Azure Business Plan to be Announced, Bing vs. Google, Microsoft Virtualization and the Cloud

Top News Stories
SharePoint is Biggest thing to Hit IT (ihotdesk)
The introduction of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 is one of the most significant developments to be seen in the IT industry, it has been claimed. Speaking at the recent AIIM Roadshow, Duncan Williams, sales and marketing director at Deltascheme, commented: "The arrival of SharePoint Server 2007 is without question the biggest thing seen in this industry since its inception."

Back with a Bing (FM Tech)
Microsoft doesn’t give up. CEO Steve Ballmer is determined to give Google a run for its money and, with the fourth rebranding of its Web search engine, the software giant may finally have come up with something to claw away market share from the leader. For the past few years, Microsoft has been having a tough time of it. Its last operating system for desktops, Windows Vista, was universally panned and, on the Web, it continued to lose market share to Google.

Poll: Which Web Office Suite Would You Pay For? Adobe or Google? (Read Write Web)
Today, Adobe announced that their online office suite at Acrobat.com is moving out of beta and they will begin offering both free and paid subscriptions to the web-based suite of applications. For consumers, the change won't have that much of an impact since the core services at Acrobat.com will remain free: Buzzword (the word processor), Presentations (slideshows, still in beta), and Tables (spreadsheets, new today). However, business users will now face a dilemma as Adobe begins to charge for PDF conversion as well as their web meetings product, Adobe ConnectNow.

Microsoft to Announce Azure Business Plan Next Month (CNET)
Microsoft plans to announce next month more of the business details behind its Windows Azure operating system. The software maker unveiled the cloud-based operating system at a developer conference last year. It has said that some of the services, currently in free testing, will be released in final form this year. The company has said that it will run Azure applications in its data centers and will charge users based on the computing resources they need.

Microsoft Talks Virtualization and Cloud (CNET)
Microsoft's Server and Tools Business did the virtual conference thing for industry analysts last week. Fellow analyst Judith Hurwitz ably describes the limitations of this format. I concur with much of what she writes. That said, I give Microsoft props for trying. A lot of companies have canceled or decided not to hold in-person events this year without making any real effort to put together an alternative. Limited interactivity and engagement aside, some of the pre-recorded videos were informative, STB President Bob Muglia was in typical energetic form, and I had good telephone discussions on a variety of topics.

IBM to Unveil Cloud Computing Products, Strategy: Report (eWeek)
IBM will announce a number of new cloud computing products and services June 16, according to The New York Times. In addition, IBM will unveil plans for a new research lab focused on cloud computing. The initial plans will be for a bundle of hardware, software and services aimed at software developers and testers, and another targeting virtual desktop envi-ronments. The moves come at a time when every major IT player, including HP, Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, are making deeper in-roads into the cloud.

IBM's Cloud Push Could Be Good for Google (Google Watch)
UPDATED: I want to take this opportunity to comment on IBM's big cloud push, which the company unfurled in an exclusive June 15 to the New York Times' Steve Lohr. (Mea culpa. An IBM spokesperson explained to me that Lohr in fact broke an embargo. This was not an exclusive.) GigaOm's Om Malik summarizes the offerings as consisting of: "Smart Business Test Cloud--a private cloud behind the client's firewall; Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud; and IBM CloudBurst, a comprehensive, preintegrated set of hardware, storage, virtualization and networking."

Bing vs. Google Rematch After Microsoft Upgrades Explicit Filtering (Beta News)
A few weeks ago, in our ongoing series of duels between the reigning champion search engine Google and the contender "decision engine" Bing, we gave Bing the edge in a battle of the image filters: With both search engines' explicit image filtering turned on, we were able to explore a very sensitive topic -- breast cancer -- and have Bing yield sensible and respectful, but sometimes graphic, images without presenting offensive content.

