by Michael Krupa on December 25, 2008
As we wait for anxiously for Windows Vista 2.0…er…I mean Windows 7, there are a couple of Windows 7 features that are now available in Vista and XP
The first feature is called Aero Snap and can be downloaded here. Once Aero Snap is running you can drag a window to the left or right side of the screen (drag until your cursor is stopped at the side of the screen) and release the mouse button. The window will resize to take up 50% of the screen. If you drag the window to the top of the screen and release the mouse button the window will maximize. Dragging the window away from the top or sides will resize the window back to the original size. Once I realized that the mouse cursor had to stop at the side or top of the screen before Aero Snap would change the window size the program worked flawlessly.
The second feature is called Aero Shake and can be downloaded here. This application is pretty straightforward. When you shake the active window with you mouse, all the other windows will minimize. Shaking the active window again with your mouse will restore the previously minimized windows. In my testing on a Dell XPS laptop running Vista Ultimate I had to give the active window a pretty strong shake with my mouse before the other windows would minimize or restore.
by Michael Krupa on December 17, 2008
I received an email recently from one of the preeminent Talent Management vendors talking about using their Talent Management system to plan for headcount reductions. That particular vendor was not touting a new feature of their application but it started me thinking. Given the substantial industry wide layoffs that are now underway, should the HCM and Talent Management vendors be delivering a module specifically to help with Headcount reductions? If HR systems are truly about managing talent and not just storing information about talent then helping companies identify and retain talented employees should be paramount during a staff reduction. I know that the Performance Management modules can be used to identify both higher and lower performing employees but are these modules scaled to help with massive layoffs? Citigroup is set to layoff 50,000 employees, Bank Of America will eliminate 35,000 jobs and AT&T will let go 12,000 employees.
Are our HCM and Talent Management applications currently up to the task of helping companies make sure they retain the right people when tens of thousands of jobs are being eliminated or do we need something new to help with this? In addition to the Workforce Management menu item do we now need a Workforce Reduction menu item?
What are your thoughts?
by Michael Krupa on December 3, 2008
Over on the Windowsitpro website, Paul Thurrott lets us know that Microsoft will be delaying Internet Explorer 8 to sometime in 2009. Seems that IE 8 is not quite fully baked and needs another public update of the beta release to test out all the bug fixes. IE 8 was originally supposed to be released in late 2008. I applaud Microsoft for not pushing out software that still has some significant bugs. However, Firefox is gaining market share so Microsoft better not delay too long.
You can read the entire story here:
http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=100888&feed=rss&subj=0
Paul along with Leo Laporte also hosts an excellent podcast (I mean netcast) called Windows Weekly that can be found on iTunes.
by Michael Krupa on December 1, 2008
For all of you die hard Tivo fans out there, Tivo has released a new mobile website m.tivo.com for adding shows to your Tivo. The mobile site looks great on the iPhone (possibly the target for the mobile website).
Here are a couple of screen shots from my iPhone:
Update: I used Tivo Mobile to schedule a couple of shows including Portland’s Live@7 and found the User Interface very easy to use. Searching works quickly and it takes just a couple of button pushes to send a request to Tivo. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
