How to Use Linkedin to Sell More Books

The book I read to research this post was How to Use Linkedin to Sell More Books which is quite a good book which I bought on kindle. Actually I think this book was a free download. This book focuses on a very narrow field namely selling books on Linkedin and there is very little telling you how to actually use the site. If you want to learn how to use the site I recommend Linkedin For Dummies. This book which is very short just tells you how to make new contacts on the site. Mostly via contacting someone who knows the person or joining a group the person is a member of. There is also a little on how to do searches in Linkedin via the search box at the bottom of the page. There is a little on marketing books and e-books in general. If you are lucky enough to get a publishing contract publishing houses in general do little or no marketing especially for new up and coming authors. I think this is more of an inspiration piece for budding authors than a how to manual. I'd recommend this if it is free but I think even if it is for sale for 99 p there are better books available for the same money. The authors haven't put much effort into it. I also think there are too many books available on selling e-books & I have read lots and found little new here.

Death of the PC

The book I read to research this post was Death of the PC by Matt Baxter-Reynolds which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Apparently it was the case that every 10-15 years there was a game changing event in computing like Windows or the internet irreversibly changing things. That now in the ever more rapid rate of technological change of things is becoming every 7-10 years. Currently there is an invasion of digital devices mainly tablets and smartphones that threaten take away the Windows PC's dominance over the consumer computer industry. In business Windows and computers are still very much the dominant force. Microsoft makes most of its income from the Windows and Office products. They very much still dominate enterprise computing. It's too early to say what the next revolution in computing estimated to be around 2018-2020 will be but we are very much at a junction currently where digital devices are becoming very much lifestyle devices and part of peoples lives. Surprisingly the Chromebook which combines the easy boot up, low risk of virus infection and ability to work from resources like Google Docs on the internet. It has no hard drive and instead uses a cloud service with 100 GB free but has the advatage in common with computers of a keyboard. Currently buyers have been cautious about buying these but that may change as time goes on. One problem is buyers have to learn a new operating system. The dominance of digital devices started with Blackberry which were heavy duty smartphones with minature keyboards ideal for going on the web and answering e-mails. In the future social media is set even more closely with our lives. Android of course dominates the tablet and smartphones probably in part because it is open source and it is possible to buy tablets which are like unofficial products for around $50. Many of these are made in the far east. There are also devices officially endorsed by Google which pay them commision for the privilege.  This book looks at the major products and developments in the digital device industry and I must admit I learned a fair bit from it despite being quite tech savvy. I really enjoyed reading it. It's around 200-250 pages so is a reasonable length.

Typepad

The book I read to research this post was Typepad For Dummies by Melanie Nelson et al which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Typepad came about as a blogging engine developed for someone's blog which they realised there was demand for and formed a company called Six Apart. The company name is because the couple had their birthdays 6 days apart but anyway it has become a popular blogging service that can be either hosted or self hosted by a company like Go Daddy for which there is a version called Movable Type which is similar in terms of features and the software itself is free. Typepad is particularly good in that it is configurable especially in the Movable Type version and as in a lot of blogging programs is composed of modules. In the Typepad version you can configure it in HTML. In the other version there are other programming languages like Python you can use. This book is a little bit out of date being written in 2010 but does include the substantial upgrade to Typepad in 2009. The biggest upgrade of features to date. There is a basic free option where you get a single blog with 3 GB of space and various paid options which also let you have a customized URL among other things. This is a very good and interesting book I enjoyed reading. In the basic version you are stuck with one theme called Chroma. I think Typepad is better suited to business blogs than personal blogs but it does have various social media modules so you can integrate it with the various sites. In particular there is a friendfeed module which even informs followers of your activity on Amazon. You can do podcasts although due to the increased space involved will probably need a paid membership. I must admit I'd probably have no need to use Typepad but I do find books about the different platforms quite interesting.

