Since iOS4 the iPhone and iPad can multi-task in terms of allowing apps to run in the background. Prior to this when you switched from one app to another, the app you switched from would automatically close. The app has to support background processing and most apps do. The benefit of apps running in the background means, for example, that you could be reading your email whilst, for example, Skype or your IM client is still running in the background, listening out for calls and ‘pings’.

The downside of multi-tasking is that it might be a drain on the battery. There’s no conclusive proof of this but if your battery level is dropping like a stone, it’s probably worth closing apps that are currently running. Unfortunately there’s no quick way to “close all”, at least not in iOS4 (who knows what iOS5 might bring) and turning the phone off completely doesn’t clear all apps from memory either. When the phone is switched back on, the apps that were running are still running.

To close an app, double tap on the Home button (that’s the big round one at the bottom) to reveal a panel of icons. These icons represent the apps that are currently running. The iPhone can only show 4 icons at a time. To display “hidden” icons, simply swipe your finger across any of the icons in a leftward direction.

Press and hold on any of the icons and after a second or two all the icons will start to jiggle and each one will have a “close” symbol (red circle with white horizontal line) displayed at the top left hand corner.

Tap the close symbol of the app that you want to close and the app is immediately closed. Repeat this process for each app you want to close.

Double tap the Home button again to close the “currently open apps panel”

As for my colleague’s iPhone, at the end of the working day, his battery was still showing 30%.

Video Out

Although this functionality is available on the first generation iPad, on iPad 1 the support for “video out” (as many people call it) is provided by individual apps, and not all apps support it, whereas with iPad 2, the support is provided by the iPad which means that the output of all apps, as well as the Home screen, can be displayed on an external display.

Delivering a Presentation

One of the main uses of video out and mirroring in a work/business environment is delivering a presentation. Hook up the iPad to a projector or large TV screen (many of our meeting/conference rooms have replaced projectors with TV screens) and run the presentation on the iPad.

The latest version of Keynote (Apple’s presentation app) allows you to display your presenter notes and/or upcoming slide on the iPad whilst the actual presentation is displayed on the external display device. Keynote supports video out which means you can do this on both iPad 1 and iPad 2.

I’ll be covering this in more detail in another blog post.

Sharing Ideas

Another app that supports video out is Adobe Ideas, a sketchbook-type app that can be used for capturing ideas in graphical form. In the image below, it is running on the iPad 1 and displaying the sketch/diagram (without the app’s drawing palette) on the monitor.

Another app that I use for organising ideas is Corkulous. This doesn’t support video out, however, by connecting my iPad 2 up to an external display (see the image below), i can share my ideas with colleagues without us all having to cram round an iPad.

Playtime

Of course, all work and no play makes Mike a dull boy so I thought I’d check out how Garageband looks on an external monitor:

Zero Configuration

Whether you have an iPad 1 or iPad 2, to display the iPad’s output on an external display, simply connect the iPad to the display device using an appropriate adapter. One end of the adapter plugs into the iPad’s 30-pin connector (the one that you connect the charger to) and the other end plugs into the external device. That’s it. There is nothing to configure.

VGA or HDMI?

iPad 2 supports a VGA adapter and an HDMI adapter, but iPad 1 only supports the VGA adapter. If, like me, you already have a VGA adapter that you used with iPad 1, the good news is that it will work with iPad 2.

The VGA adapter allows you to connect the iPad to a VGA-equipped TV, monitor or projector. You can purchase a VGA adapter from your local Apple Store or online here: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC552ZM/A?fnode=MTc0MjU4NjE&mco=MjE2MzE2MDc.

If you have an HDMI-compatible display device (monitor, TV or projector), you can use the HDMI adapter instead. The HDMI adapter has 2 connectors on it – one for the display device and one for charging the iPad, so you’ll never have to worry about running out of battery power in the middle of your presentation or demo.

