Often it is useful to create charts which compare different types of data. For example, you might want to compare share price with trading volume, or revenue with number of units sold, or poverty rate with unemployment and consumer confidence, or any number of other things.

To quickly and clearly display data of different types, it can be helpful to plot some data series either with different chart types, on different axes, or both. Let’s look at an example.

Suppose I work at a manufacturing company and I’d like to analyze the number of units we’ve sold over the last few months and the total dollars sold each month. I’m hoping to identify trouble spots, such as high unit sales but low dollar transaction amounts, which may indicate that the units are being discounted too deeply.

I could make two different charts – one plotting units sold by month, and one plotting transaction dollars by month. However, it will be challenging to analyze the two charts separately. I’d much rather create a chart like the one pictured below.

Read more. 

Microsoft Excel : Combining Chart Types, Adding a Second Axis

1. Firefox (see also: The Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3)
2. VLC Media Player (see also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC)
3. Ubuntu (see also: Hardy Heron Makes Linux Worth Another Look)
4. Open Office (see also: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0)
5. Pidgin (see also: Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin)
6. Launchy (see also: Take Launchy beyond application launching)
7. Digsby (see also: Digsby Improves Performance, Supports LinkedIn)
8. Gmail (see also: Our full Gmail coverage)
9. Adium (see also: Adium Chat Improves Menu Bar Item, Corrects Your IM Grammar )
10. CCleaner (see also: CCleaner 2.0 Decrapifies Your PC)
11. Picasa (see also: Organize your digital photos with Picasa)
12. AutoHotKey (see also: Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut)
13. Google
14. Quicksilver (see also: A beginner’s guide to Quicksilver)
15. GIMP
16. Foobar 2000 (see also: Roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000)
17. Thunderbird (see also: Eight killer Thunderbird extensions)
18. 7-Zip (see also: Top 10 Windows Downloads, #10: 7-Zip (file archive manager) )
19. DropBox (see also: Dropbox Syncs and Backs Up Files Between Computers Instantaneously)
20. uTorrent (see also: Our complete uTorrent coverage )
21. Winamp (see also: Our complete Winamp coverage)
22. Google Apps
23. AVG Antivirus (see also: AVG Free Anti-Virus 2008 Released, Much Improved)
24. Evernote (see also: Expand Your Brain with Evernote)
25. IrfanView (see also: Download of the Day: IrfanView (Windows) )
26. Opera (see also: Opera Updates to Version 9.6, Gets Faster, Adds Features)
27. Chrome (see also: The Power User’s Guide to Google Chrome)
28. Google Calendar (see also: Black-belt scheduling with Google Calendar)
29. HandBrake (see also: HandBrake Media Converter Gets Even Better)
30. Skype (see also: Our complete Skype coverage)
31. Linux (see also: Our complete Linux coverage)
32. Paint.NET (see also: Top 10 Windows Downloads, #3: Paint.NET )
33. Ad-Aware (see also: Cleanse thy PC with Ad-Aware)
34. Avast Antivirus (see also: Download of the Day: Avast anti-virus)
35. Google Docs (see also: Our complete Google Docs coverage)
36. LogMeIn (see also: Use LogMeIn for remote tech support)
37. Transmission (see also: Manage Your BitTorrent Downloads with Transmission)
38. TrueCrypt (see also: Secure your data with TrueCrypt)
39. Amarok (see also: An Early Look at Amarok 2)
40. FileZilla (see also: FTP File Transfer Across Platforms with Filezilla 3.0)
41. Notepad++ (see also: Top 10 Windows Downloads, #6: Notepad++)
42. PortableApps.com (see also: Download of the Day: PortableApps Suite 1.0 (Windows))
43. Rocket Dock (see also: Download of the Day: RocketDock (Windows))
44. Spybot Search & Destroy (see also: Spybot Search and Destroy crushes evil)
45. UltraVNC (see also: Tech support with UltraVNC SingleClick)
46. VirtualBox (see also: VirtualBox 2.0 Adds 64-bit Support, Updated Interface)

Thanksgiving: Free Software We’re Most Thankful For

If you were like me, you were not able to convince you manager to send to you to Tech-Ed 2008, but you can still see almost every minute of the conference. Sorry no swag. 

