell Topic: Mobility Date Added: Aug 2013 Format: HTML


text:
Chris Pratley's Office Labs and OneNote BlogA blog about Office Labs and OneNote from behind the scenes.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/atom.aspxTelligent Evolution Platform Developer Build (Build: 5.6.50428.7875)2006-12-03T22:07:00ZOneNote Mac! Another note, another web clipping...http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2014/04/09/onenote-mac-another-note-another-web-clipping.aspx2014-04-09T18:10:00Z2014-04-09T18:10:00Z
This video speaks for itself. Kudos to the team.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote for Mac! OneNote is Free! We have a Service API!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2014/03/17/onenote-for-mac-onenote-is-free-we-have-a-service-api.aspx2014-03-18T02:26:00Z2014-03-18T02:26:00Z
Today was a great day - we released "a metric ton" of new stuff. You can read all the details on the team's official blog.

At last we were able to unveil the new OneNote for Mac release. This is something many people have asked for over the years, and the team and I are stoked to finally make it available to you all.

Second, and maybe an even bigger deal, we made OneNote free on all platforms. Now you can get OneNote (for free! not a trial version!) on Windows 7 & 8 "Desktop", Windows 8 "Metro", Windows Phone, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and we also have a version that runs in the browser. You can get all this stuff at www.onenote.com. There are a few extra goodies that come with a paid version, but I think you'll agree that the free version is a great deal. (and the paid version comes with all the rest of Office, for just $5.83/month at the annual rate, an extra 20GB of OneDrive storage, Skype minutes and more). That's a better deal than $5/mo for a single app....

Third, we released an API for our cloud service that lets developers connect to OneNote. We already have a number of partners - you can see them all here: http://www.onenote.com/apps. You can also use the API to mail notes to yourself at firstname.lastname@example.com, or get a "clipper" to add to your favorite browser that sends web pages to OneNote to help with web research. If you are a developer interested in connecting to OneNote, check our portal on http://dev.onenote.com/.

Fourth, we released a new mobile app of our own called Office Lens that lets you scan documents and whiteboards directly into OneNote. It's available for now on Windows Phone only. Check it out!

With the free 7GB of OneDrive cloud storage available to anyone, you can stay in sync across all your devices with your notes and To-Dos, invite your family and friends to shared notebooks, and generally bask in the feeling of being on top of it all...

Today we hit #1 trending topic on FaceBook, #1 in productivity in the Mac app store (ahead of even the OS X Maverick download), and more than 50K pages sent to OneNote through our API before we could even have our party!

Here is the team celebrating today - as you can see St. Patrick's Day is all about purple for the OneNote team!

I thought I'd share some of the coverage we are getting - pretty great stuff - and love the comments - so positive!

The Next Web: Microsoft launches free OneNote for Mac, freemium OneNote for Windows, and OneNote cloud API for apps

The Verge: Microsoft launches OneNote for Mac, brings new features to note-taking service

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows: It's Official: OneNote is Now Free for Everyone

ZDNet: Microsoft delivers free OneNote for Mac and Windows

SlashGear: OneNote for Mac launches with new Evernote-challenging tools

Engadget: Microsoft's OneNote goes completely free, launches for Macs

MacWorld: First look: Could Microsoft OneNote for Mac replace Evernote? (duh, of course it can - it was never displaced to begin with!)

GeekWire: Microsoft releases free OneNote for Mac, makes Windows version free, offers new cloud API

GottaBeMobile: Microsoft Brings OneNote to the Mac, Makes All Versions Free to Download

Lifehacker: OneNote Releases Mac Client, Web Clipper, IFTTT Support, and More

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote is 10http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2013/10/29/onenote-is-10.aspx2013-10-30T01:45:00Z2013-10-30T01:45:00Z
OneNote is turning 10 this month. We started with "OneNote 2003" and have made many releases since then, growing in leaps and bounds, along with our user base. If 2003 was its birth, its conception was back in Nov 2000, when Steven Sinofsky and I exchanged some email about creating a new app, a topic I covered in my second-ever blog entry. We called it Scribbler, and working on that team was one of the best experiences of my career. It isn't often that you get to work with smart, dedicated people all pulling together and aligned as a team, passionate about making a great product. And now, 13 years later, that still describes the OneNote team - it remains one of the tightest knit, most loyal engineering teams around. While people do come and go from the team, it has very low turnover and everyone who has ever been a part of OneNote feels a connection with it.

In my current role I have been managing the OneNote program management team once again for the last year, after a hiatus of 6 years. (I also manage the teams for Word and several new "secret" things we're working on). I am pumped to be back involved day-to-day with OneNote.

It's a terribly exciting time for OneNote. The team has spent many years improving the Windows desktop version of the product, polishing its personal and team note taking, information management and collaboration features (hello! real-time multi-user sharing that works!). Just in the last year we've stepped up our game to include big new releases on Windows8, iPhone, iPad, and Android. We also have the web app (on Skydrive) and of course we are built-in to Windows Phone 8, and you'll see more from us shortly.

We made three videos recently to highlight real people using OneNote, for real things! We found out about them via the intertubes (and Twitter) and their stories were so interesting that we contacted them and they generously agreed to show us all how they use OneNote. Check these out at http://onenote.com.

If you are interested in being organized, especially with your spouse, or collaborating effectively with your team, you should check out OneNote. You probably already own it, and it is free on mobile/slates. And it is about to get way more awesome, but I can't tell you more just right now. (wink!)

Go OneNote! (and don't forget my favorite feature, screen clipping: Windows-S, or Win-Shift-S on Windows8.1)

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote in schoolshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2013/04/12/onenote-in-schools.aspx2013-04-13T01:44:00Z2013-04-13T01:44:00Z
I came across a couple of very interesting videos from two different schools using OneNote in the classroom and with faculty. I thought you might enjoy. You really see the power of pen/ink, freeform writing surface, capturing images and media, and shared notes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW1NjHoRrAY&hd=1 This is from Whitfield School in St. Louis.

http://countryday.smugmug.com/Other/HANDBRAKE/10944710_tdfbDJ#!i=1790107080&k=kknrpnZ&lb=1&s=A. This one is from Cincinnati Country Day.

It is great to see these educators using OneNote in ways that we designed for, and taking it to new heights.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOnetastic - it's fantastic!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2012/03/15/onetastic-it-s-fantastic.aspx2012-03-15T16:58:24Z2012-03-15T16:58:24Z
I recently came across a nifty free add-in for OneNote 2010 called Onetastic that provides some capabilities OneNote users have wanted for a while: image rotate and crop, quick text styles, the ability to pin links to any part of your notes to the desktop, and importantly, gives you a "Favorites" list within OneNote itself so you can easily access your favorite note pages from a pick list.

Perhaps my favorite feature is OneCalendar, which builds a calendar view of your notebooks. You can easily see what notes have appeared recently, and browse by date in a familiar calendar view. OneNote already have view by date but OneCalendar really made the notes in my notebooks pop. It is especially useful for anyone using team shared notebooks, since you can see at a glance just how much others have been adding to the notebooks. Turns out - there's a lot I wasn't aware of!

Onetastic is made by Omer Atay a developer on the OneNote team in his spare time. What better assurance that it's safe and compatible with the product?

