Tip o’ the Week #124 – The evolution of Windows Phone Marketplace

Posted on July 13, 2012 by ewand

Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted that an update a few months ago to the desktop Zune software has removed the Marketplace for buying or downloading Windows Phone apps.

This was something of a surprise move to some, since the Zune software has been the primary way of finding and getting hold of phone apps, other than using the Marketplace app on the phone itself.

Read more about the development here. Hear it from the Windows Phone team here.

Over the months since the Windows Phone 7.5 (“Mango”) release, the web site at windowsphone.com has been getting more and more functionality, including a much improved “Web Marketplace” – as of now, the web site is the only way to browse apps on your PC and get them sent to the phone. Very soon, it will only be possible to get apps for the phone if you’re running the “Mango” release.

If you browse the web marketplace (http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/marketplace for Brits) and see an app you like, you can quickly have it sent to your phone – over the data network, without needing to plug the phone into the PC first. It’s a good idea to be on WiFi if you’re going to be installing apps since it’s quicker, and it won’t cost anything compared to downloading data over 3G. Especially if you’re abroad at the time…

The Zune software is still going to be used to feed updates to the phone, such as OS version upgrades – it allows the PC to manage the large amounts of data required to do the update, and the Zune software can also make sure a backup is taken of your phone, in case things don’t quite go to plan. So, if you get a notification on the phone that an update is available (either the phone telling you, or if you plug it into your PC and the Zune software tells you), then it’s worth applying the update. For more info on how to get Mango if you haven’t done so already, see here.

Also, if you’re downloading very large apps (games, perhaps), you may find that they can’t be installed using the over-the-air method, e.g. if they’re larger than 20Mb in size. For apps this big, you’ll either need to connect the phone to WiFi or plug it into your PC. The delivery of apps is still done using the Web Marketplace in the latter case, it’s just that with the phone connected to the computer, it will use the PC’s own internet connection and be fed the apps that way.

Tip o’ the Week #123 –Windows 8: sign in, with Pic & PIN

Posted on July 6, 2012 by ewand

A short but sweet Tip this week, aimed at those of you who are running Windows 8: if not, why not check out the Release Preview page.

Out of the box, the logon security model that Windows 8 supports offers a variety of ways to log into or unlock your PC, though ultimately it could still requires a complex password just like before and network admins could disable certain features. It might be decided, for example, to not Both the Picture Password and PIN approaches are really aimed at making it easier to sign in when you don’t have a keyboard – unlocking a slate device using a strong password can be pretty laborious with an on-screen keyboard, so both provide a more touch-friendly way of logging in.

Picture-based logon

Picture Password allows the user to take any photo, to choose 3 features of it, and to make a gesture on each of them. An obvious (and therefore – seriously – not recommended… do not do this) choice would be a picture of your child/spouse/dog/self, where you touch on both eyes and then the nose, or swipe along the smile. This don’t-pick-the easy-to-guess-feature approach is somewhat reminiscent of the great Monty Python “How Not to be Seen” sketch*. Fans of the original Halo game may like to hark back with this spoof video.

Anyway, best practice says to choose a picture with lots of potential points of interest, so that you and only you will know which people to tap on, or which trees in the forest to swipe the trunk of, etc. Although Picture Password can be operated with a mouse, its sweet spot is really if you have a touch-capable device.

This is something of a secret gem, since it’s as useful on a desktop or laptop as it is on a touch device. In a nutshell, setting a PIN on Win8 will allow you to unlock your work PC with only 4 keystrokes (you don’t even need to hit ENTER). As with Picture Password, you need to set your strong password first, and when your password changes, you’ll need to go back in and edit the settings for the PIN. Essentially, PIN and Picture Password are just used as way of unlocking the strong Alph4numer1c Pa55!w0rd that’s been stored already.

To enable either of these options, go into the Settings charm from the main Start Screen, and choose More PC settings, then go into the Users option on the left, and look under Sign-in options.