Tech·Ed Online

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A simple interface is based on Microsoft’s .NET framework and features a dark gray background and large easy-to-read buttons for the programs feature set. Images are displayed as thumbnails, so you can flip through pages if you’re just looking to browse. Some editing tools are available for red-eye correction and image rotation, and you can sort photos into groups made easily accessible on the bottom of the interface. Photology’s true strength is its capability to quickly sort through giant photo libraries and find images fitting a specific criterion. You can sort by date, time of day, indoor or outdoor location, and content such as faces, flowers, and sunsets. Users can also search by name for previously-labeled images.

Those are a bit basic compared with the coolest thing that Photology knows how to do. You can search by color, simply by using a mouse-over tool to select different gradations. Though some may be turned off by the required extra download of the .NET framework, this program is a great choice for anyone wishing to collect photos and search a large image library.

Featured Freeware: Photology | The Download Blog - Download.com

On Monday, Evernote, a good triple-platform note-taking service for Windows, Mac, the Web, and (multiple) mobile platforms (see all), updated its application for Windows Mobile phones (download).

Speed is the main story here, with text, photos, and audio notes uploading faster than before. Of course, depending on your carrier and the phone’s capabilities, this still may not be as rapid as it is on the highest-end Windows phones.

The Evernote for Windows Mobile 3.0.0.172 also improves the interface, a spare but attractive app consisting of four actions to take various notes or upload a file from the phone’s folder, in addition to two soft-key buttons.

One key lets you view and search notes created on the desktop, Web site, or your phone. Thumbnail images and the ability to search notes directly from Evernote are two additions–previous versions rebounded you to the Web to view search results. From Evernote’s menu, you can click to view recent notes, settings, and, now, your saved search results.

(Credit: CNET)

Evernote never worked as well on Windows Mobile phones as it did on the desktop, Web, and iPhone, but this effort is the publisher’s new personal best for the platform. Much more can be accomplished without leaving the application, but there’s still room for growth.

For example, playing back a voice note requires you to download the audio first. That’s a more time-consuming and space-sapping event than viewing an image or text note, especially if you created the recording from your phone in the first place and have simply used Evernote as a holding pen. I’d love to see Evernote host an instant-playback feature that can optionally just play the file without saving it.

Evernote’s applications and basic 40MB bandwidth-per-month membership are free. A premium membership offering 500MB per month rings in at $5 per month or $45 for the year.

Evernote perks up its Windows Mobile app | The Download Blog - Download.com

 

Drop.io, a file-sharing start-up that lets you easily toss anything from photos to phone calls in a "drop" (kind of like a virtual storage cabinet), has launched a new look.

The redesign makes the site look a little slicker, and certainly accentuates Drop.io’s "easy to use" mantra. It’s also clearly a consumer-oriented product now–in comparison, the old design looks like a back-end content management system. That’s good, because the company hopes to appeal to Luddites as well as techies. (For a business model, Drop.io offers premium accounts that get rid of the 100MB free account storage limit.)

Feature-wise, it’s pretty much the same, but Drop.io’s team has said that it’s "about a thousand times more customizable and useful" thanks to a newly reorganized dashboard. They also say that the speed of the site should also be a notch higher.

Drop.io gets prettier, easier | Webware - CNET

iTunes 8.0.2 for Windows 64-bit

Based on my testing, the plug-in, which requires registration to download, works quite well. After surfing over to the company’s plug-in page, which is already populated with other plug-ins for iPhoto, Outlook, Photoshop, and others, I downloaded the file in seconds.

Once installed, the plug-in embeds itself in Microsoft Office. On my version of Office 2007, I found YouSendIt’s plug-in added under the "Send to" menu, allowing me to send a file through the YouSendIt service without requiring me to surf to the company’s page.

As soon as I was ready to send a file and clicked the "YouSendIt" button, the company’s Express software popped-up immediately, asking me to input my username and password. Once complete, the process mimics YouSendIt’s online version: I input the e-mail address of the recipient, decided how long the document should be preserved for, and sent it. A progress bar displays how much time is left before the document is sent.

There’s not much to the YouSendIt plug-in. In essence, it provides you with another alternative to send files. And although I usually send documents and spreadsheets through Office’s "Send to email" feature, YouSendIt’s plug-in came in handy when I needed to send a large PowerPoint presentation that the recipient’s e-mail couldn’t handle.

Just like the online service, the recipient receives an e-mail containing a link to download the file, which saves them some valuable in-box space.