Onetastic requires OneNote 2010 (or a later version - wink wink), and requires OneNote to be on Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 or higher (I am running on Win8 Consumer Preview and it works fine)

Give it a spin. It's small, free, and useful. Hard to argue with that.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote Web App gains Ink displayhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2011/09/30/onenote-web-app-gains-ink-display.aspx2011-09-30T19:25:08Z2011-09-30T19:25:08Z
In case you missed it, the always updating Web Apps (available at http://office.live.com and embedded all over the web) got a refresh yesterday. You can read about it more here: Announcing new features you've requested.

One of the big ones for me was that the OneNote Web App can now display ink notes. So for those of you who use the stylus a lot, your notes are now visible for you to refer to on any device.

Also check out the OneNote App for iphone, now at v 1.2 with kinks worked out, and of course WIndowsPhone 7.5 (Mango) being rolled out now has improved Office app support including OneNote. Julian Kay has a nice overview with pictures.

Don't ask me about support for more platforms: Like Sgt. Shultz, "I know nothing!"

Chris

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxRibbon Hero 2: the game you can play at workhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2011/05/18/ribbon-hero-2-the-game-you-can-play-at-work.aspx2011-05-18T23:39:00Z2011-05-18T23:39:00Z
Ribbon Hero 2 has been out for about three weeks now. It is outpacing all our past projects in downloads by a wide margin. So far, I'd categorize the user feedback on "RH2" in the following way:

 Haven't tried it:	 that is the dumbest thing I can imagine

 Have tried it:	 this is cool, fun, clever, and I am getting value out of it

So, the verdict is clear: you should try it. Don't read about it and judge it. Download it, install it, and try it. If you have Office 2007 or 2010, try it at work - our data shows that most other people do. It is one of the few work-safe games imaginable - after all, you are improving your work skills through workplace training. If anyone asks why you're playing a game, tell them "you should play it too - I've already learned three new things that improve my productivity and help me go home sooner (ahem, I mean get more work done). Also I dare you to not get addicted to the lounge-y theme music."

In 2010 Office Labs released Ribbon Hero, a game that helped you get better at Office while you played it. Our major finding at that time: "that is not as dumb an idea as it sounds". In fact, people played it, liked it, and learned about Office making them more productive. Schools started using it. Some corporations deployed it. Training centers used it. Ribbon Hero has since become a poster child for the "gamification" movement, where fun is used to help learning. That's also called "serious gaming", although its catchier (and more fun!) to say "gamification".

The new version, RH2, is a complete overhaul, much more polished with a narrative and "bling", and updated to more than "sort of fun". We learned from our pals the experts in XBox and added "charming", "clever", "humourous", "self-deprecating", "tongue-in-cheek", and some other personality elements I am sure you'll enjoy. And it is a *lot* more fun. After all, helping people recover after Clippy has messed them up - how can that not be rewarding? We had some fun turning Clippy on himself:

Here's a sample of the feedback we've gotten from people who have tried RH2. You should believe them.

ovibarcelo: Microsoft Clippy is back! Ribbon Hero 2, the best @Office tutorial ever http://www.ribbonhero.com/

DirkSonguer: Ribbon Hero 2 is actually quite nice as a game itself (not only as a helper) -> http://bit.ly/msXJln #office #gaming

groovyPost: "Overall, Ribbon Hero 2 is hands-down the best training tool I've ever seen."

GeekWire: "Never let it be said that the people at Microsoft don't have a sense of humor."

istartedsomething: "I can't imagine a better way to incorporate learning for a productivity application"

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxSearch Commands for Office 2010: It's here!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2011/04/13/search-commands-for-office-2010-it-s-here.aspx2011-04-14T01:37:29Z2011-04-14T01:37:29Z
I know there are a lot of fans of our Search Commands 2007 prototype from Office Labs out there, and many of you have written to ask us to update it to work on Office 2010. Well, thanks to some volunteer work and a little burning of the midnight oil from a few Labsters, we now have the requested update.

Search Commands is used by many people to find that one command that you know exists but can't find. It's used by others to discover what capabilities exist - for example you might search on "math" in Word and be surprised to see the deep support for equation editing that Word 2010 supports natively. Still other people prefer to navigate the Office applications using search for anything other than the most basic commands. Use Win-Y to get the search box, type a few letters, then use the number key to jump directly to the command you want. It's a different experience than clicking with the mouse or remembering a lot of shortcuts, but quite a few people seem to like it.

BTW, it's this variety of usage that interests us in Labs - we release our prototypes to see how people like to work when given alternatives. So give Search Commands 2010 a try and leave feedback on the site for the people who worked on it...

Cheers!

Chris

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxThe Garagehttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2011/01/20/the-garage.aspx2011-01-20T17:41:54Z2011-01-20T17:41:54Z
It's not often these days I post twice in one week, but I just loved this post about The Garage @ Microsoft. This is a community that started up about 18 months ago as a grassroots effort, initiated by my team, Office Labs, but now is self-sustaining and run by the community itself. In the picture, I'm the one on the farthest left with the big cheesy smile. I think Quinn did a great job explaining what it is all about in the interview. The Garage is one of the reasons its so fun to work at Microsoft. People come together to work on their passion, and they have the support and resources they need to follow their ideas to fruition.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote Mobile now for iPhone!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2011/01/18/onenote-mobile-now-for-iphone.aspx2011-01-18T19:49:03Z2011-01-18T19:49:03Z
It's another great day for OneNote lovers. OneNote Mobile is available for the iPhone. It's been a top customer request for awhile, so it's great to finally have this out. You can read more about it on Takeshi Numoto's blog, and Mike Oldenburg's blog goes into more detail. And if you happen to be reading this on your iPhone, the link to OneNote Mobile in the app store is here.

The icing on the cake is that it is free for a limited time, so go get it now!

I am sure people will have lots of questiosn about this release, and want to know if there will be OneNote for iPad, Mac, Andorid, whatever. I won't be able to answer those questions, so please don't bother asking :) . If you have specific questions about OneNote Mobile for IPhone, you can ask Mike Oldenburg on his blog. I use a Windows Phone these days (which already has OneNote Mobile) so I am not the best guy to ask. As always though I am happy to chat with anyone who wants to leave a comment.

Yippee!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote Web App, cloud sync of notes, and Ribbon Hero for OneNotehttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2010/06/08/onenote-web-app-cloud-sync-of-notes-and-ribbon-hero-for-onenote.aspx2010-06-09T06:48:00Z2010-06-09T06:48:00Z
Three great things are newly available.

The first is that the web version of OneNote is now available to the public. Here's the official blog post. This is something I've been waiting a long time for, and it nicely solves a few problems:

When you want to use OneNote's multi-user collaboration capabilities with a friend who doesn't have OneNote, that's not an issue. Either or both of you can use the web app or the rich client, see each other's edits as they're made and generally get down to work with no hassle. Of course you can work with a large group of friends as well - you're not limited to two. Great for class projects, or virtual teams at work.

If you need to check your notes for a piece of info and don't have your PC handy, you can access all your notes (the ones stored in Skydrive) via a browser on a friend's PC or some phones (via the browser).

The second great thing is related, but may be subtle and lost in all the discussion of the web app. As great as the idea of a web app is, the full "rich client" version of OneNote 2010 is a far better experience for extended work. But one thing has been hard to make work for many people until now: keeping notes in sync across more than one PC. For example, I have notebooks I need to use on two work PCs (one laptop, one desktop), as well as my home PC. I also share a notebook with my wife and she has two PCs. Before Skydrive, keeping these notebooks up to date across all these machines needed a service such as Live Mesh or Live Sync. But these solutions don't work well if you modify files in two locations when not connected to the internet, and other glitches.

