One of the weird and annoying things about Excel is that it shows you an item on the Windows taskbar for each document that you have open, but it doesn't let them operate as separate windows.  If you're using dual or multiple monitors you'll notice that you can't place one document on each monitor to see them side by side because they share the same window.  The following steps will allow you to open Excel documents side by side, but they involve some tweaks to the file system settings in Windows.  If you don't fully understand the changes below I would recommend that you not make them as they will be a challenge to fix on your own and could mess up your system.  To get Excel to open documents in separate windows so you can place them independently you can do the following:

Excel 2007:

• Click the Office Orb in the upper left corner to bring up the menu.
• Select Excel Options from the bottom right corner of the menu.
• Click the Advanced tab.
• Check the "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange" box and save.

Excel Versions Prior to 2007

• Tools|options|General tab|Ignore other applications (check it).

Then in Windows Explorer

1. Go to Tools -> Folder Options.
2. Select the File Types tab.
3. Select the XLS file type and click "Advanced".
4. Uncheck the "Browse in same window" checkbox if it is checked.
5. Select the "Open" Action in the Actions listbox and click "Edit".
6. In the "Application used to perform action" textbox add "%1" to the end of the line and be sure to include the quotes around the %1.
7. Uncheck the "Use DDE" checkbox if it is checked.
8. Click "OK" and "OK" again.
9. Repeat steps 3-8 for the XLSX file type if you have Office 2007 installed.
10. Click "OK" to dismiss the Folder Options dialog.

If you already have Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite installed, you can download and install Team Edition for Database Professionals in less than 10 minutes.  Previously I had only seen the Database Professionals edition as a separate 3 gig download on MSDN that included all of Visual Studio along with it, so I never took the time to download it and install it since I already had the rest of the Team Suite installed.

Little did I know, Team Edition for Database Professionals can be installed as an add-on, so you don't have to waste your time re-downloading the rest of Visual Studio along with it.  The add-on is a mere 7.9MB in size and will add all of the database features to your existing Team Suite installation.

The Database Professionals tools are excellent and I highly recommend them.  Microsoft's brief description of the tools:

Tools for building SQL databases in a managed project environment with support for versioning, deployment, unit testing, refactoring, and off-line SQL development.

In addition it also lets you compare the schema or data of two different databases.  A good use of this is to compare the schema/data that exists for databases in different environments (i.e. dev, test, production, etc.)  The entire list of features is far too vast to include in this post . . . maybe another time.

 

Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals Add-on

 

I am always having to open the Windows Task Manager throughout the day to kill off processes that are annoying me for one reason or another.  Usually their cpu or memory usage is out of control, so they need to be taught a lesson.  As a result I always keep the Windows Task Manger running in my system tray at all times.  Another benefit of doing this is that the system tray icon shows the current cpu usage.

To make sure that the task manager is always running I have created a shortcut to it in my startup folder.  This way everytime I start up my machine the task manager will automatically run in the task tray.  To do this you can do the following:

1. Open your Startup folder, located at: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
2. Go to the file menu and select New, then select Shortcut.
3. The dialog will prompt you for the location of the shortcut.  Type C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe
4. Click Next, then click Finish.
5. Right-click on the new shortcut and select Properties.
6. In the dialog there is a "Run" drop down box.  Select "Minimized" and click Okay.
7. Open the task manager and make sure that "Hide When Minimized" is selected in the options menu.

If you need even more info about the current state of your system check out the Process Explorer from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft).  If you don't believe me that Process Explorer is awesome, check out some of the amazing things Scott Hansleman has used it for.

SmartSetr now officially supports automatic updating of SmartSets . . . for the most part anyways.  I can commit to updating everyone's SmartSets at least once per day, however, because of the bandwidth and server consumption required I probably won't bulk update everyone's sets more than once or twice per day.  If you would like to make sure that your sets are all as up to date as they can be then simply visit the SmartSetr site and click "Refresh All SmartSets".  If you haven't visited the SmartSetr site since January 10, 2007 then you will need to visit once more and auto updates will automatically be enabled for your account.

