Office 2007 SP1 Bug…

You little cracker

Before…

Copy format (using format painter) from the bulleted line and viola….

Greek? Wow.

This is the Business…

David Gristwood and Mike McClarey did an excellent day in Microsoft Edinburgh yesterday talking about Office Business Applications (OBA).

Geeks talking to geeks about BUSINESS stuff!!

They are very good presenters - Microsoft must have a special training department for devs like these.

They covered the bases, ticked the boxes and did the business. We could really do with more of this because it shows the dev community not only the business angle of developments but it rightly raises the profile of office applications integrating with LoB data.

My own favourite was the Sharepoint section (but I knew most of it already).

After Geektosterone… and Vista When the Sun Goes Down… at Falkirk 1, this was a great day with the devs. Bloody well done Dave and Mike.

Does a Lab Rat Like a Puzzle…

NO!

Technet is on the road, showing us Performance Point, Search Server and SQL2008 stuff. I went to the session on the first two, given by  Andrew Fryer and Viral Tarpara respectively.

Both excellent chaps and guys who I don’t hesitate to recommend for their respective specialisms. But, today at the Inchyra Grange hotel, Falkirk, they were so far off target that it could prompt a bad-taste joke.

Up-front-declaration; the technologies look great. Targeted tools for specific jobs. Does what it says on the tin (probably), no “yeah, but…” about them. Great stuff.

From Andrew, the quality of presentation was so far below MSFT standards, ouch; demo rule #1 = know it, practice it. Unfamiliarity with the product is not excusable in this forum. On top of that, the balance of the whole set was out. It wasn’t clear if he thought he was addressing a business or technical audience!

Message to Viral, lose the graduated reflection from your slide titles! Grrr, that has become such a caricature even within the “Web2.0″ world. What a distraction.

Viral is a good presenter, eloquent, flowing - American. However, going off-piste is fun for a skier but it’s not a spectator sport.

Anyone past row 3 can only actually view half of the screen in that room and the small font on the Sharepointy style admin screens can’t be seen from half-way back.

Remember, it’s the audience’s gig, not yours.

I’ll repeat, the products look great - but this is actually the first time I’ve seen people walk out of an event like this.

We may have been lab rats but we don’t like being told it, especially when the experiment doesn’t work.

Samhuinn…

The Beltane Fire Society here in Edinburgh arranged a superb event to celebrate Samhuinn. All in all a great little spectacle. Mobile phone photos on Flickr.

The SpencePoint…

Spence is making his Sharepoint-as-an-Enterprise-Application-Platform point at length.

Take note - he knows whereof he speaks.

Oestroegenius

Jenny Eclair….

….the very words evoke a particular reaction.

We all have preconceptions about ‘celebs’ - our emotional, visceral and intellectual reaction to how they look, behave and sound. We make judgements - snap, easy, glib judgements. I like to think my judgements are right. I’m accustomed to being right, usually, sometimes.

Many people have heard of Ms Eclair, seen her on various TV programs, but fewer will have seen her on stage. When she appeared in Edinburgh on Sunday, I was happy to along expecting a pleasant evening of slightly nutty, slightly grumpy stand-up.

What I wasn’t expecting was the hour and a half of slick, energetic, continuous, stream-of-hyper-consciousness humour that assaulted us from the moment she appeared. It simply didn’t let up. Running, jumping, rolling around. Constantly keeping up the routine, never relying on dialogue with the audience for a pause or a link. Fantastic. Leaving one quite à bout de souffle.

I have a new perception of Ms Eclair - one which she perhaps deserves more. Like she could care less Go see her if you get the chance.

60 today…

Congratulations to our friend Vicky (she’s not online hence no link). She is 60 today and working very hard.

However, putting many of us youngsters to shame, to celebrate, she has run 60 miles this week and to date, has completed 60 half marathons.

Go girl.

Green Bits and Red Bits…

Now that’s my kind of talk. The essentials of meaning communicated using primary colours on a simple diagram. Not that the Microsoft .Net stuff is simple but it’s distilling it down to pictures that helps me.