With Skydrive, you just place the notebooks on SkyDrive, open them from every machine, and you are done. You get the full feature set and ease of use of the "rich" OneNote application, plus offline access (work literally everywhere including airplanes and "the cabin"), plus automatic syncing of changes made by multiple users across machines, *without* any of the glitches that can arise when using a sync service. It just works. This is the same benefit users of OneNote inside organizations with file shares or SharePoint servers have always had, but now Skydrive provides the "anywhere" access.

Third, (and with this I get to tie together my old job and my new job), Office Labs has just released an update to the Ribbon Hero game which adds support for OneNote 2007 and 2010. So if you feel that Office (and especially OneNote!) must have a lot of capability that you don't have the time or inclination to discover and learn, try playing Ribbon Hero and have fun picking up some "wow-that's-so-useful-I-didn't-know-it-could-do-that" sort of tips - in just a few minutes. Note for 2010 beta users: Ribbon Hero works with the beta versions of Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2010, but with the final code coming on the market now and a free 2010 trial download available, we decided to make the new OneNote support work only with the final version of OneNote 2010. So ditch the beta and get the free trial!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxRibbon Hero: Gaming is Everywherehttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2010/02/02/ribbon-hero-gaming-is-everywhere.aspx2010-02-03T03:48:00Z2010-02-03T03:48:00Z
Years ago I remember playing the original Halo game and marveling at, among many marvels, how the game seamlessly taught me the controls as part of the storyline of the game. I had not owned or played console games before then since my old Atari days. The complicated controllers with multiple joysticks and buttons and seeming focus on button mashing over strategy hadn't excited me. Games for PC and consoles tended to come with complicated help cards that described all the button sequences you could perform and it just seemed a little overwhelming.

But here was this game that invited me to check out the function of my armored suit by having a lab tech take me through the paces. When I remarked on this experience the next day at work, several other folks from Office mentioned they had the same reaction.

Although Office doesn't offer joystick controls, its button count outweighs the Xbox controller significantly. We spent some time wondering how we could build that "in game" learning experience into our products, especially OneNote which I was working on at the time. These days many games - all the major ones at least it seems - use the approach of building teaching into the gameplay. Whether the teaching is part of the plot or not, players are eased into the game and do not need to learn all the options until later stages.

For us, this concept morphed a bit and became the OneNote Guide notebook for OneNote. The idea was that rather than rely on the help system which operated outside the product, people would be more open to looking at OneNote's capabilities in situ, and if the Guide encouraged them to try some features and see what happened we could make some progress educating users on some simple yet novel concepts we were introducing (e.g. the click anywhere to type editing surface, tags and tag searching). The guide tested very well with new users, especially as we refined it to make it look less like dry help and more like a fun interactive experience. But we did not build any actual gameplay into the Guide or OneNote.

The challenge of designing a product like Office is considerable. Each of the core applications has over a thousand "features". Each feature was added for a set of people who needed it. Each is used by some set of users. Collectively all are used by the user base of Office. Although each user only uses a certain fraction of the feature set, the collection of features each person uses is slightly different from the others, so that a randomly selected group of just a couple hundred users will collectively cover nearly all the functionality of the suite in their normal usage over time.

Even organized into activity-centric and contextual groups as with the Ribbon, it is a lot of functionality to expose and expect hundreds of millions of people to navigate. We hear all the time from people who say they are sure Office can do something, but don't know where it is, or wish that we would add some functionality the product already has, or simply say they don't have time to discover what the product can do. Although the Ribbon has been controversial with some users who were very proficient with the old UI, all these problems were more pronounced with the earlier menus and toolbars. That's in part because that interface was designed when the products were much less capable, so as commands were added it became unwieldy and impenetrable. You may be able to use the old system well for what you already know, but learning to use anything new (especially that it even existed) was very difficult.

Now it is 2010, and my team, Office Labs, has a released a new project called Ribbon Hero (and on FaceBook) which is using gaming to expose users to the capabilities of Office. Although I was initially doubtful that a game could be built on Office that was any fun, the Ribbon Hero team surprised me. From early builds I've been a fan. I was surprised that some seemingly simple gaming features drew me in and engaged me.

Since I used to lead the design team for Word, I enjoyed scoring easy points in all the areas I knew so well. But I also enjoyed the challenge of decoding exactly how the challenge authors created certain end results. And since I didn't work on Office 2010, I found a few capabilities especially around images that were new to me. Although I know them well in many ways I'm still just a user of PowerPoint and Excel, so for both of those I learned several useful capabilities (e.g. around slide show control, transitions and animation, and charting). Often I knew that certain features existed, but had never bothered to use them. After completing the challenges I felt familiar enough with them that I have used them since.

Although I learn quite a bit about Office as I play Ribbon Hero, to describe Ribbon Hero merely as "training" does it a disservice in my view. It is best described as a game, albeit one that as a side effect increases your awareness of Office capabilities. I found that I could play a couple of challenges in a few minutes of downtime, and then once I started, I had a hard time stopping. I wanted to maximize my score. When I learned something new about Office that only made me want to play more - what other hidden gems were in there? When the team added sound effects the desire to score more points intensified: I wanted to hear that cha-ching of points being added - so satisfying. When the team enabled score sharing I suddenly found I wanted to beat some people who were ahead of me. Some were barely ahead and I felt I could pass them quickly so I always felt I was making progress. Definitely a game.

As a casual game, Ribbon Hero appeals to more than one type (or "persona") of gamer. There are people who want to get credit for what they know. It's positive and affirming to score points doing something you know how to do. These people are motivated to get a high score so they can feel accomplished. Enjoy scoring 100% on a test? Ribbon Hero is for you.

Although Ribbon Hero does not yet have a strong competitive element, there are those who want to see how they stack up against others. Partly to see where they land, sometimes to do better than someone else. Then there are people who just like gaming and diversions - Ribbon Hero appeals as a set of challenges that people are measured on and they can improve at, hence it is a game (see a great analysis of what constitutes a game and Danc's comments on Ribbon Hero at Lost Garden)

When we released Ribbon Hero we weren't exactly sure what the reaction would be. From talking to folks internally at Microsoft we knew there would be initial skepticism from some (just say the phrase "a game based on Office"). We also knew that if people played it, that skepticism would change since just about everybody converted to some sort of fan (from grudging to enthusiastic) after trying it. We really had to get the game out into the wild to see what the full range and distribution of reactions would be. The game has been downloaded 25,000 times already, which is pretty exciting. We're collecting the feedback now. Early indications are people are pleasantly surprised that Ribbon Hero is entertaining, and they are even happier that they are discovering truly useful capabilities of Office they didn't know about.

Some sample tweets about Ribbon Hero (these reflect my own feelings):

I'm finding Microsoft Office 2010 funner to use with Ribbon Hero installed. Makes me get creative w/what I'm working on.

But i wanna play Ribbon Hero all day!! Memo to self, play ribbon hero all weekend.

