Words of Mass Destruction

Windows 8 "Don't Call It a Beta"

2012-01-23T21:58:00.000-08:00

Word on the street is that the Windows team at Microsoft is going to call the beta version of Windows 8 targeted for late February the “consumer preview”. So, if you keep looking and searching for Windows 8 Beta you may want to keep up to date on what it is called, because it looks like Beta is out the window so to speak.

Why the change? We can only guess. First the current pre-beta version of Windows 8 that is available to the public is called the Developer Preview. You can find it here. Also, during CES, one of the PR reps for Microsoft refered to it as the Consumer Preview.

A number of people are talking about wether it is going to be called beta or not, because we are all excited about getting are hands on it and have nothing else to talk about at this point. That is a good sign for Microsoft.

None the less, I will still throw in my guess for the possible name change. Windows 7 beta was not a beta. As we saw with the "beta" version of Windows 7, it was 99.9% finished and I am pretty sure Microsoft isn't using any feedback from us during that brief time before the official production release. Another reason to not call it beta is to signify that this version of Windows is different from its predecessors in a big way.

It doesn't matter what they call it, as long as I get it sooner than later. The previews and pre-beta version are rock solid and impressive in so many ways. I am most excited about getting a version of Windows that not only looks significantly different than the last version but has features that make it fresh and exciting again. Windows 7 was a huge leap forward, now we wait for eight.

Ink Costs More Than Human Blood

2012-01-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

I have been working on a print management project for a large company in Dallas the last few months and am constantly amazed at the cost of printing and that print is not dead. I spent many years at Kinko's and FedEx Office and know way to much about printing and the printer industry.

As I was cruising the Internet (I cruise, I don't surf) I came a cross this poignant infographic that sums up the rediculous costs of the ink we use in our desktop printers. I saw some numbers on one site that suggested we Americans spend more annually on printers and ink than we do cars and healthcare, but, I cannot locate data to back that up.

This poster does sum up the cost at the smallest level well though.

CES - Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga Ultrabook

2012-01-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

This is the notebook/laptop/ultrabook/tablet I have been waiting for. As expected sleek laptops and tablets are merging and it is happenning in 2012. The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga features a patented 360 hinge so you can fold the monitor all the way back and pose the machine in a number of different positions not available before.

The form is sleek and sports a soft to the touch paint covering the entire thing, and even has a leather rest pad for your hands as well as a leather trim. Niiiiiice.

This beauty will be out in June 2012 and will be running the new Microsoft Windows 8 and will sport a nice 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. All of that and a battery life that will last you all day, well atleast 8 hours of work anyway.

Get more details here at The Verge.

Microsoft Smart Watch - Time Runs Out

2012-01-03T09:29:00.001-08:00

Remember those unattractive smart watches that Bill Gates was touting about a decade when he thought they would be the ubiquitous smart devices that be a part of our every day life? Well maybe you don't like most people out there, because they never took the world by storm like smart phones eventually did to become the dominant smart devices in our lives.

These watches never sold well and actually where discontinued years ago, but now the stream of data that was powering these watches is finally getting turned off.

Read more - Time runs out on Microsoft smart watches - http://pulse.me/s/4ATs9

Building a Better Computer

2012-01-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

NZXT Phantom - One of the many cases I to choose from.

It has been almost six years since the last time I bought a new PC, and I have more than maxed it out in every way possible at this point. 4GB RAM just won't cut it anymore. It is time for a new computer. My laptop I bought three years ago is faster than my desktop and I need to upgrade my laptop.

My current desktop is a Dell, which was the first time I ever bought a computer I hadn't built myself, but I got a sweet deal on it at the time and it was hard to find 64 bit hardware back then. It has served me well, but with most computers like Dell's what you you buy is what you get and upgrading is difficult. Not only can I not add more RAM, I can't add another HDD because the power supply was the bare minimum needed for what I originally ordered. And adding a new power supply is not easy because the case is customized for the exact one that is in there now. Bottom line... time for a new computer and I am building this time.

When I built my own in the past I had much more time on my hands and much more patiences for the multiple trips back and forth to the computer store. I definitely don't want to do that again unless I have to and I don't want to order something that is prepackaged from Dell or Best Buy. So, I found a good compromise. Order from one of several boutique shops online that will customize my machine as much as I want and do the work to put it together for me.

There are several sites out there that will allow you to choose from some guided choices out there similar to Dell or Gateway but only give you additional control like not forcing you to buy the OS or install a free version of 20 different pieces of software you don't need. I personally can't stand all the bloatware OEM manufacturers like Dell add to the computer. There are also some sites that let you design your case and airbrush anything you want on it, it has gotten complicated.

After learning about these boutique sites, I knew it was time to do some serious research. I want to make sure I ordered the right configuration and I also want to know that some new chipset isn't gonna be here in a month that I am about to miss out on because I ordered today instead of waiting.

The areas I focused on where chipset, RAM, HDD/SSD and graphics - everything else was secondary.

CHIPSET - I knew I wanted to go with the latest Intel i7 chipset (aka sandy bridge), but my research helped me to realize since I am not a hardcore gamer I do not really need to fork out an extra $500 for the extreme version of this chipset, their highest end version of this chipset.

RAM - I wanted to make sure I got a mother board that could handle up to 32GB of RAM and the fastest RAM too. Since I was already focused on the Intel i7 chipset that was pretty easy since there is only a few choices of motherboards out there. I only ordered 16GB today because since I don't really even need 16GB at this time, it certainly wasn't cost effective to bump up to the biggest memory sticks on the market.
HDD/SSD - This is probably where I spent the most time for what ended up being a no brainer in the end. I wanted to take advantage of the speed of the SSD hardware but they are not big enough for the data I need to carry and they are expensive. I also wanted to take advantage of the data protection of RAID 1 and eventually a higher level of RAID some time down the line. I tinkered with the idea of getting a hybrid SSD/HDD but there as been way to many problems with those in the last year and they are expensive too. I eventually decided on a cost effective 180GB, on which I will install my OS and other applications and then use two HDDs for my data storage. I will put the HDDs into a RAID 1 configuration to give my data some added protection from hardware failure and in the future I can eaisly upgrade and add more drives.

GRAPHICS - I have had a multi-monitor (2) setup for years and cannot live without it, I would even choose to bring work home to use my optimized work space rather than be handicapped at the office. Fortunately, any decent video card these days comes with two outputs so I could easily find a card to support my mulitple monitors, but I needed to consider what I would do if I wanted to add a third or fourth monitor later and what if I wanted to start (god forbid) using any of the new 3D technology out there. I am not a big fan of 3D since typically you get a lower picture quality for little value add and the jury is still out on the final tech in that arena, but I wanted to be positioned to take advantage of it in the future.

I considered going with two cards versus one super card and eventually went with the two cards. Well technically I went with one card with room to add another card later at some time in the future. I chose the Nvidia Geforce GTX 580 1.5GB model over the pricier GTX 590 version. The 580 has two outputs which works for me now and I can add another with two more outputs and more power to my rig. In fact, two 580s are much more powerful than a single 590 and cost the same or less. A single 590 would have given me up to four outputs to support up to four monitors, but I like the idea of the 580 and adding a second one later when I need it.

I had to make a choice between going with Nvidia and Radeon. One important thing that my research turned up on the ASUS motherboard I selected, was that due to the layout and spacing of the controllers and the size of the cards, it is much more difficult to add Radeons later utilizing bridging. Glad I found that out now.

One last thing that would effect me later if I hadn't planned it out ahead of time would be the power supply. Not only would adding an additional graphics card require a bigger power supply, the future addition of HDDs would also require a larger power supply. I certainly didn't want to get stuck again like I did with the Dell and the undersized power supply.

The NZXT Phantom Black case I chose for this configuration.

Final Setup
In the end I ordered from a shop (Ironside Computers) that had many good reviews and almost no negative comments. The other thing I liked about this company is the site made more sense than some of the others and had the configuration features I was looking for. Also, a big factor in my decision was the excellent customer service I got from them. The person I talked to (robert) was super helpful and allowed me to order a special configuration that wasn't otherwise on their site. He also answered all of the many questions I put before him. He helped me recognize I had ordered a redundant part I didn't need. He also walked me through choosing the right power supply for how I would not only order this computer today, but also for how I plan to upgrade it in the future.

One thing these boutique sites give you that the others don't is access to the latest hardware, cases and overclocking options. I priced out a $3500 machine on Dell and couldn't even get close to the power of this beast, and I certainly wouldn't have got to choose such a cool case for it.

Here is the site I ordered from Ironside Computers ask for Robert and tell them I sent you.

Another Fabulous SharePoint 2010 Internet Site

2011-12-30T22:52:00.000-08:00

There is so much work I cannot share with people outside of my company. I can tell you things like I worked at major airline designing and impementing SharePoint sites heavily using collaboration and social features, but I can't post images of these sites. I can tell you they looked great and describe them to you or show you something that looks similar but I still am legally bound from showing you the work I did there. Sometimes it is a real bummer, because I would have so much to post every week. But sometimes we get to work on public facing sites like the award winning BCBSLA site I featured a few months ago.
Luckily this last month we released another stellar public facing Internet site built on Microsoft's SharePoint platform. Actually I should say sites, because there are many more than one. These sites use customized page templates and webparts and takes advantage of the built in publishing features of SharePoint much like the BCBSLA site we launched last year. This is yet another site that speaks to the strengths of proper SharePoint development and utilizing SharePoint for its strengths. But this site takes what we have done with other customers like the BCBSLA site (other customers include a major US retailer where you probably got your last computer or phone from and another customer who is a global leader in chemical manufacturing) and adds another dimension.

This implementation is designed to unify the look and feel of dozens of different sites with an easily deployable and reusable site template and publishing mechanism. This is a great solution for companies that want to control the look and feel across large complicated sites or set of many sites. This is also a perfect solution for those companies out there that need to create a separate user experience for mobile but still be able to use the same content, framework and publishing mechanism.

I can't get into all the details here just yet, but in the coming months we will be presenting a nice complete presentation on this from the technical perspective as well as the business perspective. Look for this presentation to be featured at Cloud Fest (previously Tech Fest) in Dallas in a couple of months.

Did I mention these sites are designed to work on mobile, so no Flash being used here, it just looks like it.

The site feature here is live http://www.lehighhanson.com also take a look at this site using the same template http://www.hansonbuildingproducts.com/Pages/Home.aspx

Vote for the site as a top SharePoint site here http://www.topsharepoint.com/lehigh-hanson

Another Reason I Love Working at RBA

2011-12-30T15:21:00.000-08:00

If you know me at all you know I love my job, and wake up everyday appreciating how lucky I am to have it. We just wrapped a another successful year as one of the fastest growing tech companies in the USA. We added another office in Minneapolis and had a major expansion to our office in Dallas. We will be having our company kick off event to start the year in a couple weeks at the Gaylord Texan, that will be a blast.

It has certainly been a great year, and we are starting off strong for 2012. But what I am really excited about and looking forward to is the company trip to the Bahamas in a couple of months. Can't wait. Atlantis here we come.

Predictions 2012

2011-12-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

Last year I made a few predictions early on that came true, unfortunately I can't point to my blog because I never wrote them down. I shared some of my predictions with friends and it ended there. One of the predictions I made was that Borders would close its doors. By the end of 2010 it was obvious that, in this new Amazon ruled world, there wasn't room for both Barnes and Noble and Borders to keep their doors open. While B n N put out a respectable device and adapted to this new digital online world we now live in, Borders continued to struggle. Struggle no more.

The other significant prediction I made was that Steve Job's would leave Apple. Now I didn't think he was going to die, that is sad and we will be robbed of his genius forever but his health certainly wasn't going to hold up. I dont think Apple will suffer immediately from this loss, but they will have trouble long term maintaining the momentum they have enjoyed over the last few years.

This year there is a lot going on, and it is an election year, so I am writing my predictions down this time so I can reevaluate in a year from now and probably laugh at my silly predictions. Some of these predictions are pretty safe but some are far out there. Enjoy.

Microsoft Office Apps will be the top selling app on the iPad by the end of the year. With the current success of Xbox and Kinect and a new OS on the way Microsoft stock will also finally climb above 30 again.
Netflix will lose more revenue share due to lack of innovation and slow integration with social media. Other mediums like Xbox Live and Google TV will pick up its share. I am tired of not having an Facebook/Twitter integrated app from Netflix. I should be able to share what I am watching with my friends and I should be able to easily link to movies from within Facebook or with share links within Netflix. Another issue Netflix is going to ultimately suffer from is not owning content. Netflix found itself in a position to serve an audience that was moving more to streaming and downloads from home, but now everyone is catching up. What is your next move Netflix? Your last move was a blunder.
Time Warner Cable will report huge loses in the coming year. This cluster of a company will finally suffer from its notoriously poor service and seeming inability to make a deal with any other company out their to provide a decent tablet and online choices for its customers. Their greed and lack of actual content will hurt them in the end. While other Live TV choices are adapting and integrating, TWC is arguing and their customers are feeling it.
Nokia's semi-triumphant return, look at the form factor of the N9, it looks like it comes from the future... and we love the future. If we have learned anything from Apple, we have learned you don't have to be first to market with the technology, you just have to be cool when you make it to market. Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. The N9 looks cool, but the name needs to change, Americans don't like names like N9 - call it something like the "Swipe" or "Glide" and hide the Nokia and Microsoft logos.
Google's Chromebook will be pronounced dead on arrival. But, first Google will try to sell us on the fact the Chromebook is using a new social collaboration interface, which is really just a rejiggered Google Wave application. Adding Chromebook to Google + circle "Dead Ideas".
iPhone 5 will be the slowest selling iPhone to date, with Nokia packing an unexpected punch with its new form factor and user friendly coolness, iPhone will have another reason it should have given its phone a more significant update. At this point next year, without any significant updates to its devices and focus on old tech like Airplay and iCloud, Apple will have started to lose its luster.
RIM will report lossed for every month of the year and rumors about it being up for sale start circling the virtual water cooler. RIM may have some smart tech and cutting edge ideas, but they don't know how to market it to consumers.
ATT finally buys T-Mobile, but will lose market share due to backlash from TMobile users.
Ultrabooks will over take netbooks and notebooks and laptops and further confuse consumers on how to buy a laptop. We will also hate the term ultrabook by the end of the year. Upside is that this will be the year where non Apple consumers can get mobile computers with cool, sleek form factors.
I have touched on it a bit in the items above, but Smart TV or Internet TV is finally going to break through in 2012. First the marketing has to get clearer since everyone is bringing something to the market here, but there isn't a clear marketng name for it, like G3 or G4 was for mobile devices. Google TV and Xbox have bridged the gap already and are bringing some cool features to their already existing devices in the next few months. I can now watch Live TV and use my apps from the same device.
Spotify will continue to rule the market but competitors will arise and force the service to reduce its rediculous monthly rate. I can get Netflix for cheaper on all of my devices.
Angry Birds will get on our nerves and will have finally saturated the market so much that there will be backlash against the brand. Rovio will release to many mediocre variations and will allow some poor licensing decisions to be made. I predict we will see an Ed Hardy Angry Birds crossover. Maybe Rovio will release an application to create your own Angry Birds game.
Phones will get bigger and tablets will get smaller.

I think that will do it for the tech predictions, I may add some more later. Here are some non-tech predictions:

Sears/KMart will file Chapter 11, I think everyone will agree this is a no brainer. Sears just has not been able to adapt and move forward, these brands used to be ubiquitious, but their brand relevance is almost non existant these days.
American Airlines will not be allowed to file chapter 11. With more than $3 billion in the bank, someone needs to step up and hold this company accountable for years and years of bad business practices and some of the worse customer service.
Tiger will regain his thrown. I say we get at least five wins out of hime in the year 2012.
Iran will shutdown the Internet, last year it was Egypt, now a new regime will deny its people the time wast called Internet and they will revolt. A top executive at Google who lives in Iran will join the protestors. Iran has picked a bad year to pick a fight with the world, it is election season in the US and we will be focused on domestic issues this year.
North Korea will do something stupid and blame it on South Korea.

Now for some celebrity death predictions:

Kobe will get together with Kim Kardashian, effectively killing his career and any respectability he has left.
Axle Rose (overdose)
Scott Weiland (heart attack)
Kirk Douglas
Lauren Bacall
Ernest Borgnine
Zsa Zsa
Everyone (12122012)

Thats it. Next list will be predictations of things that won't happen.

01062012: One more prediction, unemployment will be at 7.6 percent by December 2012. Romney will win Republican vote and Obama will win with a larger margin than last time and be the first incumbent president to get a second term with a such a high jobless number.

University Goes Google

2011-12-24T15:23:00.001-08:00

Major university chooses Google Apps over Microsoft Office 365 - http://pulse.me/s/4j2Bn

Well atleast for now, until they realize how much it will cost them for real and they start having compatibility issues.

Funny how stories about going Google get out into the mainstream, but when they never get fully implemented or end up moving back to Microsoft you never hear about it.

New Blogger app Test

2011-12-24T15:18:00.001-08:00

This post is a test of the new app I installed my phone.
With image from Microsoft Innovation booth Tom and presented at.

