One of the obvious differences between Tag barcodes and standard QR codes is that Tag barcodes can be customized and full color, as well a black and white. Tag barcodes are eye-catching. For a quick video showing how Tag can be used, first download the Tag app using your smartphone and scan the Tag on the right.

And in December 2011, Tag became the only platform that lets you create, read, and track Tag barcodes, QR codes, and Near Field Communication (NFC) touchpoints. At last you can delete all of your different QR code reader apps, and have only one app to read any Tag barcode, QR code, or NFC touchpoint.

You can find detailed information about creating Microsoft® Tags, including examples of customized Tags and ideas for using them at the Tag website

TechFleur plans to offer Tag creation and reporting services in the near future and here is the Tag I created so you can add my contact information to your smartphone. Remember to download the Tag app first.

Look for more exciting news about my experiments with Microsoft® Tag in future posts.

恭喜發財 (Kung Hei Fat Choy)

Today is the 2012 Lunar New Year of the (Water) Dragon, which is the Chinese year 4710, 4709, or 4649 depending on which version of the Chinese calendar is used. The Year of the Dragon will extend to February 10, 2013.

Coincidentally, today is also my wedding anniversary. My totally delightful husband and I plan to celebrate both momentous events with traditional excessive culinary enjoyment, in anticipation of which I’ll spend the day exercising and working diligently on this blog to burn as many calories as possible.

I wish all of you 雙喜 (shuāngxǐ) Double Happiness, health, and prosperity in the coming year.

There’s a slide titled “STUDENT WHO OBTAINED 0% IN AN EXAM But he didnt [sic] answer any question wrong!!”¹ making the rounds on facebook. The questions and answers on this slide are undoubtedly parodies, but they’re also exquisite examples of the potentially wide gap that can exist between clarity and intention, a gap into which readers can fall.

The first question and answer on the slide is:

Q1. In which battle did Napoleon die?
* his last battle

Technically, the answer is correct, but it’s obviously not the expected answer. The question could have been more specific:

What is the name of the battle in which Napoleon died?

This form of the question makes it clearer what type of answer is expected.²

Another question and answer from the slide:

Q9. How can a man go eight days without sleeping?
*No problem, he sleeps at night.

This question is confusing in a number of ways. While the use of the word “day” referring to a 24-hour period is commonly understood, the person answering the question used the word in the sense of “daytime” vs. “nighttime.” The question could also be asking whether a man can stay awake for eight days/nights; how a man might survive without sleeping for eight days/nights; or the method(s) a man might use to avoid sleeping for eight days/nights. You may be able to come up with other possible interpretations.

In both business and technical writing and editing, you help your readers when your documents are specific, unambiguous, and consistent.

²Of course, regardless how the question is asked, the correct answer would be that Napoleon didn’t die in battle. He died on the island of St. Helena due to stomach cancer or, as some have maintained, of arsenic poisoning.

You can add a watermark to the pages of an Excel worksheet by inserting a picture field in the center section of the page Header. Sometimes, however, the watermark does not display in Print Preview or when the document is printed. You confirm that the picture field (&[Picture]) is in the page Header, so why doesn’t the watermark appear on the page?

The short video and step-by-step instructions below explain the reason that the watermark is missing and how to solve the problem.

Background
The requirements for your worksheet are: 1) there should be no gridlines, and 2) a “Draft” watermark should print on all pages.

Your worksheet looks fine. The gridlines have been removed by applying the white fill color to the entire worksheet. However, when you check Print Preview the “Draft” watermark you had added to the page Header doesn’t display. You check the page Header and the picture field is still there. So what’s the problem?

Answer: The white fill color you used to hide the gridlines also hides the watermark. Here are the steps to correct the problem:

Step 1: Remove the fill color from the worksheet.
           a. Click the Select All button, which is located at the intersection of row 1 and column A.
            b. Select “No Fill” in the color picker tool. The gridlines are now visible. When you check Print Preview, you see the watermark.

Step 2: Hide the gridlines on the worksheet.
            a. Open the File tab and select Options.
            b. In the Excel Options window select Advanced in the navigation area.
            c. Scroll down to the area titled “Display options for this worksheet:” and uncheck the “Show gridlines” checkbox.

When you go to the worksheet, the gridlines are hidden, and when you go to Print Preview, the watermark displays.

I believe in protection of rights in authorship for people who create or own rights to original content in any media, and I also believe in the openness of the Internet that allows appropriate sharing of that information. Copyright law is already in place, but the protections offered by the current law aren’t always sufficient to prevent financial losses or dilution of value in intellectual property.

Nevertheless, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261 and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) take the wrong approach to supporting copyright owners, and offer solutions that can potentially cripple the Internet as we know it today. Even though SOPA has been delayed, PIPA will be considered tomorrow and I’m sure that this issue is not dead. Online piracy is a real issue that affects all content producers, including this site, and as an author of content, I’m concerned not only that someone may steal and benefit from my work but that I may inadvertently misuse the content of others. As stated on the U.S. Copyright Office site:

The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

Creative Commons has attempted to address this issue by providing authors, developers, creators, and owners of copyrights a way to provide a blanket set of “permission to use” options. Many copyright holders are willing to share their content as long as they are credited with authorship/ownership and, for Internet content, links back to the original work are included in any derivative uses. However, there are those who disagree with the Creative Commons approach to copyright because they believe that some of the Creative Commons options may confuse consumers.

