Blogs

You may have noticed that enabling people to find the right piece of information has become a bit of a religious event within Microsoft. Search tools to date include LookOut Windows Desktop Search aka WDS MSN Search Live Search Vista However things have continued to improve with these engined and Office 2007. For example, you can be inside Outlook, type a word in the search bar and within a fraction of a second have returned to you all the mails, calendar items or contacts that have that word in. You can even type something like "from:David received:last week" and get the mails from me that I sent last week. One nice featrue is that a nice yellow highlighter pen will show you where in the mail etc the magical words are, so finding them becomes easier. Obviously the new search engine in Vista / WDS will find documents searching the content itself. I then saw this post, saying that the same process can be delivered from inside a document , so highlighting all the nice words you were looking for - makes...

While browsing the web today I came across this place (The IW Center) which describes itself as "TheIWCenter.Com is a site created and managed by me, Shawn Murray. I happen to work for Microsoft as a Solution Specialist focused on information worker products like Microsoft Office, Sharepoint Portal Server, Live Communications Server, etc. I maintain this site in my spare time and it is not officially associated with my job or Microsoft Corporation. As such, the content and opinions on this site are mine, not necessarily those of Microsoft Corporation. Here you will find webcasts, news and other content on Microsoft's information worker products. These include Office, Sharepoint, Live Meeting, Groove and many others." Sounds pretty interesting I thought, so digging a bit deeper, this site has some great content. I recommend browsing around the site, but some items I thought you might find useful: Office Professional 2007 Prodcast - Mark Alexieff, Product Manager Excel 2007 Prodcast - Michael Worosz, Product Manager...

Hello, just a quick note to say that I am due to fly today @ 11am to Boston for the Partner Conference - if you are going then I will see you there, if not, you can read about it here. ttfn David

I saw this over at the Windows Vista blogs and realised that the original graphics for people withotu higher end graphics were really not up to scratch. Looking at the site, you can even see a nice example of "glass" and the new standard theme side by side. hurray! ttfn David

I spoke to Matt in our team recently about the backup and disk image technology in Vista and lo and behold, off he went and wrote a whole blog article on it with some fantastic links. The backup in Vista has been critised by quite a few as it does not allow the user to perform granual backups, however I do think that most users who want to backup their documents are more than capable fo simply draging their documents to a CD or DVD and having it burn. For those who want a more robust backup, the Complete PC backup of Vista does a full system image backup. While some find the lack of control fustrating, every end user I have spoken to simply wants a reliable regular backup - nothing more - and this is delivered excellently. ttfn David

SQL 2005 Webcasts and Virtual Labs SQL Server 2005 is data management and analysis software that delivers enhanced security, availability, and scalability to mission-critical data applications—while making them easier to develop, deploy, and manage. Choose from a wide range of live and on-demand webcasts. Or take part in a virtual lab, which allows you to cut your teeth on the new platform by experimenting with its different capabilities. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/eval/webcast.mspx?wt.mc_id=sql.ad.01037 Free SQL Server 2005 Training Whether you are interested in database administration, database development, or business intelligence, you can access the E-Learning topic you want, when you want it, and learn at your own pace. Each lesson includes hands-on virtual labs and offline functionality. In addition, you may consider taking a free Microsoft Skills Assessment to help you meet your Microsoft SQL Server 2005 training goals. You'll receive a learning roadmap with additional skills resources including instructor...

I was reading Guy Kawasakiblog entry on the top lies of CEOs and I realised how many of them applied to those "high flying" small business owner managers in a scaled down way, What I partcularly liked what the "what we wished they actually said" section: “I don’t know.” “Thank you.” “Do what’s right.” “It’s my fault.” How many times would a small business specialists life been saved if this was what they actually said to us instead of (perhaps the 17th lie) "I did nothing to it, it just started going wrong... I was not even here when it happened." And of course, that is probably what was said when this all started! ttfn David

I was having a look at the site on OMPL shaing (mine is up there) and I noticed that my blog had been shared by a few people, so I looked around and came across this from Javier an MVP. This post from Javier is entitled "Create easier-to-remember URLs for OWA, RWW and even Sharepoint" and it made me realise how great an this idea is. Just to add to this, I have a 3rd tool to add, which is ISAPI Rewrite, which I use for this site. From Javier's site: If you are running SBS you must know by now that you need to type http://something.yourdomain.com/exchange or /remote to access OWA or RWW from the internet. One issue that I often encounter is that users forget those URLs are (specially if the are technologically-impaired J ). So, what about giving your users simpler URLs? Like http://webmail.yourdomain.com for OWA and/or http://remote.yourdomain.com for RWW It is all so simple, go read his blog entry for more. As I said, he gives two ways to do this, my 3rd is to use ISAPI_rewrite to have lots more control. For this...

Sooo many of you clicked the links in the posts from the last two days, but got an OWA screen that I had to go back and edit about 16 posts. All fixed now - thanks to Rob for pointing it out. ttfn David

The .NET Show: IIS 7.0 Scott Guthrie and Bill Staples provide some details on what IIS 7.0 is, describe new features, and demo how much easier IIS 7.0 is to use and administer. 100k - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2f497db8-06fb-4d30-a00b-abfed571fe9c&DisplayLang=en 300k - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09f5aefa-b5d2-4568-8edd-50b39912f0da&DisplayLang=en Mobile - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1c6878d1-bebb-4e63-ad89-6768c9881fb8&DisplayLang=en ttfn David

I just saw this article at Wired and realised one of the benefits of working for a smaller organisation - this is not me I'm talking about, but you. One of the worrying quotes was: The survey gathered responses concerning e-mail security from 406 companies in the United States and the United Kingdom with more than 1,000 employees. In both regions, 38 percent of respondents said they employed staff to read or otherwise analyze outbound e-mail . In the United States, 44 percent of companies with more than 20,000 employees said they hire workers to snoop on workers' e-mail. Wow, not just the US, but the UK too. Now, should your customer be in the business where they do need to analyze mail, then of course SBS can help - for details on how to set it up, go have a look at the forum entry - http://uksbsguy.com/forums/thread/334.aspx for the answer - simple and effective. ttfn David

Upgrading MSDE 2000 to SQL Server 2005 Express This white paper discusses the new SQL Server 2005 Express Edition features that are important to MSDE users. It covers how to upgrade your existing MSDE installation to SQL Server 2005 Express and presents criteria to help you decide when to upgrade your MSDE installation to other editions of SQL Server 2005. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/msde2sqlexpress.mspx SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Handbook Preparing for a SQL Server 2005 upgrade involves understanding some basic principles that will help you make appropriate decisions and ensure your success. Each SQL Server 2005 component has a unique architecture and life cycle—the two primary areas that will affect your upgrade path. Some SQL Server 2005 components build on a solid foundation to augment, optimize, and stabilize existing functionality. Microsoft has performed extensive, under-the-hood rework of other features to give SQL Server the horsepower and programmability features that your applications...

I didn't, but a quick search on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=security%20iso&DisplayLang=en shows that since January you can download each months security patches as an ISO, carry it around with you and patch to your hearts content. ttfn David