This post .NET Framework 3.5 explains in a graphical way how, ay a high level, v2, v3 and v3.5 versions relate.

Neat, well done that man.

Green with a Hint of Blue…

Stevecla posted earlier a question about a colour combination which he thinks might be applied to Microsoft. This having been triggered by a post from a chap called Seth Godin. (Sounds like he’s getting his retaliation in first, or maybe Seth spoke to a Microsoftie).

Now…hands-up…OK… I don’t follow Seth’s blog or read his stuff, but this is my own take on Steveo’s view and what I think this means.

Steve thinks that Microsoft if kind of blue (= innovative) for having stuff like XBOX, Zune, popfly,home server, media centre with photosynth, seadragon and surface coming through their youth academy.

Well Steve…

XBOX is a PC, which plays games, but it’s a PC - pure emerald. (Now, XBOX live I think does give you a platform for innovation in service)

Zune is a music player only a few generations removed from the tape-playing Walkman and playing catchup with the iPod, it is a dead-end innovation-wise until you can, maybe make a phone call with it or pay e-cash with it - then it becomes just another mobile phone.- lime green.

Popfly, cute name, Frontpage on the web, hacks web pages together for the Common Man - no blueness here.

Home Server - it’s cut-down Windows Server 2003, a classic marketing re-package to snag a new market - greeeeeen. (Yes the marketing text books tell you that’s innovation but not in my version of the tech industry).

Media Centre - it may be getting out of short trousers but it was available as an XP version - pick your favorite shade of green for this one.

As for the new boys: Photosynth - looks innovative, can’t tell for myself as the darn thing won’t do anything when I click install. Seadragon - I like the name, Microsoft liked it so much they bought the company - cash buys innovation, hmmm. Surface - very seductive but insufficient data to compute innovation quotient.

The real story of Microsoft innovation, for me, is about the core of the business - the flow of operating systems, server products, development products and all the software goodness. It is a bit of a bummer that so much focus has to fall on the shiny toys just because that’s what obsesses elements of the media - it really clouds the fantastic amount of stuff that Microsoft produces.

After the Gorilla, Here Come the Bunnies

It’s another must-see advert in the Sony Bravia Story. Uber Smile-making…

http://bravia.sony.eu/bravia.html

An Outlook Calendar is for Life, not just for Christmas…

This may be a sad and lonely feature in Outlook, possibly ignored, passed-by, left sitting on the Office street, pleading it’s case on a crudely-written piece of cardboard.

An honest, useful but ignored piece of functionality which may easily go un-noticed. It does not trumpet it’s own approach - there are no garish flashing lights announcing it’s arrival and there seem to be few who proclaim it’s presence or promote it’s use or even it’s exploitation.

Maybe…secretly…many of my colleagues are using this feature but are too coy or timid to say? Certainly, if it had been used, some puzzling over meetings may have been avoided.

Calendar Overlay Mode is a hidden gem. When viewing more than one calendar, you can overlay them semi-transparently - this gives you an easily-assimilated view of what various events/meetings are happening in these calendars at the same time.

In a small company, this should be invaluable - especially where people are covering a number of projects or activities. Open and overlay their calendar and you know at-a-glance what is planned, what is coming up, when people might be out of the office etc. The calendar can, of course also come from a Sharepoint list or other compatible feeds so is useful for wider collaboration.

Yes, there are other ways of find out this stuff but we are still primarily visual animals and having a decent amount of information on a single page to scan for patterns is tremendously useful.

Still Hurts…

Proof, though none is needed, that although time dims the memory of some events, others only lie dormant - this post (very eloquent for a policeman) - touched a nerve for me. If you’ve ever had to do it, you’ll understand.

Vista When the Sun Goes Down…

After hours - is Vista a Jekyll and Hyde character, would James Senior and Matt McSpirit reveal hidden depths to our new best friend in the OS world? or would Vista turn out to be an Ovaltine and slippers type?

