Yes, I’ve started a podcast. It’s been a month in planning and finally pumped out Episode 1, a beta test, Monday. If you have time and want to check out our beta episode, go to hometowntechtalk.com. Episode 2 is already in planning for sometime next week, I’ve got another co-host to substitute since Jeff can’t always be there. Episode 1 was really messy, I spent three hours editing it down to get the final version, another two hours figuring out how to encode it over and over. I’ve learned from audio mistakes (sync issues), and poor preparation. Episode 2 will be very polished, have four unique segments (each with their own intros), and possibly an exclusive interview with someone special (it’s a surprise) if I can get it arranged in time.
I don’t know what it is but I’ve been ecstatic about putting out another episode so I cannot wait. I really want this to be something we can put out every two weeks, but it’s just hard with our schedules. I’m thankful enough to get at least one person together with me to record. Two or three extras would be my target, no more than that.
The website is still underway; I’ll eventually put up some more content pages so you know who we are, and what we are actually doing. This blog is actually kind of a mess too, will work on that sometime soon. It’s all on my big to do list.
If you have any suggestions, comments, questions, please don’t hesitate to email me. I love feedback; you can find my email address on the hometowntechtalk website. I’m Stephen Crawford, if you didn’t already catch that 
Microsoft Office Word 2007 may just be the runner up for “Swiss Army knife of the year,” next to the iPhone.
Ever since I started testing the early beta versions of Office 2007, I must say I’m very impressed by the new ribbon design and a few new features it incorporates. I’ve always been a big fan of using styles to keep things clean so it’s perfect. I have tried all the open source “word” replacements too and none can compare to this. The new font package is very nice too, Calibri is my favorite, now everyone needs to upgrade so they can enjoy the documents I write with Calibri.
One of its new, little known, features is a blog publisher. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, bloat. But no, it’s actually really great. I draft all my blog posts in Word anyway; it’s just a quick easy way to check spelling and such. So now all I have to do is click the “Office Button” and then Publish and Blog. It couldn’t be any simpler, and it works great with WordPress blogs too.
Every post on this brand new blog has been posted using Word, can you tell a difference? It publishes very clean html, unlike what you would normally expect coming out of Word; <FONT><FONT><FONT>a</FONT></FONT></FONT>^h^h^h. Uploads pictures, this feature is priceless. I like putting pictures in my post most of the time so it’s just a real time saver. The only buggy thing about it is image placement.
Before I publish a post, I usually post it as a draft from Word. Then add the categories from the WordPress admin since there appears to be a problem with adding new categories from Word. Then I check image placement, linkify (sucks from Word–I’ll admit), finalize it, and publish directly from WordPress. Let’s review: Office Button->Publish->Blog. Easy as pie.