SharePoint User Import and Terminated Accounts (disabled users) System Accounts

2011-12-22T19:40:00.000-08:00

This solution is for SharePoint 2003, SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

This subject has come a couple of times recently, and it is not the easiest thing to find information on because of the nature of the issue. It is one of those issues that if you knew what to search for you probably wouldn't be having the issue in the first place. This is one of those issues that veterans of SharePoint, LDAP or Active Directory have seen over and over and plan for in their deployments. But it is a mystery without an answer for those first timers out there. I hope this helps.

The subject is those annoying service accounts, terminated (or deactivated) accounts, system accounts and groups you don't need to see showing up in SharePoint. You see them in search results and user lists and other places you normally see user accounts.

The solution is part LDAP filter, part organizational unit and part SharePoint import and it heavily depends on what version of SharePoint you are running. But mostly it is about getting your organizational units setup correctly. The great thing about SharePoint is if you have skimped or missed something in the past and got away with it, SharePoint will expose it and every other issue you didn't know was out there.

I am going to link to a couple of blogs that will help, mostly because I will need to reference this issue again and want to be able to come my post and have everything here in one place so I don't have to look for it again.

This article from Adam Preston is simple step by step for SharePoint 2010. But this only covers disabled users in AD and properly disabled too.

Here is a really but good article from Mauro Cardarelli that outlines the power of LDAP filters and Active Directory.

This article on Microsoft's site explains it well and in step by step detail. Now there are some caveats that don't stand out immediately to the newly initiated. For example, first read you may think this is strictly something that has to happen on the SharePoint side of things, but before running to your SharePoint guy and putting the fix off on him/her, make sure you read the reference information below the article. Most likely your SharePoint guy will tell you he did these things and ask you if you have correctly filtered LDAP information into proper organizational units.

After you get all this working and it quiets down the next thing you are going to be asked is how to hide member groups and how to get Distribution Lists to work with Alerts and Workflows.

Here is a good article from Brian Nielsen on distribution lists and SharePoint. Brian has come to my rescue many times over the years and his creative insights and solutions make me look good.

What is the difference between LDAP and Active Directory? Oh boy. Check out this link.

New Xbox Metro Dashboard

2011-12-22T13:56:00.000-08:00

I updated to the new X-Box dashboard recently and I am still getting used to it, especially the new integrated voice command driven menus. Ever since Microsoft introduced Kinect, there has been some level of interactivity with voice commands and even hand gestures. But, now the integration is deeper and more integrated across all aspects of the console. That being said, it is not everywhere it needs to be yet, for example, I haven't figured out how to get the machine to recognize commands like "Console Off" as well as many of the other commands that are available from the guide menu. Then again, maybe Microsoft doesn't want us to turn our X-Box's off.

My favorite voice feature is being able to voice search using Bing, this is a great intuitive feature. Who needs menu's when you can just say what you want and all the options are displayed out before you. I did a search for Netflix and it not only showed me Netflix it gave me some additional content and options related to Netflix.

My second favorite voice feature is being able to navigate Netflix and the Zune marketplace. I wish I had Verizon FIOS as my Live TV provider because I would really like to voice command my Live TV.

The voice features are cool and finally integrated in a meaningful what there are other updates that come with the new dashboard that standout even more to me. Sure all menus have adopted the new metro look and they are easy to manipulate with voice and hand gestures but the new cloud save feature is the one that stands out to me the most. With this new feature I can now save my games and profile to the cloud and access them from just about anywhere. That is cool.

This new update while not perfect is another leap past the competition it was already way out in front of already. I look forward to the next update and more apps.

Google TV

2011-12-20T22:05:00.000-08:00

Tis' the season for new gadgets. The holiday season seems to be the perfect excuse for me to catch up on gadget buying that I passed on earlier in the year. Partly, because there are such great deals around this time of the year on almost everything and partly because I have more free time to mess with the new gadgets than any other time of the year.

One of the gadgets I have been passing on for a while now is Google TV, this past week I finally broke down and got one for less $200.00 at Best Buy. I have been dabbling in the Internet TV Blu Ray players, TVs and other devices and have never found one that I use more than my X-box. Most of the usage was really just Netflix, by now Netflix is on every device so anything you get today will have it.

The one big issue I have had with all these devices, including the X-Box, is that I couldn't watch my live TV service that I am already paying an arm and a leg for on any of them. In addition, to get all the features I really wanted I was still adding a laptop and switching back and forth through three or four different devices. I want one device, I don't need all these devices stuffed into my TV cabinet in the living room.

I know why we don't have one device and it is pretty simple. It is the same reason we have Blu Ray instead of HD DVD. Greed. The big companies want to dominate and own everything, even at the expense of us the consumer. I was very happy to dump Time Warner Cable a month ago and move over to ATT Uverse, now I can watch HBO GO, MAX GO and a half a dozen other apps on my iPad now. Now I can watch everywhere, and for someone that travels a lot and has that big cable bill every month, it almost feels worth it now.

Side Note: TWC I will not miss you, please stop sending me your signature package advertisements... why would I pay more for the same crappy service and still not have access to all the incredible apps out there? Yes, I do know you have a TWC app on the ipad. But it freezes up and only works in my house.

Now that I made the switch to a TV service that plays nicely with others, it was time to check out the next Internet TV device. I got the Google TV home and it was easy to hookup, it even came with a HDMI cable, I have never got an HDMI cable for free with a device before. I have to admit it isn't the greatest quality HDMI cable but it was provided. I ran the automatic setup and it connected to the Internetz and updated itself, a couple of reboots later and I was up to date and following the on screen instructions to hook up my cable box to the Google TV. It was as simple as unplugging the cable box from my TV and plugging it into the Google TV box.

I was elated to see that I was watching my cable I pay so dearly for every month through this new device and it was flawless. This is cool. This is also the direction X-Box is heading in if you have Verizon Fios. I was up and running in a matter of minutes and I was more than happy about not having to switch back and forth between my live TV and another device.

This means that I can watch full HD, full screen Live TV now with the added benefits of the Google TV service and my favorite apps. I can also use the Live TV function of Google TV to give me a visual display of what is playing and what is coming up on my ATT Uverse service. In my opinion, the best way to searhc for something to watch. Its TV, guides should be visual not text. Finally, something that makes sense.

I like that I can acces many of my favorite apps like Netflix, Pandora and IMDB from the same box I am watching my Live TV from. It just makes sense. There are a ton of apps and you can easily surf the Internet from this box and many of them work while watching Live TV.

I like the search feature that tells me what service has the show or movie I am searching for, including my Live TV service, and then I can play it from right there. Sometimes it is Live TV, sometimes it is coming up on TV, sometimes it is Netflix, sometimes it is Hulu or HBO GO. I can't get enough of this feature.

Most of what Google TV offers is not new, but what is new is the way you control it and a simple interface. I think this device, as opposed to the now defunct Logitech Google TV device, marries the best of two companies together. Sony reinvents the TV remote that is more like a game controller with a full QWERTY keyboard and Google TV simplifies the interface. The remote has most of the features you would expect in a TV/DVR remote with the addition of a built in keyboard and mousepad you control with your right thumb to manage the Internet.

This device is far superior to the competition and Sony is well on its way to put the other contenders like Boxee and Roku out of business quickly. There is defintily room for improvement in the interface, many parts of it are not intuitive and there are very few resources to get guidance from. More apps need to be integrated so I can use them while watching Live TV. I need to have more control over the picture in picture function, it is great I can watch live TV but when it blocks links and key information that is not cool.

The remote needs to be configurable and there needs to be on screen guide to tell me what my ATT Uverse controls are mapped to. Also, I can turn my TV on and off with the Google TV remote, but there isn't a function for turning any other devices on or off so I still have one extra remote. Sony and Microsoft have been at it for awhile with their gaming systems and Microsoft is light years ahead of Sony when it comes to making those devices true entertainment devices. The latest update for the X-Box has many of the same features as Google TV but less content and apps. But, what the X-Box has that none of the others have it hands free voice control over the entire device. I love being able to say "X-Box go Netflix, X-Box play movie" and I am watching Netflix without ever touching a controller.

Sony and Microsoft are well poised to dominate the entertainment in your living room.

Overall, Google TV rocks and it is not a flash in the pan. I imagine this device will continue to be used long after the holiday season unlike the majority of the other device I buy at this time of the year. I am also looking forward to more apps, content and the next software update. Ultimately for this to really be successful, Sony needs to get all theses features integrated into it's Playstation pronto.

New Windows 7 Desktop Configuration

2011-12-20T11:07:00.000-08:00

A recent HDD failure has taken me down the path of reinstalling and reconfiguring another instance of Windows 7. This gave me a chance to do one of the more enjoyable things with Windows and that is setup a cool personalized desktop that works well for me. It also a great excuse to surf the net to find some new slick wallpapers. Since I have been playing Minecraft recently, I have been favoring wallpapers with cube themes, expecially the darker cube themes. I have aero setup so my wallpapers rotate through a dozen or so cube images, including a couple actually from Minecraft.

As in the past I am using Rainmeter, this time around it is Rainmeter 2.1, much friendlier than previous versions. I am using a combination of skins downloaded from the creative folks at deviantart. I am using mainly the updated Enigma skin and the Before Dawn Bar. The only other skin I am using is the volume control from D3, the one that comes with Enigma is difficult to mute and move around. Visit one of the sites linked above to get the latest and greatest.

My desktop setup is two Dell 22" Monitors sitting side by side. Here is what that looks like:

To get a better look at the details here is what they look like stacked:

Adding Links to Lotus Notes Databases from SharePoint

2011-10-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

Steps to create a link to a Lotus Notes Database in SharePoint.
Solution works with SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and BPOS.

First, a little something about Notes URLs:

The format for Lotus Notes URLs do not start with HTTP or HTTPS, so they will not generally work in SharePoint URL or Hyperlink columns. Links to Notes databases and documents need to be added using HTML Href commands in a Content Editor Webpart.

The first question is - How do I get the URL for the Notes Database I want to link to?

Get Notes Database URL:

1. Open Notes client

2. Open the object (view or document) you want to reference

3. Go to the Notes URL bar (if necessary, press Control-L)

4. Click the drop down button to show the URL history list

5. Click the drop down button again to stop showing the list

6. Notes will place the current object's URL in the URL bar

7. Click on the address once and the address will be selected

8. Copy the URL; while the address is selected, on your keyboard, press the keys the CTRL and the letter C at the same time. (Ctrl + C)

The second question is – Now that I have the URL for the Notes database I want to link to, how do I add it to SharePoint?

Creating the Link in SharePoint:

Remember that the columns in SharePoint designated as URLs do not accept Notes URLs, this is important. You will have to add the link using HTML, the easiest way to do this is to use the Content Editor Web Part and to edit the HTML.

Example 1 of a properly formatted href statement for a lotus link:
<a href=”Notes://yournotesserver/notesdocument”>Name of the Link goes here</A>

Example 2 of a properly formatted href statement for a lotus link:
<a href=”notes://MDCNA001/862575E700611FA7//2B2EF1B95418076F3652575D000225AAD”>AMQS POL</A>

SharePoint Good Design Internet

2011-10-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

SharePoint doesn't have to look like SharePoint, in fact SharePoint doesn't have to look like anything. That is the beauty of SharePoint, it is a platform, and provides a frame work that can turn any website into a powerhouse.

To many websites that are built on SharePoint don't actually use SharePoint functionality. When we develop websites using SharePoint, it is important to us that we take full advantage of the publishing mechanism, design the page to work on all mobile devices and to have consitant manageable design from a layout perspective as well as content perspective.

One of the Internet facing sites I worked on last year was http://www.bcbsla.com/ for Blue Cross Blue Shield Louisiana and it is a prime example of utilizing great design as well as the rich functionality of SharePoint.

In fact this site has won a number of interactive media and creative awards. So far the site has been nominated as a Top 10 site on a number of differents sites and also won a Hermes as well as two IMA awards. Check out the details below.

Beside the Hermes award, the new http://www.bcbsla.com/ won Best in Class awards under the categories of Insurance (scoring 484 out of a possible 500 points) and Healthcare (480 out of 500).

The site also earned perfect marks for Content (Insurance), Design (Healthcare) and Feature Functionality (both categories).

The new site was re-launched in November 2010 with new design and functionality. One of its new features, My Blue Community, also recently won an IMA (Outstanding Achievement in Social Networking).

The IMAs were launched in 2006 by the Interactive Media Council, a nonprofit organization of web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals. The awards were created to provide accomplished web professionals with endorsements and tools to be recognized as leading providers of top-tier services.

The IMAs “recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development “* and nominations are accepted from around the world from web design firms, advertising agencies and corporate marketing departments, as well as individual web designers and graphic artists.”*

SharePoint 2010: Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions Book

2011-10-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

New SharePoint 2010 book is out on Microsoft Press.

Once again I have had the opportunity to contribute to one of Phil Wicklund's outstanding SharePoint books. The latest book SharePoint 2010: Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions is now in print and widely available. This new book will walk you through Microsoft SharePoint solutions in the cloud, you will learn about the different cloud choices and how to customize and maintain SharePoint cloud solutions. You will also get practical advice for migrating business solutions either to Microsoft SharePoint Online or to a private cloud, using your own data center. This is an ideal guide for IT professionals, architects, and decision makers.

This book will also give you a peak into the minds of just five of the many stellar consultants the work at RBA Consulting.

I wrote chapter two, which helps you decipher Office 365 and will walk you through the different licensing models and helps guide you to a model that makes sense for you. Not too many SharePoint books out there dare to tackle the licensing topic, but we do.

Catch Phil, myself or one of the other contributors (Brian Nielsen, Brian Wilson or Faraz Khan) at one our presentations or events and get a free copy.

Topics Covered:

Extend the reach of your SharePoint solutions—in the cloud
Evaluate the ROI for using a public, private, or hybrid cloud solution
Build public cloud solutions on either a shared or dedicated server
Use Microsoft Office 365 for email, messaging, document authoring, and more
Customize SharePoint Online using sandboxed solutions and SharePoint Designer
Control identity management and authentication with Windows PowerShell®
Deploy SharePoint in a private cloud with Hyper-V® and Microsoft System Center
Improve private cloud automation, availability, and data isolation with multi-tenancy

Remove Corrupted Web Parts in SharePoint

2011-10-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

Post Updated for SharePoint 2010
This feature works for SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint online.

Web Part Page Maintenance View

Need to remove a corrupt webpart on a page in SharePoint 2007 and can't? Many times web parts will get corrupted in SharePoint after meodifying them and even if you open the page in SharePoint Designer you cannot delete the web part. Some times you can see the web part and it is grey and not responsive so you can't delete it. Here is a trick to get around that problem.

Add "?contents=1" to the end of the URL. For example, http://portal.rbaconsulting.com/default.aspx?contents=1 . This will give you a list of webparts on that page and allow you to perform a few different actions including the ability to delete a webpart.

You can also reset and close web parts from this view.

SharePoint 2010 Note Board Best Practice

2011-10-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

SharePoint 2010 Web Part Note Board
One of my favorite web parts in SharePoint 2010 is the Note Board web part. This web part is Microsoft's answer to micro blogging, something akin to Twitter without the hash tags.

For those of you using the Note Board here are a few tips and best practices to ensure the best results and user experience.

1. Do not fall into the trap of adding all the social web parts to a single page, this does not add value for the users. Add the Note Board where it makes sense. Part of good information architecture and good user interface design is outlining the context and purpose of sites, pages and other content.

2. Change the title of the Note Board to something that makes sense, something that directs the user to add content and use the web part. The example I use here on the left has the Note Board titled What Are You Working On? This Note Board image was taken from a team site where I was inviting my co-workers to share what they are working on. Properly titling any web part will help drive participation and provide direction to the reader.

3. Use the right web part for the right purpose. If the page you are placing your web part on would benefit more from a two way discussion instead of a one way micro blog then use the Discussion Board instead of the Note Board.

4. Set the Custom Properties on the Note Board web part. URL for Note is the most important one, set this to the URL of the page. It is important to know that notes in each Note Board is tied to the exact URL of the page it is on. If you change the URL of the page, the notes you have collected so far will disappear. Do this a few times and your users will stop using it - guaranteed. SharePoint can add all sorts of syntax and parameters to the URL that can alter the URL and make it appear that the Note Board doesn't work. Set the URL.

Trick: You can add more than one Note Board to a page. But, why would I do this? Since you can set the URL for each Note Board instance you can actually configure Note Boards on different pages with the same URL so they all share the same notes. Also, you could add a number of Note Boards to a single page that show you notes from other pages.

SharePoint 2010 Media Fail or simply Media failed to load

2011-10-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

MEDIA FAILED TO LOAD

A number of users out there are running into the Media Failed to Load message when trying to use Community Clips (from Office Labs) and the Media Player web part in SharePoint 2010 to playback a video file. Even when they upload a WMV file they are still getting the same error. Most players would throw up a codec error message or simply an error saying codec is not supported - this would make things a bit clearer since that is the real issue.

It would be great if uploading a video file to a SharePoint media library would re-encode these files so that the average user could upload files.

