You Don’t Know Jack

The Joys of Working at Windward

I don't know about you, but I work for a pretty badass company. Considering I'm only 22, I think I have a pretty decent variety of work experience under my belt. I worked construction as a plumber's assistant for three summers during high school. I've done two retail stints, one at a Longs Drugs senior year of high school and then at a Best Buy during my early college years. I also volunteered to coach youth hockey while I was in high school, which was AWESOME!

Like Coach Bombay, minus the flowing locks and DUI

Now I'm in my (first) senior year of college and I've been a Marketing Intern at Windward for more than a year now. So why is working at Windward awesome? Let's start off with a little table comparing some of the jobs I've had:

	Get to use porta-potties everyday	Awesome employee discount (so your entire paycheck goes towards crap you'd never buy in the first place)	Get to deal with kids just as annoying as I was as a kid	Free snacks, game night, and beer when we hit quota
Plumber's Assistant
Longs Drugs
Best Buy
Volunteer Hockey Coach
Windward

 

I think it's pretty clear why Windward is the best, especially considering I get to use real toilets and don't have to deal with annoying kids. One time I did get to fix a broken toilet here at Windward though. Yeah, it's on my resume.

Now we'll break down what makes Windward truly awesome.

Game Night

One night a week, all the cool kids (i.e. geeks) stay late and play video games. We played Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings until we were bored to death and were finally able to successfully lobby the company purchase of StarCraft. Now once a week I get to prove why the Marketing team is better than the Development team.

You know you want it

Lots and Lots and Lots of Snacks

All college students love free food, but Windward takes it to the next level by actually paying me to eat free food. Nothing's better than stalling trips to the grocery store so I can eat my weight in Goldfish everyday. And yes, that is beer in the fridge. Shhhhh…

Hungry? Your fault.

 

Thirsty? Again, your fault.

Awesome Workstations

These things are bigger than my freakin' TV. 'Nuff said.

StarCraft + 26" Monitor = AWESOME

The Good and The Bad

This wouldn't be an honest article if I didn't tell you at least one negative aspect about working at Windward. As a Marketing Intern, I get to experience the joys of sharing a window with the CEO of the company. Needless to say, my work gets done on time.

Big Sister looms in the shadows…

 

And now you know why working at Windward is awesome. Until next time…

 

Think your job is better than my job? Sound off in the comments!

 

The Joys of Video Production

One of the most powerful selling tools for almost every business and every website is videos. They let anyone who wants to receive advice, training, support, or even a laugh do so at their convenience. It comes as no surprise that having high quality videos will convey that your company, product, service, and reliability are also high quality.

Creating high quality videos is no easy task, but you can make the job infinitely easier with the right tools. The professionals all use Final Cut Pro, the Mac-only industry standard for any serious video production. I mean, they made Napoleon Dynamite with it so it must be legit.

Tina! Final Cut Pro is teh shiz!

Of course we make software that plugs into Microsoft Office so Macs are in short supply here at Windward. I love my MacBook to death, but iMovie just doesn't cut it for screen capture (although it does rock for Cubicle Wars 2010 Trailer Epicness, created by yours truly). Which leaves us with Camtasia. Oh, Camtasia…

A whole bunch of piss you off, in a box!

Where to begin? I suppose Camtasia does work well for screen capture. It's taking the screen captured footage and doing something with it though where the troubles begin. Let me break down my typical Camtasia experience.

For any work videos I start with a script. I DO use my Mac and Ableton Live to record and edit voice narrations. Once I have a working version of the narration, I take two or three trial runs while recording the screen and listening to the audio recording. I've had pretty decent luck with this in my opinion.

Occasionally I'll go crazy and use Camtasia for something other than screen capture. Beware that this is a LONG process. This 2:00 minute Introduction to AutoTag video took me more than a full day to do. Probably because I used the ghettoness known as Microsoft Paint to do all the image editing, but you still have to admit it's pretty awesome.

