SharePoint Daily for December 2, 2008

Top News Stories
Want to Get SharePoint but Stay on Lotus Notes? Here's How (Computerworld)
Microsoft Corp.'s SharePoint collaboration server software is, by many accounts, a huge hit, providing that seemingly irresistible formula of solid technology for free or at a low price. Paired with Microsoft Office, SharePoint's document collaboration capabilities have proved so irresistible that Microsoft is touting SharePoint, not Exchange e-mail server, in order to lure IBM Lotus Notes users over to the Microsoft stack.

Microsoft Slashes VS 2008 Prices (Redmond Developer News)
While showcasing additional functionality for its forthcoming Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft said it will be slashing the price of the existing 2008 version of its integrated tooling environment. The company announced discounts of as much as 30 percent for Visual Studio 2008 at last month's TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The VS 2008 price promotions are designed to provide discounts to developers using competitive products and to those already in the Microsoft ecosystem who may want to upgrade to the Microsoft Developer Network or Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).

Microsoft Shuts Down CSF Development (Telephony Online)
Microsoft has informed its telecom service provider customers that it is removing its Connected Services Framework product from the market and will no longer be developing new functions for the CSF. The move is a significant one for Microsoft, indicating the failure of its major Telco 2.0 initiative to develop a service delivery platform that could be widely deployed, but it is also a significant indication that the telecom industry has not moved as quickly to embrace a common approach to service delivery.

Do You Trust the Cloud With Your Data? (Tech Radar)
Cloud computing sounds like a good idea on the surface. You store your data and run both your email and web applications on someone else's servers over the Internet, accessing everything from wherever you happen to be.

Agile for a New Age (SD Times)
Ask Jim York what it takes to master agile methods, and he points to the skill set of a team known for silliness, not software: Drew Carey and the ensemble cast of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” York, founder of Virginia-based agile training and consulting firm FoxHedge, runs improvisational-
theater-style seminars that teach developers to think on their feet. Like improv, he noted, agile development sets a few basic rules and then lets participants run with the project, summoning their creativity to flesh out the concept. In his classes, developers are assigned scenarios and must then work together to “act” their way out of them, much as the cast does on Carey’s TV show.

Microsoft Program Sparking Start-Ups (Redmond Developer News)
Hundreds of start-ups have signed up and more than 1,000 have expressed interest in Microsoft's new effort -- called BizSpark -- to seed them with assorted tools, technologies and connections. Through BizSpark, launched last month, Microsoft will offer fledgling commercial software makers with access to a spate of Microsoft's development tools, server products, production licenses and technical support. Included in the program is a three-year, professional subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network, whose members have access to tools and platform technologies for building, testing and maintaining applications built on the Microsoft platform, including Visual Studio and .NET Framework.

Holiday Sales Look Uncertain for Microsoft and PC Sellers (MSNBC)
Microsoft and PC makers are facing one of their most challenging holiday seasons in years as a result of the troubled economy, a shift toward lower-cost portable computers and the gap between major Windows releases. The only real question is how bad it will get.

Windows 7 Takes Flight (Redmond Developer News)
Developers who have labored to make their applications run well on Windows Vista should -- with a few notable exceptions -- be able to move over to Windows 7 with little effort. At least that's the initial verdict after an extensive review of the first pre-beta (6801) build of Microsoft's next operating system.

Vista: Two Years Later (eWeek)
Some kids sleep anxiously for fear parents will forget the big birthday. Two years ago yesterday, Nov. 30, Microsoft launched Windows Vista for businesses. But yesterday there was no fanfare, no obligatory look-back posts in commemoration—not even from Microsoft employee bloggers. Oh, my, what has Vista become?

Around the Blogosphere
TypeMock for SharePoint! (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
My colleague Tommy wrote a post about unit testing SharePoint applications a few weeks ago. I must admit that this is something that I have considered hard to apply to my SharePoint projects, and have therefore avoided it (with a very bad conscience). Luckily others have had been more proactive, like the guys at TypeMock. Their product now even supports mocking SharePoint objects like SPSite, SPWeb and SPList. I have realized that I no longer have any excuses, and that it's time to step into the world of unit testing. And it feels good to let that bad conscience go just before santa arrives! The guys at TypeMock even created a special SharePoint version of their product, at a lower price. Hoping to get a licence for free I'm posting their sales pitch:

A Tribute to the Humble Leave Form - Part 6 (SharePoint Magazine)
When I started this series of articles, I knew it would be quite a few parts and ambitious in its way. But after reading some of the other great articles on SharePoint Magazine, such as Bjørn Furuknap’s first article on customising the user experience, I’m now feeling like I picked the easiest topic of all! Seriously, Bjørn, part 1 of your series is the closest experience I can imagine to any man giving birth! I bet you feel relieved getting that one out of your system!

Workflow Foundation .NET 4.0 Not Quite the Cousin of Workflow Foundation 3.0/3.5 (Zlatan's Blog)
Check this out, it appears that WF 4.0 is a completely new framework, not related in any way to WF 3.0/3.5. Good news is that you can still use old 3.0/3.5 activities as long as you wrap them in a interop activity. Now this is not really bad news, reality of the situation is that, albeit I (think I) am maybe one of the biggest fans of WF (and many months ago this was my first .NET 3.5 certification) and there is quite a bit of us out there, I found that most junior and intermediate developers find it difficult to understand and they're quick to give up on it from the start, even some (not just a few) senior developers seemed scared of it.

Announcing SharePoint PowerShell Deploy on CodePlex (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
It is an pleasure to announce the first of our two new SharePoint projects on Codeplex.com: Project Description: SharePoint PowerShell Deploy is a set of PowerShell files to help you build, deploy, upgrade and destroy a SharePoint farm. It can be used on development machines as well as test and production scenarios. Background information and thoughts about the project are available at this blog entry

Adding a Link to the Site in SharePoint Search Results (Ton Stegeman)
In the SharePoint search results page users get a link to the document or the listitem. It is very easy to add a link to every item to the site that contains the item. The steps below show how you can add that link to every item:

How can I Manage Media File Types in SharePoint? (EndUser SharePoint)
I need the users to be able to view video clips in MOSS. The clips will be saved in a doc library. What are the options available? [There is] no standard [file type], they have different video files recorded in different ways (digi camera, phones, downloaded clips etc..) They only need just to click on the file and view… something similar to youtube.

Installing WSS and Search Server Express to Make a Search and Collaboration Appliance (Ian's SharePoint Blog)
WSS is great and Search Server Express is great, put the two together and you have an awesome collaboration and search solution in one. But Search Server Express includes WSS so why install both of them?

SharePoint Defaults Have Faults (SharePoint Joel)
In all my work to encourage people to implement best practices, I've found that those that say, hey I'll go with default often find chaos down the road.  The Governance and Deployment checklist I did a while back, as a product manager on the SharePoint team, was designed to help people know what the choices are, and provide awareness to the choices.  Heather Solomon shared her site checklist for new sites.  I hate to hold up a well thought out deployment.  That isn't my design.  I'm sure that defaults will at least give me something to work with that I can plan and scale later.  Defaults are not best practices by any means.  The Defaults are essentially focused around the least amount of clicks to evaluate the product.

Around Bamboo Nation
Folder Name Headings in your SharePoint Shared Documents? (SharePoint Blank)
A question came in via email recently which immediately generated a chuckle, since the message began, "As you seem to be quite expert on the whole SharePoint thing..."  Though I certainly appreciate a compliment as much as the next blogger, modesty demands that I point out that the key word in that sentence fragment is seem.  I think I've learned a fairly respectable amount as a SharePoint end user over the past 6+ months, and that's due to a combination of factors (including the genuine SharePoint experts with whom I'm fortunate to work, the excellent instructors at Mindsharp and Learning Tree and, yes, my own inquisitive nature), but expert?  Nah, I'm just a fellow traveler, doing my bit for the community.

Microsoft Updates
Install updates for Microsoft Office 2007 Help (Help and How-to)
If your computer is connected to the Internet while you are using the programs in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, you already see the latest Help articles. If your computer is not connected to the Internet, you see the Help articles that were included on the 2007 Microsoft Office system CDs. If you can't connect to the Internet while you are using an Office program, you can now see the latest Help articles by downloading and installing updated Help files.

SharePoint Events
December 2, Chicago, Illinois, The Chicago Microsoft SharePoint Business Strategies Group
December 2, Grand Rapids, Michigan, West Michigan SharePoint User Group
December 2, Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville SharePoint Users Group
December 2, San Diego, California, San Diego .NET Developers Group Meeting
December 3, New York, New York, New York City SharePoint User Group
December 3, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
December 3, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
December 4, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, South Florida SharePoint Users Group
December 4, Kansas City, Kansas, Kansas City Office Geeks
December 4, Online, Bamboo Recent Product Releases
December 8, Zaventem , Belgium, Belux Information Worker User Group
December 9, Southfield, Michigan, Southeastern Michigan SharePoint User's Group
December 9, Tampa, Florida, TOGA User Group Meeting
December 10, Bloomington, Minnesota, Minnesota SharePoint User Group
December 10, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Colorado Springs SharePoint User Group
December 10, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
December 10, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
December 10, San Diego, California, Southern California SharePoint User Group
December 11, Puget Sound, Washington, Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group
December 11, San Francisco, California, San Francisco SharePoint Users Group
December 11, Reston, Virginia, SharePoint User Group of the District of Columbia
December 15, Amman, Jordan, Jordan SharePoint User Group
December 17, Iselin, New Jersey, NJ SharePoint User Group
December 18, Online, Bamboo Recent Product Releases
December 18, Louisville, Kentucky, Kentucky SharePoint Users Group
December 18, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Hampton Roads SQL Server and SharePoint User Group
December 24, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group

January 27-29, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon

February 2-4, San Diego, California, SharePoint Best Practices Conference

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

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