Bottom line is you need to record your video and re-encode it with the proper codec if the original recording doesn't encode the video with the correct

Download and install in this order:

Community Clips: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/communityclips/Pages/Default.aspx
Install .NET Framework 4: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992
Download Encode Expression 4: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=75402be0-c603-4998-a79c-becdd197aa79&displaylang=en
You will now find a new menu item under Programs -> Windows Media

Recording Video

Launch Community Clips, Start and Stop button will be in the tray.
Record something

Converting Video

Encode the file in question using Windows Media Encoder found in that folder.
Launch Media Encoder
1. Convert a File, next
2. Select Source file and Output file location, next
3. Select Windows Media server (streaming) from the Content Distribution window, next
4. Change Video and Audio to DVD Quality video (2Mbs)
5. Select highest bit rate, next
6. Display Information, next
7. make sure "Begin converting when I click finish" is checked and click Finish
Upload the file to SharePoint

You don't have to use Community Clips to record the videos, you can use just about any program you want. The key is to re-encode the videos with the Windows Media Encoder.

Editing Video - If you want to quickly edit the video after you have recorded it, download Microsoft Movie Maker from here and install it. It is free and simple to use. Edit your videos before encoding them to save time and make things easier.

So lets recap:

Record (Community Clips)
Edit (Movie Maker)
Encode (Windows Media Encoder)
Upload (SharePoint).

A complete Microsoft solution for easily getting high quality videos into SharePoint.

Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Free Anti-Virus

2011-10-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

Why pay for Anti-Virus protection for your computer when you can get it for free? Especially when the free option is one of the better options. I have been using these tools from Microsoft for Windows 7 and have not had any issues. They do what I want and are unobtrusive.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security_essentials/default.aspx

I actually paid for some anti-virus software, I can't remember which one it was but it kept bugging to buy more stuff all the time. I got rid of it.

New Book Deploying Cloud-Based Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Solutions

2011-08-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

Last year I co-authored the SharePoint 2010 book Workflows in Action with Phil Wicklund, this year I am proud to announce the latest co-authoring adventure with Phil - Deploying Cloud-Based Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Solutions on O'Reilly.

This is a great book that walks IT Professionals and Architects step by step through a number of different cloud solutions. This book will help you make sense of it all.

Interested in what Office 365 has to offer? We have a chapter on that too. I wrote that chapter with the intention of explaining the different options and why you would use it.

The book will be released in October, but you can get some of the chapters early if you buy it now. Check it out here at O'Reilly.

Make Your Twitter Feeds Update Your LinkedIn Update

2011-05-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

A number of people ask me how to do this. I thought it was pretty straight forward but it looks like enough has changed on the LinkedIn interface that this is not so obvious anymore.

This feature of LinkedIn is a setting for your Post an Update section right under picture, name, etc at the top of your profile page. Most people just type in an update every so often and leave it at that for a while. If you have a Twitter account you can configure this update to come from Twitter automatically. You can configure multiple accounts as well as some prefences, like only displaying updates with preferred hash tags (#).

NOTE: Now I would say think before you act. LinkedIn is where people come to look for you as a professional and if you are updating LinkedIn with not a so professional Twitter feed then it may backfire on you.

If you do not have a Twitter account, go get one.

Lets get Started.

Log into LinkedIn and go to your Profile page.

Click on "Post an update" right below your picture. The space will expand allowing you to add some text or an attachment. You should also notice a check box with the Twitter logo ( a little blue bird) next to it. Select the context arrow (the black arrow head pointing down) on the right side the Twitter logo, you will see an option for Twitter Settings.

Click "Twitter Settings" and the Manage your Twitter settings window will pop up. First things first, Add a Twitter account by clicking on the first link in this window. Another window will pop up for Authorizing LinkedIn to use your account. You have to authorize LinkedIn to use your account or this won't work.

Once you have walked through the steps to authorize LinkedIn to use your Twitter account you will be taken back to the Manage your Twitter settings window.

You will notice now that you can Add another Twitter account. You must have the login and password for the Twitter account to authorize an additional account. I have my personal one and a work one added so I can receive updates from both (that is not reflected in the images in this blog because these are old images) on my updates in LinkedIn. But, I know what the login and password is for both accounts to authorize them.

NOTE: A Twitter account can be authorized by multiple users and can share tweets on an unlimited number of LinkedIn profile pages.

From the Manage your Twitter settings window you will have three options ACCOUNT VISIBILITY, SHARING TWEETS and TWEET DISPLAY. Let's look at each of these options one a time before going any further.

ACCOUNT VISIBILITY
This will display your Twitter account on your profile page on LinkedIn. So if you do not want people to find your Twitter account easily do not check this.

SHARING TWEETS
This options gives you a way to only display certain tweets by using specialized hash tags. The only hash tag that works today is the LinkedIn specific hash tag of #in or #li, simply add these to your tweets if you want to only show these tweets. Hopefully, in the future we will be able to add any hash tag.

TWEET DISPLAY
This option is important if you want the readers of your updates to be able to get to rich content like pictures, etc. I recommend checking this for everyone.

After you have selected the options you want, click on the "Save changes" link and you will be returned to your profile page. Sometimes you are returned to your settings page, navigate to your profile page from there.

The next time the twitter account is updated that you authorized to share on your LinkedIn profile you will see that tweet on your profile page. Go ahead send a test one now.

My Setup:
I personally have a couple of different accounts related to work and SharePoint that update my LinkedIn status. I also have my Facebook profile automatically updated in the same way. This makes it easier for me to share links and posts to everyone without having to login to many accounts.

I update Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook are upated.

There are two different ways I update Twitter, either when I share something on I am looking at or when I update my blog with a new post. Everytime I create a new post I then share this on my Twitter account to it is shared out to all my other accounts.

Adding Document Links (shortcuts) to SharePoint Library

2011-05-08T15:40:00.000-07:00

A question that comes ups at my clients quite often is "How do I add links or shortcuts to documents in a SharePoint document library?"

I won't get into to the pros and cons in this post about wether this is a good idea or not from an information architecture or taxonomy perspective, but I will say that this is something that should be well thought out before using a document library to have links in it instead of just documents.

The feature that enables you to add shortcuts in a library is really a content type. All you have to do is add the content type "Link to a Document" to your library. In fact the shortcut will be referred to as a link from here on out.

To add “Link to a Document” Content type to your library follow the steps below.

Please Note: This solution works for all versions of SharePoint 2010, including Office 365.

STEP 1: ENABLE CONTENT TYPES By default adding content types are disabled in your SharePoint library. To add a content type you must enable editing content type in the library settings under the advanced option. Once you have enabled the content type editing, you can add/remove content type.

Enable Content Type Modification in List/Library
1. To enable content type editing go to list/library settings page.
2. Then from the list settings page, Click “Advanced Settings” and in the advanced settings page, click the radio button labeled “Yes” for option “Allow Management of Content Types”. Enabling this option will allow you to modify content type settings.
3. Click Ok after selecting Yes option.

After coming back to list settings page you will find the content modifying option as shown below:

STEP 2: ADD NEW CONTENT TYPE1. Still from the document library settings page, scroll down to the Content Types section that is now available.
2. You will notice there is only one content type by default for a new Document Library, this content type is the basic Document content type. This default content type may be different depending on the type of library and configuration of your particular environment.
3. Click the link "Add from existing site content types"
4. Using the droup down, change the content types that are being displayed by changing All Groups to Document Content Types. By default there are about eight different content types that should be displayed. Select the content type called "Link to a Document" and click the Add button.
5. Now click OK

You have now added the Link to a Document content type to this library.

STEP 3: ADD A LINK TO A DOCUMENT
1. Go back to the main view of the document library you just added the new content type to.
2. From the documents tab you will now notice two items that appear underneath the New Document icon when you click on the lower part of that iicon with the context arrow. You will now see Link to a Document as well as the default Document option.
3. Click on the Link to a Document option.
4. A "new link to a document" window will appear. Enter in the document name and then the document URL.
5. Click OK

You have now added link in your documents library. When you click on this link it will open the document or go to wherever the links URL directs it.

Some curiosities I have noticed.
As with most new features we discover in SharePoint we get so excited at first that the software manufacturer has added them. But, under further scrutiny, or actually trying to use the feature, we find some fairly obvious and glaring issues. Most of these issues point to one of two things we see in big company products. The first, is whoever designed the UI for this feature has never really used this product in the real world. The second, the company making the product is so big that the person responsible for feature isn't talking to others that are responsible for effected features or similar features. As you read below you will see these issues fall into these categories too.

Note: All this is fine with me, because it just creates more demand for specialists like myself to sand down the rough edges and help bring the product as a whole to the end user.

+ Add Document
The green plus icon with the words next to it "Add Document" that appears at the bottom of the view for your library is not very controllable out of the box. Add Document link only brings up the option to add a document. You must browse to a document and upload it.

You can change the content type settings to make Link to a Document the default setting for this library when you create a new document but clicking on this + Add Document link still forces you to browse to a document.

Even if you change the content type settings to remove document from the options on the create new document button, clicking +Add Document still forces you to browse to a document. If you browse to a document and select one to be uploaded the next screen will actually default to the properties of Link to a Document, trying to get you to add a URL as a mandatory field. Of course, you can just select cancel and your newly uploaded document will still be in the library.

Link to a Document Content Type Name
Link to a Document is really a misnomer since you can link to anything with a URL, it doesn't have to be a document. It could be an image or even a site itself, anything with a calid URL. Only Http or Https: URLS are valid, please see my next post on how to link to Lotus Notes databases (i.e. URLS beginning with notes://)

Getting a SharePoint Documents URL
SharePoint 2010 doesn't make it as easy as past versions to get the URL path of a given document. IT used to be you could find a document right click on the document you want to link and choose COpy Shortcut. You would then simply copy this where you want to use it. But now there is a ton of "crap" that comes with that shortcut that makes it difficult to use that shortcut without going in and editing it quite a bit.

It is much easier just to select the function E-Mail a Link from the Send To menu in the document context menu.

I create another blog here about adding Lotus Notes links to SharePoint.

New Windows 7 Desktop

2011-04-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

Here is a snapshot of my new desktop for my laptop running Windows 7. After getting a sneak peak at what Windows 8 is going to look like it got me thinking of what would make the most sense for a desktop and we haven't seen a real change in many many years. So, I started looking around and most of what I found was garbage and dissapointing. But, then I was in a meeting yesterday at Microsoft and one of the presenters had a configuration I had never seen before. It was intriguing so I found out more. Was this new Win 8? some sort of Beta build or test product? Nope.

He pointed me the right direction and got me looing in RainMeter, Omnicom and ObjectDock and I started messing around with the possibilities. I went to work reskinning my desktop from the ground up. I wanted to do something so when I remote login to my machine from tablet it was easier to use with touch gestures. This is a screenshot of what I came up with on my first go around flying back to Dallas from Redmond.

DATASHEET VIEW Error SharePoint 2010

2011-01-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

Are you getting this message when trying to view a list in SharePoint 2010?

"The list is displayed in Standard view. It cannot be displayed in Datasheet view for one or more of the following reasons: A datasheet component compatible with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is not installed, your browser does not support ActiveX controls, a component is not properly configured for 32-bit or 64-bit support, or support for ActiveX controls is disabled."

More than likely this because you are running the 64bit version of Office 2010. To get around this you have to go to this link and install "2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components."

Pretty lame. I know. But, that is how it is.

Perch

2011-01-24T19:49:00.000-08:00

Early adoption can be a risky business, and even riskier when it comes to the coolest, latest peripherials. But, the peripherials certainly make the device... or is it the man? Anyway, this device looks slick, compact does the things you want it to. It is primarily designed to be a portable wireless speaker to use with your mobile device, i.e. iPhone, iPad, Droid, etc...

Since this device also has a built in microphone, it can be used as a portable speaker phone for important conference calls. It has a number of other features, it has a docking station that charges the speaker and your phone. It also has a cool magnetic connection for connecting to the dock.

I like it because it is compact and looks really cool. I am sure the sound quality is going to suck like most speakers but it will at least look good on the desk or next to the bed.

Get yours here for less than $200.00

Microsoft's OneNote comes to Apple Store

2011-01-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

I do not have an iPhone so I don't have this myself, but I am a big fan of Microsoft's OneNote product. I had a Windows phone about a year ago and was dissapointed with all the sync'ing errors it had and it eventually stopped sync'ing up all together. It sounds like there are still some intermittent sync issues, but otherwise works great.

I saw it for myself and it looks good and I wanted it immediately on my Droid Incredible... App envy.

I don't have an iPhone, but I do have an iPad and I should still be apple to use it on that for now and since it is free I can live with the limited realistate given to iPhone apps.

Check out this article on ZDNET for more details.

Top SharePoint Sites BCBSLA

2011-01-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

Top SharePoint is featuring the SharePoint site I just finished working on. This site was no small feat and a lot of talented people (especially RBA folks) put a lot of hard work and long hours into delivering one of the largest, if not largest SharePoint ".com" deployments of 2010. This site includes an extensive Intranet, Extranet and Provider Directory that is making BCBSLA customers life much easier to find the information they need everyday.

Take a second and pop over to the link and give it a 5 heart rating so we can get to the top of the list. We were there a few weeks ago and got knocked down.

SharePoint Fest 2011 Speaker List

2011-01-17T21:04:00.000-08:00

Speaker List for SharePoint Fest 2011 in Dallas has been updated, looking forward to preseting with all of these talented individuals. http://www.sharepointfest.com/Dallas/

Also, I am starting it right now! Remember you heard it here first. The brand new, not even open right now, Irving Convention Center looks like the Sandcrawler from the first Star Wars movie. I am also half tempted to dress up as a Jawa since this is the first major event at the new convention center.

I live across the lake from the convention center and have been watching them build this for more than a year now. I thought Dallas was getting a permanent Star Wars Convention location. Not that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a Star Wars convention here real soon.

In fact, if you dress up as a Star Wars character I will give you a free signed copy of the latest book I have worked on: SharePoint Work Flows in Action. This is the book I was lucky enough to collaborate on with Phil Wicklund last year.

News Year Resolution

2011-01-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

Add more images to my blog posts. :)
I promise.
And... maybe better grammar. Maybe.

SharePoint Fest Dallas March 16

2011-01-13T11:41:00.000-08:00

If you are in or near Dallas you need to check out SharePoint Fest in Dallas on March 16. I will be presenting as well as a number of my RBA co-workers.

It looks like we have 6 or 7 speakers from RBA Consulting this year showcasing SharePoint, particularly SharePoint 2010. RBA has been the title sponsor for this event since the beginning. Previously this event was called SharePoint TechFest.

Last year Scott Wheeler and I presented to standing room only classes on BI and Workflows in SharePoint. I am looking forward to it again.

If you are not familiar with this event it is the second largest SharePoint conference the last two years. I think it was actually the largest one anywhere last year. People come from all over to attend this conference.

Check out our popular Workflow University presentation posted on SlideShare, we (Scott Wheeler, Phil Wicklund and I) presented this after SharePoint TechFest last year at the Microsoft Offices in Irving, Texas as an extension of our TechFest presentation.

SharePoint 2007 Trick Additional Usage Reports

2011-01-13T09:35:00.001-08:00

Besides the easy to get to Site Usage Reports, there are two additional pages you can get site usage information from. I know you can get to the Site Usage Reports from the administration page by clicking on the link to Usage Reports but these other pages need to some special tweaks to the URL to get to them.

Site Usage Report - add this after your domain "/_layouts/UsageDetails.aspx "
Site Usage Summary - add this after your domain "/_layouts/Usage.aspx"

Example:

https://portals.rbaconsulting.com/_layouts/UsageDetails.aspx

URL shortcut for Site Usage Reports - "_layouts/SPUsageWeb.aspx"

SharePoint 2007 Trick Corrupt Web Parts

2011-01-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

Need to remove a corrupt webpart on a page in SharePoint 2007 and can't? Many times web parts will get corrupted in SharePoint after meodifying them and even if you open the page in SharePoint Designer you cannot delete the web part. Some times you can see the web part and it is grey and not responsive so you can't delete it. Here is a trick to get around that problem.

Add "?contents=1" to the end of the URL. For example, http://portal.rbaconsulting.com/default.aspx?contents=1 . This will give you a list of webparts on that page and allow you to perform a few different actions including the ability to delete a webpart.

SharePoint 2007 and KPI's

2011-01-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

Using KPI's in SharePoint 2007 have a come up a few time in conversations the last couple of days so I thought I would post something about them. While KPI's have greatly improved in SharePoint 2010 and companies are moving to the latest version of Microsoft's most popular software of all time, many are still using SharePoint 2007.

KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) are typically used to track business or project goals and are found in the Enterprise version of SharePoint. You will find them available in Report Center by default but you can also have them activated in other types of sites. KPI lists are lists like everything else in SharePoint but they are not exactly the same as other lists. You do not have as much control over the fields and functionality as you may like.

KPI's can be used to track data in different in a few different ways. They can track data in SharePoint lists, in Excel spreadsheets, manually entered data and other data from SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.

There are a number if sites that go into great detail on the KPI functionality and also how to configure them so I will not be redundant here. Instead I recommend a couple of sites for you to look at:

Check out this Microsoft site for details on setting up KPI's.

SharePoint Kings also has an excellent walkthrough here.

In regards to SharePoints Report Center template take a look at this page.

Microsoft VP: Google faces “long, hard road” in business software

2010-04-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is launching Office 2010 next month, so I checked in with the man in charge of the Office team, Chris Capossela, to find out how confident Microsoft is feeling with its Office suite now that Google is trying to make a serious claim on the business-application market. After all, Googlers have said 2010 will be the year that Google Apps, the bundle of online business software including Gmail and Google Docs, becomes a formidable competitor to Office.