Do bear in mind that it’s possible that your company’s information security folk (if you have them) may decide that they don’t want people to use the new Picture Password feature, or the ability to unlock your machine with a simple PIN, if either won’t meet their security policies. For the moment, you might find that both are allowed, and if you get your funky Windows RT slate device later in the year (like this one?), you’ll still be able to use these techniques to unlock it.

*Mr Nesbitt learned the first lesson of not being seen: not to stand up. However, he did choose a very obvious piece of cover…

Tip o’ the Week #131 – Shortcuts with Windows 8 Release Preview

Posted on June 29, 2012 by ewand

This tip is being published out of sequence, like a few others before it, since it’s much more timely than it would be if published in mid-August (which is when it would otherwise be scheduled).

Everyone must have seen Windows 8 by now, and many of you will be running the latest version, the Release Preview. If not, you can install by heading over here.

Like any new environment, Windows 8 can take a bit of getting used to.
There have been a few previous Tips o’ the Week to help. Here are a few more.

Using Metro apps instead of desktop ones

If you’re on a regular laptop or desktop PC (ie non-touch, with a keyboard & mouse), it can be a bit strange getting used to Metro apps – especially if there’s an equivalent on the desktop that you might normally use instead. There’s no better example than IE 10 in Metro and IE 10 on the regular desktop – it may take some effort to use the Metro version rather than simply clicking on the IE icon on the taskbar, or adding tabs to your existing IE desktop window…

Every time any major bit of software evolves, there are a few things that initially seem like a kludgy way of operating, or just an annoying change, even if they subsequently turn out to be an improvement. The Ribbon in Office, for one. Moving to Metro IE as the default browser you use, can be a bit like the day you stopped caring whether Windows showed you the extensions of known file types. Try it, get over it, and live it like every normal end user will.

One keystroke that will be invaluable to any QWERTY-toter with a Metro penchant is WindowsKey – Z, which displays the App Bar, showing some context-relevant options for the app.

In the News app, for example, the App Bar will show categories of news along the top of the screen. In the Finance app, the top of the screen shows navigation options whilst the bottom is concerned with pinning items to the main Start screen. Search on MSFT, for example, Pin to the start, and you have a quick way of looking at the current Microsoft stock price.

Metro IE is possibly the most App Bar-relevant application, however, since the section at the top of the screen is where IE Tabs are controlled and navigation between them sits; and the bottom is where the site address is entered, and where you can access tools like on-page Find, the “View on the desktop” capability that shows the app in the regular IE (useful for sites with addins that don’t work on Metro IE, eg apps with Silverlight addins), and the somewhat-yet-to-be-discovered “Get app for this site” option (commentary here).

If you browse to a site in Metro IE and it shows the spanner icon with a small “+”, then it means the site has a corresponding Metro App that can be downloaded, and the “Get app for this site” option won’t be grayed out…

Other shortcut keys of note:

In Metro IE, press ALT-D to display the App Bar and set the typing focus on the address bar, so you can enter a new site
CTRL-T creates a new Tab in Metro IE, and sets the focus to the address bar to type in the URL. This view will also show a list of icons of frequently used sites.
If you’re using multiple monitors, the keystrokes for switching the Metro App “window” between screens is WindowsKey – PgUp or PgDn, rather than WindowsKey –left or WindowsKey –right arrow which is the norm to switch windowed applications. The main Start screen can be flicked between monitors by the same Wnd-PgUp/PgDn trick.
WindowsKey – Q within a Metro app will let you search for content, with that app as focus. An example would be if you’re using Metro IE, then pressing Wnd-Q will let you enter a Bing search straight away. If you’re using the Mail app, the same key combo will search email content, etc. Essentially the same thing as showing the Charms, clicking on Search, entering the search term, then clicking the App you want to search within. Except, it’s a lot quicker. Obviously.
To send your machine to Sleep quickly on Windows 8 RP, try the following: CTRL-ALT-DEL, ALT-S, TAB (to switch focus to the options for shutdown on the right), then Space or Enter to accept the top one – Sleep.