A second feature that has been added since launch is the ability to limit the number of photos that a SmartSet will contain.  This makes it incredibly simple to create SmartSets such as Top 10 Most Interesting, or Top 10 Most Interesting of 2006, etc. that will be automatically updated daily.  The maximum number of photos that SmartSetr currently supports in a SmartSet is 500.  This may increase as I get time to test the Flickr API's limits.

Until now you have always had to manually create sets on Flickr.  You could either go to the Organizer and select photos you wish to add to the set, or you could send photos to sets from the photo's page.  With SmartSetr you can now dynamically add your photos to sets by specifying criteria and SmartSetr will create the set and add the matching photos for you. 

SmartSets are sets on Flickr that are updated for you in an automated way. For example, if you have a SmartSet based on the tag "flower", anytime you add photos to flickr tagged with "flower" they will automatically be added to your flower set for you (after you click refresh on SmartSetr).

To update the photos contained in your SmartSets you must come to the SmartSetr site and click "Refresh All SmartSets". By clicking refresh, SmartSetr will query Flickr for the photos that match the set criteria and add them to the set. I am currently working on a way to automatically update everyone's SmartSets throughout the day, as well as a bookmarklet to let you manually update SmartSets from anywhere.

There are several types of criteria that you may use to create SmartSets including tags, text, date taken, and date uploaded. You may also filter the SmartSets by privacy level, and you may sort the SmartSets by a variety of criteria including interestingness, etc.

For text based SmartSets there are several search operators that may be used including AND, OR, and NOT. For example, to create a SmartSet that contains all of your photos of red flowers you would create a SmartSet based on the text "flower AND red".

Your Flickr sets that are SmartSets should be fully managed by the SmartSetr site, except that you may change the primary photo for the set on Flickr and reorder your sets on Flickr.

Here are some interesting ideas for SmartSets

• All photos taken in 2006 sorted by interestingness
• All photos from any year sorted by interestingness
• All photos tagged with macro (dependent on your tags)
• All photos tagged with certain lenses, i.e. "canon 50mm f/1.8 II" (dependent on your tags)
• All photos tagged with the name of a conference, i.e. CES, Macworld

For more info on SmartSetr see the SmartSetr group on Flickr.  To send me a message directly send me a message on Flickr.

 

Umm, judging by my rss aggregator I would guess that IE7 was released today.   Go get it!

Flickr Sprinklr is an asp.net app I wrote to allow Flickr users to quickly add their photos to multiple groups. Flickr users often submit photos to 20 or more different groups, and the interface in Flickr currently requires you to submit a photo to each group one at a time. Sprinklr loads all of a user's groups into a table and then allows them to check off checkboxes for each group they would like to submit the photo to. If you save the Sprinklr Boomarklet to your browser's Links bar (Internet Explorer) or Bookmark Toolbar (Firefox) and then browse to any of your photos on Flickr, when you click the bookmarklet it will take you to the photo on Sprinklr so you can add it to groups.  If you hover over any of the group descriptions, Sprinklr will display a tooltip showing the group’s description so you can quickly see the rules for posting in each group.  To use Groupr you must of course have a Flickr account, and belonging to some groups helps as well.

Sprinklr has been linked to by the Great Flickr Tools Collection

It has always bothered me that the makers of my Toshiba Satellite laptop thought it was a good idea to put the `~ key where the Windows key belongs on my keyboard. The Windows Key Shortcuts are some of my favorite shortcuts in Windows. Toshiba's placement of the Windows key in the upper right corner of the keyboard severely limited my access to the key. Enter RandyRants' SharpKeys. SharpKeys allows me to easily remap the Windows key to be where it should be. I simply remapped the `~ key to be the Windows key and the Windows key to be the `~ key. Now I have easy access to all of my Windows key shortcuts again. If you care to know, SharpKeys works by adding specific registry entries in Windows to indicate what keys need to be remapped.

