The Machets’ Blog

Three women are about to be executed for crimes. One’s a brunette, one’s a redhead, and one’s a blonde.

Two guards brings the brunette forward, and the executioner asks if she has any last requests. She says no, and the executioner shouts, “Ready . . . Aim . . .”

Suddenly the brunette yells, “earthquake!!” Everyone is startled and looks around. She manages to escape.

The angry guards then bring the redhead forward, and the executioner asks if she has any last requests. She says no, and the executioner shouts, “Ready . . . Aim . . .”

The redhead then screams, “tornado!!” Yet again, everyone is startled and looks around. She too escapes execution.

By this point, the blonde had figured out what the others did. The guards bring her forward, and the executioner asks if she has any last requests. She also says no, and the executioner shouts, Ready . . . Aim . . .”

The blonde shouts, “fire!!”

We have decided to introduce a new category to The Machets’ Blog; collections of videos from the Google Video collection, found at video.google.com. The videos can be viewed on this blog or on the Google Video website. You will need the Flash Player to view any videos. Today we include a short bike stunt video, performed brilliantly.

To view this video at its actual page, please go to video.google.com.

To this date, only two of the programs in the Microsoft Office 12 suite have been reviewed on The Machets’ Blog. In the next few weeks, you can expect to see the others appear, including Publisher and Excel 12, and perhaps Frontpage 12 (this program doesn’t come with Office 12 but is avilable seperately).

The reason for this delay is to evenly publish this useful collection of productivity products and because it does take time to review such powerful software. We pull apart almost every feature of these programs so that we can give an accurite and balanced review.

In the near future, another couple of Microsoft programs will be reviewed. This includes the new version of MSN Messenger, to be named Windows Messenger 8.0 Live, as well as security software such as Windows OneCare Live (An all in one Firewall, Virus Ccanner, Automatic Backup and Defragmenter and perhaps an Anti-Spyware program - unfortunately it won’t be free) and more will soon show their faces on The Machets’ Blog.

Update 27/2/06: We won’t be writing about other programs in the Office 2007 (Formely Office 12) suite. Of course, other Microsoft software such as Windows Messenger Live 8.0, Windows OneCare Live, Windows Defender (Formely Microsoft AntiSpyware) and Windows Live Mail will be written soon. In the next few days, we will be writing an informative update on new Microsoft releases.

Update 31/3/06: Change of category.

At a computer expo (1996 COMDEX), Bill Gates compared the computer industry to the automotive industry by stating: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving cars that cost $25.00 and get 1,00 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bills comment, General Motors issued a press release making the following statement: “If we (GM) had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice per day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Your car would occasionally stop on the freeway without reason. In order to get started again, you would have to pull off to the side of the road, close all the windows, shut off the car restart it and open all the windows again.
4. For some unknown reason, you would simply do this without question.
5. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre, such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
6. Only one person could use the car at one time unless you bought “Car95″ or “CarNT”, but then you would also have to buy more seats.
7. The new seats you would need would force everyone to have the same size butt.
8. You would press the “start” button to shut off the engine.
9. The oil warning light, water warning light, and alternator warning light would all be replaced by a single “Unidentified System Error” light.
10. The air bag would ask your freshly mangled body “Are you sure?” before going off.
11. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you back until you simultaneously lifted the driver side door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
12. The radio antenna would be internally mounted on the passenger side of the car.
13. Buying a new car would force you to also purchase a new set of Deluxe Rand McNally road maps, despite the fact that you neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause your car’s performance to diminish by 50% or more.
14. Every time GM introduced a new car, people would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the old controls would function in the new car.
15. Macintosh would make a car that was five times faster, ten times more reliable and easier to maintain, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.”

Google has come up with many great services. One of their best is the Personalised Homepage, where you can choose what RSS feeds you want to have on your own customised homepage. For more information about RSS, please click here. To start off, there are a number of preset feeds that you can add and remove. You can then add your own by simply searching for the particular feed name, such as “machet” if you are looking for The Machets’ Blog. The feeds are displayed in three rows and link back to the original post.

Unfortunately, your own RSS feeds only display the title of the post, with a link to see the story. This is where the Google Personalised Homepage has its downfall, where you can’t do what is written on the box. You can personalise it to some extent, but the fine details are left out. On most feeds, users only have the ability to choose how many titles are displayed. Some of the preset feeds have extra information appended to them, including the news stories, quotes of the day and your Gmail inbox.

Overall, the Google Personalised Homepage is a good service. I have it as my homepage and it loads quickly without many troubles. Google still needs to flatten out little problems and improve the service, but otherwise it gets a reasonable score of three out of five.

The Google Personalised Homepage requires a Google Account or Gmail account. To access the service, go to google.com/ig or google.com.au/ig for Australians. You can use the two localised serviced interchangeably, and you should to get the most suitable for your needs.