Remember the days when Microsoft keyboards had Sleep buttons? An idea ahead of its time: the PC hardware wasn’t really reliable enough at suspend/resume then, but now it is: and Sleeping a Win8 PC only takes 7 keys … that’s progress. Unless, of course you know different. Answers on, oh whatever. Zzzzzz.

More shortcuts for the Win8 RP are here.

Tip o’ the Week #122 – The Sky (Drive)’s the Limit!

Posted on June 29, 2012 by ewand

For years now, SkyDrive has offered a chunk of online storage to anyone who wanted to use it, if they had a Windows Live (aka Hotmail, MSN Messenger, .NET Passport & others) user ID. Adding Windows Live Mesh to the mix gave the ability to not just store and share stuff online, but be able to back up files automatically from your PC, “to the cloud…”.

SkyDrive and Mesh have both featured a fair bit in ToWs passim – (#52, #69, #109…) though some of those missives have been superseded by more recent developments.

SkyDrive upgrade

One such change has been the release of a PC client for SkyDrive, so it’s not reliant on the Live Mesh software. It now provides easy access to SkyDrive storage directly from within Windows Explorer, and therefore any other application. Even though there’s a preview SkyDrive Metro app for Windows 8, this is the first time we’ve made it so deeply integrated to Windows through the provision of a PC client.

The differentiator here is that Mesh provided a way of backing up a maximum of 5Gb to “SkyDrive” (somewhat oddly, not taken out of the total 25Gb allocation from the regular SkyDrive), and made visible from the Windows Live Devices page. There was no really easy way to retrieve stuff that had been synced by Mesh into the magic 5Gb bucket, other than viewing the folder within the browser and downloading a file by saving it to your PC then opening it, or by synching the folder onto another PC and downloading it that way.

The fab new SkyDrive app, however, exposes the full online storage facility just like it’s any other folder that happens to be on the network – so you can move files around, double-click on them to open in native applications, right-click for properties etc. If you use SkyDrive on multiple PCs, it could be used to synchronise your content with each PC and with the online SkyDrive service, meaning you’ve always got the ability to get to your files from any browser. Live Mesh could still be useful to synch content between PCs only (eg copy all your music between two PCs at home).

Other clients are available too – Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, Mac …

Get your 22Gb free, quickly!

It’s worth noting that the previous 25Gb storage limit on SkyDrive has been reduced, so now you “only” get 7Gb. It turns out that less than 1% of SkyDrive’s existing user base had more than 7Gb of storage in use, so the gratis amount has been reduced somewhat. Never fear, though – existing users can request a free upgrade to retain your 25Gb of space, though don’t delay… it’s a time-limited offer (see here and here). It’s also now possible to buy additional storage if you want – £32 per year will get you 100Gb, for example, surely a price worth paying to ensure all your photos and home docs are backed up and accessible from anywhere…?

· For more info on the new SkyDrive features, see here.

· For some commentary on the new SkyDrive service, see here, and for info about how much better this is than the vaguely comparable DropBox, Apple iCloud or Google Drive services, see here.
(DropBox, for example, gives you 2Gb free, and charges $20 per month for 100Gb, as a comparison).

Tip o’ the Week #121 – Networking with Lync

Posted on June 15, 2012 by ewand

This week, we have a semi-rehash of earlier tips (#51 and #67), based on some investigation work that’s been done inside Microsoft’s own IT group.

If you’re going to join a Lync call (especially if you’re using video or app sharing, using a Roundtable/Polycom CX5000 device etc), then best practice is to use a wired network connection. If you’ve a laptop which is on WiFi, then you need think about your connection if you want the call quality to be at its best.

Networking preference

Windows 7 and Windows 8 prefer wireless networks, on the basis that if you’re connected to a WiFi network, then there’s a reasonable chance you’re on a laptop and therefore you’re likely to move around.

Lync really wants a nice, fast, low-latency network connection. In a typical Microsoft office environment, most users have laptops and most will be connected to wireless, meaning the WiFi is going to be pretty congested, compared to a wired network at least. And congested, slow(er) networks don’t make for great call quality (as is sometimes evidenced by the network connectivity icon).