Really enjoying Ribbon Hero - surprisingly addictive (and pretty useful too)

I don't want to overstate what Ribbon Hero is. It's our first game, and we're learning. What is available now is also only our first release. We have a number of improvements in the pipeline that should keep things interesting. This is only the beginning!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashx64-bit "Print to OneNote" solution now availablehttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2009/04/23/64-bit-print-to-onenote-solution-now-available.aspx2009-04-23T20:22:00Z2009-04-23T20:22:00Z
Good old David Rasmussen who is Group Program Manager of OneNote has built (in his "spare" time) a way to send printouts to OneNote 2007 directly on 64-bit Vista and Win7. It's a little clunkier than the built-in 32-bit only solution that comes with OneNote 2007, but if you use a 64-bit OS like I do you've wanted this for a long time.

David's project lives on codeplex, which is an open source location for projects that Microsoft employees work on. If you want to improve David's stuff, go right ahead. It's pretty impressive that a guy as busy as David had any time to do this at all, but the OneNote team has always felt the need to respond to customers and this has been a top request for awhile as 64-bit machines have really taken off since OneNote 2007 was released.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxI Heart OneNotehttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2009/03/10/i-heart-onenote.aspx2009-03-11T06:55:00Z2009-03-11T06:55:00Z
There's a new website called iheartonenote.com. It's a place to discuss OneNote with other people, share tips, notebooks, etc. So many people post emotional connection stories about OneNote that "heart" seems appropriate (FWIW, last time I checked a piece of software can't yet have your baby). That Marcus guy seems a little kooky though. I'd only trust a fictional host as far as I could throw him. Check out my profile there to see how old I really am (fictionally, of course).

Anyway, for my first post in the community I thought I'd share my top OneNote tips. Here's the post I put up:

Top fifteen OneNote tips

I tried to do ten but couldn't stop myself.

15. Send to OneNote printer driver. Print anything to OneNote from any app. PDF, Word, web pages, AutoCAD, whatever! (currently not now also on 64-bit Windows - bummer yippee!)

14. Email these notes button (Ctrl-Shift-E). Click the button in the toolbar, choose recipients, and my notes are distributed without any retyping or hassle. Even sends ink. (you need Outlook 2007 for this to work best)

13. Type a word, right click on it, click "Create Linked page", then click the link and presto you're on a new page with that title that is linked to from the first page. Great for things like "here is the recipe for Grandma's cookies". highlight "Grandma's cookies", right click, create linked page.

12. Type simple math (like "12*29.99= ") on the page, hit Enter (or space bar) and OneNote solves it!

11. Right click on anything (notebook, section, page, piece of text or image on page), and choose "copy hyperlink to this". Paste that in OneNote or in other documents. You can even hyperlink to other places on the same page. I often type "see note above" right click on the referenced note elsewhere on the page, copy hyperlink then put cursor on the word "above", then Ctrl-K, Ctrl-V, Enter to add that link.

10. Ctrl "." (period) to toggle bullets on and off. Tab to indent.

9. Ctrl-1 to triple-toggle ToDo checkbox (Todo|Done|nuthin). Customize the built-in tags and use Ctrl-1-9 to tag things, Ctrl-0 to remove tags. Don't forget View/All tagged notes to query across all your notes and build summary pages pulling out quotes you liked, questions to follow up on, ToDos, etc.

8. Right-click on image (e.g. screen clipping), copy text from picture (also works great when searching for a screen clipping - Find (Ctrl-F) will find text inside your images!)

7. Using Live Mesh (mesh.com) to put notebooks in folders that are synced across my many machines

6. Win-N for a new "always on top" side note. Great for taking notes while reading other stuff like web pages, docs, PDFs.

5. Shared notebooks with my team (File/New/Notebook, select shared when the instructions ask you). anyone can edit at any time, even offline! Don't forget to use features like 'View/Pages I Haven't Read' and 'View/Pages Changed Recently'. Also right click on anything to see who added it. Work disconnected if you like - your changes will sync and merge cleanly later. Offline/online, easy to use super capable group wiki!

4. Tab key after text to create tables on the fly. Type the first column heading, then Tab (Table magically appears!), next column heading, Tab and so on. Enter when finished the header row, keep going. Use Enter twice on an empty row to break out - never touch a mouse while taking notes!

3. I'm falling behind with my notes! Click "record audio" button to capture what people are saying so I can participate instead of take notes. Take the occasional one word note to indicate what was happening. Later click on those words to hear what we were saying. Great for brainstorming and interviews!

2. Flag OneNote items as Tasks to track in Outlook with Ctrl-Shift-1 through 5. The task is created in Outlook, and the done/not done status is kept in sync with OneNote.

1. Win-S to take a screen clipping and auto-file it in OneNote! Bonus: right click on the system tray OneNote icon, customize screen clipping to send only to clipboard to paste in other apps or OneNote as you like. (my all-time fave)

Ok one more for bonus: Full Page view. F11 to toggle, or the button to the right of the Help menu. Nice clean screen for uncluttered note taking and maximum "paper".

What are yours? (feel free to respond on the iheartonenote site...)

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxTransitioning to Office Labshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2008/05/31/transitioning-to-office-labs.aspx2008-06-01T09:26:00Z2008-06-01T09:26:00Z
It's been about a month since we went live with officelabs.com. Of course as a team we've been operating a little over a year, but only now do I get to talk about that period. I thought I might fill you all in on my transition from OneNote to Office Labs.

As Office 2007 was wrapping up, my second son Skye was born. (I'm sitting next to him on a plane to Toronto as I write this). I took my paternity leave and when I came back in the fall of 2006 Office 2007 was just wrapping up. I went to work for Jeff Raikes, the president of the Business Division at the time. He had asked me earlier to come do a job for him whenever I was able to move on from Office2007.

Jeff had a two-part mission for me that was simple to say and hard to do. Basically he said, "help the division try more ideas", and "explain to the world and the company what our long term vision is for productivity". Right, roll up those sleeves and start knitting Petunia!

For background, the business division covers several product lines: Office System (which includes the Office applications, SharePoint server and a lot of other components and servers), Office Live - the productivity service, Unified Communications (UC) which includes Exchange, Live Meeting and Office Communicator (enterprise IM), and Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), which provides "software to run businesses" such as ERP, CRM and several other three letter acronyms . Basically the business division as a whole is focused on "productivity" - helping people get stuff done - whether it be at home, school, or work.

I worked in the Office group for 12 years, first a little on Excel, then a lot on Word, all of OneNote, and a little on Publisher. I was quite familiar with the Office team's processes for developing software which are in my opinion first-rate. Relative to just about any software project in the world, the scale of a release of Office is huge, the quality that comes out is excellent and always improving, and it gets done more or less on time which is a semi-miracle in software development. But that doesn't mean Office and its processes can't improve - in fact the Office team is first to criticize themselves and work on ways to do better.

The other parts of our division have their own styles and personalities. Office Live is fairly fast moving, Unified Communications is always up for a new idea, and MBS is consolidating and growing its scope at the same time. Jeff had asked me to help the division "try more ideas". Ok, where to start?

One thing that was clear was the different viewpoints on "innovation". Some people in the company felt that we didn't explore new ideas and technology well or fast enough. Others felt we had no problem and that we took the right measured approach to new things. I think many readers who work in corporations are familiar with this range of opinions about their business. Sometimes it can get a little nasty - the "gotta innovate" people think the others are blind curmudgeons who couldn't imagine anything other than what they have today. The "steady as she goes" folks think the others are lightweights, chasing the latest trends and not being appropriately thoughtful about business results. That's a caricature but you get the idea.

