Microsoft RoundTable is a very cool videoconferencing system featuring 360° panoramic views powered by its 5 built-in cameras. Microsoft sent me a RoundTable system for review. I figured I may as well install it in one of TMC’s two conference rooms to have some “real world” testing scenarios. After plugging in the various cables, including a USB cable to the host PC, I then installed the Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 (LM 2007) beta software client, which was designed to handle the RoundTable’s 360° panoramic cameras. I should point out that Microsoft is offering both a hosted model for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 as well as a CPE (customer premise equipment) solution, namely Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007). The RoundTable can work with either. However, I tested it with a Microsoft Office Live Meeting online beta account.
Archive for June, 2007
Zero Gravity is a game and involves an absent-minded astronaut, lt. bennett, who continues to crash his ship into an asteroid. your objective? help lt. bennett find his way back to his ship in each level through various mazes. there are different types of levels and different types of obstacles involving teleports, asteroids, ice blocks, pipes, etc. once you get lt. bennett back to his ship, you advance. your score is based on time and moves.
this game was written entirely in silverlight 1.1 using the .net framework and the tools provided.
Source: Tim Heuer
Leading Analyst Joins Media & Entertainment Group at Microsoft
Katherine Styponias to help Microsoft deliver new digital entertainment experiences.
Innovative Wireless Technologies Selects Microsoft Dynamics SL
Wireless products and applications provider selects Microsoft Dynamics solution for better time capture, project management and government compliance capabilities.
Microsoft Announces Quarterly Earnings Release Date and Upcoming Events for the Financial Community
Events with Microsoft leadership slated for July.
MOSS 2007 Content Deployment: make sure you’re in a good state before blowing a gasket
Spence has a great post on content deployment. Like he said, content deployment gets a bad rap as many of the issues people call PSS (err… CSS) about problems with content deployment. I love the way he classifies it… “ensure your platform hygiene before randomly abusing” MOSS and calling CSS. So true…
If you’re doing content deployment, or if you’re planning to use it on your project, I’ve got two words of advice: (1) read Spence’s post and (2) don’t wait until launch to test it out.
SharePoint under the hood - see real error description and callstack/stack trace
have always loved the nice SharePoint error messages that are presented when something goes wrong. My most popular error message is “An unknown error occured. Please contact your system administrator.”.
In order to see the real error messages as well as the stack trace of where the error happened within SharePoint, you have to do two simple things - in fact, this is mainly standard ASP.NET business:
In the web.config file of your SharePoint web application, edit these two entries:
Well, courtesy of my buddy Todd Klindt, here’s a little unknown STSADM command that you can use to change all that once and for all. The command you need is:
TIP: Using code blocks in master pages throws error
If you want to use script tags for dynamic content in a master page, for example: Â <%= DateTime.Now %> and you recieve the following error: Include the following in your web.config file to resolve this issue:
Duking it Out with the BDC Object Model in a Webpart
I created a webpart that could create document libraries pulling in client names and ids from a sql server instance. Unfortunately, it did not work in the production environment for some reason or another, so my colleague thought it might be a good idea to use his BDC Instance. I thought this was a good idea, but I am not very familiar with code related to the BDC. I went to MSDN and Sezai’s Blog to find some code.
I’ve been very bad about blogging. I’m going to try to blog as often as possible! The last few weeks have been very busy. Not really an excuse, but TechEd 2007 and fiscal end-of-year responsibilities are a lot of work!
I’m in San Francisco for 2 days at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference. I was invited by Peter O’Kelly and Guy Creese to participate on 2 panels: 1) Unstructured Content: Lock It Up, Follow It Around, or What? and 2) New Realities in Collaboration and Content Management. The conference gave me an opportunity to connect with other folks in the industry and with customers and partners. One of the questions that came up was “How do I plan for my SharePoint deployment? How do I govern usage? How do I implement a plan?”
What is a Shared Service Provider?
For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about a bit of overview. In MOSS 2007 there is this new concept of Shared Services Providers(SSP). The idea being that there are certain services that really make sense to centrally manage and share. A good example being profiles. With a SSP we can import all of the profile information from AD once and then our various web applications can consume the data. So maybe we have http://marketing and http://accounting it doesn’t make sense for each one to maintain identical profile information, they should share.
Missing UI Settings in the Object Model
Houston, we’ve got a problem. It seems that there are quite a few settings in the ShaerPoint UI that are not supported in the Object Model. Just yesterday, Sean Skinner discovered that when creating WSS sites programmatically the options to enable the navigation menus were missing. A few weeks back, a client sent me an email asking how the advanced email settings in lists could be set during site provisioning. Oops, those are missing from the OM, too.
Learning Gateway has been released on CodePlex
For everyone involved in SharePoint and Education this is a must have download.
SharePoint Screen Casts and Demos
Bob Fox one of the SharePoint MVPs recently included some screencasts on his blog. Watch for other screencasts coming down road. He’s listened to me, I bet he would listen to you if you had suggestions for him.
MOSS Profile Search LDAP query to remove disabled and service accounts
To put together the right query to get users that are not disabled accounts nor service accounts, you will need to add the following parameters to the query.
- (!userAccountControl=512) - removes disabled accounts
- (!userAccountControl=66050) - removes accounts with password set to never expire
Site Templates and Retaining Web Part Configuration Settings
Several folks have asked me about this recently so I thought I would post the answer.
