Today’s guest post concludes the dish from Jon Gluck--an entrepreneur, connector, and marketer extraordinaire--on how he gets his (digital) life together. I started reading Jon’s tweets and blog a few months ago and liked his mix of style and substance, including a deft homage to the advance poster for The Social Network as his Twitter icon (left). The first half of the post can be found here on the Office Casual blog. --Doug Thomas

Last week I showed you how shortcuts, folders, and productivity applications can help you discover your “inner administrator.” Here are three other ways I keep myself organized:

4. Email

Whether you’re an entrepreneur like me with multiple projects on the go and others in the cooker, or a committed employee handling many tasks at once, your email inbox can quickly look like a labr...

Looking for a new and nifty gift for your favorite techie (or geek)? The Touch Mouse is a mouse you have to feel to appreciate. The new Microsoft Touch Mouse brings the best of mice and touch technology into one cool device. In this short video, I give it a test drive on an Excel workbook.

For Office 2010, the File tab leads you to the new Backstage area. This is where you can save, print, and so much more in every Office 2010 program. Let me give you an overview in this short video.

You can read more on how Backstage works or see it for yourself when you download and try Office 2010 Beta for free.

--Doug Thomas

Life in a spreadsheet is a sea of numbers, and it’s no fun to be lost at sea. With tools like conditional formatting (new in Office 2007) and sparklines (new for Office 2010), a sea of data becomes a clear mountain lake. Ok, Ok, enough of the colorful analogies; let me show you how color makes a spreadsheet better in this video recorded today during the Microsoft Store celebration the first anniversary of Office 2010.

--Doug Thomas

Make your inbox less intimidating by switching to the Outlook Conversation View. In this short video, I'll show you how he handles email with the enhancements in Outlook 2010 including the new Ignore button.

Here is how to change your view to Conversation View. Need more help? See our training on Outlook Conversation View or watch a video on another great feature: Clean-up conversation.

--Doug Thomas

Mail Merge is not as easy as "click this button," it's more like using a recipe to cook a meal. In these two videos, let me show you how to “cook” with Mail Merge. The first video goes over label creation by using any contact list (via a CSV file); the second is importing Outlook contacts to personalize an event flyer (nearly the same steps as creating a form letter).

This stuff is a bit tricky and these videos—just like cooking videos—go over the process lightly. Below are links to step-by-step articles or find more at our new Holiday Mailing Made Easy section at Office.com.

--Doug Thomas

You just had a great interview. You think you have the job, now all you have to do is…make a presentation. That’s what Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of Appssavvy, does with his applicants. As he states in the New York Times' great Corner Office column:

Every job candidate must present to five to seven people as the final step before we hire them. We will give them a real-life example from our company and ask them to make a presentation. That is literally where you can just make or break it, and find out if they’re an all-star or whether you just avoided making a bad hire.

How does that sound? Pretty scary for some. But it makes sense: Public communication is a must-have in companies today. We are no longer just typing out memos and a proposal. We are presenting online, creating videos, trying to connect to gain influence. And a presentation in the interview process is a Johnny-on-the-spot way of showing your new employer you can bring it. I expect this to become a trend.

Perhaps you need to hone your presentation skills:

Some folks wanted me to make a video about this week’s update to SkyDrive and how it helps working with the Office Web Apps. As soon as I started working with the new features, I quickly organized my own SkyDrive and start using the Web Apps even more. I think you’ll like the changes—you asked for them—and if you haven’t started your own 25GB of free storage (SkyDrive) or the free online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote (the Office Web Apps), you might want to dig in.

Look who's heading back to college? With some nifty computer tools for students and teachers, I reenter the college scene to demonstrate some of the magical things OneNote can do, showoff a free graphing calculator called Microsoft Mathematics 4.0, and a nifty PowerPoint tool found in Office for Mac 2011. Watch (and read below for links to learn more).

Today we have a guest post from Jon Gluck; an entrepreneur, connector, and marketer extraordinaire I started reading on the web. I invited him to give us his take on what he does with technology. –Doug Thomas

A day in my shoes may not seem too appealing on paper, but I manage just fine. I manage in large part because of my intense passion for business but equally important are the organizational skills I've committed myself to mastering. 

So, whether I’m at home in bed, at dinner with friends, or dutifully at my desk, my system never leaves my side.  I never know when a grand idea will hit or when a time sensitive opportunity will infiltrate my inbox. I can’t fall victim to unpreparedness. What follows is my starter kit to discover your “inner administrator.” Here are three ways I keep myself organized...