The problems associated with ownership and enforcement of copyright will continue to evolve as technology makes it easier and easier to copy and distribute content. I expect that we will see ongoing efforts to protect the financial interests of copyright holders, particularly large corporate interests. I hope, however, that the Internet in the United States will remain an open platform for the appropriate sharing of information, opinion, and creative effort, and that this freedom will extend to countries where it does not exist today.

I feel the same way about using old documents as the starting point for new projects. It’s tempting to use a document with existing text, formatting, images, and other components to reduce the work required to create a document from scratch. But no matter how clean a document looks, it can contain hidden problems that add time and cost to a project. Similar problems can occur when multiple authors work on the same file because each author may have different, possibly incompatible, ways of achieving a desired look-and-feel.

You can, and should, still use templates for efficient document production, and here are some suggestions to help you decide what works best.

The word “template” can refer to several different forms of master document. The master document may contain only the underlying formatting information, portions of text with areas to fill in the blanks, or macro-controls/plug-ins to reduce errors. A “clean” master document contains no project-specific information. However, it’s also very common to use a similar, pre-existing document as a template.

How do you know when it’s best to use a clean master document or a pre-existing document as a template?

Use a pre-existing document if:

• you created the document yourself;
• you are confident that the formatting in the pre-existing file is relatively clean;
• the document you’re working on is relatively short (e.g., 50 pages or less);
• the particular document is not prepared frequently, and/or
• you don’t have technical resources available who are able to create a clean master document.

If any significant problems occur in formatting the document, you can always create manual workarounds so that the appearance of the document is correct even though the mechanics of the document aren’t working.

Use a clean master document if:

• you know or believe that the pre-existing document that is provided as an exemplar is broken;
• the pre-existing document that is provided as an exemplar has a number of unnecessary formatting codes that may be misused by an unsuspecting author;
• there is no pre-existing document that can be used as an exemplar or as a template;
• the document is relatively large and you suspect that there are hidden errors in the formatting code;
• you will be updating a number of similar documents; and/or
• there are a number of similar documents that will be prepared over a period of time.

I have sometimes found that it is faster and safer to create a clean master document with formatting into which I copy-paste the content from the authored text with no formatting, and then apply the defined styles in the master document to the text, than it is to try to work with a pre-existing document with a questionable formatting setup. I then always go to the clean template when preparing similar documents rather than using one of the documents that was built on the original clean template. This is a good habit to acquire because after you have finalized documents, someone else may have made changes both to the text and the formatting. Or the file may have become corrupted. Or infected with a virus.

I’d love to hear your comments regarding the use of templates in document production. If you have any great tips or suggestions, please share.

(See also: To Meet Your Deadlines, Begin at the End

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent. — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is a simple post in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He worked tirelessly for civil rights. The battle is not over. It starts again every day, and will continue until justice and equality apply everywhere. We honor Dr. King today in celebration of his birth, but we celebrate his life’s work in action to ensure the rights of all Americans, not merely protecting the rights of a few.

There is a relatively simple solution.

Instead of printing to PDF, use the Save As . . . PDF option. It may take a little longer to process the PDF, but the resulting file will more closely reflect the formatting of the original.

Note: If you have set a page size, such as 11×17, the PDF that is created using Save As . . . may actually be a different size. To verify that the page size for your document is correct, open the Print Dialog using the Print option on the File menu. Put a check in the checkbox for Choose Paper Source by PDF Page Size (Windows). If the page size is wrong, you can correct it by printing the existing PDF file to a new PDF file. Be sure to change the page size using the Properties option before printing the file.

Another option that may work is to use a PDF utility like PDF ReDirect, which is a free download.

Adobe Special Offers

There are more effective ways to use PowerPoint, and I plan to present creative options on this blog. One of the first is an article by Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist at Apple, innovator, and venture capitalist. He lays out 11 topic slides and their relative importance in a pitch to potential investors.

Here is Kawasaki’s article, How to Create an Enchanting Pitch, and below are some key takeaways:

• Your business needs to be at a point where venture capital or outside investors makes sense. Ideally, your business will have a track record that shows viability.
• Focus on why consumers/customers want your product or service, and how you execute better than the competition.
• Your demo is more important than your slides. Put the majority of your effort in a great demo and use slides to maintain visibility of key information.

Kawasaki’s advice applies to more than venture capital presentations. It applies just as readily to project proposals and sales presentations.

You can see that the key items in the presentation relate to the business and not to PowerPoint itself. PowerPoint is how the message is delivered, but it is not the message. It is a tool; it is not the point. In future posts, I’ll show you how to use PowerPoint to communicate more effectively.

If you have Windows 7, you also have the Problem Steps Recorder (PSR), which records screen shots of the actions taken on the computer. The screen shots are stored as a MHTML document with the .mht file extension. This file is saved as a compressed ZIP file.

Step 1: To launch the PSR, click the Windows 7 Start button.

Step 2: In the Search text box on the Start menu, type “psr” (without the quotation marks) and Windows will automatically initiate a search.

Step 3: Click on the PSR link in the list of results.

Step 4: Click the Start Record button on the PSR and perform the steps that reproduce the problem.

Step 5: Click the Stop Record button.

Step 6: Give the ZIP file a name and save it the file on your computer.

You can review the recorded steps by opening the ZIP file and clicking on the .mht file. More information to help you use the PSR tool can be found on the Microsoft website: How do I use the Problem Steps Recorder.