Sometime in the last week, I removed Microsoft Excel from my computer. You might think I went on some weird, Mac OS X Leopard-inspired anti-Redmond bent, but that's not the case. I honestly have absolutely no idea how it happened, or when I did it, but one day it was there, and the next, it wasn't. And while it's certainly annoying, it's forced me to check out Apple's Numbers application, and while it's a "passing" spreadsheet app, it would certainly take some getting used to for any spreadsheet junkie, myself included.

I found out my Excel was missing after downloading an .xls Excel file, double-clicking and surprisingly finding it opening in Numbers. At first, I thought that Leopard had made Numbers the default application for .xls files, but then, when I clicked on the Excel icon in my dock, I got a transparent question mark over the icon, the universal symbol for "This application doesn't live here any more".

Oops.

Nowhere near my Microsoft Office CD, nor near an older laptop where I could copy over my Excel, I had to give Numbers a twirl. The first task? Taking that .xls document, making changes, and then saving it as a comma separated value file, or .csv. So, like any good Excel pro, I hit "Save As", and added .csv to the extension, but Numbers wanted no part of it. In fact, Apple wanted me to instead use the extension ".numbers", which makes absolutely no sense, even if I weren't raised in a DOS-like "8.3" world.



Instead, I had to go to File and choose "Export", and decide if I wanted a PDF, Excel document, or a CSV file. Not very intuitive. Later, when I went to sort the columns alphabetically by "First Name" and found myself looking for the "A-Z" option so common in Excel, instead, I found a "Sort & Filter" button which was okay enough, but didn't have a way to indicate it had a header row. Annoying.



The OpenOffice crowd has learned that the best way to have users learn their office applications quickly is to closely mimic the market leader. And while I'm not suggesting Apple copy Microsoft's every move, even a computer-savvy geek like me has so far been left wanting more from the company's would-be Excel replacement. Over the last week, my occasional interactions with Numbers have had me looking forward to getting Excel back. While if forced to live only with Numbers, I now know I could do it, I have yet to see the one killer feature from Numbers that would make me switch, and the little glitches now and again that run contrary to my expectations make me, for once, ready to crawl back and feast from the Redmond table.

Some quick notes after our week (plus one day) away:

* We DID have some impact from the earthquake, which was evident immediately. Some of our pictures and picture frames on bookshelves or stands had been knocked over. In one amusing example, one of my two fantasy football trophies looked like it had been flung three feet from the bookshelf. More likely, it fell and bounced, but still, pretty impressive. Also, one plaque on the wall is now at a 30 degree angle, when I swear it was straight before. Despite that fun, no damage, and nothing broken. I looked throughout the house.

* Although I had thought I adjusted well to the switch to Standard Time, I forgot all about it before going to bed last night. So when I thought I was going to get up early (at 6 a.m., according to the alarm clock), I was actually getting up at 5 a.m. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

* Our 18 year-old beagle, Molly, is home from my mother-in-laws, and doing fine. She seemed out of sorts last night, disoriented, and likely a bit miffed we abandoned her for longer than I can remember, as this trip exceeded even our honeymoon. Combined with the fact Molly goes to bed at 9 p.m. when at "Grandma's", and we had her up past 11, it's no surprise she seemed to be a bit in a fog. Don't worry though, by the time I served her breakfast kibble this morning, all was well.

* There's something to be said to coming home to a technology haven. We drove all over Denver and Aurora yesterday looking for WiFi, until we found it at an Aurora Barnes and Nobles, helped by my looking it up via my Blackberry on Google Apps. Now at home, we confirmed our WiFi works, the TiVo recorded all the shows we asked it too (including this year's Halloween Simpsons episode), and we're back in the swing of things. There's also the matter of our WiFi being faster than the hotel, although it was admittedly pretty good.

Now, I'l have to avoid the typical post-break doldrums and not feel like I need more time off right away.

It's been a while since we had one of these, but in the spirit of Jason Calacanis, there's been a number of things over the last few days that have caught my eye, worth noting.

First of all, the very best ways to watch what I'm viewing and liking online are first, to subscribe to my shared Google Reader link blog, and second, to add me as a friend on Friendfeed.com (E-mail me if you still need an invite). Getting linked on Facebook or LinkedIn doesn't hurt either.

If you noticed the cries of horror throughout the blogosphere, the sounds were due to Feedburner and Google's Feedfetcher missing each other again. Across the board, total subscriber counts were halved. I personally saw my readership plummet from 156 to 83. But, I didn't panic, as I knew it was a simple glitch. (Comments: Zoli's Blog, ProBlogger, and Mashable)

Ever stop to think about what our tech world will look like five years from now? Chris Brogan did. Just looking backwards, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone, Firefox, GMail, Facebook... you name it... weren't even around in 2001. In 2011 or 2012, what will that list be looking back to 2007?

More on LinkedIn... they continue to innovate. Fresh off announcing they would be part of Google's OpenSocial, it looks like they are on the verge of announcing a new platform for developers. In fact, earlier this week, Spokeo picked up a new post in their RSS feed called "Announcing the LinkedIn Platform", which doesn't go anywhere. Chris Webb noticed as well and Twittered about it. Mark that as a wait and see...

On another note... my Being Mac. Being Mormon. It's Quite Similar. post was more popular than I had anticipated. My good friends at MacSurfer added it to their list of links last night, and that's sent consistent traffic my way for the past 24 hours, getting hundreds of visits. As mentioned before, however, those readers are simple drive bys and don't often comment. They didn't today either.

It's one thing to add features that aid users, and quite another for companies to add features that don't add any value, and can be found just about everywhere else. That's why the latest addition to the LinkedIn start page is baffling.

Some time over the last weeks or so, LinkedIn determined that a great addition to the front page would be the integration of news feeds via Google News about my company. Yet for some reason, despite the fact I can get company news from a myriad of other sources: Yahoo! News, Google News, RSS feeds and focused media, LinkedIn has forgotten just why we use the site in the first place - for business networking, not for news collection...

LinkedIn is never going to be my start page when I open my browser, and that extremely valuable front page real estate is absolutely wasted with the addition of company news. (See the right graphic for a blurred version)

In the face of potential competition from Facebook, LinkedIn may be feeling the pressure to continue to innovate, but I think this is absolutely the wrong direction. Leave the news and sports feeds to the portal sites, and stick to what you do best.

If you've really got a ton of engineering time out there to be utilized, please start here:

February 2007: How to Make LinkedIn Even Better
March 2007: 10 More Suggestions for LinkedIn

UPDATE: It'd be hard to say LinkedIn doesn't listen. This morning, when I checked the site, the news feed was missing, and I haven't heard anybody say that it's still there on their site (and not just removed for me). I don't know if it's a permanent removal, temporary, or just shown to a percentage of visitors, but if it has been yanked, that's very impressive speed. I can confirm multiple visitors from LinkedIn's homebase have read my note.