Creating a video is only the beginning here at Windward. Once we produce and publish the video, I would say that on average we go back and reproduce the video at least five times. Our boss in notorious for sending us an email response within five minutes that says something like this:

Great video!   Love this… Awesome at 1:30 when you do thing… Love that…   Nice job. Oh, can you make it say this? And do this other thing? And while you're at it just redo the whole thing?   Thanks - dave

 

Getting it past the critics is the first part. After that we test the videos on every computer, every operating system, and every internet connection we can get our hands on. Then we usually get another email like this a few days later…

 

Just tested (insert video name here) at home while I was downloading a few gigs worth of files and compiling our entire enterprise reporting package. It skipped for 1 second. Redo the whole thing.   Thanks - dave

 

And they wonder why we hate doing videos. This ensures we get to spend about two hours on the phone with Camtasia until after another eight versions we finally get one that doesn't skip. Oh and we took out every effect, transition, and zoom-and-pan so now it sucks.

So what's the lesson here? If you're creating videos, don't kill yourself trying to win an Oscar. You won't. James Cameron beat you to it. Instead, go for something functional that gets the message across. Like always, the KISS method definitely applies here.

 

Do you have nightmares about some of your video production projects? Got some tips to make the video production process smoother? Fire away in the comments.

 

A special thanks to my boss, David Thielen, for having a great sense of humor and for not firing me after reading this blog.

The Cubicle War Continues!

In 2006 we contacted the geniuses at Barats and Bereta about creating a promotional video for us. We gave them free reign and asked that the video only contain a single mention of our company name. We put a lot of faith in their comedic talent, and they delivered far beyond what we could've hoped for. Four years and 2.5 million views later, Cubicle War 2006 has cemented its place in viral video history. Check out the video below.

Considering the great success that was Cubicle War 2006, we're extremely excited to announce that in 2010 the Cubicle War will continue! Barats and Bereta will be delivering the next installment of Cubicle Wars this March. Until then, sit back and relive the greatest Cubicle War 2006 moments with the official trailer for Cubicle War 2010 below!

What Computer Science Means To Me (and why it’s OK to hate programming)

I started my college career as an Open Option Engineering major. Sounds fancy, but all it means is that I got to sit through a 1-credit hour class designed to give us 'open optioners' an understanding of all Engineering disciplines to help us make the most informed major selection. The field that caught my attention the most, and managed to get me to enroll in the major, was Computer Science.

This doesn't really have anything to do with Computer Science.

The Computer Science presenter pulled out a pencil and told us to think of it as a computer. There are all sorts of things you can do with a pencil like math, writing, and drawing. However, to say that the study of math, writing, or drawing is the study of the pencil though is incorrect. The analogy made sense to me, Computer Science is the study of computers as tools and what can be done with them, not necessarily what can be done to them.

Four years later and I'm now entering the second semester of my senior year. I'll soon be a full-fledged Bachelor of Computer Science, according to my degree. According to my classmates and coworkers however, I am fairly unique Computer Scientist. You see, I hate programming.

It's hard for me to hit the nail on the head. Whether it be dreading the monotony of staring at thousands of lines of code all day, spending hours trying to find a single bug or syntax error, or picking up a new project and having no idea where to start, programming and I don't get along all that well.

It didn't start out that way. My first introductory programming class used Python and the short programs we had to write were like puzzles, fun and not overwhelmingly difficult. To this day my favorite programming language is still Python.

Then came the second course. We used a mixture of Python and C++, and while the assignments and projects were manageable, somewhere along the way I found myself beginning to hate programming. I felt that our professor, who primarily taught graduate courses, used lectures as a chance to show off how much he knew and I could hardly follow the code being written in three different applications with syntax and structures I'd never seen or used. I struggled, but made it through nonetheless.

Felines make excellent programmers.

At this point I've taken classes I hated like Data Structures and Principles of Programming Languages (lots of programming) and classes I loved like Algorithms and Computational Theory (not so much programming). While I can read and write code fluently enough if I have to, I would still much prefer to avoid it altogether.

The whole reason I became a CS major is because I think computers are the most fascinating devices man has ever created. They can be applied to any field and make pretty much everything faster, better, and cheaper. They're used for everything from simulating highly complex gene folding on the microscopic level to unmanning Wal-Mart's inventory and reordering systems.

A lot of people give me weird looks when I tell them I'm a CS major who hates programming. They think it's like saying I'm a self proclaimed literary genius who happens to be illiterate. But coding is not and will never be what I think of as the essence of Computer Science.

Einstein had mad programming skillz.

