Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts

16 April 2014

The coolest productivity tips for Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2013 provides a number of advances over the older versions, but users who have used Office for years may not realise what these cool new features are. At the launch of Office 365 Personal in Singapore, where pricing was announced (S$89 a year), Elsie Chong, Marketing Manager, PC Category, Consumer and Channels Group, Microsoft Singapore, introduced her favourites:



PDF Reflow: Word 2013 will open PDF documents as if they are Word documents, preserving the formatting as far as possible while making the text editable. The edited document can be saved as a PDF, or as a Word file.



Excel 2013 has a function called 'Flash Fill' that instantly understands what is being abstracted from existing data, and automatically fills up the rest of the row or column with the appropriate data. In this example, Chong typed in 'Andrew' and the software filled in the rest immediately.



Powerpoint 2013 has a mini dashboard feature which is officially called the Presenter View. This is an all-in-one screen that allows presenters to manage everything they need while giving a presentation, including skipping slides without the audience realising it, reading speakers' notes in extra large print, and switching displays.

As with Word and PDFs, the new Office for iPad also preserves the formatting seen in documents created on other devices, Chong said. "It was built from scratch, and optimised for touch," she said. In particular, the transitions between Powerpoint slides work as they should, she added.

The cloud-based Office 365 will always enable the latest versions of Office for subscribers' use, allowing them to enjoy the features as Chong has described. 

24 March 2014

Power for outdoor events

Power always seems to be a problem when organizing outdoor events. A China company has come up with a compact power system that generates the power from the wind and the sun. 
Source: Chengdu IDing website, featuring the Red Dot award

Called the Portable Wind Solar Complementary System and a winner of the Best of the Best Red Dot Design Awards 2013, Portable Wind Solar Complementary System harnesses wind energy and solar energy to generate power. 

The sides of the storage unit fold out to form a stable base, to which the solar panels and the wind generator are fixed. Designed by Luo WanLan, He Cheng, Peng Tao, Xiong Xiong, and Zhang WenJun of Chengdu IDing Industrial Design, the wind turbine has a rated output of 400W while the solar panels have an output of 90W. 

More details are shared here.