Microsoft Cuts 3000 Jobs, Windows 7 RC Available to Public, SharePoint Online Review

Top News Stories
SharePoint Online (SaaS) Review - What it is and Isn't (CMS Wire)
With the number of on-premise SharePoint installs going no where but up, one has to wonder why Microsoft has also gone to the trouble of building an online (SaaS) version. In an interview with Redmond's Director of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), Tom Rizzo indicated the move was in part to reach new customers and grow revenue more efficiently — keeping up with the Joneses also comes to mind.

Microsoft BI Team Gears Up for 2010 (Intelligent Enterprise)
Microsoft announced last week that its next Business Intelligence Conference, originally slated for October 2009 in Seattle, has been pushed back one full year to October 2010. I thought this event was on an 18-month cycle to begin with, so I wasn't disappointed. I also wasn't surprised given that Microsoft BI exec Guy Weismantel shared that news with Intelligent Enterprise earlier in the week as part of a press tour. Weismantel also said the much-anticipated Gemini (in-memory technology) and Kilimanjaro (scale-out data warehousing) releases are on track for the first half of 2010. So won't a Fall 2010 event be anti-climactic?

Ballmer on Microsoft's New Layoffs Notices (CNET)
In the wake of handing out 3,000 layoff notices Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent an e-mail to staff. Ballmer characterized the cuts as the second phase of the plan announced in January. At the time, Microsoft said it would cut 5,000 jobs over an 18-month-period. With the cuts made in January and those announced on Tuesday, Microsoft has now nearly eliminated all those positions.

Oracle Beehive Activity Starts Buzzing (ZDNet)
Oracle Beehive, which quietly launched a year ago this month, and was more noisily celebrated at last fall’s OpenWorld, has some additional new functionality updates announced this week. “As organizations rely increasingly on collaboration software to drive both communication and business process efficiency, repackaged groupware and point solutions are proving to be costly and difficult to manage on an enterprise scale. With its unified platform, Oracle Beehive provides enterprise-ready collaboration in a single, easy-to-manage system with a low total cost of ownership,” said David Gilmour, senior vice president, Collaboration Technologies, Oracle.

Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) Public Download Links Are Live (Softpedia)
It looks like Microsoft has learned its lesson with the delivery of Windows 7 Beta Build 7000. The Redmond company jumped the gun on the pre-announced deadline for the availability of the Release Candidate development milestone and started serving the bits a day early, with downloads running smooth. At this point in time, both the 32-bit and the 64-bit flavors of Windows 7 RC are available for public download. What does this mean? Unlike on April 30, when only MSDN and TechNet subscribers were allowed access to the bits, now all users can download their own copy of Windows 7 RC Build 7100.0.090421-1700, completely free, as well as get the product keys from Microsoft to activate the platform.

Can Microsoft Cope as Windows 7 RC Goes Live?  (PC Pro)
The Release Candidate of Windows 7 is available for download now, with Microsoft pleading for patience in a bid to avoid a rush on its servers. Windows 7 Release Candidate: start from scratch or upgrade the beta? Read our verdict here.

Google’s Enterprise Strategy May Be Solid After All (Tech Crunch IT)
There has been some doubt lurking in the trenches about whether Google has a solid, organized enterprise strategy. But there have been some recent developments that indicate that Google might have a viable game plan to become a player in the enterprise space. Yesterday, Google rolled out Google Apps Directory Sync, a tool that will let businesses sync the user account information in Google Apps with Microsoft Active Directory or Lotus Domino. Google says it’s using technology from Postini, security and compliance company Google acquired in 2007, to import information from users’ LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) systems, which includes mailing lists, groups, and user aliases, to a user’s Google Apps account. This utility will help many businesses, schools etc. who are currently using Google Apps save a lot of time and energy when it comes to importing information to their Google Apps system.