Our popular culture definitely is biased toward the new - we tend to place it on a pedestal, and imbue words like "invention, innovator, entrepreneur" with mystical heroic qualities. People admire and many aspire to be seen as innovators. The innovator who makes a $100m/yr company is lauded. The guy who quietly makes a billion dollars a quarter doing what they did last year is ignored. Note: as much as John Q. Public admires the former, shareholders really like the second type of guy. Delorean makes a good story, but we can't name who at Toyota made them the #1 car company in the world.

I'm conscious as I write this that the "blogosphere" tends to have a huge bias in favor of rapidly embracing the latest thing - most of us are in that "gotta innovate" group - more than even the general public. But a criticism of that approach especially for a larger company is that you can't always be chasing "shiny objects". You have to deliver business value. Speed for speed's sake is also not a good idea. How do you act appropriately fast enough without just churning? After all, while consumers might say they want a new thing every day, enterprise customers tell us they can't handle the pace of change we throw at them today. What to do?

I didn't want to fix a phantom problem. I also felt during my time in Office that we could make some improvements to the system, as good as it was.

One thing I felt strongly was that the people who said we don't have enough good ideas were flat wrong. There is no shortage of great ideas at Microsoft. I also felt that our product groups, even the "old" ones, had the appetite to take big risks. Just look at the new Ribbon UI for Office 2007. We also had the capacity to develop entirely new things on our own - look at OneNote, or SharePoint. Where it seemed we could use a "tweak" was in five areas:

Improving the number of risky or uncertain areas we explore at any time

Increasing the "stakes" of the areas we explore - place bigger bets

Decreasing the iteration time for designs (more iterations, faster in response to user feedback)

Accelerate in time the delivery of new ideas (get them to market faster)

Easier exploration of ideas that didn't already have someone working in the area

We're trying to tackle all of these with Office Labs. Our team extends the already solid Office development process to enable those product teams and others across the business division to try more stuff. When I write next I'll go into more detail.

One closing thought. We work with the whole business division (which makes more than Office). We also aspire to create entre products and services, which may not be called "Office". So why did we call ourselves Office Labs? The answer is that Office is really well known and is much bigger in scope than most people realize. So it actually covers a lot of the productivity area. Trying to come up with a name that was generic like "business division labs" or "productivity labs" seemed lame. And choosing a fancy sounding name just to be cool was not our style. So Office Labs it is - Office System is our largest and most important client, and its definition is always growing - in fact we hope to be part of that growth.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxMike Tholfsen blogging about OneNote in Educationhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2008/05/19/mike-tholfsen-blogging-about-onenote-in-education.aspx2008-05-20T01:12:00Z2008-05-20T01:12:00ZJust a quick note today. Mike Tholfsen (OneNote Test Manager / ninja as mentioned a couple of posts ago) has finally started a blog on OneNote in education. Mike has been passionate about this topic for years and it is good to see him starting to talk about it in a blog. We're seeing OneNote use in educational contexts (classrooms and lecture halls of course, but also corporate education) start to explode. I'll let Mike tell those stories though. Here's a link to his blog - worth subscribing to.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxMy new gig is Office Labshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2008/04/28/my-new-gig-is-office-labs.aspx2008-04-28T19:54:00Z2008-04-28T19:54:00Z
For some time I've been quiet about what I have been up to since leaving the OneNote team in the capable hands of David and the gang. Well, today my new team's external site went live at http://officelabs.com.

As you can see on that site, Office Labs is a "try it and see what there is to find" kind of place. We experiment with many different ideas, large and small. Most of them stay internal to Microsoft because they just aren't as interesting as we hoped, or we can find out what we need from internal usage. But some of them we will be putting out on officelabs.com for the general public (you folks!) to try so we can understand how "normal" people would use these tools. Now of course, as we bloggers and blog-readers know, we're not actually normal - you could even debate whether the blogosphere is more warped than the set of Microsoft employees, who comprise an interesting cross-section of job types, experiences, and cultures. But I digress.

Head on over to http://officelabs.com and check it out. We'll have more projects to share throughout the year.

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxMike Tholfsen, OneNote Ninja!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2008/01/11/mike-tholfsen-onenote-ninja.aspx2008-01-12T06:02:00Z2008-01-12T06:02:00Z
It's been awhile since I have posted anything here, and for that I feel shame. It's just that Dan and John and others are doing such a great job.

Another guy who's doing a great job but isn't blogging yet (he's shy) is Mike Tholfsen. Mike is the test manager of the OneNote team, and he's also a tireless (and I mean tireless) OneNote promoter inside Microsoft. You may remember Mike as the guy who wrote "My One and only OneNote".

Microsoft is getting to be a pretty big company these days, and we make so many things that it is hard for people to keep track of it all. So as odd as it may seem, teams that make products that are not already ubiquitous (like Outlook or Windows) sometimes have to remind others that they exist.

Actually OneNote is in broad usage in the company already - it has taken off virally and in any meeting or lecture I go to, if a laptop is open more often than not OneNote is there as people keep track of what is said and what they need to do next. In fact the usage data shows that for people who have it installed (more than half the company - pretty good!), they use it more than PowerPoint.

Where Mike comes in is in expanding people's perceptions of what OneNote can do. When you first use it, it seems like a way to organize your stuff, but it can be so much more. For example, my new team uses many shared OneNote notebooks to collaborate and share ideas like a really capable wiki. OneNote notebooks can also be packaged up as a single file to email or download which will "unpack' inside OneNote when you open them. This may sound like nothing special, but the effect is that you can distribute entire "courses" or books of material to a broad set of people, replete with cross links and organization, tables of contents, etc. Plus the content can be added to or annotated by the recipients (unlike a PDF). and these materials can be searched and arranged with all your other material so they become part of your stuff in a way isolated PDF or Word docs or random web pages can't. The other day I got an email inviting me to download an entire course on how to manage email and tasks effectively (something everyone in corporate settings struggles with), and it came as a OneNote notebook.

What Mike has done is make a point of meeting with all the right executives, sales people, and so on to get across to them that OneNote can be more than a note-taking tool. He's made videos internally and externally, like this one to show the power and ease of use of OneNote, in particular focusing recently on this "content distribution" aspect of OneNote to replace paper for green corporate or academic initiatives. He's helped the Office marketing folks see this potential in OneNote too.

He's worked with the people who do internal training at Microsoft to get them excited, and through them connections have been made to customers who also are interested in training. It's been amazing to watch. He even demoed to Bill Gates! He's also been active in the academic world, visiting a local school where the staff and kids were independently using OneNote, and even going to a conference in Finland on technology trends in teaching with one of the teachers. There's a neat video of what the school has done here.

So hats off to Mike. Now we just need him to spend a few cycles on his day job :-)

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxSummer OneNote 2007 news round-uphttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2007/08/12/summer-onenote-2007-news-round-up.aspx2007-08-12T21:19:00Z2007-08-12T21:19:00Z
It's getting hard to keep blogging about OneNote in detail now that I am no longer on the team, but I thought I would do a little round-up of some interesting developments in the last couple of months.