Last week Minster68 came up with a suggestion which was to create a contact in Outlook which was his Gmail account and then set up an Outlook rule to forward on any meeting requests to this email address. Once the email is received by the Gmail account, the meeting is automatically added to the Google calendar that is associated with the Google account. The Google calendar is then accessed via his iPhone.

So on Friday I gave it a go and I’m pleased to report that it works.

Rather than labelling my Gmail contact as iPhone, which is what Minster did, I labelled it as “CalendarSync” as I think that is a little less obvious than iPhone, and a little less alarming for the other attendees who might think we’re becoming an Apple only company.

My Outlook calendar is full of items that have been generated via a meeting request, most of which are created by other people. Unlike many people, I receive meeting requests for more than just meetings. For example, every time I’m booked to deliver a training course, our team’s Training Co-ordinator sends me a meeting request.

So I created an Outlook rule to automatically forward on meeting request emails to my CalendarSync contact, as suggested by Minster, and asked a colleague to set up a test meeting. The meeting request email came in, I refreshed my Google calendar and found that the meeting had been added.

Unlike Outlook, I don’t actually have to log in to Google and accept the meeting requests, they are just added to the calendar. Where a meeting is set up by me, it’s just a case of inviting the CalendarSync contact as Minster said.

As well as meetings, my Outlook calendar contains appointments, which are like iCal events. I use appointments for several purposes, primarily when I need to block off a period of time to work on a project but I’m not actually inviting anyone. I also use Outlook to record time spent on different activities so for example if somebody rings me with an Excel query and I spent 30 minutes on it, that is recorded in Outlook as an appointment.

To get appointments into my Google calendar, I can either invite the CalendarSync contact or change my way of working and use meeting requests instead of appointments and invite CalendarSync as the only attendee (you can’t invite yourself to a meeting).

My Manager and one or two others in the team have author permissions on my calendar so sometimes they add appointments too. As far as I can see, there’s no way of automating an email to Google for appointments created by somebody else, so I’m going to have to check for these and forward them on manually.

I have quite a few future meetings and appointments already in Outlook and as Minster said, these won’t be transferred across to Google. If these meetings and appointments have been created by me then I can open the item in Outlook, add the CalendarSync contact, save the item and the Google calendar will get updated. However, if the item has been been created by someone else then I have to use the forward command in Outlook, forwarding it to the CalendarSync contact.

I also tested what happens if a meeting or appointment is moved or deleted from Outlook and I’m happy to report that the Google calendar is automatically updated.

The only downside is that I now get a load of emails on my phone because my iPhone syncs to my Gmail account, however, that can be dealt with by setting up another Gmail account that is dedicated to this task and not attaching the mail account to the iPhone.

Finally, to get my Google calendar on my iPhone, which, after all, was the object of the exercise, I subscribe to it via BusyCal on my desktop Mac and via MobileMe synchronisation, the calendar items appear on my iPad and iPhone.

You can access your Google calendar directly from your iPhone – via Settings > Mail, Contact, Calendars > Add Account > Other > Add CalDAV Account (especially handy for non-Mac users)

So all in all, a good solution and thanks to Minster for the idea.

The text chat feature behaves like instant messaging. If a delegate has a question, wants to make a point or simply has a problem (for example, their audio has disappeared or they need to leave the session early for personal or business reasons), they can advise you. The “text chat icon” (a little speech bubble) changes colour on the presenter’s screen to indicate that there is a new “message”, or if the chat panel is open, their text message will just appear in the panel.

When an attendee clicks the raise hand button, a hand icon appears next to the attendee’s name in the participants panel, indicating that the attendee may have a question, a problem or simply wants to make a point.

It’s important to “set the rules” before the course starts. I encourage participation but ask delegates to use the raise hand button and the chat panel appropriately otherwise it stops the flow of the training session.

Emoticons allow the trainer to ask a question and have the participants reply by clicking a button. If I ask my group “Have you ever used pivot tables?”, each delegate can reply by clicking a “yes” icon (which could be a green tick or happy smiley, for example) or “no” (which might be a red cross or a sad smiley).