Q:Why don’t site templates (STPs) maintain webpart configurations when I use them to create new sites?
Scenario:
|
• |
You create a new list, such as a Custom List, on a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. |
SharePoint Groups, Permissions, Site Security, and Depreciated Site Groups
had an email from one of Ted Pattison’s students on “security in SharePoint.” When I first started reading it, I expected to have some question about server hardening or firewalls, but the question was about permissions. It’s been so long that security meant permissions that I was a bit stumped. Where did our info on permissions go? Is this some IW thing? I found some good content, but it can be confusing. There are some decent quotes from the content on MSDN.
The basics are on the office.microsoft.com site, designed for the information worker. I recommend starting here, it’s the easiest to understand and digest.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/CH100649861033.aspx
The Beta testing trail took us to an interesting new private beta site called Zude. This app is deploying cross domain drag-and-drop technology to allow users to create a unique Web presence. This development is like a 2015 version of Netvibes, or Pageflakes on steroids. 5g’s technology has enabled perhaps the most powerful personal expression platform I have tested. Users do not need any technical skill to essentially drag and drop their entire Web experience onto the Zude platform. The platform also incorporates an advanced tool set, nimble enough for experienced coders to fine tune their creations.
BOSTON–Some big names in search met Thursday at the Red Herring East conference and allowed their brains to be picked by venture capitalists eager to find the next good idea.
A panel consisting of Ask.com, Answers.com, Truveo/AOL and Microsoft search gurus deflected a slew of questions.
Who do you think are the next big search companies to watch? Who’s going to go public? How are we going to monetize video search? Is it better to be a video search engine, or allow people to watch the video on your site once they find it?
Similar to what industry experts said of mobile video earlier in the week, it’s not the technology holding things up. It’s figuring out how to monetize all these new things, said the panelists.
The panelists said they were impressed with search engines like ZoomInfo.com, the job candidate search engine, and Mahalo, the search engine started by publishing entrepreneur Jason Calacanis that uses human-created results for the most popular searches.
While Mahalo is considered unique, none of the panelists sees it, or any other significant breakthrough on the horizon, as changing the definition of search.
The big money, some said, is in an area the general media just isn’t paying attention to: enterprise search engines.
Endeca, a company that offers customized search engines for the enterprise, among other services, will do about $100 million in revenue this year, according to Don Dodge, a manager of search and the director of business development for Microsoft’s emerging business team.
“Endeca is going to be the next billion-dollar company in Boston. They are focusing on enterprise search, which very few people pay attention to because it’s not sexy like Web search…And I think they will go public soon,” said Dodge.
Doug Leeds, the vice president of product management at Ask.com agreed with Dodge’s assessment of Endeca’s significance, but had a different take.
Source: News.com
iDay has dawned
Just a quick note. The 29th of June 2007 goes into history as iDay. The day the iPhone is released.
Personally, I like to see the hype around the iPhone. VC’s, CEO’s and a some A-list bloggers are waiting in front of the Apple store in Manhattan (5th Avenue) for the official launch of the iPhone. The news is on top of Techmeme. Robert Scoble and his son are first and second in line. Thomas Hawk an Kristopher Tate are running crowd control by handing out numbered tags. It seems AT&T increased EDGE speed.
From a marketing perspective Apple has done a great job. Even AT&T gets some positive notes
It gets even better because it seems an internal note from Steve Jobs reveals new iPods and Macs
Just found a picture of Katie O’Brien on the Wimbledon site.
I guess she ain’t happy with this pic :-). Is she pushing back her breasts?
Both companies to focus on Software as a Service and the creation of an ecosystem to encourage new SaaS application development.
TOKYO — June 27, 2007 — KDDI Corporation and Microsoft Co., Ltd. today announced that they have reached an agreement to jointly develop and provide applications using a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model for corporate users. The companies will also create an ecosystem to provide extensive support to independent software vendor (ISV) partners and spur the development of new service-enabled applications to drive momentum for new SaaS applications. The companies will embark on joint marketing activities to cultivate the adoption of SaaS among ISVs in Japan. They will also jointly educate the corporate market on the benefits of the SaaS model.
Under the agreement, KDDI will use Microsoft® Connected Services Framework as a foundation for providing services to customers. The first SaaS application will be built on Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration, a carrier-grade platform that offers enterprise-class e-mail and document-sharing services to corporate customers. Subscription is a monthly fee-based model, covering mobile and fixed-line communications and the SaaS application. The service will create a seamless work environment by allowing corporate customers to access their data on a PC in the office or on a mobile phone when they are on the go. This initiative is a demonstration of a service-delivered solution that combines services, software and hardware to provide a seamless user experience.
A support program will be available to software vendors and corporate solution partners to ensure that they have access to resources to enable them to collaborate as well as to develop and market their SaaS applications.
Source: Microsoft Press
Dividend of $0.10 per share payable in September.
REDMOND, Wash. — June 27, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that its board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.10 per share. The dividend is payable September 13, 2007 to shareholders of record on August 16, 2007. The ex-dividend date will be August 14, 2007.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFTâ€) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
For more information, financial analysts and investors only:
Colleen Healy, general manager, Investor Relations, Microsoft, (425) 706-3703
Source: Microsoft Press
