Ben There, Done That

After a little over a month since my last blog post I’m back.  The lapse in posting had several contributing factors.  The biggest being that within the last month I go married and then went on a week long honeymoon to St. Lucia with my beautiful bride. (I’ll maybe put up a few pics when we get our favorites).  That combined with the increased workload to make up for the time off didn’t give me a lot of time to blog.  I’ve also been eagerly awaiting the Office 2010 suite of products to start working with.

So, rather than posting sever updates, I figured I would post one update that highlights what has been going one.

First, I have the SharePoint 2010 bits that I have started testing.  Due to an NDA with Microsoft, I can’t talk about them other than if you want to get a peak, head over to http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx where MS has posted 3 videos giving you a sneak peak at SharePoint 2010.

Secondly, I have also installed the Office 2010 clients.  I was accepted into the Office 2010 beta program on http://connect.microsoft.com.  There is no NDA in place for the clients, so there may be more posts following on that topic.

Also, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have both RTM’d.  You should expect to see them on MSDN and TechNet the beginning of August.  I’ve seen several dates, so I won’t try to predict, just keep your eyes open. You can see the official Microsoft Post here.

The June Cumulative Update Package for SharePoint 2007 has also been released.  Head over herehttp://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/07/20/june-cumulative-update-packages-ready-for-download.aspx to get the download links and more information about the update.

I read an article on The Seattle Times website that in an attempt to compete with Google Docs, Microsoft will be releasing a free web based version of Microsoft office. Read the Full Article here.

I think that’s all I have for now, stay tuned as more and more information becomes available on the Office 2010 suite of products.

Sadly, it’s true, Ballmer announced the other day that the next version of Office won’t be released until 2010. Despite all the rumor going around about the “14″ becoming a “2009″ it appears it will become 2010. You can read more about the announcement here.

Ok…this blog posting is way off topic, but I have a friend, Bryan, that I talk to and discuss things with regularly…this posting is for him and the random things we have been talking about lately.  Specifically random thoughts that could actually make sense as well as some gripes we have with some online services.

1.  I installed Windows 7 on my desktop the other day after such great success with it on my MacBook Pro.  Well, the result, catastrophe, it’s been nothing but a headache and I’m about ready to go back to Vista on my desktop (look for an upcoming blog post on this).  Bryan’s theory…Microsoft is using MacBooks as their development platform for Windows 7…based on my experience, it’s almost plausible and believable.  It goes right along with how many people inside Microsoft use Google for Search.

2.  Gmail labels and the lack of organization available.  Those guys are all engineers, we’re anal, we like stuff organized.  Have you every tried to have a highly organized gmail inbox?  You can’t do it.  Our primary example, Bryan and I both do 99%, if not all of our billing online.  So you have all your emails relating to bills.  In those bills you have Comcast, AT&T, Electric, Water, Rent, etc.  Sure you can label a “bill” email Bills and Comcast, but what if you want to pull up only your Comcast bills?  Go ahead, give it a try…let us know how it goes.  Yeah, that’s what I thought, you can’t do it.  Following that same logic, if you want highly organized/categorized emails, you have a REALLY long list of labels.  Our solution, how about some “sub-labels” Google or the ability to filter on more than one label at a time would be a good start?  We’re all engineers who like our organization, help us organize.

3. Microsoft new security approach – a top secret division to create viruses for the Mac.  This one we haven’t seen any evidence of, and nothing to back it up.  But after reading this article we wondered why not.  If they are offering rewards to catch hackers rather than fixing security holes that have been found.  Microsoft and Mac have always had arguments going on about the most secure OS.  Microsoft obvious sells a lot more and has a lot broader user base, and therefore many more viruses and security holes discovered.  So, why not create a Top Secret division of Microsoft to create viruses and exploit the security holes in Apple’s OS to make the two OS’s seem even in terms of security

Ok, so that’s all for now, just the fun things we talk about and come up with in our spare time…feel free to post any other random gripes and conspiracy theories about technology that you may have

This past Wednesday, Microsoft announced the scheduled release of the Office Suite Service Pack 2.  This includes Service Pack 2 for SharePoint.  You can read the official announcement here.  For those of you that just want to know the date, it is between February and April of 2009.

