Blog:: Craig Pringle

I stumbled across a handy feature in OneNote today.  If you are reading a document and taking notes (I was studying for an exam) then switching between windows will soon become tedious.  But - you don't need to switch back and forth between windows at all.  In the Window menu there is an option to keep OneNote on top of other windows.

Doing this I found that I could work quite effectively with the X60 in slate mode on the train.  I full screened the PDF I was reading and then put arranged OneNote over the top of the bottom third of the screen and configured the window to stay on top.  I also found that using the panning hand in the PDF was the most effective way to re-position the content in the PDF - both pen flicks and the scroll bar had a tendency to scroll too far.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit intense.  I had a major customer presentation that ate about a week.  And I have about a million unread feeds.  Here are some links that are worth looking at that I've just caught up with.

On GottabeMobile.com

• Warner Crocker points to a cool add-inthat makes sending to OneNote mobile a bit easier.
• Warner also reviews his first week with the Lenovo X61
• Motion Computing get FCC approval for HSDPA in the LE1700.  I understand this is also underway in Australia.
• Please don't wear a OQO Model 02 on your belt.  Here here.
• Demo of touch screen pen flicks.  I love pen flicks...
• Creative charging for Vista drivers!  Dispicable - my advice is vote with your feet and buy something else.
• Interactive Whiteboards vs. Tablet PCs
• Hugo gets his hands on the Raon Everun
• Frank Garcia becomes a tablet MVP, as does Matt Faulkner.  Great stuff guys!
• MS are going to address a flaw in ReadyBoost in SP1 for Vista.
• Dell to release a UMPC?

On jkontherun.com

• Beautiful beer girls with Tablets.  Am I dreaming?  Actually - if I was dreaming it would not be an American beer!
• Samsung are getting ready to release a 64GB SSD - now we are talking!
• Tweak OneNote for a little bit more battery life.  Who'd of thunk it...
• Read your feeds faster on a UMPC - I need to be doing this!
• Touchscreens with hover are on the brink - using projected capacitive touch.  In other words it can tell when your finger is almost touching the screen - how cool!
• Intel and MS teaming up on a new slate platform called the "Edy Personal Computer" platform - will be watching to see where this goes.
• Use your smartphone as a bluetooth webcam.  Groovy Baby (sorry - Austin Powers is on in the back ground.  Britney Speirs just exploded.  Good job...

That's about half my unread items.  I'm off to bed...

Passing this on as it may interest some of you:

Exchange MVPs will be on hand to answer your questions about Exchange Server, Outlook and Exchange for Small Business Server.  So if you are thinking of upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 or have questions about Exchange Server 2003 we hope you can join us for this informative online chat!

Chat 1

When:   Tuesday June 19^th

Time:    5pm PST or 8pm EST

Where:  TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

No password required

Add to your calendar:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0619_TN_ES.ics

Chat 2

When:   Thursday June 21st 

Time:    10am PST or 1pm EST

Where: TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

No password required

Add to your calendar:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0621_TN_ES.ics

=============================================

Q&A with the Security MVP Experts

We invite you to attend an Q&A with the Microsoft Security MVPs. In this chat the MVP experts will answer your questions regarding online safety issues such as phishing, spyware, rootkits as well as server related topics. If you have questions on how to protect your PC, please bring them to this informative chat

When:   Thursday June 21^st

Time:    4pm PST and 7pm EST

Where:  TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

No password required  

Add to your calendar:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0621_TN_Security.ics

My friend Lee's long wait is almost over - his new LS800 is on the way.  He asked me today what he should do with his new tablet when he gets it.  There are tons of things you can do with your tablet and discovering those things is one of the joys of tablet ownership. 

That said here are 10 tips - things you can do with your new tablet to get you started.