Windows 7 Gets a Better Grip on Power (Silicon.com)
Microsoft has made energy efficiency a key design element of Windows 7, focusing on better power management for end users and centralised tools for IT pros, company executives said Friday. Company engineers sought to make power management features more accessible than previous versions of Windows while at the same time, giving people the ability to customise settings.

Analysts: New iPhone Still Lacks Features IT Needs (Network World)
Apple Inc.'s new iPhone 3G S adds several features -- remote data-wiping capabilities, hardware-based encryption and the ability to be tethered to a laptop -- that are aimed at boosting its rank among IT executives.

Around the Blogosphere
Demoing Geneva Beta 2 with MOSS 2007 (edhild's WebLog)
I put together a little video demo of using Geneva Beta 2 stuff with MOSS 2007. You can get these VMs using the links from the previous post, but it is an awful lot to download and setup. So I thought a video might be appealing.

Final Call: Excel and SharePoint - I Didn’t Know You Could do that! (End User SharePoint)
Why does MOSS get to have all the fun with Excel? Sure WSS doesn’t have Excel Services, but there are still a few tricks we can pull to get some kind of working relationship between Excel and SharePoint. In this live online, hands-on workshop, Laura Rogers and Mark Miller will show you techniques that might not be so obvious when first starting to use SharePoint with Excel.

SharePoint Governance – Debategraph Style (Clever Workarounds)
Quick note: This is another of the sort of posts where I cannot help but feel that some readers will wonder what I have been smoking. It is not essential, but reading the “one best practice” series will provide a lot of background to this post. On the grand scale of world problems, your average messed up SharePoint project would not be considered particularly “wicked”. If you compare a haywire SharePoint project to the truly *global* wicked problems, such as global warming, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Tom Cruise, then it kind of makes you realise just how good we SharePoint architects, developers and engineers have it. I mean, hey, if a bunch of nerds can’t make little ol’ SharePoint a success, what hope do we have for the big issues like making Tom Cruise less of a tool?

Around Bamboo Nation
Spotlight on Mark Miller, SharePoint Rock Star (Spotlighting the Rock Stars of SharePoint)
Mark Miller is the founder and editor of EndUserSharePoint.com, an absolutely indispensible resource for SharePoint end users.  Having assembled a team of regular contributors to EndUserSharePoint.com that includes some of the most respected names in SharePoint (including his fellow SharePoint Rock Star, Joel Oleson), the site is well on its way to realizing Mark's vision of being the "central repository for all SharePoint End User information."  In our wide-ranging feature interview, Mark discusses everything from his own unique path to SharePoint, to the increasing importance of social media as a tool to more effectively serve SharePoint end users, the evolution of EndUserSharePoint.com, and much, much more.

Creating a SharePoint Document Workspaces via Word 2007 (Part 3): The Document Management Pane (SharePoint Blank)
Having successfully created a Document Workspace from Word on Friday, it's now time to look at the SharePoint integration features which are available in the Document Management pane from within Word:

Guest Blog by BlueThread's Rob D'Oria - Why is that BLOB in My SharePoint Database? (The Bamboo Team Blog
As you know, SharePoint stores the BLOBs (Binary Large Objects) associated with documents and attachments in a SQL Server database, specifically the AllDocStreams and AllDocVersions tables within a given content database.  While this may seem like a good idea to some, it's hard to derive any benefit from the approach.  One could try to argue that it simplifies backup/restore and disaster recovery scenarios, but that argument starts to fall apart quickly as the size of the content databases grows exponentially.  At that point you're left with incremental and full backup times that exceed available windows and an unnecessarily bloated database that will impact performance and create scalability challenges.

SharePoint Job Listings**
SharePoint Developer
As SharePoint Administrator/Developer you will be responsible for the day-to-day administration, support, and maintenance of various SharePoint portals and websites.
You must have extensive organizational skills in the design, development, implementation, support, and management of Web infrastructure technologies, Web services, and multiple SharePoint farm instillations. Train personnel in routine daily use of SharePoint portal. Design and develop, using C#, custom SharePoint web parts, web controls, and workflows.