Well…compared to the earlier presenters during the virtualisation day (see my earlier post), James and Matt were more Colin and Justin. As with their gig on the EVO tour, this was straight-forward stuff revealing very little, if anything, which was not fairly well-known. Particularly disappointing was the gratuitous injection of Photosynth and Virtual Earth (the fly around 3d New York) which is all sooooo old.

The one interesting item was the Windows Home Server. This was presented on a TranquilPC fan-less box around 2/3 the size of an XBox360 - very cute. WHS is 2003-based and seems to be spawning system add-ins like wake-on-LAN, DHCP, web photo hosting - very open and ‘community’ but I wonder though how this sits with Microsoft’s trustworthy computing - I suppose the SDK probably shields the system from anything dodgy??? Hmmmm….

I am looking forward to James’ presentation in Edinburgh later this year to hopefully see something more substantial.

Evan-jelly-call…

I’m sure Microsoft probably didn’t have any input into the specifics of the content of the brown-bags. However, the busy-busy day of virtualisation was only slightly dislocated by the sheer incongruity of finding a bag of Jelly Tots in my lunch bag.

That brought a smile…..thanks.

Geektosterone…

…is that special hormone which emanates when a group of geeks get together at a technical event. Earnest-face suits rub shoulders with the pierced and bearded, shiny leather shoes shuffle next to trainers and chrome-accessorised platform boots. The Macdonald Inchyra Grange Hotel reeked of geektosterone yesterday.

This was a Microsoft Technet event on Virtualisation - but an event with a big difference. Minimal PPT (from Steve’s blog), maximum hands-on demo. James and Steve are like Morcambe and Wise crossed with the Chuckle Brothers.

But the combination of real in-your-face doing-it-on-the-fly techno show supported with deep knowledge delivered with rapid-fire (if contrived but slick) presentation made it like a day-long, 300 level, on-demand webcast played at 1.5x speed without a pause button. The content was excellent, kind of ‘everything you need to know to start messing with Windows Deployment Services, virtualisation and some baby-steps clustering thrown in for good measure’. Great stuff.

They can now do us a big favour by providing a suite of VMs a la Demo Showcase with what they showed pre-configured for us to play with. Given how fast they showed it being out together, this shouldn’t be a big task. Thanks in advance guys

Given what they provided in content it could be a bit mean-spirited to bitch about the logistics - not enough places to sit during the breaks, not getting back into the presentation room to sit down during the breaks (I can live with the brown bag lunch).

Groove/Sharepoint - Hmmmm…

This brief Microsoft article puts and answers some When/Why type questions on Groove and Sharepoint. While this is a slightly longer article (in English) from a French partner.

Because You Need the Answer…

After lots of years working for a Microsoft Gold Partner, I’m not often stumped when launching into a new software product but Groove is New-to-Me. I’m looking forward to it doing interesting and marvelous things for me but…I couldn’t immediately figure is it peer-to-peer or is it a server-based product.

It is both, or either - suit yourself. However, you won’t find this question (Do I need Microsoft Office Groove Server-) asked (or answered) on the Microsoft Groove Server product site.

Now Showing in a Cinema Near You…

Windows2000 - the star of the show. A glitch at the start of the screening took the projection PC through a boot sequence.

Rose Rising…

The irresistible rise of PINK wine continues a-pace. The Grande Dame of PINK, Mateus, now offers 3 different shades of the stuff and every brand and his dog seem to have gone PINK.

Meanwhile the clever boys at Stormhoek, led by the redoubtable Macleod-borg are pushing PINK wine as a classy way to dress - spotted in Edinburgh, Couture on an A-board.

Mini Cray…

I grew up with Cray in my mind as the gold standard of Computers That Go Fast - I know it’s different nowadays.

Looking around the room here, I can’t imaging many of the guys not wanting a rig like Scott Hanselman’s. Follow the links to the articles (part 1, part 2, part 3) on it’s build - this thing should have go-faster stripes.

Imaging not having to wait for your computer to do stuff.

Imagine not having Vista eating 100% of your (single Pentium M 1.6Ghz) processor after coming off standby.

I can only imagine…