Microsoft Office Reference Guide

One of the more eclectic trade shows to hit Los Angeles every year (now twice a year) is Digital Hollywood. While ostensibly a pow wow for entertainment industry moguls to do deals with technology folks, it always features stuff of interest to ordinary geeks and those looking for cutting edge products.

This year, coming on the heels of Web 2.0, the focus at Digital Hollywood was once again "community," social networking, and widgets, but from an entertainment perspective.

For example, while you might expect that a company like Slide.com hosts PowerPoint presentations, it actually is one of a multitude of sites that enable mostly kids to put up pictures and make them into slideshows.

But if you look closely at this site and many others in the Web 2.0 space, you will once again see that API's allow developers to leverage content from one site in another. For instance, the Slide.com content can be made available in a Facebook "wall;" while this is not that exciting for the mainstream technology/business world yet — it may be soon.

Facebook already has many platform alliances with other types of content — some of them business. Its Slideshare link doesn't work yet (I keep trying) but eventually real PowerPoint will also be shared in apps like Facebook.

It's also quite possible that your higher ups are clamoring for tie ins to Facebook right now. One source you can go to right now, which may surprise you, is that AOL developer network. Instead of having your own developers come up with a social network to integrate with your own intranet or extranet, you could use Userplane. To begin to work with the newly buzzing semantic web you might check out AOL's sphere application to connect your content to textually relevant information from blogs, press releases, video, photos and ads, as well as your own archives.

AOL is bursting at the seams with apps you might be able to buy or subscribe to easily — even Mapquest is part of their developer network. They were at the show selling to entertainment web site but a business web site could take advantage of this trend equally well and stay ahead of the curve competitively.

Speaking of video, it's always a big part of this show and I am interested usually from a PowerPoint perspective. At this show Microsoft's Silverlight platform followed the Web 2.0 caravan down from the bay area. What is Silverlight? It's Microsoft's latest answer to Flash as a plug in platform to play multimedia in the browser.

For Microsoft multimedia mainly means the WMV file format, but Silverlight is gaining in the entertainment world for its cross browser and platform capabilities and it has a who's who of entertainment partners already. It doesn't tie into the business part of Microsoft (yet) as much as it does the consumer area buttressed by MSN, but eventually even Microsoft Office Live, the web based product, will interface with the "real" Microsoft Office, and PowerPoint will interface with Silverlight.

At this point unfortunately Microsoft's web entertainment/consumer presence and business presence are still somewhat disconnected.

The holy grail in my opinion of web video — which Silverlight may enable eventually — is video search. At this point only a few third party Flash developers have video search per se — where the actual visual content is searchable; most video needs to be tagged to be searchable.

An interesting application at the show pushing that envelope, however, is blinkx.com.

Figure 1

The first thing you notice on their site is the video wall — it does tend to grab your attention. The second thing is the word "search."

Searching in blinkx content brings up a host of hits based on its speech to text engine that indexes the content. Blinkx also has an entirely brandable extra-browser application called bbtv.

Figure 2

This is another trend — we covered a brandable video app called VIDITalk that works in Sharepoint a while back. Blinkx is doing this for entertainment on a bit of a grander scale, although it doesn't have the user access features of VIDI or YouTube.

Other large video applications were also at the show. Working alongside Silverlight (and incorporating its technology) was Move Media Player.

Interesting that Move uses the Silverlight plug in since it apparently competes with Microsoft Media Player; but it works with major media companies like ABC to deliver online versions of shows like Lost and Gray's Anatomy.

The long awaited convergence of the computer and TV is here thanks to the web. Lots of folks use Media Center to watch broadcast TV but one company makes a cool little gizmo that broadcasts web content around the house or conference room to one or more HD monitors. The ZvBox was at the show to be sold to entertainment companies but like many new products at Digital Hollywood, it might well turn up at InfoComm geared to corporate communications users.

While many of us already connect a PC to a TV monitor one way or another (many plasmas come with DVI or VGA connectors) the ZvBox has a terrific resolution and literally creates an internal broadcast channel in your local environment; best of many features, its universal remote (great for presentations) makes the computer interface unnecessary (no mouse) and lets you navigate the device like a home remote control.

There were some other interesting businesses at the show. Sybase, formerly a Microsoft competitor in large scale databases, was there to show off various messaging and mobile offerings that would connect, presumably, to databases.

Take a Long Look @ LinkedIn

Among the hoopla concerning social networking was pioneer Linked In. Like many users I have grown tired of receiving birthday announcements about people I don't even know, but the Linked In rep took me on a tour that opened my eyes to its business potential as a communications, search and research tool.

One neat trick is that you can locate contacts in Outlook who you correspond with frequently on Linked In, and import part or all of your Contact list from MS Outlook into the social networking environment.

Figure 3

I speculated on this in a previous update as a feature and today's news had rumors of Microsoft interest in Facebook.

Linked In will use an Active X control to scour your Outlook contacts for other members, whom you can import and/or invite.

I was amazed to find within minutes that about a third of my Outlook contacts were also members of Linked In, many of whom I had not annoyed with an invitation to my own network.

Figure 4

You can also download a Linked In Outlook Toolbar to:

• Build your network from frequent contacts
• Manage your LinkedIn contacts in Outlook
• Stay connected to your network

The other terrific aspect of Linked In is its ability to take advantage of SEO (search engine optimization) capabilities for finding members and doing research.

Their rep took me through a process of changing the URL of my public profile to match my name, so that Googlers and other searchers would be able to find my several web sites (including InformIT) through my Linked In profile.

Adding keywords to my Summary and Experience fields make them meta data for searches as well, so that those who might be looking for help with video, presentations or PowerPoint might locate my Linked In profile and thereby — perhaps — hire me.

The Advanced Search window for People allows you to modify a search for those at a specific company, whether they are currently there or not. This is a good way to get the low down on working conditions from former employees and to locate individuals by drilling down by a host of useful parameters.

Figure 5

Another amazing resource is the Ask a Question feature — or actually the Answers section of Linked In.

Figure 6

You can send a question out to your network or select specific connections for potential responses. As you frame your question similar questions (already answered) will pop up, and you can get guidance on the sort of issues you may want to address.

Figure 7

A sample of questions from the network enable you to see the benefit of reaching out with queries — one netted 97 responses — thereby widening the scope of the questioner's actual network, getting him/her useful information and literally connecting him/her to other Linked In users. Browsing Q&A can stimulate your own work efforts and get you similar results.

Figure 8

Just recently I wrote an update about Career Advancement for Office Professionals; whether you are IT or elsewhere in a professional field it would seem that taking advantage of the potential of a powerful social network like Linked In would be very beneficial.

Here, finally, is an example of one of four answers to an IT related question. Couple that with the relationship opened up with those who responded, and you can see its obvious value.

Figure 9

This year Digital Hollywood proved very stimulating — if the Fall event is as fertile as the one I just attended, I will keep you posted.

InformIT Articles and Sample Chapters

How Meeting People Online Becomes Science with Social Networks

The Future of Identity

Books and eBooks

The Truth About Profiting from Social Networking

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide