I have to quite liking the new Microsoft Office Ribbon interface. Sometime I might write a longer post on why I think it;s an improvement. In the short-term though, here’s something I just discovered.

If you move the mouse cursor up into the ribbon you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to move through the menus.

Enjoy.

This year I’ve had some fun writing about the tools that I use. At the beginning of the series someone asked me to include regular summaries which I have only been moderately good at. So here is the summary for the end of 2008 because I’m not sure I’m going to write anymore before its 2009.

• Introduction – why on earth am I doing this.
• Word Outlining – you really should learn how to write documents this way.
• Twitter and Twhirl – not sure how to summarise Twitter
• FeedDemon – my feed reader of choice.
• Blackberry 8800 – my world in my pocket
• Windows Live Writer – I blog so I writer
• iTunes and iPod – a sweet piece of apple even though I complain about the bloat.
• Synergy – share that keyboard and mouse to get better returns
• Jing – screen snapshot wonders
• Flickr – where I share my pictures, but also interact with others and their pictures too.
• Notebook and Pen – there’s still a bit of old-school in these veins.
• Google Analytics – I know so much more than  am willing to say
• Mindjet MindManager Pro – I am such a fan of mind mapping
• The off switch – the holiday season is a really good time to use this tool. Go on, I dare you.
• Logitech Cordless Presenter – this gets used all over the place, it’s liberating.
• Snipping Tool – simple screen capture
• Word Ctrl + Shift + N – using the keyboard for what it was intended.
• Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V – my keyboard goodness

(Good, I’ve now got a list of topics not to cover next year. It’s amazing how quickly you forget what you’ve written.)

I’ve been trying out a new tool recently – the Windows Vista Snipping Tool.For most of what I do it’s a direct replacement for Jing. Jing does a whole load more than the Snipping Tool – it’s just that I don’t use those other features very often.

Having said that, there are a few difference between them even for a basic user like me:

• The Snipping Tools starts a lot faster than Jing on my device.
• Jing provides more sophisticated annotation capabilities – these include text and arrows, whereas the snipping tool is just highlighting and freehand drawing. I don’t often annotate.
• Jing provides a mechanism for capturing menu’s – something I’ve been unable to find in the Snipping Tool. Something i often want to do.
• Jing runs all of the time – but you have to start the Snipping Tool each time you want to use it. This is both a positive and a negative thing. i don’t do that many captures so don;t really want something running all of the time.
• They are both free – if you have Windows Vista.

An introductory video from Microsoft:

Windows Vista Demo: Snipping Tool

I find mind maps to be a fabulous way of thinking about things.

I regularly find myself in the situation where I am doing what I call a personal brainstorm. There are a huge set of ideas that are floating around about a subject, placing them all down onto a mind map and then structuring them is a very powerful way of visualising them. It often sparks new ideas, highlights things that are not really related to the subject and highlights activities or ideas that are dependent upon each other.

The tool that I use for mind mapping is Mindjet MindManger Pro.

I’ve struggled for a while to know quite how to write about this subject. It’s one of those where you either stay shallow or you dive in deep, and I’m not sure I see the real value in one and I don’t have time for the other. I’ve decided just to start and see where I get to.

I nearly always use mind maps for structuring thought. I have tried to present mind maps for people to talk around, it normally results in lots of vacant looks. I’ve, therefore, moved away from presenting mind maps other than the simplest of diagrams (You can now do really simple diagrams in PowerPoint 2007).

As a thought structuring technique I nearly always start with a blank sheet and type.

Mind Manager allows you to do a lot of the working from the keyboard so it’s relatively easy to stream-type. In this mode the two most powerful keys that you have available are the “Enter” key and the “Insert” key.

• Pressing “Enter” adds a topic at the same level as the one you are currently in. This is great for creating a list of things all at the same level.
• Pressing the “Insert” key adds a topic as a child of your current topic. Great for adding a sub-thought.

I don’t classify, mark, annotate, or even worry too much about the structure it’s just how the thoughts come out. It’s amazing, though, how often that these thoughts are reasonably well structured. If you stop to think too much about the structure you loose the flow a bit.

Ideas tend to come faster than I can type so type as much as possible to make sure that I don’t miss something.

After I’ve brainstormed I’ll then structure and annotate. Mind Manager has a great set of Map Markers. I normally expand these out so they are all visible on the right of the screen. From here I’ll pick topics and mark them. My favourites are priorities, because that’s often what I am trying to get to understand.

The one thing I’ve always thought would be useful, but never been able to work out, is the ability to filter a set of topics based on the markers. Perhaps I just haven’t looked hard enough.

Once I’ve been through this activity I normally go and create something that communicates the thoughts that I have just worked out. I’d like people to be able to just look at my maps and understand them, but that doesn’t seem to communicate very well. Perhaps it’s a culture thing.

I’m actually quite a simple Mind Manager user, and lots of people do far more explicit things, this way of working helps me though.

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I’m a bit of a numbers freak. I used to think that everyone was like me, but I’m steadily realising that not everyone approaches graphs and charts with quite the same level of enthusiasm.

If you are a numbers person – read on. If you think numbers are as interesting as a postman’s socks you have my permission to go and read something more appropriate to your needs.

For a numbers man link me Google Analytics is heaven. I can tell you more information than you could possibly want to know, or could be bothered to ask about.

I can tell you where people came from, where they went to, what browser they were using, where there device is situated, what search keywords they used, and so much more.

Probably the best bit about Analytics is that you get all of this information for the princely sum of £0. Now there’s a bargain.

For those of you not aware of analytics it works like this:

• You register for an account at analytics.google.com.
• You then add a website profile.
• It then generates some code which you put in a sensible place on your site. In the case of this site typepad even have a widget to make it that much easier, and I know that wordpress allows the same.
• Then you wait a while, preferably 24 hours.

Bit by bit, the numbers start rolling in and you can enter numbers heaven.

I have a number of favourite views.

The first thing I normally notice is the Traffic Source view. In recent times there has been a shift here. Google used to absolutely dominate these numbers, they are still big, but they are down to 30%. The difference has been twitter and a myriad of other referers who have said something about one of my posts on their blog (thanks).

Having said that, I still have a good look through the search keywords. Should I be worried that the top two keywords are “graham chastney blog” and “graham chastney”, are people really trying to find me.

As a technologist I’m also interested in things like the browsers that people use – Internet Explorer is still out in front, but Firefox is catching fast.

I’m also really interested in the location of my visitors. Being based in the UK and would expect many visitors from there, the number of visitors from the USA is nearly as big. Being able to drill down beyond country is fun, but it’s not really that useful for my blog.

A blog is really about the content though, and that’s where I get the best information, what are people reading? The simple answer to that is – all sorts of stuff. There have been a few really popular ones, but the reading is very varied, which I suppose reflects the variance in my writing.

You can also decide to share your analytics with other Google users if you so desire. I don’t, primarily because it’s a person blog and I’m not sure else would care about my statistics.

Analytics is so good that I regularly ask myself the question – “why can’t I have this at work?”