As I celebrate the new year and think about my life & the goals that I've set for myself, I can't help but to feel a great deal of gratitude. And though there are many people on my list to thank personally for giving of themselves to contribute making my future possible, today is reserved to give thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr. And though I am always grateful for his great example and what he did for us, this year I wish to do something small to actually show my gratitude.

Today, I wish to assist in "building the dream" by spreading the word about the MLK Memorial that is scheduled to be completed in 2008 in Washington DC. This will be the 4th memorial in the historic National Mall (along with the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial), and the 1st non-presidential memorial ever built there.

In order for this to happen, over 20 million dollars is needed to complete the project. To make the MLK Memorial a reality, they are asking us to give whatever donations we can. I plan on making at least a $30 donation to get one of those "Dream Now" t-shirts, and will be encouraging my family to do the same (at least $5 to get a wristband and a lapel pin.)

Thank you in advance for your assistance in a great cause. May all of us have a great 2007!

BTW - I'm pretty sure that my next few posts will be about documents.

To say that I'm doing a "Dave Chappelle" would be overstating things quite a bit. No, I didn't go out of the country. No, I'm not upset at anyone regarding my creative rights (I blog this site on my own.) However, I did take a much needed break from blogging to take of several personal items of business.

One of the big items was moving me and my family from Atlanta, GA to Richmond, VA - which I would encourage people to avoid doing during the winter holiday season as much as possible; unfortunately for us, it could not be avoided. But thanks for my lovely wife arranging everything while I started my new job as an IT consultant, we were able to make through beautifully.

The best part about this move is that I'll finally have more time for things that are important in my life. This is because:

1. No more Atlanta traffic. Richmond has no idea what a "real" traffic jam is.
2. I'm only have a 10 minute commute (no interstate highways)
3. I no longer have to work 60-70 hours a week without getting overtime pay; which means I'm usually home my 6pm.
4. Life is slower and much more relaxed here than it is in the ATL.

And what are the things that are important in my life? A lot of things are important to me, but here are the ones that come to me (in this order):

1. My relationship with God - cause I believe that if I don't get this right, I won't get anything right, either. And getting it right means to follow Christ example - serving people, caring for people, and uplifting people) including myself.
2. Continuing to make my marriage better everyday. My wife and I make a great team. She is my best friend, and I love her more than anyone in the world - and I tell her everyday. I also try to show her that everyday as well.
3. My wife and I have a high schooler, a middle schooler, and two in elementary school that need all the time and nurturing they can get from their father. They are all great kids with great potential, and I'm excited that they get more of my time now to ensure (as much as we can) that they reach that potential.
4. Though I've had a good IT career thus far as a programmer, I have goals to make it a great career. For one, I enjoy teaching and I'm excited to start teaching computer classes for Learning Tree next year. I have 4 certifications left to become a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, and I also don't have a bachelor's degree yet - both of which I'd like to obtain sooner or later.
5. Blogging on BetterDocuments.com has been the perfect remedy for putting down my thoughts on topics that are important to me. I still have passionate about creating documents that are effective in every way, so I look forward to being even more expressive about that in the years to come.

This will be my last post for 2006, but if all continues to go well for me (which I'm glad to say it has so far), you'll see a lot more of me in 2007. Until then, please have a happy and safe New Year (oh! and I hope your other winter holidays were good, too!)

If your machine hasn't been updated in a while with the latest Microsoft updates, and virus definitions ... this may be a good time for you to take some time to do so. Every week, hundreds of new viruses are being created and causing PC's everywhere to buckle, particularly when it comes to Microsoft products.

The latest virus getting a lot of press is called the "Zero-day Microsoft PowerPoint" trojan virus. After you've updated your machine(s), check out these links to get more information about it:

http://tailrank.com/posts/562949953823303/Microsoft_PowerPoint_0-day_Vulnerability_FAQ
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/37089.html

Hey, be careful out there!

Virtually all of us have been guilty of sending too much e-mail at point or another (some on the verge of spamming), especially when one is exposed to it for the first time. I suppose that it's only natural since e-mail is so easy to send. When you start collecting e-mail addresses from friends and family, you have to find out if it really works; so you send stuff.  And when you actually get a reply, you get that rush of excitement; and then you get addicted. Soon, you forward almost everything in your inbox that you feel is of any significance (yes, you remember now ... don't you?)

