Author: rich_gibbons

Microsoft Licensing, products, Cloud, and more!
Posted on

Embed YouTube in PowerPoint 2007


I now know how to embed YouTube clips into Powerpoint 2007 slides. It is amazingly easy and just as useful 🙂

Thanks to a tweet from @jamestutt which pointed me to this link I can now harness the power of YouTube in my presentations-just today I delivered one where this was a perfect fit.

How to embed YouTube into PowerPoint 2007:

Steve Clayton blogged about a brilliant video from CommonCraft that explains Software + Services very succinctly in less than 4 minutes, and I needed to create an internal S+S training presentation-so I used that. Initially I just had a link to the video on YouTube so the presentation was interrupted while it went off to the YouTube site, but now it’s all contained within the .pptx; giving me a much smoother, more professional looking session 🙂

Common Craft S+S Video:

I think this holds the record for the most links in one post!

Posted on

Performance Point Server killed off?


Performance Point Server (PPS) has been part of the Microsoft product portfolio for a while now but, as far as I can tell, it hasn’t really made much of an impact. It’s been the top-end, full featured Business Intelligence (BI) product but the uptake hasn’t been amazing and MS announce there won’t be another standalone version of PPS, making Performance Point Server 2007 the last.

A lot of clients I work with who you would expect to jump on PPS have stayed away and they aren’t the only ones. The impression I get is that most people are unsure about Microsoft’s credentials in this part of the BI arena; they’re not sure that PPS will stack up against competitors such as SAP (Business Objects), Oracle (Hyperion) and IBM (Cognos) when it gets to the nitty gritty high end enterprise features. PPS isn’t cheap-coming in at around 17K-and when companies invest at that kind of level, they need to be completely confident they will get the best possible return on their investment.

However, this isn’t the end for Performance Point Server, or at least it’s component parts. As expected the scorecarding, dashboard and analytics features will all be folded into Sharepoint 14 (due this year/early 2010) and the new “Performance Point Services for Sharepoint” will be available via the Enterprise CAL.

I think this is a really good idea and will certainly increase peoples usage of MS BI and thus help increase their market share. The proliferation of MOSS 2007 (Sharepoint) throughout all market sectors means an amazing amount of people will have much easier access to these tools. It will make it yet another compelling reason for people to make the move to Sharepoint and for those that already have (but didn’t take Software Assurance)-a good reason to upgrade. By removing a product from the portfolio it looks like MS will increase the use of that product as well as grow it’s (Sharepoint) revenue at the same time…good skills 🙂

From the official statement:

“Additionally, in the summer of 2009, we will release ‘Service Pack 3′ for PerformancePoint Server 2007, which will include updates to the Planning module. From there we will focus our development on the new monitoring and analytic capabilities in ‘PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint’ and will not offer standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server.”

Posted on

MS Songsmith Remixes


Songsmith was one of Microsoft’s announcements at this year’s CES show and I didn’t pay it much attention to be honest-a program that adds music to your vocals just didn’t seem like much to get excited about.

How wrong I was!

We are witnessing a new meme being created at this very moment-people giving Songsmith the accapella’s of popular/classic songs and seeing what it comes up with music wise; I have to say some of them are fantastic.

Here we have:

Beatie Boys Intergalactic (courtesy of @Jonoble)

Wu-Tang: C.R.E.A.M

Police: Roxanne

and an oddly techno Wonderwall from Oasis

I’m not sure that these are the greatest advert for Songsmith as a serious product but they do help show that great music definitely requires a human touch 😉

You can grab a trial here and start to join in with what will hopefully become a truly popular meme. I’m gonna go dig out all my cd’s with accapellas on and see what I can come up with-if I get any gems I’ll post them up here 🙂

Posted on

Microsoft announce job cuts


The rumours have abounded for the last few weeks and today they were confirmed-Microsoft are making job cuts…5000 over the next 18 months, with 1400 of those taking place now.

Many thought and hoped it wouldn’t happen, but unfortunately not even the Software giant that is MS has proved immune. However, and while I am sorry to all those who have/will be cut, it isn’t as bad as it could have been. Numbers around 8000-15,000 were often spoken of, some even went as far as 30,000 s0 5,000 is a relatively conservative outcome. The positions are being cut from “R&D, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, and IT” according to the memo from Steve Ballmer…

On a more positive note, Ballmer also mentions that they’ll be hiring 2000-3000 new people during the same 18 month time frame, so MS are by no means freezing or stagnating; simply re-appraising and re-focusing. Also, at least MS profits were up…albeit only by 2% but still-that’s a fair increase when you’re talking numbers the size that they are. I was chatting about this at work today and just because the results (in this case and others) aren’t quite as good as predicted-they’re still good so is there as much need to worry as we’re told?

Posted on

Windows Mobile and the Sky


Microsoft look set to announce WinMo 6.5 at the Mobile World Congress and also a number of new cloud services including SkyBox, SkyLine and SkyMarket (via Gizmodo).

These are all exciting additions to the Windows Mobile experience and I can’t wait to start using them on my WinMo 6.1 HTC Diamond…first up SkyBox.