How To Make A Killer Linkedin Profile

The book I read to research this post was Linkedin Gold: How To Make A Killer Linkedin Profile by Lance Willis which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is quite short and concise but makes interesting reading and I think is essential reading for anyone interested in getting another job. The book covers a lot more than just creating a Linkedin and covers a whole plethora of useful websites along with their being sections on Twitter and Facebook. If you do a search in a search engine for yourself your Linkedin profile is likely to be highly placed and is important you get it right. You should aim to get at least 500 contacts on Linkedin as then it will display it as 500+ and don't pick people at random but rather give yourself about 4 months to reach it and pick in the same industry who can help you. You should have a professionally done photo, many trade shows have photograpers who will take a photo and post it online for you for a fee. Your profile should look intelligent and include things like a mission statement and where you want to be in 5 years. You should keep abreast of developments in your industry and mention this in your profile. Your current job should offer opportunities to train if not you definitely need to change jobs. More people use Facebook to search for a job than Linkedin which isn't surprising considering the former's popularity. You shouldn't be afraid of asking for recommendations but avoid spamming people. The job seeker subscription on Linkedin is worth getting and allows you to add contacts on the site. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can tell he really knows what he is on about. It isn't a how to guide to using Linkedin for that he suggests get Linkedin For Dummies but is informative all the same. Finally bear in mind your shouldn't post anything on the web you wouldn't want an employer to read and you should always maintain professional standards.

Coming Up - Suede

I am reviewing the album Coming Up by Suede which is their most successful album both commercially and critically and an excellent album. It featured 5 top ten hits including Trash which made number 3 in Britain and was there joint biggest hit. They were an indie band from London who won the Mercury Prize for their debut album and it was also the biggest selling debut by an artist in 10 years. They are probably more of an albums band than a singles band. Fans had high hopes for the follow up to Coming Up which though turned out to be a disappointment and the band split up soon afterwards  reforming for some concerts in 2010. Brett Anderson the lead singer did do some solo albums. Brett had a relationship with Justine Frischman who later had a relationship with Damon Albarn of Blur and would later join all girl group Elastica. My favourite track on this album is probably The Beautiful Ones which iis quite haunting and widely regarded as their best song ever. Suede did later on have problems with drugs but for a while were one of the most promising indie and britpop bands.

Amazon Web Services Part A

This is the 1st installment in my blog post series on Amazon Web Services based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this cloud computing service. Cloud computing is at a stage electricity was at over a hundred years when factories needed to run their own generators to provide power to machinery. This machinery was very expensive and anything but cost effective with any repairs having to be done by specialists who were also expensive. Nowadays we have electricity boards that provide almost infinite power at low cost and we don't have the hassle of repairing generators. In the same way cloud computing offers huge computing power at low cost and in many instances does away with having to build servers and buy associated software. AWS is the biggest cloud provider in the world and is years ahead of its closest rivals. There is even a free tier with any of Amazon's services letting you try before you buy and you are only charged for what you use with things like storage used being averaged out for the whole month allowing for surges in demand. Generally you limit how much you use EC2 or elastic compute cloud which is the most expensive and typically 70% of your bill. Generally Amazon automate what services they provide you in a way that minimizes your bill. There are over 30 services provided by AWS with lots of new ones coming out all the time. Amazon gets a good deal on the hardware they buy for their server farms and do their best to pass these savings on to their clients. They call their server farms availability zones or AZ's and they have them in different geographic zones with the default one you use being in Virginia, USA and a company will typically use at least 2 of these AZ's in case one goes down. Amazon do have very tight security at these locations and operates redundancy which means everything is backed up to several servers so if one goes down there is no outage. EC2 is a virtual server with you needing to provide your own operating system and software. They charge for EC2 hourly. Simple storage service or S3 is your main storage and is used where something needs to be written once and read multiple times. You could run everything with in EC2 but it would relatively be very expensive. You are generally better off letting Amazon sort what services you have to use and charge you accordingly. Some companies even write their own applications to do a similar job to the services with in AWS although you need a very good reason if you do that.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part J