Capossela said, though, that he’s confident about Microsoft’s position against emerging competitors like Google. He said Google will have a hard time convincing big companies that it’s making a serious commitment to Apps, especially since so much of its revenue comes from advertising in web search.
“If Google stopped supporting Google Apps tomorrow, no one on Wall Street would blink,” he said.

Read more here

I Blinked and We Didn't Need SharePoint Anymore

2010-04-01T22:02:00.001-07:00

Is it possible that we will see messaging from social software vendors the likes of Telligent and Jive turn from "better with SharePoint" turn into "better without SharePoint" in the not so distant future!

The overall message and strategy that we are seeing from vendors in the market place is the utilization of "better with SharePoint" messaging to get their foot in the door or to steal some of the existing space from SharePoint. The selling point is that the customer would use their products (i.e. Jive SBS, IBM Lotus Connections, Oracle Beehive, etc...) with SharePoint to leverage collaboration and social activities. They are all saying that SharePoint should only be used for document management and workflow and that there isn't a successful social or collaboration story with SharePoint.

The real messaging is that we will settle for "better with SharePoint" for now, while we get our product installed and get the customer using it happily and then turn around later and sell the customer on not needing SharePoint in the future. There are two key areas where this could easily happen without anyone even noticing.

SharePoint 2010 improves greatly over the previous versions when it comes to a solid social and collaboration story. In fact, SharePoint has added many out-of-the-box features that previously required third party software or custom code.

However, SharePoint 2010 is not addressing two key capabilities in micro-blogging and blind expertise discovery. Micro-blogging in 2010 is limited to the MySites and I am sure somebody will come along with a web part or feature that will make this a ubiquitous feature throughout SharePoint like it is in their competitors’ products. But, for now this appears as weakness and will be picked at by the competition and used to leverage their social solutions.

The second item, blind expertise discovery, is the ability to discover information and people that you don't necessarily have access to. In other products this is commonly referred to as a community or communities feature. This was a well-known weakness in SharePoint 2007 and it continues to be in 2010. Ironically, the new SharePoint wheel has a segment called communities and it is our belief that this will be used by the competitors, to make it appear that SharePoint is weak.

Up to now, the competition has limited the SharePoint integration discussion to connectors or extenders that may or may not really exist in some cases. But now, the introduction of SharePoint web parts in just about every product out there is a clear indicator that the competition is getting more serious and they have come to grips with the dominance of the SharePoint platform in the Enterprise. Is this just a move to be smart and work with SharePoint because it is inevitable that every shop out there has some form of SharePoint deployed? Or, is it something more devious?

Think about this, if other products start getting into SharePoint shops and the customers start using their web parts for social and collaboration, instead of SharePoint’s social and collaboration features, the line between which products they are using will blur over time. Also, the customer will stop relying on SharePoint features for collaboration and social, they will stop using MySites, they will not be leveraging rating, tagging and other SharePoint features. Pretty soon the customer isn't getting the full value of SharePoint and when the competitor comes around to convince them to drop SharePoint and only use their product it will be a lot easier to get the customer to no longer value SharePoint.

A lot of Microsoft account managers could be finding themselves fighting the losing battle of justifying the licensing for SharePoint and trying to convince the customer that there is value there for SharePoint when the customer doesn't recognize it.

Microsoft Office 2010 32 bit or 64 bit

2010-03-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

The 64 bit OS has become more popular in the last year and Microsoft has done a great to make that happen with the latest releases of its core products Windows, Office and even SharePoint all running on 64 bit. SharePoint goes so far as to only run on 64 bit machines, which has a bunch of IT folks scrambling to get new machines asap.

I have been running 64 bit on my laptop since 2008 and for the most part have no issues with it. I especially enjoy all the extra RAM I can run on my machine (12GB). I have had issues with drivers not being available for certain peripherals and also some wireless hot spots not allowing me to conntect and even some backwards compatibily issues, but in general I have had a really good experience.

So know comes the Microsoft Office 2010 beta and soon in a couple of months the general release of the uber popular Microsoft suite. Now you are probably wondering about whether you should install the 32 bit version of Microsoft Office 2010 or the 64 bit version, Microsoft can help wit the answer. According to the FAQ on the new site Microsoft Tech Garaunteed site, Microsoft does not necessarilly recommend installing the 64 bit version of Office 2010.

Will a 64 bit version of Office 2010 be available?

"Yes, 64-bit Office 2010 product upgrades will be available. However we strongly recommend most users install 32-bit version of Office 2010 on both 32 and 64-bit Operating Systems because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition. The 64-bit installation of Microsoft Office 2010 products will be available for users who commonly use very large documents or data set and need Excel 2010 programs to access greater than 2GB of memory. There may be technical issues with the 64-bit version and in order to install a 64-bit version of Office 2010 product users must have a 64-bit supported operating system on their PC."

Personally, I have been running the 64 bit version for months and I love it, but I don not have a bunch of add-ins or macros or anything of note really that needed to be ported over to this install. I have been running a clean, no add-in installation and it works great. That being said the only reason I installed the 64 bit version was because I am running a 64 bit OS so I thought it made sense. Besides the challenge with add-ins as specified above I have also heard that the 32 bit version can actuall perform faster than the 64 bit version and that only someone who is putting a serious load on their CPU will see a benefit. It works for me, but I can see where there could be issues for some users. So all in all, no real benefit for most users to install the 64 bit version.

One other note, I have seen backwards compatibilty issues with files saved in PowerPoint on a 64 bit machine and then moved to a 32 bit machine running 32 bit PowerPoint (2007 and 2010). The slide animation and transitions slow to a crawl and are unusable. But if you download the latest PowerPoint Viewer from the web they run fine in there.

Check out the new site here Microsofts Tech Gauranteee Program for 2010
here and keep up to date with latest information.

Google Apps Marketplace

2010-03-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

Business to business software can be a tough sell. Online B2B can be even a harder sell. While there is certainly money to be made, unless you’re one of the big players, the likelihood you’re going to succeed is pretty small. Starting today, Google is taking their roll as one of the big players and extending a platform to boost some smaller players.

Tonight, Google has unveiled their Google Apps Marketplace. This is an app store for enterprise apps in the cloud. Using a set of APIs, these third-party apps can deeply integrate their products within Google Apps, which already some 25 million people are using. And that also includes over 2 million businesses ranging from startups, to small businesses, to Fortune 500 companies.

Get the rest of this article here at TECHCRUNCH

SharePoint TechFest

2010-03-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

Wrapping finishing touches on my presentation for TechFest in Dallas. I will be presenting on Visio Workflows in SharePoint.

The improvements in Visio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 are impressive, most of them will have you saying "Why didn't I have this before?" As a Business Analyst I can now sketch out a workflow in Visio and hand it off for someone else to build it out in SharePoint or how even you a non-developer can build it out and get it up and running.

Lots of new Actions and Features, my favorite is being able to look up and compare profile information with just a few clicks.

SharePoint TECHFEST Site

Google Buzz Turns into Google Hangover

2010-02-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

The basic issue here is that Google Buzz automatically set your followers up based on who you e-mail the most and by default everyone in the world can see who these people are if they look at your profile. This has been an issue with man other web applications like LinkedIn and Twitter in the past, so you would think that Google would have expected this. Well, maybe they did think about this and maybe they were trying to get this out without people noticing. Is there something shady going on at Google? Are they trying to change our behavior? Or did they just drop the ball on this one.

The biggest issue I have is that people where buzzing me before I even knew that there was a new application in my gmail. I am more annoyed by the fact that it was already installed and it wasn't an option like other apps. Some people like having their micro-blogging in the same place as their e-mail but others like me are not so keen to it, at least not yet. Maybe once I get my head around what the advantages of yet another micro-blogging app and one that is in my gmail, I will change my mind.

Background on Buzz Issue:

Google released some privacy fixes for Buzz. They're a nice start, but we don't think they go far enough. Read more here: Sorry, Google's Improvements To Buzz Don't Fix Privacy Flaw

There is a huge privacy flaw in Google's new Twitter/Facebook competitor, Google Buzz.
When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow.
A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail. That's fine.

See more of this story here at Slicicon Alley Insider from Nicholas Carlson

Song of the Day (SOTD) Tricky

2010-02-01T06:42:00.000-08:00

Song of the Day (SOTD)

Every morning when I get up bright and early to start working I have to turn on the tunes to help me get focused in on the days tasks, so I thought why not share some of the tunes each day. Maybe you will like them, maybe you won't but I thought it would be interesting to mix these into an otherwise business/tech oriented blog site.

So, here is the first one EVOLUTION REVLUTION LOVE from Tricky.

Boot from VHD Windows 7 Install Steps

2010-01-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

Boot from VHD Windows 7: Windows 7 Boot from VHD

Here is a walkthrough of installing a bootable VHD from a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 disc:

1.Insert Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 media
2.Boot from the CD like you’re installing the OS normally
3.At the first screen, hit Shift-F10 to open a command window
4.Use the DiskPart utility to create and mount the vhd. Type DiskPart at the command prompt and hit enter. Now enter the following commands:
1.create vdisk file=C:\VHD-Windows7.vhd maximum=40960
2.select vdisk file=C:\VHD-Windows7.vhd
3.attach vdisk
4.exit
5.Close the command prompt and continue setup
6.Select the Custom (Advanced) Install option
7.Select the VHD disk you created for the install
8.That’s it! The Windows installer takes care of the rest.
9.If you want more control, you can use BCDEdit or EasyBCD to edit the boot menu

That is it, as you can see it is pretty simple.

Oracle Wins Unconditional EU Approval for Sun

2010-01-22T05:34:00.000-08:00

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Oracle Corp won unconditional European Union approval on Thursday for its $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, a month after offering public pledges to sooth regulatory concerns.

The acquisition will reshape the high-tech landscape, with Oracle, the world's No. 2 business software maker, moving into the hardware business. Sun is the top player in the $17 billion high-end computer-server market.

Oracle promised in December to keep the market open for others to make storage engine software for Sun's MySQL database and to boost investment in the unit after the European Commission launched an in-depth investigation of the deal. It also pledged to set up a separate customer advisory board of MySQL users.

Those concessions have satisfied Europe's competition watchdog that the deal will not distort the market.

"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned, " EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

"Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products."

The Commission said its decision took into account Oracle's public pledges and that the company had already implemented some of its promises.

It said there was a competitive alternative to MySQL. But the decision did not satisfy some opponents.

Florian Mueller, a spokesman for the founder of MySQL, Michael Widenius, who is strongly opposed to the deal, said the European Union executive's decision was wrong.

"It's not based on hard facts... It should not serve as the basis for decisions taken by other regulators because it would set an awful precedent for merger control in connection with open source and a variety of other IT business models," he said.

While it was not unusual for the Commission to clear merger cases after in-depth probes, dissatisfied third parties could challenge the Oracle decision in court due to the absence of formal concessions from the company, said antitrust lawyer Paul McGeown at Hunton & Williams.

"Vocal complainants during the process are potential litigants. We won't know for some time but this is not the end of the story," he said.

The Commission's decision could be partly due to its desire to avert a split with the U.S. Department of Justice, which approved the deal in August, said Alec Burnside, a partner at global law practice Linklaters.

"Oracle refused to formalise its pledges and the Commission doesn't seem to have been willing to follow through with its concerns by imposing a prohibition, perhaps because of the transatlantic tensions around the case," he said.

Authorities in China and Russia have yet to approve the deal.

The Sun takeover will give Oracle control of Sun's server computers and storage equipment, its widely used Java programing language, the Solaris operating system and SQL database.
Sun competes with IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Parkard Co in the computer server market.

Google Wave just a Ripple?

2010-01-19T15:08:00.001-08:00

Whatever happened to Google Wave? Why didn't the world change?

I Need To... Web Part SharePoint 2007

2010-01-13T07:15:00.000-08:00

The I Need To... Web Part is a simple yet, for no earthly reason, complicated web part. It is simple where it should be and complicated where it shouldn't and there is not a good explanation of how to configure this web part within SharePoints own help files.

I Need To... relies on another list to pull data from, that list should be created first. I have seen many posts floating around saying that it only works with one kind of list and doesn't work for another, including custom lists. Well, it does work with custom lists and that is what I use 99% of the time.

Another incorrect assumption about the "I Need To" web parts is that you can only have one per page, that is not true. Add as many as you like, you can have a page with as many drop downs as you want, it will probably be an ugly page but... your choice.

Here is how to set up the "I Need To" web part from scratch, do not start with an existing list or you will get all sorts of weird results. Read this entire post through once before trying to do this, it will save you a headache.

You will create a custom list that has three fields in it in this order and spelled this way and pay special attention to case sensitivity. The three columns you need are Title, URL, and Choice.

Title - Use the default that comes with a brand new Custom List, do not change anything, don't even look at it, it is dead to you for now.

URL - Create this column first and use the Hyperlink field type, do not change any settings, dont touch anything just get the name and type correct. Make sure that the name of the field is all upper case - that is ALL UPPER CASE. Not making it all upper case will result in the error "invalid URL" later when trying to use the I Need To web part.

Choice - This is going to seem really stupid but, you can use any fields except the "Yes/No (check box)" field type for this column and it has to be called Choice at least in the beginning (more on that later). Make sure the case is correct for the name "Choice" or it will not work.

Make sure you make it a field of type choice and replace the three default entries with two new entries "Yes" and "No". You should now have two entries. You do not have to get the case or spelling correct on these "Yes" and "No" options. In fact you can put whatever you want but I wouldn't do that just yet, the I Need To web part is very sensitive, I think it has feelings or something.

After you have added your two columns, do not rearrange them, do not rename them, do not mess with views, do not do anything.

Got to your page you want to add the I Need To web part and add the web part. After adding the web part configure the web part to point at the custom list you create earlier. adjust the drop downs so they are selecting the correct fields, hit apply or OK and you are done.

Sometimes the web part will display an error saying it is not configured after you have configured it for the first time or when you make a change to the configuration, just refresh the page once or twice and it will go away. Evidently displaying false errors is some sort of feature of this web part, but I don't know what this feature is good for.

If you are receiving any other errors at this point or it is not working then you missed something and should start all over, put pay attention this time.

Another option you can use with this list and webpart is adding more than two choice fields. For example I have a list with the options Home, Support and Sales. So when I setup my I Need To webpart on my Support page I can tell it to only look at items identified as Support. This makes it easier to maintain since everything is in one single list and not broken out into three different lists.

Somebody told me the other day they call this web part "I Need to... Kill My Self" because it can be so frustrating trying to get this thing to work correctly.

*Updated for errors and grammar 01/13/2011

Native VHD Boot Windows 7 Supported Versions

2010-01-10T12:58:00.001-08:00

The only version of Windows that support native VHD boot are Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows Server 2008 R2.

You can run VHDs on 32bit or 64bit operating systems.

Thats all...

VHD Lifehacks Windows 7

2010-01-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

Centralizing Your Personal Folders

So now you have a couple of VHDs setup and you are happily bouncing back and forth between your different virtual environments. But, soon you realize that when you are in VHD A you want something that is in VHD B or even god forbid from an older environment that you dread having to boot into. No this isn't a blog about hacking into one VHD from another or opening it in a virtual environment within the one you are in now. This is about some common sense good practices to employ when working with multiple environments.

The first thing you should take advantage of is the fact that even though you have only one hard drive, when you boot to a VHD it creates a virtual partition for the OS (your new c:\ drive) and puts everything else that was once on the C:\ drive onto a new partition (most likely D:\)
So you can move all your personal folders to the D:\ drive and then point the personal folders on all of your VHDs to these folders. My C:\ drive basically looks like this when I am not booted into an OS.

It contains the following folders:
Contacts
Favorites
Links
Music
My Documents
My Music
My Pictures
My Videos

And then it contains the following files:
Windows7Work.VHD
Windows7Personal.VHD
WindowsServer2008.VHD

As you can see it is a very clean C:\ drive. Another machine I have has basically the same setup but also still has the original Windows Vista OS installed so there are some additional folders.

If you create these centralized locations and you boot to a VHD you will find that these folders are always on a second partition (usually d:\) and that you can get to them easily from any of the VHDs. The next thing to do is point all your personal folders in each VHD to these folders, so when you save a document to My Documents you will always be able to access it no matter what VHD you are in currently.

Moving Favorites to the centralized location cuts down on so many headaches when it comes to keeping track of all the bookmarks you gather so quickly. If you don't centralize them like this than every VHD you are in will have different bookmarks and favorites. I like to even put these on a Network Drive and sync my laptop to this folder so I can make sure all my machines, real and virtual have the same bookmarks. It is a life saver, I recomment it highly.

Lastly, the biggest benefit you get from centralizing everything is that when you upgrade to the next OS or create a new VHD everything is still in the same place and easily accessible.

VHD Boot Management

2010-01-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

After creating and deleting a few VHDs you may want to clean up the boot menu, perhaps change the name of entry or even point an entry to another VHD or maybe like me you are tired of trying to remember which Windows 7 is the which since they are all named the same. This can easily be done by using the BCDEDIT command from a CMD with Administrator permissions.

The BCDEDIT command can be run from any of the VHDs, you can change some data like boot order and description for the VHD you are currently booted to while you are actually in the VHD itself.