The cure? Getting bombarded with a ton of e-mail, of course; which then makes you question whether or not the messages you send are really necessary. A post from Melissa Macbeth gives us a great checklist of questions we should all ask ourselves before send out anything. The moral of her post is this:

"If you empathize with your recipients, your e-mail etiquette will improve and you just might send less e-mail. (The tone one takes in an e-mail also makes a world of difference - but that is a whole other topic.) And when you are the recipient of unnecessary e-mail, delete it! Don’t let someone else’s bad habits cause you to have too much in your inbox."

I also believe that the principles learned here will also help us in our decisions on the necessity of creating a document. The point of any document is to provide information efficiently. Unless you're writing a novel or something else that entertains, unnecessary content of any kind masks the important points that your document needs to relay, and thus will pollute it - even a simple flyer or brochure.

Does that mean we should also refrain from creating a document under the same circumstances? I think so. Many of us have received documents via e-mail that get opened one time and then sits on our hard drive for years until we delete it (or until our computer crashes!) But now I get some that I don't even bother opening, because I never needed it in the first place.

My advice in regards to these documents are the same as Melissa's: empathize with your recipients. Do they really need the document you're sending them, or should it be discarded on arrival?

If you haven't updated Microsoft Office on your machine in a while, this would be a good time to do so. Microsoft has posted several security updates in the last week alone.

The latest concerns applies to those that use Flash files in their Office documents. As reported by Joris Evers of CNet News.com, "flash files embedded in Office documents could run and execute code without any warning" and "a successful attack may allow attackers to access sensitive information and potentially execute malicious commands on a vulnerable computer".

Microsoft confirmed that this issue is an ActiveX flaw related to a Windows component called "hlink.dll".

I'm sure most of you have seen this sentence before: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Some of you may be wondering why it's special. The reason for it's popularity is because it's one of a few unique sentences that uses every letter of the alphabet, which is called a pangram.

In addition to a brief history on pangrams, Jensen Harris shares with us a cool trick in Microsoft Word to automatically generate this pangram in a sample paragraph by typing "=rand()" and pressing Enter.  Check out this post about this trick and to read more about pangrams.

More often than not, your kids' homework is nowhere close to the kind that you used to get. My kids are no exception; in fact, it got so bad when my oldest son started middle school that we had to get him his own computer. I read an interesting article from an English teacher in Philly.com who says this:

"Students today are a product of an instant-gratification society. Writing a quality paper takes time, and most teenagers aren't willing to make that sacrifice. Like steroids in major-league baseball, technology has become a way for students to cheat - to bypass hard work and cut right to the end result."

I personally think his opinion is a bit general. Besides, in order for this to be true, all schools in our country would have to educate kids that all have easy access to a computer (which I don't think is the case just yet). However, I do believe that the possibility is great if teachers and parents aren't careful. I believe half the battle is staying involved in your child's education - which is no different than 100 years ago; the only difference is that we have the opportunity to use computers as a supplement. 

The word "cheat" is a harsh word for this teacher to use in my view. Most of the time, the child simply needs to be taught how to use a computer properly - like reminding them to use a spell checker, or teaching them the difference between typing a paper for school versus typing an e-mail to a friend. I've made my children retype and edit their schoolwork many times (much to their dismay) because it was sloppy and incomplete. On the flipside, I've been able to teach my children how to make their homework better than it would have been without a computer.

Quite frankly, I think the teacher that wrote this article is a bit too "old school" and needs a lesson on how computers have and will continue to improve our way of life, especially in the classroom. Computers are here to stay; and if we keep looking back to the past, the future will leave us behind. And I'm pretty sure you don't want your chid left behind. I know I don't!

You may or may not have notice new links inside some of my blogs with the dotted underline. If you have noticed them, you may also have noticed that they don't really do anything yet.

We are experimenting with what's called in-text advertising (by Kontera) that adds extra links to other sites automatically based on the site content. I'm trying them out to see how much value they add to my blog site (including revenue). And since my Kontera account was activated just last night, they currently don't do anything. In about a week or so, these links should give us something - hopefully interesting for us.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and patience.