Saying Computer Science is only about computers is like saying astronomy is only about telescopes. Computers are the beginning, not the end. And while coding may be the means to an end, it is not the end itself. And that is what Computer Science is to me, taking these machines we've created and using them to make our jobs easier, show us things we never thought possible, and maybe make life a little better for all of us.

What do you think? Is my opinion of Computer Science dead-on or am I just a n00b without the balls required to be a hardcore programmer? Sound off in the comments!

What Makes Windward Reports Different?

The following is an email exchange that took place between our CTO David Thielen and a well-respected Crystal Reports consultant. This blog is meant to serve as a reference for anyone curious about the differences between Windward Reports and the majority of other reporting software packages. I think it does a thorough job of addressing the concerns some of the more diligent users may have.

I initially contacted the consultant and offered him a free copy of our product. He and our CTO proceeded to exchange a handful of emails discussing the differences and similarities between our product, Crystal, and a few other packages.

Windward messages are highlighted in light green with black text.

Responses are highlighted in dark green with white text.

 

################################################################

 

Hello ******,   My name is Adam Jackson and I'm with Windward Reports. I'm writing to you after stumbling across your blog and website dedicated to Crystal Reports. I'd like to offer you a free copy of our report design tool AutoTag and the Windward Reports reporting engines. I don't ask anything in return because I'm confident that you'll be impressed with our product and that you'll potentially share or blog about your experience.   If you're interested please visit: http://www.windwardreports.com/apps/PressCopy.aspx   Your download code is: (removed)   Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like to know anything further.   Best, Adam Jackson (Windward)

 

Adam,   >> I'm confident that you'll be impressed with our product and that you'll >> potentially share or blog about your experience.   I am always happy to share new ideas with my readers. But I will be honest. I have seen plenty of "no learning curve" tools, all of which promise to be different from the last "no learning curve" tool. So far everyone of them has been useless. You see, I have to solve real world business issues with CR every day. The users have the steepest learning curve understanding their own business issues and then the limits of their own data. It is rare that the reporting tool interface poses the most serious challenge. So my experience is that the complexity of the reporting interface is going to correlate closely with the capabilities of the reporting tool. Tell me your interface is simple and I expect it to be limited. You will have to convince me.   While your offer of free software is a nice gesture, it doesn't compare to the value I place on my time. I am still willing to spend some time with your tool, but only if your team is willing to do some homework for me. The first step is to compare the raw capabilities of your tool to Crystal. I want to see a list of things that each tool can do that the other tool can't do AT ALL. NOT which does things easier, so no adjectives at this point. Do you think you can have someone make an initial list of these features for me? I am sure that there are a handful of things that CR can do that Windward can't (an vice versa) and I won't be impressed if I have to uncover them myself. That would mean that you really don't know your competition and then I would be wasting my time. But here are some places to look:   Subreports. CR can take one already completed report and embed it within another. Cross-tabs. CR can create a grid that dynamically changes the number of rows/columns based on the values in today's data. Group Sort. CR can subtotal each group and dynamically find the top 10 groups today, showing an 11th group for the others. Running Totals. Create a column that automatically increment on every detail line, or even once per group. Formula Functions - Does Windward have a formula syntax comparable to CRs.   Once we get the first part done then I have another simple test that lets me cut through to the heart of the matter. I would like to take one or two standard reports that I use in my Intro and Advanced class and then see what it takes for me and your team to create them in Windward.   Let me know if you think I am being unreasonable.   From ******

 