Microsoft Shows Off The Power Of Facebook’s New APIs (Tech Crunch)
Earlier this week Facebook made the landmark (and long-awaited) announcement that it was going to enable the “Open Stream“, granting developers far more access and flexibility to Facebook data than they had before. To commemorate the event, Facebook held a special Technology Tasting at its Palo Alto office, where it gave everyone an idea of exactly what developers could do with the new data.

Microsoft's Slow-moving Cloud May Overshadow Rivals (Reuters)
On the face of it, Microsoft stands to be the biggest loser in the cloud computing revolution if it means big companies jettison software on their own computers and move to handling information entirely on the Web. The upside for the world's largest software company is that such a revolution is moving very slowly, if at all. And by the time it does arrive, Microsoft could have levered itself into position to emerge a big winner.

Around the Blogosphere
3 Minute Screencast: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Metadata (End User SharePoint)
Yesterday on Twitter we had a discussion going on how to approach the topic of metadata with End Users. The discussion moved over to a post here called Folders in doc libraries are metadata cries for help. When it came to the topic of moving documents in bulk into a library and attaching metadata, Sharon from Joining Dots suggested a way and I suggested another. In this screencast, you’ll see how to move large amounts of documents into a library while attaching the correct metadata to each document.

Fix for Event ID 53258 – MS DTC Could Not Correctly Process a DC Promotion/Demotion Event (Brain Litter)
I've run into this enough times lately to warrant creating a visual walk-through of the fix. There is a KB article, if you like lots of words – but as always, a picture is worth a 1000 sandwiches...

Virtual PC 7 for Win 7 (Owen Allen - The MOSS Garden)
Virtual PC 7 is available now for download and inclusion with your copy of Win 7 RC. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx. It’s working like a champ.  I’ve got it running on my Lenovo T61p laptop, and a virtual Win 7 machine running.  In the virtual Win 7 machine, I can run my “legacy” copies of Microsoft Office so that I can be ready to test new copies whenever and wherever they come from.  ;-)

Portal / Blogging Solutions and Some Thoughts (zevenseas)
As probably a few people know I’m a big fan of Wordpress and Drupal. I know they are not always Enterprise ready but still SharePoint can learn from these two. A lot seems to be about manageability inside SharePoint but that is the number one thing users don’t care about at all and why should they? There is a good article posted by Dion Hinchcliffe on some of the issues with SharePoint. His line: Traditional enterprise systems, including SharePoint, tend to be more rigid in their ability to be shaped by users and too often force users into pre-determined uses rather than letting the users shape the use of the tools to best fit the work.

Around Bamboo Nation
Skyline Technology Enterprise Portal Summit - Sky's the Limit! (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Sky really is the limit for our Partner Advantage Program member, Skyline Technologies! This free half-day event on April 30, 2009 drew 100+ attendees to the EAA Aviation Center's Vette Theater in Oshkosh, WI. Attendees were able to hear about and see highlights from some of the work that Skyline has performed for customers on the MOSS 2007 platform.  The event provided a forum for discussion for the decision makers in attendance to help them understand what thought processes and decisions went into planning, approving, developing and deploying specific portal solutions.

How do you Bamboo? (Runzheimer International) (The Bamboo Team Blog)
It's always gratifying to hear how our products are helping customers meet their everyday goals in the workplace. We spend a great deal of time developing, testing, and fine-tuning our products, but we never want to lose sight of our end goal - enabling you to improve your business performance through SharePoint web parts.  With this in mind, we ask you "How do you Bamboo?" so that we may learn from your experience, and share how our products are having a real impact on real companies. This week: Jeff Lundberg from Runzheimer International.

SharePoint Saturday DC - Calendaring in SharePoint, How did it go? (The Bamboo Team Blog)
With our Calendaring in SharePoint session at SharePoint Saturday DC behind us, I thought I'd recap a few highlights in order to tell you how it went and pass along some of the calendaring tidbits in case you couldn't be there:

KPIs - Using Bamboo KPI Column for Effective Project Management (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are valuable quantifiable measurements for quickly comparing the progress made against measurable goals, the end results of which reflect the critical success factors of an organization. SharePoint comes with Web Parts for presenting key performance indicators, but they are only available in the MOSS Enterprise edition. If you are running Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Server Standard, KPIs are not available. In this blog, I will share with you why KPIs are important to the success of a project, and introduce you to our upcoming Bamboo KPI Column.

