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How to Maintain PMI Certifications with Free Webinar PDUs and Ensure PDUs Are Reported Correctly

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Project management is a very important skill because a project forms the basis for grouping a series of tasks and activities with a certain time frame and requiring resources to achieve a defined outcome. Hence, qualified project managers are always in demand in any industry, and project management is a good skill to acquire. To kickstart your path towards becoming a qualified project manager, you should first register an account at www.pmi.org. PMI  (Project Management Institute) is a not-for-profit professional membership association for the project management profession. This means PMI is in charge of certifying new project managers and keeping records of existing ones. The association is also in charge of updating the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) which is the set of standard terminologies and guidelines for project managers, as well as the various project management certifications.  For aspiring project managers, you need to fulfill the  requirements of hold
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You Can PPT Too! (Part Two): Useful Shortcuts With SHIFT

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Well, the second part took longer than I thought it would. Hopefully with some downtime now, I can get the other parts out sooner. So onto the main topic, in this article, I will talk about some useful and convenient ppt shortcut features, powered by a simple but useful key - the SHIFT key. Some of these may already be familiar to seasoned Powerpoint masters, but may not be immediately apparent to new users. If you know of any other tricks, I would love to hear from you in the comments :) Let's start by running through the more well-known uses for SHIFT: Selecting Multiple Objects This should be quite straightforward. Hold down the SHIFT key and select your objects, either one by one, or click and drag across the slide canvas to cover the objects you want. To finetune your selection, you can continue holding down SHIFT and click on individual objects that you want to add into or remove from your selection. Drawing Straight Lines Hold down the SHIFT key and draw you
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You Can PPT Too! (Part One): How to use Alignment in Powerpoint for Professional Looking Slides

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PowerPoint has many interesting and time-saving features. I like to call them Quality of Life (QoL) features. For the most part, these QoL features make working with Powerpoint easier.  Unfortunately, some of these can be confusing for newcomers. At least, that was how I felt when I starting learning how to do better PPT presentations beyond the default templates. Why not do a mini-series to share some useful PPT tricks I have learned, I thought. And so I bring to you the first part of my "You Can PPT Too!" series.  Let's start with something simple. Simple and yet, I would often see neglected in presentations.  How many times have you sat through a presentation, only to have your attention drift away from the presenter because of untidy alignment, like the one on the left below? A little exaggeration on the alignment but it conveys my point. Not only do such minor details distract your audience, but they also convey sloppiness and are generally bad for professi
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How to Control Xiaomi Web Camera Sharing Permissions

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This post came about as a result of another earlier post on  How to share a Xiaomi webcam/video camera to multiple Mi accounts . A reader wanted more privacy control over his web camera after being shared with other accounts but could not find the necessary settings. After a few backs and forth, it got apparent that even across Xiaomi products, the level of controls is not consistent and I thought this was worth a post by itself to show where to find the settings and get more feedback on the inconsistencies. Xiaomi is a big Chinese company selling various Smart Home devices and digital technology products. It is a very big brand in its home market and has been rising internationally due to its aggressive marketing and pricing strategies.  In terms of webcam products, Xiaomi has a few different series to cater to different market needs, so to set the context, I am using Xiaomi Home Security Camera 1080p (it's the China website because not all products are available in every
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In Cloud Computing, What is the Difference Between Scalability and Elasticity

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In Cloud Computing, we often hear the terms 'Scalability' and 'Elasticity' being thrown around, often being used interchangeably. Recently, I was listening to an online course describing Cloud Computing concepts, and the way these two terms are described got me thinking about the differences. So far, there is no consensus on how to draw the line. I have seen explanations that put Scalability as adding resources while Elasticity as adding AND removing resources. I have also seen descriptions that say Scalability is to be able to scale an instance's resources, while Elasticity is to be able to add/remove additional instances. I am of the opinion that demarcating the differences purely from the perspective of resource adding and removing is too simplified and a little ambiguous, while the latter view of instance resource vs new instances is still talking about Scalability (Vertical Scaling vs Horizontal Scaling - explained at the end of this article).
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Powerpoint File Size Does Not Reduce Even After Deleting Slides

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Updated 10 Jul 2018 - After some testing, I find that those "extra" template slides appear when you try to copy some slides and paste them to another deck with "Keep Source Formatting". So if you frequently encounter this problem, you could be like me, often having to take content from different decks and piece together a customized deck for the work on hand. If so, then the solution below should help with your Powerpoint file size. If you work with Powerpoint slides a lot, you may have seen some pretty big and bloated slide decks, especially if it contains lots of photos or video content. This presents an issue when sending over email with attachment size limits. Most of the time, deleting slides or compressing content should help to reduce the size.  If you had come upon this article after googling, you probably had just encountered a similar frustrating experience as me. Even after  removing most of the content, the Powerpoint file size remains mostly th
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How to Add Borders Around Images or Photos in Microsoft OneNote

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Updated 10 Jul 2018 - Another quick tip, the steps below can be reversed, you can copy an image into OneNote first, select the image, and then choose to insert a 1x1 table, which will achieve the same result. Ever since I started using Microsoft OneNote on my work laptop, I have found it useful for taking quick notes or just jotting down random notes while working. For those that like to use notepad or Microsoft word to jot down quick notes or your To-Do list, Microsoft OneNote works just like a note-taking program and much more. Unlike normal text-based editors, it allows you to click anywhere in the frame and start typing notes, add drawings and images! You can also group your notes into sections within notebooks, do hyperlinking across different sections, copy and paste content from the web (and a link to the source will be automatically added for you). This is a piece of software that should earn a place in your arsenal of handy office productivity toolkit. One peeve I have is w
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