The Lync client is network-aware, though, and will default to using the highest-performing network it can. So, if you’ve a laptop that’s on WiFi and plugged into Ethernet, then Lync will use the wired network in preference. There’s one important consideration though – Lync can’t switch an in-progress call between WiFi and wired!

So if you establish a call on Wireless, then see the dreaded red bars that tell you all is not well with your network, simply plugging in a network cable won’t do you any good. You’d have to drop the call and re-establish it to make a difference.

To be sure which network you’re using for the call, fire up Task Manager – right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager, or just press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC.

In Windows 7, select the Networking tab, and if you’re using Windows 8 Consumer Preview, look under Performance and you’ll see little graphs of how your networks are doing. This will help you see which network is being used to carry all that data.

A simple way of checking the behaviour is to use the Lync client’s test call facility and see which one spikes…

If the WiFi is taking the brunt, then make sure the wired network is connected OK, then disconnect the call and re-establish it, and you should see the wired network usage jump up.

No real need to disable WiFi, but if you have a switch on your laptop to do that, and you’re a suspicious sort (or untrusting type), then doing so may hurry the process along.

Tip o’ the Week #120 – The colour of time

Posted on June 8, 2012 by ewand

This week’s tip is a lovely little Windows app, recommended by Ceri Morris.

It’s a little like the sunrise alarm clocks which start your day by gently lighting the room, or the sleep alarms which gradually fade out the radio instead of a sudden silence in place of music.

This free application, called f.lux, changes the colour temperature of your Windows PC’s display, based on what the time is. Once the sun goes down, it starts to change the bright white of your Windows backgrounds to a nice soft glow, with the intent that your eyes will adjust to the softer lighting system when you’re looking at the screen in the evening.

Ditto, early in the day, the less harsh, less bright white screen will be more soothing on the peepers first thing, and that will be altogether better. It’s possible to over-ride temporarily, if you’re doing work that is colour-sensitive (like photo editing etc), and you can preview the effect so when you install the software, you’ll be able to see what it looks like throughout the course of night and day.

Thousands of comments on the f.lux website list people saying they’re sleeping better since their evening PC use with f.lux helps their eyes relax before settling down for the night. If work/life balance is a problem for you, then maybe you should stop using your work PC in the evening… but if you do need/want to use a computer after the sun goes down, give this tool a try and see how you get on with it.

Check out the site to install F.lux – http://stereopsis.com/flux/ – It’s really rather good.
Now, go to bed!

Tip o’ the Week #119 – Using Outlook in multiple windows

Posted on June 1, 2012 by ewand

This week’s tip comes courtesy of Jon Morris, who is agog at the way lots of people switch between their Inbox and their Calendar, in Outlook. Hands up if you routinely use the Navigation Pane on the lower left of the main window, to switch between these two most commonly used folders?

OK, put your hand down now. People will stare. As an aside, the Navigation Pane was introduced in Outlook 2003, and was codenamed the “WunderBar”. Honestly.

Long-term ToW readers may recall Tow #10 (over 2 years ago), which covered some Outlook shortcut keys – eg press CTRL-1 to switch the current window to “mail” (whichever folder of email you last had open), CTRL-2 to “Calendar”, CTRL-3 for Contacts etc. That’s one way of switching the focus around, and certainly quicker than clicking on the WunderBar.

Anyway, back to Jon’s tip. If you right click on any folder or any of the shortcuts in the Navigation Pane, you’ll have the option of opening that folder in a new window, so you can switch between (for example) your Inbox and Calendar windows, by any of the various means you might favour (ALT-TAB, WindowsKey+number, hovering over the application on the Task bar etc). This works well if you have multiple monitors, so you could (say) have your Inbox on the main screen and the Calendar/Task list on the second one.