Hi;   Adam asked me to answer this. Let me give you a general answer, and then a specific one.   With Windward you use Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint to design the report. The report template is the document created by that app. Let's use Word as the example. A Word document is a sequence of objects - paragraphs (which are a sequence of characters), tables, bitmaps, charts, etc. We allow our reporting tags to be placed anywhere within that stream.   Big picture this gives you a couple of advantages: You are designing a report that is a document (if it's a spreadsheet same with Excel) in a layout that is fundamentally a document. This gives you the ability to easily set anything you want that can be hard to impossible in Crystal. The logic can break anywhere. So a forEach loop or an if can start in the middle of a table and end in a different table. You are operating on that stream of objects that makes up a document. Group sort/by does not exist in our system because it's not necessary. You would just have a forEach inside another forEach. Subreports – yes (you just import another Office template). Running totals, functions, formulas, etc. – yes. All of Office's functionality is included. You can lock parts of the document, use version tracking & commenting, display differences between two templates, etc. In Office 2010 some incredible collaborative features have been added to Office. You get all of that.   Now on to some specifics: You want to iterate over a series of rows, where for each row you have a table, some text, a chart, and more text. All of that occurs for one row, then goes to the next row of data. Piece of cake in Windward. From what I know of Crystal – impossible. In Excel, we expand all references so a SUM() of a table remains a SUM() function – this holds for everything built in a spreadsheet. We also carry the Excel cell formatting across and use it for output in any format including PDF, DOCX, etc. In PowerPoint you can set up all the PPT functionality to carry across to the output. Yes it comes under easier – but you can have someone with no training on our system design a report – because they know Office. You can't do that with Crystal.   The above is off the top of my head. If this is sufficient we would be happy to give you a free copy. We would also be happy to answer any questions you have creating a couple of your reports for class. But to be honest, I'll be surprised if you have more than 1 or 2 questions. As you say, ease of use is overused. But when something is a lot easier – it does make a difference.   Thanks – dave (CTO – Windward)

 

David,   >> With Windward you use Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint to design the report.   So it sounds like you are assuming that the user already knows how to do specific data manipulation in Office? If someone (like me) has never needed to go beyond Office XP, you really think there won't be a learning curve?   From ******

 

Hi ******;   Good question. BTW, we're going to use these exchanges for a blog post because it's a really good way of making clear how we are unique.   To your question - we don't use the data manipulation in Office. That not only is difficult and has a learning curve - but it is also quite limited. We have our own tags which you place using our Office Add-In AutoTag. If you use our databin and/or user defined tags (UDTs) - then it's just drag & drop from a pop-up window.   If you want full control, then you need to use the tag editor in the Add-In and that does require an understanding of the underlying data - but by and large maybe a minute or two of training on our system. We heavily borrowed from the Excel UI so it looks very familiar.   Where the rubber really meets the road is the SQL and XPath wizards. If you need a complex SQL select, and it was not prebuilt in a UDT, then you need to create the select. You need to try it to see but the best way to describe how easy it is to learn & use - we get virtually no support questions on it.   So if UDTs are set up - truly zero learning curve (except drag this to where you want it to be in the template). For full control beyond UDTs, incredibly easy and most people will need no training on the report design part - but they do need to understand their data.   Thanks – dave (CTO – Windward)

 

David,   >> If you want full control, then you need to use the tag editor in the >> Add-In and that does require an understanding of the underlying >> data -   Oh, I finally get it. Getting full control requires learning how to build a meta data layer like in Cognos. Some people have a use for that model but not me. Thanks anyway.   From ******

 

No, not at all. I agree a meta layer like Cognos is a lot of extra work (and rarely worth it). It's hard to explain because we don't fit any of the existing models and people tend to assume we must be similiar to others. We had the lead product manager for Sql Server Reporting Services stop by for a demo and it took him 15 minutes to start to understand how we work - because he kept looking for things that just aren't required with us.   When I say an understanding of the underlying data, and this is only if you don't set up the UDTs for people, you need to understand that an employee name is the FirstName and LastName columns in the Employee database. You don't need to be a DBA or know how to create a select statement. But you do need to know that the employee name is not in the ProductList table.   What we have is different - and we've eliminated a lot of steps. Not changed them, but eliminated them. We're happy to give you a free copy and you could spend just 10 minutes using it in Word to see.   thanks – dave (CTO – Windward)

 

David, I teach my users to create 10 second reports using the CR wizard to explore unfamiliar tables.  They might have to do a dozen of these before they find the data they want.  Can you report directly from the tables without setting up any UDTs? When doing UDTs whose job is it to link the tables together?  The user or the person doing the UDT? Who determines the type of join required each situation?   From ******

 

