New Open Source Alternative to SharePoint; Good Vibes for Microsoft Cloud Computing; Chrome May Shift OS Landscape

Top News Stories
SharePoint Muscles Into Records Management Systems (Search CIO)
Forthcoming data from Forrester Research Inc. indicates that Microsoft's blockbuster SharePoint platform is making inroads into records management systems, a subset of enterprise content management (ECM). "Microsoft has blown the doors off the traditional ECM vendors from a content management perspective," said Forrester analyst Brian W. Hill, survey author and ECM expert at the Cambridge, Mass.-based research house. "What surprised me is that organizations are also using SharePoint for records management purposes."

MindTouch Cloud: The Open Source Alternative to SharePoint and Salesforce.com? (Read Write Enterprise)
Sharepoint is the big giant in the enterprise collaboration space. Salesforce.com is now in the market with Salesforce Chatter, a service that embraces Facebook, Twitter and the applications within Force.com. MindTouch has the potential to compete with the large market players. Today they are announcing MindTouch Cloud, an open-source, SaaS service that integrates business data from any number of sources, including Oracle, Sugar CRM and Salesforce.com.

Microsoft, Salesforce.com Offer Social Tools (The Wall Street Journal)
An unlikely software sector wants to get in on the social-networking act: business applications. On Wednesday, Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. became two of the most high-profile companies yet to retool business-oriented offerings to emulate Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn—Web services that help consumers track each other using posted photos, information feeds, status updates and other features.

IE9 Will Close Performance Gap, Microsoft Says (Network World)
Microsoft today claimed that its next browser, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), has nearly closed the JavaScript performance gap between itself and rivals made by Mozilla and Google, even though the browser has been in development only a few weeks. Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's president of Windows and Windows Live, acknowledged that Microsoft had catching up to do. "We know we have a lot of work to do in some areas of performance," Sinofsky said today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC).

The New Office 2010 Beta: Is Microsoft Winning The Last War? (InformationWeek)
For most modern businesses, Microsoft Office is the standard for productivity applications. So the arrival of Microsoft 2010 -- now going into beta for release next year -- is big news. But after a couple weeks of working with the new release it seems that Microsoft has done a great job -- of winning the last war.

Office 2010: At last, the Suite that Users Built (InfoWorld)
What do you give the application that has everything? If your holiday shopping seems like a chore, pity the poor developers on Microsoft's Office product team. Microsoft Office has every feature you could ever want and then some. They say the average user only needs about 10 percent of what Office has to offer -- and they've been saying it since at least Office 97. So how can Microsoft improve on a product that many customers considered feature-complete long ago?

Good Vibes for Microsoft's "Point-and-click Cloud Computing for the Masses" (The Industry Standard)
People who write code for a living have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. Over the years the press has played up the hate (and the hype), but today I thought I would turn to one Microsoft software project which is generating genuine interest and kudos from some developers.

Microsoft Ushers Silverlight 4 Beta Into Spotlight (ChannelWeb)
Microsoft on Wednesday launched a beta of Silverlight 4, which features more sophisticated business application development tools and improves Silverlight's performance when running outside of the Web browser. At the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's corporate vice president for .NET, announced the public beta of Silverlight 4 and said Microsoft plans to launch it in the first half of 2010.

Google's Chrome May Shift the OS Landscape (PC World)
Google is hosting an event today to offer the first official glimpse at the Chrome operating system. Chrome has ignited enthusiasm in an operating system market that has been largely stagnant for years. Google may succeed in shaking things up a bit. When you mention Google in conjunction with any upcoming tool or service it tends to draw some attention. When you put Google in the same sentence with 'new operating system'--directly challenging Microsoft in a market it has mercilessly dominated for decades--the rumor mill kicks into high gear. Vegas may even be taking odds.

Around the Blogosphere
Installation Notes for Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta (Bill Baer)
Today we announced general availability of the public beta versions of Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.  This post describes the prerequisite software requirements and provides links to additional hardware and software requirement resources for Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Upgrade Support for Prerelease Versions to Release Versions of Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 (Bill Baer)
I’ve been receiving this question frequently this week so I’m sure others are asking as well: Question: Can I upgrade prerelease versions of Microsoft SharePoint Server or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to the release version when it becomes available?

SharePoint 2010 Development Environment – Practical Tips (blah!bLaH!BLOG!!)
Unless you’ve been under a rock, or the aliens abducted you, you must have heard about SP2010 by now. There are many exciting changes around SP2010, and this blogpost deals with the changes specifically around your development environment. Two major new developments - a) VS2010 comes with SharePoint dev tools, and b) SharePoint 2010 can now be installed on Windows 7 or Windows Vista (for development purposes only).

