Utterz seems to be locking up the franchise on making easy podcasts and video blogs on the internet. Fast efficient and effective, plus it is very easy.

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There is an idiot light in Excel that often times needs to be shut off if you want to keep your sanity and keep your spreadsheets looking sharp.

The evil little critter looks like a paint brush and shows up hovering slightly over the edge of a cell’s corner.  It is supposed to tell you that the cell in question does not have the same formula as a cell next to it.

That is great if you have a massive spreadsheet of heavily repeating formulas.

However, when you have a spread sheet where the cells formulas are very different from cell to cell it gets in the way and becomes tedious to deal with, especially if you need to click into a cell obscured by this paint brush.

Plus, when it comes time to offer up your spreadsheet in a presentation or report, having a bunch of paint brushes in the document can infer to the people receiving your report that you have errors where none really exist.  This is bad for conveying confidence in your numbers and results and I advise that you turn this little whiz bang off in your spread sheet before you send it out. 

Of course, the people that receive the spreadsheet may have it on and there isn’t much you can do about that unless you put the spreadsheet into a pdf or something.

Here is how you can shut the paintbrush error / idiot light off in Excel!

Go to Tools in the menu, Select Options, then uncheck the box that says

Inconsistent formula in region

Then hit ok and click on a cell somewhere in the spreadsheet and it should be gone, until you reactivate it.

Hope that helps a little bit, its not curing mesothelioma or other types of cancer but might reduce your stress level a bit.

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I have been waiting for a service like this for years.  Qipit takes images that you snap with your mobile phone camera or just a regular digital camera of things like white boards, hand written notes and other documents and converts them to text using OCR, Optical Character Recognition, technology which has evolved very significantly over the last 12 years.

As a heavy mindmapper I often times try to use electronic mind maps instead of a regular white board, but some things are just easier on a white board.  I use mind maps so heavily because they enable me to capture that information very rapidly. 

However with this type of service and application, I have the ability to get a great electronic backup with very little effort.  Not to mention, I can get electronic iteration captures as the white board notes evolve say during one of those meetings where it seems like everyone will step up and drive the dry erase marker over the white board to get a feel for the issues or add to the discussion.

Now with my 1 megapixel camera on my phone, I can only convert images from white boards.

However, these days I always carry a small digital camera with me as well.  With that I can also upload images from my computer to the site and have documents scanned and read via OCR as well or even have hand notes converted.

Or Here’s a great tip if you are Mobile without a WiFi connection or computer

Take the picture with your regular digital camera.  Pull the flash card out of the camera and drop it into your phone or smart phone and add the better quality image as an attachment and send it to Qipit via email!

So in review this is a very cool and did I mention FREEEEE!  service.  It takes your pictures of handwriting from white boards or even from printed documents and uses OCR technology to create a soft copy or it can even publish straight to your blog or website.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of electronic white board tools and applications, even some touch screen surfaces requiring expensive investments in large screen devices and the wiring and connections and tuning and plasma mount to keep it from falling off the wall, etc, etc, etc. 

This is just a simple little solution that is ready to go for almost any user and the setup only takes about a minute.

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This evening (well its actually 2 am) I’m working on putting together my schedule and travel plans for SXSW in Austin Texas next month.  I have never been to SXSW nor to Austin, although I did live in San Angelo Texas for about a half year when I was going to intelligence analyst and cryptography school back in the early 90’s.  That seems like aeons ago, and it is amazing how much I have changed since then so I can only imagine how much Austin must be different today.  SXSW is a film, music and interactive media festival and conference.

No Stranger to Film and Music Festivals

These days I am more heavily involved in interactive media than I am in either music or film.  Never the less, I did live in Savannah, Georgia for several years and I am no stranger to film and music festivals having run a bar on River Street in that music festival happy town.   In fact, my wife’s alma mater, is the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and they will be an exhibitor at the show.  They are renowned in part for their animation and graphic design programs and they are growing into one of the largest art schools in the world (I think they are like 2nd or 3rd now with schools in Savannah, Atlanta and France.)

Forest Gump (the bench scene) was filmed behind my apartment while I lived in Savannah, and my wife working for River Street Sweets helped make the actual box of chocolates.  Chocolate covered rice crispy treats so that Tom Hanks wouldn’t get to sick if he had to eat them in multiple takes.

If you haven’t read the real Forest Gump book by Winston Groom, you are missing out on one crazy and very funny book.  The movie is to the book what cool aid is to a pitcher of daiquiris.

Hunting Down an Entertainment Industry Evolution

I’m going for the People and the continuance of a Zeitgeist build that seems to be tracking through several forms of New Social Media that includes video, music, blogging, social media, networks, consumer electronics and coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show definitely includes virtual reality!

I was stunned and amazed at the progress that virtual reality technologies have made in the last 12 months.  Attending CES in 2008, was like stepping into a Neil Stephenson novel and finding a functional world on a cusp of overtaking the real world.

I am keyed up to talk to many old friends from recent blog and podcast expo shows, and I am very eager to see how these areas cross paths in a setting like Austin with an extended community of music and film people and industries adding to the mix.

Fun Fact - the bench in that scene does not sit in that location in that particular square.  They moved it to get a better view of the monument in the back and for lighting purposes.

Biking It!

I think I am going to try and rent a bike for the convention to get around Austin, as opposed to renting a car.  It sounds a lot more fun.  I walked most of CES in Las Vegas.  I’ve done cabs, and I’ve done limousines(more limos than cabs) and I’ve done rental cars.  You just don’t get the feel of a town when you are in a cab or limo or rental car.  Walking and biking it sounds a lot more practical and fun and hopefully might be better for meeting people as well. 

I’m not going to Austin to talk to the cab drivers. I’m going there to talk to the people at the show!  In a situation like this, I think you have to live by the tenet of

What would Iggy Pop do?

No I don’t mean slicing your self up on stage in a half naked state of delirium, but just generally being there, being cool, and creating something expressive that connects with people.  I’ll skip the broken glass and go for everything else.  Note to self, load up my MP3 player with some Iggy Pop music for the ride.

If the travel plans come together, I will hopefully arrive Friday night on the 8th to attend the sessions Saturday through Tuesday on the 12th, flying out Tuesday night.  So that will be 4 days and 4 nights in Austin.

Lugging the Studio Around

I took close to 30 pounds of gear to Las Vegas for CES.  Heading to Austin it will probably be just over that as I will not only take my camera but probably the mobile components of my podcast studio as well.

I usually hump most of that gear on my back.  One thing that I learned in the Army years ago is that humping stuff in a back pack doesn’t really make you stronger, just makes your muscles more knotted up and dense.  It builds stamina.  I’m not excited about that part of things, but hey its nothing that a good soak in a hot tub and some drinks can’t fix.

Will You Be There?

If you are in the Austin area or planning on attending the conference between the 9th and 12th (its a 10 day event) let me know, drop me a comment or email or something.  Love to connect up with any readers, friends, acquaintances or people pushing the envelope in different directions.

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