1. Install Vista
   There is a lot to love in Windows Vista if you are a tablet or mobile user.  The Snipping Tool (which is available for XP tablet users in the free Tablet Experience Pack from Microsoft), Pen Flicks, multiple selections in Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer's panning tool, autocomplete for URLs and email addresses, an updated Tablet Input Panel and handwriting personalisation make Vista a compelling offering for tablet users.  You can read more about all of these in this post I did way back in April last year, during the beta.  There are some more mobile friendly features outlined here as well.
2. Make a Mind Map
   Mind mapping is a great way to plan things out or get your creative juices flowing.  I use Mind Jet's MindManager 6 - but there is a new version coming out soon, so that will be well worth checking out.  If you are running it on a small screen tablet, check out my optimization tips.
3. Ink on a PDF.  Tablet users delight in freaking people out.  A great way to do that is to return a PDF form that has been emailed to you by emailing it back within minutes all filled out.  I use PDF Annotator to do this.  Apart from being very efficient it is good fun.
4. Take some notes.  Note taking is where a tablet comes into its own.  If you have OneNote installed you can use that, but if not all tablets (Vista or XP) come with Windows Journal.
5. Do some drawing.  Drawing is great on a tablet.  For the best tablet experience you want something that is aware of the different pressure levels that are reported by an active digitizer.  My favorite is NZ grown ArtRage - even my daughter loves it.  Another good option is the free photo editor Paint.NET.
6. Read a book.  In slate mode a tablet makes a great platform for reading eBooks.  I've used both Microsoft's Reader and Palm Digital Media's eReader and they are both good.
7. Ink in Word - You can use ink in Word to markup documents or to insert ink comments.  If you are using Word as your editor in Outlook 2003 or if you are using Outlook 2007 then you can also ink email messages.
8. Ink on PowerPoint Slides - Another great way to show off in front of the ink challenged masses.  More on that here.
9. Ink Instant Messages - If you use Windows Live Messenger then you can chat in ink.  Great if you happen to be having an IM conversation while on the train (I've done that!)
10. Most importantly of all - Have fun!

Just plucked this cool article off the wire via  David Rasmussen's Blog.  David points out thatMindJet Labss have released a great little tool to provide some integration between OneNote 2007 and MindManager 6.

The OneNote 2007 + MindManager tool provides three functions:

• OneNote 2007 Send To MindManager
• OneNote Hyperlinks in MindManager
• OneNote Notebook Hierarchy Mapping

In their own words, you can:

• From MindManager, easily map out the OneNote Notebooks, Sections, and Pages, including hyperlinks to the notebooks, sections, and pages:
• From MindManager, send the current map to OneNote as an image that you can sketch on and annotate:
• From OneNote, send a page to MindManager as a hyperlinked topic

Grab the OneNote 2007 + MindManager download here.

This is a test of posting to DasBlog from Office 2007 (RTM) I initiated the post in OneNote 2007 and it kicked it off to Word to be published.

 

If your are reading this it worked!

Update: Wahoo!

In my previous post I pointed out that the Office compatibility pack released today.
Guys if you use Office 2000, XP or 2003 in your organisation, deploy this patch now! Even if you have no plans to deploy Office 2007 (and you should - it rocks!) unless your line in a bubble other organisations you interact with will.
Deploy this pa tch and you can open, edit and save the new XML formats. Documents created in the new formats will start making their way into your environment. Your can either have them break or just work. Your call.

Just read on Marc Orchant's Office Evolution Blog
Microsoft has released a Compatibility Pack for Office 2000, XP, and 2003 that lets those older versions open, edit, and save to the new XML file formats used in Office 2007.
It's a free download available in English, Japanese, French German, and Spanish and provides users of older Office versions to the following formats:
Word
.docxMicrosoft Office Word 2007 document
.docmMicrosoft Office Word 2007 macro-enabled document
PowerPoint
.pptxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation
.pptmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled presentation
.potxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 template
.potmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled template
.ppsxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 show
.ppsmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled show
Excel
.xlsbMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 binary workbook
.xlsxMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 workbook
.xlsmMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled workbook
.xltxMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 template
.xltmMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled template
.xlamMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 add-in
The download links and more information can be found here.

In the course of testing my little ink plug-in for Vistas search (http://www.pringle.net.nz/Blog/PermaLink,guid,55e3cc16-a9c0-4177-b5bd-b8a4eed260fd.aspx) I discovered something cool.
The search indexer in Windows Vista is including the index from OneNote 2007. The upshot? In your search results you get sections that include your search term in your handwritten notes! I noticed because I have a section in OneNote called Demo that has "Blah" written in it. I use that to demonstrate how I can search for text in OneNote and get hits from handwritten notes. I wrote" Blah" into SearchPad and Demo.one was in the search results!
Hey - when did this start working? I explicitly tested this in an earlier build of Vista and was disappointed that it did not work.

David Rasmussen has started bloggin.David is on the OneNote team and has some VERY funky blog posts to get going. Should be a great one to watch:http://blogs.msdn.com/david_rasmussen/default.aspx

Warner over at GBM links to a CNet article that indicates Office 2007 has been slipped again.
I'm very sorry to hear this as I think it is already a great app
I only hope they can stick to this new timeframe!

