First, let’s define the difference between a Workbook and a Sheet (or sometimes called a Worksheet.) A workbook is the overall Excel file, whereas the Sheets are the individual spreadsheets. A Workbook can contain multiple worksheets, which are the tabs along the bottom of the Excel window.

Link Data in the Same Sheet

In any given sheet, you can use data from any other cell. This is most commonly used for formulas. You can also use a very basic formula to duplicate a cell’s content.

=E14

Entering this simple formula will display whatever’s in cell E14, whether it’s text, numbers, currency, or a date. If you change the contents of cell E14, all the other cells that reference E14 will change as well.

Link Data Between Worksheets

Where this linking ability of Excel really shines is when linking data between different worksheets. For example, if you have one spreadsheet (IT Expenses) that details expenses broken down by day or week, and another (Expenses by Dept) that compares total expenses between departments, you can pull the totals from the IT Expenses spreadsheet for use in the Expenses by Dept spreadsheet.

In the Expenses by Dept spreadsheet, you would enter this formula to pull the data from the IT Expenses sheet:

=(IT Expenses!C21)

Now, this looks a little complicated, but it uses the same basic structure as the =E14 formula we used before. We’re just adding the name of the spreadsheet from which we want to pull the data.

Link Data Between Workbooks

Similar to how we can link data from separate worksheets, we can use data from entirely separate Excel files (workbooks). Again, the structure of the formula is simple; we just need to give Excel a little more information about where it should look for the data.

=(‘[IT Expense Report.xls]IT Expenses’!C21)

In this case, we’re adding the other workbook’s file name (IT Expense Report.xls) in square brackets. Then we enclose the file name and sheet name in single quotes.

Please note that for security and convenience, try to keep the two Excel workbooks in the same folder.

These data linking techniques can also be incorporated into more complex formulas the same way you would use local cells.

Changing the theme of an established blog is never a trivial undertaking. It’s a decision that requires a lot of thought and planning before you even get into the actual redesign. A lot can go wrong, not the least of which being a poor reception from your readers.

If you spend any sizeable amount of time researching blog redesign or searching for quality Wordpress themes, you’ve probably stumbled onto Thesis. I’m not going to get into why Thesis is a remarkable Wordpress framework; I’ll let the video on the Thesis site do that for me.

I’d wanted for a long time to use Thesis on Astro-Geek:3000 for all the reasons discussed in the video – power, flexibility, and support. But the theme I’d been using for months had features I wanted to keep, in particular the featured post box in the upper right. I eventually found the plugin version of what had been built directly into the theme, so I used that as a sign. It took me a couple days of tweaking and nudging things to get it the way I wanted, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

I’m a minimalist when it comes to design, but I want as much functionality as I can get. Thesis is the same way. Its design is simple, but when you get under the hood, the things you can make it do are virtually limitless.

Thesis is a premium theme framework, and it does cost money. It costs $87 for the personal option, which will allow you to install Thesis on one blog. Or you can go with the developer’s option for $164 (the cost of two personal licenses) and install the theme on an unlimited number of blogs.

Now I know that’s a hefty chunk of change, but when you think about the time and effort that’s gone into Thesis, and the potential it has for optimizing your blog, it doesn’t seem so bad. Plus, if you purchase Thesis, you can join their affiliate program and earn money by referring others.

I am a part of the affiliate program, and if you use this link to purchase your license of Thesis, I’ll get a bit of cash to burn a hole in my pocket.

You can follow the developer of Thesis, Chris Pearson, on Twitter – @pearsonified

User Tiketti has posted a script on the iLounge forums that will allow you to adjust your play counts in iTunes 9.

Dim iTunesApp, currTrack, newPlayCount
Dim prompt, title, defaultValue

Set iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application")
Set currTrack = iTunesApp.CurrentTrack

prompt = "New playcount:"
title = currTrack.Artist & " - " & currTrack.Name
defaultValue = currTrack.PlayedCount

newPlayCount = InputBox (prompt, title, defaultValue)

If IsNumeric(newPlayCount) Then
If newPlayCount >= 0 Then
If Len(newPlayCount) > 0 Then
currTrack.PlayedCount = newPlayCount
End If
End If
End If


1. Copy this code into Notepad.
2. Save the file as SetPlayCount.vbs (the file name doesn’t matter; just make sure it’s a .vbs file)
3. In iTunes, play the song whose play count you want to adjust; double click the script you just saved.
4. Enter the desired play count in the input box.

