Checkout the following slick video to see the new, user interface improvements in Office 2007. Gone are the toolbars, replaced by ribbons and galleries. The improvements and new features in Office 2007 look really good. Will this require you to upgrade to Vista?

The last few months I have been listening to a variety of podcasts. Some of them start out strong and then totally fade out of my attention, e.g. 43 folders. Even though there are plentiful tools to self publish easily on the Internet (like this Wordpress blogging tool I am using), it is really hard to create compelling audio or video content. And I think it is way harder than text based content.

There is one podcast that I have been listening to every week. It’s consistently good and inspiring even after almost 30 episodes. Venture Voice — Entertaining Entrepreneurship. The interviews on this show, and the entrepreneurs they cover, are absolutely worth listening to. There are some other podcasts I like too, and I will list them here in the future. If you have a favorite podcast that is consistently worth listening to, let me know.

I was at the Apple store a few weekends ago with my daughter. She took me to see the PhotoBooth software. It’s simple and incredibly fun software that lets you add effects to pictures taken with the built-in camera. The screen flashes white when it takes a picture which is very clever and emulates the flash on a camera. Of course, the computer doesn’t have a flash. And since the computers in the store are connected to the Internet we were able to send the pictures off to ourselves. Very cool. The only downside to this software is that it only runs on iMacs and the new Macbook pro’s. You cant buy it separately if you already have a Mac or a different one.

The “answer” to happiness has been outlined the following excellent article I read today at LiveScience.com. I fowarded this article to some friends and they found it useful.

“It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don’t make it.“
—Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook.

From the article, “One route to more happiness is called ‘flow,’ an engrossing state that comes during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling. It comes less from what you’re doing than from how you do it.”