When I deliver online courses I like to use a dual-screen setup. Acrobat Connect allows the presenter to choose which monitor to share, however, the version of Webex that I use at work doesn’t support dual monitors so I run the main application (the one that I am delivering training on, for example, Excel) on the primary monitor and put the participants and chat panels on the other one. This allows me to keep my eye on the chat and delegates who join late/leave early with just the glance of an eye.

A final trick to share with you is that I often join the Webex meeting as a participant from another computer. One of the disadvantages of delivering and attending online training is that you are at the mercy of a sometimes-flaky Internet connection. This can result in a “lag” where the attendees screens are “behind” mine, for example, where I have moved to the next slide of a presentation but the attendees are still seeing the previous slide. By logging in to the meeting twice (once as presenter once as a participant), I am able to monitor the training session from a delegate’s perspective.

Picture the scene – you’ve found a quiet room in an uninhabited part of the building and 10 minutes after starting the training, sirens wail, builders hammer and gardeners mow – yes all these have happened to me (not at the same time!). There are some noises that are unavoidable and short of stopping the course and trying to find an alternative location to deliver from, there’s not much that can be done apart from to talk a little louder!

Where I work, we use Webex to deliver the visual element of an online course but the audio is delivered via a teleconferencing system (the trainer and the delegates dial-in). Delegates often attend from their desks in open plan offices which means that there can be background noise which not only affects my concentration as a trainer, it also affects the other delegates.

So my first tip is, whether you are using integrated VOIP or a telephone conferencing system, find out how you, as the host, can mute all participants.

Staying with the telephone, whenever an individual joins or leaves the teleconference call there will usually be a high-pitched beep. The system that we use has two distinct tones – one to indicate that somebody has joined and another to indicate that someone has left. There is also the option to require everyone to say their name when they join and an automated voice announces their arrival with “xxx has joined the conference”.

The beeps/announcements, which can be heard by all participants (not just the host), are distracting, especially when people log in late. Often, when the presentation/training has finished and it’s “question time”, people who have no questions will leave the teleconference with the result that their “leaving beep” will cut right through the question that somebody else is asking, meaning that I have to ask the delegate to repeat the question.

Tip number 2 therefore, is to disable “the beep” either altogether or immediately before the training session starts.

In my next blog post I’ll give you some tips on non-verbal communication when delivering an online training session or presentation.

Dashboard – the word means different things to different people but I was recently asked by a customer to “build them a Dasboard in Excel”. The requirements were fairly vague but included:

• A way to graphically display different sets of summarised data.
• The ability to switch from one graph to another at the click of a button.
• The ability to select the most appropriate chart for the selected data.
• Drop-downs so that they could choose whether to display the data “by country” or “by month”.
• Drop-downs so that they could select which country and which month to display.
• On the column chart, they wanted to have a straight horizontal line at 95% to indicate the “Target”.

It was with this last requirement that I hit a brick wall. Rather than create a “mixed type” chart with a second data series fixed at 95%, I thought that the easiest way was to use Excel’s drawing tools to draw a line and then change it’s colour and thickness. This should take me 2 minutes with the Excel macro recorder.

Oh how wrong was I!

I recorded the process and when I looked at the VBA module..horror of horrors…there was no code. So I recorded it again…and again. “Something’s not right here” I thought, so off to Google I went.

It turns out that the Excel 2007 macro recorder doesn’t record actions that involve placing and manipulating the drawing tools/shapes.

However, Microsoft fixed this in Excel 2010. So I opened the file in Excel 2010, turned the macro recorder on and hey presto…I have a working macro. For those interested in the code (and feel free to copy and paste this into an Excel 2007 module)…

ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddConnector(msoConnectorStraight, 280, 69.75, 812, 69.75).Select
With Selection.ShapeRange.Line
.Visible = msoTrue
.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 0, 0)
.Transparency = 0
End With

With Selection.ShapeRange.Line
.Visible = msoTrue
.Weight = 2.25
End With

Whereas delegates have to book if they want to attend a classroom-based course or a virtual training session, the eLearning courses (which have been created using Articulate) are hosted on our team’s website and can be accessed at any time by simply clicking on the name of the course on the website’s Course Catalogue page.