A few things to note… Unlike the script for versions 8 and earlier, you must have the song playing. If you only highlight the song as before, you’ll receive a script error.

Since this script works only on the song that is playing, it won’t work on multiple tracks.

Thanks, Emma, for the tip!

Error messages, despite being annoying, are very good tools for troubleshooting problems with your computer. If you can pass along the information in the error message to IT support staff, they might be able to decrypt it. You might also be able to search Google for the error’s particular wording, or better yet, an error code.

The problem with this, however, is that these errors can be very long, or difficult to remember – as with error codes. A simple solution would be to jot down what you need on a piece of paper and type it into your email or search field. Depending on the amount of information you need to convey, this may not be terribly efficient.

What might be an even better solution is to copy the contents of the error message to your clipboard. Simply hit Ctrl-C, as you would anywhere else within Windows. Then from there you can paste the full message into your email body. Or if you need to search for a portion of the error, paste it into Notepad and then take what you need from there.

You’ll end up with an output like this:

—————————
Remote Desktop Disconnected
—————————
This computer can’t connect to the remote computer.

Try connecting again. If the problem continues, contact the owner of the remote computer or your network administrator.
—————————
OK Help
—————————

Notice that you even get the title of the error, as well as the button text.

Not only is this quicker and easier than writing out error messages on scrap paper, but it can be more accurate by negating the chance of transposing or misinterpreting letters.

The brand new iPhone 3GS has just been announced. It’s faster than the 3G iPhone, with all kinds of bells and whistles. I was a bit surprised to read that the 16GB variety will be sold for only $199, while the 32GB flavor will be $299. That’s quite a bit lower than the 3G when it came out.

But that’s just for new iPhone customers.

What about those of us that have, say, an 8GB iPhone 3G, and want to upgrade to the 16GB 3GS? Well, according to the fine print on the AT&T website, existing iPhone customers will need to shell out at least $499 to upgrade:

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

Wow.

So for $500, an existing iPhone customer can replace their 3G iPhone, which now only costs $99 new.

If I want to upgrade my current 8GB 3G phone to a 16GB 3GS iPhone, I’ll have to shell out six hundred dollars, and refresh my two-year service plan.

It would be cheaper to cancel my current plan, pay the $200 (or whatever it is) early termination charge, then buy a new 8GB 3GS for $199 and start a new plan.

How can AT&T get away with this?

When I first decided that I wanted to venture into the world of custom domains and hosted web space, I did a little browsing and eventually settled on Midphase for my hosting. Let’s just say that my experience with them was less than smooth. It wasn’t a horrible experience, but when the opportunity to leave presented itself, I had no reservations letting go.

That opportunity came in the form of a tweet I happened to notice. It was last November, I think, when someone mentioned that Dreamhost was having an anniversary special. The offer was soon to expire, so I jumped on it. For less than $10 a month, I found myself with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth forever.

That in and of itself was more than enough to kick my old host to the curb. When I got into the control panel for my account, I was doubly happy with my choice to move to Dreamhost. Their console is easier to navigate than the cPanel console Midphase uses. Everything is much more straightforward, and much more user friendly.

There are a lot of features that I could talk about, and it could easily span several blog posts, but I’ll just mention a few of the more eye-catching features here.

One-Click Installs

There’s an Easy mode and an Advanced mode available. In Easy mode, you can’t access the installation files, which means you aren’t able to upload additional themes, plugins, etc., but all upgrades and maintenance is taken care of for you. In Advance mode, you get access to everything, and can do whatever you want. Needless to say, I only use Advanced installations.

The software available in Advanced mode (as of 2009-04-21):

• Wordpress 2.7.1 (Blogging and CMS)
• Gallery 2.3 (Image Gallery)
• ZenCart 1.3.8 (eCommerce Management)
• PhpGedView 4.2 (Geneology Software)
• OpenX 2.6.4 (Ad server)
• Pligg 9.9.5 (CMS with Social Networking)
• dotProject 2.1.1 (Project Management)
• Moodle 1.9.4 (Course/Learning Management)
• Joomla 1.5.9 (Content Management System)
• phpbb 3.0.4 (Forum/Bulletin Board)
• MediaWiki 1.13.4 (Wiki)
• WebCalendar 1.2 (Calendar)
• Advanced Poll 2.03 (Poll/Survey)

I was excited to see MediaWiki listed as the wiki installation of choice for Dreamhost. It’s my preferred wiki platform, and was unavailable as an automatic installation in cPanel’s Fantastico.