The Iraqi Ambassador to the UN was walking down the hallway and bumped into President Bush.
Hoping to break the ice with an innocuous comment, the ambassador quickly said, “Respectfully, sir. I have a question about what I’ve seen in America.”
Politely, President Bush answered, “If I can help explain things to you, please let me know.”
The Iraqi whispered. “My little girl watches this show called ‘Star Trek’ and in this show, there’s Chekov who is a Russian, Scotty who is Scottish, Sulu who is Chinese, but there aren’t any Iraqis. Why aren’t there any Iraqis on Star Trek?”.
President Bush whispered back to the ambassador, “It’s because Star Trek takes place in the future.”

As part of Microsoft codename Office 12, the new PowerPoint offers some nice new features that gives it a better look and feel, but most importantly the program is very user friendly and simpler to use.

The best improvement in this version of PowerPoint is the way of accessing the slide animations. In Office 2000 and earlier, users were required to right-click each image or text, or select the item from a list - but nobody knew what corresponded with what. In Office 2003, the custom animation appeared in a panel to the left of the screen, as did the help menu, clip art and others. You had virtually no control when it would appear or disappear. It was also reasonably difficult to access. In PowerPoint 12, the custom animation settings have been integrated into Microsoft Office’s new toolbar system that replaces all the drop-down selections to a settings toolbar at the top of the window. This never changes unless it assists you in other activities.

A great improvement in PowerPoint is that keyboard shortcuts are displayed when the Alt key is pressed. Previously, they have been displayed in the drop-down options at the top. The problem was that by the time you had made your selection, you already performed the action the long way. This new system teaches the user what the shortcuts are before the action has taken place, enhancing your experience and mastering your skills.

PowerPoint 12 has new backgrounds and templates, as well as a new set of fonts and themes. It gives the people you are presenting to a fresh new experience. Finally, audio and video is far more easy to integrate into a presentation than it has been in previous versions.

Users of the last few versions of PowerPoint should not feel compelled to upgrade to PowerPoint 12 when it comes available as there are not enough new features and improvements for the price you would be paying. Of course, if you are purchasing a new PC or have a very old version of Office (such as 97 or 2000) it is worth the upgrade.

Edit: Added to Microsoft category.

A little old lady answered a knock on the door one day, only to be confronted by a well-dressed young man carrying a vacuum cleaner.

“Good morning,” said the young man. “If I could take a couple minutes of your time, I would like to demonstrate the very latest in high-powered vacuum cleaners.”

“Go away!” said the old lady. “I haven’t got any money” and she proceeded to close the door.

Quick as a flash, the young man wedged his foot in the door and pushed it wide open.

“Don’t be too hasty!” he said. “Not until you have at least seen my demonstration.”

And with that, he emptied a bucket of horse manure onto her hallway carpet.

“If this vacuum cleaner does not remove all traces of this horse manure from your carpet, Madam, I will personally eat the remainder.”

“Well,” she said, “I hope you have a damned good appetite, because the electricity was cut off this morning.”

Microsoft Office Word 12 showcases a big improvement in Microsoft’s new commitment to making software user friendly. Most software today, including previous versions of Word, include a toolbar at the top of the window with many drop down selections. Under these, there are many more options to choose from. With Word 12, the drop down element has been removed and replaced with a new toolbar. The toolbar as each category is selected. For instance, when you are writing, you have the Write toolbar selected. You can then easily change the font and other properties. When you want to edit the page design, you simply click Page Layout. Here you’re able to add a customised watermark to your page; a feature that has been hidden deep inside previous versions of the software.

Some people knew about the word count feature of Word 2000, XP or 2003, but with Word 12, everyone will be in on the secret. This useful tool now sits permanently at the bottom of the window, and automatically counts without the need for clicking a refresh button. Another great change is the zoom slider in Microsoft Word. Previously, you have had to type what size you would like the page to be. Now, all you need to do is drag a slider left and right and your page will follow your every move.

In the References panel, users can now add a bibliography to their work by typing all the necessary fields such as book name, author, publisher, etc into a dialogue box. Mail merge used to be a chore for some users of older versions of Office. That has all changed, with a dedicated toolbar that is very easy to locate, as it sits at the top of the window called Mailings. Microsoft couldn’t have made it any easier!

Microsoft Office Word 12 is definitely the best and most advanced word processing software available to date. Unlike the minor version upgrade from XP to 2003 (where the only noticeable change was the colour), Word 12 has taken a great leap into the future. It is a very powerful system that will now take you much further; much more can be achieved. Microsoft has invested lots of time and money into developing such a system, and in the end, Word 12 will become a great success.

Update 31/3/06: Microsoft Office Word 12 has been renamed to Office Word 2007. This post has been added to the Microsoft category.

Happy New Year! Don’t forget - dd/mm/06 from now on!