Friday, March 25, 2005
Mondosoft have announced a new generation of Enterprise Search, targeted towards large-scale search needs, typically intranets and enterprise and web portals, will be available from Mondosoft, starting tomorrow. The new product is named
MondoSearch Enterprise, and will index millions of pages with great ease, in a very timely manner.
The new product will typically be 10 times faster than MondoSearch 5.1b, and case studies show speed and performance improvements up to 18 times better than MondoSearch 5.1b. Even with millions of searchable documents, it is possible to update the full search database on a daily basis.
Webcast 14 April
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 05 (English) has been posted to
MSDN Subscriber DownloadsLocated in: Tools, SDKs, and DDKs Platform Tools, SDKs, DDKs WinFX SDK - Community Technology Preview.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Momentum around
CMS.RAPID continues - yesterday we had the 500th unique person download.
Please please keep Nick or me informed of any success stories / deployments ... such evidence helps us drive more futures after we have delivered
V1.1 and CRM integration.
Get first-hand deployment experience through the Virtual Lab series. The Microsoft Office
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 hands-on labs will teach you how to set up the portal, organize content on the portal, manage user permissions, create Web Parts for custom tasks, and much more.
It's simple and free ... no complex setup or installation is required to try SharePoint Portal Server running in the full-featured TechNet Virtual Lab. You get a downloadable manual and a 90-minute block of time for each module. You can sign up for additional 90-minute blocks anytime.
From
Paul Schaeflein ...
Mike Fitzmaurice conducted a webcast on March 21st that included a few demos. Those demos are now available on GotDotNet.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Symbian has agreed to license ActiveSync synchronization software from Microsoft in an effort to win more corporate customers. This will enable users of smartphones that run on Symbian software to wirelessly receive emails via network computers that run Microsoft's Exchange Server software. Nokia which sells most of the Symbian-based smartphones, last month signed a deal with Microsoft to license the same software for use in its enterprise devices.
Press Release
Monday, March 21, 2005
The
Gizmondo was released this weekend making it the world's first Microsoft Windows-powered handheld gaming console.
Specifications: The Gizmondo is powered by a Microsoft Windows CE.net platform, boasts a 2.8-inch TFT color screen with a Samsung ARM9 400Mhz processor and incorporates a NVIDIA GoForce 3D 4500 graphics accelerator. It provides cutting-edge gaming, MMS multimedia messaging, an MP3 music player, Mpeg4 movie playing capability, a digital camera and a GPRS network link to allow wide-area network gaming. Additionally, it contains a GPS chip for location based services, is equipped with Bluetooth for use in multi-player gaming and accepts MMC card accessories.
Longitude for SharePoint is a plug-and-play server appliance that integrates with your existing SharePoint Portal Server 2003 infrastructure and brings Advanced Searching features.
From Carlos Segura is the
Rollup Sharepoint Lists web part - with this webpart you can display aggregated data from multiple WSS lists.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Great that NTL upgraded my home broadband connection this week to 2Mbps for no extra cost.
I found this useful
Bandwidth Speed Test page that works with any time of connection.
Also interesting to read NTL are trialling a
faster type of broadband called ADSL2+ that could pave the way for speeds of up to 18Mbps.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
From
Fitz ...
Here's the official word on Whidbey/WSS interoperability and compatibility:
Read
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
The beta program for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 is open for nominations. If you would like to participate, please visit the
Microsoft BetaPlace site ... you will need to :
- Sign in with your Microsoft .Net Passport ID. If you don't have a Passport account, you will need to first complete a Passport registration.
- Enter the Guest ID "LCclient" (this ID is case-sensitive).
- Click on the Office Live Communications Client link.
- Click on the Nomination link on the left side of the page.
- Fill out and submit the nomination form.
(To evaluate Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, deployment of Live Communications Server SP1 is required)
Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 is an enterprise messenger that integrates communications capabilities (including instant messaging, rich presence, PC-based voice and video, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and enterprise telephony) with productivity and other communications applications.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
I had a session today with the Microsoft CRM guys and it became evident that it would be really useful if the proposed MCMS.Rapid V1.1 membership / user profiling optionally integrated with
Microsoft-CRM. What do you think ?
Please send any thoughts on MCMS.Rapid membership / user profiling functionality to
blog'AT'markharrison.co.uk and
Nick.Mayhew'AT'artemiscorp.com.
From
Jan ...
