June 2006 - Posts

• Good Morning Hilton Logan!

  As if it isn't hard enough for the party attendees to make the 8:00 sessions, our little Hilton Logan had a fire alarm go off at 3:45, clearing us all out into the front yard for a little impromptu Tech Ed meeting...  Woo hoo!  Posted Jun 15 2006, 09:24 AM by wpreston with no comments Filed under: TechEd 2006

• Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint (2007)

  In Alexander Malek's presentation this morning (Tech Ed 2006 - OFC210: check it out), he mentioned that he's part of the team working on the Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint (2007) and that we should expect to see the tools released in about a year.  These include the project types that we'll want to use for starting web parts and event handler projects, amongst other things.  The other notable tool he mentioned was one that would take a site, as you build it out, and create a site definition based on it - NICE! Keep an eye out for them.  http://blogs.msdn.com/alexma   Posted Jun 14 2006, 01:24 PM by wpreston with 3 comment(s)

• Office 2007 Beta 2 TR

  I've heard a few different variations now, but it sounds like there will be an Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh before the RTM release.  I've heard about 8 weeks - which puts it in the late July, early August timeframe.  No details on what the difference will be just yet.  Woo hoo!  The more fixes we can see sooner, the better.  Posted Jun 14 2006, 12:38 PM by wpreston with no comments Filed under: 2007 Microsoft Office System, TechEd 2006, General, MNSPUG

• New SharePoint forums / newsgroups

  From the posting of Lawrence Liu (MSFT) "The new public newsgroups for SharePoint Products and Technologies (all versions include the upcoming 2007 release) have been implemented on the msnews.microsoft.com NNTP servers. Their names are:     microsoft.public.sharepoint.general     microsoft.public.sharepoint.setup_and_administration     microsoft.public.sharepoint.design_and_customization     microsoft.public.sharepoint.development_and_programming These newsgroups are already being actively monitored by SharePoint MVPs and a few Microsoft people. The newsgroups have been very carefully named so that they can effectively replace the existing English language SharePoint oriented newsgroups (like this one) and significantly reduce cross-postings or misplaced postings. (There's absolutely no impact to existing foreign language SharePoint oriented newsgroups.) Over the next few weeks, all of the applicable Web pages on Microsoft.com, MSDN, TechNet, and OfficeOnline will be updated to link to these new newsgroups, so please start using them now. Thank you." (Wes) In other news... there is also a new group that has me intrigued called:    microsoft.public.msroboticsstudio Ah, excellent: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/apr06/04-19VSExpressFreePR.mspx Posted Jun 12 2006, 08:20 PM by wpreston with no comments Filed under: 2007 Microsoft Office System, SharePoint 2003, Information Worker

• Keynote tidbits

  Little things here and there that caught my attention (other than Jake on stage - see previous post...): - According to the latest from Chris Capossela, Office 2007 is currently on schedule for release for October - pending any issues that need to be resolved as a part of Beta 2.  - MS announced a new product called ForeFront that will be working with ISA server to, amongst other things, help make it a lot easier to expose selected SharePoint sites externally.  It'll do a LOT more, but this was the sample that had me excited.  - I hadn't caught this one before, but you can use Outlook 2007 to track history of IM messages - something we couldn't do before without third party clients such as Trillian.  The added benefit being the indexing and search results including this history. - There are new security features coming in September for adding additional security to the SharePoint environment - as part of the Antigen product being further integrated.  Antigen will also allow for more accurate checking of files imported into SharePoint - checking 'true' file types instead of relying on the file name extension only.  If you rename a .mp3 file to .txt and upload it now, SharePoint will let you.  With the new functionality, Antigen will know what the file actually is and reject it.  OK, that's it for now.  We'll see what we can dig up on any more details of these and more as the week goes on.      Posted Jun 12 2006, 06:39 AM by wpreston with 1 comment(s) Filed under: 2007 Microsoft Office System, SharePoint 2003, TechEd 2006, General

• Tech Ed 2006 Keynote Fun

  Usually a blog post about the Tech Ed keynote is about all the exciting stuff that's going to be talked about during the convention.  Well, this one is a little different.  While there is a lot of great information to talk about, what's more interesting is that Jake got a little attention AND got himself on stage during the presentation.  The 'theme' of the keynote went along the lines of the FOX show 24 - and in keeping with that theme had the actress that plays Chloe as a guest presenter.  She eventually called a few people on stage, and Jake managed to catch her eye.  You'll be able to see what happened in the handful of pics I was able to take (I'll let Jake post them) and in the presentation as it makes its way online.  Be sure to check them out!  Posted Jun 12 2006, 06:29 AM by wpreston with no comments Filed under: TechEd 2006, General, Fun