Overall, the process to send files was quick and I didn’t recognize any lag time between starting the process and completing the file transfer. That said, YouSendIt capped the file size limit at 2GB, which might upset those who need to send huge PowerPoint presentations. But for most us, 2GB is more than enough.

YouSendIt’s Office plug-in isn’t necessarily a "must have" tool, since I found that more often than not, sending e-mail through Word or Excel is sufficient. But because there are larger files that sometimes crop up, it doesn’t hurt to have it installed just in case.

The Office plug-in is available now on YouSendIt’s site as a free download after registration.

YouSendIt brings file delivery to Microsoft Office | The Download Blog - Download.com

The popular Outlook extension Xobni (download) is getting hooks into additional data sources. The service, which to date has given users historial detail about the people they communicate with in e-mail, is now extending its lookup to more social networks and other data sources.

Now, when a user is viewing a person’s record, in addition to showing the user the Outlook history, it will also look up communications with that person on Yahoo Mail, and let you connect with them on Skype.

More interesting, I think, is its expanding hooks into social networks: In addition to its previous LinkedIn support, it will now troll through Facebook and return information about a highlighted user, such as their recent status message and picture.

The product can also look up the company the contact is affiliated with on Hoovers, and display that info in your sidebar.

Although Xobni now grabs data from more sources, it is still only a tool for users of Outlook. I’ve heard that support for Web e-mail (Google and Yahoo) is coming.

Read previous Xobni coverage.

Xobni will now look up data on your contacts’ employers.

It will also give you their e-mail history from Yahoo Mail as well as Outlook.

Outlook plug-in Xobni gets deeper social hooks | The Download Blog - Download.com

When Microsoft shipped the 6801 build of Windows 7 some of the unfinished features were hidden from view using an elaborate protection mechanism. This mechanism has now been rendered useless thanks to the work of Rafael Rivera who developed a tool called Blue Badge.

Understanding the risks involved in patching core system files, you may download a copy of the tool for x86 or x64 (both rev. 2). Please keep in mind this tool is not affiliated, sponsored, supported by, written by, or endorsed by Microsoft Corporation.

Windows 7 - The “Blue Badge” experience | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

If you work in a corporate culture that’s fond of meetings, or an industry that involves lots of long-distance collaboration, you’ve no doubt heard an increasing amount about "webinars" lately. The web-based meetings, usually involving collaborative editing, whiteboard brainstorming, slideshow presentations, and/or live desktop sharing, are helpful when teaching a computer concept or technique, providing a one-way presentation a la PowerPoint, or presenting ideas and getting feedback from clients. Lots of providers compete for the largely corporate market, but at least one site, DimDim, provides free web conference hosting for groups of 20 or less. We gave one of them a try and took a few screenshots, so read on to see what you can get for free in the webinar world.

DimDim not only offers free sign-ups for those wanting to host seminars for up to 20 participants, but offers up its hosting platform for free as an open source package, for those with the server space to do something with it. DimDim doesn’t ask much more than a username, email, and password, and only from the host—those you invite to join only need to hit a connection link in the email that gets sent out when your webinars are scheduled and then starting.

The system requirements for anyone participating are basically having a decently high-speed connection and be using either Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari. If a host wants to screencast their desktop, it usually requires a separate (free) program to be downloaded and launched automatically.

Each sign-up also gets a unique access key for conference calling—the old style of tele-conferencing. I tried calling in while hosting a meeting, but ended up being alone in a conference call, waiting for others to join. So either DimDim is offering this functionality as a separate enticement for lower-tech users, or I’m not quite doing it right (equally likely).

You can set up DimDim conferences in a lot of different ways, depending on your own setup and those of your participants. You can go audio & video, audio-only, or none of the above, if you just want to text-chat. You can rotate three microphone privileges amongst three other participants, choose whether your guests can see each other or not, and (perhaps the most helpful feature) set a time limit to your meeting, which ticks away in the upper-right corner and might help everyone stay a bit more focused.

I tested DimDim out with my (very patient) wife sitting in the same room and a friend connecting from across the city. Two were on residential cable connections and the third on DSL. The whiteboard, chat, and audio functions were surprisingly snappy and responsive, though I found out that using my laptop’s built-in microphone and speakers was a bad idea on many levels—everybody could hear the pounding of my typing, and there were a number of looping echos. The desktop view sharing from my system was a bit laggy, however, and occasionally required my asking the guests to manually hit "refresh" in the main window. That’s using residential upload speeds, though, and dependent on what else was uploading at the time.