Onenote usage is really taking off as I talked about last post. The numbers are good of course, but I also love the anecdotes. Recently I have had the opportunity to talk in front of several large audiences internal to Microsoft and asked them if they used it significantly. Holy Smokes! More than 3/4 of the room each time. You might think that's nothing special because they're Microsoft people, but they're too busy to use products that aren't valuable to them just like everyone else. A great rush each time. It's the shape of things to come.

David Tse released his Web Exporter PowerToy. This tool allows OneNote to publish an HTML+JScript view of a notebook to a web server (including SharePoint). There are several nice things about this tool:

it allows casual browsers to read the notebook contents - they don't have to have OneNote

it automatically republishes the notebook on a schedule so it stays up to date as you (and others) update the editable OneNote version

it helps out a lot of OneNote fans who were concerned about being the first few people in their organization who use OneNote

it is released via the Microsoft Shared source program on Codeplex so you can see how it was made and use the code yourself.

David made it in his spare time at work - it's cool to work at Microsoft!

There are several new MS bloggers about OneNote:

David Tse (Program Manager on the OneNote team, mentioned above)

John Guin (Tester on the OneNote team)

Michael Oldenberg (User Assistance and documentation specialist - big OneNote fan)

Dan Escapa (another PM on the OneNote team - you really should subscribe to his feed) continues to fire out a prodigious amount of material about OneNote including these gems:

Snag-it outputs to OneNote 2007

including OneNote pages in Vista's start menu search

search and replace PowerToy

sort pages PowerToy

sort sections PowerToy

Jeff Raikes, President of the Microsoft Business Division, huge OneNote user, and also my new manager got profiled here on how he uses OneNote. You might think this is some gimmick but it's not. I'm impressed with his usage since *on his own* he has adopted just about every scenario we envisaged for the product such as taking notes (in ink!), keeping track of tasks connected with Outlook, connecting meetings in his calendar with OneNote notes, annotating files like PowerPoint slides, even sharing notebooks with his assistant. Unfortunately they couldn't show his actual data for privacy reasons in the demo because his real usage is way more detailed and impressive than the demo. The demo captures the essence though which is the point. He's probably the best most complete, effective user of the product I know. All that and he happens to run the division. I can't say he got there because of OneNote but he is showing me a thing or two about how to be organized and on top of things!

A couple of Microsoft colleagues went to a local grade school awhile back to see how they are revitalizing the classroom with computers. This school has put a lot of thought into their program. They use OneNote for every student with a shared notebook for each class. The teacher puts assignments in the notebook and the kids work on them individually or in groups, with OneNote syncing the data and a keeping it organized. They use OneNote's features for capturing web pages, keeping documents together, and drawing. What they told me was really impressive - even more than the ideas we had for OneNote in education. It made me jealous for no longer being on the team!

A big shout-out to the guys at gottabemobile.com. Rob Bushway, Warner Crocker and others are big OneNote fans and keep everyone up to date on the latest news about hardware, OneNote and anything mobile - especially Tablet PCs.

I follow the comments that are posted here and any mail sent to me through the blog. I love hearing from you all - it's my daily pick-up! If you have support questions however, I highly recommend posting to the user group since the experts there can usually help better and faster than I can.

Cheers, and have a great rest of summer!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote Momentumhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2007/05/09/onenote-momentum.aspx2007-05-10T06:02:00Z2007-05-10T06:02:00Z
What an exciting three months OneNote 2007 has had out in the marketplace. By every measure OneNote 2007 is a hit! Check out this blog activity for one thing:

Blog posts containing "OneNote" over the last 360 days taken May 9 (from Technorati)

Traditionally many people measure a product's success by a particular metric: the number of units sold. But there are many other metrics to use: of course one is "profit" - if you gave away all those units for a song (or for free!), you didn't make any money. Also its not clear how dedicated those customers are. Conversely if you held the price high enough and people bought a lot of it, you have a good sense that people see value in the product.

Another measure is usage. You want to see that people are really using your product. That means they are getting value out of it, and also indicates loyalty.

Another measure is "buzz" like the blog measure above. Are people talking about your product? If so, that's also a good sign. Notice there is a spike not just on the "news" of availability (around Jan 30) but there are higher spikes later - that's when people are using the product and talking about it. For examples of what people are saying, check out Dan's "blog roundup" posts: January, February, March, April. Some of my favorite quotes:

"OneNote 2007 sharing is indistinguishable from magic"

"I just purchased a copy of Microsoft OneNote, my life will never be the same."

But those are tame. Why not really go for it?

"The Greatest Invention in Human History? I vote for Microsoft OneNote"

"I need Office OneNote 2007 to live."

And for the you-know-who crowd:

"I can't believe I'm so excited over some program that M$ came up with. It's probably just all the adrenaline that's been pumping through me lately."

And we're just getting started!

There are other measures. For software there is also "deployment" - many companies have purchased long term contracts with Microsoft for most or all of our latest software, but they don't always get around to putting the new stuff on their users' machines since they have a lot of work to do. So we care about whether that has happened or not since it is a measure of how much they value the new stuff.

I can't share specific sales figures with you all and they don't tell the whole story anyway (there's that "deployment issue" plus lots of people get OneNote on their laptop but don't know it, and so on). I do want to show the existing trends we're seeing however.

First, it's worth noting that OneNote 2003 (the first release) was a success in its own right. A new product that costs money and isn't a visible lifestyle item (e.g. software to get work done vs. an iPod) takes time to build its user base. And as I said, the nice thing about free products or services is that they can build users fast, but because they are free their users often have no special investment in the service. OneNote 2003 shipped well over 10million units and racked up several million actual users over the 3 years it was on the market (as best we can tell). Pretty good for a whole new "category" of software most people didn't know about or know they needed, with next to no marketing budget and not being included in any Office Suite! By contrast, the top web productivity apps and suites that everyone writes about because they're "hot" all have less than 500K users, most of them far less (I can't tell you how we know that though!)

Our plans for OneNote are for it to build momentum like "rolling thunder" over several years. Each release retains users from the one before and adds proportionally more. The great majority of people only try a new thing when their friends recommend it, and that takes some time. If you think about how an application like PowerPoint went from obscurity to ubiquitous over the course of a few years - that's the idea.

Fortunately, in addition to raving fans and sales figures, we are able to get more quantitative and explicit measurements on popularity. One way is through the Customer Experience Improvement Program. Some of you may know this - it is the little balloon that pops up to ask you if we can (anonymously and in aggregate) track which commands you use in the application, how long you use the application, etc. We use this data to make the product better in the future, but it is also a handy measure of overall activity. CEIP data is returned to us in the form of "sessions" which are fixed length blocks of time containing data.

Here's where it really gets exciting. Although we can't know for sure how many users these session counts represent, we think variables like what % of the users have signed up for the program are about the same for each release, which makes them comparable. Look at these relative numbers!

Release

Date

Number of CEIP sessions added over
the 5 months after RTM (code final)

2003

8/15/2003

310,109

2003 SP1

7/22/2004

1,050,620

2007

10/28/2006

10,744,083

Do you need a chart? Can someone say hockey stick?

