Letter From the Publisher

Welcome to WUON!

A twinkle in the eye. That’s how Woody’s Underground Office newsletter -- affectionately known as WUON ‘round here in the Underground Labs -- got its start. Woody’s firm Pinecliffe International has been disseminating information about WOPR products and Word via his WOPR e-newsletter for several years. Jim and Lee’s company PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. has been publishing a client-list newsletter that recently evolved into the e-newsletter PRIME Information. But we all longed for a single soapbox, er, platform from which we could pontificate, ahem, discuss the hottest issues out on the jittering edge of the Microsoft Office arena.

Woody’s been involved in the book publishing business for many years as an author and, most recently, Series Editor of the Underground Guide series (Addison-Wesley). He himself penned The Underground Guide to Word and The Underground Guide to Telecommuting. He brought Jim and Lee into the series as authors of The Underground Guide to Excel and The Underground Guide to Microsoft Office, OLE, and VBA. The single biggest frustration we’ve had with book publishing is the length of time it takes from the moment pen first caresses paper to the tome settling in on a retailer’s shelf. When you aggregate the authoring/proofing cycle with manufacturing and distribution for a book of average size (say, 350 pages), this six to ten-plus month stint almost amounts to a software product’s version life cycle. So we cast about for a more dynamic, timely vehicle for publishing information about Microsoft products. Seemed to us that a 10-14 page monthly newsletter would be ideal. Next we assembled an outstanding staff of Contributing Editors and authors, and here we are with WUON Volume 1 Issue 1.

WUON’s three-pronged mission is precisely the same as that of the Underground Guide series books: the truth be it good, bad, or indifferent (hence our credo Truth by the Gleaming, Merciless Truckload(tm)); technical accuracy of the highest caliber; all presented in a humorous, irreverent, even wacky style.

For WUON, our tactical focus is on Microsoft Office in all its glory. It’s a big target but, hey, somebody’s got to do it. Don’t get us wrong. We don’t have a bias re Office or Microsoft itself for that matter. (Honest.) Reporting the truth involves setting aside any personal biases and employing the scientific method to analyze and in some cases, perform invasive surgery on the target product. Occam’s razor is a well-used tool here in the Underground Labs. So with WUON we’ll bring you a relentless analysis of the Office entity month in and month out. The truth about Office, guerrilla publishing style. All of us here at WUON want to hear from you, our readers. Each contributor’s e-mail address appears in her/his bio.

-- Woody Leonhard

Telephone
Editorial Staff Fax:

Subscriptions (US):
Subscriptions (AUS):
Customer Support Fax (US):
Customer Support Fax (AUS):

Correspondence Address
Feel free to mail any correspondence regarding article submissions, tips, tricks, letters to the editor, and so forth to:

Editors-in-Chief c/o PRIME Consulting Group, Inc.
2629 Manhattan Avenue
Suite 273
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254-2447

or via e-mail to:

Woody Leonhard (Publisher) at woody@wopr.com
T. J. Lee (co-Editor-in-Chief) at tj_lee@primeconsulting.com
Lee Hudspeth (co-Editor-in-Chief) at lee_h@primeconsulting.com

Staff
Publisher - Woody Leonhard
Editors-in-Chief - Lee Hudspeth and Timothy-James Lee
Contributing Editors - Ronald Beekelaar, Michael Gordon, and M. David Stone
Distributor - Ken Mocabee
Australian Distributor - Peter Deegan (sales@mcc.com.au)
Design and Layout - Tailor-Made Marketing (Hermosa Beach, CA) and Terrell Design Group (Torrance, CA)