This is the 10th and last installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. First we are starting off with publishing from Visio to a web page. You have the work open on your desktop and choose file/ export and choose change file type. You choose the web page option which converts it to HTML. You name the file and click publish. It can then be imported into web design software. You can also save a file as a PDF or a XPS files and there are various software viewers free on the internet for these. You go into file/ export/ pdf or xps and then choose whether you want pdf or xps and there are various options. If you go into review/ new comment you can make comments on a drawing, useful if there are co workers working on the same project. You can also add information to a drawing by using review/ ink which lets you add stuff freehand. This information comes up like a tool tip. You can also click the shape choose pen/ then type of pen ie ballpoint pen. This lets you add information freehand either with the mouse or a dedicated tablet and pen. It can be converted to text or a shape. Using a mouse to enter text is a bit unreliable. If you convert it to a shape which is also under the pens tab it is treated with in the program as a shape and you can apply quick styles or comments to it. To co author with in Visio you need either Skydrive or Sharepoint Server. Several of you can work on the same drawing at the same time but you give co workers permissions to only change what is necessary and protect the rest. There changes come up as updates on their co workers screens. The permissions are normally set by the administrators and the file they work on will often also be a template to protect certain aspects of it in addition. To search for a particular shape you click on the search tab and enter a word in the search box. Various stencils meeting that criteria appear and also their stencil family tab for each stencil displayed will appear. You can click on a particular stencil family or group to be taken there. You can drag a stencil shape to favorites which is empty by default or right or left click the shape bringing up the various menu commands. You can use the save as command to take a stencil shape and customize it and save it in a different folder. It's worth noting Microsoft have various templates which have a vsd extension and stencils which have a vss extension on their website that are often free and quite specialized that you can add to Visio and if you have an earlier version they are frequently compatible with that too.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part I

This is the 9th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. The types of stencils or shapes you put on your workspace often have options specific to them. When you right click the shape these are among the commands that come up. Find and Replace is under home/ editing and you will usually enter the text to find and whether or not to replace each instance before moving on the next instance. If you left click a diagram you can go into process/ diagram validation. There are various options to check a diagram and you either repair it and then re check it to make a warning go away or click ignore this issue. You can turn several shapes in a diagram showing several processes which might be in something like manufacture. You select the shapes and click process/ subprocess/ create from selection. The other processes shown will normally be relegated to subprocesses or a single process. You can use subprocess shapes but that is optional. In the file tab is the print dialog box. A dotted line diagram compares the workspace to the print paper. This is shown in page set up with the other various options. There is an edit header and footer option that can put it on either every page or alternate pages. You go into that dialog box and just delete the text to remove a header or footer or both. File/ info has the options for deleting personal information or metadata from a drawing. This might be information like the author's name and address of work. The various information is displayed on the right and you can click on a field and edit it or select the remove personal information where you just select the options. If you use a template it prevents the initial drawing being modified which can happen if the person clicks save rather than save as. If you go into file/ save as in save as type choose visio template  and then to get it displayed in the templates folder you have to go into new/ options in file and select the various options to say what is locked in the template and name it. The next installment in this series will be the end and I'll try and do that later tonight.

Windows Azure

The book I read to research this post was Introducing Windows Azure For IT Professionals Technical Overview by Mitch Tulloch which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. There is a version in book form of this and Microsoft Press have released it free on kindle so people who are likely to implement Azure have a way of getting up to speed without having to shell out loads of money. There have apparently been 750 thousand downloads and of course there are lots of more specialist books about Azure by Microsoft Press that people can but. It is an online database that is a cloud computing offering and strictly speaking the software is run on the online server and you are not given a disc to run on a local machine so it isn't classed as a hybrid cloud. It works with Windows 2012 R2 & other software such as Sharepoint. Microsoft are constantly bringing out add ons for this online service such as Biz Talk and also it does all work with some versions of Linux. A lot of people use the Visual Studio Online Cloud Service with Azure as it lets them write their own addons and customize it. A lot of people use Hadoop with the database and I think that also works with the Amazon Web databases. There are 8 regional data centers around the world and in Europe they are based at Dublin & Amsterdam. This book is a decent length and goes into using Azure in quite a lot of detail. When using the cloud service your first 5 GB is free but you are also charged on things like the number of instances running. For a company it is quite competitive when you consider the cost of having an onsite server and things like software to. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book although in places it was a little tricky to understand but I definitely recommend downloading it on kindle and Microsoft are releasing free e-books about a lot of their products which I will be reviewing and would recommend.