I think that's the core issue for any reporting approach. One is that with a ton of setup then it's all right there for the user - but that setup is killer. The extreme example of this approach is Cognos. The other is there is no setup, but users are floundering. This is what the CR wizard works to address. If you want to drop in, do no prep work of any kind, and help people unfamiliar with the tables - then our UDTs are not the solution. They come after. For this case you want to use our SQL wizard (there is also an XPath Wizard - click on links for a video of each). What this does is let you drag and drop to select tables, columns, sort, filter, order by, etc. Every time you make any change in the wizard, you immediately see the resulting table. So you get a very simple to use system, that requires no knowledge of how to write a SQL select.     The final issue is the joins. We build those automatically from the database metadata - where we can. We can't read minds and so we go for the shortest path between two tables, and for two jumps, give precedent to an intermediate table that has two columns (ie a join table). For one or two hops we're almost always right. For more, we can be wrong. If we are wrong, or the metadata does not have the relationship, the user can then set it, again via point and click with the table being built live. (We also have a means to predefine all the joins outside of the metadata, but that does require an upfront effort - generally on the order of minutes to hours.)     I very much wish you would try AutoTag - and give me your feedback after doing so. I'm also happy to have one of the support people here do a screen share and you can ask to see how we do various things, and they would then show you. So you would direct, and they would then do it. If so, again I ask that you give me any suggestions you have for us.     ??? - thanks – dave (CTO – Windward)

 

Dave,   Thanks for being patient. I like the screen share approach and may take you up on that. I am reviewing some CR deployment options for my January newsletter but once I have that in place it might be interesting to see what you have done.   One more question in the meantime. Is there a Crystal Consultant - someone who has done it professionally - who has either converted to using your product or added it to their repertoire? If you know of someone like that then I would like to talk to them.   From ******

 

Hi;   Thank you for sticking with this - I used to be a tech author in my spare time and I know you get hit by a ton of people. I think a screen share will be great because we can then quickly show you what/how/why on your questions.   I'm not aware of any Crystal consultant that has dived in to it but we do have one who has also promised to dive into it "soon." I will ping them right now to see if they have yet.   Thanks – dave (CTO – Windward)

Epic 2009 Picdump!

Here's a collection of abstract, geeky, funny, stupid, and just plain random pictures that caught my eye throughout 2009. Hope you enjoy!

Disco!

Someone has a lot of time on their hands… and two lobsters

Awesome cyclone

Staple Metropolis

See the resemblance

Geeks get it

No thanks

A lone, brave soul

Air guitar

DUCK

Martian sunset

I love facebook and awesome facebook conversations

I Hate Twitter!

Yowza

South Park WIN!

I want to be like mommy!

Four non-intersecting circles (trace each one with your mouse and you'll see)

Random

More geeky awesomeness

Crazy paper art

I have never and will never read or watch Twilight. Ever.

Unique and geeky resume

Teenage Mutant Ninja Raccoons

PHOTOSHOPPED… or is that just what they want us to think?

I'm pretty sure this one is photoshopped

Star Wars geek epicness

Mesmerizing

The perfect Christmas gift

Headlamp

Calvin & Hobbes Snowmen FTW!

I Hate Twitter

It seems like everywhere I look these days someone is talking about Twitter. Whether it's on the news, commercials, or online Twitter definitely seems to be "the next big thing". The thing is, I just can't understand why.

So I'll just come right out and say it. I hate Twitter!

My addiction to Facebook is bad enough, but at least there I can do more than tell the world my deepest thoughts (with more than 140 characters no less). I understand why companies love Twitter, with its ability to spread free advertising in the blink of an eye. What I don't understand is why so many individual people are drawn to it. Do you think your life is so meaningful that everyone is dying to know what it is you're doing at every waking moment throughout the day? Are you so materialistic your world revolves around the latest product announcements and sales? Or are our lives are so dull we have to read what famous people are thinking about all day and fantasize about what it would be like to live the lavish and luxurious lifestyle ourselves? Well, I'm sorry but I just have to say, NO ONE CARES!

I use TweetDeck at work to browse Twitter for any mention of our company name. Unfortunately, our name is similar enough to a mall in a Hawaii to pick up the tweets of people referring to the mall. I'm tired of reading people mindlessly ramble about, "Going to Windward mall. Hunnnngrrrrrrry," "The Windward mall is the haps, yo!" and, "OMG WINDWARD MALL LOLZ!"

I read somewhere that 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of tweets. Furthermore, a painstakingly large percentage of Twitter registrants tweet once, and then never tweet again. Obviously I'm not alone in my thoughts that Twitter is just rather meaningless.