Google Apps & GMail

Upon adding a domain or subdomain to your account, Dreamhost gives you the option of using Google Apps to provide their popular Calendar, Docs, and Sites platforms for you domain. With just another click, you can have calendar.yourdomain.com, docs.yourdomain.com, and sites.yourdomain.com set up.

In addition, you can use GMail to manage your domain’s email. Just another option when you’re adding your domain or subdomain, this lets you use Google’s very popular GMail interface for all of your hosted email accounts. This is what I use for all of my email addresses, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Flash Media

Dreamhost provides a free flash-based media player, similar to what you’d find on YouTube. While it can only play .flv formatted videos, Dreamhost provides an automatic video converter. All you have to do is upload your video to your account – it can be in any of the more popular video formats – and Dreamhost will convert it to .flv for you, ready to be embedded in your website.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a video that I can demonstrate this with, but I hope to be putting some videos together for this site in the near future. When I do, I will definitely be using this feature of my Dreamhost account, instead of uploading my videos to a third-party service like YouTube or Vimeo. And the great thing about it? With unlimited storage and bandwidth, I don’t have to worry about having too many videos.

…And More!

These are just a few examples of what Dreamhost can do. I’ve had no complaints so far; and with the deal I got, I don’t foresee myself moving away from Dreamhost for a long time. If ever.

If you’re looking for your first web hosting service, or are unhappy with your current host, you can click here to give Dreamhost a try!

Some time ago, I came across a neat little program called Taskbar Shuffle. It does exactly what it sounds like it does: Taskbar Shuffle gives you the power to rearrange the buttons on your taskbar. According to the website:

Taskbar Shuffle is a simple, small, free utility that lets you drag and drop your Windows taskbar buttons to rearrange them.  Here’s a full feature list:

• Reorder your taskbar buttons by dragging and dropping them

• Reorder your tray icons in the same way

• Reorder tasks in a grouped button’s popup menu in the same way

• Middle-click to close programs on your taskbar

• Works with UltraMon taskbars

• Tweak taskbar button grouping

During a normal day, I’m on the computer for more than eight hours. So as you can imagine, I’ve gotten used to having things certain ways; my taskbar not excluded.

I like to have my browsers first, Outlook next, then my productivity applications, and finally all of the random windows. This makes switching between applications much easier.

Before Taskbar Shuffle, if a program were to crash, or otherwise get closed, it would throw everything off when I relaunched it. But thanks to this little gem of an application, I don’t need to worry about that any more. If I have to restart Firefox, for example, I can just grab it and put it back next to my Quick Launch menu. One thing you should keep in mind, though, is that it keeps related buttons grouped together. For example, if you have multiple messenger windows open, if you try to drag one, it will bring the others with it. I’m not saying this is a fault with the program; on the contrary, I think this feature is smart.

Taskbar Shuffle is very good at what it does. I have it auto-start with Windows, and never have to think about it. Taskbar Shuffle is “just there” and leaves a small footprint in terms of resources. It’s free and works with Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, XP, and Vista (32-bit versions only.)

Click here to download

Well, the biggest thing in the tech world lately is the iPhone OS 3.0 event Apple held yesterday (2009.03.17) I’m not going to rehash the full run-down of the features – head over to Gizmodo for that. I just want to touch on a few of the ones I’m looking forward to the most; those that I will get the most use out of.

Cut, Copy and Paste

This is the most rumored and hoped-for feature ever since the first iPhone came out. It will certainly make a lot of things easier, but to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really missed it that much. There’ve been a few times when I wished I could copy a chunk of text, but for the most part, I don’t do a lot of text entry or editing on my iPhone, so I wasn’t as adamant about this feature as others.

When you double-tap over text, you will get a "cut, copy, and paste" bubble dialog. Double-tap again and a "paste" bubble will appear if there’s anything stored in your clipboard.

I wonder: how is this going to work with the double-tap zoom feature?  While browsing a website, you can double-tap a column of text to have it fill the screen. Will Copy and Paste only work at a certain zoom level, so that the first double-tap will bring you in closer to the text, then another double-tap will initiate the Copy dialog?

Stereo Bluetooth A2DP audio

You will be able to pair your iPhone 3.0 with a stereo Bluetooth A2DP device, like headphones or speakers.

