jp's technology blog

Juan Pablo Alonzo

If you are one of the Messenger fans like me and you also have a Gmail or twitter account (or both), you can now integrate those services within your Messenger.

There is an addin called Buddyfuse that will let you chat with your Gtalk contacts from Messenger and publish on twitter your MSN status.

Here is a demo video so you can check out:

You can visit their home site at http://www.buddyfuse.com/en and just in case you were wondering, they promise more social networks in future releases.

Juan Pablo Alonzo

The guys @ Gizmodo published today one of the most interesting news I have seen latetly. They published a video with one of the most secret and unexpected projects from Microsoft: Courier.

Courier is a Microsoft branded tablet which according to Gizmodo, is in the in the "late prototype stage of development”. This tablet, or more accurate, booklet seems a real deal to me. What do you think?

If you want to check the source, you can visit Gizmodo’s article here.

Courier: First Details of Microsoft's Secret Tablet

Juan Pablo Alonzo

There is a lot of people who don’t know you can import web information directly within Excel.

If there is a table you want to import to Excel, you just need to go to Data – Get External Data and select the information you want to show from the website and the cell range where Excel should put it.

Here is a screen shot to show you how to find the function.

Juan Pablo Alonzo

HowToGeek has published a ver handy tool to integrate Facebook and Outlook.

FBLook is a small utility that integrates seamlessly with Outlook and allows you to update your Facebook status, show what your playing in iTunes or WMP, see your friend status, and receive notifications.

If you want to check the tutorial on how to install and configure the tool, you can go here.

Download FBLook from here.

Via How To Geek.

Juan Pablo Alonzo

Bing just showed it’s new visual search. Take a look here:

http://www.bing.com/visualsearch

Juan Pablo Alonzo

Twitter is, without a doubt, a social network with a lot of potential, but, as it is for every social network, it is public and therefore it cannot always be exploited as much as we would like it. There are some cases where we need more privacy.

There is a corporate option called Yammer. Yammer is a micro blogging tool that allows sharing of files, videos, photos, thoughts, surveys, etc in real time between a group of people. It is private because it creates groups based on email domains and you need a valid corporate email to participate in the group. From there, you can have access to all your group’s history, messages, colleagues info, files, photos, videos and communications.

You can even create personalized groups within your network to make communications between teams more fluent (think of your marketing team). Here is the link to Yammer and see what you can do with it. They even have apps for managing yammer from your Desktop, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Outlook, Firefox, and others and an API in case you want to make your own. I think this idea is marvelous and definitely worths a look. It could be really useful.

Juan Pablo Alonzo

Did you know you can log into multiple webmail accounts at once using Internet Explorer 8?

If you haven’t seen it yet, let me give you the tip:

Press the Alt key so the Menu appears.

Go to File – and click on New Session as shown below:

IE will open a new tab where you can log into another webmail account without having to close the previous one.

Now this is a very helpfull tip!

Posted in the Official IE blog. You can see the source here.

Juan Pablo Alonzo

I have great news for all the baseball fans out there! There is an addin for keeping track on your favorite baseball games within Word 2007.

Here you can find the Ribbon Baseball Widget, which will let you see the score, inning and base situation. After installing, just select the team you want to track and the addin will download the information directly from MSN sports every 30 seconds!

I know this is not real time, but it is definitely better than reading the newspaper on the next day! I leave you and image below:

Juan Pablo Alonzo

Nobody likes scratched CD’s and DVD’s. It’s something we all have faced once and never forget. Lifehacker has posted some tricks when it comes to scratched CD’s and DVD’s. I found them really useful since they all try to solve the problem by only using stuff you can find at home. Here I give you the links to this articles so you can have them at hand whenever you need to struggle with them.

Clean a scratched CD or DVD with a banana – this article shows a video demo on repairing the cd with a banana and some glass cleaner. Doesn’t it sound easy?

MacGyver Tip: Smooth a scratched DVD with Pledge – If you have Pledge furniture polisher at home, you only need to spray some of it onto the scratched CD and gently wipe it all off with a soft micropore cloth (the ones used for eyeglasses). This is really awsome!

MacGyver Tip: Fix scratched CDs with toothpaste – Although I have to admit this one sounds weird, using toothpaste to eliminate scratches seems to be possible and easy. I bet you could try this one too!

I hope this tips and tricks work and if you have any other, let me know (never know when you would need one of these).

Juan Pablo Alonzo

Dragging Your Files to Outlook.
When you select a file and drag it to Microsoft Office Outlook, the action that Outlook takes depends on which folder you place the file in:

If you drag the file to the Tasks folder, Outlook will create a new task with your file attached.

If you drag it to the Calendar folder, Outlook will create an appointment where you placed the file, and your file will be attached.

If you drag it to the Mail folder, Outlook will create a new e-mail message with your file as an attachment.

This is a very simple trick, but very useful when working.