Celebrities love to share the intimate details of their life on Twitter. From cooking breakfast to boasting their thoughts on politics, people just can't seem to get enough. It blows my mind. Are we such a narcissistic culture that face-to-face conversation and human interaction has been traded for 140 characters of garbage?

Maybe I'm missing the big picture, or maybe I have a brain and can actually think for myself and recognize Twitter as being entirely pointless. You decide.

Do you use Twitter? Think I'm being pompous and inconsiderate? Sound off in the comments.

Going Green – Everybody’s Doing It

While relaxing and watching a slew of movies and television shows this weekend I came to a sudden realization: going green has become the latest fad.

The night started off with one of my favorite flicks, WALL-E. The movie tells the story of a simple robot who partakes in a spectacular journey and ultimately saves humanity from laziness, obesity, and a general sense of apathy toward caring about the environment.

Wall-E is the man. Errr, robot

On an interesting side note, I love how this movie portrays robots as friends to humanity rather than the typical American view that they're going to kill us all.

I am from Californ-EE-YAH and I am going to KILL YOU

After WALL-E, I flipped over to HBO and caught The Day The Earth Stood Still for the first time. Starring Keanu Reeves in his perfect clueless and emotionless role, the plot revolves around an alien sent to save Earth. Unfortunately, the alien concludes that the only way to save the Earth and its precious life is to destroy every human being. A sad end for us, but considering we're causing a mass extinction faster than any the Earth has seen before it's hard to argue with his logic.

"I really have no idea what is going on right now"

Finally, I tuned to Animal Planet for a Jeff Corwin special. Little did I know the show, titled 100 Heartbeats, centered on all the animals facing endangerment or extinction. With a mixture of optimism and despair, Corwin describes how these animals arrived in the danger zone and what is being done to ensure their survival.

This dude is just crazy

Throughout all of this, the brutal reality of what we as humans are doing to the planet started to sink in. Tragic, barbaric, and barely describe the state we've brought the planet to with overpopulation, uncontrolled pollution, and global warming. Scarier still is the fact that some people refuse to recognize the scientific evidence behind all of these problems, only worsening the situation.

Back to my original point, is the green movement in? My answer is I hope so. It's so easy to scoff and say that changing your lifestyle won't fix anything, but it's this kind of thinking that will ensure these problems persist and grow worse rather than get better. Changing your entire way of life overnight is nearly impossible, so maybe instead try to focus on one thing at a time. Eat vegetarian or vegan a few times a week or for a few meals a day. Set your thermostat to one or two degrees lower and put on a sweater. Take the bus or, better yet, walk somewhere you're going once a week. It's tough to say if one person can make a difference, but we'll never know until we try.

A Review of Windward Reports Java Engine

Here at Windward Reports we offer a suite of reporting packages composed of four core products you can use individually or collaboratively:

• The Windward Reports Engine. The engine is pure Java (there's also a pure .Net version). The Engine runs on one or multiple servers as part of an enterprise's server-based application. The engine can be called from either Java code, integrated as a Java Servlet/JSP, or called directly from the command line via a batch file or shell script. The engine is typically deployed as a set of JAR files and wrapped into a standalone application or deployed to a web application server such as Apache Tomcat, IBM Websphere, Oracle WAS, etc.
• AutoTag. AutoTag is our report design tool that allows you to create templates in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• AutoTag Max. Your all-in-one desktop reporting solution. AutoTag Max is the enhanced version of AutoTag and includes an express server and automatic report scheduling.
• Arrow for Microsoft SharePoint. Windward Arrow 3.0 extends Microsoft SharePoint to deliver an enterprise reporting, document management, and dashboarding as a full business intelligence package. Arrow 3.0 for SharePoint lets any community of users design, run, and share reports.

This is our account of what a full Windward Reports Java Engine install and usability experience entails:

Installation

Getting the Windward Reports Java engine up and running is a fairly simple and straightforward process. First you'll have to download the correct installer from the latest versions page. From there the package can be installed with reference to online documentation, although the vast majority of users won't need to use the guide at all.

The instructions guide you through installing the engine and the installation will add both WindwardReports.jar and the third-party libraries to your classpath. After this you'll only have to install AutoTag, which automatically detects which components are installed on your system and installs only what's necessary.

