1980 witnessed the launch of the classic arcade game Battlezone by Atari.

In 2007, Microsoft launched Visio 2007, which included the new Themes feature.

For 28 years, the two have been on a collision course with destiny...linked by computers, the Geek Factor...and Fate.

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UPDATE!

Hey football/soccer fans! We've got an update to our automated smart drawing for this years European Cup soccer tournament.

Perhaps you are familiar with the first version, which can be found here: European Cup 2008 Auto-Updating Diagram

Well, that version needed a few updates, most notably, the handling of games that are resolved with penalty-kicks, or shoot-outs.

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Visio is a natural choice for creating brackets for sports tournaments.

I have seen many elimination-tournament diagrams created in Visio over the years. In fact, just a few years ago, a very nice example was done for the 2006 World Cup. You can get it at Office Online here: 2006 World Cup Bracket.

But the trouble with these diagrams is that they require *gasp* manual input of data, or user-movement of shapes. The horror!

Well this year, that is all going to change...

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The Geographic Map Shapes & Drawings are an extremely popular feature of this web-site. And since a lot of our readers speak German, or come from Germany, it seemed like this post was long overdue.

So today we present a map of Germany and it's states--the Bundesländer--as they are called in German.

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David Edson of long-time Visio fame, and currently of Visibility.biz, recently sent us a high-quality Visio rendition of the Periodic Table to share with you.

You'll want to note that this download is more than just a static diagram! You can use it as an interactive reference, because each SmartShape contains extra information about each chemical element. And you can even right-click each element to link to the Wikipedia entry about each substance!

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Edit: the is Microsoft Office Visio Conference 2008 over, so this won't be super-interesting any more : )

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Recently, Matt R asked about a Visio Bingo Template for his marketing team. I thought to myself, "Now there's a mission-critical application of Visio!"

Well actually, it was a ShapeSheet challenge. I wanted to make a card that allowed the user to randomly update the numbers, but without using any code.

The resulting bingo card shape is implemented entirely using the ShapeSheet. There's no VBA code behind the number generation, so you don't have to worry about any VBA Macro Security issues.

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A recent Visio newsgroup post asked about customizing the output files from Visio's Save As Web feature. This rang a bell in the ol' noggin, and I went searching for an old demo that exported a customized html page, with pop-up menus that displayed Custom Property (Shape Data) information.

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Well folks, the Missus and I have been traveling New Zealand's south island for the past few weeks, and I've finally found the time get online and offer up a new post.

The land is beautiful down here, and folks are very conscious of the environment. In the news, there's been lots of talk about generating power using the energy stored in ocean's waves and tidal flows. On the long train ride from Auckland to Wellington, I had a conversation with a guy about a simple power generator that works by anchoring a buoy to the ocean floor, and using the up-and-down motion caused by floating to generate electricity.

I had the idea to create a Visio diagram to illustrate how such a wave generator might work. Read the rest of this entry »

Arno Nel has published links to a really cool set of Visio drawings that relate to Microsoft SharePoint on his blog: Arno Nel 2.0 - The Information Worker. The diagrams illustrate models, scenarios, and flowcharts for planning, designing and deploying SharePoint installations.

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Perhaps you have noticed that this web site is mainly devoted to custom Visio shapes and information about developing Visio solutions. But if you've seen the Snowflake Generator or the CD Jewel Case Template, you know that we're not just about work and no play.

I've created a new Visio Art Page. You can find a link to it at the top of every page on this site, as it is now a standing feature of Visio Guy. Hope you enjoy!

If you just went out and bought yourself a color laser printer, like I did, then you might be itching to create a bunch of CD Jewel Cases in living color!

And since you're already a Visio pro, there's no sense in installing and learning another application, because you can download a Visio CD Jewel Case Template right here!

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Nia hao ma and g'day mates! This week, we've got a Map of Asia & Australia for you to download. This complements the Map of North America, Map of Europe, and Map of Central & South America that we've offered you earlier.

(Download map_AsiaAustralia.zip)

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Ola Visio Amigos! Following on the heels of the Map of Europe and the Map of North America, this week brings us a map of South & Central America, that you can download here. Some of the islands of the Carribean are also included.

As usual, the color treatment and text have been added for your convenience!

(Download map_SouthCentralAmerica.zip)

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A few weeks ago, I uploaded the map of Europe Visio diagram. This file provided convenient access to all the shapes of Europe, all neatly arranged relative to one another, living in harmony with peace and unity. Alle Menschen werden Brüder... Today we have the same pain-free (ie: no Shape Search) treatment for North America.

AND, we finally have a short post from the VisioGuy!

(Download map_northamerica.zip)

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Every once in a while, folks ask about map shapes in Visio. Does Visio have countries and continents? Yes? Well, where on earth (pun intended) are they?

Visio has had map shapes for a long time, but it has become increasingly difficult to find them. First, some of the shapes got moved into the shape database. That means they are no longer in a stencil, but must be found by running a Shape Search. And we all know that search can be less than perfect at times.

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