Creating Word Clouds

We were working on a dashboard for one of our customer and had investigated the use of http://www.wordle.net/ to generate word clouds for use in a dashboard. The site take a document and gives greater prominence to words that appear more often. In this sample we have used the last 4475 comment threads on our support forum to generate the above picture.

For a sales graphic it could be used to highlight the leading products or the most active customer or salesperson. For more information on dashboards you might be interested in attending our free workshops in the coming months http://e-ms.ie/excel-dashboard-workshop/

 

Visit us at Catex in the RDS 19th-21st Feb

We will be demonstrating how our handheld software and systems can help your business at stand C24. Come along and let us know what your challenges are and we can discuss how we can help.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web DesignResponsive web design – as defined by wikipedia – (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices  from desktops to tablets and mobile phones in both landscape and portrait.

This site has some great free responsive web templates which you may be able to adapt for your own web site.

 

http://www.os-templates.com/free-website-templates

The 5 Rules of Successful 21st Century Marketing

I attended a very interesting presentation on saturday from Franco De Bonis , DG Group – You can see the slides here http://www.slideshare.net/dggroup/dg-group-the-5-rules-of-successful-21st-century-marketing

Ransomware

I hadn’t heard of this until today. One of our client’s had an attack on their server , the malware makes a zipped (RAR) file of your data and adds an encryption to the file. It then deletes the data using the sdelete function which doesnt allow the traditional undelete file methods. There are various versions but the infected user is offered a password to decrypt the file.

The bottom line is you must have a backup process in place that is tested and verified. That wont help our client today but you may help you tomorrow!

http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/ransomware-whatis.aspx

MASC for TAS Accounting

Tas LogoMASC is now linked to TAS –  sales invoices can be loaded into TAS using the quick journal import

To import transactions into TASBooks:

  1. From Company Manager, select the company you want to import transactions into then select Company à Import Transactions. The path to the company where the files will be imported is automatically displayed.
  2. From the drop-down list select the type of CSV file you are importing.
  3. To select the file you want to import select Browse, locate the  file and select it and then click Open. The path to the CSV file appears in the bottom box.
    tas import assistant screenshot
  4. To begin the import, click Next.
  5. If there are any problems found with the import file, the errors are displayed on-screen. You should correct the errors indicated and then retry the import. To retry the import, click Retry or to close the Import Assistant to try again at a later time, click Close.
  6. Enter a supervisor user code and password for this company, and click Next.
  7. The ready to import window appears. Its vital that you do not continue unless you have already taken a back-up of your data,If you have taken a back-up of your data, to begin importing transaction click Import. When the import is complete, the Transaction Import Assistance confirms the number of transactions successfully imported.If the import fails, you will be advised of the point at which the failure occurred. This may result in only some of the transactions being imported. In this situation, you may choose to restore the back-up you tool before beginning the import and completing the import again, or editing you import file, to ensure only the un-imported transactions are included

 

Network Lunch Business Apps

Waterford City Enterprise Board is hosting a Network Lunch in the Tower Hotel on Thursday 25th October at 12.30.

Pat Jones from HANDHELD.ie – Software and Hardware for Mobile Workers will present a session that will introduce you to the world of Business Apps.

Business Apps for SME’s

Love them or loathe them apps, smartphones and tablets are the future for computing as sales for these devices exceed laptops and PC’s.  As part of our presentation we will cover

  • Smartphone and tablets  growth and future developments
  • Introduction to Apps  – defining  the difference between web  and native apps
  • Overview of the wide range of business apps for both web and native devices
  • Competitive advantage and planning for your future strategy

This lunchtime event takes place from 12.30pm to 2pm in the Tower Hotel and the only cost is your lunch (soup & Sandwiches, Tea/Coffee € 8.50).

For more information please email info@waterfordceb.com or telephone Cecilia on 051 852 883

business apps  for SME's qr code

Click here for a copy of the presentation

Recording your PC Screen


Have you ever wanted to create a tutorial to record how something should be done on a PC. Well, here is a handy little utility program which will do it.

To aid their development of Windows 7 beta versions, the Microsoft engineers built in a diagnostic tool called Problem Steps Recorder that combines screen captures with mouse tracking to record your actions.  You can launch this program from the Start Menu by typing psr.exe in the search field. Hit the Record button and the applet tracks your mouse and keyboard input while taking screen shots that correspond with each new action.  When you stop recording, your session is saved to an HTML slide show recreating your steps. You can add comments and annotations.

This tool is instantly useful if you need to create a tutorial, for example, to provide instruction for anyone on how to run an application.

Printing comments on an excel sheet

Select File page Setup
Select the Sheet option
Beside comments select “As Displayed on Sheet”

Changing the System Date with VBA

I needed to reload files into an access database and process the contents based on the system date. To avoid having to process each file manually, I found that you can change the system date of the computer with this vba code

Date= #23-Feb-2011#

And you can also set the time , a bit too easy !