Periodic Ramblings

Looks like low cost air carrier Ryanair in Europe is contemplating charging people to use the toilets during flights.

Wonder what revenue generating idea airlines will come up with next.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7914542.stm

I had a need today in an Excel spreadsheet to highlight a cell based off of whether or not it was the same as another cell.  This can be accomplished rather easily, using the Conditional Formatting feature found within Microsoft Excel.

Under the Format menu, choose Conditional Formatting and you will be presented with the following dialog box.

From here you have an option to choose from two types of conditions:

Cell Value Is: Change the formatting of the cell based off of the current value of the cell.

Formula Is:  Change the formatting of the cell based off of the value computed by a formula.

Also, you are no limited to just one condition, you can place multiple conditions on a cell, so based off the condition being set, you may have different formatting that you would like on the cell.

Example: If the Cell is greater than 10 highlight the cell in green, whereas if it is greater than 20 highlight it in a nice share of yellow.

Here is a screenshot of the dialog box filled out for the example given above.

Conditional formatting is a powerful tool for highlighting specific information within an Excel spreadsheet.  I use the conditional formatting when I want to show what values have changed in an analysis spreadsheet.  This draws the attention immediately to the values that need to be focused on allowing for less discussion when presenting the information as there is no question as to what information should be addressed.

Techcrunch posted a list of 21 Twitter Applications.

The Top 21 Twitter Applications (According to Compete)

Posted using ShareThis

I had a need today to capture an image of the currently open dialog box and realized that I did know if that could be done in Windows.  Figuring that there are others that also have that question, here are the two capabilities and their corresponding keystrokes in Windows.

Full Screen Capture -> Print Screen Button

Active Window/Dialog Box -> Alt-Print Screen Button

This saved a potential headache, as I was going to grab the whole screen and then cut/paste what I needed in Gimp.

As an iPhone owner, one of my biggest complaints was that there was no over the air syncing for Contacts or Calendar unless you subscribed to MobileMe or were using an Exchange Server.

As a user of Google products, I was frustrated that I could only sync Contacts and Calendar through iTunes.  So, if I did not sync to my computer, I would not have the changes to my Contacts or Calendars.  Well, other people must have had the same frustration as me, because Google released Google Mobile – Sync for various mobile devices, the iPhone included.  As with most Google products it is “Beta” but for Google this usually means a step above most companies.

It utilizes Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol and therefore mimics an Exchange Server setup on the iPhone.   I immediately setup the iPhone to sync to Google Contacts and Calendar, following the straight forward instructions for adding a new Account on the iPhone.  It immediately updated my Calendar and Contacts on the iPhone with what was stored in my Google account.  The only caveat that I did notice, was that the groups  I had setup in Contacts did not sync.  I am not sure if this is by design or something that I did wrong.  Other than that, everything worked as designed.  I can finally update one calendar and have it available on my iPhone and the web with the same information.

Thank you Google.