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SharePoint Daily » More Google Acquisitions to Combat Office; Windows 7 Takes Over Christmas; The Decade of the Cloud?

More Google Acquisitions to Combat Office; Windows 7 Takes Over Christmas; The Decade of the Cloud?

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SharePoint 2010 Lists (Windows IT Pro)
While Santa Claus may be checking his list twice right about now, I spent some time last week building an application based on SharePoint lists on SharePoint 2010. It was a great experience in the new, value-laden functionality of SP2010, and I’d like to share the take-aways with you. Before I do that, I’d also like to ask a question of you, my readers. SharePoint 2010 can be downloaded from Microsoft now, and can be installed, so you can try it out in your enterprise. But I know the reality for some of you might be that you don’t have time or hardware to do so.

Google Acquisitions May Signal Big Push Against Microsoft Office (Deals & More)
I use Google Docs for almost all of my writing, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s pretty bare-bones compared to Microsoft Office. But that may change next year. For one thing, Google has been making a number of acquisitions that are clearly Docs-related. Over the weekend, TechCrunch reported that the search giant is in the final stages of talks to acquire DocVerse, a startup that lets users collaborate around Office documents, for $25 million. The deal would also bring Google some key hires, since the startup’s co-founders were managers on SharePoint, Microsoft’s popular collaboration service.

Windows 7: Looking Back On A Pivotal Year For Microsoft (eWeek)
Microsoft's 2009 was a pivotal year for the company, to say the least. The economic recession that gripped much of the tech industry did not spare Redmond, which was forced to report a 17 percent decline in year-over-year revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009. Earnings came in at $13.10 billion (£8.15bn), around $1 billion below Wall Street estimates. Much of that decline in revenue could be tied to sluggish PC sales, which in turn lowered demand for Microsoft’s products.

Will the Teens Be the Decade of the Cloud? (Redmond Channel Partner)
We're coming to the time of the year when pundits look back on 2009 (no thanks) and, given that we're nearing the end of the decade, look back on the 2000s, or whatever they're called. We considered doing a long post of technologies of the decade but never pulled the trigger. And then we figured, why look back? Let's look forward to 2010 and the teens. Right after we talk a little about the 2000s...

2010 Software Trends: Big Ideas from Small Places (PC Magazine)
What does the next year of software look like? Some things are obvious, such as new versions of Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office and continued improvement in online applications, mobile tools, collaboration, and new forms of communication. But what's most exciting about software is that often the biggest changes come seemingly out of nowhere, from small firms and teams that have a great idea. Let's start with what we know. Two of the biggest applications suites are set for big upgrades in the year to come.

Is it Ballmer's Fault? (CNET)
Microsoft is in significant disarray, fettered by its desktop dominance as the world goes mobile. Would this have happened anyway, or is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to blame? Ballmer, after all, knows how to sing to developers, but he doesn't really speak their language. Former Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates did. Now, more than ever, Microsoft needs to get in front of developers but finds itself playing catch-up.

A Very Windows 7 Christmas (ZDNet)
How many tweets does it take to send Christmas wishes? The Microsoft Twitter stream for the Saks 5th Avenue window display is up to 298,000 messages. That's nothing compared to the number of people who will wander past the Windows-7-powered windows that tell the story of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Flake: there was a queue at lunchtime stretching around the corner and on a Friday night with the 50 LED snowflakes on the storefront flashing on and off to the accompaniment of Christmas tunes, the sidewalk was packed the length of the store.