Microsoft Updates
Sign In as different user does not clear the session and cookie values (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
If we have any session variables used in any custom Web Parts or any custom pages in SharePoint and these session variables are used to fetch data based on logged on user, then when we click on "sign in as different user" it does not clear out all the previous session values and cookies. This would not fetch us correct data in a custom Web Part. When we use custom authentication with ISAPI filters sitting on MOSS, sign in as different user throws an error 401 Unauthorized.

Event Handlers cannot be triggered by an anonymous user (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
When trying to perform an action on a SharePoint list as an Anonymous user you may see the following error message: An unexpected error has occurred. System.OutOfMemoryException: Server Out Of Memory.

Meta data change in a document library saves the entire document again in the database (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
When you edit the metadata of a document in a document library where versioning is enabled, the entire document will be saved again into the database.

SharePoint Job Listings**
Senior Developer- .Net - Full Training in SharePoint Provided! (Electronics Weekly)
Senior Developer required for MS Gold Partner in Marlow. An experienced Developer is required to work for a leading MS Gold Partner in Marlow. This role will involve taking on both a Consultancy position as well as a Senior lead. You can expect to remain hands-on as well as client facing in this exciting new role. To apply, you must have excellent ASP.Net 3.5, C# and exposure to SharePoint 2007. Please be aware, as this is a consultancy role you will be travelling 50% of the time, with the remainder time spent in the offices in Marlow. You will also be required to pass a Security Clearance to SC level.

Mixon Consulting, Inc. is Seeking a Senior SharePoint Information and Solution Architect
Candidates should have more than five years experience with the Microsoft Development platform as well as experience with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).  In addition to possessing a strong technical background, the individual must demonstrate strong communications, business analysis and leadership skills.

Bamboo Partner Events*
May 7, Online, Unleash the Collective Power Within a Media / Advertising / Publishing Company with SharePoint 2007 - InterDyn AKA
May 12, Online, Leveraging SharePoint for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Transparency - Dux Sy
May 20, New York, New York, Almost Summer SharePoint Happy Hour - DataLan

June 13, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Saturday
June 20, Charlotte, North Carolina, SharePoint Saturday

July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday

August 24-26, Washington, DC, Best Practices Conference - Mindsharp

SharePoint Events**
May 6, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 6, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 6, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
May 6, Dallas, Texas, SharePoint TechFest 2009
May 7, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 7, Online, 'What's New from Bamboo?' Webinar
May 7, Online, Unleash the Collective Power Within a Media / Advertising / Publishing Company with SharePoint 2007
May 7, Kansas City, Kansas, Office Developer User Group of Kansas City
May 11-15, Los Angeles, California, Microsoft Tech Ed North America 2009
May 12, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 12, Online, Leveraging SharePoint for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Transparency
May 12, Online, Setup jQuery in Your SharePoint Environment - Step by Step
May 13, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 13, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 13, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 14, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 14, Evansville, Evansville Indiana's SharePoint Group
May 19, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 20, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 20, New York, New York, Almost Summer SharePoint Happy Hour
May 21, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 26, Online, Deep Dive with jQuery: Create a Preview Pane
May 26, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 27, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 27, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 27, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
May 28, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
May 28, Online, 'What's New from Bamboo?' Webinar

June 11, Evansville, Indiana, Evansville Indiana's SharePoint Group
June 13, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Saturday
June 20, Charlotte, North Carolina, SharePoint Saturday
June 22-24, Boston, Massachusetts, SPTechCon
June 26-27, Dulles, Virginia, Regional SharePoint Users Conference 2009

July 2-3, Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference
July 13-16, New Orleans, Louisiana, Worldwide Partner Conference 2009
July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday
July 20-24, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp

August 24-26, Washington, DC, Best Practices Conference

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event  or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

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