Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Outlook Actually Does Speak Human


I like understanding computers, I like knowing how they work, what happens when you do this, what happens when you do that. I know that computers ultimately resolve things down to a 1 or a 0. But when a computer turns around and understands you, that's a completely different story!!!

I was setting up a task the other day. I use tasks like crazy, it's the only way I'd get anything done. Plus it feels good to put the "Check" into the box to say that baby is DONE!

Well, I was shocked to find out that in the Date field, I could use plain english! Not only is there the ability to type in the numeric date, select it from the drop down, but it understands what I want.

For example, I type in "Today" and I get today's date resolved. I type in "Yesterday" or "Tomorrow" and those dates resolved. Now let's get tricky "Three weeks from today", I get the date. WOW! I type in "Christmas", I get the 25th!

I can't say it works for every holiday, but this is pretty cool, you can even use things like "Next Sunday" or "Three weeks from last Monday"

Finally, an application that understands dates the way I like to think about them.

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