Bnpositive's Blog

Tonight I’m working on installing Windows 7 on my wife’s laptop. I’d originally thought that I’d have to do a completely clean install. Although I was willing to do that, I didn’t want to take the time to find all of her files and settings and back those up on an external drive so they wouldn’t be lost.

First I downloaded the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor just so I’d be aware of anything that might be important before I started. No real major issues to report. A warning about RAM size. RAM available was listed at just under 2GB, Microsoft recommends 1GB as a minimum, but more if available. The laptop is holding as much as it can.

I’m proceeding with the install and am told I’ve got to uninstall Windows Live OneCare. It’s interesting that nothing was reported about that having issues with the upgrade advisor scan. Now I’ve restarted and I’m trying again.

I’m really afraid that I’m going to absolutely love Windows 7 on my wife’s computer and then want to install it on my own business laptop. That will prove to be too much of a risk in case of unknown issues. I’d be open to looking at dual-booting to give it a try, but the stupid hard drive on my laptop is excruciatingly tiny.

I’ll follow-up with a post tomorrow on my experience with the rest of the upgrade process and what I think about Windows 7. Here’s crossing your fingers.

Image: Windows 7 Installation Screen

Wrapping up the last of the series of posts where I’ve been sharing all of the toolbars from the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon toolbars. This last post is from probably one of the least used applications by the mainstream user community for Office products.

The Access 2007 application has the least amount of toolbars and functions than any of the other products, even though the application is perhaps the most powerful of the entire Office suite for customization and development power.

Access 2007 can work with and integrate with the other Office applications like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Outlook. Yet with all that integration and possibility, the least amount of toolbars.

Sometimes it’s still hard to find what you’re looking for in Access though, just like the other applications. Click on the image below to see all of the Access toolbars in full-size, all together in one place.

After doing these different posts, I’m starting to feel like I should be quizzing myself on what I’m seeing and see if I can remember them all later.

Not too long ago everyone on twitter was showing their support for Iran by changing their location. There were a variety of reasons I heard of for changing your location to Tehran, but I never did. I think accurately representing your location in your twitter profile is more important than people think.

As you can see from my graphic above, people set their locations to a variety of different uses. Some people are very specific and providing city, state and zip for their location. Others just provide a city. Some people put the name of a business in their location. In many cases if you use twitter from your iPhone it will grab your GPS coordinates and use that to specify your location.

Regardless of what you set your location to, realize there’s a very valid use for being accurate with that location. I will frequently look for people to follow based on their location. I want to hear from people that live in the same city as I do. It’s a way to keep tabs on what’s going on around me.

The other use is that sometimes people could be looking for knowledgeable users in specific industries or a variety of skill sets. You could be losing business opportunities by not being identified as located in the city people may be searching for some help.

As part of the ongoing series of putting all of the Office 2007 toolbars into one place so you can see everything at once. Here’s the group of toolbars from the ribbon for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.

The interesting thing I noticed about many of the Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 ribbon toolbars is that there’s lots of unused space on a few different toolbars.

It makes me wonder if the divisions and separation of tools and features are really due to the functionality of each fitting into a group or if there’s another reason.

Would it have made more sense to combine some features currently found on multiple toolbars to a single toolbar, thus reducing the different places you’d have to look for the item.

Perhaps the side of the spectrum is there are more features coming for PowerPoint that will expand these toolbars even more? I was at a conference a week or so ago and the presenter from Microsoft was using the new version of PowerPoint that’s not on the market yet. Other than some new animations, I didn’t notice anything completely new.

Here’s the image to view all the toolbars in one place.

More and more of my friends and family are getting started or getting more active on Facebook. As I talk with people more about how they’re using Facebook and what they like about it, the conversation very naturally flows into what annoys them about Facebook as well.

It’s been over four months since I’ve seen a Facebook quiz show up on my wall. I’m rarely notified of new invites to try a new, cool application, and I’ve finally figured out how to accurately import an RSS feed into your Facebook Notes.

As I share that information with people, many of them are interested in and immediately ask me how I did it. I’ve been directing them back to each post by email. I thought it would probably be a good time to share a little, short review of some of the lessons I’ve learned on Facebook.

• Managing Facebook Information: Be aware that when you add someone to your network, they can see your updates. You may be sharing stuff with people you didn’t realize.
• How to Block Those Annoying Facebook Apps: Just like the title says, here’s the instructions on how to block all those annoying applications from your wall and updates.
• Something Better Than Facebook Vanity Names: Facebook has made vanity names available to give you a nice, short URL for your Facebook profile. They’re about to release the same thing for pages. Here’s something a little better.
• Importing an RSS Feed to Your Facebook Page: Here’s a popular one for sure. If you’ve got a blog and you want another way to spread the word, take advantage of this.
• Facebook Quizzes Be Banned!: Here’s the holy grail. It’s time to shut those quizzes down for good.

Hopefully at least one of these have helped you out. If you’ve got other questions about Facebook or things you can’t figure out, let me know in the comments. I’ll see if I can find some answers and a solution for you.

"Dad… I’m bored!". "There’s nothing to do!" How many times have you heard those in your life? How many times have you said it yourself? I remember in college, I went to a small school in a small town, we’d sit in our dorm rooms and complain about not having anything to do.

The Goby website has brought Web 2.0 to choosing your own adventure.

The interface is simple to use, you just put in a keyword of what you want to do, where you want to do it and when you’d like it to happen. Clicking on "Search" then provides you a list of opportunities in your area to take advantage of your request.

The display you receive is a nicely arranged and organized list of possible matches, and from my own search, very accurate matches of my desired results. Provided with a map of the area used in your request and links to more information and the source website.

So, the next time you’re bored and looking for something to do in your city, or perhaps if you’re visiting a new city and looking for an event or activity to fill some time between business meetings or other responsibilities. Go uncover something to do with Goby.