How many users is this? It's really hard to say since it depends on people agreeing to join the program which is off by default. Only a tiny fraction actually send us data. But it's a lot, and look at that trend!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxAustralian students get a deal on Office 2007 (and OneNote!)http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2007/03/05/australian-students-get-a-deal-on-office-2007-and-onenote.aspx2007-03-05T14:17:00Z2007-03-05T14:17:00Z
I'm hearing some buzz about a 90-day offer going on in Australia. If you are a student at one of about 30 universities, you can get the "Ultimate" edition of Office 2007 (includes OneNote!) for AUS$75 which is about 5% of what it costs to buy if you were to pay full price (which no one does of course, but it is still an amazing deal). Alternatively you can "rent to own" for AUS$25/yr for three years. Too good to be true? No, it's for real.

You can read more here: http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/form.asp

And bland details here: http://www.microsoft.com/australia/education/unistudentoffer/default.mspx

I looked into this a bit and while some people in Australia are speculating a lot about why this promotion is going on, the background is pretty simple. The fact is most university students can already get Office for about this price from their university because their university negotiated it into their purchase agreement on behalf of the students. The students just don't know it. And the universities find it a hassle to get the product out to students because they have to do all the muck work: getting boxes stocked, checking IDs, making sure people don't buy more than one, etc. So they don't promote it. This trial offer in Australia is experimenting with Microsoft handling the work. As long as the particular university you attend has purchased the right for all its students to have the software, you can just get a licence key directly from Microsoft. The difference is that the students have to get their own bits (usually download the free trial).

Pretty good deal. If you're a student in Australia, go for it!

I don't know anything about whether this program will be extended or offered in more places, so please don't ask, OK?

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxNew OneNote 2007 PowerToyshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2007/02/16/new-onenote-2007-powertoys.aspx2007-02-16T11:32:00Z2007-02-16T11:32:00Z
Dan Escapa is on a tear releasing a set of new PowerToys for OneNote 2007. What's going on is that a whole bunch of PowerToys were written internally on the OneNote team and by some of our "friends" inside the company over the last six months. As the 2007 has now shipped (and therefore the API set is frozen) these Powertoys are getting finalized. And if I know Dan, he's been too busy to get them out but now he's a man with a mission. PowerToys are a way to add features that we couldn't do in core code on the main schedule. Of course powertoys are not tested as much, so they are basically "use at your own risk". (rarely a problem is encountered though in my experience)

Here are the ones out so far:

Word Count. We get asked by some people to be able to know how many words are on a page for articles and essays and so on. here you go.

Send to OneNote (from the file explorer/shell). Ever looked at a file in My Documents or elsewhere and thought, "I want to push that into OneNote so I can add it to my project, make some comments about it, etc? Now you can.

Export Outlook Notes to OneNote. Lots of people use Outlook's Notes feature to keep track of little scraps of info. Or rather, they used to use it until OneNote came along and blew it away. Now you can push all those little honeys into OneNote where they belong.

More to come. Stay tuned to Dan's blog.

UPDATE: Dan's got another powertoy, this time it is "Sort Pages". You can now put all your pages in alphabetical order. Rock on, Dan!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote 2007 now available at retailhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2007/01/31/onenote-2007-now-available-at-retail.aspx2007-01-31T12:16:00Z2007-01-31T12:16:00Z
Yes, the final code of OneNote 2007 is now available for purchase in an actual box (with a curvy corner no less and fancy pull out center: here are some samples if you haven't been down to a store yet). Of course OneNote is available along with Office 2007 and Windows Vista today. This is hardly news for most people in the tech world but it's a big deal for all of us who worked on it so I wanted to mark the occasion.

As we near the expiry of beta 2 of office 2007 products (build 4017 in Help/About) on Feb 1, I expect to hear from several people who are still using that build for some reason (I am already hearing from them in fact).

Likewise there are people still running beta 2 tech refresh (build 4407 in Help/About) which expires Mar 31.

To everyone running a beta version: stop doing that. You will be much happier.

If you have decided you will keep using OneNote now that you've experienced the beta, and I am sure that is every single one of you :-), the simplest thing to do would be to go buy the full version (version 4518 in Help/About). You can uninstall the beta version and then install the final code of OneNote. All your notes will be there - no worries. I personally wouldn't even bother with a backup, but that is me.

I realize that many people are in special circumstances though. If you are expecting your company or university to provide the new version for free or highly subsidized, but they are taking their sweet time doing so, you can maximize the amount of time you can use OneNote 2007 with full editing capabilities while avoiding spending any of your own stash. If you just need 60 days or less, I would uninstall the beta and install the trial version which gives you the final code and all the capabilities for 60 days. Well, you won't get save as PDF with the trial until you convert it to the full version. (update: a change was made Feb 1 to allow trial to validate so you can get this now). If you think they won't give you what you need within 60 days, and you are still running one of the beta versions, you could stay on beta 2 tech refresh until it expires on Mar 31, then switch to the trial for another 60 days after that. For those of you still running plain beta 2 (build 4017) you can patch to beta 2 tech refresh build 4407 here. There's no need to wait to do this as the expiry date is fixed unlike with the trial.

Once you are running final code (either the trial version or the full version), you can't go back to beta code (or 2003) - the betas and 2003 will not read files updated by the final 2007 version. That said, don't stick around on the beta code longer than you have to - we fixed a lot of bugs between that version and the final release so it pains me to think people are using it even now.

If you have the trial right now, when you buy the full version just activate your trial installation in Help/Activate Product using the product key of the final version. Don't bother to uninstall and reinstall because the code is the same. Activation of the trial over the internet is limited right now (in some cases because we're limited to certain countries where laws make it easy to support credit card use over the net). For others, you can buy a product key from a retailer (or a box) just like you buy pre-paid phone minutes, or just buy from an on-line retailer (unless the credit card thing makes that hard where you are).

Of course a better option than buying standalone OneNote is to get the Home and Student edition of Office 2007. For just a few dollars more than OneNote standalone you get not only OneNote but also Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 - and they rock. If you do this, note that you need to unistall the standalone trial version before installing Home and Student as the licensing is not quite the same. If you had been trialing the Office Home and Student version then you don't need to uninstall. Gosh - so complicated. Just make sure that the full version you are installing matches the trial version you purchased - if not you need to unstall the trial first.

I'm also hearing from people who recently got a computer that came with a trial version of OneNote 2003 installed (PC makers are still selling some machines with that installed). Obviously I suggest you not bother with that and recommend you go get the 2007 trial. Even if you have already started using the 2003 trial, just uninstall it and download the 2007 trial - it will pick up where you were, extend the expiry date, and no data will be lost.

Once again I feel like giving a little "boo-yeah' to the OneNote team. Although for all of us here in product development the 2007 release is now "ancient history" we're still dang proud of it. You guys rock!

I also want to mention some resources you really should use:

1. Dan Escapa, a program manager on the OneNote team has taken on the mantle of regular OneNote poster now that I am no longer an "insider". Go bug him and ask him questions. He is really great at responding. In particular, go ask him to create 2007 and 2008 calendar templates for OneNote (he did the 2006 ones).

2. If you have a support question about OneNote (not working right as far as you can tell), please ask your question in the newsgroup. I am of course happy to help if I can but like any good designer I only know what the product is supposed to do. People in the newsgroups can respond quicker and also tell you what the product actually does. :-)

For any MS-people reading this, check out my internal blog and discussion of my new team here: http://msblogs/chrispr. We're hiring!

Till next time...

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote Viewerhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2006/12/06/onenote-viewer.aspx2006-12-06T16:06:00Z2006-12-06T16:06:00Z
I sometimes get asked if there is a "viewer" available for OneNote files. There are viewers available for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (among others) so this is a natural question.