Here’s a full shot of DimDim in action, scaled just a bit to fit on this page. (Note: I lack a decent webcam, so we used another participant’s camera to try out video conferencing, not shown in this shot):

In all, I found DimDim to give its free users a surprising amount of flexibility and functionality for the price, and would be interested to find out what options set apart the other webinar-hosting companies in the field.

Got any tips or experiences to share in hosting web conferences? Wish you weren’t invited to so many? Tell us your take on webinars in the comments.

Screenshot Tour: DimDim Hosts Your Webinars for Free

Today, the Windows Live team announced a brand-new photo-sharing service that integrates directly with the Windows Live Photo Gallery desktop software, a part of the Windows Live client applications. (More info on Photo Gallery is here). Simply called Windows Live Photos, the new online service lets you upload photos directly from your computer and create and manage online galleries of photos.

The online service mirrors some of the functions of the desktop software – for example, you can tag people in your photos, tag yourself, or rename the photo’s title. However, the online gallery also provides new features like the ability to add comments to the photos or copy an embed code for posting your photos elsewhere on the web. There’s a photo URL provided, too, if you just want to link to the photo itself.

Through Live Photos’ privacy controls, you can specify who, if anyone, has access to your photos and what they can do – view, edit, delete, download, etc. 

One of the best features in the new service, though, is definitely the photo slideshow, which you can launch at anytime from the “More” menu. The slideshow is easy to click through with its navigation buttons at the bottom or you can let it auto-play. When you’re finished viewing the images, you can easily return to your photo gallery either by clicking the link provided or just hitting “escape.”

The new Live Photos service will also be available from the new Windows Live homepage, also announced today.

New Photo Sharing Service Announced: Windows Live Photos | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Amid all the news last week about the upcoming new Windows Live and new Windows Live Photos service, one thing that may have been overlooked is how Windows Live SkyDrive was tied into those announcements. According to a post on the SkyDrive team blog, the team is increasing the amount of online storage from 5 GB to 25 GB! The reason for the increase is to provide more room for all the photos that will soon be uploaded using the new online photo service.

In addition to the storage increase, the SkyDrive service will also offer more features like the ability to download photos directly from SkyDrive to your Windows Live Photo Gallery desktop software. You can also choose to download entire folders as zip files, move files between folders, and copy files to multiple folders.

Another big revamp involves the sharing features and functionality. With the new SkyDrive, you’ll be able to share files and photos with others without requiring them to use a Windows Live ID. If you have certain groups of people that you share photos with on regular basis, you’ll be able to organize them into groups to make repeat sharing easier and faster. And you can see what your family and friends have shared with you all in one place. Commenting on photos will be improved with HTML, spam control and other options.

For Internet Explorer users, there will be an option to keep your IE favorites in sync in between all your computers, too.

The new SkyDrive will have a new look-and-feel when it relaunches so it fits in better with the rest of the new Windows Live. It’s not here yet, but, according to the team blog post, it will be here soon. Stay tuned!

Want 25 GB Of Free Online Storage? | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Have you been eying the new Windows 7 features with envy? Well, now you can get at least one of them on your Vista computer: Aero Shake. Over at LifeHacker, they’ve released an app that lets you shake your active window to minimize all the other open windows, just like in Windows 7. Shake again, and the other windows will be restored. Simply called the Shake app, the software was written in AutoHotkey and the source code is available for addition to your main AHK script if desired. But for most of us, the downloadable .exe file will work better.

Before you download, though, be aware that this app is still a little “rough around the edges” they warn, and some commenters have reported issues with its use. In our tests, it worked OK, but maybe a little slow. It also hid the sidebar! However, it definitely gets us excited to get our hands on Windows 7 so we can finally enjoy the real Aero Shake and all its other cool features too.

Aero Shake For Your Vista PC | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

From the Windows Vista Team Blog, I learned of Witty, a Twitter client for Vista. The software, powered by the Windows Presentation Foundation built into Windows Vista, runs like a "real" application and like some apps, can be minimized to the system tray. Like most Twitter apps, Witty lets you post updates, view timelines, view replies, respond to direct messages, and open links in your browser. However, Witty has some more unique features that make it stand out like the skinning capabilities, fade techniques, spell checking, the ability to remember the window location & size, and a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts. You can download Witty here.

Witty for Vista | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10