Scrivener

The book I read to research this post was Scrivener For Dummies by Gwen Hernandez which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Scrivener is a writing software initially released for the Apple Macintosh and particularly for the OS X Lion operating system and I think the version in this book is a previous version which at the time had a cut down Windows version although in future both versions will have similar features. I did look on Google to see how much this software is and it is free for 30 days and $40 thereafter. The company that make it is literature and latte. It is particularly suited to writers as they can keep all there work in one place which it does with folders and subfolders. It also allows you to do e-books particularly in pdf and you can import your work including notes and annotations into Microsoft Word. There is a kind of add on at http://crowl.info which is a word counter useful for editing for things like magazines and newspapers. The book does a decent job of explaining how to use it although this software has been superceded by Scrivener 2 which hopefully there will be a follow up book on. The book explains where there are differences between the windows and mac versions although in the later version the features in the windows version are comparable. I really enjoyed reading it and think the price of the software does sound quite reasonable. I'd never heard of this software prior to reading this book and apparently the word scrivener is a fancy word meaning writer. It's an interesting book.

Visual Social Marketing

The book I read to research this post was Visual Social Marketing For Dummies by Krista Neher which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is about marketing your business through visual mediums like photographs, videos and presentations. Slideshare is the biggest social network devoted to presentations which most people do in Microsoft Powerpoint. Video is mostly shown through sites like Vimeo & YouTube although you can use mainstream sites like Facebook. There is a site called Instashare that lets you put on it up to 15 seconds of video. Of course many of these sites have pro packages you pay for and get additional features. There is also Pinterest where you get a tiny program which is a virtual pin that goes into your browser and when you see something you like you click it and it is embedded into your page on Pinterest. There are social bookmarking sites that work in a similar and it is worth bearing in mind a lot of what you see on the internet is copyright and you should embed it rather than copy it which infringes the copyright. This book is quite interesting but didn't have that much knowledge I didn't already know although I have read lots of similar books. I think most people would find it interesting. A lot of marketing is done with smartphones and there are apps like Vine for video editing & Photoshop Express for photo editing to help with this. Even laptops are a bit cumbersome so most people use a phone or tablet for this purpose. There is also sites like Google + and Twitter that are mainstream social media sites but have a very receptive audience for photos in particular. I did enjoy reading this book and I think it gives you the nuts and bolts for promoting your business. There is also in the Part of Tens lists of 10 types of photos and 10 types of video you can use for promoting your business. It would work equally well with promoting something like your charity or even song.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part H

This is the 8th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC about that software. In this post I am going to continue my look at containers. These are similar to groups in that both turn objects into a single item at a particular level. If you click on a container with objects inside it the format tab appears which is context sensitive. If you click format/ select container it selects the container and everything in it. You can drag objects out of a container which then become separate unlike groups. You can click format/ disband container which gets rid of the container but leaves the contents intact. There are also on the format ribbon various options for changing the heading. You can drag shapes into a container which then automatically become part of it unlike groups. You can select the container or its contents and apply quick styles to them. When you lock a container which is on the format ribbon you can't disband it or drag shapes out of it but can delete it with the delete key.