Check out jkOnTheRun Audio Edition no. 11.   James Kendrick has recorded one heck of a video demo of the Tablet PC.

Some of the things that JK demos include:

• Sticky Notes
• ActiveWords w/ InkPad
• Ink in Outlook
• OneNote
• MindManager Pro ink and gestures
• MM export to JVC Gantt
• MM export to PowerPoint
• Ink in PowerPoint
• Ink Art (Tablet PC Experience Pack)
• Send to OneNote 2003 (Tablet PC Education Pack)
• InkGestures

Great effort - a must watch!

In an excellent article Chris Pratley - of the OneNote team in Microsoft - gives tablet users an insight into what OneNote 12 is going to deliver specifically for them.

Check out the full post here.  For me some of the highlights are:

• Ink on the clipboard!  Copy and past ink as ink - previously it would convert to an image when you pasted it.
• Lasso selection tool.  I have often thought that this was the one and only thing that Journal had over OneNote.  Not anymore.
• Automatically add more writing space as you need it.  This is a big one for me.  I've been using Beta 1 in anger for a while now and this ads a big productivity boost.  This is another way OneNote moves from a paper like experience to a note-taking experience that trancends paper - no turning pages.

I'm still having some reliabliltiy issues in Beta 1 - that's why it's a beta!  Looking forward to the next beta release and the final product.

James Kendrick links to Owen Braun who writes about some of the extensibility features in the upcoming version of OneNote.  Sounds great - I can't wait to see what the community comes up with here.

As promised Chris Pratley has posted some more really interesting stuff about features that will be in OneNote 12.

Chris talks about unifying the analog and the digital.  What does this mean?  Well an example of this you may already be using exists in OneNote today.  OneNote takes your handwritten notes today (analog data) and converts them into searchable text in the background (digital data).  Anyone who has used this knows what a powerful feature this is.  OneNote 12 is going to take this much much further.

Today, you can send just about any content to OneNote by "printing" it to the Send to OneNote power toy.  The printed document ends up in OneNote as an image and can be annotated and marked up - BUT - the resulting image includes the text in the original document that is not searchable.  OneNote 12 will take this to the next level. 

"OneNote 12 includes its own "OneNote Import Printer Driver" which captures the text of any document that is printed to it, and stores it with the images of the pages you print into OneNote. This lets you have not only images of printed pages, but you can search through the text in those images. This printer driver works for anything that can be printed, not just Microsoft applications or documents."

In addition if you scan a document into OneNote 12, take a screenshot or insert a photo of a document the text will automatically be recognised using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and will become searchable. 

"For you existing OneNote users, that means the documents you have printed into OneNote already will all automatically become searchable!"

I can't wait to see how well the OCR technology works, but really even if it is not perfectly accurate it is going to be a huge leap forward.  That said, it sounds like it is going to be pretty cool!

"In fact, we're including about four different OCR engines in OneNote, each one optimized for different types of images that contain text. We sniff the type of image and use the appropriate one automatically."

And as if all that is not cool enough you will be able to search audio and the audio from video because this is going to be indexed for seaching as well.  How?

"The way this works is pretty cool. The audio is converted from waveforms to phonetic equivalents, and those are indexed. You can type your search term, then this is converted by OneNote into a phonetic equivalent which searches against the phonetic index of the audio. Actually this is a gross oversimplification but you get the idea."

Man - and I thought the current product was cool.  Roll on OneNote 12!

Chris Pratley has a post about what is (and is not) coming in OneNote 12.  Firstly he explains that OneNote will not be using the new UI and tells us why.  He also delves into some of what will be in the new version...

"OneNote 12 actually has some new UI for navigation and organization. For example, you can pop open your set of notebooks (yes, you can now have multiple notebooks!) and leave it sitting next to your note page (on the left) to make it easy to navigate your notes, and also to use drag 'n' drop (Yay! Drag 'n' Drop!) to rearrange your pages, sections, folders, and notebooks."

That all sounds great - but please tell me I'll be able to insert a link from one OneNote page to another!

Chris is promising to post more on OneNote 12 in the near future, so watch this space.

James Kendrick has a way of unearthing some pure gold. Today he points us to a OneNote FAQ put together by OneNote MVP Ben Schorr. Ben really knows his stuff and I am sure there is something there for everyone.