If you think that the only thing worse than sitting through another presentation is reading about the technicalities of presenting then this book will make you think again.

First let me state what this book isn’t – it is not an introductory guide to Powerpoint. I for one am extremely thankful for that. Given the number and voluminous tomes out there seemingly dedicated to coaching the production of bullet laden slides this beautifully crafted book is a breath of fresh air.

As an IT instructor I have for several years advocated a move away from bullet point fatigue and have personally delivered several ‘Effective Presentation’ courses. Suggesting that presenters move away from what is perceived as the expected format for a presentation and their comfort zone has been met with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

It is against this background that I approached Nancy Duarte’s new book.

Each page is perfectly presented and full of inspirational quotes and tips interwoven with copious case studies. The real world examples provide inspiring guidance as to the qualities needed to be able to create and deliver truly inspiring presentations.

Personally, I would like to see more examples of how to impart technical and factual information with the same impact as the other facts, figures and statistics covered. The good news for those of us with such a need is that this is to be addressed shortly according to the author in her illuminating online presentation for O’Reilly (the publishers of the book) on 17th September 2008. This presentation is available on online at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1095 and is well worth investing the time to watch.

Since the topic of the book is very visual it’s a significant benefit to have the additional resources available online at http://slideology.com/book/. As to be expected the material is perfectly presented, clicking the corresponding page number loads the requested resource and many examples are downloadable for demonstration and examination purposes in the PowerPoint format.

This is without a doubt a book to which you will return to for inspiration as your presentation deadline approaches and it’s attractive 294 pages would not look out of place in your coffee table book collection. Nancy Duarte is an accomplished communicator and readers will undoubtedly benefit from her copious presentational experience.

slide:ology is a book I’ll certainly be using in the future and I highly recommend you do too.

slide:ology is published by O’Reilly. It is available in print (ISBN-10: 0596522347 ISBN-13: 978-0596522346), as a PDF or online at O’Reilly Safari Books. If you’ve not used the Safari service before there is a 30 day trial of the system included with slide:ology. A preview of slide:ology is available at http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596522346/preview.html.

Disclaimer

First a disclaimer, I am not a fan of spreadsheets. There I’ve said it and I know it’s sacrilege to some.

Don’t get me wrong I use them as much as the next person but I’m always very careful in creating a spreadsheet based solution. As a veteran IT professional I’ve seen too many spreadsheets that should come with a warning slapped on them.

In the best cases they are often over complicated in construction and built without a thought as to what they may need to become in the future. However, in the worst cases they just plain don’t add up. Incorrect references and formula and the most eye straining designs you’ll ever have the misfortune to witness coupled with an obvious misunderstanding of the concept of a spreadsheet all mean too many spreadsheets are just not fit for purpose.

Be it a lack of training or a laissez faire attitude on the part of those who should know better in an organization in my experience it is a pervasive problem in organizations today.
Anyway, climbing down from my soapbox …

History

To add to this dismal situation Excel has a long history of calculation malfunctions!

Just to clarify I don’t mean when a formula is incorrectly formulated by a user. These calculation malfunctions manifest themselves in various situations even when the details entered are completely correct.

What’s Wrong with Excel Now?

Well, the latest issue manifests itself when a collection of positive numbers should add up to a given negative number.

That is easier to show rather than describe so per the following screenshot of Excel, in each of the 3 examples the sum of positive values should add up to the negative value (on Row 1) therefore the result of the SUM in row 10 should be 0 – which as you can see it is not.

For example in column B:

100.03 + 0.04 = 100.07

-100.07 + 100.07 should = 0

But according to Excel it is 7.95891E-15 . If you change the format of the cell to Number and increase the decimal places (see row 12) you can see the REAL values.

So as demonstrated Excel, prior to any forthcoming patches, has a problem with addition and/or subtraction especially evident when calculations involve a mix of negative and positive numbers as the result approaches zero.

Does it matter?

OK so does this really matter? My answer is a resounding “Yes” and in more circumstances than you may imagine.

1. Data Comparison Operations

Any time two numbers are compared you need to be aware that the number displayed on the screen isn’t the complete number Excel uses to make any required comparisons and that complete number might adversely affect the result of the comparison being made.

The most obvious comparison function is the IF statement. For example, an IF function that uses 0 in the first argument, as in =IF(B12=0, “True”,”False”)

However, comparisons in Excel are by no means limited to the IF statement alone. Indeed all the following functions use comparisons:

• IF
• LOOKUP
• HLOOKUP
• VLOOKUP
• SUMIF
• SUMIFS
• COUNTIF
• COUNTIFS
• AND
• OR
• NOT

2. Scaling Errors with Large Multipliers

Another situation where the miscalculation can manifest problems is where extremely large numbers are used. This is because while the errors are many decimal places to the right of a number, multiplications using large numbers will serve to magnify the error.