Interface

With the install complete you'll be able to design reports right away. Our design tool, AutoTag, is an add-in to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint so report creation is made that much easier by being integrated into an interface you already know. This means you can open Word and begin adding the desired elements to your template (headers, footers, text blocks, charts, graphs, images, tables of contents, etc.) using Word's built-in commands and AutoTag's slick ribbon interface. Since every business and technical user is already familiar with Word, AutoTag requires minimal training.

The charting package included with AutoTag really stands out. The charts are easy to create, have a wide range of layout and theme options, and are accompanied by solid examples in the sample templates and written documentation.

A lot of AutoTag users take advantage of our Excel integration just as much as our Word integration. Of particular note is the ability to use Excel's dynamic formulas and computational capabilities. In an invoice table, for instance, you can set one cell to sum the product subtotals (=SUM(E4)). When the report is generated, the cell will sum all the data in the product subtotals column (cells E4 through E10) instead of a single cell.

Tags

This is a summary of all the basic tags AutoTag uses and their primary functionality:

Out Tag: The most basic and most common tag, it takes just seconds to use the out tag to insert a piece of data into your template.

ForEach Tag: There is no complicated process for iteration over a set of records. This simple tag gives you the power to loop through your data and make an entry for each entry in the datasource.

If and Else Tags: To get the effect of conditional actions simply use tags that allow you to create select statements without hassle. No complicated sections or tricky fields required.

Chart Tag: The chart tag lets you create a series of selects to define the data you need to use in your charts and graphs. The tag interface's Select Data icon walks you through selects for the chart's rows and columns and formatting the chart is easily done within the tag itself.

Matrix, Column and Row Tags: The matrix tag lets you create a table with as many cells as needed and the rows or columns expand automatically depending on the data.

Import Tag: The Import Tag can import images, text, and PDF files directly to your report without requiring you to insert them manually.

Query and Set Tags: To save time you can use the query and set tags to create variables and use them elsewhere in the template. It saves time not only during report design but is also noticeable when running a report as the template will not need to repeatedly re-access the database.

Output

Windward Reports offers nine different output formats: HTML, PDF, DOCX, XML (Word), RTF, XLSX, XLS, PPTX, and direct to a printer. Two other Windward products, AutoTag Max and Arrow for Microsoft SharePoint, allow you to schedule reports to be run as needed and can also automatically email those reports to any recipients you specify. In addition, Arrow for SharePoint gives you the ability to set permissions so authorized colleagues and others can view, share, and edit report templates all on their own.

Support

This is where the Windward Reports team really shines. Our detailed documentation covers everything from installation to program use to system admin maintenance. There are also short "getting started" guides to help you get up and running in as little time as possible. If all else fails, the Windward Support team is here to meet your every need.

Summary

Overall, we think Windward Reports is the reporting package you've been looking for and will make your job infinitely easier. Our products install smooth, run fluently, and leave the competition in the dust. And don't forget, if you think we could do be doing something better tell us on our Ideas Page.

Digiorno Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza – The Worst Frozen Pizza Ever?

During my last trip to the grocery store I hesitated at picking up the usual California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizzas and instead went for some Digiorno frozen pizzas. Rest assured this is a mistake I will never make again.

First let me state that I consider myself a fairly bright individual. I know how to read the directions for cooking food and was even sharp enough to pick up on the recommended high altitude cooking settings. Digiorno, however, seems to think the statement, "Place pizza directly on center oven rack," translates to, "Place pizza AND CARDBOARD SHEET directly on center oven rack."

Alas, my ESP failed me in this scenario and I placed the pizza directly on the center oven rack at 375° for 25 minutes. I leapt for joy and rushed to the oven as the timer beeped, only to find my pizza had melted through in two places and was dripping on my oven's element. Not only was my dinner after a long day of school, work, and homework destroyed, but I was also given the added bonus of getting to smell burnt cheese and uncooked dough for the rest of the evening.

So for this I say thanks to Digiorno. Thanks for making my apartment smell terrible, thanks for enforcing the starving college student stereotype, and thanks for wasting my time and money. You've earned a favorable spot on my black list of companies and products I will never use or recommend. While I still have your attention, check out this awesome broken link on their site for the frozen pizza from hell.