You can apply a callout to a picture with the command insert/ callout. That is the best way as you can apply the callout to the picture it is attached to. There are other methods but they don't apply it to the picture it's attached to and you have to be carefull if you move it around. A callout is like a thought cloud or speech box which are both types of callout. There are other types too. Basically it's a kind of text box. A hyperlink links text to information which can be a URL or other type of information. You can link a diagram or text including a local file with a hyperlink. The hyperlink command is insert/ hyperlink. You usually click browse in the dialog box to add the location automatically. You can enter a description which appears as a tool tip when someone's mouse hovers over it. To delete a hyperlink go into the dialog box and select the hyperlink address and click delete and then ok. If you connect the subaddress to the hyperlink with the browse button specifically for that it lets you attach a part of the page or document to it. You can attach it to a drawing but must name it and put the exact name in the subaddress box. There is also a zoom feature and you will choose the width feature that only zooms to the width of that page. By using control+click you can bring up multiple hyperlinks where they are set up for a single bit of text. You then choose one from the pop up menu. To set up multiple hyperlinks merely use the add key and enter the hyperlinks into the box in the dialog box.

Stealth Warplanes

The book I read to research this post was Stealth Warplanes by Doug Richardson which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book was published in 1989 so is probably a bit out of date but is quite interesting because there is a whole plethora of aircraft incorporating stealth technology including the quite well known F-117A Stealth Fighter. It does have other aircraft like the U2 & Blackbird but a lot of the aircraft I had never heard of and a lot never made it past the prototype stage. Of course the aircraft we know about are mostly out of service or old and the latest technology often referred to as black ops is mostly top secret. Most of the stealth aircraft fly at less than the speed of sound because things like having quiet engines and appearing insignificant on radar wouldn't work. Often they are used over fairly short distances for detailed reconaissance although there are some super quick aircraft where the aim is to out run missiles. An example is the SR-71A Blackbird where for many years the only country that could shoot it down due to their incredible speed and flight altitude was the Soviet Union although there were reports the North Koreans did their best to shoot them down. The Stealth Fighter is composed of a low density carbon composite that doesn't show up on radar. In the Second World War the Japanese Warships painted to resemble smaller less significant ships from a distance and the British painted their Canberra's camouflage green on top and sky grey underneath so the roots of this go back quite a long way. There are aircraft that have the heat from their engine outlets diffused and often have quietened piston engines. There are various decoy measures to fool missiles and another system is to flood the air defences with decoy missiles so genuine ones can get through. Of course yet another measure is spy satellites but to get the right information often requires a closer look and these satellites can often be fooled. If you see this book being sold cheaply secondhand it is worth reading and I did learn quite a bit from it as well as enjoyed it.

Corporate Blogging

The book I read to research this post was Corporate Blogging For Dummies by Douglas Karr which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . This book is about blogging as it relates to big companies. They normally use a specialist blog platform like Wordpress VIP or Compendium and will have a theme specially written for the job. One thing it says in the book is you must give the bloggers time to settle in and develop their style as bloggers. I know when I initially started blogging I tried to write about subjects and gradually found doing book reviews where I tried to give people an idea of some of the things that were in a book was better. Quite a bit of this book is on SEO, Google Analytics and landing pages, much of which I have covered in other books. They are important in corporate blogging where you want what you write to be read by quite a large audience. Google Analytics can be linked to many blogs and gives feedback on things like what people read and demographics of your audience. Of course with a big company you might want something more heavy duty like Omniture. An important thing is don't just regurgitate your sales spiel but try and put information in that people can't find elsewhere particularly about your products. You can compare your company to your competition although you have to be realistic about this and make sure the competition doesn't ridicule what you say. You should try and develop a chatty style where you tell people about every aspect of your company. It isn't just buyers you will visit your blogs and you should have a customized URL and preferably have blogs in the name to let people know what it is. Smaller companies might use a platform like Typepad or Moveable Type or even a self hosted Wordpress blog. You can get the Wordpress software which is open source and free at http://wordpress.org . Many like this option because of the huge amount of potential customization available and plug ins. I did quite enjoy this book which covers the topic well.

