Live With Ani

the IT Girl's Guide book on Facebook

For those of you who have not yet had a chance to see my fan page on Facebook, check it out, and if you like it become a fan!

The book's out and I am looking for wonderful people to try the book and let me know what they think. I am super excited sine this is the 2nd book in the series and am looking for ways to get the book out to those who can benefit.

We began this journey with Wiley publishing in 2005 and the first book was about blogging with Moxie, which came to market in 2007. The book I authored was published on Aug 25th 2008 (this year) and I am looking for ways to promote it. My goal is to reach as many non-technical women as possible and to encourage them to learn Excel. Excel is one of several software products in the family of Microsoft Office, and I would love for women to try it, then go out and put Excel to use, in their everyday lives. If you want to go from being a stay at home mom to an office job, a minimum wage job to an office role, or if you want to keep track of your Christmas gifts, or just put your recipes in order, Excel is a great tool to know. No matter what you enjoy doing everyday, this is a fun way for you to learn Excel.

The goal that is near and dear to my heart is to be able to make these books accessible for women in homeless shelters who can learn this skill as a starting point to go from being homeless to holding a job, if that's what they desire. I would also love to see this book in the hands of many girls in high school and college, sharing with their friends the cool things they've learned about Excel and how they can use it to present their projects better in class.

Listen ladies, one day I hope to have many more women developers who I can work with in my role, until that day, this is a starting point. We hope the series will continue strong to help you learn about technology!

I hope to hear many stories about how women have been able to use Excel to help them in their everyday lives.

See you soon!

Microsoft Surface, really cool and well a bit expensive, but not anymore...

It's totally cool when you can use a cardboard box, some paper and a camera and for $50 you have your own Surface!

Check out the

Surface for poor people

post!

Do you really Love Mac and think it's better than a PC?

Okay, I know you would think I am saying this because I work for Microsoft. But, (I use but, because it negates the statement before it) I put together my first PC when I was 14 with money I earned from babysitting. Since I have always had a PC, I used a Mac in high school when I had no choice, but as soon as the PC came to my High school and since then I have been on a PC.

For those people walking around thinking Mac is soo much better than a PC, here is an article for you!

Why do Macs need so much fixing? posted by Ed Bott.

"To which I say, give me a freakin’ break. I’ve made an entire career out of helping people become more productive with Windows, which includes explaining how things work, how to customize system settings and features, and, yes, how to fix problems. And here’s a news flash: I have peers on the Apple side of the universe who make their living exactly the same way. In fact, maybe the real question should be, Why does the Mac OS need so much fixing? Consider the evidence:

MacFixIt.com is an enormously popular website that offers up a veritable gold mine of solutions to help people fix problems with the Mac OS. (It doesn’t always “just work”?) Ironically, it’s a CNET property. Yes, that’s right, the same company that owns ZDNet." read the full Macs need so much fixing article here...

SMX Sydney 2008 - After presenting where do speaker's go?

Well in Sydney they go and have a BBQ under the Harbor bridge and enjoy really great company and wine. Then I convince them to go check out an Ice bar called -5 experience I found while having lunch at the Sydney harbor the day before. Well we wanted to take a cab, but Rand Fishkin and Danny Sullivan convinced us to take the public transport so guess what happens when you try to get 10 very happy speakers and their friends into public transport?

Well the best part is, before the BBQ most of us were speaking at SMX Sydney 2008 which was a fantastic conference and I learned so much from the audience and we wrapped up by Rand Fishkin RICK ROLLED SMX Sydney, if you've never been RICK ROLLED here is your chance:

So here we are wrapping up the conference with the Moppet Rick Roll playing in the background then off to the -5 Experience bar!

SMX Sydney 2008 - words from an attendee

Now that I am rested and caught up on sleep and such, man that was a fun trip and I met some of the most amazing people while in Sydney. They were friendly and helpful and check out what someone had to say Monday April 14th after I got back from Sydney:

Just spent a few hours this morning blowing away my SEM team with the Adcenter Excel plugin you demonstrated last Friday in Sydney.

I went and set up an Adcenter account first.

:)

The crazy thing was the team looked at the Adcenter Excel plugin January when it was launched - it was already downloaded on their machines - but as they didn't have an Adcenter account - it didn't work....

The wording for the Adcenter stuff made them believe it was only open to US advertisers.....

They (and I) didn't realise that we could set up an Adcenter account from Australia, with an AU credit card/ billing address....

Anyway - you've totally blown the team away!

:)

Best

You can register for your adCenter account on the adCenter website and get all you need to work with the Excel 2007 adin. Go to: Where to get adCenter addin (beta) for Excel 2007

It's always WAY COOL when someone else finds the tools that I am excited about helpful :) YEY!

Posting for a demo at BlogHer Business 2008 Conference

I am gathered here with a few people and I am showing off the Windows Live Writer and guess what? I just found out the Windows Live Writer team is already on Beta 3! Everyone love's this product. There was an April fool's joke that said the Windows Live Writer was canceled, but it's a good thing it was just a joke.

On another note, while on the BlogHer Business 2008 panel, I asked the audience how many people have heard of Windows Live Writer and out of the 200 only one hand went up, she used to be with Microsoft before joining SixApart. I hope we get the word out soon! You can also check out how the panel went by looking at at the BlogHer Business 2008 Live Blog case studies for day 1, Microsoft was presented last, so you'll have to scroll to the bottom to see how it went..

You can also check out the tweet someone tweeted on Twitter.com.