Why does it happen?

These errors are a result of a floating-point rounding error and if that hasn’t already reduced you to a catatonic state you can read more about the details in Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article 214118.

Could it be avoided?

In a word – Yes and it should be. Programmers often have to write code to take into account failings elsewhere.

A personal allegory will serve as a demonstration.

Many years ago when Excel 2000 was state of the art and Excel 97 was the version of choice for a client of mine I undertook a project to develop an Excel based solution. Part of the solution required a form to be displayed to the user from which they selected a date from an OLE data control.

This worked perfectly on my Excel 2000 system but when deployed at the client’s site the date was constantly 1 day out. The user would select a date using the control but the date displayed was incorrect. After much testing it became clear that Excel 2000 and Excel 97 did not handle dates in the same way when using VBA code to manipulate the data.

Obviously I had to create a solution to work around the VBA anomaly introduced with Excel 2000. I created a simple code block to check the version of Excel in use and adjust the date accordingly.

Wringing my hands and complaining about known anomalies wouldn’t help the client and in this regard Microsoft should take the same approach. While floating-point issues may be the root cause of the problem they can be handled in such a way that the end user is not adversely affected.

A fact that has not escaped other software providers.

Is it only Excel?

Excel is not alone in is it’s miscalculations. Apple’s Numbers calculates incorrectly in exactly the same way.

However, the good news is there are many programs that handle the issue elegantly and calculate correctly, including:

• OpenOffice
• NeoOffice
• Google Spreadsheets
• ZoHo Sheets

In the meantime … what can you do?

There are several techniques available that may eliminate the issue from your spreadsheet.

However, bear in mind that these are only a temporary fix which shouldn’t be needed and may not work in every situation and the burning question how do you know when you’ll need it before the final figures are in?

Sorting

Reordering the listing of values can on occasion solve the problem. Obviously, this just serves to emphasize how ridiculous the problem is! The order in which figures are added should have no impact on the result and there are occasions where reordering items is not possible. For example, a list of sales figures sorted by month can’t be reordered to accommodate Excel’s idiosyncrasies.

Using Precision as Displayed

Another potential solution is the Microsoft recommended use of the ‘Precision as displayed’ option.

‘Precision as displayed’ is an option in the Excel Options the function of which is to force Excel to calculate using only the level of precision displayed in the cell rather than the full data stored within the cell.

This is an approach which should work well with accountancy and financial data where precision to two decimal places is required.

In other situations ‘Precision as displayed’ can actually cause problems of it’s own and certainly the data will be less accurate than with the option disabled.

In Excel 2000/2003 the Precision as displayed option is in the Calculation section of the Excel Options.

In Excel 2007 the Set precision as displayed option is in the Advanced section of the Excel Options.

Using the ROUND Function

The Round() function rounds a value to a specified level of precision. The values contained within the cells are not altered but the value used for comparative purposes is determined by the level of precision specified by the arguments in the ROUND function, as follows:

=IF(ROUND(B12,2)=0, “True”,”False”)

The use of the Round function means that the value contained within cell B12 is rounded down to 2 decimal places prior to it being compared to, in this case, zero thus removing the potential impact of any floating point errors to the far right of the decimal point.

The Round function adjusts a value up or down depending the threshold. If the significant digit is 1,2,3 or 4 it rounds down whereas if the significant digit is 5,6,7,8 or 9 it rounds up.

Conclusion

So there it is – an insight into the latest in a long line of Excel issues to affect the unsuspecting user.

It becomes clear that it is folly to rely on Excel to correctly compute even the most basic calculation. Best advice is check everything … at least twice!

In my role as Co-Chair of the North West Institute of IT Trainers I recently gave an online presentation demonstrating just how many free resources there are available on the Internet and beyond. Originally my intent was to limit myself to free training resources but ultimately I included software and other tools as well.

It proved to be one of our most well attended online events and demand was high for a list of the resources shown. In light of the demand I thought it would be good to share these resources to a wider audience hence this four part series covering free online resources for the IT trainer and in fact the majority of the resources are just as useful if you aren’t an IT trainer.

If you missed part 1 you can find it here and without further ado here’s part 2!

Adobe

Connect Events

Adobe run many events every week and most are recorded for on demand playback at a time and place to suit you, there is an index of available events on the Adobe web site.