You can do the following:
Change the display order of the different VHDs.
Change which VHD is the default to boot from.
Change the Description of the VHD that appears in the boot menu.
Set boot manager time-out value.

There is more you can do with the command but I have only messes with the ones above.

Change the display order of the different VHDs

Here is the command:
BCDEDIT /displayorder {guid} {guid} {guid}

Why change it? I changed mine because by default the last VHD you add is the one that is listed first in the boot menu and that is not the one I wanted display first. After I changed mine I realized all I really cared about is the one that is booted to by default and that is easier to change then typing long esoteric guids all day :)

Change the default entry the boot manager will boot to

Here is the command:
BCDEDIT /default {guid}

Why change it? I didn't want the most recent VHD I added to be the default one because I was creating a secondary workspace and I wanted to continue using one of my older VHDs as the default workspace. I also changed the description of each entry so it was easy for me to remeber which space was what.

Change the description of the boot menu choices

Here is the command:
BCDEDIT /set {guid} description "Windows 7 Workspace"

Why change it? I changed mine so each space represents the purpose of each workspace. For example I have my old Windows Vista space, I have a Windows 7 space designated for my working environment, one designated as a sandbox space and finally one that is designated for my home studio (music) workspace.

There is a lot more you can do with the BCDEDIT command but these are the ones I use the most.

Windows VHD - What is not supported?

2010-01-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

What is not supported for native boot using VHDs?

Native boot VHDs do not support all of the features that are available when Windows is normally installed or deployed to a physical disk. You may want to consider the limitations of booting Windows from a VHD when you are planning how to deploy Windows for your environment, wether it is at home or at work.

The following scenarios are not supported for native boot using VHDs:

Using VHDs to native boot with previous versions of Windows. Windows Vista and and other previous versions of Windows do not support native boot. Native boot VHD requires significant changes to the operating system and these changes are new in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (previous version of Windows Server 2008 will not work, only the R2 version works.)
Hibernating to conserve power. An operating system that is booted from a VHD image does not support hibernation. Native boot is primarily targeted to Windows Server or managed desktops, and development and test computers where hibernation is not a critical feature. Most people don't use the hibernate feature on there desktops, but this is certainly an important feature for laptops. Since I have switched my laptop to boot from a VHD image I now use the Sleep feature, but be aware this is not exactly the same as hibernate.
Using compressed or encrypted VHDs for native boot. VHDs that have been compressed by NTFS or encrypted using Encrypting File System on the host volume are not supported for native boot.
Configuring native VHD boot if the host volume is protected by BitLocker. You can save a VHD file on a file system that is protected by BitLocker, but you cannot use the VHD for native boot or enable Bitlocker on the volume(s) that are contained inside a VHD. This could be the biggest reason for some to not use the boot to VHD feature, currently I am not using but I may in the future.
Booting to a VHD that is located on a remote share or a USB flash drive. Windows does not support booting to a remote share or a USB flash drive, whether installed on a physical volume or from a VHD. You can boot the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) from a USB flash drive, which is supported for Windows deployment. Windows PE typically boots from either a Boot.wim or an installed image, but booting Windows PE from a VHD is not supported.
Upgrading the operating system booted from a VHD. If you boot from a VHD, you cannot upgrade the Windows version in the VHD to a newer version. It's much cleaner to reinstall than upgrade to the latest versions. I have a machine that natively boots to Vista and instead of upgrading to Windows 7, I created a VHD for Windows 7 and dual boot between the two environment. The idea is that if I find that I need something from the old environment I can still get to it exactly the way I did before. Eventually, when I don't need the old environment I can get rid of it completely and just use the Windows 7 environment. I plan to make this my method of upgrade going forward with other versions as well.

Windows 7 was My Idea (Burn ISO and Boot VHD)

2009-12-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

This week I have been scrambling to get a SharePoint 2010 Beta environment up and running on my home machine and rebuild a laptop for a coworker. I have been running Windows 7 on my work laptop for atleast 6 months and I love it. In fact, my work machine (laptop) is setup to dual boot to Windows 7 or Server 2008 using VHDs only - that was my idea ;)

This work environment has been awesome and I can't praise Microsoft enough for making the world a better place with abillity to boot from VHDs. I boot up Windows Server 2008 when I need to run Hyper-v for things like my SharePoint environments, in particluar the SharePoint 2010 pre-release builds. And, I boot up the Windows 7 environment to do everything else I need to do for work or to manage my fantasy football team (14 - 1 heading to the super bowl this week).

Want to boot from VHD? Check out Stuart's instructions here.

I am working on a chapter for a book about some specific features of SharePoint 2010, that will be published sometime next year, and I have been getting my screen captures from my work machine, more specifically the Windows Server 2008\SharePoint 2010 environment. As luck would have it, as soon as I thought I was done with this chapter (about 30 pages) I realised that the version of SharePoint I had been using (pre-release) was not the beta version and has some very different features, or at least variations on features than the beta version. So, that meant I needed to redo all my screenshots and walk back through all the steps I had documented to make sure I wasn't including anything that shouldn't be there.

Download SharePoint 2010 Foundations here

Download SharePoint 2010 Server Beta here

My machine at home, a very robust Dell running Vista very happily for the last couple of years, needed to be upgraded to run Windows 7 so I could get an instance of SharePoint 2010 Beta up and running for some screenshots I needed. To get the beta up and running on Windows 7, I followed the instructions on the MSDN site. Be sure to read through the entire set of instructions before moving forward, this will save you some headaches later.

I was able to create both a SharePoint 2010 Foundations Beta and a SharePoint 2010 Server environment in there own VHDs running on Windows 7 successfully. My world feels so much more organized now, I love it and I highly recommend it.

Another great reason to use VHDs is for upgrade purposes, my machine was originally running Windows Vista for the last couple of years and instead of just upgrading it to Windows 7 I created a new Windows 7 VHD that I have migrated my content to over a couple of weeks as I discovered what I needed. I figure I will keep the Vista environment for a few months until I feel like I don't need anything from it.

Now to just figure out this Backup and Restore center.

Google Convicted by French Government

2009-12-18T09:48:00.001-08:00

Google's plans to scan millions of books to make them available online has gotten them in trouble with the French government. This week a court in Paris ruled that Google is breaking the law by digitizing thousands of books that are under copyright.

As of yesterday, Google is being assessed a daily fine ($14,300.00) until it can prove that they have removed the books from their database. Even though the results financially are a drop in the bucket for Google, this is a clear indicator that the Google halo may be losing its effect.

Of course, Google plans on appealing this ruling. But on local shores, U.S. authors and publishers have also been suing Google, and the U.S. Justice Department has concluded that the original deal Google has negotiated with publishers probably violates antitrust law. And don't forget that the top U.S. copyright official and the governments in Germany and France also have raised objections about the settlement overstepping its bounds.

On top of the recent objections over copyright, there has been concerns by numerous libraries about Google having too much control over intellectual property. The search giants, "Trust us" motto is not good enough for the Library Association of America – Google could do just about anything they want with the property and even thought their intentions may be good today, who knows what it will be in 5 or 10 years. Also, what would happen if Google crumbles or sells the rights to someone else?

There will be a fairness hearing on the amended settlement with U.S. authors and publishers, which must be approved by a court, on February 18, 2010.

Retail and Twitter (Metropark’s Reverb)

2009-12-16T22:06:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite stores that has popped up in the last couple years is Los Angeles based specialty store Metropark. This ultra-cool, mostly clothing retailer combines equal parts fashion, music and art – they even have a live DJ on weekends.

I was visiting the location in North Park Mall in Dallas this week to get a little Christmas shopping done for myself and I saw something new on the wall behind the counter. I was used to seeing the plasma screens playing music, displaying advertisements and other general fashion related imagery. But, this time there was something new; the image I was looking at was an animated glob with word bubbles popping up out of various countries with little short blurbs of content. I immediately recognized these as tweets and I was intrigued.

I watched the screen for a while and read the different micro bursts talking about shopping at Metropark, working at Metropark, finding things at Metropark, etc… The program called REVERB was displaying a live twitter feed that was showing each feed as it came in and also indicating visually where that tweet was coming from. One interesting item to note is there were tweets on there from countries that don't even have a Metropark in them, most likely people shopping online.

After, watching for a few minutes I started thinking about what kind of value and impact this had on the store, its customers and even the people that work there. It creates a buzz that gets people excited, it helps make them feel like they are part of something bigger and cooler, it is a natural extension of what they are already choosing to participate in when they visit a retailer like Metropark. It blends many of the elements that they already have interest in when shopping at a retailer like Metropark. I could imagine other retailers doing something like this too.

I also imagine that this would pretty cool at a corporate office or not just out in the retail world. Imagine if you had your sales force across the country using a private version of twitter and where displaying those in an intriguing format like a video screen. Or, take it a step further and give the end user a touch screen app that allows them to dive deeper or set filters on the content. You could really bring together some disparate teams fairly easily with something like this.

Basically, I think it shows the next logical step in combining the different pop culture into a singular retail experience. I am not sure how useful it is in its current usage beyond being "cool". I would like to see it out in front of the store, give people something to look at, or maybe have the images project onto a globe shape, they could even be setup around the mall instead of just in the store itself. This would probably generate extra foot traffic and buzz.

IBM Acquires Lombardi

2009-12-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

IBM is getting into the NFL and buys Lambeau field? Oh, wait wrong Lombardi. Today, leading provider of business process management (BPM) software and services, Lombardi was acquired by IBM. Most likely this purchase revolves around IBMs need to provide smaller solutions for some customers. Currently, IBM already offers similar solutions but they are focused on a much larger scale.

Lombardi has been a supporter and "better with" story for IBMs WebSphere products for many years, so this isn't to far a stretch to see the connections here. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for us to integrations stories with the rest of the IBM stack.

Many IBM customers will already be familiar with Lombardi, and the wide gaps IBM has in their departmental business process automation.

Oracle Rides off Into the Sunset?

2009-12-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

So does Oracle finally get Sun Microsystems? It looks like it is finally going to happen. Taking a look at the concessions that Oracle gave makes me feel like the EU should of just let them do it before and not mess around all this time. Everything Oracle is giving up is insignificant when it comes to the big picture. Really, only time will tell what this all means, nobody really knows what Oracle's plan is with MySQL - so how can the concessions they made for it really be judged by anyone, even the EU.

It is getting rediculous, lets get on with it and see what happens.

Get more here

VHD Dual Boot Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008

2009-12-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

THE BOOT DUEL or DAS BOOTS

With the recent releases of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 there has been a lot of buzz around the boot to VHD feature. I personally am excited about this technology and am using it now and can't imagine going back to the old ways. It is kind of like wearing contact lenses for ten years and having to deal with the day to day routines of puttin them in and taking them out and cleaning them and buying new ones and new solution and dealing with dry or tired eyes. And then, one day you get lasik and all of that goes away and you can see better than before, and you say to yourself 'I can't imagine ever going back to contacts again.' The ability to be able to boot to VHD is like that.

I work extensively from my laptop and I am currently writing this post from my laptop. Right now my laptop does not have a native OS installed on it, I am running purely from VHDs - just one file represents my entire OS. I can now back up and restore my computer in a matter 2 or 3 steps. Also, backup is so much quicker than ever before. I currently have a dual boot setup, one OS is Windows 7 and the other Windows Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V. If you looked at my hard drive you would only see two files it is very very clean and it is much quicker and easier to manage.

Just think about the pain it takes now to reimage your machine and clean it up or swap out a hard drive, now you can just backup one file and be done with it.

Check out Stuart's post on how to make this work for you.

Top 5 Most Important SharePoint 2010 Features

2009-11-23T06:32:00.000-08:00

Sure, things like improved mobility, Silverlight and browser cross-functionality are pretty cool features in the latest version of SharePoint, but these are not enough to be differentiators. Over the next few months and years you will see plenty of SharePoint "most important" lists that tought the "best" and the "coolest" features of SharePoint 2010. But, up to this point I haven't seen many that are very relavent to reality and real life customer functionlity. Also, most of them include functionality that really doesn't make that much difference in the scheme of things. This list is based on what my customers have greatly needed or been asking for after integrating SharePoint 2007 to their environments. This list does not contain new features about the Client Side Object Model, or performance enhancements or the new F5 Debug\Deploy feature - this is not a list for developers and administors, this is a list for end-users. The items on this list are also answers to many of the pain points from an end-user perspective or even from the perspective of the IT Pro that has support the businesses constant request for solutions.

Mulit-Authoring Document Capabilities
Now more than one person at a time can author a document and see who and what else is being edited at the same time.
Two-Way Communication with LOB
The BDC is now the BCS and with a new name comes new functionality, and at the top of that list is the ability to puch and pull data from your lines of business systems.
Workflow Improvements
There are so many workflow improvements it would be difficult to contain them all here in a single blog entry. First of all, you can reuse SPD workflows and you can move them between SPD and Visual Studio. But now, you can use Visio to build and manage your workflows and even display visual representations of them in a SharePoint site.
Visio Services, Excel Services, Access Services, Project Services, etc...
What I call the "Services Family" has had huge improvements or in some cases actually exists now. The new functionality and integration of Visio by itself makes me forgive Microsoft for completely ignoring this product in the 2007 release. I can connect visuals in Visio directly to real time data in SharePoint. Wow! Imagine what you could do with that?
Social and Community Collaboration
Personally, I am not a big fan of the terms Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, but I am a big fan of the potential that web based applications like Twitter and Facebook have opened up for the enterprise. And, with SharePoint 2010 you will find it easy to adopt new functionality like Micro-blogging, adding things to your wall, tagging, rating and general collaboration. This latest version of SharePoint really brings the social community behind the firewall idea into the real world.

This ability to do real-time collaboration has unlimited potential and I can't wait to get more people on the same SP 2010 environment so I can see it in action with large groups of people.

Chrome OS - the Browser is the OS?

2009-11-19T13:07:00.000-08:00

Wondering about Chrome OS? Here is a quick list I found today on 5 reasons it is different. I am little curious how the Justice Department has found Microsoft guilty of some law becuase it had embedded IE in the OS and was forcing users to use IE, when Google is now taking it a step further in the same direction??? Hmmmm.... I don't get it.

1. The browser IS the OS: This is the fundamental tenant of Google Chrome OS. There is no installation of Firefox or IE – Chrome IS both the browser AND the OS.

2. It’s designed to fix itself: Chrome OS really focuses on security. Applications run on Chrome OS are placed in their own “security sandboxes,” which is designed to prevent malware and virus attempts. Another cool feature is that Chrome OS verifies the integrity of its code and, if it finds that it is compromised, reboots and fixes itself.

3. All apps are web apps, no installations: Speaking of apps, there will be no installation of apps. No Microsoft Office, Adobe AIR, TweetDeck, or Digsby. This also means no installations. Even Android apps won’t run on Chrome OS.

4. Chrome OS doesn’t support drivers and will not run on your laptop: The Google operating system won’t be running on your Dell or Macbook anytime soon – it only works with solid-state hard drives. It is meant for netbooks. Many hardware manufacturers are going to have to tweak their netbook designs to support Chrome OS. In the future though, Chrome OS could evolve to support drivers. Today, they said it will handle printing, for example, based on some “innovative technique.”

5. Super-fast startup speeds: Google cares deeply about speed, and Chrome OS is a shining example. They took out anything they deemed “unnecessary” to speed up the boot-up. You can be browsing the web “in seconds.” In fact, they’re so obsessed with it that they’re asking the hardware manufacturers to use specific metals that make Chrome OS faster.

Google Chrome OS Announcement

2009-11-19T10:39:00.001-08:00

The Google Chrome OS Announcement is going on right now, check it out on the EnGadget site. Lots of news and announcements around this release.

Check it out here right now

KEEPING UP WITH THE GOOGLE’S

2009-11-16T11:46:00.001-08:00

Google Targeting Microsoft
Ever since Google released Google Docs upon the masses, Google has insisted that they do not have designs on Microsoft's core PC software business (i.e. Windows and Office). According to Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division, "We wouldn't ask people [today] to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet." But once it is and Google's finishes with the 30+ features and performance updates it has planned for the office suite in the next year, the company will no doubt ask just that. So, you have to ask yourself where does Google really seeing themselves and Microsoft fitting in the big picture.

Chinks in the Google Armor
These days it seems like Google has its fingers in everything, but still they are quite on their global domination plans. As rumors come out this week that Chrome OS will be available as early as next week, and that Google Wave is not ready for prime time, and Bing slowly gains search market share, more and more people are talking about the dings appearing in the Google "Halo". Most recently was the vulnerabilities found in their Chrome browser. This time, Google is releasing a new silently distributed update that fixes a pair of security vulnerabilities that expose users to malicious hacker attacks.

Vulnerability #1: The user was not warned about certain possibly dangerous file types such as SVG, MHT and XML files. Because the JavaScript runs in the local context, it may be able to access local resources.
Vulnerability #2: A malicious site could use the Gears SQL API to put SQL metadata into a bad state, which could cause a subsequent memory corruption. This may lead to a Gears plugin crash or possibly arbitrary code execution

Google, the New Villain
The more that Google struggles with its Chrome browser and loses touches with some of its other products like Google Groups and YouTube, the more some are saying the good guys (Google) are becoming more and more like the villains (Microsoft). Is Google the new Villian? Check out some of the bullet points below from Erik Sherman over at BNET:

Google asks people to trust them without saying why.
Google's search engine market share is reaching Microsoftian proportions.
Google acts first and asks questions later, as with its troubled book scanning deal.
Google gives lip service to charges of monopoly, but makes no move to change, leading to increased government scrutiny.