I applaud the efforts of anyone taking a shot at creating their own logo, or creating one for someone else. Not you graphic artists that actually do this for a living; I'm talking to those of us that are the opposite trying to establish your own branding and save a little money at the same time. I'm very proud of the logo I created years ago, that I still use today and will continue to use for a long time. 

For those of you that fit this category, I have a public service announcement for you. Microsoft Office isn't the answer this time. It's great for creating all sorts of documents; but despite all of the graphical options that are available, it is not meant to be a graphics program.

I've seen two logos in the last week from those trying to create their own. I won't embarrass them by showing them to you, but both of them were very bad. It was obvious that they used MS Word, MS PowerPoint or MS Publisher, because they both used clipart that everyone has seen before. One of them even used WordArt with one of those weird AutoShapes.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is not how you want to portray yourself.

So you have two options. The first option is to take the time to learn how to use a real graphics program (i.e. Abode Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, Fireworks, etc.) so that your images look much cleaner and professional. You do not have to be a talented artist to be able to produce good looking graphics; you simply just have to know how to use the programs and become familiar what looks good. One of my favorite sites to get ideas on logos is CoolHomePages.com (be sure to check out the rest of the site for ideas on website layouts.)

If you don't want to do that, you probably know what the other option is ... that's right, hire a professional. For those of you that have tried to create a logo (or any graphic) in Microsoft Office, I would say that you're technical sound enough to learn how to use a graphics program and I would strongly encourage you to do. The skills you pick by doing so will come in handle for the rest of your life. Good luck.

It's been a little under a month since I launched the new BetterDocuments site, and so far it's been an enjoyable, trouble-free experience. I have a long way from where I want to be; but having a weblog site has proved to be an effective medium for me to accomplish what I've set out to do.

The "trouble-free" part of my experience is mostly due to the blog software that I selected to build my site. I wanted something low-cost (free is always good), easy to install, with a lot of features, and built on the .NET framework (being a .NET programmer myself.) After a week long search, I was very pleased to find every single that I was looking for in DasBlog, built by newtelligence.

I was able to submit a post after about 15 minutes of installation and configuration; and even though it comes with 16 site templates (themes) ready to go, I created my own theme in about a day's work - which I strongly recommend. Maintaining this site has been incredibly easy. DasBlog is very well put together technically using C#, storing all data in XML so that you don't need a database. I was also able add additional functionality of my own, all thanks to good documentation.

I wish to thank Scott Hanselman and Omar Shahine for their continued work on a great weblog engine. You also find other tips, add-ons, and kudos by searching for "dasblog" in Google. Needless to say, I am now a big fan of DasBlog, so much so that I'm going to use it for all of my blogsites ... including new personal site (coming soon!)

My first look at OpenOffice.org was back in 2001, months after its first beta version. I wanted to see what the buzz was all about, and find out if there really is a free office suite comparable to Microsoft Office.  I installed it on my PC. Honestly, I was quite impressed with what I saw. It was easy to use, and I was able to create all of my day-to-day documents in OpenOffice just as proficiently as I did in Microsoft Office, including spreadsheets.

However, after about two weeks, I began to grow tired of reformatting every other document I created in Microsoft Office just so I could use it in OpenOffice - particularly any documents with tables and borders in it. I learned early not to even bother opening any complex documents in it.  But most of all, I missed the little things that I had grown accustomed to in Microsoft Office and had enough of continuing to learn where things were.

Truly, absence made my heart grow fonder of Microsoft Office; even though I liked what OpenOffice had to offer, the decision for me was clear.  I uninstalled it from my PC. But that doesn't make OpenOffice a loser in my book. I definitely see this office suite appealing to those that like "open source" applications (where you can "look under the hood" as they say). Certainly, any organization looking to save money should definitely give OpenOffice a strong look - it is FREE after all. And if you're someone who uses about 5% of the features in Microsoft Office, you'll find OpenOffice offers the exact same stuff.

As for me, "open source" applications aren't really that appealing to me, as long as it works. I know there are arguments both ways whether or not Microsoft Office (or any Microsoft software) does; there are bugs in OpenOffice, too, and being able to look at the code doesn't make it any better in my mind. Whether you like them or not, the truth is that Microsoft Office is a great office suite; and personally, I think it's the best and is worth the cost to have the advanced features that it offers. And Microsoft Office 2007 will continue that trend (which I will discuss in a future post).