Video Demonstrations

In addition to the Connect events Adobe provide demonstration videos of specific technologies.

An example is a recent demonstration of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).

Podcasts

Podcasts are audio and/or video files available online from many sources the majority of these are free, especially those listed in the iTunes Store.

iTunes

Let me say this

• iTunes is FREE to download
• iTunes is cross platform
• You do NOT need an account at the iTunes Store to use it
• You do NOT need an account at the iTunes Store to download podcasts
• Podcasts are free in the iTunes Store

Right now I’ve clarified that I’ll tell you why I felt the need to emphasize those points. I have heard so many people explain that they don’t use iTunes because they think they have to pay for it or it won’t work on a PC or they think they do need an account or they are afraid they will be charged – you get the idea!!

Last point with iTunes – where do you get it? Simply download it from Apple.

Now we’ve got past those essential issues it’s time to get on to the good stuff and have a look at what’s available

PhotoshopUserTV

Photoshop User TV is created by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and is presented by 3 photoshop luminaries in Scott Kelby, Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski.

Photoshop User TV is a weekly 30 to 45 minute video podcast of all things Photoshop related with demonstrations, tutorials and news.

All episodes are free for the first two weeks they are available, after that time they are free for NAPP members and purchasable for $2 an episode. So well worth downloading in the two weeks after they are released whilst they are free.

Photoshop User TV web site

Photoshop User TV iTunes link

ScreenCastsOnline

ScreenCastsOnline is the brainchild of Don McAllister and is a weekly tutorial based video cast. The topics covered are all related to the Mac platform and cover a wide range of applications and technologies.

ScreenCastsOnline web site

ScreenCastsOnline iTunes link

LayersTV

Another podcast from those nice people at NAPP this time presented by Corey Barker and Rafael ’RC’ Concepcion.

LayersTV web site

LayersTV iTunes link

Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast

Presented by Adobe’s very own Terry White the Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast covers all the applications in the Creative Suite. Copious tips and tricks as well as longer demonstrations of the feature set of each application.

Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast web site

Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast iTunes link

Creative Sweet

Creative Sweet TV is presented by Australian Adobe expert Mike McHugh and covers all things Creative Suite related.

Creative Sweet TV web site

Creative Sweet TV iTunes link

InDesign Secrets

InDesign Secrets is an audio podcast presented by David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion and covers Adobe InDesign.

InDesign Secrets web site

InDesign Secrets iTunes link

theindesigner

Also covering InDesign is theindesigner a video podcast presented by Michael Murphy, a long time InDesign user and Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign.

theindesigner web site

theindesigner iTunes link

IT Idiots

Belying the name there’s plenty of useful information to be found in this wide ranging podcast produced by 2 IT professionals and a pharmacist (don’t ask!)

ITidiots web site

ITidiots iTunes link

MrExcel

Learn Excel with MrExcel is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel, presented by Bill Jalen. Learn Excel with MrExcel is a two minute video posted every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book.

MrExcel web site

MrExcel podcast page

MrExcel iTunes link

MacBites

How could I not mention it? OK I’ll declare an interest here – I’m one of the presenters of this weekly look at all things Mac related.

In MacBites we discuss the Apple related news items of the week before discussing our experiences of switching from Windows based PCs to the Mac. My section is the Software Review a demonstration/discussion of a piece of Mac software or the demonstration of a technique such as creating global shortcuts for your browsers.

That’s it for part 2 but there’s plenty more free resources coming in part 3 – more video resources, manuals, newsletters and much more.

In my role as Co-Chair of the North West Institute of IT Trainers I recent gave an online presentation demonstrating just how many free resources there are available on the Internet and beyond. Originally my intent was to limit myself to free training resources but ultimately I included software and other tools as well.

It proved to be one of our most well attended online events and demand was high for a list of the resources shown. In light of the demand I thought it would be good to share these resources to a wider audience hence this four part series covering free online resources for the IT trainer and in fact the majority of the resources are just as useful if you aren’t an IT trainer.

So with that let’s get to part one!

Local Groups

There are often many groups meeting in your area with a specific focus on either a technology or a profession. Don”t dismiss these as a valuable source of information and demonstrations. To give a few pertinent examples to those of us based in the North West of England:

NWIITT

NWIITT is the North West Regional Group of the Institute of IT Trainers and we meet regularly at The Pelican Public House on the Sale/Timperly border on the last Monday of each month (except Bank Holidays). We also run online events for members – all the benefits of the regional meetings but without the travel.

Software demonstrations and soft skill presentations are plentiful and with opportunity to ask questions these meetings are a valuable resource!

NWAG

Official Adobe User Group for the North West of England.

