Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Failure on Google

This is definitely worth a laugh - Open google and search for "failure" ...

Update: talked with Mark Kruger - he pointed to this article on Wikipedia about google bombing

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Citrix Presentation Server - Web Interface for SharePoint

Source InformationWeek:

Citrix's SharePoint Interface seamlessly embeds Presentation Server-based applications into Microsoft's SharePoint Portal. An installable SharePoint Web Part, the interface has been available as a technical preview since July, and it was announced completed and ready for download this week. Download is available from mycitrix.com and requires Presentation Server 3.0 or 4.0. More info on Citrix Presentation Server - Web Interface for SharePoint.

Alfresco - Open source ECM solution

Alfresco is....

  • Alfresco is an open source, open-standards content repository built by the most experienced content management team that includes the co-founder of Documentum. The Alfresco product has a lean, modular component architecture that allows new functionality to be added without any system disruption and is significantly faster than proprietary commercial systems.

  • J2EE-based professional portal projects that require a content management system at a much lower cost than commercial systems.

  • Low-cost, open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint™.

  • ...



  • I think that SharePoint definitely has hit mainstream since other vendors/open source products use it as a point of reference ;-) ...


    Wednesday, October 12, 2005

    SharePoint jobs, average salary & contractor rates UK

    For SharePointers in the UK: http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/skills_and_rates/sharepoint.do

    Internet Explorer Dev Toolbar

    From Bart Smet - Internet Explorer Dev Toolbar - a must have for every web developer :
    Something I missed on the PDC apparently :s. But anyway, you can get it over here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en. Keep in mind it's still beta, the installer needs a reboot at the end of the setup!

    An overview (copied from download page):

    The IE Developer Toolbar provides several features for deeply exploring and understanding Web pages.

    -- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page.
    -- Locate and select specific elements on a web page through a variety of techniques.
    -- Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
    -- View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
    -- Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
    -- Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
    -- Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
    -- Immediately resize the browser window to 800x600 or a custom size.
    -- Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
    -- Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
    -- Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages.

    Well, I like it. Especially W3C compliance validation (which is in fact just a dynamic link to the W3C validator page) is a nice feature to evangelize in the academic world. Especially when you show that www.microsoft.com has 0 validation errors and a site like www.linux.org has 22 validation errors, www.apache.org has 4 validation errors :d. I should have misheard any "we care about standards" statements from some 'groups' ^0). Also check out the IEBlog post on this tool on http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/16/469686.aspx.

    No excuse for not developing on WSS

    Picked this up from SharePoint Products and Technologies Developer Roadmap:

    SharePoint products and technologies is the target deployment platform for everything web-based going forward. So if you're an ASP.NET developer, there's no excuse in not being a WSS developer.

    Another Dolmen blogger about SharePoint

    And yes, here's another Dolmen blogger, Gert has been working on SharePoint projects since SPS2001, so I expect a lot of interesting postings....

    Tuesday, October 11, 2005

    BIWUG Meeting on Groove and K2


    The Belux Information Worker User Group (abbreviated as BIWUG) is toa central meeting point for the Information Worker community in Belgium and Luxemburg. BIWUG members are people, technical and non-technical, who are interested in Microsoft Information Worker products and technologies. We cover the whole range of products and technologies that influence in some way or another the daily activities of the information worker. BIWUG is there to provide the members the needed organization, infrastructure and support to share their experiences, learn about products and technologies in a different way than at Microsoft organized events, seminars or trainings, discuss problems with other members or IW peers in round-the-table sessions, get product demonstrations from third-party vendors, and much more. Our website: www.biwug.be

    On 20th of October we have our second monthly meeting and the agenda is fully packed with lots of exciting topics. Representatives of GrooveNetworks and K2.net will demonstrate their products and after that there is the usual round-the-table discussion with your fellow BIWUG members and peers.

    The meeting will be held at the Microsoft office in Diegem.
    Interested? Go to www.biwug.be and register for the meeting.

    Monday, October 10, 2005

    Microsoft Navision demonstrates Microsoft Dynamics Road Map With SharePoint-Based Employee Portal

    Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability of Service Pack 1 for Microsoft® Business Solutions-Navision®, now part of Microsoft Dynamics™. The main objective of the service pack announced today is to improve the customer and partner experience by enhancing the overall quality of Microsoft Navision 4.0 and to make the solution more accessible to a broader range of users via the Microsoft Navision Employee Portal. Employee Portal is built from the integration between Microsoft Navision and both Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

    For more info check out the press release

    [MVP] Congratulations! You have received the Microsoft MVP Award


    I got an email this weekend ... it seems that I'm a Windows SharePoint Services MVP now... thanks to everyone who got me nominated. Hopefully I will live up to all of your expectations. Also congrats to all of you who got their MVP nomination renewed or who got nominated for the first time.