Around the Blogosphere
2009 SharePoint Toolbox Review (dwinter's [MSFT] WebLog)
SharePoint Administration Toolkit (version 3.0 and version 4.0):
We released the fully supported toolkit twice this year. The 3.0 release contained the first version of the SPDiag tool. We published a How-To walkthrough video with the help of Hilton Giesenow on how to use SPDiag 1.0 here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/ee221106.aspx

DPM and SharePoint - Part 5 - What's Coming Next? (From The Field)
I chose to delay this blog series so I could speak about DPM 2010 and SharePoint 2010 openly once the betas were made available! By now everyone should know the pros and cons of SharePoint and DPM 2007 when it comes to backup and recovery, not least the need to have a recovery farm. I’m pleased to say that the requirement for a recovery farm in SharePoint 2010 is now gone! The real technical specifics of this can be found on MSDN. This also means DPM no longer needs a recovery environment and can recover SharePoint 2010 content faster and easier than ever before.

Putting the Brakes on SharePoint with JQuery (Binary Wave)
For the better part of the last year I've been watching from the sidelines as nearly the entire SharePoint community jumped on the JQuery bandwagon. It seems like every year some new thing comes along which will make SharePoint sing and dance like a Broadway musical (remember 2007 – the year of AJAX?). Blog after blog has popped up with tips and tricks on how to do nearly everything with javascript, from fetching list items with web services to making pretty lightbox effects out of picture libraries. Ok, that's cool and all, but the one question nobody seems to be asking is: will it scale?

DPM and SharePoint - Part 6 - What about Search? (From The Field)
People have been asking me for some time about the search post in this series. Sorry it took so long but as promised here it is! Backup and Recovery of SharePoint is complicated at the best of times, what with Config DB dependencies, customisations and a whole load of other things to worry about, we don’t really want to have to worry about SSP’s, Search and the dependencies there either. In fact a lot of people don’t worry and just choose to re-crawl all their content. However, for some this may not be acceptable. The good news is that as of DPM SP1, SharePoint SSP’s and Search can be easily protected with DPM out of the box.

Excel v. Custom Lists (SharePoint Stories)
I thought I had a great way to distinguish SharePoint Custom Lists from Excel in our upcoming training session on Custom Lists. My tag line was going to be “Using Excel to track a list of items instead of SharePoint is like using a garbage bag instead of luggage”. I tried that on my coworker John, and he said: “You know; using garbage bags might not be a bad idea.” Thanks to today’s airlines, he might be right, sigh…

Around Bamboo Nation
Bamboo World Clock & Weather Web Part for SharePoint - Now with Detailed Multi-day Forecasts and More! (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Bamboo's annual gift to the SharePoint community, our holiday release of the upgraded World Clock & Weather Web Part is now available as a free download at the Bamboo storefront. As you will recall, last year's offering included such holiday-themed features as the ability to display snow falling on your Web Part page and a customizable holiday message. In our latest release, those festive features are now joined by a pair of features that many users have requested: the ability to configure detailed multi-day forecasts, and to show a chosen display name.

Partner Advantage Team Welcomes Sieben to the Program! (The Bamboo Team Blog)
SiEBEN provides innovative IT solutions for enterprises, using the most modern technologies. The continuous effort for innovation and its specialization in modern sectors of information technology, has distinguished SiEBEN as one of the leading companies. In addition, SiEBEN is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and has the following four divisions: Mobile, Systems Integration, Business Applications and Internet Division. Especially, for the business Applications division, SiEBEN is specialist on SharePoint projects for intranet portals, user collaboration and secure content management.

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Sr. SharePoint Architect - Indianapolis, IN
The SharePoint Architect will oversee development, architectural design, UI and technology integration efforts for various client projects. Must have experience with Microsoft SharePoint, C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, SQL/SVR and experience leading a team.

Microsoft Updates
Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (MOSS server-package): December 15, 2009 (Microsoft Support)
Cumulative update packages for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 contain hotfixes for the Office SharePoint Server 2007 issues that were fixed since the release of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Note This is build 12.0.6524.5001 of the cumulative update package. We recommend that you test hotfixes before you deploy them in a production environment. Because the builds are cumulative, each new release contains all the hotfixes and all the security updates that were included with the previous Office SharePoint Server 2007 update package releases.

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