I’m back after way to long of not blogging.  I have a few posts to catch up on as well.  I was taking a little “vacation” a coupe of weeks ago up in Michigan to get my wisdom teeth removed.  It wasn’t a whole lot of fun, but I made it safely through and have recovered nicely.

As soon as I got back from vacation I had to travel to Houston, TX for work and spent the week there.  Upon returning home from Houston, my week this week was filled up with some Project Server training.  With all the SharePoitn work I’ve been doing, I’ve been getting more and more into Project Server 2007 as well and how it fits into SharePoint.  This week I finally decided to get some in depth training on it to help make me even a better consultant.  As I do more and more with Project Server don’t be surprised to if Project Server blog posts start showing up on here.

So, now that I’m done with all that, I decided I would take some time and update you on what I’ve been doing as well as get caught up on some overdue blog posts.

John Holiday posted this video of a demo of Windows 7

The other day a client had a requirement of putting a link to a quiz about a training video as well as making sure that the user watched the entire video. I thought, why not just put the link at the very end of the video, disable any controls to fast forward the video so the only way the user can get to the quiz is to sit down and watch the video.

I did some research, and the only format I discovered that this was reasonable to do it in was to do it in Flash. So, I took the .wmv video from the client, imported it into flash, took a screen shot of the last frame of the video, added it at the very end, and create some text on the image with a hyperlink embedded that took the user to quiz. I bundled it all together into a .swf file. Now the trick was to get it to play in SharePoint. Fortunately, Michael had done this not long ago and posted it on his blog here. Using his solution the video was easily embedded in the page and the client was happy.

Thanks Michael!

For those of you that are interested in just using a downloadable web part to play the Flash, EPC Group offers a free download on their website.

I just ran across a new website (still in Beta) called UltimatePC. If you are running Windows Vista Ultimate it has some nifty features from great deals on hardware and software for people running Vista Ultimate to some blueprints for various environments you can set up around the house. The website and the resources on there can be accessed from any operating system; however, the special deals are only for those people running Vista Ultimate. If you get the chance, go check it out.

If you’re like me, you may be asking, “Microsoft SharedView, what is that?”. I found out about it today through my Office Live Workspace. I clicked on the Share button and was present with Share Workspace and Share screen. Sharing a workspace I was familiar with, but this sharing a screen peaked my curiosity, so I clicked on it. I was taken the Microsoft SharedView Beta download site. So, being the kind of person I am, I decided to download it and install it.

After it downloaded an installed, a toolbar showed up at the top of my screen and I thought to myself, this looks a lot like Windows Live Meeting. I had the option to start a new session, so I quickly started a session and was given my session information. I immediately sent the info to a co-worker, he clicked on the link and was prompted to install Microsoft SharedView. Once he installed it, he joined my meeting and I was asked if I want to let him in. I clicked yes, and sure enough, we found ourselves in a free, simplified version of Office Live Meeting 2007 with the ability to share a screen or just an application, give each other control of the meeting and message each other in the meeting. It was impressive.

The response time seemed a little slow, so we’ll continue to play with it and see how it goes, but it is a great option if you need a free tool to host internet wide web meetings with friends, classmates, co-workers or family members. I know I’ll use it as well if only to help troubleshoot family and friends computers as it is a quick easy way for me to see what they see as well as gain control of their mouse and keyboard if necessary to help them out. Way to go Microsoft! In my opinion your starting to compete with some of the Google web applications and I’m loving the progress and steps you are taking to compete.

I finally got access to my Office Live Workspace today. I went to their site and pre-registered and wasn’t given access at the time. I was told I would be contact with an email when my space was set up. I still haven’t gotten the email, but I go back every once in a while to give it a try and finally got in! My first thought as soon as I gained access, was, this is SharePoint 2007 customized, so it sent me off on a search and got me my answer on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog here. Office Live Workspace is indeed WSSv3 customized. The possibilities once you start developing on SharePoint are endless! I’m excited to see where Microsoft takes this as they continue to improve and update Windows Live Workspace, from what I’ve seen so far, I definitely give it a thumbs up.