    Some others got MVP news as well:
  • I was awarded MVP for WSS (Heather Solomon)

  • Bart De Smet - MVP Edition - version 3.0 has shipped :-)

  • The MVP season has opened!

  • MVP Award

  • Renewed as an MVP for MCMS! (Angus Logan)
  • Wednesday, October 05, 2005

    Windows SharePoint Services : core component of the Windows platform

    From ComputerWorld - Microsoft's back office blitz:

    For customers running SharePoint merely because it's an easy way to build an intranet, or even those not running it all, get set for a change. WSS could become as core as Active Directory to a mostly-Microsoft enterprise.

    WWF's integration with SharePoint as workflow repository is only step one. SharePoint will also enjoy direct ties to Microsoft's new application library, including the much ballyhooed Office 12 as well as the new Dynamics suite. This new library, formerly code-named Project Green and now supplanting Microsoft Business Solutions, was renamed as the Dynamics line of ERP, supply-chain, and CRM servers at the Business Summit show in September. But Dynamics is more than just a simple name change.

    Tuesday, October 04, 2005

    Office 12 beta 1 in November

    From BetaNews.com :

    You mentioned that there is a beta coming in November. What are people likely to see? How far along will things be by this point?
    Sinofsky: When we come out with our beta, it will be our Beta 1. That's the first of the betas, so it will be in the kind of shape that people normally expect Beta 1 to be in.


    Maybe even beta1 on november 1st....


    Monday, October 03, 2005

    IBF 2.0

    Got this from the slides of Mauro Cardarelli:
    In calendar 2005, Microsoft plans to deliver version 2.0 of IBF, which will add support for SharePoint Portal Server Web parts and Visual Studio Tools for Office integration. By the time Longhorn ships (2006+), Microsoft is planning to embed version 3.0 right into the operating system. IBF is an SO (Service Oriented) client built on SO principles: XML schema and WSDL contract driven, loosely coupled, explicit boundaries.

    Some other thoughts about IBF:
  • IBF has a new brother, here comes BDC - Business Data Catalog

  • IBF vs VSTO 2005


  • To spang or not too spang...

    Anybody an idea:
  • Spang - what's that all about

  • Microsoft codename Spang

  • The future is looking bright


  • Update 5 oct:
    There is no Spang...

    How to find the SharePoint version you are running...

    Nice article about different versions of SharePoint by Penny.

    Sunday, October 02, 2005

    Magic quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products 2005

    Interesting quote from this Gartner document - Magic quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products 2005:

    Microsoft moves into the Leaders quadrant for the first time. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 continues to improve, and the Office franchise continues to grow. A key part of the Microsoft Office System, Windows SharePoint Services, is being widely adopted, which has created a pull-through effect for SharePoint Portal Server. Microsoft had the highest growth rate of all the portal product vendors during the past year.

    Publishing to PDF in Office 12

    From Todd Bleeker:

    At the MVP summit today, Microsoft announced that Office 12 products: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, InfoPath, Publisher, Visio, and OneNote will be able to save/publish documents as PDF files. The saved documents will be based on Adobe's Open Specification and can be read using any tool that can view PDFs.

    Saturday, October 01, 2005

    Windows Workflow Foundation resources

    Patrick has collected an extensive list of Windows Workflow Foundation resources. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a quick description taken from Introducing Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation: An Early Look

    Windows Workflow Foundation provides a common framework for building workflows into Microsoft Windows applications, whether those workflows coordinate interactions among software, interactions among people, or both. Scheduled for release in mid-2006, Windows Workflow Foundation will run on the forthcoming Microsoft Windows Vista and will also be available for Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Server 2003.


    Some of you have noted the similarities between Biztalk and WWF, here are some thoughts about it and some other links as well:
  • Windows Workflow Foundation and BizTalk 2006

  • Windows Workflow Foundation - Where does Biztalk fit in ?

  • All the Windows Workflow Foundation content from the PDC

  • Windows Workflow Foundation Community site