This is cool; I have a pair of BT headphones that I would love to use, but currently I’d have to have the bulky receiver/transmitter dangling off the iPhone.

Push Notification

This was another big feature that’s been rumored for a while. Basically, this will allow applications to receive messages, data, information from the web automatically, even if the app isn’t running. This will open up a wide avenue of possibilities for third-party developers; I’m eager to see what some of them come up with.

What I would love to see come out of the new Push feature would be to have a weather app that can display the current temperature and conditions on the icon, the same way the Calendar app shows the current date.  That way, I wouldn’t have to wait for the app to load just to see if I need a jacket or not.

Apps Running in Background – Not This Time

Probably the biggest thing missing from the 3.0 update is the ability of applications to continue running in the background. For example, if you tap a link in an email, the iPhone will launch Safari and take you to the site. With background apps, the Mail application would still be running. So to get back to your mail message, you would just flip back to Mail instead of having to exit Safari and relaunch Mail.

I think they mentioned this in the presentation yesterday, and cited battery and processing power as the main hurdles for this feature. Having applications running in the background chews through processing power, which translates into massive battery drain.

I would love to have background apps, but I fully understand Apple’s reasons for its absence.

All in all, I think 3.0 is a very robust update. I came into the whole iPhone game with the release of the 3G, which coincided with the release of 2.0, so this will be my first major OS upgrade. Too bad we have to wait for summer to get it.

I recently had to go through another Windows reinstallation here at work. My coworker’s computer had become infected by an infected flash drive. It turns out that his antivirus software hadn’t been updating itself for more than six months, so that was a large part of the problem; but we won’t worry about that right now.

The flash drive had become infected, from what we can deduce, by an infected file he unknowingly copied from a client. When he plugged the flash drive into his laptop, the antivirus didn’t catch the virus (which was developed after the AV software was last updated.)  He didn’t even know the drive was infected until he plugged it into another coworker’s computer, and the antivirus on that machine caught it.  But by then it was too late for the laptop.

This incident raised a serious security issue: Autoplay. When a CD, DVD, or other removable media is inserted into a Windows PC, by default the machine will automatically play it. For example, the music CD will start playing, the movie will begin playing, etc. Windows does this by launching the autoplay.inf file that’s on the removable media. This file tells Windows what file to launch. For a software CD, it will likely be setup.exe

As you can probably guess, this autoplay file is an all-access pass for a virus. So, in order to block this access to your system, it’s very strongly recommended that you turn off the Autoplay feature. This can be done for each drive individually, but it’s quite tedious. And for flash drives and external hard drives, you have to connect the device first.

Here’s a way to turn off Autoplay for all devices at once.

1. Start » Run; enter gpedit.msc
2. Navigate to: Local Computer Policy » Computer Configuration » Administrative Templates » System; double click “Turn off Autoplay” in the right pane of the window.
3. Select “Enabled”
4. In the “Turn off Autoplay on:” pulldown menu, choose “All drives”

That’s it. Now when you connect a flash drive or external hard drive, insert a CD or DVD, you’ll be adding another layer of protection to your system. This should not be your only line of defense, however; you should scan any and all questionable media. At least this way it won’t install itself automatically.

BONUS: You won’t get those annoying popup windows every time, either!

As a bit of a follow up to my post about the 6 versions of Windows 7 that will be available, I want to share with you some rumored prices.

I found this on news.idealo.co.uk:

The Starter Edition should cost US $199.95 (around £135), Home Premium US$ 259.95 (around £157) and Windows 7 Professional US $ 299.95 (around £205). The system builder versions should be cheaper though.

If you could see me right now, you’d see me with my head cradled in my hands, shaking it in disbelief. Two hundred dollars for the Starter Edition?!  That’s a lot of money. Though I shouldn’t be surprised because Vista has a similar price structure.

The difference in this case, however, is that with Vista we had the choice to stay with XP. That’s not as much of an option any more since XP is no longer available outside the Pirate Bay.

Is Microsoft too greedy? They have a chance to deal a huge blow to Apple and Linux with this operating system. If they ride the wave of positive reviews Win7 is getting and offer a less daunting choice of flavors and market the crap out of it as costing less than Vista, they could generate a huge amount of momentum.

As for me, if I were still debating on whether to switch to Mac or not, the 6 tiers and heavy price tag on Windows 7 would have been enough to bump me over to Apple.