We hold live meetings and coming soon online meetings using the Acrobat Connect service for which all you need is a browser and the Flash player.

Topics covered are every product in the Creative Suite, which is a lot, and a few that aren’t:

• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• InDesign
• Bridge
• Flash
• Fireworks
• Dreamweaver
• After Effects
• Premiere Pro
• Soundbooth
• Lightroom

So for all things Adobe you can’t beat the benefits of mingling with the experts!

Mac User Groups

Depending on your platform of choice there are even local groups dedicated to the operating system … OK I mean if you’re a Mac user there are many Mac User Groups across the region and the country.

Here in the North West there is the North West Mac User Group based in Grappenhall and there’s the Blackburn branch too. If you’re based to the East of the region there’s the huge Yorkshire MUG with 500 members.

Again product demonstrations and experts on hand to answer your questions.

Good way to get yourself known and maybe even find work if you’re freelance.

Microsoft

Microsoft have a myriad of free resources avilable from their various online portal pages – the trick is trying to locate something specific among the range of materials available.

I’ve separated the materials available into several separate categories, as follows:

Templates
Sample Documents
Learning Portal
Events
Training Presentations
Microsoft eLearning
Application File Viewers
Convertion Kits
Books
Quick Reference Guides

Templates

To assist in your search there is an index on the blog of Dumb Little Man (great name!) to 250 free items.

Microsoft also have their own index to the templates available at their template portal.

Sample Documents

There are many downloadable sample documents available from Microsoft’s site, a few examples are:

20 Sample Visio Diagrams

Sample PowerPoint design template

Christmas labels in Word format

Learning Portal

Microsoft maintain a Learning Portal at their web site.

There are both short single page tips and longer training courses available from this portal, for example:

Short tips

Making a Common Change to Multiple Contacts in Outlook

Get Results You Want by Adjusting a Value Using Goal Seek

Help protect a Microsoft Access project (ADP)

Adding Bookmarks to Word Documents

Longer Training Courses

Excel 2007

PowerPoint 2007

Events

Microsoft provide a huge range of seminars delivered online both live and replayable after the initial recording is made.

There is a sample selection of web delivered seminars viewable on demand.

While a full list is also maintained with recordings listed on the "On-Demand Webcasts" tab and the live events listed on the "Live Webcasts" tab.

Some presentations are segmented into a presentation element and a separate hands-on lab section.

Delivery is via a technology called Live Meeting 2005 Replay and this requires the following:

• Internet Explorer 6 with SP1 or above
• Windows Media Player version 9 or later

Training Presentations

Microsoft provide full training presentations for download from their Office Online Portal, for example:

Word 2003—Create footnotes and endnotes

Excel 2003 – Great Excel features

Microsoft Office – Get up to speed with the 2007 system

Word 2007 – Get up to speed

Excel 2007 – Get up to speed

PowerPoint 2007 – Get up to speed

Access 2007 – Get up to speed

Word 2007 – Save time with templates

Excel 2007 – Create your first workbook

Excel 2003 – Create your first workbook

Excel 2007 – Enter formulas

Excel 2003 – Enter formulas

Visio 2003/2007 – Crime scenes with shapes

Microsoft eLearning

Microsoft eLearning is a more course-like structured learning system than individual online events provide.

Microsoft have categorized users into home/professional/developer etc and then provide a range of eLearning materials tailored to each group. Not all of these materials are free but some are it’s a matter of finding them. I have created a downloadable list of those that I discovered that are free of charge.

Application File Viewers

Microsoft viewers are free applications which allow users without the application used to create the files to view them.

Visio viewer

PowerPoint 2007 viewer

PowerPoint 2003 viewer

Word viewer

Convertion Kits

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint File Formats allows users of older versions of the Office suite to work with the new file formats in Office 2007. This is a free download.

Books

Microsoft often offer books in pdf format for free download prior to the official release date of a new product. It’s really an inducement to people to try the new software. A recent example was the launch of Office 2007 when Microsoft gave away First Look at Microsoft Office 2007 by Katherine Murray a 208 page introduction to the Office 2007 System.

So it’s always worth while keeping an eye on the Microsoft web site prior to product releases for items such as these.

Quick Reference Guides

There are many Quick Reference Guides available from various places on the Microsoft web site, many of them are linked to from the online courses as a parting gift on completion of the course.

One example is the Project Management Quick Reference Guide.

Another example is the Word 2007 Quick Reference Guide.

So as you can see I managed to find a huge range of materials available for free download and this is only a part of the list – coming in part 2 are materials from Adobe, free video training and much much more.