Now the smart bit here is that Outlook will remember what windows you had open, what folders they were looking at, and on which monitor they were displayed, if you close the application down by going to the File menu and choosing Exit. Closing the app using the Window Close “X” or by right-clicking on the application in the task bar will not remember the window positions, so if you get used to leaving the Outlook application from its own file menu, you’ll get the same window setup every time you restart.

Tip o’ the Week #113 – Add context to your Lync status

Posted on May 25, 2012 by ewand

One of the biggest cultural impacts of using Instant Messaging and UC technology in a business context is the way that people tend to check the status of someone before contacting them. It’s a relatively rare occurrence to get an internal phone call out of the blue if both parties are online: usually, it would be set up with a quick chat on IM first – then the calling party knows that the call they make isn’t going to drop to voice mail.

To quote UC aficionado Tony Cocks, “it’s all about presents”.
Or presence, and the value that it gives to anyone trying to contact you.

If you’re set to Do Not Disturb (DND), for example, we probably all know that means trying to send an IM won’t work. Trying to call via Lync or on the internal phone number won’t get through either – setting yourself to DND sends all calls straight to voice mail (or straight to oblivion, for many people). I heard a story the other day about someone who got an unannounced incoming cellular call – the caller saying, “yeah, I saw you were on Do Not Disturb so thought I’d call your mobile…” Like, duuuuh…

Did you know you can allow people you trust to interrupt you when you’re on DND..? Right-click on their name in Lync, choose “Change Privacy Relationship” (right at the bottom of the menu). Set them to be part of your Workgroup, and when you set yourself to DND, they’ll see you instead as being on Urgent Interruptions Only. And they can IM you.

Anyway, we can infer a lot from someone’s automatic status – if they’re Busy, then chances are their Outlook calendar has been blocked out or they may have manually set the status to show they’re busy. That doesn’t mean they’re uncontactable – only that if they don’t respond, then you shouldn’t be surprised. If they’re In a Meeting, it means not only is the Outlook calendar blocked out, but it’s being blocked by a meeting with more than one attendee. Maybe that means you could still IM the person, but they probably wouldn’t be able to take a call. If they’re on In a Call or In a Conference Call, then they’ll definitely not be able to take a call as they’re on one already…

If they’re Away (like Richard, here), then they’ve probably either wandered off from their PC or else they’ve locked the computer (WindowsKey + L), and you may get some extra context about how long they’ve been away for. If only a few minutes, they could be sitting at their desk talking with someone (or reading a paper etc), and sending an IM might get an immediate response … but if it’s been 30 minutes, they probably are genuinely not there and you’d better look elsewhere, or send an email.

Add further context

As you can see from Richard’s status above, he’s also got a line below his name that says where he is – TVP. Actually, this is just set by the free-text note field at the top of the Lync main window (which asks “What’s happening today?” if you haven’t set anything else). It’s a handy way of giving a little more context if you want people to know, or just provide a pithy one-liner akin to a Facebook status.

If you want to be a little more specific you can also provide a number of custom presence states, so rather than just being Busy you could be Busy writing reports, or instead of being Available you could be Working from home. See TechNet or previous missives on this blog.

For place specific info, you could try setting up custom locations – in short, when your PC appears on a particular network, you can give it a name and then whenever you use the PC at that location, it will show up in your own Lync client right under your name and your status. Different locations needs to be named separately (eg Home, CP, Edinburgh, TVP).

It’s not all that obvious to everyone else, however – to see someone else’s custom location, right click on their name and View Contact Card (or just click on their name and press ALT-ENTER). If they’ve set a location up, you’ll see it – otherwise they’re either not in a place they’ve named, or you’ll just see their time zone. If you want to make it plain to everyone else where you are, then you may want to stick to custom status and/or using the Lync “What’s happening today?” text status field.