Is SharePoint Worth Learning? (End User SharePoint)
Going through the mail this evening, I found this plea for advice: “I was a Lotus Notes/Domino power user, developer, sys admin., & trainer (development) for entry level developers. I am also a believer in solutions training and applied it in my training with Lotus (a product which I still think was fantastic when applied correctly in pursuit of business objectives). What do you think….is Sharepoint something I should jump in and learn immediately. Do you see Sharepoint having staying power for some time? Please advise.”

The Big Thing That’s Missing from the Visual Studio 2010 Beta SharePoint Projects (Elumenotion)
Overall I'm pretty happy, ecstatic even, with what Visual Studio 2010 has for SharePoint Development. There is one thing that is conspicuously missing and I don't understand why: support for ASP.NET pages. There are templates for a few specific types of ASP.NET pages:

Around Bamboo Nation
SharePoint 2010 Beta Now Available to MSDN & TechNet Subscribers (SharePoint 2010)
Microsoft announced on Monday that the much anticipated public beta of SharePoint 2010 (as well as the beta for Office 2010) is now available for download.  There is, however, one small catch in that the download is currently available only to subscribers of MSDN and TechNet.  If you already subscribe to either service, by all means, get thee to a download site:

SharePoint Job Listings**
Advisory Solutions Architect (SharePoint) - New York, NY
As the SharePoint Solutions Architect, you will provide the technical leadership and staff mentorship for our custom developed, Microsoft centered applications. Your strong analysis, design, development, integration, and implementation skills using MOSS 2007, SharePoint 2003, C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, and/or .NET Framework will be used as you lead envisioning, architecture, and design discussions. You will be part of the National Application Development Practice and will work to refine and enhance our implementation methodologies practice-wide. We’ll look to you to contribute to the development of strategies, policies, and best practices.

SharePoint Systems Administrator - Arlington, VA
We are currently seeking a SharePoint Systems Administrator.  The SharePoint Systems Administrator will manage all aspects of our SharePoint architecture and provide day-to-day administration and end-user support for a medium-sized SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Services farm.  We are currently undergoing a migration from SharePoint Portal Server 2003/SharePoint Services 2.0 to MOSS 2007/SharePoint Services 3.0, and responsibilities will consequently include administration of both farms until the earlier version is retired, as well as involvement in the upgrade process itself.  You will also be responsible for a diverse set of tasks that will provide you with an opportunity to support and optimize various Web application environments in addition to SharePoint.

Microsoft Updates
Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (Wssmui-hu-hu.msp): October 28, 2009 (Microsoft Support)
This article describes the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 issue that is fixed in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package that is dated October 28, 2009. This article describes the following items about the hotfix package:

Bamboo Partner Events*
November 19, Online, Breakthroughs in SharePoint for Financial Services Firms - DataLan
November 19, Sacramento, California, SharePoint - Key Features - Kiefer Consulting Inc.

December 3, New York, New York, SharePoint Winter Expo 2009 - DataLan
December 9, Online, SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management - DataLan
December 10, Iselin, New Jersey, SharePoint for Intranets, Extranets, and Public Websites - DataLan

January 14, Online, Boost Business Results with SharePoint - StreamLogic

SharePoint Events**
November 19, Online, Project Management Using SharePoint Webinar
November 19, Online, What's New from Bamboo? Webinar
November 19, Online, Bamboo 101 - List Rollup Web Part Webinar
November 19, Online, Breakthroughs in SharePoint for Financial Services Firms
November 19, Sacramento, California, SharePoint - Key Features
November 21, Birmingham, Alabama, SharePoint Saturday
November 21, Phoenix, Arizona, SharePoint Saturday
November 21, Richmond, Virginia, SharePoint Saturday
November 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar (Sprache des Webinar: deutsch) (German Language)

December 3, Online, Bamboo 101 - Calendar Plus Web Part Webinar
December 3, New York, New York, SharePoint Winter Expo 2009
December 5, Washington, DC, SharePoint Saturday
December 9, Online, SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management
December 10, Online, Bamboo 101 - Chart Plus Web Part Webinar
December 10, Iselin, New Jersey, SharePoint for Intranets, Extranets, and Public Websites
December 12, Kansas City, Kansas, SharePoint Saturday
December 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar (Sprache des Webinar: deutsch) (German Language)

January 9, Virginia Beach, Virginia, SharePoint Saturday
January 14, Online, Boost Business Results with SharePoint

* 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.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.