I will say that I take great satisfaction in being able to bring a floppy of Word documents over to the computer at my church, that has no Internet connection, and to be able to edit and print them from there ... yes, using OpenOffice. No matter what you like, I think that's worth saluting; and I hope OpenOffice stays around for a long time.

Back when I was a kid, my brother and I played a lot of basketball in our backyard where we had a hoop. We loved basketball (still do)! And not to be haughty, we were pretty good ballas growing up; and sometimes our competition wasn't always equal to our abilities. In those cases, one of us would usually say something like, "Me and my brother will take on you three (or four)!" Stepping up to a challenge like that is a thrilling experience, and winning those challenges made it even better - which, by the way, we did more than we lost.

I think Microsoft Office finds itself in the same situation, only not by choice. You'll find several articles and blogs on the Internet preaching how the OpenOffice.org suite is just as good as MS Office, plus it's free. I've actually tried it, and I must say that it is a very good product; and I certainly would recommend ... but only if MS Office isn't an option for you. 

There are other very interesting alternatives challenging MS Office - like ajaxWrite, a free web-based application that functions just like MS Word. And if you Google the term "microsoft office alternatives", you'll find many more ways not to use MS Office. But in case you haven't figured out by now, I think MS Office reigns supreme as the best office productivity software on the planet. And after seeing a preview of Microsoft Office 2007 and reading up on it, there should be no question which office suite is the best.

In this series of posts, I will write about what the "MS Office haters" are saying and why I disagree, features of MS Office 2007, and mostly why the benefits of other alternatives aren't good enough to switch from MS Office. To be honest, I don't know how many parts this will take; I guess I'll stop when I think I've made my point.

See you on the court.

Back in 1997, I was contractor working as a help desk technician in network and desktop support.  Most days, I was bored out of my skull.  It was then that I decided to take a stab at creating a website. The application I used to build my first 5 or 6 websites was Microsoft FrontPage 98.

At the time, it was wonderful for me because it was just like working in Microsoft Word and I didn't have to learn HTML. But as time went on, it became much easier to make precise changes by editing the HTML directly. Once I left network support for my first web programming job, I abandoned FrontPage completely and created websites from scratch with straight HTML. Though I'd never back to FrontPage (or recommend it for several reasons), I was always grateful that it helped me to launch a successful career in web programming.

Therefore, you can understand my mixed emotions when I read on The Office Letter this week that in Feb 2006 Microsoft officially announced that it will not be included in Office 2007, which means that we've seen the last of FrontPage. It is being replaced with what Microsoft is dubbing as the Next Generation of Web Authoring: Microsoft Expression Web Designer (EWD), which also will not be a part of Office 2007.

EWD is currently in early beta; and when there's more information, you can expect that I will do a product review on it (just out of curiosity). But right now, I would like pay my respects to FrontPage. Though the web programming industry has passed it by, FrontPage had a very good run and is still has a loyal user base to this day because of how easy it is to use (I can only imagine how they're taking this news.) And even an old timer like me has to admit that it paved the way for all WYSIWYG editors out there.

Thank you, Microsoft FrontPage. This blog is for you.

When I started BetterDocuments.com over 5 years ago, my plan was to provide good content on creating documents, in addition to offering my services. The reason is because I feel that this knowledge is greatly lacking. There are so many people that use word processing programs (like Microsoft Word or Wordperfect) just to get documents over with, but have no idea how to take advantage of these programs to make their business, personal life, or whatever they're doing better.

However, I've done a horrible job of providing that content. In the existence of the website, I've managed to produce only 7 articles. Though I feel that they're great articles that have stood the test of time and can be found on hundreds of other websites - nevertheless, it's time for me to step it up.

Therefore, I've made the decision to starting blogging. My hope is that blogging my many thoughts on creating documents will make for a better user experience for my visitors, help to springboard more articles, and to lead to even better service offerings in the future (like posting documents that could be useful to others.) At the very least, I believe it will help me to focus on providing better content.

I absolutely love the concept of blogging; I'm even trying to get my teenaged son to start one (who happens to be a faithful and creative journal writer). I think it's going be fun; but more importantly, I hope it's beneficial for those that visit the site. After all, I still have a passion for creating "better documents", and still believe that I can help others to do the same. Only time will tell how well I do this in sharing this go around. 

Wish me luck!