The answer for OneNote is yes: it is called the trial version. You download it here for free, and it lets anyone view and search and print OneNote files with perfect fidelity. Oh, it also lets you *edit* and create such files for the first 60days. And you can convert this viewer into the full product by purchasing a license and activating it with the code you get when you purchase (no additional download required).

As I write this, the viewer (trial) is only available for residents of the US, Canada, France, Germany and Japan (thanks for the update Patrick!), but it will be available much more broadly shortly (as it gets rolled out for markets where using a credit card to purchase online is not as feasible). It's also a pretty hefty download (195MB) since it contains the entire product but with broadband it's just a few extra minutes.

Ok, now you might be saying: Chris, don't be smarmy. A trial is not actually a viewer. The difference might be a smaller download, no limitation on which markets can access it, and um, something else I suppose - oh yeah, cross platform. :-)

Many people asking for a viewer are concerned that others cannot read files they send from OneNote. We anticipated that, which is why there are so many options for output in other formats such as Word, PDF, and HTML. And it is also why when you use the email function (with Outlook) we include HTML in the message body so any recipient can view the notes. (a full OneNote format attachment is included for colleagues who use OneNote)

Once in awhile someone asks why there is even a separate OneNote file format at all. After all, if OneNote used some other format there'd be no need for a viewer. Suffice it to say many of the slick things we do with auto-save, multi-user, remote sync of internet-based notes and so on require it, not to mention many other features that are better and more robust as a result. Other file formats are optimized for something other than what we need, be it feature set of some unrelated product, human readability, backwards compatibility with some other older product, etc. We actually have a lot of innovation baked into our format that helps OneNote be what it is.

So, why isn't there a viewer for OneNote other than the trial? The answer is that making a special viewer is non-trivial work, especially testing (and forget cross-platform - that is nearly a whole new product). OneNote is a small team, and every bit of work we do on a viewer means we don't get to work on something else that many people have begged us to add (as I wrote nearly three years ago). The trial covers most people's viewer needs (and then some) so the few extra % of users the viewer would help lose out to the people who are ecstatic that we added other much-requested features to the product instead.

(Update 7/20/07: David Tse from the OneNote team has made a PowerToy that publishes an HTML view of a notebook packaged as an MHT file. It is designed for use with Sharepoint but can be used elsewhere. Give it a try)

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxOneNote 2007 downloadable trial availablehttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2006/12/03/onenote-2007-downloadable-trial-available.aspx2006-12-04T06:07:00Z2006-12-04T06:07:00Z
As Dan mentioned on his blog, those of you waiting to try out the final code (everyone currently using beta for sure!) can now download a 60-day trial of OneNote 2007 here. There is a full trial of Office 2007 Professional as well which of course is worht giving a spin too - and it shows off OneNote at its best with the full Outlook integration, blogging support through Word2007, etc. This trial version will last until after retail boxes are available in stores, and of course you can always convert the trial to a full version on-line.

For those of you not familiar with how the trial works, it is the *exact same code* as the final full release - not a lower functionality version. The difference with the full version is that the trial is set to "expire" after 60 days, meaning that the data in it becomes read-only at that point. You can remove the expiration at any time by activating it with a key that you buy over the net or in a store. So if you do decide to get the retail boxed version of OneNote in January or later, you don't have to uninstall and reinstall, just use the product key that came with the version you purchased.

You should *definitely* move to the trial if you are currently a beta user. The trial can read your beta or beta 2 tech refresh notes just fine. Uninstalling the beta and installing the trial will not cause any hiccup for you.

If you have Vista final release code, you need the trial (or MSDN full version) since beta versions of OneNote 2007 are not compatible with the final release of Vista.

The final version (in trial form or otherwise) has a number of fixes in it for stability, performance, search, and syncing of shared notebooks since b2tr, and of course hundreds of other fixes you may or may not have noticed in the beta.

Edit: if you have been running b2tr of OneNote or Office, bear in mind that final versions of any of these products cannot co-exist with b2tr versions of any of them. So the 2007 trial version of OneNote does not work with Office 2007 b2tr. 2007 trial version of OneNote cannot be installed when any fragment of b2tr is left installed, and that includes the b2tr version of the PDF add-in or the office file compatibility pack. Remove any and all trace of anything b2tr before installing the trial. There is a trial version of Office 2007 available at the same URL above so you can install that to replace b2tr - they expire at about the same time (the trial will last longer depending on when you start the 60-day clock by installing and running it) so you might as well run final code!

Enjoy!

Chris Pratleyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/Chris_5F00_Pratley/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashx


text:
The operational status of NCC 1701-A...?
View Single Post
June 21 2012, 02:53 PM
Re: The operational status of NCC 1701-A...?
I think I just have a fundamental problem with replacing an outdated ship with another ship of identical design. That doesn't happen much in the real world.
I mean, when a military truck grows old, it may well get replaced by another of the same, thirty-year-old design, only this one is fresh off the still-open production lines. But ships are much more expensive and not really produced on "lines": the tooling is built for a specific batch and then scrapped, there is no spares or surplus production as such... And there are no advantages to be gained from standardization anyway. The last ship in a batch is likely to feature all sorts of improvements over the first - but if more ships are needed, there's no incentive for going back to the original design if this can be avoided.
Timo Saloniemi
View Public Profile
Send a private message to Timo
Find More Posts by Timo


text:
Social search is having a bigger impact than ever. But marketing opportunities should not define your business. Rather, your business should define what marketing opportunities are interesting. In today's By the Numbers column, "Facebook D-Day, Meatball Sundae," Eric Enge takes a look at social media through the lens of Seth Godin's recent webinar on the idea of the "meatball sundae." The idea is that meatballs and ice cream are great on their own, but not so good together.
Scroll to top


text:
- Filed Under
About 20 Lyon County Sheriff's deputies and Search and Rescue personnel searched several hours last Wednesday for a missing youngster after an 8-year-old boy was reported to have left Sutro Elementary School.
Lyon County Sheriff's Office Capt. Bryan Veil reported the boy had walked away from the school at about 10 a.m. The sheriff's office was contacted when the boy was not found after a search at the school.
Veil said they reviewed school surveillance video footage, but that didn't help. ...


text:
Product Information
Product Information
Sun Bum Sunscreen Spray, 6 oz
Ultra-sheer, dry-touch continuous spray formula protects your skin from harmful UVA/UVB rays while enriching your skin with Vitamin E, an antioxidant that helps to neutralize free radicals. Color(s): spf 15, spf 30, spf 50, spf 70. Brand: Sun Bum. Style Name: Sun Bum Sunscreen Spray. Style Number: 694374 2.
SHOP.COM ReviewsWrite a Review
This product has not yet been reviewed. Be the first to write a review.


text:
We were at Quinta Bento Novo (QBN) with a group of dear friends--most of whom we had traveled with before--in the US and once in France. We had 4 rental vehicles among 6 couples and the flexibility this allowed for coming and going--as a whole group, or in small groups--was good. A smaller number of cars would work fine, but... more
Main View of The House


text:
Super Bowl advertisers no longer are keeping spots a secret until the Big Game. They're releasing online snippets of their ads or longer video trailers that allude to the action in the Game Day spot.
Thanks for checking us out. Please take a look at the rest of our videos and articles.
To stay in the loop, bookmark our homepage.