SharePoint Developer
The SharePoint developer will be responsible for the designing, developing, and service delivery of a business solution built on SharePoint. Work includes upgrading current application, master pages and page layouts to be displayed via a firm standard PDA device.

SharePoint Administrator
This person will be responsible for design, architecture, availability, reliability, performance, monitoring, and security of public and private SharePoint servers. This person works with design team to create new and update existing SharePoint websites; and provides end-user training as needed.

Microsoft Updates
Description of the Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Xlsrvapp.msp): April 30, 2009 (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
This article describes the Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 issue that is fixed in the Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2007 that is dated April 30, 2009. This article describes the following items about the hotfix package:

Create a library (Windows SharePoint Services)
A library is a location on a site where you can create, collect, update, and manage files with team members. Each library displays a list of files and key information about the files, which helps people to use the files to work together. You can create and manage documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and other types of files in a library. The Shared Documents library is created for you when Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services creates a new site. You can customize the library for your purposes, or you can create additional libraries.

Moving your team online with Windows SharePoint Services technology (Office System TechCenter)
Does the following situation sound familiar? Your team needs to communicate and share documents and ideas. Your organization wants you to move from paper, phone calls, e-mail messages, and shared folders to online collaboration with Windows SharePoint Services technology. You’ve got a brand-new, out of the box SharePoint site, you own it, and you’re not sure what to do. If this describes your situation, you’re trying to move your team online. Moving your team online can seem like a complex process and you may not know where to begin. Here’s how to get started as your team moves online with a SharePoint site.

Add RSS Feeds to your SharePoint site (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a widely used technology for transmitting information across the Internet and intranets. Many Web sites offer RSS Feeds you can subscribe to so you can get the latest information from the source automatically. You can also subscribe to RSS Feeds from SharePoint libraries, lists, and other elements, so you can see when someone adds a document or changes a list item, for example.

Use the CSS Properties task pane (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
You can use the CSS Properties task pane in tandem with an open Web page, external CSS file, or with the Manage Styles task pane to review and change the properties and values of existing styles. When you use the CSS Properties task pane with a Web page, the task pane enables you to quickly see all of the styles that the current selection in your Web page uses, the order of precedence of those styles, and all of the properties and values of those styles.

Bamboo Partner Events*
June 18, Online, Better Together: Microsoft CRM and SharePoint - StreamLogic
June 20, Charlotte, North Carolina, SharePoint Saturday
June 22-24, Boston, Massachusetts, SPTechCon - Innovative-e
June 23, Basingstoke, UK, SharePoint Showcase Event - ICS Solutions

July 11, Toronto, Ontario, SharePoint Saturday
July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday
July 25, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint Saturday

August 8, Sydney, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 15, Adelaide, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 22, Copenhagen, Denmark, SharePoint Saturday
August 24-26, Washington, DC, Best Practices Conference - Mindsharp

SharePoint Events**
June 16, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
June 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
June 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
June 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
June 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 17, Reston, Virginia, CloudCamp Washington, DC
June 18, Online, What’s New from Bamboo? Webinar
June 18, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 18, Online, Better Together: Microsoft CRM and SharePoint
June 20, Charlotte, North Carolina, SharePoint Saturday
June 22-24, Boston, Massachusetts, SPTechCon
June 23, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 23, Basingstoke, UK, SharePoint Showcase Event
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 26-27, Dulles, Virginia, Regional SharePoint Users Conference 2009
June 30, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar

July 2-3, Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference
July 11, Toronto, Ontario, SharePoint Saturday
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
July 25, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint Saturday

August 8, Sydney, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 15, Adelaide, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 22, Copenhagen, Denmark, SharePoint Saturday
August 24-26, Washington, DC, Best Practices Conference

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

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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