Dino Esposito has written a nice article about webparts, both in SharePoint and ASP.NET 2.0: "
Webparts: From SharePoint to ASP.NET 2.0". This article also mentions the
SmartPart! :-)
Monday, March 14, 2005
A recording of last weeks MCMS.Rapid webcast is now available
here.
BitDefender today announced the launch of the antivirus solution for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
BitDefender for MS SharePoint 2003 performs real-time scanning of the uploaded and downloaded files in the document libraries and lists, with excellent cleanup rates, and an option to quarantine infected files. The on-demand scanner and the advanced reporting and logging tools further enhance the value of BitDefender for MS SharePoint 2003 as a security solution for your collaboration needs.
Neverfail for SharePoint is the only "cluster-class" high availability solution to proactively monitor the health of your entire SharePoint environment, including: physical server hardware, network infrastructure and operating system. If any problem occurs, Neverfail can take a variety of preemptive, corrective actions without resorting to a full system failover. In extreme cases, a non-disruptive, seamless failover to your secondary server can occur automatically and transparently to your users.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Ay the annual Game Developers Conference, Microsoft announced the first details about its next-generation XBOX video game system. Hardware, software, and services are being fused to power enhanced gaming and entertainment experiences.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief XNA Architect J Allard further outlined the company's vision for the future of entertainment, citing the emergence of an 'HD Era' in video games, fuelled by consumer demand for experiences that are always connected, always personalised and always in high-definition.
Keynote Audio (Windows Media)
Friday, March 11, 2005
From
venkatna ...
The cat is out of the bag. We have been working on a new personalized start page. We are essentially playing around with a number of different ideas trying to figure out which way to go. You can find this page at
http://start.com/1 or
http://start.com/2 .
More
Thursday, March 10, 2005
MSN UK have announced the release to the web of the second version of
WebSafeCrackerz, the internet safety resource for teenagers, by teenagers.
WebSafeCrackerz has been designed as a game where teenagers learn through re-enactment of real online situations, sometimes scary, sometimes funny. The tone is un-patronising, adapted to their age group and delivers advice and ways to deal with 'sticky' situations. Success in the games and quizzes brings them points which they can redeem as prizes, such as emoticons, ring tones and logos for their mobiles as well as free MSN Music downloads.
Please encourage any teenagers you are related to or know to visit WebSafeCrackerz.
MSDN Article:
Information Bridge Framework: Bringing SOA to the Desktop in Office ApplicationsEnterprises today are moving towards SOA as a way to expose their applications and data for consumption. Building solutions on top of these services is fairly easy today using existing development tools. Different vendors provide tools for both exposing and developing on top of those services by using standards like SOAP or WSDL. However, once enterprises start developing a few of these solutions problems start to arise. This article addresses some of the most common problems.
Microsoft Corp. announced today that it will acquire
Groove Networks Inc., a leading provider of collaboration software for the "virtual office". The deal unites two top innovators of technology that help geographically distributed workgroups be as productive as those that work in a single physical location.
The addition of Groove products to the lineup of Microsoft Office System products, servers and services builds on the capabilities of Microsoft's current collaboration products, allowing Microsoft to better meet the needs of organizations of all sizes that increasingly are creating borderless project teams comprising employees, customers, partners, suppliers, contractors and others.
Press release :
Demo
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Thank you to those that attended todays MCMS.Rapid webcast. Great that we had over 120 attendees.
The session was recorded and will soon be available to replay on demand - it will be at:
http://www.msusapartnerreadiness.com/eventregister.asp?eid=1904The log of questions asked is at:
http://www.mcmsrapid.com/demos/QuestionandAnswerLog.htmOne thing we revealed on the Q&A was that V1.1 has kicked off today and will include Membership (authentication / user profiles / user roles) and SharePoint/CMS integration.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Microsoft executives today introduced and demonstrated new Microsoft Office System real-time collaboration products and services that begin to significantly deliver on the company's integrated communications vision, including these:
- Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 is the new integrated communications application, and is the best client for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. Communicator provides rich presence and unifies real-time communications modes - such as IM, voice, video and access to voiceconferencing and Web conferencing - into a single application. It also enables PC-to-phone integration.
- Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack is an update to Microsoft's award-winning real-time communications platform. The service pack includes support for Communicator, enhanced "spam over IM" controls, and enterprise-grade connectivity from an LCS enterprise to the MSN, AOL and Yahoo! public IM networks. Live Communications Server provides enterprise IM and an enterprisewide presence engine.
- Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005, a major update to Microsoft's popular Web conferencing service, helps users conduct effective online meetings and collaborative sessions without having to be in the same place at the same time. Key enhancements include the industry's first integrated conference call controls for leading audioconferencing service providers, the ability to have a Live Meeting session from Office applications, and availability in seven new language versions.
Press releases:
If you would like to apply for the MCMS.Rapid partner programme / source code access please contact
Nick.Mayhew@artemiscorp.com for a copy of the agreements.
More
Monday, March 07, 2005
Microsoft Business Solutions group today kicked off its annual Convergence customer conference, highlighting the company's strategy for business applications and detailing its enhanced technology road map to partners and customer.
'Project Green' the code name for next-generation Microsoft Business Solutions' development efforts, will be delivered over the course of two waves.
The first wave will occur between 2005 and 2007, and will include the release of a shared user interface based around 50 common configurable roles that people have within a company, all seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office. Microsoft's business applications also will interoperate with service-oriented applications and include a common configurable reporting environment based on SQL Server Reporting Services and a common security-enhanced intranet and extranet environment based on SharePoint Portal Server to enable new levels of collaboration within and across companies.
The second release wave, which will begin shipping in 2008, will build on the first wave's innovation and apply a model-driven approach to business processes. Innovations released during the second wave will draw on the power of WinFX and Visual Studio.NET.
Press Release
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Whilst the MCMS.Rapid runtime has been released, the final v1.0 documentation is still being worked upon and not expected for another week.
To ensure evaluators have a positive experience with the absence of the complete documention, Nick and Tony have today written an
MCMS.Rapid Evaluation Guide.
Friday, March 04, 2005
And another nugget from the
SQL Press Release ...
Along with security and product enhancements, SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services SP2 will include two SharePoint Web Parts, which enable users to explore and view reports located on a report server through Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server. The Web Parts will make it easy for customers to build business intelligence portals with SharePoint that include Reporting Services reports.
Further to my earlier blog entry on SQL Server Community Technology Preview downloads ... the
press release also announces the Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for IIS Logs. This is a set of 12 predefined report definition files that work with a sample database of information extracted from Microsoft IIS log files.
The SQL Server Report Pack for IIS Logs allows users to monitor Web site statistics including visitors, page views and bandwidth for various time periods and geographic regions, to get more insight into their Web site usage. Users also can leverage the 12 sample reports as templates for designing new reports, and the database can be populated with individual data using the Log Parser included with the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit.
Microsoft UK has launched a
new website specifically for our UK government customers. The site contains information and events for people working in departments and agencies across the government sector, as well as details on technology solutions for delivering public sector services.
From
SilverOrange - a nice set of simple tabs made up of a bullet list styled with CSS.
Serge announces ...
... the immediate availability of a reworked and improved discussion board for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal server providing last-post first views, a discussion thread view, and SWYRO (See What You Respond On). It is available on
http://spsutil.sourceforge.net.
More
MSDN Article:
Customizing List Item Forms in Windows SharePoint ServicesEnhance and extend interaction with lists in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services when customizing forms used to work with list items.
MSDN Article:
Enabling SSL Protection on MCMS SitesLearn how to set up Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for your Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 site.
Microsoft have made available Community Technology Preview versions of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and new reporting features for SQL Server 2000.
Downloads:
MSDN Article:
Fiddler PowerToy - HTTP DebuggingFiddler is an HTTP debugging proxy that logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler enables you to inspect all HTTP traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler is much simpler to use than NetMon or other network debuggers because it exposes only HTTP traffic and does so in a user-friendly format.
More / Download -
http://www.fiddlertool.com
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Scott Guthrie on Channel 9 ... covering:
- History of the ASP.NET project
- XHTML and Accessibility Standards in Whidbey
- New IIS7 architecture and design
- Managed code and our philosophy for betting on it with ASP.NET
- RSS and cool things you could do with it
- Tracing/Eventing
- Why Apache devs will like IIS7
- App-Domains and how we use them
- Lots more
Episode 1 :
Episode 2
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
The Telerik
MCMScontrols.com site has gone live.
The free MCMS radEditor has now been tagged as the Lite version to distinguish it from the Premium version that is now supplied as part of the Controls Suite. Though it is the Lite version it is no way shackled and continues to offer MCMS authors rich editing functionality.