Mind Mapping Secrets For Business Success

The book I read to research this post was Mind Mapping Secrets For Business by Katie Darden which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is quite short but succinct and is informative on this topic. Apparently Katie has taught mind mapping to students so does seem to explain it quite well. The British psychology author Tony Buzan came up with the idea of mind mapping and was inspired by ideas in science fiction novels of a technique of showing relationships between things and doing it in a visual way. A mind map typically will have a photo or picture in the centre showing the key subject and will have wider branches coming out of the centre narrowing as you go further out. The key thing is for it to be visual and pictures tend to be used to symbolize things along with keywords running along many of the branches. Many people use software to do mind maps and they certainly make it neater and are especially good for the beginner. This book does promote freemind a free open source mind mapping software and even includes how to install it. There is a whole list of free mind mapping software in the book. Some applications mind mapping is particularly good for are SEO, website design, planning your day, studying and revising and anything where you need to plan out your thoughts. Everything in a mind map is put in categories so that you don't miss anything out. The human brain can remember between 5-9 items in any one go and this retention improves if the items are put in groups or any kind of logical order. Another technique is of course mnemonics where you come up with a sentence that the first letter of each word represents an item. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would probably read other books by this author and think it is a pretty good book if a little bit short.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part G

This is the 7th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to look at themes mostly in this post. If you press shift and left click on the corner of some shapes it works differently but only on certain shapes. With triangles for example it changes its constraining proportions and with a square it will let you change it to a rectangle. If you click on design/ themes there is a variants option next to it that changes according to what theme is selected. There is flyouts in both themes and variants with various selections. On themes is a setting called apply to new shapes which is selected by default but when unticked the theme has to be manually added to each shape you draw and doesn't inherit anything you previously drew. There is effects, connectors and embellishments options in themes. Embellishments is normally best set to automatic. Effects does things like drop shadows and connectors changes the appearance of selected connectors between shapes. The theme you set up is automatically set up in themes flyouts for re use. There is a setting to apply it to all pages in a document. File/ paste just pastes a shape minus the formatting information. File/ paste special has various options for pasting the formatting settings for text and shapes. This includes themes. Home/ shape styles concentrates on settings for the shape. You can set things like fill color and a gradient if needed. You can cut, copy and paste with in this program using the shortcuts control+ x for cut, control + c for copy and control + v for paste like in most other programs. When you do some text somewhere and do some in another shape only the font color is stored and passed on by default. The command to copy formatting information is home/ paste/ format painter. You normally select what you want copied and have to select what you want copied and where you want it to go to. If you double click on the format painter it copies all the formatting information.  When you select shapes going onto something else you can put them in containers or groups. Home/ group does grouping and insert/ container is the container command. Groups using a default visual boundary around the group but containers let you choose a boundary from the options. In groups you can double click a shape and move it outside the boundary but if you move the group the shape will follow. In containers the shape can be selected by a single click and moved outside but then becomes separate and follow the boundary if moved. Also you can add text to containers in predefined titles specially for that purpose. In groups text is normally just put into the centre space in between the group.

AKA - Jennifer lopez

I am reviewing the album AKA by Jennifer Lopez or JLO as she's often called. It is very much a dance album and I think a good addition to her collection. It is an excellent album. Her career does appear to have hit a renaissance since he featuring on American Idol as a judge. It's amazing how good she still looks at nearly 45. She first hit the big time with the film Selena & with the film Out Of Sight, directed by Steven Soderburgh and also starring George Clooney she was the first latin actress to be paid over $1 million for a film. She was born in New York of Puerto Rican descent and her parents didn't want her to work in the entertainment industry to the extent that she had to move out of the family home. She was the first person to be number 1 on the US Cinema Chart and have a number 1 single on the Billboard Chart in the same week. She topped the FHM Chart of sexiest female twice. She is very much a business woman in addition to her acting and singing with her retailing fragrances and fashion clothes among other things. Her career did go through the doldrums prior to her being on the American Idol. She did feature in a couple of films with Ben Afleck and had a high profile affair whilst being married to someone else. The films weren't well received with one critic quipping nobody will go and see the one film unless they show her on the movie poster in a coffin. She died in the first 15 minutes and her relationship with Afleck was attracting controversy in the press. Apparently she has a fortune of $250 million and I did look at the wikipedia article which I do recommend.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part F