As Google continues to battle with privacy concerns and being "creepy", Google is now dealing with concerns over its Google Privacy Dashboard and their company's Personal Health Record (PHR). The media focus here has been on what Google knows about you, and the oh noes that Google will use that data against you. But
with the Dashboard's access to Google Health, it occurs there might be another use for it.

"These are not the Droids you are looking for."
Some of this is unadroidable, sorry, bad pun to segue into the hot Droid topic. There are so many Android devices out there I can't even keep up with them. Even if I want a phone it seems like every major carrier has one or two or even three to choose from. The real story is wether or not the Droid mobile phones can but a dent into the iPhone market share.

I've haven't tested one of the phones yet, since I just got my new Windows Mobile phone, the HTC Imagio, which I love. But, I have heard lots of positive reviews and comments on the new Droid mobile phones and that they are filling many of the gaps left by the iPhone.

Verizon is marketing Droid squarely at potential iPhone customers by promoting its features that aren't available on the venerable Apple device.

Are Apple and AT&T worried? They officially say "No." but rumors of a $99 iPhone 3GS being available before Christmas tells me something different. Apple might also want to take note that the new Motorola DROID is the fastest selling Android phone to date, with 250,000 phones sold in the first week.

Meanwhile, in other Google mobile news, Google is set to pay $750 million to buy AdMob, a provider of advertising on mobile phones, the internet search leader announced Monday.

The deal is the third largest ever undertaken by Google and underscores the company's strategy of extending its online advertising dominance to the mobile web, where its Android smartphone operating system is becoming increasingly popular. Google said it expected antitrust regulatory review in the U.S. but not in Europe.

Google Spends $780 Million Acquires Ad Mob
AdMob has a system that serves display ads on mobile phones and its purchase could give the still nascent market a powerful boost, analysts said.

"Google could have built this itself, but this gives them a head start," says mobile analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. "It will thrust Google into the forefront of mobile display ads."

"AdMob is a great Silicon Valley story," said Google in a blog posting to announce the deal. "We are looking forward to having them join the Google team and work with us on the future of mobile advertising."

Microsoft Puts the Social in MSN
Last month the Microsoft and Google relationships\integration with Twitter and Facebook where in the news, the key being that Microsoft is actually delivering integration today and that Google is saying sometime in the future. Microsoft is making another foray into the Social world with a re-launch of their MSN site. The new version will be more in line with expectations consumers have grown used to in recent months\years, particularly around ability to share and interact with content. Check out the preview here.

[Microsoft's Bing + x(Wolfram|Alpha)] Google? | Epicenter | Wired.com

2009-11-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

I wrote about Wolfram Alpha many moons ago and I wondered what the launch of this website would mean to other search engines, especially since Bing was on the horizon. Well now Bing has launched and continues to steal market share and Wolfram Alpha really hasn't done or changed to much - in fact I rarely visit it except to see if it is still there.

Well now Microsoft is integrating Bing with it, may be interesting or it may end up just being a really geeky move that only cyber nerds care about.

Read more here - [Microsoft's Bing + x(WolframAlpha)] Google? Epicenter Wired.com

GOOGLE IS EVERYWHERE…

2009-11-12T20:36:00.001-08:00

Google now has more than 2 million customers for its Google Apps platform and has recently launched a rare mass-market advertising campaign to lure more customers away from big companies like Microsoft and IBM.

Microsoft doesn't believe Google Apps numbers

Google's marketing campaign, which it first rolled out in the United States in August, will feature ads in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes and The Economist, as well as on billboards at airports and train stations in various cities.

Google said Apps is used by 2 million businesses, up from 1.75 million in June. Those include both larger businesses that pay $50 a year per user for Apps, as well as firms with fewer than 50 employees that get the software for free. Google will not specify what percentage of the 2 million is actually paying for the service so it is difficult to access this number in a realistic manor.

The company also said there are now 20 million active users of Google Apps, up from 15 million in June, although that number included students who use the free version Google provides to universities. Again, Google opting to not break down the percentages, which tells me that there is a lot of fluff in those numbers.

Microsoft Partners with Twitter… and then so does Google

Real Time Search – Facebook – Twitter

If you search around on the Bing site you might stumble across this page http://www.bing.com/twitter that shows off real time search results of Twitter and its most popular topics. Recently Microsoft announced its partnership with Twitter at the Web 2.0 global summit; and not to be left out of the mix, Google had an announcement of its own with Twitter, also announcing a partnership. There have also been a lot of rumors and only vague denials from Google about Google possibly buying Twitter out right in the near future.

Google has "reached an agreement," but the search results have not gone live like Microsoft's have on Bing. Reports started to surface earlier this month that Twitter was in separate talks with both Google and Microsoft--which also has a deal with Facebook that will be launching down the road.

A post on the official Google blog by Vice President of Search Marissa Mayer explained that: "We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months," the post read. "That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Business Group at Microsoft Corp, said "You have to do more visual things, you have to do more sophisticated things, and you have to have better access to data."

Are we Experiencing Communication Clutter?

Kosmix – Tech Chuck – Search\Tweet Mashups

Is Googleso focused on their other applications that they are losing sight of their "bread and butter" application? This funny but true blog post "Google – It's Not Me, It's You" sums it up in a very non-technical way. While being funny, this article still sheds some light on the consumer's real life perspective and also introduces many users to little known search alternatives that are much more user friendly engines like Kosmix. Another site that does a good job at this is techchuck.

Microsoft also has a little known page that shows real time tweets on the subject of Windows 7, to bad I can't use it for other subjects and it kind of reminds me of something I saw in the Digg labs once. While this social site from Microsoft i a cool idea, they need to integrate it with Bing, dig and other relevant – related content and then I will get excited.

You Won't See This on Bing

Google Ads – Apple Advertisements – Windows 7 upgrade

Filed under the category you won't see this on Bing, I did a search for Windows 7 Upgrade and I was treated to a link to Apple's site, encouraging me to make the ultimate upgrade and switch to Mac. With a little bit of research I found articles like this "Apple Pays Google for Windows 7 Hits."

Big Blue Takes on the Cloud

iNotes – Google Apps

Big Blue is announced the general availability of LotusLive iNotes, their cloud email, calendar and contact management service, for $36 a year per user. Google Apps Premier runs $50 per user a year. This is a clear sign that IBM is serious about competing against Google and its Apps suite. To further drive the point home, Sean Poulley, vice president of IBM's online collaboration and cloud services, says the idea behind LotusLive iNotes is to bring more security, reliability and privacy to enterprises that want Webmail. "These things matter a lot to the customer," says Poulley, who described Google's Gmail as a "consumer grade service."

"We're bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition."

Many insiders agree that this new browser war with cloud computing will be won by the company that has the most aggressive pricing or even possibly by the one that offers theirs for free.

Also, of note – Microsoft recently reduced its license for its hosted online services Microsoft chops prices of its hosted enterprise cloud offerings

Drunk Pilot Again...

2009-11-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

Glad I am not flying United Airlines tomorrow on my way back home to Dallas, they just pulled a pilot out of the cockpit for being drunk.
Get more here - http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/10/crimesider/entry5604448.shtml

The EU Says NO to Oracle Sun Deal

2009-11-10T07:07:00.001-08:00

Most people I have talked to this year about Oracle trying to acquire Sun believed that it would happen and also thought it would be approved. So, the EU ruling against the acquisition yesterday will be a surprise to a lot of people. Go here for the official Reuters story.

But, many industry insiders still believe it will happen, it will just be a matter of time and resources for Oracle to make it happen. Nobody thinks Oracle will give up easily, they are prepared for a fight with the muscles in Brussels (the regulators, not JCVD.)

“The Commission's Statement of Objections”, Oracle wrote in a statement, “reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source.”

Concerns of Oracle basically owning Java, MySQL and Solaris have been an issue and some consider this to a monopolistic move on their part. This move would also give them a desktop productivity suite as well get them into the hardware business. This would certainly raise their threat level for companies like Microsoft, IBM, HP and even Dell.

Also, the fact that the commission has issued a statement of objections does not mean that this is the final word to block the deal. Oracle may agree to spin off MySQL after all—the remedy most likely to satisfy the commission in this case—to resolve the problem speedily. As long as Sun remains in limbo, it is losing potential business and Sun's debt continues to grow. Last week Sun reported that revenues in the quarter ending in September fell by 25%. And if the case drags on for too long, Sun may sink behind the horizon for good, then maybe I can afford to buy it myself.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a little history…
Oracle entered into a definitive agreement to purchase struggling Sun Microsystems. Under the terms of the acquisition Oracle will pay US$7.4 billion for Sun or $9.50 per share in cash. That amount includes $5.6 billion of Sun’s cash and debt.

Oracle has high hopes for Sun and for what the company can bring to Oracle’s bottom line. Oracle estimated that Sun will contribute US$1.5 billion to Oracle’s operating profit in the first year raising to US$2 billion in the second. Oracle has been a large consumer of one of Sun’s most popular software products called Java. In fact, Oracle Fusion Middleware is built on Java and is Oracle’s fastest growing business.

Bribery? http://www.geek.com/articles/news/post-oracle-sun-microsystems-admits-to-possible-acts-of-bribery-20090511/

Flying to Redmond

2009-11-03T07:04:00.001-08:00

As I sit on the plane surfing the Internet on my way to Redmond I can't help but be distracted by new tech and what better new tech to get excited about than the Microsoft Courier. This new tablet notebook with two screens looks exactly like what I need to make my life easier and maybe just a little bit cooler.

This new tablet PC is certainly making the rumored Apple Tablet (think an oversized iPhone) look archaic before it has even officially been announced. The courier boasts two screens that open and close like a book - and it actually looks like a book.

The Courier is touch screen, you can use a stylus or your fingers to control it. No official specs have been leaked, but this thing has a built in camera, Wifi and a nice graphics engine as well a descent hard drive for storing all those notes ad images.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it does video, but it certainly takes pictures. It also looks like it is a breeze to share and organiz those images.

So far a release date has not been given, I would love to see this before Christmas, because I want one now. Good job Microsoft.

Checkout this video to see it in action here.

SharePoint Conference 2009

2009-10-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

I just arrived in the beautiful Las Vegas for the 2009 SharePoint Conference. Getting sorted out in my hotel room, getting some last minute work done and getting ready to head over to registration.

This years conference should be a blast - follow it on Twitter with the hashtag #SPC09 that is by far the best way to get the latest and greatest from the sessions and the show floor. Right now there are more than one update every minute so I am sure it is gonna get quite noisey real quick starting tonight.

There are an unprecendented 7,500 attendees registered and many many more that aren't registered attending the event this year - it should be something special. Expect to hear lots about SharPoint 2010, Office 2010, Office Web Apps and BPOS.

I'll be bringing updates from the conference all week as well updating Twitter with posts and pictures as well.

Gartner Report puts Microsoft in the Top Right Corner

2009-10-08T14:59:00.001-07:00

The new Gartner report Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology released last month (September 2009) places Microsoft closer to the "top right corner" than its many competitors.

This new report is analyzing vendors with capabilities that go beyond enterprise search to encompass a range of technologies. Capabilities that include: search; federated search, content analytics, such as content classification, etc... and many more enterprise level capabilities.

Gartner definitely got it right on this one, they call out IBM’s biggest weaknesses pretty clearly, namely their wide array of confusing products and the bloat that makes it hard to justify their value, as well as the lack of a clear direction or commitment to a particular product line. A lot of users have complained that they are afraid to pick a product with IBM because it could orphaned without warning. Interesting part is that Oracle has the same issue, but it is not call out here.

Microsoft may be leader, but they are not that far ahead of the pack, they definitely need to focus on getting FAST integrated and making it an easy selling point. Way too often Microsoft has superior technology but doesn't seem to know how to sell the value of it to their customers or even their own team members.

Google definitely has let the search market slip lately, resting on their laurels maybe, and many people wonder if their success was only a fluke and that now they will get passed up for good. Google is not really painting a clear picture of their roadmap for the future, on one hand it seems like they are vying for the enterprise when the buy other companies like Postini, but on the other hand they are not clearly saying what they are planning to do. They certainly have a lot of plans in the pipeline with Wave and Chrome OS and all. If they can keep it simple and tie it all together neatly, they could really take the lead.

Get the report at www.gartner.com

An Easy Way to Explain ECM

2009-09-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

Have you ever struggled with explaining what Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is? Well, struggle no more, here is a very simple way to compare to something everyone can related to... laundry.

Check out this 60 second video by Mike Discenzo and Mike Layton here

The Day The Earth Stood Still

2009-09-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

The Day the Earth Stood Still or “The First Day of Our Last Days”

September 30th, 2009 will certainly go down in history as the day that the world changed, the day it all started to make sense in the Orwellian sense of things. This is the day that SkyNet went online, the day that the Matrix became reality, the day the robots took over, this day is a game changer. 093009 will forever be associated with the day that Google Wave was unleashed upon the masses. 100,000 invites go out as I write this, and those 100,000 will be able to invite 8 of their friends to join in the massive wave that is sweeping our world. By this time tomorrow, barring any technical issues, there will be almost 1 million people on Google Wave for the first time – and it isn’t even ready for mass consumption according to Google. This is a small test, nothing too big for them to handle.

Google Wave is a new product from Google, that Google claims “rethinks how we communicate and collaborate using the internet.” It is a collaboration tool primarily targeted at online users (for now) using of the most popular browsers. Think Facebook but with the ability to collaborate and be productive not just send Mafia War invites to everyone you know.

Over the last year or so Google has released so many products that most people don’t even know what is out there and I am not going to name them all here – there are a lot of them. But, the most noteworthy ones are Google Sites, Google Docs and Google Apps, which by themselves all have powerful applications and stories behind them. Now add Google Wave into the mix, these “apps” now have a platform that brings them all together.

Google seems to be building something massive but they are not telling us what it is, they are just sucking us all in one free must have app at a time. Google claims to be focused on the online consumers, but are they really positioning themselves for the massive small business market and maybe even the Enterprises – get everyone on that ‘cloud’ bandwagon while it is still hot. Maybe?

Now add a new Google Sites API to the mix that has hooks into SharePoint and Lotus and we are now looking at an OBA like solution – I guess you would call it GABA. It’s not even Google that has to think of and develop new applications; its partners are now building “enterprise” like applications like LTech’s SharePoint migration utility (SharePoint Move) that migrates SharePoint to Google Sites or another partner that has built a tool that allows you to edit Google Sites offline much like SharePoint Workplaces and Outlook, once something that only Enterprise users could do.

Is Google breaking down the walls between what the smaller consumer has access to and functionality that was once the domain of big corporations?

A few months ago Google released Google App Sync that allows users to get their Outlook data through their Google interface. Also, a few months ago Google Voice was also released – this has the potential to compete with communication applications from Cisco and Microsoft. Have these been positioned strategically by Google to fit right in with their master Wave plan?

Should I take this new application from Google seriously? Should Facebook and Twitter worry about it? Should IBM and Microsoft worry about it? Ummm… in a word “Yes”, Google Wave is not a public release yet, but we must remember that Gmail was in Beta for years and it still has taken the online email market by storm. In fact starting tomorrow, Google Wave is following the same paradigm as Gmail did, start with a small group (100,000) users and give them 8 invites for their friends so this small group quickly becomes a big group and has the added cache of being invite only – that is what drew me to Gmail, I used to sell my invites for up to $100 back in the day. Maybe I can make a few bucks again with Google Wave.

We haven’t seen a big battle for consumers like this in a long time. We are getting closer and closer to a browser war again, but with a lot more at stake this time, much more than just the browser. Next year Google releases their OS, there is something big coming and this is the beginning.

Oh yeah this blog is being written on Blogger - another product Google now owns.

Google Introduces SharePoint API

2009-09-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

This Thursday Google will inroduce a new Google Sites API that will, among other things, allow you to migrate your SharePoint and Lotus Notes to Google Sites. One Google partner, LTech, has already developed a tool to allow you to migrate data and content from SharePoint to Google.

Althought it isn't exactly clear what this migrated SharePoin content and data looks like after it is moved to Google Sites it certainly means Google is interested in the collaboration and portal spaces.

So far Google has not directly answered the question of wether it is targeting SharePoint or other large collaboration toolsets.

Other Google partners are working on SharePoint related applications like one company who is using Google Sites to edit your SharePoint content offline. Other approaches include using Google as the interface for other features and applications.

Google is here, Google is everywhere, but, the still seem to maintain the small company halo.

Are You Putting Off Picking a Portal Platform?

2009-09-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

So its time to make a decision on upgrading your old portal, and you've got some tough decisions to make. Should I upgrade to the latest version of the current platform? Should I consolidate existing platforms? Should I go with IBM, Oracle or Microsoft? Should I look at Cloud Computing? Is collaboration the way to go? And, is there any value to this Social Computing stuff?

