Free Online Training

When I scoped out the new HP TouchSmart PCs I was amazed by two things. First, that I would even consider a touch screen...but then someone pointed out my phone is a touch screen.

Second, HP has a heck of a lineup of online classes covering computer basics, Office, Adobe and some technical courses such as Linux and ASP.net.

You can't beat the price and if "just-in-time-learning" is your MO then this is a place you definitely need to visit.

Off Topic...sort of

This post is OT (off topic) in that I am not sharing an IT resource but it is related because you do training to further your career...right? Years  ago I wrote a book about sales careers. One of the things I wrote about was the ability to get a sales job with a company who wasn't hiring (see Chapter 5 of the book).

That same strategy is sound advice for someone looking for any job...especially in today's job hunting - soul crushing environment. You simply do not want your future in the hands of a HR person who is probably doing a key-word search of all their applications. Which leads me to Tim Ferris.

Tim Ferris is an author and speaker who is extremely blunt and very intelligent. He had a recent post on his blog about job searching that I think is a "must-read" for anyone who is either looking for a job or knows someone who is in the hunt for a new job.

Dashboards

Company-wide goals are usually broken down into departmental goals.  Departmental goals are then analyzed and key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to track those goals.  KPIs are quantifiable measurements of the key success factors for an company.   A SharePoint Dashboard is a tool that helps organizations track and share measurements of KPIs to determine whether or not they are on-target to achieve department goals.

The key advantage of Dashboards are that they can be automated to collect relevant, summary data on a regular basis over time.  This provides an organization with the ability to identify trends and take corrective action if trends are not moving in the right direction.

A great place to start learning about this valuable resource is Microsoft's page "Getting started with Dashboards."

Here is another article on using dashboards for Business Intelligence (BI). Here is a You Tube video with a nice tour of dashboards. If you really want a detailed look how you can use dashboards (and scorecards) to create great reports we have a class in November that specifically deals with this other of BI .

Intro to Databases

Business Intelligence is obviously hot and SharePoint and Microsoft SQL play a big part in our training and consulting offerings but what about the basic "intelligence?" It all starts with information...information found in databases.

There are some fine database introductory tutorials out there. Stanford University has some online classes that don't cost a dime.  M.I.T. has an absolute treasure trove of classes (I shared that link with my sons). Just to mix things up, along with Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and give you Quackit which has a very simple, yet effective database tutorial.

My New Addiction

I was doing some research for a client and came across one of the cooler "tips and tricks" sites that I have seen in quite a while. "Addictive Tips" has put together over nine thousand different tips for users ranging from Microsoft Office to Operating Systems and Mobile Phones. Definitely a place to visit and share.

Self-Paced Training Kits

Microsoft has some dandy resources for those of you that are forced to do self-study or just interested in "Do it Yourself" learning. One of the newest self-paced training kit is for Windows Server 2008 R2. Another popular training kit is for the SharePoint Administration cert.

For $70 each these are a tremendous value! Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't have a nice tidy landing page to list all the training kits so you will have to click on different titles or do a search at the top of the page I bookmarked for you above.

I promise it's worth the trouble!

The Most Expensive Magazine I've Ever Bought

The chances of me ever shelling out 30 bucks for a magazine that didn't have Eva Mendes on the cover were next to nil...until this week.

With fewer book stores around, I rarely get enjoy one of my favorite past-times of wandering aimlessly and seeing all the books I don't have time to read. On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble I swung by the magazine section and saw, "Wordpress for Beginners." It caught my interest because I plan on using Wordpress for a new sports comedy video blog I am launching.

This was a huge magazine that had a tremendous amount of content and I was all excited until I saw the price...$29.99! To make matters worse...it was from England. After sleeping on it (can you tell I'm cheap?) I checked out the publisher and found these guys are pretty good! Imagine Book Shop is a UK publisher of "bookazines" and other media for user guides.

The resources they sell are the most detailed I've seen on subjects ranging from Smart phones to Web Design and Video Games. While my "bookazine" was cheaper on the website, when you figured in shipping it was a wash. Plus, considering how much material it covered I would have gladly paid $30 for a book with the exact same material.So I headed back to the bookstore and pick up my copy.

Sometimes you don't go with the lowest price if the value warrants it...as in the case with Imagine Books.

R.I.P.Steve Jobs

As we all know by now, Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. He literally changed several industries (Music, Movies, Telecommunications and Computer). I seriously doubt anyone will have the footprint that Steve had in his career.

Below is the text of his commencement address to the Stanford University graduates in 2005 and the video. It's the best lesson I could share today. 

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

jQuery

Seemingly coming out of nowhere (at least to the idiot sales guy), jQuery seems to be an extremely popular JavaScript library designed to develop plug-ins. It's supposedly used by half the top websites in the world. What Linq is to C#, jQuery is to JavaScript.

Here is a good intro article at MSDN Magazine. If you want a first-hand look from the guy who invented it read John Resig's article on the official jQuery site. Finally, for additional tutorials visit my new favorite site Speckyboy!