This is the 6th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course by VTC on this software. If you click on review/ shape reports it lets you configure reports to get them just right. There is an autocomplete feature to help you find preselected fields. Selecting and clicking add lets you add a field. Similarly using the remove button lets you delete it. Clicking finish takes you into the wizard where you can configure it. If you select view/ then tick dynamic grid and connection points it lets you see potential connection points on a shape that you can add. Home/ align,  aligns shapes. There are various options on the fly out like align left. If you have several shapes one will be designated an anchor shape with a slightly darker outline and the other shapes will align to it. Autoalign aligns shapes to a set amount and lets you choose another anchor shape. The position button also under home has various options and aligns and spaces out shapes. There is an option where you can specify figures for alignment and spacing and a position/ autoalign and space which uses default values. If you hover over the button with the mouse it gives you a preview. Home/ connection which is an x button lets you add a connection point. These are dynamic and adapt to you moving shapes around with the connection point remaining the same. If you right click on the connection point of a shape you can select whether you want it to be inward, outward or inward and outward. Using control and the scroll wheel zooms in and out. Using just the scroll wheel on the mouse lets you scroll up and down on the page. Pressing control, shift and w lets you zoom to the extents of the image or images. View/ task panes brings up a floating panel which you can drag around the screen. You can choose a region on the screen to go to by simply clicking and dragging towards it. The x icon closes the pane. Finally some shapes like a triangle have various handles where you can do things like drag the point to somewhere different. Not all shapes have this.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part E

This is the 5th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to write about linking shapes to data. If you right click a shape in visio and select from the menu data/ define shape data it lets you specify data for that shape. If you drag a shape partly off a page it expands to accommodate that shape by default. File/ auto size sets whether this is default or not. File/size changes the page size either to a predefined size or a custom one. File/ orientation selects whether the page is in landscape or portrait mode. Properties are copied from what you have set up and what the last page you had, had for its properties to any new page you create although you can still change these properties. If you choose insert/ new page it creates a new page. You can have a watermark on a page which is useful for security or copyright reasons. You generally have to create the watermark although there are some predefined ones you can select. When you create a watermark it is automatically imported into the page set up dialog box. Design/ backgrounds brings up a background page normally on its own layer. You select a blank background in with the foreground page selected to get rid of a watermark. Data/ refresh all refreshes the shape properties and links connected to a shape. You will often specify a frequency for how often you wish it to be refreshed. Review/ shape reports lets you do a report on the properties of a shape. You normally select what fields you want displayed and the format ie excel workbook or visio shape for it to be displayed in. You can also link data to a excel workbook in either a single page which is done by default or by selecting various pages.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am mostly going to look at org charts. In org chart mode mostly there are either actually in the workspace or about to be displayed some org charts, there is an org chart tab which appears. You can apply any shape to the elements of the org chart and it is infinitely configurable. If you select one of the shapes and click  position you can select a predefined job title which is then applied. If you click the photo icon you can select a photo which is then applied to that person's shape. You can apply photos en masse but it is essential they are labelled so they can automatically be applied. This won't work with a digital camera where most photos are numbered rather than labelled. You also to do this use a multiple selection of the shapes. If you click on home/ layer/ assign to layer you can assign several selected shapes to the same layer. If you still click on layer but also click on layer properties on the same button, you can configure the properties for that layer. You can lock a layer in properties to preventing accidently selecting it. You can click on home/ select/ select by type and can select the constituent parts of a layer. When you delete a shape the properties for that shape remain and you can apply them to new shapes. Simply select active then draw shapes. You can select a layer with in select by type or select something with similar properties ie shapes. You can set properties for a shape although not all shapes have this type of data. One that does is flowcharts. This data isn't generally displayed but is attributes. The command for this is data/ shape data and you can tab between the fields or left click them. The attributes can be things like currency, a serial number or boolean. The last is typically true or false values.