You can see set the Lync status on the above screenshot is Off work – that tells the world that even though I’m online via Lync, I’m not online to do work… and if someone was to click on my details, they could see a whole load of information about whether I’m likely to respond to their IM. If you’ve set your status to Off work and someone IMs you about work, then it’s perfectly acceptable to just ignore the message (press Esc to get rid of the popped-up window in one fell swoop). Well, depends who it is…

Tip o’ the Week #112 – Change Outlook’s startup folder

Posted on May 18, 2012 (Updated January 7, 2022) by ewand

Productivity gurus wax on about how gaining and maintaining control of your never-ending to-do list starts with the way you prioritise, and how you build discipline in working through your task list rather than being distracted by less important “stuff”.

So, why is it that we stick with the default setting in Outlook, which starts up showing the Inbox folder, and with the most recent mail at the top…?
The only thing more distracting than looking at an inbox full of shiny new mail, is to have the new mail notification flash up in front of whatever else you’re doing, to tell you about it.

Check out the very first Tip o’ the Week – how to switch off the Outlook new mail notification. Try it out.
Live notification-free for at least a day; you can always switch it back on again if you need to.

If you’re on a Lync meeting and someone shares their desktop to show you a presentation (tsk, tsk), or you’re watching a presentation/demo on a big screen, feel free to berate the presenter publicly if they receive a new mail notification during the meeting.

Here’s a tip that Microsoft’s own internal IT training programme recommends: set which folder Outlook starts up in. When you launch Outlook for the first time, don’t have it go into your Inbox – what about opening your Calendar instead?

To change, go into the File menu, under Options then Advanced. Scroll down to the Outlook start and exit section, and pick your folder of choice. Simple as that – though if you routinely sleep and resume your PC, you might not be starting Outlook very often, so you may only see this occasionally. Continue reading →

Tip o’ the Week #111 – Sharing PowerPoint in Lync?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by ewand

If you’re regularly part of a Lync call which involves presenting slides, here’s some best practice that everyone should know about. In a nutshell – don’t share your whole desktopto show the PowerPoint slides; don’t even share PowerPoint as a single program (something that Lync would allow you to do), but it’s really not the best way.

Why not?In general, the user experience is better if you show slides by uploading them into the meeting/call. Showing slides by sharing the whole desktop is inefficient on the network too; if the network isn’t so great (eg when attendees are on slower lines), it can be practially unusable. Also, unless you’re really smooth in the way you operate the PC, you’re in danger of showing more than just the slides – email alerts, incoming IMs from other people popping up etc. A slicker way of sharing slides is to use Lync’s built-in functionality designed to do just that.

If you have slides sitting on your PC, the quickest way of adding them into your meeting is to click on the Share button within the conversation window, and select PowerPoint Presentation, which will then give you the option to choose a PowerPoint file to be shown – the Lync software will then upload the PPT to the server, and convert it to an HTML format that can be shown in a browseror in the Lync client. This process of uploading & conversion can take a little while if you have a large or complex PPT, so it’s best to start uploading as early as you can.

The nice thing about using this mechanism to share slides is that they are now in the meeting, and other attendees could take over as presenter quickly – you could even leave the meeting and let them continue.

If you store your slides on a SharePoint site, there’s a trick to quickly uploading the slides to your meeting. One way would be to navigate to the document library in the browser, and then Open with Explorer – another would be to simply open the SharePoint site in Windows Explorer, by using the UNC – eg instead of going to http://sharepointemea/sites/love-it/tipoweek, go to the start menu and simply type \\sharepointemea\sites\love-it\tipoweek.That way, you could browse to the document just as if it’s on your hard disk.

If you go back up to the point earlier in this tip, to where you’d add a slide deck from your PC – you could type the \\sharepointemea\sites\etc link into the file dialog and then select the appropriate PPT, or else you could prepare in advance by opening the library using explorer, then re-use the tip from ToW#101on how to copy the full path of a file name to the clipboard, and just paste that into the dialog when it comes time to upload the PPT.

Once you’ve converted to using this approach, you may freely mock anyone who still does it the (admittedly, easier, with one click) old fashioned way of just sharing out their whole desktop to show a single slide deck. Live the dream – upload the slides to the meeting using Lync!

There’s a really good explanation of some of the other benefits to using the PowerPoint sharing method on this blog.