Unfortunately we don’t have access to a Learning Management System so in order to track usage of the eLearning, I added an additional table (tblTracking) into the Customer Relationship Management system that I built. The CRM system stores it’s data in a SQL Server database and integrates with the website to allow delegates to see what courses are available, when they are running and ultimately book a place.

When a user clicks on the name of a course on the website’s Course Catalogue page the following happens…if the selected course is an eLearning course (indicated by a value of True in the ysnELearning field in the tblCatalogue table) a record is added to the tblTracking table. It records the user’s Name (this is actually their Windows logonID and is automatically captured), the name of the course and the date.

As all my colleagues are familiar with Access, I’ve created an Access database that is linked to the SQL Server database. The Access database lives on a file share that we all have access to and provides an easy way to query the database.

In the screenshot below (which uses fictitious data), you can see that User1 has accessed the Excel Functions course and the File Management course. In fact this user accessed the Excel Functions course twice – once on 15th June and once on 18th June. This in itself is useful information as not only can we track usage of the eLearning, but we can also see whether people are accessing individual modules more than once. Users could do this for a variety of reasons – maybe they just want to run through it again or maybe they were interrupted part-way through and decided to start again from the beginning.

Another request from my Manager was to produce a list of users who had accessed each module but exclude users who had accessed the same module more that once.

To do this I created a new query:

I added the Name, Course and Date fields and then clicked the Totals button to display the Total row in the Query Grid. The Total row entry for strName and strCourse was left as Group By but the dtmDate was changed to First. This instructs Access to display the first date it finds for a combined Name/Course and so gives the desired result:

Several months ago, whilst helping somebody setup and run a meeting using Webex, I discovered a problem – if the presenter is using Vista (and most of our company is now) and they display the chat panel and/or the participants panel, the other participants will see on their screen, a grey box with a yellow “cross hatched” pattern.

The size and location of this cross-hatched pattern is determined by the size and location of the panels on the presenter’s screen.

This issue only arises when the presenter is sharing their screen and of course, unless a participant shouts “Something’s covering part of the screen and I can’t see the presentation”, they’ll be non the wiser.

I’m lucky in that I have an external monitor. OK, it’s not a super-duper 22-inch one, it’s an old 17-inch one that I’ve had for a few years. But nevertheless, when I’m in the office, I have it permanently connected to my Vista laptop.

When I’m running a training course or delivering a presentation via Webex, I share my laptop screen and drag the participants panel and chat panel over to the external monitor so that I can have these permanently displayed. This allows me to monitor the chat and see who is attending/dropping out of the meeting without spoiling the attendees view of the presentation.

On another note, I wondered if it is possible to set Webex to screen share an external monitor? If I select Share Desktop, it will only share the primary laptop monitor. If I select Share an Application, and the application is on the external monitor, other participants can’t see it.

After some research, I found that the version of Webex that we use (Webex Meeting Centre), doesn’t support screen sharing multiple monitors.

When he did this yesterday, Paint Shop Pro displayed the following error message: “unable to get the data from the clipboard”. I was able to replicate the problem and so began some Googling (in the old days we’d call this web research). Reading up on various forums and knowledgebase sites, it appeared that many other people had reported this problem too, stretching back to 2006, so it doesn’t appear to be a recent problem. However, nobody had come up with a workable solution.

So…I suggested to my customer that he paste the screenshot into Microsoft Paint and save as a TIFF from there. This works like a charm.

It’s not often that I’d recommend Paint, but in this instance it did the job.

To get from here…

To here…

Right click on the text box and select Format Shape

In the 3-D Rotation section, set the X value to 190: