SharePoint Daily for December 4, 2008

Top News Stories
Microsoft Puts Datacentres on Wheels (ZDNet)
In a blog posting on Tuesday, Microsoft detailed what the "generation four" datacentres will look like. "This is a significant step forward, and one that Microsoft believes will reshape how companies build datacentres and support cloud computing," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.

Top Ten Tech for 2009 (MoneyWeb)
Gartner, Inc. analysts highlight technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organisations in the coming year.

Keeping Pace With Disaster Recovery (InfoWorld)
Roughly five years ago, I wrote a book titled "Enterprise Storage Solutions" that centered on the latest and greatest in disaster recovery methodology: SANs, NAS devices, Fibre Channel, robotic arm tape libraries -- the works. With disk space getting cheaper and cheaper, solutions such as backup-to-disk-to-tape were all the rage.

Liferay's Social Office: A Budget, Cross-platform, MS SharePoint Alternative (Heise Open Source)
Open source enterprise portal vendor Liferay has announced a new collaboration product called Social Office. Liferay positions the software as a budget alternative to Microsoft's SharePoint. Social Office supports SharePoint's protocols, so that documents can be opened, saved, locked and edited in MS Office.

5 Must-Do Cyber Security Steps for Obama (CSO)
As President-Elect Obama focuses on two wars and a hemorrhaging economy, security experts are urging him to address five weak security links in America's cyber infrastructure that threaten the nation's defenses and financial institutions.

Visual Explorer: New Browser Built on Top of Internet Explorer (Read Write Web)
Today we came across Visual Explorer, a new browser that wants to provide users with a better, more tightly integrated browsing experience. Similar to what Flock does with Firefox, Visual Explorer is built on top of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and provides users with a new user interface, as well as a number of new features. While Flock focuses on integrating lots of social media services, Visual Explorer tries to provide its users with a more extensive set of general browsing features such as live previews for tabs or an enhanced download manager.

A Plea to the Windows Team: Don’t Make Windows 7 too Mac-like (ZDNet)
Blogger Paul Thurrott has written a couple of interesting posts about the difference between “simple” and “easy” in the context of Windows 7. Sure, Windows 7 is still in the pre-beta phase, meaning the user-interface elements still will be tweaked considerably before the product is released to manufacturing. But Thurrott raises a number of points that left me nodding my head in agreement.

Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD Coming in January (PC Magazine)
Attendees at upcoming Microsoft Developer Conferences (MDC) will receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD, the software giant announced Tuesday. Microsoft will host 11 MDCs from Dec. 9 until Feb. 19 in cities throughout the country. Attendance costs $99 per person.

Around the Blogosphere
SharePoint Magazine Talks to Bjørn Furuknap About his Upcoming Book "Building the SharePoint User Experience" (SharePoint Magazine)
SharePoint Magazine has spoken with Bjørn Furuknap, the author of the upcoming book “Building the SharePoint User Experience” and the related article series “Customizing the SharePoint User Experience” right here on SPM. We asked him about his book, the articles, and writing online.

Unit Testing MOSS Part 1 (of 2) (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
Some of our team members, including me and Frank Jusnes, were recently responsible for providing recommendations on how to unit test in SharePoint projects, and this is an overview of our findings and experiences. This is the first of two posts on the subject giving an overview. In the second post we are aiming for more examples and explanations.

Comments on the Wrox Books for Search and Design (Mike Walsh)
I recently received two recent Wrox books. Professional Microsoft Search - SharePoint 2007 and Search Server 2008 & Professional SharePoint 2007 Design. One major difference between them is that the first deals ONLY with Search. The second on the other hand extends the boundaries of what is "Design" way past anything I would consider to be design and is in fact for me more of a mixed bag of interesting but isolated chapters on a wide range of topics.

JQuery for Everyone: Accordion Left Nav (EndUser SharePoint)
Last night, I set out on a mission; a mission to create an accordion-style left navigation menu for my WSS test site.  Mission complete.  If you can copy/paste, you can see it in action.  Since I used Google’s API to load jQuery, you don’t even need to download the library file.

Building Cloud Based Applications of the Future for SharePoint Online and Windows Azure (SharePoint Joel)
If building a webpart for SharePoint Online is your goal, you should look no further than the mantra no assemblies required. I did a post by that same title where I speak of assembliless internet widgets that are essentially lightweight javascript widgets which essentially pass a few variables to a secondary server.  As the move to the Online space with Azure and SharePoint and Exchange online.  I expect to see partners and developers trying and wrap their head around this space.  So far, I haven't seen anything impressive in terms of integration and real development in the hosted space.  (LiteSuite, is a noble attempt at seeing SharePoint facebook integration, the charts look nice but it's so new I haven't heard about it yet.)  I'm hoping this will kick off some thinking.

Around Bamboo Nation
Applying a Filter to a SharePoint List (SharePoint Blank)
I've mentioned filters in passing a few times in the past, but it occurred to me earlier today that I've never really lingered over the topic.  As regular readers have probably sussed out by now, such realizations tend to lead to dedicated blog posts, and today won't be any exception.  I'm limiting this initial look at filtering to the basics of working with filters in a single list view, but this is a topic that I will likely return to in the future with some fancier data manipulation methods (read: after I've learned them).

Introducing the ESP Content Editor (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Thanks for all the feedback on the Upload Wizard and the Dynamic Quick Launch Master Page. It's great to see folks out there downloading and using those free tools. In the spirit of the holidays, I've put another free tool out in Bamboo Media: The ESP Content Editor is a free web part that extends the built-in content editor web part to allow on-page editing and a few other nifty features.

Microsoft Updates
Demo: Streamline Business Processes with Forms and Workflows (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides many features that can help you integrate and streamline your business processes. You can use the InfoPath Forms Services server technology in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create browser-based forms and gather data from organizations that do not use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. People in those organizations can complete forms in a Web browser or HTML-enabled mobile device. Workflows automatically move documents or items through a sequence of actions or tasks related to a business process. Workflows can streamline the cost of coordinating common business processes, such as project approval or document review, by managing and tracking the tasks involved with those processes.

Introduction to InfoPath Forms Services (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
InfoPath Forms Services is a server technology built on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as an ASP.NET version 2.0 application. It enables users to fill out Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms by using a Web browser instead of, or in addition to, the Office InfoPath 2007 client program. This allows wider access to forms than was possible with previous versions of Microsoft Office InfoPath. In addition, InfoPath Forms Services provides a central location to store and manage form templates for your organization.

Add a Digital Signature to a Browser-enabled Form (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
A digital signature is the electronic equivalent of your handwritten signature on a check, credit-card charge slip, or contract, but it’s even better than a written signature. When you add a digital signature to a Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 form, the signature is invalidated if the information is changed by anyone but you.

SharePoint Events
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 16, New York, New York, Leveraging SharePoint and the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure – Programs, Products, and Prizes!
December 17, Iselin, New Jersey, NJ SharePoint User Group
December 17, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
December 17, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
December 18, Online, What's New from Bamboo
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
December 30, Online, What's New from Bamboo

January 7, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 7, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 14, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 14, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 15, Online, What's New from Bamboo
January 21, New York, New York, 2009 IMAGINE Event -- SharePoint in the Real World
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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