SharePoint Daily for August 22, 2008

Top News Stories
Zoho Share(point?) (ZDNet)
If there’s one thing I really like it is what I term ’self evident’ applications. These are apps that have a clear purpose and which are blindingly simple to use. Zoho Share falls squarely in that category.

MS Claims More than 450,000 Downloads of New SQL Server (TechWorld)
Microsoft has announced that more than 450,000 downloads have been recorded, to date, of the newly-launched version of SQL Server 2008. Speaking in Malaysia during the TechEd event in Kuala Lumpur, which attracted more than 3,200 participants, Microsoft Asia Pacific general manager, Server & Tools, Chris Sharp, said that the database management system provides new capabilities.

Tzunami Announces a New Version of Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration (PR.com)
Tzunami Inc., the pioneers and one of the leading providers of content migration technologies announced today the release of the latest version of its Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration. Version 2.3 provides enhanced features for migrating content from SharePoint 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) at a lower, fixed-price than alternative systems. Added benefits include full support for Site Templates and lists, maintaining list views, an improved Rule Engine to automate the migration process and overall user interaction.

Independents Seize On Success Of Microsoft's SharePoint (InformationWeek)
The popularity of Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration software has led to the birth of a cottage industry of suppliers who either enhance SharePoint's capabilities, or, in cases like open source Alfresco Software, seek to replace it.

Microsoft Details SharePoint-SQL 2008 Integration (Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine)
Microsoft really wants SharePoint users to upgrade to SQL Server 2008, which was released to manufacturing on August 6. Yesterday, the company's SharePoint hosting and development blog pointed out that IT admins don't have to wait for the documentation to do so.

XP: The OS That Wouldn't Go Away (Redmond Channel Partner)
There's more bad news for Microsoft regarding Vista, if you can believe that. This week, a company called Devil Mountain Software that tracks such things said that 35 percent of PCs end up with "downgrades" from Vista to XP.

How Safe is Cloud Computing? (Government Technology)
Everyone's talking about cloud computing. Some proponents even claim cloud computing will eventually take over the IT world and consolidate most technology departments under a few remaining CIOs who will be left to run the cloud. National Public Radio even proclaimed we may soon think about this new "utility computing" in the same way we think about using electricity - with all the information we need made available to businesses, homes and mobile workers by simply plugging into the cloud.

Around the Blogosphere
A SharePoint Twitter Web Part? (Michael Gannotti on SharePoint +)
I just ran across this on the web while looking to see if anyone has had success creating a Twitter plug-in for SharePoint. We just installed Moss 2007 and would like to have a site that follows specific Tweeters.

Anatomy of a SharePoint Solution: Blogs Home Screenshots (zevenseas)
This week, I kicked off a series of posts that describe the anatomy of an Employee Blogging platform we recently completed for a client. To keep things rolling I thought it might be useful to show you a few screenshots, because for me, visualising something early is always the best way to get a handle on a solution.

Track the Ranking of Your SharePoint Blog From the Sidebar (Waldek Mastykarz)
Back in May this year Joel Oleson has put together a list of the top 100 SharePoint blogs. That top 100 is ordered by the Technorati Rating (Rank) of each blog participating. Joel is planning to do an update soon, so come on and improve the ranking of your blog so you can make it to the top 100 too.

SharePoint Best Practices Conference Sells Out (Bill English Blog)
At roughly 3pm today, we were able to accept our last registrations for the SharePoint Best Practices Conference for September 15-17 in Washington, DC. We're looking forward to a great conference with roughly 35 speakers, Tom Rizzo keynoting this event and over 60 presentations. There are over 20 sponsors for this event too, so it should be a great time to kick back and talk more directly about the "why" of SharePoint.

Sharepoint Update Log - Part 1 (Ferrara Data Consulting)
It’s not everyday that you find a company or IT department that keeps a structured and updated “update log” for their systems, let alone Sharepoint. Updating your software is as easy as clicking a few buttons and trusting that everything will work as advertised. And for the most part, application updates really do what they are supposed to without causing outages. With communities, blogs and wikis for just about every application in existence, developers find it much easier to distribute test builds to the masses and receive responses rather quickly.

Around Bamboo Nation
Need to Delete a SharePoint List? (SharePoint Blank)
I touched on the topic of deleting lists once before, but in that instance the relevant information was buried at the end of my return-from-TechEd post.  Bad form, that.  Anyway, since I buried the lead before, and since (possibly as a result of having buried the lead before) I had another relatively new-to-SharePoint colleague ask me today how to delete a list, and since I discovered that the process is more straightforward than I'd previously thought, I'm going to revisit the topic today.

Bamboo Solutions Welcomes SysLogic to the Partner Advantage Program (The Bamboo Team Blog)
SysLogic is an information systems consulting and design firm located in Brookfield, Wisconsin.  SysLogic assists clients in a wide range of projects, from IT strategy to custom application development.

Happy Together (Bamboo Nation Forums)
Bamboo Web Parts - Great on their own, even better together. Alone, our Web Parts enhance SharePoint, but put them together and you’ve got the basis for a great application. Here are a few of our favorite combinations:

SharePoint Events
August 25-29, Sydney, Australia, SharePoint August Training Summit
August 26, San Antonio, Texas, San Antonio SharePoint User Group
August 26, Tampa, Florida, Tampa Office Geeks Association
August 26, Christchurch, New Zealand, Christchurch SharePoint User Group
August 26, Sydney Australia, Sydney SharePoint User Group
August 27, Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland SharePoint User Group
August 27, Melbourne, Australia, MOSSIG
August 27, Wellington, New Zealand, Wellington SharePoint User Group
August 28, Phoenix, Arizona, Arizona SharePoint Pros
August 28, Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland SharePoint User Group

September 1-3, Auckland City, New Zealand, TechEd New Zealand
September 2, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Microsoft SharePoint Business Strategies Group
September 3-5, San Francisco, California, Office2.0 Conference
September 4, Washington, DC, Federal & Military SharePoint Users Group of Washington D.C.
September 4, Kansas City, Office Developer User Group of Kansas City
September 8-9, Stockholm, Sweden, SharePoint & Exchange Forum
September 11, San Francisco, California, San Fransico SharePoint Users Group
September 11, Bellevue, WA, Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group
September 12, Brisbane, Australia, Brisbane SharePoint Usergroup
September 15-17, Washington, DC (McLean, Virginia), Best Practices SharePoint Conference
September 20/21, Waltham, Massachusetts, New England Code Camp 10

October 27-30, Los Angeles, California, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference

November 3-7 and 10-14, Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft TechEd
November 10-13, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Connections Conference

January 26-28, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon

* Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event in our listing.

Microsoft Updates
Updated Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint (with support for Silverlight 2 Beta 2) released to CodePlex! (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)
I'm very excited to announce that we have just released the an updated version of the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint that supports Silverlight 2 Beta 2! These blueprints were designed to provide developers with a better understanding of how to integrate Silverlight with SharePoint. Silverlight is an incredibly powerful technology, and with the increase in SharePoint adoption, we’re seeing greater customer and partner demand for integrating the two in order to provide a richer user experience.

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package: June 5, 2008 (KBAlertz)
This article describes the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 issues that are fixed in the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package that is dated June 5, 2008.

MS08-043: Description of the security update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: August 12, 2008 (KBAlertz)
Microsoft has released security bulletin MS08-043. To view the complete security bulletin, visit one of the following Microsoft Web sites:

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