Uncover some fun for your and your family with the Goby website

Looks like we’re on a bit of a theme here with websites related to pets so we’ll stay with it for a bit longer. Can’t help it as new pets and questions about pets have been proliferating through my discussions as of late. The Petsicon website is like WebMD.com except for your dog

Petsicon is still in beta, but after reading about it and browsing through the site, I’m surprised by the fact I’ve never stumbled across a site quite like it before. More Americans than ever are including pets into their families. More than half of all American households have at least one pet in their homes.

We all love our pets when we have them, so having a resource like the Petsicon website to ask questions and receive information about our furry and scaled friends is a great big help.

The Petsicon site is still in early alpha mode, so they’ve got quite a bit of work to be done. Right now they focus specifically on dogs. I think expanding their site for other pets. Not sure if there are any plans on that change as they develop and grow with more exposure and traffic.

If you’re a dog owner, and you’ve got questions about your four-legged friend, like why they stare at the wall for no apparent reason, give Petsicon a try. You may just uncover the answer you’ve been fetching for so long.

Uncover Petsicon for yourself.

Oh, and their icon is one of the best logos I’ve seen in awhile!

It’s not impacted my daily life. Not sure if anyone would be surprised by that or not. What am I talking about? The loss of Michael Jackson. I will say that the music industry has a gap to fill. Putting his personal life and media attention aside, the talent and skill of King of Pop as a musician, singer and dancer is probably unmatched to date and for some time to come.

Taking footage from his upcoming tour rehearsals and other behind the scenes footage, they’ve produced a "THIS IS IT" movie. I’ll probably end up taking in the movie when it’s released. The man was a master. Observing his talent on the giant theater screen will be a great time.

Microsoft has released the new Microsoft Security Essentials software for download and install on Windows PC’s everywhere! The new Microsoft Security Essentials software is a replacement for what was known as Windows Live OneCare.

The installation file for the new software was pretty light. Total download size was only 8.61MB. Sitting less than 9MB, it places it less than a third of my least favorite application, Adobe Reader. Oh, and this is a full-blown security application, not just a PDF reader.

Once downloaded the installation process couldn’t have been much easier as well. The general installation steps were expected, there was a Microsoft Genuine Advantage software check in there. After that, a system update for definition refresh and we’re rolling.

As part of the install an initial system scan is included which also went quickly. I expected the first scan to take a bit longer. If the weekly scans go that quick, I’ll be happy. If they’re even quicker I’ll be more than pleased again with my experience.

Compared to Windows Live OneCare, there’s less settings and adjustments to be made. The basics still remain though: exclusion of files, exclusion of directories, default actions to take, etc.

The one thing I wish they’d work on fixing immediately is the icon that’s used to identify the tool. Sitting down there in the system try it looks like a circus big top tent. Microsoft, you can come up with a better icon than that, please do, QUICKLY!

Tonight we stopped by our local pet store to look for some new shells for our growing hermit crabs. It appears our house is becoming a haven for a variety of family pets as we’ve also gotten a new puppy this weekend as well. While I was at the pet store my desire to setup an aquarium in our house grew even stronger.

Not too long ago I uncovered the Aquatic Eden website while I was searching for something else. Can’t remember what it was, but it also reminded me of how much I really wanted a freshwater aquarium in my possession again. I’ve been a fish lover and aquarium hobbyist since I was 10 or so.  I’ve had a number of aquariums setup over the years, but it’s been awhile since my last one was setup and running.

My wife doesn’t like fish or aquariums. I think it’s because she’s never really see a nice home aquarium setup. The Aquatic Eden website highlights the types of tanks I enjoy having. Very natural looking, freshwater, planted aqua-scapes.

If you’re a fish hobbyist and haven’t visited the Aquatic Eden website you should add it to your favorites. It’s loaded with great information about a freshwater planted aquarium with plenty of great photos and resources to help you with your next tank.

Uncover the Aquatic Eden website and the joy of maintaining freshwater aquariums.

I’ve never been one to do much gaming on my PC. I’ve always left that to my game consoles like my Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii. If I ever did get into network gaming on my computer, I think I’d have to seriously take a look at this computer from MAINGEAR.

This PC is absolutely loaded with power! The MAINGEAR Radeon HD 5870 has video processing power oozing out of it’s bays and slots. The ATI’s Radeon 5870 series to be configured with their Ephex, F131, Prelude, and X-Cube high performance gaming systems.  ATI’s newest series of graphics cards will provide gamers with full DirectX 11 support, stunning 3d visual effects, ATI Eyefinity allowing you to run up to 3 displays from a single board, and ATI Stream massive parallel processing providing a new level of computational power for video transcoding, upscaling, and other technologies.

The ability to operate three displays from a single video card and the increased capabilities for producing and working with video makes this MAINGEAR machine a work horse for more than just gaming too!

I was over at a friend’s house this evening and their kids wanted to play on Spelling City with my little girl. I’ve never heard of the site and I liked it immediately after finding out more about what the site provides to students.

The Spelling City website lets your sign-up and register as a parent and then have you kids sign-on and practice their own spelling words. The website allows you to add your kid’s spelling words into the site. This lets your kids practice their own words, not just general spelling words.

The other great feature is that teachers can register themselves and add the spelling words for their students each week. Then their students can login and practice their words each week.

It doesn’t just seem like the kids are "learning" either. Once the spelling word lists are updated, the site gives the kids games to play using their spelling words. With games like HangMouse, WordSearch, UnScramble, and Word Matching the kids are playing and having fun, and then as the Spelling City website says, show up on Friday and make an "A" on their spelling tests.

Help your kids and your friend’s kids by letting all of your teacher’s know about the Spelling City website. What a great resource!