SkyBox is an Over-The-Air (OTA) sync/backup service for your contacts, email, SMS, calendar and pictures…very handy 🙂 The rumour is that this will be available to non WinMo devices but I’m not sure if that will come off…good way to get some extra love though!

SkyLine seems to be a “Small Business” version of SkyBox with the inclusion of Exchange and SkyMarket is MS’s version of the iPhone AppStore. A Windows Mobile app store will be brilliant as it will really help users to enhance their mobile experience with 3rd party apps that make their days easier and/or more fun!

Microsoft have done a brilliant job of turning things around with Windows 7 so hopefully 6.5/7 and the Sky set of products can do the same for WinMo…

Posted on

WinMo 6.5 Available to Run?


Both Gizmodo & Engadget are reporting that there are some homebrew-style builds that are “mostly” Windows Mobile 6.5 available for install now.

Heads over at XDA Developers have got it running on some old school HTC models such as the MDA 3 and Qtek 9090, but it doesn’t look like much cop to me. It doesn’t look like the screenshots in my other recent postand I’m inclined to believe it’s just WinMo 6.1 with a new skin really.

The Gizmodo article with links is here.

Posted on

Windows Mobile 6.5 announcements?


The buzz is getting ever louder as the Mobile World Congress gets closer-will Microsoft unveil Windows Mobile 6.5?

After the pretty disappointing CES keynote, MS need to pull something big out of the bag now and a new version of WinMo would fit the bill for sure…especially with all the love the Palm Pre is getting.

Sources say that we’ll see the first WinMo 6.5 phones drop in Q3 2009-so not a million miles away. Although I’m excited to see WinMo 6.5, especially if the screenshots (below) and other news are accurate-but I think I’ll probably hold off upgrading my device until WInMo 7 hits.

Alleged Windows Mobile 6.5 screenshots
Alleged Windows Mobile 6.5 screenshots
Posted on

Exchange 14


There’s been a small flurry of activity on a few MS focused blogs recently about Exchange 14 and, although I initially decided not to post about it, following a number of conversations I’ve had at work recently-I figured I would 🙂

Exchange 14 is the next incarnation of Microsoft’s ever more popular email system (no 13 for superstitious MS) and it certainly seems to be yet another great leap forward, as 2007 was over 2003. Microsoft’s entrance into the world of Software+Services means that Exchange 14 has been designed with cloud services in mind, making it the most scalable to date. Already there are 3.5 million users on Microsoft’s Exchange Labs via the Live@Edu scheme-surely the biggest Exchange deployment ever?!

An interesting bit of info from the Exchange Team is:

“Ferris Research just did a survey of several enterprise customers, and they found that the cost of running Exchange 2007 was roughly half that of running Exchange 2003. E14 will bring that cost down by a similar margin yet again.”

A clear sign that Microsoft can, do and will continue to save customers money while still delivering awesome products!

I’m looking forward to all the Wave 14 products but I find it hardest to get excited about Exchange if I’m honest. That’s because, as an end user, as long as it gets my emails from place to place that’s all I notice…all the fancy stuff I see is part of Outlook and thus Office 14. That said, Exchange 2007 had some great new features around UC that really enriched the UX (User eXperience) so I’m hoping E14 will too!

Posted on

Windows 7 Sleep Mode


The guys over @ Gizmodo have found an issue with Windows 7 beta going into sleep…it doesn’t like waking up again (note to self: Ask MS if Windows 7 is a student…)…

From the Giz article:

“I came home last night, I thought my previously healthy Windows 7 machine was dead. It was making a horrendous squeal and refused to reboot multiple times. Turns out it was asleep.”

Only after countless reboots, pulling the plug, booting and re-booting again did it come back to life-a worrying time I’m sure!

Things like this are to be expected in a beta and I’m sure Redmond will get it fixed before Windows 7 is released in it’s full glory, but it’s good to be aware of these things so people don’t freak out 🙂 I’ll echo Gizmodo and say it’s probably a good idea to disable sleep/hibernate/power save just in case…

Original article is here.

Posted on

Office for Sales: New Office 14 Product


It seems there will be a new component of Office 14, Office for Sales.

Mary Jo Foley has some info from Alpha Testers that shows: 

  • It’s an end-to-end CRM product that will incorporate both software and services components
  • The product is based on and hooked inextricably into SharePoint Server
  • Developers will be able to customize the system to integrate with third-party products, like Siebel CRM
  • Features include the ability to store customer information in Outlook; maintenance of a centralized Sales Center SharePoint site; the creation of sales communities; and support for “sales interaction management” (SIM)

It seems that Sharepoint Server 14 will offer offline support and this will be available with Office for Sales too.

To me, as a Microsoft reseller, this is pretty exciting. It’s going to give a lot of companies a real reason to upgrade to Office 14, which to be honest I feel was missing somewhat from Office 2007. It should also allow resellers that don’t work in the Dynamics/CRM arena to offer CRM services and support to their customers. The fact that it is tightly hooked in to Sharepoint should also help drive further adoption of that technology.

I think this should turn out to be another great move from MS, which will help their partners and customers become more successful, as well as showing that Redmond is still innovating and pushing forwards. I’m looking forward to Office 14 more all the time and this certainly helps 😉

Website Powered by WordPress.com.