It's My Life

PowerPoint and I, we are getting a divorce.

		Tuesday, 17 July 07 - 07:12 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

Warning: this post contains explicit details of my relationship my with soon-to-be ex.

I heart PowerPoint. I started using it when I was a student, I think around 1997. At that time most people didn't know it existed, outside the business world.

At first I was shy, just writing a couple of key words on a few slides. Then I started falling in love and I wanted more - that's how girls are. I got a glimpse of all its nice features: the transition effects, the sounds, even the programmed buttons and hyperlinks. We had passion. PowerPoint came along with me when I presented my thesis to the jury in college, and we did a great impression.

Then came corporate world, and I must say, if I am good at one thing in business, it is making presentation. That was so easy, with my beloved PowerPoint.
Everyone knew about us and our great relationship.
Event at home, when I switched to Mac 4 years ago, I couldn't leave PowerPoint for Keynote. Keynote was nice, but it was just a fling.

Of course, people (hum, softwares) change, and PowerPoint was getting older, more mature, a bit different, but always the same old one I had always known.
Until recently. Maybe it's mid-life crisis, but that much change came unexpected to me. I changed jobs in April, got a brand new PC, and there it was: PowerPoint 2007, all brand new.

At first I got curious about its new features: new templates that look young and professional. New styles and color sets.
But then came hell. I got used to the "office button" because it's on every Office program and I had to deal with it. Still, I don't like it much.
That ribbon idea, it got me confused. Where, oh where were my buttons and menus??
And then came the worse: thinks that I really liked in PowerPoint, things that were making my life easy, were gone. The drawing bar, gone. The selection pointer, gone. When I want to draw 10 lines, I need to go to the insert/shapes menu and click on the line button and draw ONE line and DO IT ALL AGAIN. That makes me crazy.

And I haven't even tried to apply effects to objects or transitions between slides, yet.
I am telling you, PowerPoint and I, it's over.
Thing is, we are going to have to keep on leaving together for a little while. I can't pay the rent do my job on my own without it.

Webdesign resources.

		Sunday, 10 June 07 - 07:32 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

I created a lens on Squidoo with a list of the webdesign resources I have collected these past months.

Marie's Webdesign Resources

Feel free to visit, share, bookmark... I'll be glad to add your favourites, too, if you post them on the comments.

Another couple of weeks, and I will be a certified webdesigner, it is really exciting.

1984

		Tuesday, 22 May 07 - 06:53 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

I love my MacBook. I'm typing on it right now. I have loved Mac computers since I got my first one 4 years ago. Call me a geek if you want.

I found this little video today, and it feels incredible to think that Steve Jobs was already working on it before I was born. It is funny to see what a great speaker he was at a time when he still looked like a kid. And it is fantastic to realize that 1984 has been a turning point in the history of personal computers, and it is still a fantastic case study for marketers like me. Even if I was just out of kindergarten at that time (but I already loved computers).

Enjoy.

Optional security?

		Sunday, 25 February 07 - 06:23 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

A belgian consumers association announces that cars (they mention the VW Fox between others) produced both in Europe and in South America are sold as identical when they are not on the security level.

The example of the VW Fox is significant : the cars produced in Europe get 4 stars at the Euro-NCap tests while the ones produced in Brazil get 1.5 stars. In short : in the same accident while driving at 65 km/h, the European driver is going to live and the Brazilian one is going to die.

Let us cynically reassure ourselves : the Brazilian cars are sold in South America only, we rich European or North Americans do get the "good" cars. Oh and did I mention the "bad" ones are sold at a higher price?

We are not all equal in this world, especially not on the economic level. But while it is hard enouh to see some populations are struggling, it is even more unacceptable to note that even when they pay the right price for a product, they are treated as second-zone citizens.

Do you have a lens?

		Tuesday, 13 February 07 - 09:01 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

I thought nobody could be more aware than me about what is going on on the web (I am a certified web-addict since 1999) but I did miss something : people can now build their lens. I read that yesterday in an article about marketing gurou Seth Godin (whose blog I read religiously every day).

For those like me who had no clue about this : a lens is a webpage about you, that introduces you with text and pictures, gathers links to things you are interested in like books or music, and is linked to your blog or website or flickr account... It is a kind of online resume about your life. It offers you a new way to talk bout what you are interested in, and to benefit from what others know.

I am not sure about creating my own lens yet, but Seth asks a very scary question : "would you hire someone who does not have one?".

Would you?

My DSL is letting me down...

		Monday, 12 February 07 - 08:18 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

My router loses the DSL signal every 3 minutes and takes 5 more minutes to reconnect. This is killing me.
And you know what they say when I call the provider : everything is fine with your line. Nope, it is not. Think we have the more expensive DSL providers of Europe here in Belgium, and nobody to help when you are in trouble (or, if someone is willing to help you, they will probably end up recommanding that you reinstall your OS... I never heard of anyone having to reinstall OS X anyway...)

So how am I connected right now, you are going to ask? Well I have very generous neighbours who do not protect their networks. But I am not using them for downloading, I promess :  I am an honest girl.

I mean, really... wow!

		Tuesday, 30 January 07 - 08:05 PM (GMT) By Marie D in I'm a girl, but I'm a geek

I am a Mac user, and I love my Mac. I try not to bother everybody about it, as PC users have a hard enough life using their PC's, hum, I can spare them my sarcasms. But I can't resist the temptation of showing you this : a bunch of Microsoft guys annoucing us that, Vista being released, "The wow starts now"

They really look like having fun, don't they?

If you want to know what it looks like to launch a great product you really believe in, hire Steve Jobs as a teacher - just watch this: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/

I bet you'll want an iPhone before the 5th minute.

... More items are available in my News Archive