These are just a few of the questions that you've got ahead of you when it comes to upgrading your portal, and if you are just getting into it now you have a lot catching up to do. But, its better to get started now instead of putting it off any longer. To many times I talk to IT folks and they say they don't have time to decide now or that it is not a priority or there just isn't a compelling reason to upgrade they old portal because their team members don't really use it that much anyway. I have even heard that its to difficult to pick a vendor or a path right now because there are to many choices or that they are waiting for a clear leader or standard to emerge. Before you put it off to long you should think about a few things.

What if the choices don't get any clearer in the next few years? What if your best employees start to abandon ship to go work at place using newer more compelling technology? What if they go work for your competitors? What if your competitors are upgrading and taking of advantage of new technology now and they are leveraging it against you? What will your customers think when you don't offer new standard Web 2.0 tools as part of their customer experience with you? What will your employees think? What will your business partners think?

There are certainly a lot of questions to think about when making a portal decision or a platform change, but there are lot more important questions to ask if you are planning on waiting. It isn't gone get easier and all the big vendors are battling each other and slashing prices to win right now.

Putting off a decision may work for your company if it is one of those that tends to take IT changes and upgrades slowly anyway, but it may be time to affect that standard now that the marketplace and technology has changed so significantly in the last two years. Your choices three years ago could look more obselete than you ever imagined, IT strategy use to hold up for 5 to 10 years or even longer, but, not anymore. Or atleast, not right now.

To Blog or Not to Blog OR Drive Traffic With a Blog

2009-09-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

I work with a number of different customers in many environments, mostly internal Enterprise portal solutions and they all have different views on Blogs. Some of them struggle with internal policies forbidding Blogs, some struggle with getting people to update them, some struggle with how to manage them and how to make them effective. At some point at every customer the Blog discussion happens and I tend to hear the same concerns and very similar scenarios. One one hand this can be frustrating but on the other hand this can actually be good, since Blogs can easily become a "quick win" for a project. One of the other things I hear quite a bit is that sites they have setup are dead and that nobody goes to them, even project sites where work should be getting done. I have some practices I follow when it comes to Blogs that I share with my customers and my favorite one also helps drive traffic as well get more interaction on your site. Most articles I see focus on the individuals blog, for this article we will talk about the TEAM BLOG and we will focus on the Enterprise.

A Blog is primarily a "one to many" solution that allows a user to easily publish a point of view, some information or generate some conversation on a topic with the comments feature. The first mistake most people make when it comes to the blog is that they create it without a true purpose or focus. I have never come across a legitimate reason to create a blog that is just for general conversations - it needs to be focused. People need direction, they need to know what to expect, what use it for and what they should be getting out of it.
The second mistake users make is that they do not update it enough, people are not going to follow the blog if you are not updating it. A lot of people I talk to tell me "I don't have time to blog" or "I don't know what to blog about." I ask you then, "Why do you have a blog?" Every blog post does not need to be a disertation on hunger in third world countries, keep it simple, don't over think it. It is ok to have shorter blogs, think about things you can blog about quickly like links to other blogs or information, short conversation starters, blog about something relevant you heard on the radio on the way into work. Basically, if you have thoughts or hallway conversations you can think of something relevant to blog about.
The third thing I see quite a bit is not featuring the blog, so many customers hide their blogs and it takes to may clicks to get to it or nobody can find it.

Here are some suggestions on making that Team Blog get more traction, drive eyeballs and traffic to your sites. I will use a project I am working on as an example. (My team is working on a project to review the new features and possibilities with the new SharePoint 2010 platform. We have about 8 people that are participating in the project and we are mostly in different locations. We are also using SharePoint 2007 for our blog.)

1. Define a clear purpose for the Blog. Our blog was built so that our team could post information, links and news items that would be interesting to the team or may have some impact to discovering information about the new SharePoint platform. The direction I gave the team was that if you have something to share do not use e-mail, put it in this blog.

2. Update it on a reguar basis. This is true of individual blogs and still true when a group of people are contributing too. I check it on a regular basis and sometimes I had things to keep it relevant and fresh. Another trick I use is to e-mail enable the blog, the easier it is for people to contribute the more they will contribute. My team uses E-Mail or Word as ways to submit to the blog without having to navigate to it and get logged in and all that. "Make it easy, it should not be an extra step or another tool you have to use, it should be an extension of what you already do."

3. Feature the Blog. Do not bury it on your site, make it the site. Most sites that you visit on the web today are Blog sites, wether you know it or not. Blogs are intended to be social and they promote collaboration so use them for their strengths. Typically, when teams create a project site in SharePoint they create a Team Site, with its default Announcements, Calendar, Tasks and Document Library - I don't do that. I create a Blog site and I add the features I will use to the main page of the blog, so when users come to the site they see the latest and greatest activity. A typical site for me is a Blog with the right column of the main page holding some micro blogging web part for status, a doc lib web part and some peoject status indicators and sometimes even a calendar.

Once you start getting people to our Team Blog you will notice that all of the sudden other benefits like collaboration and social computing will rear their heads and you will now be working as a team and you will see much higher quality interaction than before.

If you need some stats to help convince the powers that be that Blogs drive traffic check out this site, they are sayig their numbers indicate that blogs drive 55% more traffic than sites without blogs. Check it out here.

Bamboo Nation Web Parts SharePoint Sunday Sunday Sunday!!!

2009-08-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

Good quality and generally funny SharePoint videos are hard to come by. Here is one straight from Bamboo - Check out the video here.

If you are not familiar with Bamboo Solutions, they are the leading provider of technologies that augment the Microsoft SharePoint platform.. If you need more info go here and if you are interested in buying something let me know and I can get you a discounted price.

FYI Disclaimer - I do not work for Bamboo Solutions, but I do work for a compay that uses their products and is a partner of Bamboo.

18 Cool Things Windows 7 Does That Vista Doesn't

2009-08-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

18 Cool Things Windows 7 Does That Vista Doesn't (Tech Radar)
From Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista, the Windows operating system has taken many giant leaps. And while Vista received a lukewarm reception from some users, Windows 7 is likely to be remembered for addressing those criticisms. In fact, there aren't many changes to the overall look of Windows 7 when compared to Windows Vista. Instead, Microsoft seems to have paid attention to the feedback it received and created an OS that is not only stable, but also very capable.

I have been using Windows 7 as my primary OS for a couple of months now, here are some of my favorite updates:

Taskbar Preview - with the new preview system the task bar is cleaner and more manageable, plus you also get some great controls over the windows in the actual previews without having to maximize the window.

XP Mode - This feature is advertised as a way to run applications that are not compatible with Windows 7 or Vista, but MS has created its own reasons for needing this. Sure I could use Virtual PC when I was running Vista, but this is so much easier and adds some cool integration features to the desktop, like being able to install a program in XP Mode and access that program directly from your Windows 7 desktop. Ironically this was a life saver for me in an unintended way, I needed this feature the other day because I have the Office 2010 Technical Preview on my machine and I was having some issues with Word. Unfortunately, you can't have more than one version of Office installed at a time and I didn't want to loose the new uber cool Outlook 2010 (it has an ignore button... but more on that later) so I am now running a 2007 version of Word in XP Mode, works like a charm.

Notification Bar - This usually over cluttered bar that houses the all important clock (now with date showing) can be customized very easily and its new layout puts all of those annoying application icons into one pop up window now. Peek at desktop is cool but I don't know why I need it. This little button allows me to peekthrough all of my open windows so I can see my desktop.

Sticky Notes - I know I can use other programs to do the same thing, but Sticky Notes is to One Note like Notepad is to Word. What I really like about it is I have do something with my notes before I shut down and go home or to the next meeting. It doesn't save your notes, that is brilliant, it forces you to take action and reconcile whatever you wrote down.

Networking - I move around and connect to many locations and while Vista was pretty good at handling connections and organizing them Windows 7 takes it to a whole new level. Now when I go to a specific clients site it will recognize the network and change my default printer as well as some other cool features - this saves me headaches. I look forward to exploring this feature more to see what else it does.

More here

Back from the Dead and nothing is happenning... or defining Enterprise 2.0

2009-08-24T08:51:00.001-07:00

Just got back from a nice long vacation in Mexico and am getting caught up on all things work related and especially all things SharePoint. After the previous months flurry of SharePoint 2010 overload (Groove is now Workspace, SharePoint 2010 works in Firefox, etc...), it doesn't look like a lot has happenned in the last week or so, which is to be expected after a big major announcement (i.e. 2010 SharePoint and all that is related) and I for one am certainly glad about that - a lot less to catch up on.

One thing I certainly did on my nice relaxing vacation on the beach was get caught up on articles and books I was neglecting over the last six months and I cam across one from AIIM that I liked. Now I must say, as of yet I am not a huge fan of AIIM yet and I think there is definitely a strong role for that group to play in our world of information management in the future. These guys may set the boring standards that dictate the future but they still put out some interesting and sometimes well informed information like an article about defining the meaning of Enterprise 2.0, again some of the information in this article is questionable but most of it "hits the nail on the head."

Enterprise 2.0 Definition:
"A system of Web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence, and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise."

I particularly like the definition of Enterprise 2.0, but I haven't accepted it 100% yet. Check out the full paper here.

How Much Does My Data Weigh?

2009-08-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Wow! One of my coworkers showed me this thread on a legitimate Microsoft forum this morning and I had to post a link to here. The theory being discussed is basically as a HDD stores more data it becomes heavier and thus more difficult to manage physically. It is a little difficult to take the discussion seriously from the very outset, especially since the person posting it goes by the name McLovin. Ignoring all of that, the post seems pretty sincere. Reponses to these types of things usually devolve quickly into flame wars, but, this one has some pretty entertaining if not completely unthought provoking responses.

Read it, for some light humor in the middle of your day or send it to your friends and tell them that you believe it. I wish I had found the post earlie before it was closed so I could of put some reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the weight of swallows.

Check out the forum here

SharePoint 2010

2009-08-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has really hit the nail on the head with the new version of SharePoint 2010, I can't wait for this to get to General Release - so far the hands on demo is awesome.

Between, SharePoint, Windows 7 and Bing, Microsoft may have hit the multi billion dollar trifecta.

back to the hands on...

SharePoint Has Caught the Competitors Napping

2009-08-10T10:21:00.001-07:00

I ran across this new article on SharePoint and the success that Microsoft has seen with it over the last year or so. I personally am very excited to see how SharePoint 2010 will take the market to the next level, most companies are just catching up to the 2007 release now and most are not covering as broad a product offering as SharePoint. I am also concerned from a partner perspective how confusing it may get for customers with Microsofts renewed direction on using MCS and moving customers to they cloud. Overall, I think with the slick new Windows 7 operating system and the innovative new SharePoint 2010, Microsoft is poised to dominate the orld... again.

“SharePoint is saving Microsoft’s Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in,” said Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco, which makes an open-source content management system. “It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping.”

Check out the rest of this article here

Sorry but the Magic is Gone - Part I of "Making Good Decisions"

2009-08-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

"A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do." - Niklau Wirth

In the currently hyper-active world of ECM, WCM, SaaS, Portal, Web 2.0, Social Networking, etc... it is a daunting task to try and stay on top of it all. Over the years the number of contenders in these markets have fluxuated greatly, one year there seem to be a ton of them and the next year there seem to be hardly any. Most customers barely have time to do keep on top of what they are doing at work day to day, let alone keep up with all the changes going on in the rest of the world. So many customers rely on analysts reports like what Gartner and Forrester provide.
One of the more infamous reports is the Magic Quadrant, a slick, simple graphic that shows "exactly" where a particular product compares with other like products in terms of ability to execute and completeness of vision as well as some other criteria. For years, this "magic quadrant" has been looked at by many IT and Business leaders as a definitive collective source of intelligence upon which they will make some critical decisions that could alter the course of their business for the better or the worse. Also, vendors that have products on these lists have realized the importance of what it means to rank higher on this list, it can literally make or break a company, depending on how they are rated by Gartner analysts.

More and more real-debate as occurred on the absolute validity of these reports and on what they are actually rating. For instance, a debate I hear often is wether or not your placement on this report shows were a product\company is heading or where it has been. When a report comes out in October 2009, can I really tell if this company is on on its way up, holding static or even on its way down? Can I tell that this is a reliable product? Can I tell if they are new to this market? Now to be fair there is quite a bit of detailed information in these reports for you to help you come to a conclusion, but how much value should you put into this one single report. Any research that is good research should be done based on multiple resources, based on different types of research and in relation to a span of time, not just "what is hot right now." So, talk to some people actualy executing in the industry or who executed, look at case studies and understand the vision and long term strategy of the products you are researching.

Another item that these reports and other reports seem to miss on is the product lifecycle. Basically, at what point are we at now, when the report is being compiled, in each of the showcased products development\release life cycles? Is there another version that is a few months or a year out? Will this new version potentially make or break the products placement on the report. For example, last year (October 2008) when Gartner released the reports for Horizontal Portals it showed Microsoft and IBM firmly as the leaders in execution and other products like Jive as visionaries, but not as likely to execute. Then right aftewards they released another report on community platforms (social networking capabilities) and it showed Jive at the top as a leader for their strategy and their current offering. What do these reports tell me? Well that depends who I am and what I know and how I interpret them. To me, I immediatley think this "What good to me is having "the best" community platform out there if that same product can't execute on its unerlying portal infrastructure?"

If I wanted to present a case to my customers to use Jive I would show them the reports and say "Jive is on the bleeding edge and is doing something nobody else is doing and thus if we adopt this product we to will have an edge over our competition." But, if I wanted to make a case against Jive I could do that with the same reports. I could say "Jive is on top now, but where they last year and the year before, they don't have a stable track record. Watch out for bleeding edge because it is to risky."

What I am saying is, be careful of putting all your eggs in one basket and do your own research.

Think About This
If an executive pays tens of thousands of dollars to a analyst group each year, how likely are they going to argue or really test the results this group is providing? If I have to justify money I am spending on this resource, but I argue against its validity, I am probably not going to get approval in the future for spending the money on this resource again.

Many people join these analytical groups for very different reasons, I see so many people that are subsribers to these groups so that it makes them fee informed or look smart. But, in reality they don't participate at a high enough level to really get any value out of it. It is like buyig a gym membership and only going to the gym every few weeks or months. I have the membership so psychologically it makes me feel good and I can tell me friends I am going to the gym.

Also, watch out for people that just participate so they can argue with the analysts. There are people that like to challenge the intelligence of others that are labeled as official "smart people", this helps satiate some inner desire to feel smarter. This is usually the same people that explain away failed past projects as the fault of other "less intelligent" people not listening to them.

Thats it for now - Part II coming soon

Cause and Effect Lists in SharePoint updated

2009-08-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

I upated my post on Lists "Cause and Effect"

I added two more items about look up fields in a SharePoint lists.

Internet Addiction in China - Shock Treatment

2009-08-02T21:51:00.000-07:00

I was driving home tonight listening to NPR and I heard another bizzare news story out of China. There are institutions that are using shock treatment as well as other "mental health" type treatments on teens in China who are supposedly "addicted" to the Internetz. I did some more research when I got home and also saw other countries (Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea) have started cracking down on "internet addicts" as well, but China is by far the most extreme. It is a well known fact that the Chinese government often limits and even blocks their people from the Internet as well as other common technologies, but this is, as President Obama would say, "stupid." The thing that amazed me the most is that not only the government is supporting this ideaology, but that families are making their own choices to send their children to these clinics that are run by psychologists and the military.
Internet addiction is defined as someone who uses the computer online for more than 6 hours a day for more than three months. If that is the standard, then the youth (and adults) of America, and the rest of the world, need start to committin themselves ASAP. While I agree that some of these kids probably should get a "real" life and stop playing WOW ot tweeting all day and night, I really don't think it is any different than say text messaging incessently or even, like in the olden days, talking on the phone. It is hard for me to believe that any reasonable person could serously treat someone like a drug addict or a mental patient just because they are on the Internet to much. A government, or your own family, supporting their children to be given shock treatment and even prescribed anti-depressant drugs is rediculous.
Everytime, I hear stories about the Internet being blocked in China I just think about how my parents would tell me growing up that I can't play with certain friends. The more they said "No", the more I wanted to do it and the more I found ways to sneak out at night and "get in trouble." I have to imagine that these kids, and adults, got be trying everyway they can to get on the Internet. Kind of like Online gambling here in the states, it is illegal, but there are still 9 million people doing it.

The next news story I heard was about the plague taking another victim in China it just had me shaking my head at how far backwards this country seems to be going. Now, the plague is a real issue, starvation is a real issue, lets focus on those and quit shocking kids heads with electrodes for socializing virtually and trying to escape from a world that wants to hurt them.

FREE SharePoint 2007 eBook - Design and Build SharePoint 2007 Sites

2009-07-30T09:33:00.001-07:00

This eBook provides prescriptive guidance that can help you build custom enterprise sites by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 — such as company-wide portal sites or Internet presence sites. Custom sites based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 combine coded elements, such as workflows, document converters, and Web Parts, along with content, such as master pages, layout pages, graphics files, and Web pages. Best practices for developing these sites include setting up multiple environments for developing, integrating, piloting, and deploying coded elements and content from one environment to another.