UPDATE: I also want to add that SharpKeys is not specific to Toshiba laptops. It is able to remap keys for any Windows keyboard.

Saw this on Scoble's blog and I'd love to give it a try in some apps and see what it's all about.

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I have noticed by watching my tracker stats that someone who has visited my blog a couple times has been searching for how to create a blog. So I thought I'd throw up a quick post on my blogging setup and the other setups that are available. I personally use the fantastic blogging engine called DasBlog. DasBlog is built using ASP.NET and is very easy for developers to customize. For example it was really easy to create my own custom theme template for my blog. Also it was relatively easy for me to build my Flickr Photos page into DasBlog. DasBlog does require that you have your own web hosting that supports ASP.NET (I use WebHost4Life). DasBlog is currently maintained by Scott Hanselman and Omar Shahine.

For those who don't currently have an ASP.NET webhost or aren't web savvy enough to setup something like DasBlog, there are plenty of great free hosted blogging services out there. For starters there is Microsoft's MSN Spaces. Spaces is a blogging service that not only allows you to create a blog, but also is great for sharing photos, creating custom lists for things like projects, and is also going to have some great features dealing with integrating content from Xbox360. A couple other popular free blogging services are Google's Blogger, and Yahoo's Yahoo! 360

I have been having connection issues with Outlook where it can't connect to my university imap accounts to recieve mail. Then a strange thing happened today. I'm working on reformatting my wife's laptop for her (it's running slow and hasn't been reformatted since she got it 4 years ago) and I backed up her Outlook data file for her. To make sure that the exported data file contained everything it needed I copied it into my Outlook data file directory (C:\Documents and Settings\Eric\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook) and renamed my Outlook.pst to Outlook.pst.old and renamed hers to Outlook.pst. Then I start up Outlook and verify that her data is there and also realize that it has fixed my connection issues that I was having. So I closed down Outlook renamed my data file back to Outlook.pst, opened Outlook and the connection issues are still fixed . . . very strange.

A friend of mine referred me to Remember The Milk today. Remember The Milk is everything that I have been searching for in tasks management . . . almost. The UI is great, simple, and easy to use. Not only that, but it allows you to do things like separate tasks into separate lists, such as Personal, Work, etc. My biggest issue with task management in Outlook is that there is no time based view of your upcoming tasks. One of the most important pieces of a task is its due date. In Outlook there is no simple way to see an overview of what is due today, tomorrow, in three days, and so on. Remember The Milk understands that tasks have due dates and priorities and gives you views on your tasks that allow you to easily see these things. So why can't I fully switch to this beautiful AJAX task management application? Because there is no local view of my data. Remember The Milk needs to have what Plaxo has . . . Outlook synchronization. If not that, then at least an API so that someone could create a desktop app to store the tasks locally and create views of it on the desktop. I need a complete task management system, and I was thinking of writing a .NET app to create a time based view of the tasks store created by Outlook. This way I would still have all of the power of Outlook task management, and at the same time be able to see a simple time based view of my tasks. Anyways, Remember The Milk would be just about perfect if there was an offline story. I'm always on the go with my laptop and there isn't always a web connection where I am, so offline data is crucial.

Yesterday I discovered that Microsoft's Remote Assistance app that is built into Windows XP actually works. I was skeptical that it wouldn't be able connect through the various routers and firewalls in place between me and the person I was trying to help out (afterall, it's still next to impossible to simply send a file to someone over and IM client). To my surprise it connected with ease and didn't require me to tweak any settings anywhere. No port forwarding, no nothing. The user experience was actually really good too. I was able to connect to my brother-in-law's laptop thousands of miles away and control his machine as if it were my own with very minimal lag. Quite an impressive experience and it will be extremely valuable when I am providing tech support to family and friends. It's much easier to just do things for people than to try and describe everything on their screen to them without even being able to see it yourself. I would agree with what Omar says about needing a way to offer other people assistance, instead of always having to explain to people how to invite me to assist them.