Who would think that you can actually run Office Communicator on a non-Windows Mobile phone?
It’s actually quite easy: download the Java Client, install it on your phone, configure username, password and server name, and… off you go!
The client has limited functionality, but just enough: you get a tab with all your contacts, one with the online contacts only (see below), one with the conversations and one with the groups.
Recently, my company laptop was upgraded to Communicator 2007.
Two things I did not like about this:
after installation, my presence icons in Outlook 2007 did not work anymore. And this made me realise how convenient these things are, and how quickly you get used to them: you start a new message, type in your recipient, you notice that he is in the office,… you close the message and go see him!A new version of the famous “Shift Happens” presentation is available. Updated, and even more inspiring than the previous one. Check it out on TeacherTube.
Last week, I attended the Microsoft event in Louvain-La-Neuve where they launched their new Unified Communications products. As always, it was a very impressive show with lots of presentations, information, partner boots… Unified Communication will be a great tool to increase productivity and offer new ways of communication to the information workers.
I can’t wait to start using it, but as a trainer, I am also wondering how we will teach people how to use it? Using Office Communicator, is this something that you can learn in a classroom environment? Just imagine 10 students calling each other… Will you learn it using e-learning? Seems rather static and unreal to me. Do you have any suggestions?
One thing I realised is that it will be necessary for the users to understand the full picture of the infrastructure: where is my mailbox, what is happening when I start a voice chat, what happens when someone calls me, when I divert a call…
Another thing that I am always curious about is the different presentation skills and the presentation styles of the presenters. Presentation Zen has a an interesting blog post about the presentation styles of Microsoft’s Number One compared to Apple’s Steve Jobs.
I had the luck of seeing Bill Gates in action on the Vista launch last year, and I can agree with some of the remarks of Garr Reynolds; and as an Apple fan, I never miss a keynote of Steve. But to select a “winner” would be disrespectful for both: they are both passionate about what they do in their own way, and I experienced it again in Louvain-La-Neuve last week.
Have a look at the video below. Very inspiring!