Get the book here

FREE SharePoint Archiving Tool for SharePoint

2009-07-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

Now that you have had lots of success at getting people to use your SharePoint sites, there is now a lot of content that needs to be protected and maybe even archived to help speed up using the sites. Today Metalogix a known leader in the industry releases a free archiving product for SharePoint, I look forward to checking it out for myself and providing a review later, but for now you can check out Archiving Express for SharePoint here

#spsdallas SharePoint Dallas Presentation Delivered

2009-07-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

Just finished wrapping up my presentation Social Thinking "Thinking Outside the Inbox" at SharePoint Dallas. I really enjoyed meeting some new faces and seeing some old faces as well.

Thanks for being agreat audience. Let me know if you want me to follow up on anything.

Have a nice hot day. Getting ready to grill bacon wrapped hot dogs and sausages.

About Me

2009-07-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

This blog is primarily focused on the things that interest me related to my day to day job of being a consultant for a Microsoft Partner and working with SharePoint. And, since Social Networking is such a big deal right now and looks to continue to be a big deal for the foreseeable future you will see lots of posts about that as well. One day I will lose interest in Social Networking or it will lose interest in me and I will start blogging about something else.

What do I do?
I am an Information Architect and a Business Analyst focused on the world of SharePoint. I work as a consultant for RBA Consulting in Dallas, Texas. I love what I do. I get meet and work with a ton of smart people that really keep me on my toes. I get to see the inner workings of many of the top Fortune 500 companies. I present at conferences whenever I can and I want to do that more and more as much as I can. I practice what I preach... most of the time.

Why not a video blog or podcasts?
One reason I started this blog was to help me get more hours honing my writing skills, podcast doesn't really help with that. Also, I'd rather be able to easily search the text here within this blog to find something from three months ago than have to try and remember what Podcast and where in the Podcast I talked about something. And, if I can't find it, you can't either... well easily anyway.

What do I believe?
I believe you don't have to accept every poor schmo's invite to be in their network or to be their friend. Facebook - I believe Facebook is for my friends, some I work with and most I don't and never will. I have turned down almost 40% of the friend requests I have received, if I haven't hung out with you and had a drink with you, you are probably not my friend. LinkedIn - I will accept just about anyone that I have worked with, unless you are a complete moron or have a bad reputation, I don't need you getting me dirty too. I see the vallue in getting recommendations from peers that are respectable and actually have some relevant to say. I don't believe in getting a recommendation from everyone on your contact list or soliciting recommendations and even providing the text to put in it.

Why 'Words of Mass Destruction'?
Because it sounds cool and I can put some sort of made up meaning behind it that sounds deep and thoughtful like I have some sort of insight into a world you are longing to be a part of and can't figure out which to use and which door to choose.

"So long and thanks for all the fish." -DA

Facebook Stats

2009-07-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

It's a funny thing "facts" on the internet, that aren't always real or true, but here are some you can trust.

Facebook's latest usage statistics
- Facebook now has more than 63 million active users.
- Facebook has seen an average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007, with an average of 3% weekly growth since Jan. 2007.
- Facebook active users are doubling every 6 months
- Facebook gets more than 65 billion page views per month and more than half of active users return daily
- According to comScore people spend an average of 20 minutes on Facebook every day(comScore)

Facebook latest country statistics
- Facebook is the sixth-most trafficked site in the United States (comScore)
- Canada has the most Facebook users outside of the United States, with more than 7 million active users
- The U.K. is Facebook's third largest country with more than 7 million active users
- Remaining top 10 countries in order of active Facebook users (outside of the U.S., Canada and UK): Australia, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, France, Hong Kong
Facebook latest applications statistics
- Facebook is now the number one photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)
- Facebooks photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined (comScore)
- More than 14 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day
- More than 6 million active user groups
- Over 12,000 Facebook applications have been built on Facebook Platform
- 140 new Facebook applications are added per day- More than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform

SharePoint Saturday Dallas #spsdallas

2009-07-22T06:11:00.001-07:00

Got up early to brush up on my presentation "Social Thinking (Outside the Firewall)" for SharePoint Saturday this weekend, and I was just thinking about how over used the term social networking has become, I almost dread hearing it now. It is used in so many different contexts now sometimes I don't even know what is the right context.

I also found it interesting that China and India have the most Facebook accounts, but haven't figured out the percentage of the population yet. Well as of a few days ago nobody in China is on Facebook now, ha... I mean how sad. Approximately 30% of Americans are on Facebook or some form of Social site, seems like a lot until you compare that to the 70% of Australians that are on some sort of site, they really push it bigtime even at the governement level in that country.

Also, recently I have found myself getting annoyed when people aren't on the same social sites I am on and especially not on any at all. Well anyway, off to work.

The description of my presentation:

This presentation is designed to help the end consumer to leverage and think of new ideas around how to capitalize on the Social Networking craze using current technology (i.e. SharePoint). Focuses are on understanding the what and why, how to leverage predictable human work habits to get actual buy in and usage of SharePoint, and "Thinking Outside the In-Box".

Twitter HashTag - spsdallas

**UPDATE**
It didn't make sense to me that China or India would have the most facebook accounts or users so I did a little research and found out that wasn't the case that in face it is the US and that Canada is second with something like 7 million accounts. I like the way people missapropriate information from other sites and get it completely wrong.

Bing Tweet

2009-07-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

This site is pretty cool, it gives you an indepth look at trends on Twitter and Bing all in one page and you do not have to constantly update it to see what is changing. I like it because it gives a really quick overview what is hot and happenning while it is happenning.

http://bingtweets.com/

To Bing or Not to Bing - that is the ?

2009-07-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

Can't decide which to use Bing or Google? Well now you don't have to make choice - use Bingle - http://bingle.pwnij.com/

:) Kinda funny, these types of things always seem to pop up. Yeah to the nerds of the universe.

SharePoint Saturday Presentation - Dallas

2009-07-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Just sitting down to review my presentation for this weekends SharePoint Saturday in Dallas at the Microsoft offices. My presentation will be on Social Networking behind the firewall and how to leverage the SharePoint you already have.

I'll be talking about:
Some of the psychology behind social networking and why it works and why it doesn't.
Leveraging common behavior in the corporate office.
Thinking outside of the In-box
and much more...

My presentation will get you thinking about all of this differently and will apply real world applications to the scenario.

Samsung Omnia Software Update from Verizon

2009-07-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

If you are like me and have the Samsung Omnia from Verizon there is worthwhile update that has just been released, check it out here.

Cause and Effect List Settings SharePoint 2007

2009-07-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

"You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect."

List Settings
Have you ever wondered why you can't edit a list in Datasheet View anymore or why certain columns are not available in the Group By drop down? This page attempts to demystify some of the various settings in libraries and lists and the cause and effect associated with them.

Effect
I can't set an alert on my views anymore.
Cause
That is because you have Content Types turned on, this disables the alerts on views feature.

Effect
When I try to Edit Datasheet View I am not allowed to edit, it says read only.
Cause
As soon as you turn "Check\In Check\Out" on you can no longer edit in this view anymore. Turning this on causes some other interesting things to happen as well, but I am sure someone will be more than happy add that information to this wiki :)

Effect
I can't find certain columns in my filter drop down when I try to modify or create a view
Cause
You cannot sort or filter on Calculated Fields, you also cannot sort or filter on the People Picker field.

Effect
I cannot group by the start time or end time columns.
Cause
That is because you are in a Calendar List and you cannot sort by these fields in this type of list.

Effect
I used to be able to group by certain columns but now I can't.
Cause
As soon as you enable a column to allow for Multiple entries you lose the ability to use the Group By settings in your views.

Effect
I can't filter on a column in my view using contains or begins with.
Cause
SharePoint only allows you to filter using "contains" and "begins with" if it is a single line of text, mulitple lines of text or a choice field. You cannot use lookup fields to do this.

Effect
I can't find the "order column" link anymore in my list or library.
Cause
If Content Types is turned on for this list or library you will have to manage the column order in each one. To get to the "order column" select the content type you want to change the order for. By default document libraries have the content type Documents.

Effect
When I try to use a calculation field some my columns are not available for my formulas.
Cause
Lookup fields cannot be include in a calculation.

Effect
I cannot access all of my fields in Edit Data Sheet mode.
Cause
Lookup fields cannot be accessed in Edit Data Sheet mode.
Updated on August 5th, 2009

Microsoft Revamps Partner Program

2009-07-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

I was wandering when this was gonna happen, it is definitely a much needed revamp. Hopefully they do it right, because right now it seems like there are more Microsoft Partners than there are actual customers. I work for a company that prides itself in being highly certified and qualified to execute on this program. I hope they add something in there that weeds out the partners that don't have the skillsets locally and are certified in one location in another state, or are using certifications that are for people that don't even work for them anymore. I hope they make it worthwile and make it distinctive.

Microsoft is revamping its partner program with a new system of membership designation that officials characterize as less hierarchical and better suited for the wide diversity of partner types the company now supports, including such partner types as Web developers and designers.
In her keynote opening the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans today, Microsoft channel chief Allison Watson unveiled the updated program, which will go by a new moniker, the Microsoft Partner Network. Over the next year to 18 months, the company will phase out the well-worn “Gold Certified,” certified and registered membership categories in favor of four new classifications assigned to partners at different levels of relationship and commitment with the Redmond, Wash., software provider, according to Microsoft.

The new categorization will span a range of partner types, including:

Community: This designation is being described as entry level and is intended for any channel organization that is considering launching a Microsoft practice, but is not yet at the level of selling.
Subscriber: Partners who have moved beyond the exploratory phase and committed to building a Microsoft practice or capability in a particular area.
Competency: Partners that have earned a solutions specialization in the Microsoft program. Microsoft will be reducing the number of official competencies from 46 to 30 over the next year, as well as changing some of the specialization names to be more relevant to the end customer.
Advanced Competency: Microsoft’s Best-in-Class space; partners that are most committed to Microsoft and operate a full-scale, sophisticated practice.

A couple of drivers are behind the membership adjustments, according to Julie Bennani, general manager of the Microsoft Partner Network. Most notably, she said, the partner ecosystem has evolved dramatically over the past five years with the number of different business models in the channel more than doubling from about five types to upwards of 10 or 12 – everything from traditional reselling to managed services to ISVs to Web developers.

Bennani said Microsoft is looking to better support market differentiation for its partners, many of whom had complained that achieving Gold Certified status has been “too easy” and therefore failed to be of any significant value-add in the eyes of end customers.

“We have heard that Gold Certified is not a differentiator so we wanted to change the way we qualify partners,” she said. “One of the key things is that of the 640,000 partners worldwide, not all can, should or would be in Advanced. And that’s OK.”

Different partner requirements will come with each of the four landing spots, with the Community designation requiring little more than some company registration information. The key requirement in the new Advanced category will be participation in regular, formal customer satisfaction surveys. Ultimately however, Bennani said Microsoft is trying to create a program that provides for partners more than it requires of them.

“This vision has been in development for two years. It’s not a hard right,” Bennani said. “We want these partners with us and we have a strong system today and want to keep it that way so we are giving them 18 months to meet the new requirements and giving them a year to brand their business without having to do a lot.”

In introducing the new partner program, Watson talked about three key pillars that the company is looking to drive. One focuses on shoring up partner capabilities, especially sales and marketing skills that Watson said will be key to selling the host of new products and services coming from Microsoft in the next year, the second emphasizes customer satisfaction and the third lasers in on the importance of social networking to businesses.

“Customers are requiring and recognizing sales and marketing expertise in the partners they work with,” she said. “To that end, Microsoft is introducing a new set of profitability modeler tools for sales and pipeline management targeted specifically for partners that will be jumping on the software-plus-services bandwagon. Many partners are still unclear how they make money from Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite of services; many, in fact concerned about hosting conflict with Microsoft and about the validity of the recurring revenue model.

The Profitability Modeler tool will allow partners to estimate three-year profit and loss impact for new opportunities such as BPOS, mobility and hosting solutions, she said. Additionally, and to great applause during her keynote, Watson announced that Microsoft is making available 250 seats of BPOS for free for partners to try in their own organizations, so they get a better sense of how it works and how to sell it.

Watson unveiled a number of other new resources for partners, including Project Greenlight, which gives partners a tool to test their customers’ applications on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, along with providing technical recommendations for ensuring compatibility and marketing resources to help drive the sale. The specter of compatibility issues with Windows Vista and XP applications has many customers skittish, according to a recent survey by ScriptLogic, and Microsoft took great pains to try to allay concern during the keynote on Monday.

On the skills front, the company has revamped its Partner Learning Center, which aggregates all the training opportunities – technical, sales and marketing – into a portal for partner access. The portal allows users to create their own individual training view in real time and lets managers maintain a master view so they can keep track of where their staffers are on the training path, she said.

Watson stressed Microsoft’s belief that social networking can be leveraged to boost business and pledged investment in a variety of areas to help partners learn how to take advantage and save money for their customers.

“You can use social media to increase customer satisfaction, change attitudes and increase revenues,” Watson said, citing a recent IDC study that showed that using social media as part of marketing and sales increases the size of the average IT transaction by 16 percent and the volume of transactions by 33 percent.

“This is an important objective that we’ll be driving harder this year,” she added.

New SharePoint 2010 Updates

2009-07-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

Finally, some concrete information has surface on the next version of SharePoint and Office, and it looks good. Now, if I can just get my hands on it.

Highlights:

Better page editing
Check In and Check Out multiple documents
The infamous SharePoint wheel is better aligned with reality
The ribbon - I like this, not sure how others feel
Inline editing with Asynchronous controls
Search got even better
SharePoint Designer upgrade
Visual Studio is waaaaay better now
Light version (Browser based) Office products
New Web Parts
and much more...

For more details, check out the official Microsoft site here

Also, on Office 2010, here is PCMags Technical Review

Microsoft 2010 Premature Release?

2009-07-13T07:21:00.001-07:00

Is the "accidental" premature release of 2010 information really an accident or is it marketing strategy? Microsoft was (and still is) planning to make a big announcement and release some inside looks into the new Office 2010 due out later this year (or early next year :)) But, someone didn't get the timing right in the Website department and for a brief moment this morning the new 2010 information and related videos was release to the public for a few minuts before it was taken back down. It may have only been up for a few minutes, but that was more than enough tim for Google to cash it and for you to still see it.

You be the judge, strategy or mistake?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=4905&tag=nl.e019

Twitter + SharePoint = S*@tter

2009-07-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

Warning! The Following Blog Contains Very Colorful Language. But, damn its funny :)

So we just wrote a Twitter like application for SharePoint and we realy really want to call it Shitter. So if we go with that name, I was thinking about some of the other terms that would go with it. Instead of Tweeting, you would be Shitting and in stead of being a Twit you would be a Shithead.

I am not sure any customer would let us use that name, but I gauranteed that would never forget it. And from now on, when I hear someone say SharPoint and Twitter in the same sentence I am gonna think Shitter. Oh damn... the application just crashed it looks like it is taking a dump.

:)

The Real Time Search Battle Begins

2009-07-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

In typical Microsoft fashion, the behemoth took longer to embrace a new Web phenomenon than most corporations, and definitely took longer than the major Web companies. Last week, the @Microsoft account sprung into life and began tweeting like no tomorrow. It's definitely not "the first official Microsoft Twitter account," but it's "the official Microsoft Twitter account."

See the rest of this post here

Also, if you are interested in Twitter on the X-Box360, then checkout this post.

Wikis and Projects

2009-07-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

I was just writing about Wikis and using them for running or augmenting projects and as a collaboration tool and then I saw this blog from Jeff Hobbs, so why keep writing? Check it out below :)

One of the best (and often overlooed) web tools available to businesses for enabling teamwork and collaboration is the wiki. Few things speak more to staying in the flow of one’s work than just clicking “Edit This Page” where you see something that needs to be written or re-written. Though Wikis have been around since the 90s, their potential for business collaboration has made them more popular in the business world over the past few years.

It’s human nature for people to fall back on old habits while trying to form new ones; they’ll need a wiki champion who can diplomatically redirect content into the wiki. Email is most often the channel that the wiki-wary fall back on during this kind of transition, and the most dangerous for locking knowledge into a recipient list. It’s crucial in the adoption phase to insist that errant emails are channeled into the wiki before they can be acted on in order to get long term and effective buy in from team members.

Read the rest of Jeff Hobbs blog here

ZOHO for SharePoint

2009-07-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Zoho adds a little pressure to Google Apps and makes it a lot easier to edit Office docs online and this is a heck of a lot more secure.

http://www.zoho.com/sharepoint/

Thanks to Brian for showing me this cool tool.

A BIG OOPS SHAREPOINT SP2 PATCH

2009-06-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

I was wondering when we would find a major flaw in SharePoint 2007 SP2, and this one is a pretty big one. But, at least it doesn't have anything to do with security ;)

Last week, Microsoft announced the release of a hot fix to address one of the biggest faux pas in Microsoft service pack history. Not since the Windows 2000 SP2 debacle has a service pack been so maligned. When installed, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) SP2 activates a product expiration date, meaning that your SharePoint server will stop working 180 days after installation of SP2. Can you say, "Oops"? Wow. The SharePoint Team Blog entry details the problem, and last week's post has links to the fixes. The SharePoint team members promise a "repaired" MOSS 2007 SP2 installer within 4 to 6 weeks. My guess is they'll beat that deadline to save a little face. While the release of the update is the most important news of the week, there are other good bits to share.
Check out this link for more details:http://www.officesharepointpro.com/Articles/tabid/149/nodeid/1980/A-Big-Fix-for-a-Big-Oops.aspx